The Cycle


     In a small house near Tokyo, a young boy sat
listening to an old radio.  He liked the radio,
especially the drama shows about families and their
struggles.  He would close his eyes and imagine the
scenes, playing out their actions to the dialog and
sounds he heard.  He had a good imagination and could
easily follow the actions of the characters in his head. 
By all accounts, he was a bright child with much promise.
     Nearby, his mother, dressed in a simple everyday
cotton kimono, knelt on the floor and tended to her
sewing.  She enjoyed  listening to the radio with her
son.  It was one of the few times she had to be alone
with him anymore.  Her husband had begun training her son
at the tender age of 5 in the family's unique style of
martial arts.  This left him little time to do much of
anything else.  These short radio shows while his father
was away teaching other students were about all the boy
was permitted to enjoy.
     The show ended and the young boy dutifully got up
and switched off the radio.  It was getting late and his
father would be coming home soon.  It would be better for
all parties concerned if he did not catch his son idly
listening to the radio.
     Moments later the father arrived.  Stomping into the
small house and tossing a small parcel of food to his
wife, he was hard to miss.  He had an imposing presence;
large, bald but every inch the martial arts master.  A
man with all the airs of complete control over his
environment; and this house was, unmistakably, his
environment.
     "Are you ready, boy!" he bellowed as he entered the
house.
     "Hai, father." the young boy answered with an
obvious gulp.
     The training sessions were long and arduous.  For a
child of such young age, the level of training could even
be considered cruel.
     "Outside!" the father yelled.  His wife only stared. 
Like every night, she fought back the urge to beg for her
son to have a night off; a night to be a child.  But she
remained silent; scared of her husband and even more
scared of what he was doing to her only son.
     The training, if that's what it could be called, was
mostly whatever feather-brained idea the father could
think of to toughen his young son while showing him the
techniques that made up his unique method of martial arts.
     Repeatedly, the boy was beaten around the yard by
his larger and more experienced father.  Each time, the
boy learned something of value.  Sometimes, however, he
only learned that being bigger and stronger had its
advantages.  Advantages that could only be nullified by
growing bigger and stronger himself.
     By nightfall, the boy was exhausted.  Unfortunately,
the father was not through.
     "One thousand blows on the striking post, boy!" the
father bellowed.
     His son obediently complied.  As his blows rained
down on the post, its shape changed in the boy's mind. 
First it was some hated enemy, faceless but evil. 
Slowly, it changed; became older, larger, balder.  The
blows became harder, more directed, more lethal.
     Thirty minutes later, the boy's fists bloody and
raw, he finished.  Gasping for breath, he stared at the
post with a burning hatred. <Some day...> he thought.
     "The boy has the makings of a real man, wife," the
father said absently as he watched his son workout.
     "Hai, my husband," the wife answered meekly.  She
hated what he was doing to the boy but felt powerless to
stop him.  She, too, feared the older man and what he was
capable of.  Carefully, she prepared the boy's dinner;
for that was a woman's duty, a wife's lot.
     As the boy entered the house, he bowed stiffly to
his father.
     "I have completed my training as you directed,
father.  May I eat now?"  He asked flatly.
     The father just grunted with a slight nod and
retired to another corner of the room to read the daily
paper one of his students had given him for partial
payment for today's lessons.
     Gently, the mother made her son comfortable and
cared for his wounds.
     "You baby the boy too much." the father growled from
behind his paper.  "He'll never grow up to be a man that
way."
     The wife ignored her husband and continued to care
for her son.  Their life wasn't the best but, under the
circumstances, it was better than the alternative (at
least the one she imagined in her own mind).  Cautiously,
she glanced at the simple wakizashi hanging on the wall
near the family shrine.  Its simple wooden handle and
scabbard looked, to the untrained eye, like a simple
carved and polished piece of wood.  It was never
established where it came from, often she thought it was
simply given to her husband as payment for some martial
arts lesson, but it could have been a family heirloom; a
weapon with a history.  In any case, many nights she
fought the urge to take down the weapon and use it either
on her husband or herself.  Either way, it would have
ended her suffering, her abuse, her fear.
     "Thank you, mother," the boy's soft words seemed to
sing in her mother's heart.  She longed to hold him like
she did when he was younger; to show him a mother's love
like all young boys deserve.  But all that came to an end
when her husband decided his training was to begin.  No
longer was she to do  motherly' things around the boy. 
It would damage his development into a real man; or so
her husband said.  It was about to get worse.  Much
worse.
     "Woman," the father growled as he flung the paper
from him.  "I have decided that your presence damages the
boy's chances of becoming a true man."  He paused glaring
at his wife.  "Therefore, I have decided to take him out
of this house and out into the world to train properly. 
We will return only when he has reached the level of
manhood required to carry on my family's martial arts
expertise."
     For several seconds, the wife stared at her husband,
horror struck.  He was going to take her son, her baby
away; perhaps, never to be seen again.
     "NO!" she yelled in the begging voice she had used
so often in the past. "Please, my husband.  I will not
interfere with his training.  I will not treat him like a
baby any longer.  Please, don't take my son away." 
     With angry eyes, the father bolted to his feet and
grabbed two packs he had prepared the night before,
flinging them out the open door into the yard.
     "I am the master here, woman!" he yelled, his face
turning red with rage.  "How dare you question my
decision!"
     "Please..." she begged as she crawled across the
floor, placing herself between her husband and her only
son.  "I won't interfere with his training.  Just me stay
with him."
     "Boy! Come!  NOW!" the father barked as he walked to
the door.  He stopped just inside and glared at his young
son.
     Trembling and with tears streaming down his face,
young Genma Saotome obeyed his father.