Gai-Jin (18 page)

“I’m not!” Nobusada screeched. “You were my rival, now you’re nothing! In two years I’m eighteen and then I’ll rule alone and you …” He pointed a shaking finger at Yoshi’s impassive face, everyone appalled—except the girl. “Unless you learn to obey I’ll … you’ll be banished to the North Island forever. We-are-going-to-Kyōto!”

He swung around. Hastily a guard flung the door open. All bowed as he hurried out. She followed, then the others, and when they were alone again Anjo wiped the sweat off his neck. “She’s … she’s the source of all his … agitation, and ‘brilliance,’” he said sourly. “Since she arrived the fool’s become even more stupid than he was and not because he is fornicating himself blind.”

Yoshi hid his astonishment that Anjo would make such an obvious though dangerous comment aloud. “Tea?”

Anjo nodded, morosely, jealous again of his elegance and strength. Nobusada’s not such a fool in some ways, he was thinking. I agree with him about you, the sooner you’re removed the better, you and Sanjiro, you’re both trouble. Could the Council vote to restrict your powers as Guardian or banish you? It’s true you send that foolish boy mad every time he sees you—and her. If it were not for you I could manage that bitch, Emperor’s stepsister or not. And to think that not only was I in favor of the marriage but I put
tairō
Ii’s stratagem into place, even against the Emperor’s opposition to such a match. Didn’t we refuse his reluctant first offer of his thirty-year-old daughter, then his one-year-old baby, until eventually, under pressure, he agreed on his stepsister?

Of course, the close connection of Nobusada with the Imperial family strengthens us against Sanjiro and the outside lords, against Yoshi and those who wanted him appointed Shōgun instead. The connection will be all-powerful once she has a son—that will mellow her and drain her venom. Her pregnancy is overdue. The boy’s doctor will increase the dose of ginseng, or give him some of the special pills to improve the boy’s performance, terrible to be so limp at his age. Yes, the sooner she’s carrying the better.

He finished his tea. “I will see you at the meeting tomorrow.” Both bowed perfunctorily.

Yoshi left and went out onto the battlements, needing air and time to think. Below he could see the vast stone fortifications with three encircling moats within moats and impregnable strong points and drawbridges, the walls monstrous. Within the castle walls were quarters for fifty thousand samurai and ten thousand horses, along with spacious halls and palaces for chosen, loyal families—but only Toranaga families within the inner moat—and gardens everywhere.

In the central keep, above and below him, were the most secure living areas and inner sanctum of the reigning Shōgun, his family, courtiers and retainers. And the treasure rooms. As Guardian, Yoshi lived here, unwelcome and on the fringe but also secure and with his own guards.

Beyond the outer moat was the first protective circle of daimyo palaces. These were vast, rich, sprawling residences, then circles of lesser ones, then even lesser ones, one such residence for each daimyo in the land. All had been sited by Shōgun Toranaga personally and ordered constructed to conform with his new law of
sankin-kotai
, alternative residence.

“Sankin-kotai,”
he said, “requires all daimyos to build at once and maintain forever a ‘suitable residence’ under my castle walls in exact positions I have decided, where he, his family and a few senior retainers are to live permanently—each palace to be lavish,
and without defenses
. One year in three the daimyo will be allowed, and required, to return to his fief and to stay there with his retainers, but without his wife, consorts, mother, father or children, or children’s children, or any member of his immediate family—the order in which daimyos leave or remain is also to be carefully regulated according to the following list and timetable …”

The word “hostage” was never mentioned, though hostage taking, ordered or offered to ensure compliance, was an ancient custom. Even Toranaga himself had been hostage when a child to the Dictator Goroda; his own family had been hostage to Goroda’s successor, Nakamura, his ally and liege lord; and he, the last and greatest, decided merely to extend the custom into
sankin-kotai
to keep everyone in thrall.

“At the same time,” he wrote in his Legacy, a private document for selected descendants, “following Shōguns are ordered to encourage all daimyos to build extravagantly, to live elegantly, to dress opulently and entertain lavishly, the quicker to divest them of their fief’s yearly revenue of koku which, by correct immutable custom belongs only to the daimyo concerned. In this way all will soon become debt ridden, ever more dependent on us and, more important, without teeth—while we continue to be thrifty and eschew extravagance.

