Nevertheless, if he had entered then, Arisuga would have been chosen, by acclaim, because of his song.
But enthusiasm cools rapidly, and these stoical orientals could be moved to enthusiasm by but this one thing—war.
So that after a month—two—it required another word from grizzled Zanzi, who had been in the war of the Restoration, to let Shijiro in.
"Jokoji!" That was the word. "His father is at Jokoji!"
And they demanded, and he told, the story of Jokoji—which, pardon me, I do not mean to tell. Save this little, so that you may understand, that it was that last terrible stand of Saigo behind the hills of Kagoshima, where the Shogunate perished and the empire was born again in 1868. And the shoguns you may care to know were that mighty line of feodal chieftains who had usurped the throne from the time of Yoritomo, to that of Keiki. For all these years the imperial power had rioted at Yedo, in the hands of two generals, while the emperor, a prisoner in his palace-hermitage in Kyoto, had been but the high priest of his people.
They are there yet, at Jokoji, to the last man, Saigo and his gallant rebels, in a great trench, without their heads, a warning to future rebels.
After that other word—Jokoji—Arisuga was chosen.
Observe that they finally took him because of his father—though he died a rebel. Indeed, those old insurgents, of 1868, are gradually being canonized with crimson death-names, because they neither knew dishonor, no, nor suffered it.