"Gai-Jin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clavell James)

Monday, 15th September

Monday, 15th September: "Gai-jin are vermin without manners," Nori Anjo said shaking with rage. He was chief of the roju, the Council of Five Elders, a squat, round-faced man, richly dressed.

"They've spurned our polite apology which should have ended the Tokaido matter, and now, impertinently, formally request an audience with the Shogun--the writing is foul, words inept, here read it for yourself, it has just arrived."

With barely concealed impatience he handed the scroll to his much younger adversary, Toranaga Yoshi, who sat opposite him. They were alone in one of the audience rooms high up in the central keep of Yedo Castle, all their guards ordered out. A low, scarlet lacquered table separated the two men, a black tea tray on it, delicate cups and teapot eggshell porcelain.

"Whatever gai-jin say doesn't matter."

Uneasily Yoshi took the scroll but did not read it. Unlike Anjo his clothes were simple and his swords working not ceremonial swords.

"Somehow we must twist them to do what we want."

He was daimyo of Hisamatsu, a small though important fief nearby and a direct descendant of the first Toranaga Shogun. At the Emperor's recent "suggestion," and over Anjo's flaring opposition he had just been appointed Guardian of the Heir, the boy Shogun, and to fill the vacancy in the Council of Elders. Tall, patrician and twenty-six, with fine hands and long fingers.

"Whatever happens, they must not see the Shogun," he said, "that would confirm the legality of the Treaties which are not yet properly ratified. We will refuse their insolent request."

"I agree it's insolent but we still have to deal with it, and decide about that Satsuma dog, Sanjiro." Both were weary of the gai-jin problem that had disturbed their wa, their harmony for two days now, both anxious to end this meeting--Yoshi wanting to return to his quarters below where Koiko waited for him, Anjo to a secret meeting with a doctor.

Outside it was sunny and kind, with the smell of sea and rich soil on the slight breeze that came through the opened shutters. No threat of winter yet.

But winter's coming, Anjo was thinking, the ache in his bowels distracting him. I hate winter, season of death, the sad season, sky sad, sea sad, land sad and ugly and freezing, trees bare, and the cold that twists your joints, reminding you how old you are. He was a greying man of forty-six, daimyo of Mikawa, had been the center of roju power since the dictator tairo Ii had been assassinated four years ago.

Whereas you, puppy, he thought angrily, you're only a two-month appointee to the Council and a four-week Guardian--both dangerous political appointments implanted over our protests. It's time your wings were clipped. "Of course we all value your advice," he said, his voice honeyed, then added, not meaning it as both knew, "For two days the gai-jin have been preparing their fleet for battle, troops drilling openly and tomorrow their leader arrives.

What's your solution?"

"The same as yesterday, official scroll or not: we send another apology "for the regrettable mishap" laced with sarcasm they will never understand, from an official they will never know, and timed to arrive before the leader gai-jin leaves Yokohama asking for a further delay to "make enquiries."

If that does not satisfy him and he or they come to Yedo, let them. We send the usual low-level official, nonbinding on us to their Legation to treat with them, giving them a little soup but no fish. We delay, and delay."

"Meanwhile it's time to exercise our hereditary Shogunate right and order Sanjiro to hand over the killers for punishment at once, to pay an indemnity, again through us, at once, and into house arrest and retirement at once. We order him!"

Anjo said harshly. "You're inexperienced in high Shogunate matters."

Keeping his temper and wishing he could send Anjo into immediate retirement for his stupidity and bad manners, Yoshi said, "If we order Sanjiro we will be disobeyed, therefore we will be forced to go to war, and Satsuma is too strong with too many allies. There's been no war for two hundred and fifty years. We're not ready for war. War is..."

There was a sudden peculiar silence.

Involuntarily both men gripped their swords.

The teacups and teapot began to rattle. Afar off the earth rumbled, the whole tower shifted slightly, then again, and again. The quake persisted for about thirty seconds. Then it was gone, as suddenly as it had arrived. Impassively they waited, watching the cups.

No aftershock. Still no aftershock.

More waiting throughout the castle and Yedo. All living creatures waiting. Nothing.

Yoshi sipped some tea then meticulously centered the cup in its saucer and Anjo envied him his control. Inwardly Yoshi was in turmoil and he thought, Today the gods smiled on me but what about the next shock, or the next, or the one after that--any moment now, or in a candle of time or this afternoon, or later tonight or tomorrow? Karma!

