The last page of my narrative is finished. I lay it aside with the
others and gaze out through the open balcony of my tower room upon the
majestically beautiful stretch of Kagoshima Bay. From this pagoda eyrie
I can look with equal ease down the blue gulf and upon the gray roofs
of the city beneath the castle height.
There, in the mouth of the inlet, off the volcanic island in the head
of the bay, is the anchorage where the _Sea Flight_ lay that eventful
night for Fate to send me my brother Yoritomo.
My thoughts wander from the classroom below me where, as honorable
and honored teacher of the _tojin_ learning, I instruct the young
_samurais_ of my great friend Satsuma. I pass in rapid review those
eventful months in Yedo. I recall the sacrifice of my dear friend
and rejoice to know that the years promise a maturing of good fruit
from the seed sown by his spirit and watered with his blood. I recall
how even Mito and the cautious Abe were forced to accept the treaty
they abhorred, by the menace of Perry’s black ships, in the Spring of
fifty-four.
The brother of the sweetest woman on earth or in Heaven still sits on
the stool of the Sei-i-tai Shogun. But now Ii Kamon-no-kami the Great
Elder holds the place of Abe, and seconds the efforts of the wise first
consul to Japan, the American Townsend Harris. Word has come that the
treaty for the opening of ports to commerce and intercourse will be
signed. The Shogunate and feudalism verge towards their inevitable
fall. But the truth must penetrate to the ears of our sacred Mikado
through the age-old barriers of ignorance and prejudice. I see a new
Japan.
A hand touches my arm with the lightness of a perching butterfly. I
turn and draw to me my wife, the Shogun’s daughter, and press my lips
upon her coral mouth. So much I have retained of my _tojin_ manners.
She withdraws her soft arms from about my neck, and glides back to
kneel before her lord and clap her hands gently. There is no responsive
“_Hai!_”--but through the entrance floats a graceful woman, bearing a
blue-eyed baby girl. Little Azai is handed to her mother, while Kohana
San smiles the greeting she cannot speak, and kowtows to the master.
A sturdy boy of four rushes in to fling himself down before his august
father in the required salute. But there is a light not altogether
Nipponese in his lustrous black eyes as he springs up to tell of his
war game with his playmates in the castle garden.
And O Setsu San? She still attends upon the Shogun’s daughter when
not serving her lord and husband, the Swordmaster of Kagoshima, once
known as Yuki the _ronin_. But of the august Prince of Owari and his
quaint and dainty lady Tokiwa, who for a time I called father and
mother,--from them I have been cut off as from the dead.
Kagoshima is far from Yedo, yet even Shimadzu Nariakira, Daimio of
Satsuma, dare not whisper abroad the secret of my presence among his
counsellors. For Keiki and old Rekko still plot and intrigue in the
capital of my wife’s august brother, and in Kyoto the Son of Heaven
still dwells in the Past, and in his eyes the hairy _tojins_ are beasts
and demons.
May Ama-terasu, bright Goddess of the Sun, soon illumine the night of
Kyoto with her rays of truth!
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
In the list of books by the same author, the price for the second one
actually was printed as $150, with no room for a decimal point.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Shogun's Daughter, by Robert Ames Bennet