“Even so, some fiefs—Satsuma, Mori, Tosa, Kii for example—are so rich that even these extravagances will leave too dangerous a surplus. From time to time the ruling Shōgun will therefore invite the daimyo to present
him with a few leagues of a new trunk road, or palace, or garden, pleasure place, or temple, such amounts, times, and frequency are laid down in the following document …”

“So clever, so far-thinking,” Yoshi muttered. Every daimyo in a silken net, powerless to rebel. But all ruined by Anjo’s stupidity.

The first of the Emperor’s “requests” brought by Sanjiro to the Council—before Yoshi had become a member—was to abolish this ancient custom. Anjo and the others had prevaricated, argued and finally agreed. Almost overnight the rings of palaces emptied of all wives, consorts, children, relations and warriors and in days became a wasteland with only a few token retainers.

Our most important curb gone forever, Yoshi thought bitterly. How could Anjo have been so inept?

He let his gaze drift beyond the palaces, to the capital city of a million souls that serviced the castle and fed off it, a city crisscrossed with streams and bridges, most constructed of wood. Now there were many fires—the blossoms of earthquakes—all the way to the sea. One great wooden palace was in flames.

Yoshi noticed idly that it belonged to the daimyo of Sai. Good. Sai supports Anjo. The families are gone but the Council can order him to rebuild and the cost will crush him forever.

Forget him, what’s our shield against the gai-jin? There must be one! Everyone says they could burn Yedo but not break into the castle or sustain a long siege. I do not agree. Yesterday Anjo again told the Elders the well-known story of the Siege of Malta some three hundred years ago, how Turk armies could not pry even six hundred brave knights from their castle. Anjo had said, “We have tens of thousands of samurai all hostile to gai-jin, we must win, they must sail away.”

“But neither Turks nor Christians had cannon,” he had said. “Don’t forget Shōgun Toranaga breeched Osaka Castle with gai-jin cannon—these vermin can do likewise here.”

“Even if they did, we would have withdrawn safely to the hills long since. Meanwhile every samurai, and every man, woman and child in the land—even stinking merchants—would flock to our banner and fall on them like locusts. We have nothing to fear,” Anjo had said contemptuously. “Osaka Castle was different, that was daimyo against daimyo, not an invasion. The enemy cannot sustain a land war. In a land war we must win.”

“They would lay waste everything, Anjo-sama. We would be left with nothing to govern. Our only course is to web gai-jin like a spider webs its far bigger prey. We must be a spider, we must find a web.”

But they would not listen to him. What’s the web?

“First know the problem,” Toranaga wrote in his Legacy, “then, with patience, you can find the solution.”

The crux of the problem with the foreigners is simply this: How do we obtain their knowledge, armaments, fleets, wealth and trade on our terms, yet expel them all, cancel the unequal Treaties, and never allow one to set foot ashore without severe restrictions?

The Legacy continued: “The answer to all problems for our land can be found here, or in Sun-tzu’s ‘The Art of War’—and patience.”

Shōgun Toranaga was the most patient ruler in the world, he thought, awed for the millionth time.

Even though Toranaga was supreme in the land, outside of Osaka Castle, the invincible stronghold built by his predecessor, Dictator Nakamura, he waited twelve years to spring the trap he had baited, and lay siege to it. The castle was in absolute possession of the Lady Ochiba, the Dictator’s widow, their seven-year-old son and heir, Yaemon—to whom Toranaga had solemnly sworn allegiance—and eighty thousand fanatically loyal samurai.

Two years of siege, three hundred thousand troops, cannon from the Dutch privateer
Erasmus
of Anjin-san, the Englishman who had sailed the ship to Japan, together with a musket regiment also trained by him, a hundred thousand casualties, all his guile and the vital traitor within, before Lady Ochiba and Yaemon committed seppuku rather than be captured.

Then Toranaga had secured Osaka Castle, spiked the cannon, destroyed all muskets, disbanded the musket regiment, and forbidden manufacture or the importation of all firearms. He had broken the power of the Portuguese Jesuit priests and Christian daimyos, reallocated fiefs, sent all enemies onwards, instituted the laws of the Legacy, forbidden all wheels, the building of oceangoing ships, and had, regretfully, taken a third of all revenue for himself and his immediate family.

