SOSANOÔ MIKOTO, THE PATRON GOD OF SWORDS AND INVENTOR OF POETRY.
Gradually it dawned upon Sennoske that his father, from some inexplicable cause, must have been unable to fulfil such a duty which his samurai honor had imposed upon him, and that he was educating his son to act in his stead. The thought, as soon as it struck the lad, brought a thrill of wild and fierce delight. With conscious pride he felt that his body, trained to every athletic exercise, his sinews of steel and muscles of iron, his quick eye and swift foot, gave him a better right than any other youth of his age to hope to carry out the dream of every young samurai,—to see himself grasping his blood-stained sword and covered with mortal wounds, his foot upon the body of his prostrate and dying foe. No samurai worthy of the name had a higher ambition than to die such a death; and when Sennoske lived, the spirit that ruled men of his class was not different from what it had been for centuries before, or from what it continued to be up to within the last few decades.
The thoughts, hopes, and expectations thus engendered in the mind of Sennoske had completely occupied it until he met O Tetsu. Not that this event wrought anything like a complete revulsion of feeling. No new-born passion could wholly supersede the result of traditional and inherited tendencies, and of an education which had caused the tenets of a soldier’s creed to be instilled with the first glimmer of consciousness. Sennoske was still as ready as ever to dare anything and sacrifice everything in the cause of his father’s vendetta. With that object in view he would not have hesitated a moment to lay down his life if necessary. But this “if necessary” had now intruded itself where before no thought had been given to it. He sometimes feared that he was even lacking in loyalty and good faith to the principle in which he had been brought up, because he permitted himself to look forward to any end but one; and this was doubtless the reason why he refrained from speaking to his father of his passion for O Tetsu. Day by day, however, that passion grew; until he felt that it was impossible to cease hoping that he might yet call the girl his own, and that the fulfilment of his mission, whatever duties it entailed, might not be irreconcilable with the consummation of his desires.
CHAPTER VI.
Ten years had elapsed since Mutto and his son had first come to Kuwana, and the great struggle so long impending was now fairly breaking out. That the crisis had not occurred sooner was a matter of sufficient wonder, and was owing altogether to the strong measures of repression, to the undoubted ability for governing possessed in general by those who were still the actual rulers of the land. But although the overthrow of the Hōjō might be delayed, it could not be averted. The insolent pride of these chieftains, not content with setting up and pulling down Shôguns at will, and punishing with death all who incurred their displeasure, had even heaped indignities upon the imperial family; and from this, more than from all other causes combined, their hold upon the people was weakened beyond hope of recovery.
In Japan the divinity which hedges the king owes nothing to the poet’s flowery imagery, but has always been accepted as a living fact by high and low, by rich and poor, by the strong and by the weak. The government of the country had de facto always been wielded by some chieftain whose genius, naturally in those times mainly of a military character, had enabled him to arrogate position and power. If at the same time he possessed administrative and organizing qualities, then the prestige and influence exerted by his name, added to the support of his clansmen, would often secure this power for several generations to his descendants. In this way the Sugiwara, Fujiwara, Taira, the Minamoto, and others whose names and exploits are familiar to every child in Japan, had risen to fame and to the control of the State.