woman's business, which could not be that of interfering with questions
of state; and she obeyed. But Iyéyasŭ revolved the entire question in
his mind, and decided that there was danger in a delay that allowed
both parties to grow stronger in antagonism. So that he came at once to
Yedo, which is now Tokio, and visited Hidetada, asking to see both the
boys together. They came in along with their father and his wife, and
took their accustomed places. Now these were on the higher floor, raised
by a few inches from the floor on which kneels the visitor of lower
degree, in the presence of his superior: a line of black lacquer edges
the division. Thereupon Iyéyasŭ taking the boy Take Chiyo by the hand,
made him sit by him, and alongside of his father, and ordered the other
son, Kuni Matsu, to sit below the line, and said: "The State will come
to harm if the boys are allowed to grow up in the idea of equal rank.
Therefore, Take Chiyo shall be shogun, and Kuni Matsu a daimio." This
decision gave to the line of the Tokugawa a brilliant and powerful
continuity, for Take Chiyo, under his manhood name of Iyémitsŭ, was as
an Augustus to the Cæsar Iyéyasŭ. And, indeed, Iyéyasŭ had certainly
made sufficient inquiries to warrant his decision. If he consulted the
abbot Tenkai, of Nikko, who was a preceptor of the boy, he must have
heard favorably of him. For, according to the judgment of Tenkai, as I
find it quoted elsewhere, "Iyémitsŭ was very shrewd and of great
foresight," and in his presence the great abbot felt, he said, "as if
thorns were pricking his back."
Not but that he was also fond of luxury and splendor; and one glimpse of
him as a youth shows a quarrel with a tutor who found him dressing
himself, or being dressed, for "No" performances, or "private
theatricals," and who proceeded thereupon to throw away the double
mirrors,--in which the youth followed his hair-dresser's
arrangements,--with the usual, classical rebuke, condemning such
arrangements as unworthy of a ruler of Japan.
There are many stories of Iyémitsŭ more or less to his advantage--and a
little anecdote shows a young man of quick temper, as well as one who
insisted upon proper attendance.
Iyémitsŭ had been hawking in a strong wind, and with no success. Tired
and hungry, he went with some lord-in-waiting to a neighboring temple,
where lunch was prepared for them by his cook,--a man of rank. Iyémitsŭ,
while taking his soup in a hurry, crushed a little stone between his
teeth; whereupon he immediately insisted upon the cook's committing
suicide. The cook being a gentleman, a man of affairs, not a mere artist
like poor Vatel, hesitated, and then said: "No soup made by me ever had
stones or pebbles in it; otherwise I should gladly kill myself: you
gentlemen have begun dinner at once without washing hands or changing
dress, and some pebble has dropped into the soup from your hair or
clothes. If after having washed your hands and changed your dress, you
find any stones in the soup, I shall kill myself." Whereupon Iyémitsŭ
did as was suggested by the cook, repented of his own severity, and
increased the cook's pay. But the tutor and guardians of Iyémitsŭ
watched over him carefully, and the story I had begun to tell shows that
they had no sinecure.
The tutors and guardians of the brother, whom Iyéyasŭ had decided to put
aside in favor of Iyémitsŭ, were naturally deeply aggrieved and sought
for chances to regain their ward's future power and their own.
As my story began, Iyémitsŭ, representing the hereditary shogunate, was
called upon to travel to Nikko and worship officially at his
grandfather's tomb. On his way it was natural that he should rest as we
did, at Utsunomiya, and in the castle of his vassal, Honda, who was one
of the tutors of his brother. This was the son of the great Honda
Masanobu, of whom I spoke above as a champion of Iyéyasŭ.
Here was an opportunity; and a scheme of getting rid of the young shogun
was devised by his enemies that seemed to them sufficiently obscure to
shield them in case of success or failure, at least for a time. This
was, to have a movable ceiling made to the bath-room weighted in such a
way as to fall upon any one in the bath and crush him. Whether it was to
be lifted again, and leave him drowned in his bath, or to remain as an
accident from faulty construction, I do not know.