Safe today but soon there will be another bad one, a killer earthquake, like seven years ago when I almost died and a hundred thousand people perished in Yedo alone in the earthquake and in the fires that always follow, not counting the tens of thousands washed out to sea and drowned in the tsunami wave that swept unheralded out of the sea that night--one of them my lovely Yuriko, then the passion of my life.

He willed himself to dominate his fear. "War is completely unwise now, Satsuma is too strong, the Tosa and Choshu legions will become his allies openly, we're not strong enough to crush them alone." Tosa and Choshu were fiefs, far from Yedo, both historic enemy to the Shogunate.

"The most important daimyos will come to our banner, if summoned, and the rest follow."

Anjo tried to hide the effort it took him to unlock his grip on his sword, still terrified.

Yoshi was alert and well trained, and noticed the lapse and docketed it for future use, pleased that he had seen into his enemy. "They won't, not yet. They'll delay, bluster, whine, and never help us smash Satsuma. They have no balls."

"If not now, when?" Anjo's fury spilled out, whipped by his fear and loathing of earthquakes.

He had been in a bad one as a child, his father becoming a torch, his mother and two brothers cinders before his eyes. Ever since, with even the slightest quake, he relived the day and smelled their burning flesh and heard their screams. "We have to humble that dog sooner or later. Why not now?"

"Because we have to wait until we're better armed. They--Satsuma, Tosa and Choshu--have a few modern weapons, cannon and rifles, we don't know how many. And several steamships."

"Sold to them by gai-jin against Shogunate wishes!"

"Bought by them because of previous weakness."

Anjo's face reddened. "I'm not responsible for that!"

"Nor I!" Yoshi's fingers on the hilt tightened. "Those fiefs are better armed than we are, whatever the reason. So sorry, we have to wait, the Satsuma fruit is not yet rotten enough for us to risk a war that by ourselves we cannot win.

We're isolated, Sanjiro is not." His voice became sharper. "But I agree that soon there must be a reckoning."

"Tomorrow I will ask the Council to issue the order."

"For the sake of the Shogunate, you and all Toranaga clans, I hope the others will listen to me!"

"Tomorrow we will see--Sanjiro's head should be put on a spike and exhibited as an example to all traitors."

"I agree Sanjiro must have ordered the Tokaido killing just to embarrass us," Yoshi said. "That will madden the gai-jin. Our only solution is to delay. Our mission to Europe is due back any day now and then our troubles should be over."

Eight months before, in January, the Shogunate had sent the first official deputation from Japan by steamship to America and Europe, with secret orders to renegotiate the Treaties-- the roju considered them "unauthorized tentative agreements"--with British, French and American Governments, and to cancel or delay any further opening of any ports. "Their orders were clear. By now the Treaties will be voided."

Anjo said ominously, "So, if not war, you agree the time has come to send Sanjiro onwards."

The younger man was too cautious to agree openly, wondering what Anjo was planning, or had already planned. He eased his swords more comfortably and pretended to consider the question, finding his new appointment very much to his liking. Once more I'm in at center of power. Oh yes, Sanjiro helped put me here but only for his own vile purpose: to destroy me by making me ever more publicly responsible for all the troubles these cursed gai-jin have brought, therefore setting me up as a prime target for the cursed shishi--and to usurp our hereditary rights, wealth and Shogunate.

Never mind, I'm aware of what he and his running dog Katsumata plan, what his real intentions are against us, and those of his allies, the Tosa and the Choshu. He won't succeed, I swear it by my ancestors.

"How would you eliminate Sanjiro?"

Anjo's brow darkened, remembering his final violent row with the Satsuma daimyo only a few days earlier.

"I repeat," Sanjiro had said imperiously, "obey the Emperor's suggestions: Convene a meeting of all senior daimyos at once, humbly ask them to form a permanent Council to advise, reform and run the Shogunate, quash your infamous and unauthorized gai-jin agreements, order all ports closed to gai-jin, and if they don't go, expel them at once!"

"I keep reminding you, it is only the Shogunate's right to set foreign policy, any policy, not the Emperor's, nor yours! We both know you've deceived him," Anjo had told him, hating him for his lineage, his legions, his riches, and obvious, abundant good health.

"The suggestions are ridiculous and unenforceable!

We've kept the peace for two and a half cent--"' "Yes, for Toranaga aggrandizement. If you refuse to obey our rightful liege lord, the Emperor, then resign or commit seppuku. You chose a boy to be Shogun, that traitor tairo Ii signed the "treaties"--it's Bakufu responsibility gai-jin are here and that is Toranaga responsibility!"

