# Modern Japanese Stories/On the Conduct of Lord Tadanao

Tadanao-kyō Gyōjōki
On the Conduct of Lord Tadanao
by Kikuchi Kan
I
Lord Tadanao’s councillors were summoned before Ieyasu at his headquarters and treated by his excellency to an eloquent burst of abuse.
“When Ii Tōdō’s forces were in trouble today were the Echizen retainers taking a midday nap? Did no one tell them what was happening? If they had moved forward, covering the rear of the main attack, Osaka castle would have fallen this very day. But, no. Thanks to your general’s youth, and thanks to his councillors being the biggest cowards in Japan, we have thrown away a battle! A precious battle!”
Ieyasu did not wait for an answer. Livid with rage, he rose at once and left the room.
The senior councillor, Honda Tomimasa, had come prepared with several excellent excuses for the Echizen forces’ failure to take part in the day’s fighting, but this perfunctory dismissal took him by surprise. He had not had a chance to utter a word.
There was obviously nothing more they could do, but the mood of the councillors, as they withdrew from headquarters and ​returned to the Echizen camp, was very far from one of philosophic resignation. They were in a panic. One thought tormented them all. How on earth could they phrase this matter when they made their report to Lord Tadanao?
General Lord Tadanao, daimyō of Echizen, was twenty-one. He had inherited his huge fief, with its annual revenue of 670,000 koku, at the tender age of thirteen, upon the death of his father Hideyasu. His father had died in the intercalory fourth month of the year 1607, and never, from that moment until now, had the general suspected the existence, this side of heaven, of a will stronger than his own.
The natural strength of will—or perhaps one should say the natural wilfulness—which the general had brought with him into the world, had since been cultivated by him to a growth of towering proportions, like a lone cedar shooting skywards from the peak of a lofty mountain. The councillors remembered the trepidation with which they had entered his presence, the gingerly fashion in which they had broken the news, when the order to join the present campaign had first reached the Echizen household.
“Letters have been received from His Excellency the Shōgun’s father,” they had reported. “He cordially requests your appearance before Osaka, with your forces.” The custom of representing to their young master that his will was absolute had by that time become second nature.
And today it was their inescapable duty to convey to Lord Tadanao Ieyasu’s words of rebuke. What reactions might be set in motion by such outspoken criticism—for the sensation of being rebuked had had no part in their master’s experience, waking or dreaming, since the day he was born—was a question which naturally afforded them the liveliest misgivings.
Lord Tadanao called them to his quarters as soon as he heard of their return.
“And what did His Excellency my grandfather have to say? The usual set phrases of thanks for our labours, I suppose?”
​Lord Tadanao was in high spirits, and he smiled pleasantly as he put his questions. But this affability only increased the embarrassment of his councillors. It was some time before one of them gathered up sufficient courage to make a reply, and when he spoke his voice trembled.
“I fear your lordship is mistaken. The fact that the Echizen forces took no part in today’s fighting seems to have aroused his excellency’s anger, and …”
He ventured no more. The colour drained from his face, and he prostrated himself on the ground.
Never having known how it felt to be crossed or scolded, Lord Tadanao had developed no mechanism of resistance to the sensation, and no means of controlling himself when under its influence.
“Eh! What did he say?” he bellowed. “When I begged to lead the attack he forbade it. And does he still affront me? Tadanao, die!—that is the meaning of my grandfather’s riddles. To all of us, to you as well as to myself, he says—die! Tomorrow, then, lord and vassal alike, we shall drench the enemy’s swords with our blood! Our corpses will whiten and rot beneath the castle walls! Tell this to my soldiers, and let them prepare themselves for death!”
Tadanao’s hands, folded on his lap, were visibly trembling. With a sudden movement, as if he could bear the restraint no longer, he snatched his Nagamitsu sword from the hands of a page boy, unsheathed the blade, and thrust it forward before the councillors’ faces.
“See! On this Nagamitsu I shall spike the head of Hideyori, and thus shall I thrust it into my grandfather’s face!”
Seated on the floor though he was, he brandished the sword above his head and cut a series of wide circles in the air.
Lord Tadanao, not much over twenty, was still subject to occasional half-lunatic tantrums of this sort. His councillors, whose experience of such outbursts dated back to the days of Tadanao’s father, merely shut their ears to the noise and lay prostrate on the ground, as if waiting for a gale to blow over.
​The leaden skies of the last few days had vanished, and the seventh day of the fifth month of the year 1615 dawned exceptionally clear and still.
The fall of Osaka castle was now simply a question of time. Most of the more distinguished captains among its garrison—men like Gotō Matabei, Kimura Nagato and Susikida Hayatonosho—had been killed in the desperate fighting of the previous summer, and now only Sanada Saemon, Chōsokabe Morichika, Mōri of Buzen, and a handful of others were left to face the final onslaught.
The Shōgun, Lord Hidetada, rose early this day and set out from his quarters an hour before dawn. At once he ordered the detachments of Matsudaira Toshitsune of Chikuzen, Kato Samanosuke Yoshiaki, and Kuroda Nagamasa of Kai to move forward to the Okayama pass and take up positions as the first line of attack.
Shortly after dawn Ieyasu appeared, borne from his quarters in a palanquin. He wore a short jacket of brown silk, a thin white kimono, and formal overskirts bound tightly at each ankle. Tōdō Takatora, meeting him by chance, expressed concern at this unwarlike mode of dress.
“Today, surely, Your Excellency should be wearing armour?”
Ieyasu grinned, and in his eyes was the usual glint of sly mockery.
“Armour?” he said. “I need no armour to finish off the little fellow in Osaka.”
In one hand he held a priest’s horse-hair flapper, and with this he beat off the flies which kept swarming about him. Some thirty of his most trusted retainers, including Naitō Kamon-no-Kami Masanari, Uemura Iemasa of Dewa, and Itakura Naizen-no-sho Shigemasa, walked in attendance upon the palanquin. And at the end of the procession, dressed exactly as Ieyasu and carried in a similar but lighter palanquin, came Honda Masanobu of Sado.
Drawn up across the plain, between the Okayama and ​Tennōji highways, lay an army of more than 150,000 men. Banners fluttered in the early summer breeze, and polished helmet-graces flashed in the sun. Each detachment, drawn up in orderly ranks in its allotted positions, stood waiting for the now overdue word of attack.
But the handing down of this word was apparently no simple matter. Three messengers from Ieyasu, on white chargers, now wove their way through the assembled units.
“Room is being made in the ranks for Lords Yoshinao and Yorinobu,” they announced. “The forces in the van are not yet to open the engagement. They will withdraw their horses a distance of one to two hundred yards, dismount, hold their lances at the ready, and await further orders.”
This was not to the liking of Lord Tadanao of Echizen. His mind had been in a fever of excitement ever since the shock of the previous evening, and he had passed an almost sleepless night waiting for today’s battle. Now, as soon as he heard this last order, he sent Councillor Yoshida Shuri ahead to prepare the way and then moved forward himself with his whole force of near 30,000 men—sixteen battalions headed by those under his two senior councillors, the brothers Honda. Pushing through the centre of the lines occupied by the Kaga detachment, deaf to the angry protests of the Kaga men, he pressed on recklessly to the very foot of Chausu hill, and there, a little to the left of the front line forces under Honda Tadayori of Izumo, he deployed his troops in extended formation for attack.
Just at that moment an order from the Shōgun was transmitted to all units—“The defenders are evacuating their advanced posts and appear to be waiting for night. The order to attack will shortly be given.”
But Lord Tadanao was waiting no longer for orders. As two or three exploratory shots were directed at the enemy from Honda Tadayori’s forward positions the Echizen forces suddenly let loose a salvo from seven or eight hundred muskets, and, screened beneath billowing clouds of smoke, all sixteen ​battalions advanced simultaneously, like a moving forest, upon Chausu hill.
The defence of the sector from the Aoya pass to Chausu hill was entrusted to Sanada Saemon and his son, supported—a little to the south—by Iki Shichirōemon Tōotaka, Watanabé Kuranosuke Tadasu, and Otani Daigaku Yoshitane; but the combined strength of these units amounted to little more than 6,000 men.
Among the forces which confronted them the great Echizen army stood out at once for its splendour and immensity. Its general, too, Lord Tadanao, was a conspicuous figure. He gave the impression of a man resolved to achieve glory this day at any cost. His general’s baton had been cast aside, and, brandishing in its stead a huge cavalry lance, he was urging his horse at the gallop closer and closer to the enemy, paying no heed to the caution of his lieutenants.
With their general setting such an example, the rank and file fought with furious enthusiasm, each determined to outshine his neighbour, and the enemy forces facing the Echizen army swayed and broke like trees in a gale. The first great triumph came when Honda Tadamasa of Iyo slew Nenryū Sadayū, the champion swordsman of the castle garrison, and similar feats of arms, by men like Aoki Shinbei, Otobe Kurobei, Ogita Shume, and Toshima Shuzen, followed in quick succession. Sanada Saemon’s troops, defending the line from Chausu hill to the Kōshin Temple were routed in a single assault, Saemon himself falling to Nishio Nizaemon, and his chief lieutenant to Nomoto Ukon. The Echizen forces, pressing close upon the fleeing castle troops, then forced their way through the Senba pass to the Black Gate, raised their standard on the gate itself, and set fires ablaze at a number of places inside the castle.
3,652 enemy heads were taken. In the battle honours of this day there was no one whose share was comparable to that of Lord Tadanao.
Lord Tadanao had drawn up his horse on the crest of Chausu hill. From there he saw the Echizen banners and war-pennants ​sweep like a tidal wave across the castle moat, overflow into the perimeter beyond, re-form into a narrow triangular salient which jutted conspicuously from the main attacking lines, and drive on like a wedge into the interior of the castle. And as he watched he leapt up and down in his saddle in a transport of simple, boyish glee.
A soldier from the front line came running back.
“Aoki Shinbei was the first inside the castle, sir!”
Lord Tadanao’s face beamed as he heard the report.
“Shinbei’s the bravest of them all!”—his voice was shrill with excitement, and he was obliged to quieten his horse, which had taken alarm at the sound and was urging itself forward—“Return at once and tell Shinbei that his revenue is increased by five thousand koku!”
What manner of glory was his, as a general, now? That he should be able to offer up the head of Sanada Saemon, the man who had wrought such havoc among the besieging forces—this was enough in itself. But now the supreme distinction of setting first foot within the castle walls had been won, amongst all these detachments from so many fiefs, by a soldier of his own army! What manner of glory, thought Lord Tadanao, might this be?
Pondering the miraculous achievements of his retainers, Lord Tadanao felt all to be but a reflection of his personal strength and power of will. The wound to his self-respect, dealt him yesterday by his grandfather Ieyasu, was now completely healed. But it was more than just that: Lord Tadanao’s faith in himself was many times more strong and fervent now even than before.
Almost one hundred daimyō had taken part in the attack on Osaka castle, and when Lord Tadanao reflected that not one of them could have won laurels to match his own, he experienced a glow of immense satisfaction. He could almost have believed a halo of glory hovered about his person. But he felt far from surprised. Indeed, as the son of the peerlessly courageous Hideyasu, and as a blood relation of the Tokugawa family, it ​seemed to him that such deeds of martial valour as he had performed today were perfectly natural, almost disappointingly so. Lord Tadanao’s exultation became mingled with a feeling of complacency which he found it difficult to keep in check.
“My grandfather was a little too hasty in his estimate of this Tadanao. I must see him and hear what he has to say.”
He hurried off at once to seek an audience with Ieyasu, whose headquarters had now been moved up to the Okayama pass.
Ieyasu, seated on a camp stool, was receiving the formal congratulations of a succession of daimyō, but when Lord Tadanao appeared he rose from his seat—a signal honour—and grasped him by the hand.
“Splendid! The hero of the day, and a true grandson of Ieyasu!”—He drew Lord Tadanao close, praising him unreservedly to his face—“In military valour you have shown yourself worthy of a place beside Fan Kuai of China. Yes, truly, you are the Fan Kuai of Japan!”
Lord Tadanao was of an ingenuous, uncomplicated nature, and as he heard himself extolled in this manner tears of happiness welled in his eyes. The fact that he had been insulted by this same person only the day before was instantly forgotten. Not the slightest tinge of resentment remained.
On returning that evening to his camp he mustered his retainers for a great celebration. He knew himself now to be the strongest and bravest of all men. Even that flattering reference of Ieyasu’s to ‘the Fan Kuai of Japan’ seemed to him, as he recalled it, only partially adequate.
Darkness had fallen, and in the night sky he could see the ruddy reflection of scattered fires still raging within Osaka castle. Those fires, he idly imagined, were bonfires lit in honour of his own exploits. He drank to them, re-filling his great wine-cup again and again.
Except for a certain hazy exhilaration, Lord Tadanao’s mind was empty of all thought and feeling.
On the fifth day of the following month, when all the feudal ​lords who had assisted in the final assault were reassembled at Nijō castle in Kyoto, Ieyasu took Lord Tadanao by the hand and addressed him as follows:
“When your father Hideyasu was still alive you always behaved towards me with the utmost respect, as became a filial grandson. Now you have shown your loyalty on the field of battle, excelling all others, and my satisfaction is complete. I had considered offering you a written address of thanks, but this is a family matter and such ceremony might not be fitting. Rest assured, then, that as long as my own family line continues the household of Echizen shall remain in undisturbed peace, as firm as the ageless rocks.”
With these words he presented to Lord Tadanao a flower-patterned tea canister from his private collection. Over­ whelmed by the honour. Lord Tadanao fancied for a moment that there radiated from his person—from his person alone in this vast assemblage of his peers—shafts of dazzling light. Inside him there was a throbbing, flooding warmth of limitless satisfaction, as if there were nothing more he could ever wish for in this world.
Satisfaction, of course, was by no means an entirely novel sensation for one whose will had not normally encountered obstacles, and who was able, more often than not, to gratify his emotional impulses to the full. Since early childhood his will and his emotions, being subject to no form of discipline from without, had developed at their own pace and run riot as they pleased. Lord Tadanao carried no memories of inferiority or defeat in anything he had ever undertaken. In his childhood, shooting toy arrows at toy targets in competition with his playmates, he had always been the winner. Whenever a tournament of court football was held within the castle—for courtiers from Kyoto had introduced the art even to the garrison of Fukui—the player who kicked with the greatest skill had invariably been Lord Tadanao. Even in trifling board-games like Gobang, Chinese Chess, and Double-Six, he was victorious in nine cases out of ten. He had naturally, too, shown ​precocious ability in all the arts which were essential to a military man—in archery, horsemanship, jousting, and swordplay—and after out-classing his companion-pages, who had started on equal terms with himself, he gave regular proof of his amazing prowess by defeating, with ease, even those young samurai who were acknowledged within his household as the champions in their respective fields.
In this way, with the passage of the years, a sense of superiority over his immediate circle had taken firm root in his mind. And, deep down, he had come to cherish the conviction that he was, in fact, of a superior species, possessing characteristics quite distinct from those of his retainers.