To build this machine, ten carpenters were set to work within the castle
and kept jealously secluded,--even when the work was done, for the young
shogun delayed his coming. The confinement fretted the men, among whom
was a young lover, anxious to get back to his sweetheart, and not to be
satisfied with the good food and drink provided to appease him. He told
of his longings to the gatekeeper, whose duty it was to keep him
imprisoned, bribed him with his own handsome pay and promise of a
punctual return, and at last managed to get out and be happy for a few
moments. The girl of his love was inquisitive, but reassured by
explanation that the work was done, and that he should soon be out
again; yet not before the shogun should have come and gone on his way to
Nikko. And so he returned to the gatekeeper at the time appointed.
Meanwhile, during that very night, the officers of the castle had gone
their rounds and found one man absent. In the morning the roll-call was
full. This was reported to the lord of the castle, who decided that if
he could not know who it was that had been absent it was wise to silence
them all. Therefore, each was called to be paid and dismissed, and, as
he stepped out, was beheaded. The gatekeeper, getting wind of what was
happening and fearing punishment, ran away, and being asked by the girl
about her lover, told her what he knew and that he believed all the
carpenters to have been killed.
Since her lover was dead, she determined to die also, having been the
cause of his death and of the death of his companions. She wrote out all
this, together with what her lover had told her of his belief and
suspicions, and left the letter for her father and mother, who received
it along with the tidings of her suicide. The father, in an agony of
distress and fear, for there was danger to the whole family from every
side, made up his mind to stop the shogun at all hazards, and in the
depth of the night made his way to Ishibashi, where one of the princes
had preceded Iyémitsŭ, who was to pass the night still further back on
the road.
Here there was difficulty about getting a private interview with so
great a man as this prince, whose name you will remember as being the
title of the former owner of our friend's house in Nikko: Ii, Kammon no
Kami.
The letter was shown to Ii, who despatched two messengers, gentlemen of
his own, one back to Yedo, to see to the safety of the castle there; the
other one to Iyémitsŭ, but by a circuitous route, so that he might
appear to have come the other way. The letter was to the effect that the
young shogun's father was very ill and desired his son's immediate
return. By the time that Iyémitsŭ could get into his litter, Ii had
arrived and shown him the girl's letter. Then the occupants of the
litters were changed, Matsudaira taking Iyémitsŭ's _norimono_ and
Iyémitsŭ Matsudaira's. This, of course, was to give another chance of
escape in case of sudden attack by a larger force, for they were now in
enemy's country and did not know what traps might be laid for them. The
bearers of the palanquin pressed through the night, so that, leaving at
midnight, they arrived at Yedo the following evening; but the strain
had been so great that they could go no further. There was still the
fear of attack, and among the retinue one very strong man, Matsudaira
Ishikawa, carried the litter of the prince himself. But the gates were
closed, and the guards refused to recognize the unknown litter as that
of the shogun; nor would they, fearing treachery, open when told that
Iyémitsŭ had returned. Delays ensued, but at last admission was obtained
for Iyémitsŭ through a wicket gate--and he was safe. Later, after
cautious delays, the guilty were punished, and I hope the family of the
carpenter's love escaped. When I first read the story, years ago, the
version was different, and there was some arrangement of it, more
romantic--with some circumstances through which the young carpenter and
his sweetheart escaped, and alone the father, innocent of harm,
committed suicide. The story sounded sufficiently Japanese and upside
down and was pretty, but I have forgotten its convolutions, so that I
give you this one, which I think has a pleasant local color. It has
local color, and that charm of action which belongs to such histories as
those of the great Dumas--not to mention Mr. Froude.
Do not forget that these details are given for your amusement, and not
for your instruction. I am quite uncertain as to the historical value of
my information as soon as I come down to close particulars. What little
I really know comes down from early reading of the missionaries and of
the Dutch, and that is mostly outside impression, though thereby
valuable, because not based on theory or principle.
