The Giant of Fukujima (Part 1)

A very long time ago on the island of Fukujima, in the Sea of Japan, there lived the great, great, great grandson of Hiroto the Dragon King of the Southern Sea. The name of this young man was Terumasa.

Well Terumasa had one incredibly large problem. He was, in a word, gigantic. Teru was after all, descended from a great dragon who ruled in the form of a man, or so legend would have it. In point of fact if one were to look closely at the stories of the time one will find that very few of his subjects actually ever saw the king, since he kept himself tucked away in his enormous palace at the centre of the island. Rumour has it that the king actually lived in a huge pool of of salty sea water, which as you might imagine is what any respectable sea dragon would like to live in. The stories also relate that one day, while on one of his rare sojourns on dry land, he caught sight amongst the throngs of his solemn subjects, standing with eyes averted, a very beautiful young girl from one of the local fishing families. Well the great king fell immediately in love and asked his chief attendant, the Honourable warlord, the Great Yoshio Masuda, to invite the girl to his palace for some tea, and of course to meet her father.

So it was that on the following day the girl, who was named Akiko, entered the Grand Palace, at a respectable distance behind her father.

Well to cut a long story short, Akiko was soon married to the Lord, amidst huge celebrations and the burning of offerings at the temple. As such stories go they lived happily for the rest of their rather long lives.

From this happy union came three sons and two daughters, and it is the youngest daughter who is of particular interest for our present story. This girl, who was called Mikiko, was married by arrangement to the great warlord of the Northern island of Tarajima, the Honourable Imamura Terumasa, the Terrible. Mikiko brought four strong boys into this world, all of whom brought the house of Imamura great battle honours, and earned the family much wealth and respect, and extended the Imamura Empire to the furthest horizons of the known world. These included the island of Fukujima which, some years earlier, had fallen into the hands of the Manchu warlord, the Lord Che Chin Hanku, the terrible lord who had for many moons pillaged and terrorised the lands that were within this area. This same lord had some decades earlier fought and killed a grandson of the great Dragon Lord and taken the island of Fukujima out of the hands of the family and made himself king and lord.

The Lord Che ruled over the island of Fukujima for twenty years, during which he managed to wipe out practically all the remainder of the Dynasty. All that is except for young Terumasa, the main hero of our tale. His mother had managed, with superhuman ingenuity to smuggle the rather conspicuously large lad off the island and hide him with his cousins on the island of Tarajima, keeping him safe from the agents of the Lord Che hunting far and wide for the remaining male members of the Dragon Line.

Anyhow now that Teru was himself a man, expert in the way of the warrior, and in possession of great cunning and courage, he was ready to gather the dispersed and disheartened forces of his family and face the Lord Che to take back the lost realm of his ancient and revered ancestors. The honour of all the Houses related to the House of the Dragon King, and the future of his own wife and family rested on his considerable shoulders.

So it was that on a stormy autumn morning, having gathered many warriors, old friends and new allies, about him the great and legendary Army of Liberation for Fukujima, began its equally legendary and hazardous march towards the fleet that was to transport them to their fates, and to glories that none had dared to hope for, but all had dreamt of.

For those of you who already know the story of the Great Battle of Fukujima, I need not go into too many long and bloody details. For those who do not then suffice it to say that after two long years of cruel fighting, the Lord Che's forces were either decimated or ran away in disarray. Some even changed sides, since many among Che's troops hated him for his cruelty and bloodthirstiness. The islanders in turn celebrated their liberation as village after village rose up to fight for the great and true returning lord of the island. The Dragon line had always been remembered for their just and honourable rule, and the people were only too glad to be rid of the Manchu's cruelty. And so it was that lord Imamura Terumasa, the Dragon King, the Lord of the Northern Islands, son of the Kings of Tarajima, and great great great grandson of the Lord Hiroto, the Dragon King of the Southern Sea, Lord Trumasa II took his rightful place in the great palace of his ancestors. Terumasa finally put an end to the interminable squabbles of the minor warlords of all the surrounding islands and brought, for the first time in two decades, peace and calm to the area.

So much for the story up till then. Did everyone live happily ever after? Well, not quite.