We left Nikko this morning; a hot, moist, quiet, lovely morning. We dawdled at our friends' house and breakfasted, and said good-by to our worthy landlord. Yesterday he had found fault with my sketching him in his ordinary yellow priest's dress, while he had vestments as beautiful as any painter or clergyman could desire; in proof of which he had rushed into his house and reappeared in those lovely things and moved about the green of the garden looking as radiant as any flamingo. But I knew not of these possessions of his, and regretted quite as deeply as he could himself not having painted him in them.

It was a sad moment—that of leaving his little garden for good, and walking down the road to the enormous steps under the trees by the river, where we reversed the picture of our arrival six weeks ago. There stood the naked runners, and our hostess above us, as we sat in the kurumas, but this time the doctor was not with us, except to bid us good-by. His place was filled by the professional guide and factotum, who sat anxious for departure in his own kuruma, and who for days had been packing and labeling and helping to make lists, and receiving instructions, and bustling about at times when he was not sleeping—and generally making life a misery. We rattled over the bridge, passed the children going to school, and the polite policeman with spectacles and sword, who looks like a German Rath of some kind or other, and the woman of the Eta class[7] who has sold us skins of monkeys and of badgers, as well as two baby monkeys, whom we have disrespectfully named Sesson and Sosen, after the painters who so beautifully portrayed their ancestors.

Soon we had entered the long avenue of cryptomeria and kept on through shadow and sunlight, with our runners at their fullest gait, for we had to be in time for the afternoon train at Utsunomiya, and it is twenty-two miles from Nikko. But we were more than in time, and had to wait at an inn near the station. I am absurdly stupid and fatigued, so that I have given up watching the landscape and merely make these notes. Besides, there is a missionary near us so self-contented that I feel like withdrawing into my own self and dreaming of the times he was not here. I recall a little story of Utsunomiya, connected with my associations of Nikko, which I shall try to tell you; though, at the very start, I find a difficulty in my having heard it told in several different and contradictory ways—and I can only travel one at a time. As I shall tell it, it represents a legend believed at least in the theater, which, as we know, everywhere makes a kind of history.

The story is about the shogun IyÉmitsu, whose temple, you know, is at Nikko, and who was near missing the honor of being divinized there later, owing to a plot arranged by his enemies, the scene of which was this little town of Utsunomiya. At that time he was but a boy, the heir-apparent, and was on his way to Nikko, as was his official duty, to worship at the tomb of his grandfather IyÉyasu, lately deceased. In this story IyÉmitsu is not in the legitimate line of descent, but is made the heir by the decision of the great IyÉyasu.

His father, Hidetada, was shogun, as you know, having succeeded IyÉyasu, during the latter's lifetime,—the old man remaining in reality the master, though absolved from external responsibilities. Now, Hidetada's wife was of the family of Nobunaga, on her mother's side—and bore him a son, who was named during his childhood Kuni Matsu. Another son, whose boy name was Take Chiyo, was the son of Kasuga No Tsubone, a remarkable woman. Each son had tutors, people of importance, and around each boy gathered a number of ambitious interests, all the fiercer that they were dissembled and depended for success upon the choice of either heir as shogun, to succeed father and grandfather. The claim of the other son was favored by the father and more generally accepted; but the son of Kasuga was superior in looks, manners, and intelligence, and his mother hoped to influence in his favor old IyÉyasu, the grandfather.

IyÉyasu was then living in retirement at Sunpu, that is now called Shidzuoka, which is on the road called the Tokaido.

Kasuga took advantage of a pilgrimage to the shrines of Ise to stop on her road, and naturally offer homage to the head of the family, the grandfather of her son. Besides the power of her own personality, she was able to place before IyÉyasu very strong arguments for choosing as the heir of the line a youth as promising as her Take Chiyo.