I do not know that critical history has yet begun here. But in the
historical place where we have spent our summer, talk about the past was
but natural and all to be listened to without much chance for us to
distinguish what was of record and what was of legend. What I have been
writing about is legend, and I am warned of its complicated
incorrectness. That has not prevented my setting it down. You would like
the pretty murderous story whose details reflect a peculiar past. It
would be nothing to you if it were not at all Iyémitsŭ, but his father
Hidetada, for whose destruction the famous plot of the Hanging Ceiling
was hatched. Nor would you care if the ceiling and bath-room had never
existed. What is worth having is that many people thought that they saw
themselves in the mirror of a period.
Now see how re-arranging the atoms of which the previous story is
constituted will give you quite another picture that I would spare you,
though it is a correct historical one, but it has the advantage of being
quite as strange in certain ways, though not so fitted for the theater,
and of giving you again a picture of feudal Japan.
As I said before, the story as I have just told it has been kept in
memory, if not invented on purpose, through a book written in honor of a
Japanese opposed to Honda, the master of the castle, the author of the
plot of the Hanging Ceiling. There may have been such a story afloat at
that time among people of low degree kept out from the many secrets of
the court, but knowing that things were being done; at the same time,
there is nothing that would account for a sufficient reason; and, worse
than all, the date is impossible. Young Iyémitsŭ was not in any position
at that possible date (eighth year of the Genwa) to represent the
shogunate. His father Hidetada would have been the proposed victim,
which is again impossible because of the devotion of Honda, the lord of
the castle, to Hidetada. That there was such an accusation I believe is
understood. It was met at the time and at once disproved to the
satisfaction of the shogun. It was the Lady Kano who had denounced
Honda, and apparently invented the plot. She was a daughter of Iyéyasŭ,
and had, perhaps, some of the fierce strain said to have shown in her
mother and sister. Her baby grandson had only just been deprived of this
very fief for the advantage of Honda, so that she had at least this
grievance. And she was united in intention with the wife of the shogun
Hidetada. This was a beautiful and wilful woman,--known to us by her
after-death name of Sogenin, whose preference for Iyémitsŭ's brother,
her son also, had met Honda's resistance. You can realize that I am not
capable of even discussing the question, and that I am only doing it to
amuse you and to bring in more pictures.
As the shogun was to be received by the lord of Utsunomiya, new
additions were ordered for his castle, the bridges and roads were
repaired, which works required all the laborers, skilled or otherwise,
of his domains, and even obliged him to draw upon his retainers and
soldiers. Such enormous preparations were, of course, noised abroad.
Now, it so happened that at one time Honda's father had been concerned
in an insurrection, or levy of arms, of certain members of the Buddhist
sect to which he belonged, and had fought the great Iyéyasŭ, whom
afterwards he served so faithfully. Among the upholders of the faith
were fighting monks, a variety of the militant church well known in the
annals of Japan. At the close of this rebellion a band of these
monks--something like a hundred--and a hundred other warriors were
intrusted--Japanese-way--to the wardship of their former fellow
partisan, and there they were handy for use. But they had retained
something of both the clergyman and the warrior, keeping their priestly
names and wearing their hair unshorn, and they refused to work, which in
their eyes would have assimilated them to common soldiers and laborers.
Thereupon,--and this was thought to be queer even in those days,--the
lord of the castle invited them to go about the country and report upon
certain matters in various places, at which places they were met by
bodies of armed men, who put an end to them. I suppose that, according
to strict views of the country and time, this was justifiable, though
excessive, and this is one of the little pictures that I wish to frame.
You see how the unpleasantness of the occasion might help the later
stories of assassination.
And now, in correcting another error, I can give you another picture of
feudal Japan, a Japan now broken up, against whose last rulers, the
Tokugawa, I hear daily so much. That lady in the story just given you,
where she is the mother of Iyémitsŭ and the concubine of his father, the
shogun, was a very different person.
Little Iyémitsŭ was the legitimate son; moreover, the one who by date of
birth was the probable heir, notwithstanding the preference shown by his
father and his mother, Sogenin, for his younger brother. So that the
succession was decided abruptly by the stern head of the family,
Iyéyasŭ.
