The Samurai's Garden

Stephen decides to visit Sachi, but he gets out of bed to find Matsu gone. The radio informs him that there has been a setback for the Japanese – the Chinese have prevailed in the battle of Taierchwang. Stephen celebrates by beginning a painting in the study. Matsu returns and, instead of staying quiet as usual, expresses happiness that Stephen is working, then tells him – a happy synchronicity for Stephen – that they will visit Sachi today.

As Matsu and Stephen near Yamaguchi, they smell something burning. They run to the village, where a fire spreads wildly. In the confusion and thick smoke, Stephen helps Hiro, a fingerless villager, throw seemingly futile buckets of water on the leaping flames. Matsu digs fire breaks.

Hours later, the fire is out. Only a few houses have been destroyed. Sachi and her home are intact. Matsu praises Stephen and tells him that his grandfather also would be proud. Even after breathing the ashy air, Stephen has never felt healthier. He feels for the villagers, their solitude allowing them no Red Cross, their encroaching age making them vulnerable. Sachi approaches the men and bows low, expressing her gratitude.

Inside Sachi’s house, the trio have tea. Matsu and Stephen learn that the fire started from a pile of magazines. Sachi juxtaposes her friends’ actions against the villagers’ – the villagers had everything to lose, but Matsu and Stephen risked their lives in sheer bravery. Matsu corrects her: “We had more to lose than you could know” (123). Sachi blushes. Stephen leaves so that Sachi and Matsu can be alone.

Matsu and Stephen decide to stay the night with Hiro in Yamaguchi. Hiro tells Stephen that long ago, Matsu helped the villagers to construct their humble homes, assisting them by carrying materials from Tarumi, and that Matsu cannot be taken at “face value.” Stephen jokes that none of the villagers can. Hiro asks what Stephen’s perfect face can tell them. “That I have a lot to learn” (124), answers Stephen.

Very early the next morning, Stephen visits Sachi’s stone garden. As he stands there in the dawn light, he fears that his time in Japan is growing short. He does not think Sachi will be awake, but she enters, surprising him, wanting to show him something: a small cluster of purple balloon flowers growing among the rocks. She explains that for a long time, she could not bear to see flowers as they reminded her of the past and its unattainable beauty, but that now she is grateful for them and their hopeful message. Their conversation touches on the war and Kenzo’s death; Stephen tells Sachi that he has not told Matsu about her presence at the funeral. She bows to him.

Stephen asks Sachi for more about her past. They pause for lunch, then Sachi dives farther back into her story and her deeper truth: She recounts meeting Matsu (so quiet she assumed he didn’t like her) and Tomoko (beautiful and ambitious) as children, her blossoming friendship with Tomoko, and becoming betrothed to Kenzo. She shares her discovery of her own illness via a rash on her arm a year after Tomoko’s death and that she confided in Matsu, who arranged for her to see a doctor. She tells Stephen that when the rash spread, she finally admitted to Kenzo that she had leprosy, and he walked out on her.

Sachi says that when the disease began to spread faster in Tarumi, she and four other afflicted made a plan to commit seppuku in the sea, to prevent bringing shame to their families. Only Sachi was unable to follow through with the act. She ran to the woods and hid, hungry and cold. Matsu found her, assured her that her family believed that she had died, and told her, “It takes greater courage to live” (139). He knew of Yamaguchi, a haven for villagers and others from farther away who would or could not commit suicide, for it was where he had hoped to bring Tomoko.

Matsu brought Sachi to Yamaguchi. It was still an undeveloped village – dirty, ramshackle, and full of the stench and sight of rotting appendages. Sachi tried to flee, but Matsu took her to the home of Michiko, an old woman ravaged by the disease, who convinced her to stay with her kind care. Sachi, used to being treated like royalty in Tarumi, had a tortured adjustment to Yamaguchi. Matsu’s frequent presence as he assisted in the village soothed her. Then, for days, he did not come.

To calm Sachi in Matsu’s absence, Michiko told her a story about a girl named Sumiko who wanted nothing more than to become a pearl diver. When she did, it was everything she had dreamed and more. She married a boy named Akio, and soon they were joyfully pregnant. But to protect the baby, Sumiko had to stop pearl diving. Her spirit failed as her belly grew, and Akio feared for her life. He took her to the water, where she swam away. Three months later, she returned, the baby in her arms. She gave the child, Kuniko, to Akio and returned to the sea. Years later, when Kuniko told Akio that she wished to become a pearl diver, he did not stop her. He knew that her mother would always be there to protect her.

When Matsu returned the next day, having been ill, he told Sachi that Michiko had once been a pearl diver and that she had had a child. Sachi found herself changed, humbled, empathizing with the lives around her. Years passed, and the village took shape. With Matsu’s help, Sachi began working in the village gardens, then building a house, then creating her own stone garden. She learned about beauty – the physical kind that fades and the deeper kind that persists. As Michiko neared death, Sachi cared for her. She was comforted that Michiko would once again dive for pearls, reunited with her daughter Kuniko.

When Sachi was in her early twenties, Kenzo figured out that she was alive. Kenzo began to send her food and messages, reigniting her sense of loss. During a short time when Matsu was unable to visit, Sachi again raged against the trap of her life, considering suicide. A strong wind sent her barefoot into the stone garden, where her perspective changed once and for all: “its beauty was one that no disease or person could ever take away from me. I stood there for a long time until I felt like I was no longer myself at all, but part of the garden” (152).

As Sachi finishes her story, in present day, Matsu enters the house.

Matsu is pleased that Stephen has visited Sachi. The two men return to Tarumi to collect supplies for fixing the burned houses in Yamaguchi. Stephen feels a bit worn down, and Matsu notices; living together a while now, they’ve begun to “read each other’s minds”(154).

Matsu tells Stephen more about Tomoko, how she became more serious and less a flighty young girl as her disease progressed. One night, she asked Matsu to help her find their father’s fishing knife so that she could end her life. Matsu refused. A few days later, Tomoko found the knife and took matters into her own hands. 

Stephen and Matsu have made several supply deliveries to Yamaguchi and are ready to begin building. On this morning, Stephen stays home to rest. He becomes restless and listens to Matsu’s radio: The Japanese have taken Hsuchowfu, an important railway junction between Nanking and Peking. Stephen knows that Canton and Hong Kong may be next. Stephen writes letters to Pie and Mah-mee, saying that he will return home.

Matsu returns, and Stephen is ready to tell him about his decision. Matsu hands Stephen a letter from Mah-mee. She urges Stephen to stay in Tarumi for his health, reminds him that Hong Kong may stay safe because it is under British rule, and says that she and Pie will not visit him because things are still in flux between her and Ba-Ba. She mentions an uncle named Sing, a friend of Ba-Ba’s, with whom she has been spending time; Stephen does not remember him. Sing was ill as a young man, too, and has assured Mah-mee that Stephen will recover.

Stephen goes to the garden and finds Matsu there sharpening his father’s fishing knife.

Stephen and Matsu are the guests of honor at a celebration for the homes they’ve rebuilt in Yamaguchi. Stephen calls it “one of the best nights of my life” (160). Later that night, Stephen has a sake-induced dream that Yamaguchi is in Hong Kong and that Pie is there, tending to Hiro and the other villagers.