But, although Lord Tadanao was sufficiently convinced of his pre-eminence over his own retainers, he had, despite himself, fallen prey to certain melancholy misgivings since setting out for the Osaka campaign. His competitors in the struggle for glory would now be daimyō, men of his own class. Was it possible that he might find himself outshone by some among their number? Worse, now that he was to be tested in that very business of war to which men of his class were dedicated, might he, unawares, commit some error of judgment as a general? In actual fact, in the engagement of the sixth of the fifth month, by deferring his entry into the battle until too late, he had committed just such an error, and had dangerously shaken even his own deep-set faith in himself. But the glory he had won on the very next day, in the storming of the castle, had completely healed this wound to his self-esteem. It had done more. The Echizen forces had been first inside the castle, and their battle honours had been overwhelmingly greater than those of any other detachment; Lord Tadanao’s comparatively modest conviction that he was a better man than any of his retainers had consequently grown more comprehensive in scope, and changed to a conviction that he was a better man than any of the sixty noble lords who had joined in the storming of the castle. The forces which had taken 3,652 enemy heads in the Osaka campaign, and the forces, ​moreover, which had taken the head of General Sanada Saemon, belonged to Lord Tadanao. There was no doubt of that.
The flower-patterned tea canister and the title of ‘the Fan Kuai of Japan’ had made a deep impression on Lord Tadanao’s mind. He regarded them together as a twin testimonial to his pre-eminent merit.
It was exhilarating. He felt as if all 120 daimyō and lesser lords in that room were gazing upon Lord Tadanao in wide-eyed wonder and admiration.
Until now he had been proud to think himself a finer man than any of his retainers. But it was not really satisfactory, this measuring himself only by those who were his subordinates. Now, taken by the hand and cordially welcomed by no less a person than His Excellency, he was being singled out for praise before all the lords in the land.
Lords Yoshinao and Yorinobu, who were his own uncles, had won no particular distinction. Another uncle, Lord Tadateru, Chamberlain of Echigo, had failed to take any part in the fighting on the seventh and had positively fallen into disgrace. Even the honours won by the great and celebrated clans of Date, Maeda, and Kuroda paled to insignificance, to less than the gleam of fireflies before a full moon, when set beside those of the Echizen household.
When he thought in this way, Lord Tadanao’s sense of superiority, which had been momentarily unsettled on that one occasion by Ieyasu’s cutting rebuke, not only miraculously recovered all its former strength, but went on, by a process of violent reaction, to become something far more splendid and unshakeable than it had ever been before.
Thus Lord Tadanao, daimyō of Echizen, taking with him the proud consciousness of being the foremost hero in the land, withdrew from Kyoto in the eighth month of that year, and returned in a most exalted frame of mind to his castle-seat at Fukui.
II
Hundreds of candles, set in silver candlesticks, blazed in the great hall of the castle at Echizen Kitanoshō. The evening’s festivities—as was clearly shown by the solid masses of white wax which had already climbed high about the base of each candlestick—were well advanced.
It had been Lord Tadanao’s custom, since returning to his province, to gather together his young retainers during the day for tournaments, and at night, as soon as the games were over, to invite the whole company to a huge informal banquet.
The title of ‘the Fan Kuai of Japan’, so flatteringly conferred upon him by his grandfather Ieyasu, was a source of immense happiness to Lord Tadanao. His heart beat quicker at the mere thought of it. And by thus competing with the young warriors of his household, measuring his own skill with the spear and the sword against theirs, and soundly defeating all comers, he was providing this proud new boast of his with the daily sustenance it demanded.
The young warriors ranged at this moment in a deep curve around the great hall, below the step of the slightly elevated section on which he himself was seated, had been specially selected from among his numerous young retainers for their prowess in the military arts. Among them he could see some who were still mere youths, their hair not yet trimmed to the styles of manhood, but one and all were powerfully built, and their eyes shone vigorously.
But an even nobler and more gallant spectacle was presented by the master of the castle himself, Lord Tadanao. Though lean and trim in figure, his eyes glowed darkly with an almost uncanny quality of penetration, and in the set of his brow there was an overwhelming suggestion of dauntless courage.
Lord Tadanao was a little intoxicated. Things had a tendency to revolve. Nevertheless he steadied himself and gazed slowly around the whole assembly.
The one hundred or more young men seated in the hall below him were every one of them slaves to his will. As the ​thought passed through his mind he could not check a sudden surge of that special pride known only to those who wield great authority.
But the pride he felt this evening was not that alone. It was twofold. For in his prowess as a fighting man, too, he had proved himself superior to all these young men seated before him.
Earlier today he had assembled his retainers for yet another great tournament. He had chosen from their number those judged most proficient in the art of wielding the spear, and had divided them into two teams, the Reds and the Whites.
He himself had taken command of the Reds. But from the very start his team-mates had fared badly. One after another they had retired from the arena in defeat, and when it came to the deputy-commander’s turn, and he too was laid low, there still remained five members of the White team who had not yet been obliged to fight.
It was at this juncture that Lord Tadanao, as commander of the Reds, strode valiantly and imposingly into the arena, brandishing his huge six-yard spear with masterful ease. The White warriors were cowed at the mere sight. His first opponent, the head page boy—who had been so overawed by Lord Tadanao’s warlike appearance that he seemed in two minds whether to join battle or flee—had his spear struck from his grasp before he had really started, and upon receiving a blow in the stomach collapsed in the semblance of a swoon. The following two contestants, a stable overseer and an officer of the treasury, were stricken to the ground in rapid succession. The deputy-commander of the Whites next took the field. This was Ōshima Sadayū, eldest son of the castle’s fencing instructor, Ōshima Sazen, and rated second to none in the whole Echizen household in his skill with the spear.
There was a murmur of excited whispering among the spectators. “Even his lordship, for all his strength, may find Sadayū a stiff proposition.” But after some seven or eight vigorous exchanges Sadayū too was humbled. Recoiling from ​a glancing blow to his thigh, and momentarily set off balance, he lowered his guard and exposed himself to a crippling thrust from directly in front, which landed squarely on the vital region of his chest. His downfall was greeted with wild cheering from the spectators’ seats, where the whole of Lord Tadanao’s household was gathered. Lord Tadanao, gasping a little for breath, stood quietly awaiting the apparance of the rival commander. He was experiencing, not for the first time in his life, a glow of sublime and exhilarating self-satisfaction.
The White commander was a young man called Onoda Ukon. At the age of twelve he had become a pupil of Gondō Saemon, the celebrated Kyoto master of spearmanship, and at the age of twenty, demonstrating the good use which he had made of his training, he had defeated his own teacher. But Lord Tadanao held no one in awe. At Ukon’s sharp cry of challenge—“Ei!”—he levelled his spear and went furiously in to the attack. There was more than the confidence of skill behind his onslaught. There was, it seemed to the onlookers, the whole power and majesty of the Lord of a Province, of the daimyō of a 670,000 koku fief. The battle was hotly contested for some twenty exchanges, and then, suddenly, Ukon staggered beneath a powerful blow to his right shoulder, retreated a few steps, and, prostrating himself before Lord Tadanao, signified his surrender.
The spectators cheered until the very walls of Kitanoshō castle trembled. Lord Tadanao felt, once more, that glow of sublime self-satisfaction. Returning to his seat of honour he announced, in a great voice:
“Gentlemen, my sincere thanks to you all. It is now my wish that, as some compensation for your labours, you should join me in a feast.”
He was in even greater spirits than usual. As the banquet proceeded his most trusted retainers came before him, one after another, and offered their compliments.
“My lord! Since your experiences amid the arrows in the Osaka campaign you have advanced yet further in your skill. ​People like ourselves are no longer worthy opponents for you.”
The merest mention of the Osaka campaign was enough to make Lord Tadanao childishly happy.
But even Lord Tadanao was by this time feeling very much unsteadied by the wine. Looking about the assembly he could see that a large number of his guests had already lapsed into some kind of drunken stupor. Some had reached the stage of incoherence. Others were softly murmuring sentimental songs. It was obvious that there was little life left in the evening’s entertainment.
Lord Tadanao recalled suddenly the aura of feminine refinement which pervaded his own apartments, and he sickened at the boorishness of this all-male carousal. Abruptly he rose.
“Gentlemen, I beg your leave!” Without further ceremony he left the hall. Even the most heavily intoxicated of his guests managed somehow to straighten their disarray and make a low obeisance. The small page boys, who had been fast asleep until this moment, opened their eyes with a start and hurried out after their master.