Great attention was paid by the grandfather, the great Iyéyasŭ, to the
education of this grandson. As a Japanese friend remarked, he believed
that the important place in the generation was that of the third man. So
that three distinguished noblemen were appointed his governors: Sakai,
to teach benevolence; Doi, to teach wisdom; Awoyama, to teach valor.
Besides these great professors for the future, the little boy needed an
immediate training by a governess good in every way. Kasuga, a married
woman, the daughter of a well-known warrior of imperial descent who had
lost his life in some conspiracy of the previous generation, was chosen
by the government for the position. This was, perhaps, as great an
honor as could be offered to any lady. Besides, there was an opportunity
to clear the memory of her father. And she begged her husband to divorce
her that she might be free to give all her life to this task. So devoted
was she that the boy being at one time at the point of death, she
offered herself to the gods for his recovery, vowing never to take any
remedy. In her last illness she refused all medicine, and even when
Iyémitsŭ--now ruler--begged her to take a commended draught from his
hand, she merely, out of politeness, allowed it to moisten her lips,
saying that her work was done, that she was ready to die, and that her
life had long ago been offered for the master. Nor would she allow the
master to indulge her with regard to her own son. He was in exile,
deservedly, and the shogun asked her permission to pardon him, in the
belief of possible amendment. She refused, bidding Iyémitsŭ to remember
his lesson: that the law of the country was above all things, and that
she had never expected such words from him. Moreover, that had he
revoked the law for her, she could not die in peace. There is a Spartan
politeness in all this, for which I think the stories worth saving to
you.
And they will help to give Iyémitsŭ existence for you. He seems too
vague in the temple dedicated to him at Nikko, even when we look at his
bronze tomb and are told that he lies there packed in vermilion: our
minds have become so far removed from the ways of thinking of Japan that
a divinized mortal is an empty phrase for us.
The details of such stories as I have told would not have seemed very
antiquated across the seas, at their date, to those who remembered the
days of Queen Elizabeth. The change has been as great in Europe as in
Japan, but here it has been sudden, like the shifting of the scene of
the theater; so that I can realize that when I was a boy such things as
I am telling you would not have seemed very old-fashioned hereabouts.
And now I make my notes in this little railroad coach, with the
telegraph wires running in and out of the picture that I see through my
window; and, indeed, it is this implied contrast which I think has urged
me most to tell you these more or less accurate anecdotes.
If you wished to learn more about Iyémitsŭ from the Japanese biography
that I have with me, you might be puzzled. One has felt so distinctly
the all-powerfulness of the men whose names and stories are the outer
history of Japan. So full is the impression forced upon one by the
outside of the life of such a ruler as Iyémitsŭ, bounded between the
worship of his grandfather in golden temples and his own worship in
almost equal splendors, and filled in by despotic use of power, that it
leaves little place for the theory of all this power coming from the
Mikado, who practically lived upon a narrow income apportioned to him by
his lieutenant, the shogun. But in my little biography, written
evidently to keep to present views and theories, I learn that toward the
emperor our impatient hero was "faithful and humble"--and part of his
story consists of visits to the emperor and of his receiving honors from
this source of all honor. Thus, upon his coming of age, and having his
hair trimmed, cut, and shaved in a manner to indicate this important
event, the emperor sends a great court officer to compliment him, gives
him the name of Iyémitsŭ, honors him with the rank of _Junii_, and
appoints him a Go Dainagon. Also, later he appoints him to be the
commander of the right wing of the imperial guard, and also
superintendent of the Right Imperial Stable. Thereupon Iyémitsŭ calls
upon his majesty at Kioto to pay his homage, and is made
commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and moreover Naidaizin, with
the rank of Shonii; and he is also permitted to ride in an ox-carriage
and to have armed body-guards; the latter privilege one that he had been
obliged to enjoy perforce from early days, as we have seen. Whereupon,
says my chronicler, Iyémitsŭ had the honor of presenting to his majesty
a yearly income of twenty thousand bags of rice; and this goes on until
after his death, when the emperor gives him these titles for the future,
the name of Daiken-In, the rank of Shoichi, and the premier office of
Daijo-Daizin. "The favor of Five Imperial poems was also extended to the
deceased."
