“But the sons of the daimios repose amidst the splendors of the temples,” I bantered him.
He glanced about reverently at the decaying little edifice. “The spirit of Shinto is simplicity. Yet I wish I could have entertained you with proper hospitality, and that we might enter Yedo in the manner to which we are entitled by our rank.”
“Ours?” I questioned.
“Are we not brothers?” he countered.
“You know the position of my family at home,” I said. “But it is a far cry from America to Dai Nippon. I have read what the Dutch writers tell about the hauteur of your nobility. Even as a friend of a kinsman of your Emperor, will I be received?”
“I am not the kinsman of the Emperor,” he replied.
“You’re not? Yet you said that your father, the Prince of Owari—”
“He and the princes of Kii and Mito are the heads of the August Three Families, descendent from the three sons of Iyeyasu. He is the cousin of the Shogun, not of the Emperor. One alone can be called Emperor of Nippon. That is the Dairi—the Mikado, lineal descendant of Ama-terasu, the Sun Goddess. The sacred Son of Heaven lives in awesome seclusion at Kyoto.”
“Yet I am aware that your shoguns, whom the outer world has known as the temporal emperors, have ruled Nippon with mailed fist since the days of my ancestor, the English counsellor of Iyeyasu.”
He stared at me in blank astonishment. “The English counsellor of Iyeyasu!—he your ancestor?—Anjin Sama your ancestor?”