For the other, there seemed but a single course. He had exhausted, as it would appear, all the avenues open to him but one. No such thing as being born again had entered into Ieyasu’s curriculum, and the very tenets of his religion scorned the lesser beatitudes of a troubled soul. Stoicism had survived mercy, and his goddess profaned the world must answer.

“Concentrate at Fushima,” commanded he, of Hidetada, now his favorite, and most trusted commander.

“But Hideyasu is intractable: refuses to obey Hidetada, his younger,” replied Esyo, before Hidetada, her husband, could make any answer.

“Then let him be humbled; I declare Hidetada my successor, and do invest him with supreme authority under me,” declared Ieyasu; Esyo withdrawing to convey the intelligence, to her displaced brother-in-law, with all the force and color at her tongue’s end.

A thousand regiments stood ready to assemble and fight under Ieyasu’s colors, and no daimyo of position would raise the feeblest protest—though fully cognizant of the motive and bitterly regretting the coup—against the cry of:

“Out with the Christians!”

The edict had gone forth, and regardless of Ieyasu’s intent no loyal defender, not a supporter of the taiko’s regime, much less any true believer in the mikado, had failed to respond to a call so vital to their existence, as obnoxious to their ways of living and welfare in death. Those godly men, the priests, and their converts, by word and by deed, had proven themselves marauders and evil-boding. They had reached over men’s consciences, struck at the state, and meddled with the home—and for what? To substitute one religion for another—and why?

“To gratify ambition,” replied Ieyasu, and for once Christianity found a foe worthy its steel.

“This stupid pilot’s inadvertent speech, he of the San Felipe, however petty, but echoes the cornerstone of a philosophy, disguised and spread as religion, intended to profit the sophisticated at the expense of the confiding,” continued he, reasoning with the court at Kyoto. “Why, they are already sniffling at the largest treasury in the empire, seek under the guise of patriots to invest the strongest fortress left us, and are poisoning the mind, as they abused a reliance, of our departed taiko’s widow, the princess Yodogima; than whom, till their withering touch defiled, none better, purer, or more faithful lived. Give me this appointment, I say; influence our beloved mikado to make me shogun—Yoshiaki is dead and Minamoto blood is in me—and I shall oust them and close these doors to the world. Then, and not till then, shall peace reign in this most favored and only blessed domain.”

Enthusiasm bore them on, as it always does, when founded well, however conceived, and Ieyasu thereat became shogun—an honor Hideyoshi had striven all his life, yet died to see lowering upon another.

“It proves nothing,” continued Ieyasu, shrugging his shoulders, “except the value of blood, establishes the divinity of the mikado, and preserves to us the religion we know resolves in practice what it preaches. I pronounce it.”

Not so at Ozaka; Yodogima had looked as far into the working of social, religious, and political complexities as the sage of Yedo had thought to enter; understood the San Felipe threat equally as well, but regarded it rather as a source, not as much as any sort of finality—Yodogima knew better the hearts of men; as a woman, she had had an experience that no man can have: she believed that Ieyasu’s act in seeking the shogunate were no less personal than had been Hideyoshi’s purpose in denying her the privileges of an inherent love; than the king of Spain’s motive was mercenary in speeding forth the missionaries.

“With transportation established, there is no end to greed, and Japan, if she would live, must open, and not close her doors. Does Ieyasu think that God in his wisdom were so narrow as to exempt this tiny spot from the responsibilities and compensations everywhere else around us borne?” said the princess, to Hideyori, who had grown to respect his mother’s advice, and now sought it, before answering Ieyasu’s importuning him to proceed thither and do homage to the newly made shogun’s attempted precedence.

“For every missionary sent to us,” continued she, “let us send two to them; as they build ships, then double their output; if it is with arms they would grab, we have more than twice their number, the largest of them, and discipline to spare. Go against them my child; possession is the secret, and the fittest shall survive; it is God’s law, and woe unto him who disobeys—Ieyasu as well; he has denied me, and let come what may your mother will be vindicated.”

Hideyori had just arrived at earliest manhood, and little did he care about anything so inane and deceptive as enforced peace, as unequal and degrading as discriminative prosperity. The old stock, the spirit of an age that did not lie, of men unstooped to a progress that would rob Peter to pay Paul, a civilization that had brought the West’s proudest knocking at their doors, made them the coveted of all continents, these aspirations burned at his finger tips.

A mother had been wronged: what more could have fired a lesser zeal?

Trained by a man whose only thought was of his best interests, loved dearly by one who had given him being, applauded by a multitude, endowed of an authority, heir to vast treasures and supported by men of valor—who could have resisted the challenge to honor a name?

“Hideyori respects the honorable Ieyasu, but cannot concede him the rank or authority claimed,” was the modest though significant answer returned, by the insulted heir to an exalted taiko’s prestige.

“I am pleased,” promised Ieyasu, to Kitagira, directly his own best trusted intermediary; “Hideyori’s refusal affords me the opportunity—awaited all these barren years.”