“He made us strong,” Yoshi muttered. “His Legacy gave us power to keep the land pure, and at peace in the way he designed.”

I must not fail him.

Eeee, what a man! How wise of his son, Sudara, the second Shōgun, to change the name of the dynasty to Toranaga, instead of the real family name of Yoshi—so that we would never forget the fountainhead.

What would he advise me to do?

First, to have patience, then he would quote Sun-tzu:
Know your enemy as you know yourself and you need not fear a hundred battles; know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat; know neither the enemy nor yourself and you will succumb in every battle
.

I know some things about the enemy, but not enough.

I bless my father again for making me understand the value of education, for giving me so many varied and special teachers over the years, foreign as well as Japanese. Sad I did not have the gift of tongues and so had to learn through intermediaries: Dutch merchants for world history, an
English seaman to check Dutch truth and to open my eyes—just as Toranaga used the Anjin-san in his time—and all the others.

Chinese taught me government, literature and Sun-tzu’s “The Art of War;” the old renegade French priest from Peking spent half a year teaching me Machiavelli, laboriously translating it into Chinese characters for me as his passport to live in my father’s domains and enjoy the Willow World he adored; the American pirate marooned at Izu told me about cannon and about oceans of grass called prairies, their castle called White House and the wars in which they exterminated the natives of that land; the Russian émigré convict from a place called Siberia claimed he was a prince with ten thousand slaves and told fables of places called Moscow and St. Petersburg, and all the others—some teaching for a few days, some for months but never a year, none of them knowing who I was, and I fobidden to tell them, Father so careful and secretive and so terrible when aroused.

“When these men leave, Father,” he had asked in the beginning, “what happens to them? They’re all so frightened. Why should that be? You promise them rewards, don’t you?”

“You’re eleven, my son. I will forgive your rudeness in questioning me, once. To remind you of my magnanimity you will go without food for three days, you will climb Mount Fuji alone and you will sleep without covering.”

Yoshi shuddered. At that time he did not know what magnanimity meant. During those days he had almost died but achieved what was ordered of him. As a reward for his self-discipline his father, daimyo of Mito, had told him he was being adopted by the Hisamatsu family and made heir of that Toranaga branch: “You are my seventh son. In that way you will have your own inheritance, and be of a slightly higher lineage than your brothers.”

“Yes, Father,” he had said, holding back his tears. At that time he did not know he was being groomed to be Shōgun, nor was he ever told. Then, when Shōgun Iyeyoshi died of the spotted disease four years ago and he was twenty-two and ready and proposed by his father,
tairō
Ii had opposed him, and won—Ii’s personal forces possessed the Palace Gates.

So his cousin Nobusada was appointed. Yoshi, his family, his father and all their influential supporters were ordered into severe house arrest. Only when Ii was assassinated was he freed and reinstated with his lands and honors, along with the others who survived. His father had died in house confinement.

I should have been Shōgun, he thought for the ten millionth time. I was ready, trained and could have stopped the Shōgunate rot, could have formed a new bond between Shōgunate and all daimyos, and could have dealt with the gai-jin. I should have had that Princess as wife, I would never have signed those agreements, or allowed the negotiations to go so badly
against us. I would have dealt with Townsend Harris and begun a new era of careful change to accommodate the world outside, at our pace, not theirs!

Meanwhile I am not Shōgun, Nobusada is elected Shōgun correctly, the Treaties exist, Princess Yazu exists, Sanjiro, Anjo and gai-jin are battering at our gates.

He shivered. I had better be even more careful. Poison is an ancient art, an arrow by day or by night, ninja assassins in their hundreds are out there, ready for hire. And then there are the shishi. There must be an answer! What is it?

Sea birds circling and cawing over the city and castle interrupted his thought patterns. He studied the sky. No sign of change, or tempest, though this was the month of change when the big winds came, and with them winter. Winter will be bad this year. Not a famine like three years ago but the harvest is poor, even less than last year….

Wait! What was it Anjo said that reminded me of something?