I. William Adams

“ Ieyasu listened and Yodogima rendered; sang as if possessed of a spirit never before felt or touched, and Ieyasu hurled at constancy’s feet all that tradition or enlightenment had vainly invoked.
A power unseen, unfelt, unknown, held supreme. The best that the energies of men had yet devised stood symbolized in this one man Ieyasu—nobody disputed that: not even he himself at heart could deny the truth. The exigencies of birth, the value of training, and the force of purpose alike marked this man as a leader among men. ”

“ War—the slogan of nature, and the handmaid of creation. War—the savior of mankind, at the cost of brute, stirred them as it had their fathers to superhuman, transcendent energy.
They marched past the shops—in which sycophants wrangled this and that; through the woods where cutters and hewers sweat or chewed; over the plains, amid sustenance born of fain indifference—into the mountains, lofty, grand and inspiring.
The roads ran smooth and easy up the long sloping ascent, they were builded and used, for a like purpose, long before Shibata’s rise had conjured sublimity’s ultimate pass. ”

“ Yodogima and Ieyasu, two lovers at heart, loomed the more formidable as enemies, measuring each other in the luminous cauldron of a perfect understanding, and did not their souls unite in the attainment of a common, supreme, an overwhelming obligation—the means as widely divergent as the uplift had been ideal—courage had failed either, and humanity must have lost a most ardently conceived, if untimely wrought, exemplification. ”

“ The green turf, the broken sky line, birds of plumage and the fragrance of flowers, the open expanse or covered nook, all bespoke a care and a concern intended to move and to weld mankind.
Yodogima remained seated, underneath the shade, amid an environment made, not creative. The sun drove its rays fiercer and more propellingly against Ieyasu’s stand. It remained for him to give; she could but receive. Love beamed from every distance, floated in close upon them, arose subtilely within, grew hard without, compelling, exacting, and vital. ”

“ The stars seemed whirling in space measured and adjusted to the balance of a perfect equilibrium; all the elements, no matter whether it be the rushing of the winds, or the rumblings of an avalanche, or the belching forth of fire and the downpourings of waters from heaven upon earth, each found in due time and with perfect accord its own properly allotted place or plan; the soul and the body lived their destined duality with no more positive dissolution than death itself scarce renders ”

“ Oyea awaited patiently some response from this newly proclaimed Savior, whom the priests had set over her and home—no other voice than conscience answered; and therein she conjured many thoughts, divined a reason for things, and fell hopelessly at the shrine of an uncontrollable, undenying, born-unto impulse. Yodogima possessed an attraction, Kami in his wisdom had equated life and death, and no man’s blood or woman’s want could save a soul or regenerate an unregenerate. ”

“ Do with it and with me as you like; you are both strong of arm and quick to see,” urged Hideyoshi, approaching and tendering with much reverence the hilt of his unsheathed, if vain, resolver of ethics.
Yodogima frowned. All the womanhood within her revolted at such boasted display of wanton cowardice. That man never is right till might has made him so, she could well believe; that might is right in the eyes of the gods were as incomprehensible to her as it seemed satisfying to him. ”

“ Yodogima looked aloft and all around. Peace on earth and good-will toward men whispered from every nook and cranny. The birds sang it, the flowers smelled it, the world looked consistent, but the heart discerned a discordant note. Were death heaven’s only beginning, life’s sole end? No, no; it must not be, for I see with closed eyes, hear with muffled ears, feel without the sense of touch a Kami, whose works neither begin with worlds nor end in man ”

“ Then, as womanhood arrived, barely kissed fain consciousness, in one stolen rapport, just an unguarded moment, the godlight once shone in, had seized upon her, made it seem as if there was a heaven, as if God himself had touched her very soul and the blessed come to earth—a little thing as insignificant as any worm or bird or animal, only a fox, had come between her and what she might have had for the taking ”

“ There is no subtler hold than that we know; the things we see are but the shades of reality. Truth vainly lives apart and is infinite.
Sitting there enveloped, within a world as distinct as sublime, as far above earth as its canopy is broad, the mystic spell touched and warmed her as though [pg 128] its complement were at hand. The province of sex fastened upon her as the sun’s rays congeal and expand with each unhindered contact: communing, Yodogima had been less than human, had worse than mocked His divinest precept, were the bread and wine passed untasted. ”

“ Thereat two white falcons spread their wings and flapped away into space. A loud roar and din as of horses trampling and speeding issued from the temple. Armed guards sprang forward everywhere—out of the temples, behind the gates, into the streets, around the palace, amid the hills—and Kuroda stood ready to strike down the lowliest and the highest who dared raise a hand or voice.
Shibata slunk back, and amid the confusion an old woman seemingly, clad in black with drawn hood, carrying a strange bundle, whispered in Yodogima’s ear. ”