IyÉyasu advised her to continue her pilgrimage, and not to go out of her woman's business, which could not be that of interfering with questions of state; and she obeyed. But IyÉyasu revolved the entire question in his mind, and decided that there was danger in a delay that allowed both parties to grow stronger in antagonism. So that he came at once to Yedo, which is now Tokio, and visited Hidetada, asking to see both the boys together. They came in along with their father and his wife, and took their accustomed places. Now these were on the higher floor, raised by a few inches from the floor on which kneels the visitor of lower degree, in the presence of his superior: a line of black lacquer edges the division. Thereupon IyÉyasu taking the boy Take Chiyo by the hand, made him sit by him, and alongside of his father, and ordered the other son, Kuni Matsu, to sit below the line, and said: "The State will come to harm if the boys are allowed to grow up in the idea of equal rank. Therefore, Take Chiyo shall be shogun, and Kuni Matsu a daimio." This decision gave to the line of the Tokugawa a brilliant and powerful continuity, for Take Chiyo, under his manhood name of IyÉmitsu, was as an Augustus to the CÆsar IyÉyasu. And, indeed, IyÉyasu had certainly made sufficient inquiries to warrant his decision. If he consulted the abbot Tenkai, of Nikko, who was a preceptor of the boy, he must have heard favorably of him. For, according to the judgment of Tenkai, as I find it quoted elsewhere, "IyÉmitsu was very shrewd and of great foresight," and in his presence the great abbot felt, he said, "as if thorns were pricking his back."

Not but that he was also fond of luxury and splendor; and one glimpse of him as a youth shows a quarrel with a tutor who found him dressing himself, or being dressed, for "No" performances, or "private theatricals," and who proceeded thereupon to throw away the double mirrors,—in which the youth followed his hair-dresser's arrangements,—with the usual, classical rebuke, condemning such arrangements as unworthy of a ruler of Japan. There are many stories of IyÉmitsu more or less to his advantage—and a little anecdote shows a young man of quick temper, as well as one who insisted upon proper attendance.

IyÉmitsu had been hawking in a strong wind, and with no success. Tired and hungry, he went with some lord-in-waiting to a neighboring temple, where lunch was prepared for them by his cook,—a man of rank. IyÉmitsu, while taking his soup in a hurry, crushed a little stone between his teeth; whereupon he immediately insisted upon the cook's committing suicide. The cook being a gentleman, a man of affairs, not a mere artist like poor Vatel, hesitated, and then said: "No soup made by me ever had stones or pebbles in it; otherwise I should gladly kill myself: you gentlemen have begun dinner at once without washing hands or changing dress, and some pebble has dropped into the soup from your hair or clothes. If after having washed your hands and changed your dress, you find any stones in the soup, I shall kill myself." Whereupon IyÉmitsu did as was suggested by the cook, repented of his own severity, and increased the cook's pay. But the tutor and guardians of IyÉmitsu watched over him carefully, and the story I had begun to tell shows that they had no sinecure.

The tutors and guardians of the brother, whom IyÉyasu had decided to put aside in favor of IyÉmitsu, were naturally deeply aggrieved and sought for chances to regain their ward's future power and their own.

As my story began, IyÉmitsu, representing the hereditary shogunate, was called upon to travel to Nikko and worship officially at his grandfather's tomb. On his way it was natural that he should rest as we did, at Utsunomiya, and in the castle of his vassal, Honda, who was one of the tutors of his brother. This was the son of the great Honda Masanobu, of whom I spoke above as a champion of IyÉyasu.

Here was an opportunity; and a scheme of getting rid of the young shogun was devised by his enemies that seemed to them sufficiently obscure to shield them in case of success or failure, at least for a time. This was, to have a movable ceiling made to the bath-room weighted in such a way as to fall upon any one in the bath and crush him. Whether it was to be lifted again, and leave him drowned in his bath, or to remain as an accident from faulty construction, I do not know.

To build this machine, ten carpenters were set to work within the castle and kept jealously secluded,—even when the work was done, for the young shogun delayed his coming. The confinement fretted the men, among whom was a young lover, anxious to get back to his sweetheart, and not to be satisfied with the good food and drink provided to appease him. He told of his longings to the gatekeeper, whose duty it was to keep him imprisoned, bribed him with his own handsome pay and promise of a punctual return, and at last managed to get out and be happy for a few moments. The girl of his love was inquisitive, but reassured by explanation that the work was done, and that he should soon be out again; yet not before the shogun should have come and gone on his way to Nikko. And so he returned to the gatekeeper at the time appointed. Meanwhile, during that very night, the officers of the castle had gone their rounds and found one man absent. In the morning the roll-call was full. This was reported to the lord of the castle, who decided that if he could not know who it was that had been absent it was wise to silence them all. Therefore, each was called to be paid and dismissed, and, as he stepped out, was beheaded. The gatekeeper, getting wind of what was happening and fearing punishment, ran away, and being asked by the girl about her lover, told her what he knew and that he believed all the carpenters to have been killed.