Lord Tadanao, emerging on to the long open verandah which led to his apartments, sensed with pleasure the cold caress on his cheeks of the early autumn air. Beyond, from where thick clusters of lespedeza flowers showed faintly white in the dim glow of a tenth-day moon, he could hear the singing of autumn insects.
Lord Tadanao decided to take a stroll in the garden. He dismissed the serving-maid sent from his apartments to meet him, and, accompanied only by a single page boy, stepped down from the veranda. The surface of the garden was moist with dew. The dim moonlight made the town beneath the castle seem like some chiaroscuro painting afloat in a vast luminous space of night air.
It was long since he had found himself in surroundings of such utter quietness. All heaven and earth was sad and still. There was only a faint, confused sound of revelry, drifting across from the great hall he had just left. Since his departure ​the party seemed to have grown more boisterous, for he could hear, mingled with the other sounds, someone singing to the accompaniment of an Azuma zither. But the hall was distant, and the sounds reached him too faintly to be an annoyance.
Lord Tadanao followed a narrow path through the lespedeza thicket, skirted the rocky spring, ascended a miniature hill, and arrived before a small thatched pavilion. He went inside. From here the mountains of the Shin-Etsu range could be dimly seen, floating high in the moon-drenched air. Lord Tadanao fell into a sentimental reverie, seized by an emotion he had never before experienced in all his life as a daimyō; and he stood where he was, unconscious of the passage of time, for well nigh an hour.
Suddenly he heard men’s voices. In the stillness which, until now, had held only the sad voices of insects, the voices of men sounded. There were two people, it seemed, and as they talked they drew closer and closer to the pavilion.
Lord Tadanao was loth to have the pleasant serenity of his feelings at this moment shattered by casual intruders. But he could not, on this particular night, summon up sufficient indignation to have his page order the men away. Gradually, still talking, they drew nearer. The interior of the pavilion was in darkness, untouched by the light of the moon, and the two men could have had no idea that their lord was standing there.
He felt no curiosity to know who these intruders were. But as they came slowly nearer he could hardly help recognizing their voices. The man who sounded a little the worse for drink was Onoda Ukon, the White commander in today’s tournament. The other, the one with the sharp, nervous voice, was the deputy-commander, Ōshima Sadayū, who had been so quickly beaten to submission this day by Lord Tadanao. The two of them seemed to have been talking for some time about the battle of the Reds and Whites.
This was Lord Tadanao’s first experience, since being born ​into this world as a daimyō, of the strange fascination of eavesdropping, and, despite himself, he listened intently.
The two men had apparently halted by the spring, not more than six yards from the pavilion. Sadayū was speaking, in a confidential tone.
“Tell me, what do you think of the master’s skill?”
Ukon’s reply was spoken with a certain jocular bitterness. “Gossip about his lordship! It’s a suicide for us both if we’re heard!”
“We gossip about the Shōgun, too, on the sly. Come, what do you think? His lordship’s prowess in arms… What is your real opinion?” Sadayū sounded in earnest. He was completely silent for a moment, as if waiting tensely for Ukon’s assessment.
“Well, it’s as they say. He’s pretty good.” Ukon paused abruptly. Lord Tadanao felt as if, for the very first time, he was hearing himself praised without deceit by a retainer. But Ukon continued.
“I allowed him the victory, as usual, but I didn’t exactly exert myself.”
There was a significant silence, during which the two men were doubtless smiling wryly at each other.
Ukon’s words, naturally enough, had a devastating effect upon eavesdropping Lord Tadanao. A great whirl and tumult of emotions suddenly raced within his breast.
Lord Tadanao had never known this feeling before. It was as if he had been trampled on and kicked, from head to toe, by muddy feet. His lips quivered, and the blood in every vein of his body seemed to be boiling over and rushing to his head.
Ukon’s brief words, with their indescribable shock, had hurled Lord Tadanao down from the loftiest heights of human dignity, from the pedestal on which he had stood exalted until this moment, and cast him ignominiously into the dust.
His mood was certainly near to violent rage. But it was very different from the violent rage which stems from a heart ​bursting with superabundant strength. His anger raged furiously on the surface, but it arose from the sudden creation, at the very core of his soul, of a terrible, desolate emptiness. He was overwhelmed by the bitter discovery that the world was a fraud, that his whole life until now, and all his proud boasts, had been built upon a false foundation.
For a moment he felt an urge to take the sword from his page boy’s hands and kill the two men on the spot; but the strength for such desperate resolutions was no longer within him.
Besides, it would only double his humiliation. For a lord to pride himself on false victories granted in flattery by his own retainers was shame and folly enough. But was he to cut down these two men now and reveal to his whole household that he knew of his own stupidity? Lord Tadanao fought against the tumult of emotions in his breast, and tried to consider calmly what course of action might be most fitting. But, because the experience had come upon him so unexpectedly, and because, to make matters worse, Lord Tadanao was of such an excitable disposition, his emotions continued for some considerable time longer in wild disorder, refusing to be arranged.
The page, who had been squatting at Lord Tadanao’s side all this while, as motionless as a piece of furniture, was a boy of some intelligence, and he was not unaware of the critical nature of the present situation. If, he felt, he failed to warn the two men of their master’s presence, there was no knowing what might happen. Noting in alarm the thunderous expression on his master’s face, he coughed lightly, three times.
The page boy’s coughing was, on this occasion, most efficacious. Ukon and Sadayū, realizing that someone was nearby, abruptly concluded their seditious conversation.
As if at a pre-arranged signal, the two men hurriedly departed in the direction of the great hall.
Lord Tadanao’s eyes were flashing with anger. But his cheeks were ominously pale.
The whole world of emotions in which he had lived since ​boyhood had gone wonderfully bankrupt at a word from Ukon.
As a child, in childish pastimes, he had always been cleverer than any of his companions. When he shot his toy arrows he had always scored more bulls than the others. During calligraphy classes the old teacher had frequently patted him on the knee and praised his brushwork. These, and other such incidents, came momentarily back to his mind now as unhappy memories.
It had been the same in military arts. As a swordsman, or with the spear, in an amazingly short time he had reached the stage of defeating any of his retainers who offered to oppose him. And he had believed in himself right up to this moment. He had had the firmest faiths in his genuine ability. Just now, for instance, even while listening to the derogatory remarks which Ukon and his friend were making behind his back, he had almost been able to convince himself that this was merely their chagrin at defeat.
But when he had considered the circumstances under which they were spoken, he had known that Ukon’s words were neither jest nor lie.
Even Lord Tadanao, with all his buoyant self-confidence, had felt obliged to accept what he heard as a statement of the honest truth.
Ukon’s words were with him still, echoing loudly in his mind.
Lord Tadanao tried to calculate just how much of each splendid feat today had been due to himself, and how much to deceit. But it was no use. Not only would he never know about today. In all the countless victories and pre-eminences he had gained since childhood, in every variety of contest or skill, he would never know what were the proportions of reality and pretence. The thought was an agony, tearing at his heart. Not all had been sham, he knew. Not all of his retainers had given him victories which were not his by right. No, by far the great majority of his opponents had been fairly beaten. But the taint ​was there. Simply because there were people, insolent people, like Ukon and Sadayū, every one of those past triumphs was now tainted with an aura of impurity. He felt himself beginning to hate Ukon and Sadayū.
But the wound went deeper. Even the glory he had won three months ago on the Osaka battlefield seemed now no longer wholly credible. And as he recalled that fine title which had been his pride, ‘the Fan Kuai of Japan’, he began to wonder whether even this did not carry with it the sort of exaggeration which makes a man ridiculous. He had been humoured like a child by his retainers. Had he also been played like a puppet by his grandfather? At this thought Lord Tadanao’s eyes began at last to dim with tears.
