The Shogun's Daughter

by Robert Ames Bennet

At the head of the bridge our cortege halted, and Fujimaro informed me that I was to alight. The Prince, as the head of one of the August Three Families, was entitled to ride in through this lesser gate, but no other daimio could be accorded the privilege.

“Very well,” I replied, determined to make a test of the matter. “Let the Prince of Owari proceed. I will wait his return here.”

“Impossible, my lord!” exclaimed the chamberlain.

“Then take me back to the yashiki,” I demanded. “The Prince was pleased to receive me as a daimio of rank equal to his own. I will enter the citadel in the same manner that he enters, or not at all.”

This was a bold stand for a foreigner whose very presence in Japan was against the ancient laws. But my natural disposition to insist upon a correct valuation of my dignity was backed by a careful consideration of Japanese manners and customs. As an American gentleman, I had the right to rank myself as an equal to any one beneath the ruler of the country. To accept a lower station would result in humiliations that I was not disposed to suffer, either from white men or brown.

There followed a prolonged conference between the captain of the gate, the chamberlain, and the Prince, during which Fujimaro twice came back and begged me to change my determination. I refused. The gate captain in turn refused to admit the unknown occupant of the second norimon other than on foot. The deadlock that followed was broken by the appearance of a hatamoto whom I at once recognized as the only member of the Princess’s guard, except the leader, that had survived the attack of the ronins. His dress indicated that he had been promoted to the rank of court chamberlain. He had come to conduct us into the citadel, and at a word from him, the obstinate gate captain yielded his will to mine.

We moved forward beneath the huge ancient gateway into a small court between the lofty bastions, and out at right angles, through an inner gateway, into the marvellously beautiful gardens of the Shogun. After winding about for half a mile or more among hillocks and rockeries and groves interspersed with kiosks and toy-like red-lacquered temples, we came to the wall and moat that surrounds the O Shiro.

Here the Prince and I left our norimons, and walked over a slender high-arched bridge, accompanied only by our chamberlains and the newly made court chamberlain, who had ostentatiously ushered us from the citadel gate. In compliance with the request of the Prince, I walked behind him as if lost in meditation, my head downbent and eyes narrowed to a line.

At the far side of the bridge we passed between the vigilant guards of the inner gateway, who, however, seemed to detect nothing foreign in my appearance. Beyond them we came into a garden court, surrounded with high walls on three sides and on the fourth with a wing of the palace. There was no person to be seen either in the court or in the broad veranda of the palace wing, to which we were conducted. Mounting a set of movable lacquered steps, we crossed the veranda to the threshold of a small waiting room.

When our clogs had been removed, the Prince handed over not only his sword but his dirk as well into the keeping of his chief attendant. The act convinced me that we were about to be received by the Shogun himself. It was absurd to suppose that one of so exalted a rank as the Prince would lay aside his dirk as well as his sword for any personage in Yedo other than the head of the Government. Fujimaro did not have to ask twice for my swords. I handed them over at the first word.