The Samurai's Garden

While Stephen and his father are at lunch, they learn that Canton has fallen the day before. Stephen imagines the people there, exhausted by the constant bombing, surprised by the Japanese army landing in Bias Bay. The Japanese in the restaurant cheer, and Ba-Ba says that it is time to go. On the way to the train station, Stephen feels that he is being watched.

Stephen stays the night at his father’s apartment in Kobe, then returns to Tarumi by train. Matsu meets him at the station. Stephen is glad to have spent time with his father, who seemed noticeably older. It’s been decided that Stephen will sail to Hong Kong in the next week or so alone while his father bides his time in Kobe, finishing business and waiting to see what will happen next in the war. Matsu says, “I thought as much” (203).

Stephen has not yet left, and already he’s begun to miss Tarumi. As Matsu prepares dinner, the men hear on the radio that Japan has taken Hankow. Matsu turns it off and asks Stephen if he’d like to visit Sachi the next day. Stephen can barely answer, and does. Matsu tells Stephen that he should visit Sachi alone.

Stephen has dreamt of Sachi the night before; in his dream she was bandaged, ill, and alone. Today, he finds her in her garden and gives her a vase he bought for her in Kobe. He tells her that he will be leaving soon. “Perhaps if the gods smile upon us, Stephen-san, we will have the chance to meet again” (204), she responds. They rake the stones in the garden, and Stephen tells Sachi that he worries about her – What if something should happen to Matsu? Sachi tells him that either she or Matsu might go first, and that she would do her best to continue living her life.

Sachi tells Stephen that he has given her and Matsu the one thing they lacked: a son. She confides in him that long ago, she and Matsu had a stillborn boy. Shocked and saddened, Stephen goes inside the house with Sachi. She gives him a gift in return for his: Tomoko’s two stones. Stephen memorizes Sachi’s face before he must say goodbye, possibly permanently: “she was still very beautiful. Then when her face slowly faded in the darkening shadows of late afternoon, I began to grieve” (206). 

Stephen spends the whole day at the beach, swimming and thinking of his adjustment to the quiet of Tarumi and the adjustment he will have to make to the noise of Hong Kong. He imagines staying in Tarumi, caring for Matsu and Sachi, a simple life. Feeling lonely, he hears something over the dunes. Unlike the times before, it is not Keiko who appears but Matsu, bringing lunch.