III
The banquet continued informally long after Lord Tadanao departed, but when the castle bell tolled the hour of midnight all the young warriors accepted it as the signal to rise and prepare to retire. At this moment, however, a chamberlain came hurrying into the hall from the lord’s apartments.
“Gentlemen!” he cried, raising both arms for silence. “Your attention please! His lordship has this moment ordered a change in the plans for tomorrow. In place of the hunt which he had previously announced there will be tomorrow, just as today, a great tournament of spearmanship. The time and the combat arrangements are to be as before.”
There were some who felt a little disgruntled at the prospect. There were some, too, who smiled to themselves. His lordship, it seemed, was eager to enjoy today’s triumph in duplicate. But the majority, pleasantly exhilarated by the wine, accepted the change with great good humour.
“Let it go on for days and days,” they cried. “All the more wine to celebrate on! Tomorrow, again, we can get gloriously drunk.”
On the following day the castle drill-hall was once more swept spotlessly clean, and white and red awnings were draped ​along its walls. Lord Tadanao, as before, occupied the seat of honour, but throughout the proceedings he gnawed ceaselessly at his lower lip, and his eyes blazed.
There was little difference in the results of the contests. But, with yesterday’s victory or defeat still fresh in the memory of each contestant, most of the bouts were, for one of the parties, battles to redeem lost honour, and a far fiercer note was detectable in the shouting and challenges.
The Reds fared, if anything, even worse than they had on the previous day. When their commander, Lord Tadanao, took the field, there remained six members of the White team, including the commander and deputy-commander, who had not yet been called upon to fight.
Lord Tadanao displayed a curious tension which at once puzzled the spectators. He seemed almost delirious with excitement as he stood there whirling his great leather-tipped spear wildly about his head. His first two opponents approached him as gingerly as if they were feeling the region of an ulcer, but were quickly dealt savage blows which sent them reeling to the floor. The next two were no less overawed by their lord’s terrible ardour, and offered only a formal show of resistance.
The fifth to appear was Ōshima Sadayū. Sadayū entertained certain private misgivings, slight though they were, as to the causes which underlay Lord Tadanao’s seemingly eccentric behaviour this day. Of course, he did not imagine for one moment that it might have been his lord himself who had been standing nearby the previous night, listening to that conversation. But he did wonder, a little anxiously, whether the owner of that cough, which had sounded last night in the darkness of the garden, might not have reported what he had heard. It was with a bow of even more than usual solemnity that he now saluted his lord.
“So it’s you, Sadayū!” Lord Tadanao gave the impression of a man striving to sound unconcerned. But his voice was strangely shrill.
​“Sadayū! Be it sword or spear, unless it is a real sword or a real spear we can never know our true skills. Combats with leather-capped practice spears are fake combats. It we can lose without suffering injury, then we may, perhaps, permit ourselves to lose too easily! Tadanao is tired of false battles. I propose to use the spear which served me so well at the seige of Osaka. And it is my wish that you, too, shall this time face me with a naked weapon in your hands. You are not to think of me as your lord. If you see an opening, strike without hesitation!”
Lord Tadanao’s eyes smouldered with rage and his voice trembled as he spoke these last few words. Sadayū paled. Onoda Ukon, too, standing a little to Sadayū’s rear, grew pale.
The family retainers in the spectators’ seats were completely at a loss to understand what possessed Lord Tadanao. Many were seized with a sudden fear that their master had lost his reason.
Lord Tadanao had had his fits of temper before this. He was, by nature, highly strung, and there were times when he was excessively rude. But he had never, in the slightest degree, shown himself tyrannical or cruel. Observing Lord Tadanao’s behaviour today his retainers were, not unnaturally, aghast.
But, although it was true that in calling for the use of real weapons Lord Tadanao was activated by a consuming hatred of Sadayū and Ukon, he was moved also by the hope that at last he might discover what were his true capabilities. If obliged to face up to a real spear, even these two might not so readily suffer defeat. They would use every art they knew to defend themselves. And then he would know the truth about his own skill. He might, of course, have himself to admit defeat. But even that, he felt, was infinitely better and cleaner than foolishly exulting over a pre-arranged victory.
“Ho there! Get ready a spear!” At Lord Tadanao’s order—so promptly that it seemed they must have been well prepared in advance—two small page boys brought forward a great spear, seemingly no easy weight for them to carry, and laid it between Lord Tadanao and his retainer.
​“Sadayū, use that!” said Lord Tadanao, and at the same moment he removed the sheath from the blade of his own, trusted six-yard weapon.
The murderous glint leaping from the seven inches of steel tip, the work of the master spear-smith Bingo Sadakane, cast an oppressive chill upon the spirits of the whole assembly.
At the uncovering of the blade Senior Councillor Honda Tosa, who had chosen to overlook his lord’s behaviour until now, rose suddenly from his place and hastened before Lord Tadanao.
“My lord, have you taken leave of your senses? To expose your valued person in such reckless sport with naked weapons, and to court injury from your own retainers! If the Shōgun hears of this it will be no light matter! I beseech you to desist.” The councillor wrinkled his old, tired eyes, and pleaded desperately.
“Old man, it is useless to interfere,” said Lord Tadanao, with an air of stern finality. “I am resolved upon fighting today with real weapons—even if it cost me Tadanao’s six hundred and seventy thousand koku province. It is utterly impossible to stop me.” There was a crushing authority in his manner, and one might as well have sought to argue away the autumn frosts. Thus absolute, in his own household, was the will of Lord Tadanao. The councillor offered no further advice and retired dispiritedly.
Sadayū had already made up his mind to raise no objection. This, he was now convinced, was a punishment for his talk last night, which must have reached the ears of his master, and there was nothing further to be said. As a retainer he had no alternative but to accept his punishment. And when he considered that it was to be administered secretly, under the pretext of a contest with naked weapons, he even felt that in this Lord Tadanao was showing him considerable favour. To die on his lord’s spear would be an atonement, a noble death, and it was now his only wish.
“My lord,” he said firmly, “no matter what the weapons, ​Sadayū is ready to oppose you.” There was a murmur of disapproval from the spectators at Sadayū’s disloyal presumption. Lord Tadanao smiled bitterly.
“Well then, you are a true retainer of Lord Tadanao. But do not think of me as your lord. If my guard is down, do not hesitate. Strike!”
Lord Tadanao withdrew five or six yards, brandishing his spear as he spoke, and took up his position.
Sadayū now picked up the spear brought by the pages and removed the sheath from its blade. “Your pardon!” he cried. And he stood at the ready, facing his lord.
All eyes were fixed upon the scene in dreadful fascination and horror. The watchers sat tensed and breathless, as if entranced, following every move in the battle being fought to a finish between master and man.
Lord Tadanao was obsessed by one thought. If he could only find out—find out with certainty—the real extent of his strength and skill, he could want nothing more. He was not conscious of himself as daimyō of a province, nor did he think of his opponent as a retainer. He merely fought, with courage and determination.
But Sadayū had, from the outset, determined the issue. After three brief exchanges he took the point of Lord Tadanao’s spear high on his left thigh, toppled backwards, and crashed to the floor.
The spectators, one and all, heaved a deep sigh of relief. The body of the wounded Sadayū was quickly borne from the arena by a group of his colleagues.
Lord Tadanao, however, felt no joy of victory. Sadayū’s defeat, he saw only too clearly, was of the same self-inflicted variety as his defeat of yesterday, and in Lord Tadanao’s heart there was now an aching loneliness far worse, even, than last night’s words had brought. The realization that the wretched Sadayū was ready to feed his lord with false victories if it cost him his very life had reimplanted at the core of Lord Tadanao’s being, even more deeply than before, his terrible uneasiness ​loneliness, and sense of lost faith. He felt bitterly towards this true self of his, which—even if he imperilled his own person and sacrificed the lives of his retainers—he could never know.
