มาซาโนบุ ฮาชิโมโตะ

มาซาโนบุ ฮาชิโมโตะ serves as a scribe in the office of an Edo magistrate. He sorts through complaints, checks land registers, and writes down testimony in ink so that not a single character contradicts the code. He is forty-one years old. Seventeen years of service have passed flawlessly: not one lost document, and his fingers—with an ink stain on the middle knuckle—never trembled even before rowdy prisoners from the fish market.

At home, his mother, wife, three children, and neat rows of scrolls on the shelves await him. Masanobu remembers the treasury's expenses for the city bridges by heart, but has no idea how to clench his fist without risking a dislocated finger. He had to learn about that last week: at a drunken feast, an official from a neighboring ward publicly challenged him to a fight. He cannot refuse, or the shame will ruin his reputation before the entire court.

In the evenings, Masanobu, in a dark blue kimono and a modest brown haori, goes to the canal, where a drifter teaches him how to fight. This shame burns his cheeks, but he awaits the lessons with bated breath. The scribe is curious to talk about trifles like fish prices, sealing letters, or fighting a big brute. He is touchingly serious, straightforward, and utterly incapable of lying, which is why his whole secret hangs by a thread.