THE SHOGUN’S DAUGHTER
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
A VOLUNTEER WITH PIKE: The True Narrative of One Dr. John Robinson
and his Love for the Fair Señorita Vallois. Illustrated in color
by Charlotte Weber-Ditzler.
Crown 8vo $1.50
INTO THE PRIMITIVE. Illustrated in color by Allen T. True.
_Third edition._ Crown 8vo $150
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
CHICAGO
[Illustration: THE PRINCESS AZAI]
THE SHOGUN’S
DAUGHTER
BY
ROBERT AMES BENNET
Author of “_For the White Christ_,”
“_Into the Primitive_,” etc.
_WITH 5 PICTURES IN COLOR
BY W. D. GOLDBECK_
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1910
COPYRIGHT
A. C. MCCLURG & CO.
1910
Published October 1, 1910
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England
THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS
[W·D·O]
NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A
To
MY WIFE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I EASTERN SEAS 1
II IN KAGOSHIMA BAY 9
III THE GENTLEMAN WITH TWO SWORDS 22
IV YORITOMO’S BETROTHED 38
V THE COASTS OF NIPPON 44
VI A WILD NIGHT 55
VII ON THE TOKAIDO 71
VIII THE GEISHA 86
IX NIPPON’S GREETINGS 102
X THE PRINCESS AZAI 117
XI ROUT OF THE RONINS 129
XII ESCORT TO THE PRINCESS 143
XIII THE PRINCE OF OWARI 154
XIV BEFORE THE SHOGUN 168
XV REQUITAL 182
XVI MITO STRIKES 194
XVII IN THE PIT OF TORMENT 204
XVIII THE SHADOW OF DEATH 220
XIX THE GARDEN OF AZAI 235
XX LOVE LAUGHS AT LOCKSMITHS 250
XXI JARRING COUNSELLORS 262
XXII TEA WITH THE TYCOON 280
XXIII LESSONS AND LOVE 296
XXIV ENSNARED 310
XXV HARA-KIRI 320
XXVI HOVERING HAWKS 330
XXVII SON BY ADOPTION 344
XXVIII HIGH TREASON 352
XXIX INTRIGUE 366
XXX MY WEDDING EVE 373
XXXI IN THE POWER OF MITO 387
XXXII LED OUT TO EXECUTION 398
XXXIII BARED BLADES 407
XXXIV CONCLUSION 418
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Princess Azai _Frontispiece_
Page
She dropped her blue robe from her graceful shoulders 98
A row of little pearls gleamed between her smiling red lips 126
“Is this loyal service?” she asked 246
Gengo struck with deadly aim 360
THE SHOGUN’S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER I--EASTERN SEAS
My first cruise as a midshipman in the navy of the United States began
a short month too late for me to share in the honors of the Mexican
War. In other words, I came in at the foot of the service, with all the
grades above me fresh-stocked with comparatively young and vigorous
officers. As a consequence, the rate of promotion was so slow that the
Summer of 1851 found me, at the age of twenty-four, still a middie,
with my lieutenancy ever receding, like a will-o’-the-wisp, into the
future.
Had I chosen a naval career through necessity, I might have continued
to endure. But to the equal though younger heir of one of the largest
plantations in South Carolina, the pay of even a post captain would
have been of small concern. It is, therefore, hardly necessary to add
that I had been lured into the service by the hope of winning fame and
glory.
That my choice should have fallen upon the navy rather than the army
may have been due to the impulse of heredity. According to family
traditions and records, one of my ancestors was the famous English
seaman Will Adams, who served Queen Elizabeth in the glorious fight
against the Spanish Armada and afterwards piloted a Dutch ship through
the dangerous Straits of Magellan and across the vast unchartered
expanse of the Pacific to the mysterious island empire, then known as
Cipango or Zipangu.
History itself verifies that wonderful voyage and the still more
wonderful fact of my ancestor’s life among the Japanese as one of the
nobles and chief counsellors of the great Emperor Iyeyasu. So highly
was the advice of the bold Englishman esteemed by the Emperor that he
was never permitted to return home. For many years he dwelt honorably
among that most peculiar of Oriental peoples, aiding freely the few
English and Dutch who ventured into the remote Eastern seas. He had
aided even the fanatical Portuguese and Spaniards, who, upon his
arrival, had sought to have him and his handful of sick and starving
shipmates executed as pirates. So it was he lived and died a Japanese
noble, and was buried with all honor.
With the blood of such a man in my veins, it is not strange that I
turned to the sea. Yet it is no less strange that three years in
the service should bring me to an utter weariness of the dull naval
routine. Notable as were the achievements of our navy throughout the
world in respect to exploration and other peaceful triumphs, it has
ever surprised me that in the absence of war and promotion I should
have lingered so long in my inferior position.
In war the humiliation of servitude to seniority may be thrust from
thought by the hope of winning superior rank through merit. Deprived of
this opportunity, I could not but chafe under my galling subjection to
the commands of men never more than my equals in social rank and far
too often my inferiors.
The climax came after a year on the China Station, to which I had
obtained an assignment in the hope of renewed action against the
arrogant Celestials. Disappointed in this, and depressed by a severe
spell of fever contracted at Honkong, I resigned the service at
Shanghai, and took passage for New York, by way of San Francisco and
the Horn, on the American clipper _Sea Flight_.
We cleared for the Sandwich Islands August the twenty-first, 1851.
The second noon found us safe across the treacherous bars of the
Yangtse-Kiang and headed out across the Eastern Sea, the southwest
monsoon bowling us along at a round twelve knots.