At Sadayū’s fall Ukon had taken up the discarded spear; with this in his hand, he now stood at the ready. He showed no trace of fear. His face, it is true, was pale, but the eyes glowed with fierce resolution.
Lord Tadanao felt that Ukon at least, the man who had dared to speak so frankly last night, would surely offer a determined resistance, and, summoning back his will to fight, which had been fast evaporating, he turned to face him.
But Ukon, no less than Sadayū, was deeply moved by a sense of his own guilt. And he too was resolved to expiate his crime by death upon his lord’s spear.
In the course of five or six exchanges Lord Tadanao noticed that his opponent repeatedly contrived to leave the vital region of his breast unguarded. This fellow too, he realized with a sudden mortifying return of his sense of loneliness, was prepared to throw away his very life to cheat his lord to the end. The idea of vanquishing an opponent who thus artfully assisted him was a sickening absurdity.
But Ukon, as if realizing that he must accomplish his wish without further delay, suddenly manoeuvred his body into the path of a feint from Lord Tadanao’s spear, and was pierced through the right shoulder.
Lord Tadanao had most wonderfully vented his rancour of last night. But it had merely created a new sadness in his heart. Both Ukon and Sadayū, at the risk of their lives, had maintained their pretence.
When Lord Tadanao heard late that night that the wounded Ukon and Sadayū, upon being carried to their respective homes, had both, at their chosen time, ripped open their stomachs, he lapsed into a mood of even deeper despondency.
Lord Tadanao pondered the matter carefully. Between these men and himself there stretched a solid, dividing tissue of deceit. This tissue, this barrier of pretence, they were striving ​desperately to keep in existence. The pretence was no idle one: it was something to which they were irrevocably committed. Today with his naked spear, Lord Tadanao had made a supreme effort to pierce this tissue, but these men had repaired the gaps at once with their blood. And now, between himself and his retainers, the tissue stretched as intact as ever. Beyond it men were living as men, in genuine human relationships with each other. But if any of those men turned for a moment to face himself, they at once dropped down before them this protective tissue of pretence. As Lord Tadanao suddenly realized that on this side of the barrier there was absolutely no one but himself, the terrible sense of loneliness redoubled its strength and invaded every corner of his being.
IV
The alarming intelligence that, since the day of the contests, the master had become increasingly subject to fits of evil temper soon made Lord Tadanao an object of terror to everyone in the castle. When on duty in their master’s presence the page boys hardly dared breathe, their eyes started from their heads, and they would avoid the slightest unnecessary movement. Even the companions of honour took care to stand most particularly upon protocol, never moving a step in advance of, nor taking a step of greater length than, their lord. The feeling of ease which had existed to a considerable degree between master and retainers was completely lost, and the prospect of an audience with the lord filled one and all with gloomy apprehensions. On withdrawing from his presence the retainers would feel physically and mentally exhausted, as never before.
The deterioration in this relationship was not remarked solely by the retainers. One day, when a companion of honour brought him a letter from the family councillors, Lord Tadanao noticed that the man was preparing to crawl to him on his knees from a point some four or five steps away.
“Don’t be afraid to come close,” he said. “There’s no need for all that ceremony.”
​But this was really spoken less in friendliness than in irritation. The retainer was sufficiently encouraged by the remark to make an effort to recover some of his old sense of ease. But it was a self-conscious easiness, and underneath there was still a hard core of restraint.
Ever since the contests with naked spears Lord Tadanao had refrained, as completely as if he had forgotten their existence, from any form of practice in the military arts. It was not simply that he discontinued the tournaments, tournaments which had been held so regularly that they had seemed almost like a part of the daily routine. He was never even seen to take a dummy sword or spear in his hand.
He had been bursting with martial pride, but always gentle; rough-mannered, but basically a most innocent and harmless young lord. Now that he had abruptly withdrawn his interest from sword-play and archery he devoted more and more of his days to drinking. Though he had been addicted to wine since early youth, it had never adversely affected his behaviour. Now, as he drained cup after cup, day after day, signs of dissipation and disorderliness began slowly to appear.
It was at a banquet one night. Lord Tadanao was in an unusually cheerful mood. His favourite page boy, Masuda Kannosuke, ventured to make a remark while replenishing his lord’s great wine-cup.
“Why have we not seen your lordship lately in the military drill-hall?” he asked. “We wonder whether your lordship’s satisfaction over your recent exploits has not made you negligent.” By speaking in this way Kannosuke fancied that he was demonstrating, clearly enough, a friendly concern for his master.
Lord Tadanao went white with rage. Seizing a tray for wine-cups which lay at his side he hurled it with the speed of an arrow towards Kannosuke’s face. The violence was unexpected, and Kannosuke blanched; but, rigidly trained as he was in the code of loyalty, he made no attempt to dodge. He took the impact of the tray full on the front of his face and fell prostrate ​where he was, the blood slowly trickling down his pallid cheeks.
Lord Tadanao rose without a word and went straight to his quarters. A group of fellow-pages ran to Kannosuke’s assistance and gently raised him.
Kannosuke, excusing himself from further duty that night on a plea of sickness, retired to his lodgings, and before the dawn of the new day he committed suicide.
When Lord Tadanao heard the news he only smiled, sadly and bitterly.
Some ten days after this event Lord Tadanao was playing Gobang with his old family councillor, Koyama Tango. The old man and Lord Tanadao ranked equal in Gobang, but over the last two or three years the councillor had tended to lose his touch. Today he was defeated three times running.
“My lord,” he said, with a good-natured smile, “lately you have become exceedingly proficient. An old man like myself is no longer a match for you.”
Lord Tadanao had been in good spirits until now, apparently highly pleased at his run of victories, but at Tango’s words an expression of melancholy stole across his face; and then, suddenly, he rose and viciously kicked over the small Gobang table set between himself and his opponent. The white and black ivory pieces arrayed on the table flew off in all directions, and one or two struck Tango in the face.
Why his lord should burst into such a fury, especially when he was winning, was something which Tango was utterly unable to understand. As Lord Tadanao was stalking from the room the old man caught at the hem of his overskirts and addressed him in a voice which quavered uncontrollably.
“What are you doing? Is your lordship out of his mind? For what reason does he offer such insults to Tango?”
Indignation at the impropriety of this treatment blazed uncontrollably in the old man’s stubborn breast.
But Lord Tadanao was not in the least moved by the old ​man’s anger. With a curt exclamation he pushed away the hand that clutched at his overskirts and abruptly walked through to his private apartments.
The old man’s eyes filled with tears. He was mortified that the lord, to whose upbringing since his earliest days he had devoted such loving care, should have thus outrageously insulted him. As he recalled the respect and kindness shown him by Lord Tadanao’s father during his lifetime, he bitterly repented that he had ever lived on to know such shame. The idea of faking defeats on the Gobang board to flatter his lord was a servile notion which would never for one moment have entered Tango’s honest head.
But by this time Lord Tadanao had come to interpret every act and gesture of his retainers in only one light.
That day, on returning to his house, the old man put on formal robes, and, with due observation of ceremony, plunged a dagger into his wrinkled stomach, thus ending an existence which had become too shameful to bear.
Rumours of Lord Tadanao’s disorderly conduct gradually spread throughout and beyond his domains.
Lord Tadanao, avid for victories of any sort, had always been an enthusiastic player of board-games, finding great satisfaction in demonstrating to himself his superior skill, but after this incident he suddenly desisted from such pastimes.
It was natural, under the circumstances, that Lord Tadanao’s mode of life should grow gradually more wild and uncouth. Within the castle he did nothing but eat, drink, and make love. When abroad his sole pastime was hunting. He hunted birds on the moors and beasts in the mountains. Birds and beasts did not—simply because it was the Master of the Province come to hunt them—rush voluntarily within range of Lord Tadanao’s arrows. Away from the world of men, in the world of nature. Lord Tadanao felt refreshed, as if he had escaped from behind that barrier of deceit.
