The Shogun's Daughter

by Robert Ames Bennet

“Woroto—my son!”

I looked up and saw his haughty eyes glistening with tears. We gazed deep into one another’s souls. My brother had gone from me, but I had found a father.

He rose and left me.

Soon, however, the screens parted to admit that sweetest and quaintest and dearest of dames, Tokiwa Sama. She glided across to kowtow to me, demurely radiant. I had found not only a father, but a mother—and such a mother! Could I but have gathered her up in my arms and poured out my heart to her!

Instead we talked with decorous restraint of various little details of home life,—matters trifling and altogether inconsequential in themselves yet charged with a world of meaning to me. I was received into the intimacy of the home life; I had become a member of the family.

Never had I chafed more at the convention that forbade all reference to romantic love. Freed from that taboo, pronounced by an over-rigid etiquette, I knew my dainty little adopted mother would have been an ideal confidante. Her dear face glowed with sympathy and love, which, being unable to express in words or caresses, she could convey to me only by looks and the exquisite courtesy of her manner.

So it was, I was accepted as the son and heir of Owari in the hearts of my second parents, before my adoption according to the forms of the law. The legal adoption was not a simple affair of routine, as I had fancied. Though proposed by the Shogun himself, it was blocked for some weeks by the intrigues of the Mito party and the opposition of the Elder Council. Unaware of the motive behind the Shogun’s supposed caprice,—a motive that made resistance futile,—our enemies worked zealously to prevent the acceptance of the barbarian as heir of one of the August Three Families.

In the end our opponents even went so far as to appeal to that mysterious superlord the Mikado. For this act custom would have justified Iyeyoshi in punishing them with utmost severity. But he was not averse to showing them that the power of the Shogun, their master, over the Kyoto court was unbroken, and so the matter was delayed for some weeks. In ordinary circumstances, the dense ignorance and bigotry of the imperial court regarding the tojin world would have insured a certain verdict against me. But the Shogun brought heavy pressure to bear. It was a difficult matter to deny the express desire of one who had the power to enforce compliance. Also I suspect that the difficulty was glossed over by a flat denial of my tojin blood and a strong insistence upon my kinship to the House of Owari.

Pending the sanction of the Mikado, I was required to remain within the bounds of the yashiki. But it was a confinement far from irksome in view of the extreme sultriness of the midsummer weather and the charm of the yashiki gardens.

Yuki, however, roved at will about the city in the disguise of a ronin, spying upon the Mito men. Soon after the funeral I had sent him to Shinagawa with a message for Kohana San. But the geisha had not been seen since my glimpse of her at Uyeno. She had not returned to her home, and was not to be found. Our first thought was that she might have killed herself for love of Yoritomo. Yet this seemed improbable when we recalled to mind his command for her to live and serve those whom he left behind.