Iyémitsŭ was fond of painting, and studied under the instruction of Kano
Tanyu. He liked to paint the sacred mountain Fuji, and the same
courteous chronicler tells me that some of his work was better than
Tanyu's. But I should prefer seeing, before deciding; though Tanyu's
imperturbable security makes one not a little bored.
It is dark; we are approaching Iyémitsŭ's city, Tokio, formerly Yedo,
the city of the Tokugawa, now finally returned to the emperor, to whom
they gave the thousands of bags of rice for income. We shall sleep at
No. 22 Yokohama,[8] and look out on the water again.
[7] "Pariahs. Their occupations were to slaughter animals, tan
leather, attend at executions, etc. The class, as such, is
now abolished, but remnants of its peculiar dress may still
occasionally be seen in the persons of young girls with broad hats
who go about the streets playing and singing." (Satow).
[8] All of Yokohama given to foreign settlement was laid out by
numbering, and retains it, apart from any other designation.
YOKOHAMA--KAMAKURA
YOKOHAMA, September 1, 1886.
Naturally we have again been wandering in Tokio; I don't know that we
have seen anything more, as we should certainly do if we had any energy
in the heat. It is more natural to fritter away time in little things.
Besides, there is a general feeling of discouragement accompanying the
continuance of cholera; and this is an unseasonable moment. Theaters are
closed; people are away. If I had to give an account of my time, I could
not make it up. I know that I went to see an engraver on wood; that he
showed me his work, or his way of working, of which I knew a little;
that he made me drink some cherry-blossom tea, pretty to look at and of
unseizable flavor; that he took me to see some of his work printed; that
I climbed up a ladder, somewhere into a hot room, where a man, naked but
for his loin-cloth, sat slapping pieces of paper with a big brush upon
the block previously touched with color; and that the dexterity with
which he fitted the paper in proper place, so that the colors should not
overlap, was as simple and primitive as his dress.
Then I went to see the painter whose drawings had been engraved. I can't
explain just why the arrangement of his courtyard seemed what I might
have expected, and yet I still keep that impression without having
noticed anything but the heat--the heat and the sun--the heat
accumulated in this big dreary city of innumerable little houses.
We explained at the door our request, and after a few moments we were
told that the painter, though he was ill, would see us. We entered, and
sat awhile, during which interval a boy pupil, occupied in copying
sketches of the master, looked at us surreptitiously through a circular
opening in the partition that made him a room.
Our artist came in and sat down, evidently an ill man, and offered us
the inevitable tea, and showed us his methods of preparation for the
colored wood-blocks, and got down examples from the great pile of rolls
and bundles of papers and drawings that filled one side of the room,
among which I noticed many fragments of illustrated English or American
newspapers. And we dared not intrude any further, and departed--just as
the conversation had turned toward European art--with gifts of drawings
from him and promise of exchange.
No; what we have really done is again to call at shops and begin over
again the pursuit of bric-à-brac. It is so impossible to believe that we
can find nothing in all the accumulation of all these shops. But even if
it be so, the manner of hunting is an amusement, as is the mere seeing
of all this stuff in its own home; and the little attentions of the
dealer, the being in a house with the privileges of tea and smoking, and
a lazy war of attack and defense; and the slow drawing out of pieces
from bags and boxes, so that time, the great enemy, is put in the wrong.
And then, what one is not expected to buy or look at is quite as good. I
know of one place to which I have returned to look out of the _shoji_
screens into the garden, where there is a big pottery statue of Kwannon.
I don't intend to get it or to bargain about it, but I intend to buy
other things under its influence; perhaps the _daimio_ seats that we use
in our visit, or the lanterns that light us when we stay late, whose oil
will have to be emptied if they are sold. And there are places where
things are for sale to people versed in Chinese ways of thinking, but
where amateurs on the wing like ourselves are not encouraged, and that
is certainly seductive. Still, I am afraid that we shall miss a great
deal that we wish to see, because of this dawdling in shops.