V
Lord Tadanao, until now, had always listened attentively to the advice of his senior councillors. At the age of thirteen, when he was still known only by his boyhood name of Nagayoshimaru, he had been called to the bedside of his dying father, and his father had said: “When I am gone listen carefully to whatever the councillors say. Think of their words as if they were your father’s.” He had always respected this last injunction.
But lately he had begun to place a perverse interpretation upon every word they uttered, even if it concerned matters of the fief’s administration. If his councillors recommended a person for a certain post and lauded his abilities, Lord Tadanao felt convinced the man must be an impostor, and he would stubbornly refuse to make use of his services. If his councillors complained of a person’s conduct and strongly urged punishment by house-arrest, Lord Tadanao felt convinced of the man’s honesty and usefulness, and he would forbid them to issue, at any time, an order for his detention.
The harvest throughout the Echizen fief was leaner this year than it had ever been in recent memory, and this imposed severe hardships upon the peasantry. The councillors appeared before Lord Tadanao in strength and pleaded for some alleviation of the burden of rice-taxation. But the more eloquently they expounded their case the more distasteful to Lord Tadanao grew the idea of acting upon it. In his heart he sympathized with the peasants. It was simply the thought of doing what his councillors wished him to do which troubled him. They droned on with their lengthy explanations until Lord Tadanao could bear it no more.
“No!” he thundered. “I say it cannot be done, and you will do as I say!”
Why he refused was something he did not clearly understand himself.
The emotional impasse between master and retainers continued unresolved, and meanwhile rumours of the Lord of ​Echizen’s eccentric behaviour reached even the innermost council rooms of the Shōgunate at Edo.
But Lord Tadanao’s distemper now proceeded little by little to gnaw its way into more fundamental compartments of his life.
It was one night. Lord Tadanao had been drinking steadily from an early hour in the privacy of his own rooms, accompanied only by a small group of his favourite ladies of the bedchamber.
The girl called Kinuno, a beauty procured for him from far-away Kyoto, had recently come to monopolize the whole of Lord Tadanao’s amorous passion and affection.
The evening light had faded, the dark hours had slipped by, midnight was almost come, and still Lord Tadanao drank on. For the ladies, who did not drink, the time had been occupied solely in the monotonous and endlessly repeated business of keeping their lord’s cup replenished.
Lord Tadanao suddenly roused himself from his dim-eyed half-drunken torpor and glanced across at the dearly cherished Kinuno, seated there in attendance upon him. But these nightly drinking sessions had seemingly exhausted her. In the very presence of her lord she appeared to have lost all consciousness of what she was doing. Those superb double-folded eyelids were slowly falling, and Kinuno was about to slip drowsily away to a moment of sleep.
As he gazed intently into her face Lord Tadanao was seized by yet a new anxiety. He thought he saw there, clearly revealed in that unguarded weariness of expression, all the sadness of a woman at the beck and call of a great lord whose power is absolute, a woman unable for one moment of the day to exercise her own will, moving only to her master’s wishes, like a puppet.
Lord Tadanao considered things further. It was unlikely that this woman, any more than other people, felt any genuine affection for him. Her smiles, her alluring glances—these were all tricks of art, things which had no deep significance. Having been sold, body and soul, for a sum which made any ​refusal on her part impossible, and set down, whether she liked it or not, to serve a great and powerful daimyō, she had no choice but to act as she did. Her last chance of escape from the misery of her present situation lay in doing everything she conceivably could to win the affection of that powerful person who controlled her fate.
But it was not only this woman whose love Lord Tadanao now questioned. He began to wonder whether any single woman, amongst all those others he had loved in all his life, had ever loved him in return.
He had lately become increasingly aware that throughout his life he had been denied the normal, everyday sympathy which men feel for their fellow beings.
He had never even known the sympathy extended to a friend. From his childhood days numbers of page boys of his own age had been selected to keep him company. But they had not associated with Lord Tadanao as friends. They had merely offered submission. Lord Tadanao had loved them. But they had never returned that love. They had been merely submissive, from a high sense of duty.
And what, if this was the nature of his friendship, was he to think of his relationship with the opposite sex? Since early youth he had had about him, at his disposal, many beautiful women. Lord Tadanao had loved them. But how many had loved him back? Though Lord Tadanao had given them love they had not offered love in return. They had merely offered him their submission. Just that. He had still about him, in his service, a large number of these human creatures. But, in place of human feelings for a fellow human, they offered only that one thing—submission.
It had become clear to Lord Tadanao that he received submission as a substitute for love, submission for friendship, and submission for kindness. Of course, there might have been cases, somewhere in the midst of all this, of true love based on human feeling, of true friendship, and of sincere kindness. But these, as Lord Tadanao tried to recall them in his present ​frame of mind, became hopelessly confused in the general pattern. The possibilities of that one word, submission, seemed to have robbed him of them all.
A man raised by his fellows one degree above the normal world of human feeling, a man in daily association with a multitude of retainers, yet conscious of complete isolation—that was our Lord Tadanao.
He saw that even his home life, the life he lived in the intimacy of these rooms, had been a dreariness of solitude.
The impurity of every love he had ever known from women seemed now clearly revealed. If ever he had set his heart on a woman she had gratified his wishes to the full, without hesitation. But, for her, this had had nothing to do with love. It had been simply the fulfilment of a duty, the retainer’s duty to the master. He was sick and tired of receiving dutiful submission in the place of love.
From this time there was a change in the settled pattern of Lord Tadanao’s private life, corresponding with that in other spheres. He began to think that, instead of the usual passive puppets, he should like to love some more spirited, resilient type of woman. If such a woman loved him in return, well and good. But, even if she did not, at least she would show some resistance. She would treat him like a human being.
By way of experiment he caused a succession of the daughters of his more highly placed retainers to be sent to him in his apartments. But to these women, too, Lord Tadanao’s words were simply the words of the lord of the castle, and they did as they were told in complete resignation, as if obeying an order which it was beyond anyone’s power to question. Feeling only the nobility of their own sacrifice, like maidens offering themselves upon the altar of some awesome divinity, they lay down beside Lord Tadanao. And Lord Tadanao, even as he held them in his arms, felt not the slightest sense of illicit pleasure.
After things had continued for some time in this unsatisfactory state it occurred to Lord Tadanao that he might achieve ​better results from women already promised to some particular person in marriage. Surely they, at least, might resist, if only a little. Accordingly he obliged a selection of the girls in his household who were shortly to be married to attend upon him. But these too proved a disappointment. They held the will of their lord to be absolute, and they offered their services to Lord Tadanao in untroubled serenity, as to someone quite distinct from the human male.
From about this time, criticism of Lord Tadanao’s unseemly conduct began to be voiced even among the lord’s own retainers.
But Lord Tadanao’s disorder had not yet run its course. The experiments with girls promised in marriage having brought no relief he proceeded to an even more shocking defiance of morality. He ascertained, by private enquiries, which of the wives of his retainers on the Echizen fief possessed the greatest beauty and most lovable dispositions; he summoned three of these ladies, as if on urgent business, to the castle; and he refused to return them to their husbands.
To many this action seemed the final, incontrovertible proof that his lordship was truly mad.
The husbands made repeated entreaties to Lord Tadanao but their wives were not returned to them. The senior councillors strongly urged their lord to reconsider an action so manifestly inhuman; but the more loudly they remonstrated the more pleasure Lord Tadanao derived from persevering in his project.
The three retainers whose wives had been stolen soon discovered the true nature of the cruel deceit practised upon them by Lord Tadanao. Two of them, apparently believing that even this sort of thing did not absolve them from their samurai duty of obedience, thereupon committed suicide.
When notification of their deaths arrived, forwarded from the district inspectors, Lord Tadanao drained the cup of wine he was holding at one gulp, smiled wearily, and said nothing. The members of his household, however, were loud in their ​expressions of sympathy and admiration for the two deceased retainers. “True faithful warriors! Magnificent deaths!”—their eulogies even included phrases of this kind. But, as for the cause of these two noble deaths, there was no one who thought of this as anything but a heaven-sent mischance, a visitation of ineluctable fate.
Now that these two were dead the attention of the whole household was concentrated upon the solitary injured husband who lived on, a man called Asamizu Yojirō. There were many who bewailed the cowardice of a fellow whose wife had been stolen and who yet hesitated to plunge a dagger into his stomach.
Four or five days later the man himself appeared abruptly at the castle and informed the reception official that he desired an audience with Lord Tadanao. The official did his best to dissuade him.
“Whatever has happened, the other party is your lord. If you were to see him now it could only result in your attempting revenge. His lordship has behaved most improperly, and we all of us realize that. But, whatever he has done, he remains your lord.”
But Yojirō was insistent.
“That is as it may be,” he flashed back, “but I request an audience. I must see Lord Tadanao, whatever the consequences. Please forward my application.”
The official, left with no choice, passed on the request to a councillor who was then conducting some business in the ante-room.
“This Yojirō fellow seems to have lost his wits,” muttered the old councillor when he had heard the official’s explanation. “His lordship has used him badly, but in a case like this the proper thing for a retainer to do is to register his protest by a formal suicide. The other two understood that perfectly, but this losing his wife seems to have completely deranged Yojirō’s mind. I had thought better of him.”
Still grumbling away to himself the councillor summoned ​a page boy and, with evident distaste, communicated the request to Lord Tadanao.
Lord Tadanao’s reaction was surprisingly good-natured.
“What!” he cried. “Has Yojirō come to see me? This is indeed a welcome visit. Show him in at once! The audience is granted.” He was shouting loudly but his features were animated for the first time in many days, by a flickering, playful smile.
Moments later, Yojirō, lean and wasted like a sick dog, appeared before Lord Tadanao. The man seemed to have worn himself out in the last few days by the intensity of his anguish: he was deathly pale, and the expression on his face was sullen and murderous. His eyes were streaked with fines of red.
For the first time in his fife Lord Tadanao saw before him an Echizen retainer revealing in his looks, without any attempt at concealment, his true feelings towards him.
“So, it’s you, Yojirō. Come closer!” Lord Tadanao spoke amiably. He felt somehow that he was now dealing as one human being with another, and he was even conscious of a kind of affectionate yearning for Yojirō. It was as if the barrier separating lord from retainer had been removed, and he and Yojirō now faced each other directly, simply as fellow men.
Yojirō slid himself forward on his knees over the smooth straw matting until he was only a few steps from his master, and then cried out, in a voice which might have risen from a tormented soul in the depths of Hell:
“My lord! Even the Code of Loyalty is a trifle beside the Great Law of Humanity! You have stolen my wife, and this is how I show my hatred!”
With the speed of a swallow in flight he sprang to his feet and rushed upon Lord Tadanao. A blade gleamed in his right hand. Even so, Lord Tadanao was too agile for his attacker. He caught the upraised arm with consummate ease, twisted it, and forced Yojirō to the floor. An attendant, acting with what he imagined to be considerable tact, took Lord Tadanao’s great ​sword from the boy sword-bearer and proffered it to his master. But Lord Tadanao brusquely pushed the man back.
“Yojirō! It is you alone who have shown yourself a true warrior!” He released his hold on Yojirō’s arm as he spoke. Yojirō, still grasping the dagger, did not even raise his head, but prostrated himself in submission.
“Your wife, too, refused on every occasion to comply with my wishes. In this household of mine you are indeed rare creatures!” Lord Tadanao broke into loud and joyous laughter.
Yojirō’s rebellion had afforded Lord Tadanao double cause for rejoicing. First, he had been sincerely hated as a man, even to the point of an attempt on his life, and this gave him the feeling that he had been permitted for the first time to step down into the world of human beings. Secondly, he had been attacked in full earnestness by a man reputed to be the foremost swordsman in the whole fief, and he had most convincingly beaten down that attack. He could not believe that there was in this victory, at least, any element of deceit. He was able once more, untroubled by the doubts which had plagued him so long, to savour his old sense of exultation in victory. Lord Tadanao felt as if a gap had opened in the oppressive cloud of melancholy which had settled of late about his life, and he had caught a glimpse of the radiance beyond.
Not only did he permit Yojirō, who begged piteously that his lord’s vengeance might fall on him alone, to depart without a word of reproof, but he at once gave Yojirō’s wife her liberty.
Lord Tadanao’s joy, however, was short-lived.
On their first night at home after returning from the castle, Yojirō and his wife, resting their heads close together on their pillows, killed themselves. For what reason they died was not made clear, but it was perhaps from a sense of shame, in that Yojirō had raised his hand against their hereditary lord, or perhaps because they were overwhelmed with gratitude at Lord Tadanao’s merciful kindness in granting them their lives.
However that may have been, Lord Tadanao heard the news ​with not the slightest gratification. Even Yojirō’s armed attack upon him, viewed in the light of this subsequent suicide, seemed to Lord Tadanao to have been a strangely incredible act. He wondered whether it had been no more than a calculated attempt to achieve a noble death at the hands of the master. If this were so, then Lord Tadanao’s amazing feat in seizing Yojirō’s arm before he could strike, and forcing him to yield, was not so very different from those amazing victories over the enemy commanders in the battles of the Reds and the Whites. After a little more of such reflections Lord Tadanao had lapsed once more into a state of black despair.
The steady worsening of Lord Tadanao’s disorder from this point is as recorded in the histories. In time not only was he casually murdering his own retainers but he reached the point of imprisoning and putting to the sword numbers of completely innocent countryfolk. The tale of ‘The Stone Chopping-block’ in particular, a story which has come down to us over the centuries in oral tradition, still produces in the listener a shudder of aversion. But, if Lord Tadanao perpetrated such cruelties, it may well have been because his retainers failed to treat Lord Tadanao as a human being, and Lord Tadanao, on his side, ended by treating his retainers in the same way.
VI
But this outrageous behaviour was not to continue without end. Whilst Lord Tadanao, in Echizen, proceeded freely from excess to excess, in Edo the Shōgun’s ministers, Lords Doi Toshikatsu and Honda Masazumi, were privately evolving plans for his overthrow. Frontal measures against so hot-headed a daimyō, and one, moreover, who was closely related to the Tokugawa family, might have given rise to a serious disturbance, and accordingly the ministers decided to send Lord Tadanao’s mother, who had taken Buddhist vows and was now known as The Nun Seiryo, on a mission to Echizen to convey indirectly the resolve of the Shōgun’s household.
Lord Tadanao received his mother, whom he had not seen ​for many years, with great affection. And, strangely enough, when told of the Shōgun’s desire to dispossess him he cheerfully signified his compliance, and very soon after, abandoning his 670,000 koku fief as calmly as if it had been a pair of outworn straw sandals, he set off for his place of exile, the town of Funai in northern Kyūshū. On his way, at Tsuruga, he formally took Buddhist orders and assumed the priestly name of Ippaku. This was in the fifth month of the year 1623, when Lord Tadanao was a little past thirty years of age. From Funai he later moved to Tsumori, another town in the same province of Bungo, and at this place, on a small 10,000 koku fief granted him for his maintenance by the Shōgunate, he passed the remainder of his days uneventfully, dying in 1650 at the age of fifty-six.
No systematic account of Lord Tadanao’s life in this latter period has been transmitted to us. The lord of Funai castle, however, Takenaka Shigetsugu, whose duty it was to watch over Lord Tadanao, caused his retainers to keep a record of the exile’s behaviour, to be forwarded to the Shōgun’s minister Lord Doi Toshikatsu, and this small volume, entitled ‘Report on the Conduct of Lord Tadanao’, survives. The following is an excerpt:
Kikuchi Kan or Hiroshi (1888–1948) This story was first published in 1918 Translated by Geoffrey Sargent ​