Owing to unsettled conditions the ensuing winter proved most opportune for Daikomitsu to further his schemes and advance his prospects. Much dissatisfaction had grown out of Ikamon’s cold-blooded work, and even his friends were shocked at his audacity. While he still maintained control of the shogun’s party, he held them together only with considerable difficulty, and long before the final blow came found himself in dire straits for sufficient support, even the protection of Tetsutaisho.

Outside of Tokyo his doings were looked upon as the voice of the shogunate and his acts charged thereto, while at home a feeling gained ground that the power must be wrested from his hands and the party restored to its former status. Many realised that they could not long stand before the inroads of the foreigners on the one hand and the cry of the populace on the other. Ikamon’s friendly concession had ceased to satisfy the one, and his daring blow failed to crush the other; his enemies were eager for his downfall, and Daikomitsu offered the most potent, if not reasonable solution. Therefore they welcomed him and winked at his questionable doings.

After placing himself on friendly terms with the ronin, Daikomitsu began urging them to greater activity, and as they had already become eager for some chance again to make themselves felt they were only too easily inflamed. Although these strange bands of marauders held many grievances they advanced no definite policy, and allied themselves with no particular party or faction; they had come into existence through an infraction of the law and lived and thrived best on disorder. The friendship of one so high in the councils of state as Daikomitsu they considered a license as well as an honour; and, listening earnestly to his counsel, advanced, before spring had come, afresh upon their terrible raids.

Daikomitsu kept himself well informed as to their movements, and long before they had concentrated upon Tokyo had gone there and begun the rebuilding of his popularity. Managing to elude his acquaintances at Kyoto and get away without arousing suspicion as to his intentions and aspirations even Takara did not divine his real purposes, and Kido knew nothing of them and cared less about him. Nor did his friends, professed or otherwise, in Tokyo know anything about his connection with the ronin, but (when they thought of him at all) considered him a statesman and a patriot, without any direct connection with any party or faction at either place. They knew he was of the literati and a kuge by birth, but counted him equally a friend to the true shogunate.

All the major wrongs complained of by the ronin were directly chargeable, as they thought, to the shogunate, and in consequence their activities began in that direction. Assuming the disguise of various occupations many of them gathered at Tokyo, marking their victims and preparing to make good their own escape. Regular meetings were held and all movements directed orderly and with despatch, so that as a whole they made no mistakes, while each member bound himself by an inviolable oath. They had been worked up to the belief that Ikamon was responsible for everything, and lest he should escape, early marked him as their first victim and awaited only the word of Daikomitsu, who in due time said:

“Take the principal first. You can better right the wrong after the instigator is gone.”

Ikamon, with all his spies, remained ignorant of the plot against him, probably because he considered Daikomitsu his friend and believed in the crude contrivances advanced to throw him off his guard; possibly because of his being beset with a multiplicity of dangers, for these were to him hard and trying times. He could trust no one now except Yasuko, his wife, who had remained loyal to him and proud of his achievements. She knew not the reason, nor did she question his motives; she trusted him, and that was to her enough.

“I shall be home early to-day, Yasuko,” said Ikamon as he parted, bowing politely to his wife, and started off on a blustering morning in March to attend to some official duties which called him outside.

“Then Yasuko is happy, and will abide here and look until you come,” said she in answer.

She did look, for he had never deceived her, as she knew; and she saw the most frightful thing, and fell to the floor weeping bitterly. Her husband did not return; but in passing the Sakurado gate had been set upon by the ronin, and, without any chance of defence or escape, beheaded; and his head placed upon a long pole, carried high in the air, was planted at his door.

This gruesome sight greeted Yasuko when she looked out along the roadway where she had so often watched her husband’s coming and welcomed his entrance. So swift had been the work of his assailants that none could offer resistance or interfere until the deed had been accomplished and the warning carried into the midst of his own household. There they staked their trophy high in the air, and departing made so good their escape that no one knew until a later day who had done the hideous work.

The removal of Ikamon proved an effective blow to his policy, and brought about a speedy reorganisation of the party. Hitotsubashi’s regency was made certain, and Daikomitsu with little opposition chosen prime minister; in fact, the latter had been decided upon by the former incumbent’s enemies before the butchery occurred.

The main opposition, however, came from Tetsutaisho, though Ikamon’s absence left him illy prepared to cope with the opposition in the council chamber or at the lobby. Still he developed sufficient strength to maintain his own position and wrest from them, finally, his promotion to commander-in-chief of all the shogun’s forces. In this he was considered fortunate; and even he, himself, deemed his place more secure under the new rÉgime than under the old. He reasoned that it could not have been long before Ikamon’s downfall would have come from another source, and in that event he would himself, perhaps, have been less able to force recognition as a result of his own strength. He had grown wiser with experience, and no longer desired particularly to fly at the tail of another man’s kite. Daikomitsu had early learned that Tetsutaisho was a friend of the army and they his main supporters, and of late made every endeavour to cultivate the popular general’s friendship. He had always taken pains not to give Tetsutaisho the impression that he himself rivalled the latter’s brother-in-law; but on the contrary had assumed such a plausible friendship to both that the liberal-minded commander never really knew the secret of the wise man’s success.

Yet, with all his tolerance, he did not care to trust the new prime minister too much. He lacked confidence in his ability and remained not at all sanguine as to his motives; still he would not let any man’s preferment stand between him and his shogun’s government. Loyalty was his watchword, and honour, as measured by feudal standards, his virtue; neither of which, from his way of thinking, could possibly be attained outside of the shogunate.

Position he had; for wealth he cared not. His friends he worshipped; to his enemies he gave no quarter. He lived for the love of living, and believed the mode made right the result. So far as he knew his own advancement had come more as a matter of consequence than as a reward for effort. He considered himself amenable to established law, and such a thing as a shogun’s wrong-doing had no place in the mind of Tetsutaisho.