About this book
A war changes shape before it begins and after it ends. Only the conch refuses to sound; only the kuwagata crest slips its socket and walks on ahead; only the stirrup grows lighter than the man in it. Nothing transforms whole. One piece of camp equipment slips its owner's hand and begins to play at war on its own — that is the grammar of this night's hauntings. The parade never announces itself. It moves hidden among the crack of the watch-fires, the clatter of the bird-clappers, and the far-off scraps of a battle cry.
The stage is a single night in an encampment, in the century of war that followed the Ōnin conflict, when a border could be redrawn between dusk and dawn. Of the hundred yōkai, thirty come from lore recorded across the provinces and drawn by generations of painters — Yamachichi, Kazenbō, Ichimokuren, Ōtakemaru and Mekurabe among them. Seventy were newly born from the life of the camp: armor and rations, signal fires and barrier gates, abatis, horo cloaks, and the dice mat behind the curtains. The girl does not run. In the light gear of a foot soldier — a common ashigaru's armor and a single kuwagata crest — she keeps her hands to herself, observes one custom at a time, and sees each of the hundred through, one plate at a time.
However long the night, it ends at dawn in a truce. The last plate belongs to Ikusagaeshi, the Army's Return — a host that withdraws with nothing settled, and whose footfalls come back down the road in reverse. When the girl sounds the single bell at her throat, the footfalls thin at that one note; the armor becomes iron and leather again, and the field becomes only morning. Even so, somewhere a sound is left over. If you meet what remains of the war game, do not pick it up, do not point at it, and pass by in silence — that is the one and only custom of this book.
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