“ Her two sisters had disappeared—Takiyama had laid siege to the one, and the other scolded the way along to keep her company and see that Hideyoshi’s second best general proved a diligent escort.
The roads were smooth, withal their crookedness and the rugged aspect of the country through which they entered to pass. An occasional rabbit jumped away, into the thicket, none the wiser for a strange, harmless fright, and Yodogima marvelled the dextrousness of his small endeavor. Could she likewise defeat or escape harm? No; civilization had reduced her to less agile and more hardened methods. ”

“ Yodogima sniffed the enamour of contest, of powers gained and a will unhampered, and the gods could not have swerved her in the test a Taira, of ages gone, had fought for the pleasure.
“I will rule, and men shall bow to a force subtler, fiercer, and mightier than any man has got,” shouted she, at her shadow, in the open, at Ozaka, and the echo, from the hills at Sawayama, as well of Yedo, burst back upon her their hitherto unchallenged answer. ”

“ Esyo flushed, and Yodogima read her as written.
“Come closer, Jokoin; I want to feel the warmth and cheer of your presence; it is an inspiration, if not a reason: Esyo is so cold; oh, so unsatisfying, yet also inspiring. Between the two of you I am thrust back upon heart, and shall answer neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no.’ Let them fight, if they will, but tell them, both alike, that they are men: that Yodogima shall let neither one answer to his God for a mistake of hers. It is a woman’s province to bear and not to succor man. ”

“ And if these things were inevitable, if there remained at Azuchi a soul forlorn and perchance bitter, perhaps welling up a still more ruthless indisposition, and if the ideal toward which a hapless, helpless woman had bent her every energy, sacrificed the body to preserve a soul, were attained—if all this had resulted in fact, there yet remained among them one in whose heart there lingered not only a burning, compelling sense of duty, but as well an abiding faith in truth. ”

“ To this proposal Yodogima made no protest, in fact encouraged its doing, yet knew full well the purport and surmised an eagerness on the part of every daimyo—invited or not—to seize any opportunity to test underhandedly his influence or lay discreetly some self-bettered plan. The taiko had whipped them into subjection and she herself borne him a recognized successor, but would the nation accept an authority incapable of enforcing itself? Could individual powers be transmitted in the absence of personal prowess? ”

“ Only the mean, the weak, and the unpatriotic would question expediency; small men with little souls might buy to sell again; others of brawn, their minds a mirage, fashion the wares, drones and idlers drive and shout their wives and children to plant and draw—men and women, humans with a purpose and a promise higher and nobler than grubbing for food or haggling for exchange or bartering for gold served a usefulness, encouraged a hope, and pointed the way toward that rendering which make men large; the ideal portended a reality which bid them not, ever, stoop to sordid, useless gain. ”

“ At last Ieyasu, by a ruse, had done something more than wait; the Chinese fantasy had been brought suddenly to a halt, and Japan saved probable humiliation, to say nothing of absolute defeat; Hidaye had already been all but crushed, and that, too, without getting beyond the confines of weak, unprepared, and unwarlike Korea. Had Hideyoshi himself left Japanese soil, with his contemplated reserve force, the trap laid by the wily Chin Ikei, China’s over-matching envoy, might have defeated more potent, if less fantastic, ambitions even than Hideyoshi’s. ”

“ God himself shall stand revealed, and the world attain its destined end—a heaven here where men are doomed, and none denied, of treasures yet undreamed.”
Sitting within the confines of her own allotted environment, far removed from the turmoils of rendering, shorn of creation’s compensatory appeal, but clothed with the choicer products of highest endeavor, Yodogima, too, pondered the complexity of human nature, and its languor or celerity in rendering the tidy milestones so highly prized or bitterly condemned as we go. Yet, unlike Ieyasu, she had partaken thereof a self-suffered resignation. ”

“ The hero of Sekigahara had dreamed before, husbanded a love absorbing virtues as intense, but never had reality seemed as close as now. Fired at the thought of mastery, he would drink deeper than ideality had bidden, quaff at last the golden elixir of a realized fount, bring down to earth heaven’s supremest joy and trend thence the glad onrush with the prize of living securely resting willingly and unbidden in his arms. ”

“ Policy had been his stronghold, from the first; the one battle risked and fought, at Sekigahara, had been forced and won at the instance of Yodogima, and the reaper of its booty knew it, had extended his hand as recompense, and in the frenzy of madness brought about an unthought catastrophe, seemingly as needless as destructive.
Only the pinched of face and sycophant at heart surrounded him now; men waxing corpulent, and others anxious to coddle them; the philosopher because he could afford to be one; possessors of endowed chairs at colleges, the gifts of one another ”

“ Ieyasu went as permitted and directed.
Had she driven her lover from her? Should she have accepted him on faith, granted his unchallenged desire, and ignored truth? Might either passive, or, if needs be, active lying have resolved better their happiness? Could heaven be attained without knowledge? Buddhism said no; Christianity claimed yes, but deeper than these, broader than either, more compelling than any other, Yodogima’s religion searched, expanded, and enforced truth’s unclaimed adherence. ”