Anjo had flushed, driven almost mad by the sneering malevolence and baiting that had gone on for months and he would have gone for his sword if Sanjiro had not been protected by Imperial mandate. "If tairo Ii hadn't negotiated the Treaties and had them signed, gai-jin would have bombarded their way ashore and by now we would be humbled like China."

"Surmise--nonsense!"

"Have you forgotten Peking's Summer Palace was burned and looted, Sanjiro-dono? Now China is practically dismembered and government out of Chinese control. Have you forgotten the British, the main enemy, were ceded one of their islands, Hong Kong, twenty years ago and now it's an impregnable bastion? Tientsin, Shanghai, Swatow now are permanent, self-contained gai-jin dominated and owned Treaty Ports?

Say they took one of our islands in the same way."

"We would prevent them--we're not Chinese."

"How? So sorry but you're blind and deaf, and your head's in the heavens. A year ago, the moment the latest China war was over, if we'd provoked them they would have sent all those fleets and armies against us and overrun us as well. Only Bakufu cleverness stopped them. We could not have stood against those armadas--or their cannon and guns."

"I agree that it's Shogunate responsibility we're unprepared, Toranaga responsibility. We should have had modern cannon and warships years ago, we have had knowledge of them for years, didn't the Dutch advise us dozens of times about their new inventions, but you put our heads in the night buckets! You failed the Emperor. At most you could have settled for one port, Deshima--why give the American fiend Townsend Harris, Yokohama, Hirodate, Nagasaki, Kanagawa and allow them access to Yedo for their impertinent Legations!

Resign and let others more qualified save the Land of the Gods..."

Remembering the clash made Anjo sweat, that and the knowledge that much of what Sanjiro said was right. He took a paper handkerchief from his voluminous sleeve and wiped the sweat off his brow and shaved pate and looked back at Yoshi, jealous of his bearing and good looks but mostly of his youth and legendary virility.

Not so long ago it was so easy to be satisfied, normal to be potent, he thought in sudden misery, the ever present ache in his loins reminding him. Not so long ago, easy to become erect without effort and be abundantly charged--now no longer possible even with the most desirable person, their most clever skills, or rarest salves and medicines.

"Sanjiro may consider himself beyond reach, but he's not," he said with finality. "Put your mind on it too, Yoshi-dono, our young but oh so wise Councillor, how to remove him, or your own head may be on a spike all too soon."

Yoshi decided not to take offense, and smiled.

"What do the other Elders advise?"

Anjo laughed crookedly. "They will vote as I say."

"If you weren't kinsman, I would suggest you resign or commit seppuku."

"What a pity you are not your illustrious namesake and you could actually order it, eh?"

Anjo got up heavily. "I'll send reply now, to delay. Tomorrow we take a formal vote to humble Sanjiro..." Angrily he spun on guard as the door was jerked open. Yoshi already had his sword half out of its scabbard. "I gave orders..."

The flustered sentry mumbled, "So sorry, Anjo-sama..."

Anjo's fury vanished as a youth brushed the sentry aside and hurried into the room, closely followed by a girl, barely five feet tall, both elaborately dressed and bubbling, four armed samurai in their wake and, after them, a matron and lady-in-waiting. At once Anjo and Yoshi knelt and bowed their heads to the tatami.

The entourage bowed back. The youth, Shogun Nobusada, did not. Nor did the girl, Imperial Princess Yazu, his wife.

Both were the same age, sixteen.

"That quake, it knocked over my favorite vase," the youth said excitedly, pointedly ignoring Yoshi. "My favorite vase!" He waved the door closed. His guards stayed, and his wife's ladies. "I wanted to tell you I've a wonderful idea."

"So sorry about the vase, Sire." Anjo's voice was kind. "You had an idea?"

"We... I've decided we, my wife and I, we, I've decided we'll go to Kyoto to see the Emperor and ask him what to do about the gai-jin and how to throw them out!" The youth beamed at his wife and she nodded in happy agreement.

"We'll go next month--a State Visit!"

Anjo and Yoshi felt their minds explode, both wanting to leap forward and strangle the boy for his lack of brains. But both kept their tempers, both used to his petulant stupidity and tantrums, and for the thousandth time, both cursed the day the marriage of these two had been proposed and consummated. "An interesting idea, Sire,"

Anjo said carefully, watching the girl without watching, noting her concentration centered on him now and that, as usual, though her lips smiled her eyes did not. "I will put the suggestion before the Council of Elders and we will give it our full attention."

