Dale Furutani - Kill the Shogun

Before Toyama could complete his thought, the man had quickly merged with the shadows of the temple. Toyama lifted his lantern and let its feeble light illuminate the edges and corners of the room. The man was gone, and Toyama could see no obvious escape route. Outside, the crickets made their lonely lament. Toyama felt a chill pass through him, because he could not fathom how and where the man had disappeared to.

Maybe ninja could turn themselves to smoke or make themselves invisible, as legends said, Toyama thought. He found some comfort in the fact that such men were hunting on his instructions, and not hunting him.

Honda went to the back gate of his villa. He was staying in what would eventually be the guest house when the new main structure was completed. His wife and retainers insisted that he build a bigger house, and he had acquiesced. It was a financial strain because of Ieyasu’s policy of giving the fudai small estates, while the tozama became wealthy. Despite Honda’s famous temper, his wife had berated him about this injustice. Honda had simply told her yakamashii , shut up, and refused to respond. He didn’t trust himself to respond. He secretly agreed with her. The Tokugawas had a newfound position as the ruling clan of Japan, but he felt his own position was precarious, and that peace was as great a threat to him as the most desperate battle.

Honda knew he was a rough country samurai. He had a certain blunt cunning honed by a lifetime of warfare, but also he knew that the winds of a shifting nation demanded new skills, skills he neither had nor valued. Honda’s skill was killing. This was an invaluable skill when there was a country to be won, and this skill kept him at Ieyasu’s side through countless battles. Now that the last great battle was over, the battle at Sekigahara, he could see Ieyasu’s mind turning to strategies for establishing a lasting dynasty. Undoubtedly there would be some killing involved in maintaining this dynasty, but other skills, more subtle skills, would be necessary if the Tokugawas and their descendents were to rule without having a state of constant warfare.

These were skills that other, more clever, men, like Yoshida, Okubo and Toyama, had. Nakamura, despite his pompous lecturing, also had a talent for creating stable administrations. Yoshida and Okubo were warriors, but the fact that Ieyasu had allowed men like Toyama and Nakamura into his inner circle showed that the balance was already shifting from the bushi to the bureaucrats.

Honda, as did most samurai, had a fatalistic view of life and death. He attributed Ieyasu’s escape from death to simple luck. If the musket ball had been just a few inches to the right, the assassination would have been successful and it would be Ieyasu lying dead, not Nakamura.

Still, Ieyasu had been lucky. He had always been lucky. His primary stroke of luck was simply outliving most of his rivals. The other contenders for the rulership of Japan had died violent deaths or, like Hideyoshi, passed away from old age. Ieyasu simply waited for his time. Ieyasu had also been lucky that, although he had been defeated in battle, none of these defeats turned out to be devastating. Through good fortune and the stupidity of his enemies, he had always survived to fight another day. Looking at Ieyasu’s entire life, where he spent his childhood as a hostage to ensure the good behavior of his clan, it was amazing that he had risen so far. He had no special skills, but the ordinary skills of a military leader and daimyo were honed in him to an unusually high degree, and these ordinary skills had proven triumphant in the end.

Still, the luck to conquer the country was not a guarantee that his house would rule the country beyond his lifetime. Hideyoshi had thought his young son would rule the country after him, but after the defeat of the forces loyal to him at Sekigahara, all the child and his mother ruled was Osaka Castle. Ieyasu ruled the country.

Transforming this rule into a dynasty was another matter altogether. Years before, Ieyasu had his first wife killed for plotting against him with another daimyo, and he forced his firstborn son and heir to commit suicide for suspected involvement in the same plot. Recently, he had almost executed his second son and current heir, Hidetada, for arriving late at the battle of Sekigahara.

Honda and others had intervened to protect this tardy son from his father’s wrath, saving his life. With such a turbulent and unstable house surrounding his Lord, how could Honda rest assured that his own house would prosper in the future?

Now, because of these unsettling times, Honda was doing something he was embarrassed about. The blunt warrior was uncertain if he was doing the right thing, and even used the back gate of his villa so that his comings and goings would attract the least attention possible.

Yoshida sat on the floor, leaning against a movable wooden armrest that was used to provide comfort in a culture without chairs. He was in the reception room of the temple he had commandeered as a residence while his villa was being built. The priests at the temple were not happy about their enforced guest, but they gave him and his men the expected courtesy, which was all Yoshida required.

He was talking to guard captains, trying to ascertain the status of their search.

“Surely you must have some idea where he is?” Yoshida said.

“Edo is a difficult town to police,” one captain said. “Before Sekigahara, it was growing, but still manageable. Now it is completely out of control. Peasants, ronin, merchants, artisans, and scoundrels are pouring into the city, and it’s impossible to track them all.”

“I’m not asking you to track them all,” Yoshida said with some irritation. “I’m asking you to track the man who tried to assassinate Ieyasu-sama. Go back to your men and redouble your efforts. This Matsuyama Kaze must be found before he tries to kill again!”

Kaze made his way through the bustling streets of Edo. Unlike people in the country villages and castle towns he was used to, the Edokko pushed back the night by flooding the streets with the cheery glow of paper lanterns. Shops stayed open and peddlers with small stands occupied likely corners, selling various tidbits of food or cheap sakè to the rushing people. Adults and children of all ages still crowded the streets.

As he walked, he constantly scanned the faces of the young children. After three years, it was a habit with him.

This night the crowd was especially active, as news of the assassination attempt spread through the city like the shocks from one of the periodic earthquakes. Groups of people clumped together to share rumors and news, breaking apart and re-forming in new combinations to take the same stories and circulate them in endless permutations.

Everyone knew that Ieyasu-sama had escaped death by the smallest of margins. Lord Nakamura, who was standing right beside him, had been killed instead. The shot was fired from a great distance, from the nearest yagura fire watchtower, and the lookout had been found in the tower with his throat cut. To these basic facts, countless flourishes were added.

One man claimed the blood had been drained from the yagura watchman and probably drunk by the assassins. Another claimed that a flash of divine light had been seen, illuminating Ieyasu just seconds before the shot was fired. This showed it was the Gods who diverted the musket ball and saved Ieyasu’s life. Still another claimed that he was a former musketeer, and that the distance between the tower and the unfinished wall was too great for a musket shot, proving that the shot actually came from within the unfinished castle, not from without. He hinted darkly that this was evidence of a conspiracy among Ieyasu’s own bodyguards. Numerous other variations on the facts were heard as the Edokko hashed and rehashed the incident.