Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/98

returned to the Echizen camp, was very far from one of philosophic resignation. They were in a panic. One thought tormented them all. How on earth could they phrase this matter when they made their report to Lord Tadanao?

General Lord Tadanao, daimyō of Echizen, was twenty-one. He had inherited his huge fief, with its annual revenue of 670,000 koku, at the tender age of thirteen, upon the death of his father Hideyasu. His father had died in the intercalory fourth month of the year 1607, and never, from that moment until now, had the general suspected the existence, this side of heaven, of a will stronger than his own.

The natural strength of will—or perhaps one should say the natural wilfulness—which the general had brought with him into the world, had since been cultivated by him to a growth of towering proportions, like a lone cedar shooting skywards from the peak of a lofty mountain. The councillors remembered the trepidation with which they had entered his presence, the gingerly fashion in which they had broken the news, when the order to join the present campaign had first reached the Echizen household.

“Letters have been received from His Excellency the Shōgun’s father,” they had reported. “He cordially requests your appearance before Osaka, with your forces.” The custom of representing to their young master that his will was absolute had by that time become second nature.

And today it was their inescapable duty to convey to Lord Tadanao Ieyasu’s words of rebuke. What reactions might be set in motion by such outspoken criticism—for the sensation of being rebuked had had no part in their master’s experience, waking or dreaming, since the day he was born—was a question which naturally afforded them the liveliest misgivings.

Lord Tadanao called them to his quarters as soon as he heard of their return.

“And what did His Excellency my grandfather have to say? The usual set phrases of thanks for our labours, I suppose?”