"Good," Nobusada said importantly. He was a small, thin young man, just five and a half feet, who always wore thick geta, sandals, to increase his height. His teeth were dyed fashionably black as Court custom in Kyoto decreed, though not here in Shogunate circles. "Three or four weeks should be time to prepare everything." Ingenuously he smiled at his wife. "Did I forget anything, Yazu-chan?"

"No, Sire," she said prettily, "how could you forget anything?" Her face was delicate and made up in classic Kyoto Court style: eyebrows plucked and, in their place, high arching eyebrows painted on the whiteness of her makeup, her teeth dyed black, thick raven hair piled high and held in place with ornate pins.

Purple kimono decorated with sprays of autumn leaves, her obi, the intricate sash, golden. Imperial Princess Yazu, stepsister of the Son of Heaven, Nobusada's bride of six months, sought for him since she was twelve, betrothed at fourteen and married at sixteen. "Of course a decision by you is a decision and not a suggestion."

"Of course, Honored Princess," Yoshi said quickly. "But so sorry, Sire, such important arrangements could not possibly be made in four weeks. May I advise you to consider the implications for such a visit might be misinterpreted."

Nobusada's smile vanished.

"Implication? Advise? What implications?

Misinterpreted by whom? By you?" he said rudely.

"No, Sire, not by me. I just wanted to point out that no Shogun has ever gone to Kyoto to ask the Emperor's advice and such a precedent would be disastrous to your rule."

"Why?" Nobusada said angrily. "I don't understand."

"Because, as you remember, the Shogun has the sole hereditary duty to make decisions for the Emperor, together with his Council of Elders and Shogunate." Yoshi kept his voice gentle.

"This allows the Son of Heaven to spend his time interceding with the gods for all of us, and for the Shogunate to keep mundane and common happenings from disturbing his wa."

Princess Yazu said sweetly, "What Toranaga Yoshi-sama says is true, husband. Unfortunately the gai-jin have already disturbed his wa as we all know, so to ask my brother, the Exalted, for advice would surely be both polite and filial and not interfere with historic rights."

"Yes." The youth puffed up his chest. "It's decided!"

"The Council will at once consider your wishes," Yoshi said.

Nobusada's face contorted and he shouted, "Wishes? It's a decision! Put it to them if you wish, but I have decided! I'm Shogun, you're not! I am! I've decided! I was chosen and they rejected you--all loyal daimyos did.

I'm Shogun, Cousin!"

Everyone was aghast at the outburst. Except the girl. She smiled to herself and kept her eyes downcast and thought: at last my revenge begins.

"True, Sire," Yoshi was saying, voice level though the color was out of his face.

"But I am Guardian and I must advise against--"

"I don't want your advice! No one asked me if I wanted a Guardian, I don't need a Guardian, Cousin, least of all you."

Yoshi looked at the youth shaking with rage.

Once I was just like you, he thought coldly, a puppet to be ordered this way or that, to be sent away from my own family to be adopted by another, or to be married, or banished and almost murdered six times and all because the gods decided I would be born the son of my father--as you, pathetic fool, were born the son of your father. I'm like you in many ways, but never a fool, always a swordsman, aware of the puppeting, and now hugely different.

Now I am no longer a puppet. Sanjiro of Satsuma doesn't know it yet, but he's made me puppeteer.

"While I am Guardian, I will guard and protect you, Sire," he said. His eyes flicked to the girl, so tiny and delicate, outwardly. "And your family."

She did not meet his eyes. No need. Both knew that war was declared. "We are glad of your protection, Toranaga-sama."

"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-Kyoto!"

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 tairo 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 Shogun 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 horse, 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 Shogun, 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 Shogun 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 Shoguns 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 Shogun 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 Shogun 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."

Shogun 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, had 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 ocean-going 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 Shogun, 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 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 who taught me government, literature and Sun-tzu's "The Art of War"; the old renegade French priest from Peking who 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 who told me about cannon and about oceans of grass called prairies, their castle called White House and the wars with which they exterminated the natives of that land; the Russian emigr`e convict from a place called Siberia who 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 forbidden 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 Shogun, nor was he ever told.

Then, when Shogun Iyeyoshi died of the spotted disease four years ago and he was twenty-two and ready and proposed by his father, tairo 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 Shogun, he thought for the ten millionth time. I was ready, trained and could have stopped the Shogunate rot, could have formed a new bond between Shogunate 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 Shogun, Nobusada is elected Shogun 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?

He turned and beckoned one of his bodyguards, his excitement rising. "Bring that spy here, the fisherman, what's his name? Ah yes, Misamoto, bring him to my quarters secretly at once--he's confined in the Eastern Guard House."