The double lassitude of my convalescence and the season had rendered
me too indifferent to inquire about my fellow-passengers. We were well
under way before I learned that, aside from the officers and crew, I
was the only person aboard ship. In view of the voyage of from five
to six months’ duration which lay before me, this discovery roused
me to the point of observing the characters of the skipper and his
mates. Much to my chagrin, I found that all were Yankees of the most
pronounced nasal type.
As a late naval officer no less than as a Southern gentleman, I could
not humble myself to social intercourse with the _bucko_ mates.
Fortunately Captain Downing was somewhat less unbearable, and had the
good taste to share my interest in the mysterious islands of Japan,
as well as my detestation of China. Even as the low, dreary coast of
Kiangsu faded from view in our wake, we attained to a cordial exchange
of congratulations over the fact that we were at last quit of the filth
and fantasies of the Celestial Empire.
As we wheeled about from the last glance astern, Downing pointed over
the side with a jerk of his thumb. “Look at that dirty flood, Mr.
Adams. Just like a China river to try to turn the whole sea China
yellow! Conceited as John Chinaman himself!”
“Give the devil his due,” I drawled. “Biggest nation on earth, and
close upon the biggest river.”
“Aye, and thank Providence, every last one of their three hundred
million pigtails lie abaft my taffrail, and every drop of that foul
flood soon to lose itself in clean blue water!” He stared ahead,
combing his fingers through his bushy whiskers, his shrewd eyes
twinkling with satisfaction. “Aye! blue water--the whole breadth of the
Pacific before us, and Asia astern.”
“Not all Asia,” I corrected. “We have yet to clear the Loo Choos.”
“The Loo Choos,” he repeated. “Queer people, I guess. They are said to
be a kind of Chinamen.”
“It’s hard to tell,” I replied. “They may be Chinese. Yet some say the
islands are subject to Japan.”
“To Japan? Then they’ve got good reason to be queer!” He paced across
the deck and back, his jaw set and eyes keen with sudden resolve. “By
ginger, I’ll do it this passage, sir, danged if I won’t! I’ve been
wanting to see something of the Japanese islands ever since I came out
to the China seas as a cabin-boy, and that’s fifty years gone.”
“You’d run out of your course for a glimpse of the Japanese coast?” I
exclaimed, no less incredulous than delighted.
“More than a glimpse, Mr. Adams. Van Diemen Strait is a shorter course
than the Loo Choo passage, and with this weather--”
“Midst of the typhoon season,” I cut in with purposeful
superciliousness of tone.
The captain of a clipper is as sensitive to any aspersions on his
seamanship as the grayest master of navigation in the navy. Downing bit
snappily. “Typhoon be damned! I navigated a whaler through uncharted
seas twenty odd years, and never lost my ship. I’ll take the _Sea
Flight_ through Van Diemen Strait, blow or calm, sir.”
“No doubt,” I murmured with ambiguous suavity.
He scowled, puzzled at my smile. “You naval officers! Commanded my
first ship before you were born--before I had need of a razor. What’s
more, I’m third owner in this clipper, and I’ve discretion over my
course. The skipper who carries the first cargo out of a Japanese port
is going to get the cream, and I’ve an idee the Japs are loosening up
a bit. I’m going to put into Kagoshima Bay, where the old _Morrison_
tried to land the castaway Japs in ’thirty-seven.”
“She was fired upon most savagely by the soldiers of the Prince of
Satsuma,” I replied. “Why not try Nagasaki?”
“Nagasaki?--Deshima!” he rumbled. “I’m no Dutchman or yellow Chinee,
to be treated like a dog. What’s more, it’s too far up the west coast.
No! I’ll chance Kagoshima. That Satsuma king or mandarin, whatever he
is, may have changed his mind since the _Morrison_, or there may be a
new one now, with more liberal idees.”
“Since you’re resolved upon it, skipper, I must confess I have reasons
of my own to be pleased with your plan,” I said, and at his interested
glance, I told him somewhat in detail of my daring ancestor Will Adams,
the first Englishman ever to reach the Land of the Rising Sun and the
only European ever made a Japanese noble.
“H’m. Married a Japanese wife, and left children by her,” commented
Downing, and he grinned broadly. “I must ask leave for you to land and
look up your heathen kin.”
“You forget yourself, sir,” I caught him up. “Be kind enough hereafter
to refrain from impertinence when speaking of persons related to me.”
He stared in astonishment. “Well, I’ll be durned! Two hundred years and
more since your forefather died, you said--”
“None the less,” I insisted sharply, “my cousins are my cousins, sir.
If there are any of my ancestor’s Japanese descendants now living, they
are related to me, however remote may be the degree. Therefore they
are entitled to be spoken of with respect.”
“Well, I’ll swan!” he muttered. “No offence, Mr. Adams.”
I bowed my acceptance of his uncouth apology, but maintained my
dignity. “As I have said, sir, my ancestor was ennobled by the great
Emperor Iyeyasu. Heathen or not, rest assured that his Japanese
descendants, if any survive, are at the least gentlefolk.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” he grunted. “You’ll soon have a chance to
inquire. I’m going to take my ship up Kagoshima Bay, fog, shine, or
blow.”
He turned on his heel, and ordered the helmsman to put the ship’s head
due east. I went below in a glow of pleasant anticipation. There was
no mistaking the look in Downing’s face. Nothing could now shake his
stubborn resolve. I was to see the mysterious Cipango of Marco Polo and
Mendez Pinto, the Iappan of my ancestor,--the land that for almost two
and a half centuries had shut itself in from all communication with the
wide world other than through the severely restricted trade with the
Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki.