During this time I saw nothing of his wife, the quaintly beautiful little lady Tokiwa Sama. The family life of the Japanese nobility is extremely private, even as regards relatives. Yoritomo found time to pay me only one brief visit. He was dressed in white, the Japanese mourning, and was greatly worn by his labor in preparing his memorial to the Shogun during the nights and his daytime duties as chief mourner for his brother.
Japanese etiquette does not permit the official mourning of parents for children. Upon Yoritomo had fallen the sorrowful task of receiving the family friends at the bier of his brother and of attending to all the Buddhistic and Shinto funeral rites. The day after our arrival the death of his brother had been officially announced, and the corpse, which had been embalmed in vermilion for a month past, was mourned over for the prescribed number of days before the interment in one of the cemeteries at Shiba.
In the meantime my friend had completed a summary of the knowledge he had acquired regarding the outer world, and the new foreign policy to which that knowledge pointed. He was now writing the full report and memorial, while his father, who had already smuggled the summary into the Castle, was intriguing for permission to present the memorial direct to the Shogun, unknown to Midzuano and the other members of the Council of Elders.
As the Council was secretly pledged to the Mito faction, it was necessary for us to obtain an unprejudiced hearing from the Shogun. Delay was dangerous, since at any moment Keiki might invoke the ancient laws against us, or the inopportune arrival of the American expedition might checkmate our purpose by throwing the Government into an irrevocably hostile attitude towards the foreigners and ourselves.
Weary of inaction, I welcomed a message from the Prince requesting me to join him on an informal visit. Where we were to go was not stated, but I accepted the invitation on the instant, and asked no questions. My attendants dressed me with utmost care, in rich though sober-colored garments, and I noticed that a ceremonial winged jacket, or kamishimo, of hemp-cloth was laid in a lacquered case to be carried along.
When, shortly after midday, I was led through the palace to the state portico, I found that the Prince had already entered his norimon, and was being borne away in the midst of his slow-moving cortege. I stepped into my norimon and was borne after him, Fujimaro and other officials walking beside me. My led-horse and grooms, my two-sword men, and the bearers of my state umbrella, hat, fan, and all the other ceremonial paraphernalia of a daimio, were strung out before or behind me.
Upon issuing from the yashiki, we did not cross the outer moat at the nearest bridge, but skirted southward along it to the Yotsuya Gate, which opens into the great Kojimachi Street. Up Kojimachi we swung at a pace far brisker than dignity would have permitted had not the absence of ceremonial standards indicated that we were travelling naibun. The incognito of the Prince, however, was no more than a conventional fiction, since his cortege was immediately recognized by every man in the throngs of samurais that passed us within the official quarter.
Gazing out through my curtains, I caught the politely veiled glances with which the two-sword men regarded our cortege. The intensity of party feeling among them was evident from the total absence of indifference. There was not one who failed to show indications of either warm friendship or bitter hatred. This was no less true of the helmetted riders we met. Some rode by with the heads of their barbed and grotesquely caparisoned horses curved high and the huge slipper stirrups of the high-peaked saddles thrust out aggressively. Others courteously swerved to the far side of the street, and a few even dismounted, despite our conventional incognito.
A mile along the Kojimachi Street brought us to the moat of the citadel. I expected our cortege to turn to the right into the great causeway and skirt the moat towards the Sakaruda Gate where Yoritomo and I had parted from the cortege of the Princess Azai. Instead, our escort led straight on across the bridge that headed the street. The thought flashed upon me that we were about to enter the Shogun’s sacred enclosure and call upon one of the high officials of the Household.
On either side I looked down over the waters of the beautiful moat, among whose blue-green lotus pads swarmed ducks and geese, swans, ibises, storks, and cranes. The outer bank rose to the causeway in a steep grassy slope, set with wide-spreading oaks and pines. Nearing the far side, I studied at close view the granite blocks of the citadel wall, many of which measured at least four feet by sixteen. They were neatly fitted together without mortar or iron cramps, and showed no crevices or displacements from the earthquakes of three centuries.