The story told by this poor jinrikisha man, as we sat on the porch of his humble dwelling, constitutes but one simple chapter in this wonderful history. It illustrates the spirit which pervaded Old Japan, the veneration which attached to the sword, and the peculiar personal obligations of honor which rested upon all samurai in those feudal times. As the story was related to me, so I tell it here, regretting only that in the process of translation it must lose much of local color and characterization, but hoping that in spite of this it may be found to possess an interest purely its own, independent of the way in which it is now narrated.
JAPANESE SWORD.
CHAPTER I.
It was in the year of our Lord 1322, according to the Japanese calendar the fourth year of the reign of Go Dai Go Tenno, the ninety-fifth descendant of Jimmu Tenno, and nineteen hundred and eighty-two years from the time when the latter had assumed the title of the “First Emperor of Japan.”
FARM LABORER.
For the first time in its history a general peace, lasting for more than a century, reigned over the land. Guerilla and border warfare, it is true, was still carried on, in a desultory manner, in different parts of the empire; feuds between the daimio of neighboring provinces were no rarities; and the kataki-uchi, the Japanese vendetta, still caused many bloody tragedies to be enacted, and year after year claimed its thousands of victims. All such disturbances, however, originating in private jealousy and personal enmity, had during this period been merely local, without expanding sufficiently to assume a national character, as in former centuries, when one half of the fighting population was constantly at war with the other. During a hundred and two years no organized revolt against the authority of the Shôgun, or rather against the Ilōjō family, who were the real rulers, had occurred. The administration of the latter, both civil and military, was, it is true, excellent in most regards,—a fact which not even their enemies could gainsay. The success with which they had repelled the invasion of the Tartar force sent by Kublai Khan, with its countless ships and its tens of thousands of warriors, showed them to be brave and skilled in war, while the general prosperity of the empire gave ample evidence both of their knowledge of the country’s needs and of their ability to enforce those measures by which the arts of peace are made to flourish. Farmers tilled their lands free from the harrowing care which beset their forefathers as to whether they would be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, or whether roving bands would seize the garnered harvest and even force the young and strong to become unwilling recruits among the henchmen and servants attending the feudal chiefs. The advance in commerce, art, and more especially in learning and the polite accomplishments, had been extraordinary, and their regenerating influence had gradually made itself felt in all parts of the empire. Plenty and apparent security reigned everywhere; and yet it was felt and known by those who cared to think and who took notice of passing events, that the end of this period of tranquillity was inevitable, and moreover even now near at hand. Every coming day might see the smouldering embers of discontent, hitherto concealed, blaze forth into a fierce and destructive civil war.