Since her lover was dead, she determined to die also, having been the cause of his death and of the death of his companions. She wrote out all this, together with what her lover had told her of his belief and suspicions, and left the letter for her father and mother, who received it along with the tidings of her suicide. The father, in an agony of distress and fear, for there was danger to the whole family from every side, made up his mind to stop the shogun at all hazards, and in the depth of the night made his way to Ishibashi, where one of the princes had preceded IyÉmitsu, who was to pass the night still further back on the road.

Here there was difficulty about getting a private interview with so great a man as this prince, whose name you will remember as being the title of the former owner of our friend's house in Nikko: Ii, Kammon no Kami.

The letter was shown to Ii, who despatched two messengers, gentlemen of his own, one back to Yedo, to see to the safety of the castle there; the other one to IyÉmitsu, but by a circuitous route, so that he might appear to have come the other way. The letter was to the effect that the young shogun's father was very ill and desired his son's immediate return. By the time that IyÉmitsu could get into his litter, Ii had arrived and shown him the girl's letter. Then the occupants of the litters were changed, Matsudaira taking IyÉmitsu's norimono and IyÉmitsu Matsudaira's. This, of course, was to give another chance of escape in case of sudden attack by a larger force, for they were now in enemy's country and did not know what traps might be laid for them. The bearers of the palanquin pressed through the night, so that, leaving at midnight, they arrived at Yedo the following evening; but the strain had been so great that they could go no further. There was still the fear of attack, and among the retinue one very strong man, Matsudaira Ishikawa, carried the litter of the prince himself. But the gates were closed, and the guards refused to recognize the unknown litter as that of the shogun; nor would they, fearing treachery, open when told that IyÉmitsu had returned. Delays ensued, but at last admission was obtained for IyÉmitsu through a wicket gate—and he was safe. Later, after cautious delays, the guilty were punished, and I hope the family of the carpenter's love escaped. When I first read the story, years ago, the version was different, and there was some arrangement of it, more romantic—with some circumstances through which the young carpenter and his sweetheart escaped, and alone the father, innocent of harm, committed suicide. The story sounded sufficiently Japanese and upside down and was pretty, but I have forgotten its convolutions, so that I give you this one, which I think has a pleasant local color. It has local color, and that charm of action which belongs to such histories as those of the great Dumas—not to mention Mr. Froude.

Do not forget that these details are given for your amusement, and not for your instruction. I am quite uncertain as to the historical value of my information as soon as I come down to close particulars. What little I really know comes down from early reading of the missionaries and of the Dutch, and that is mostly outside impression, though thereby valuable, because not based on theory or principle.

I do not know that critical history has yet begun here. But in the historical place where we have spent our summer, talk about the past was but natural and all to be listened to without much chance for us to distinguish what was of record and what was of legend. What I have been writing about is legend, and I am warned of its complicated incorrectness. That has not prevented my setting it down. You would like the pretty murderous story whose details reflect a peculiar past. It would be nothing to you if it were not at all IyÉmitsu, but his father Hidetada, for whose destruction the famous plot of the Hanging Ceiling was hatched. Nor would you care if the ceiling and bath-room had never existed. What is worth having is that many people thought that they saw themselves in the mirror of a period.

Now see how re-arranging the atoms of which the previous story is constituted will give you quite another picture that I would spare you, though it is a correct historical one, but it has the advantage of being quite as strange in certain ways, though not so fitted for the theater, and of giving you again a picture of feudal Japan.

As I said before, the story as I have just told it has been kept in memory, if not invented on purpose, through a book written in honor of a Japanese opposed to Honda, the master of the castle, the author of the plot of the Hanging Ceiling. There may have been such a story afloat at that time among people of low degree kept out from the many secrets of the court, but knowing that things were being done; at the same time, there is nothing that would account for a sufficient reason; and, worse than all, the date is impossible. Young IyÉmitsu was not in any position at that possible date (eighth year of the Genwa) to represent the shogunate. His father Hidetada would have been the proposed victim, which is again impossible because of the devotion of Honda, the lord of the castle, to Hidetada. That there was such an accusation I believe is understood. It was met at the time and at once disproved to the satisfaction of the shogun. It was the Lady Kano who had denounced Honda, and apparently invented the plot. She was a daughter of IyÉyasu, and had, perhaps, some of the fierce strain said to have shown in her mother and sister. Her baby grandson had only just been deprived of this very fief for the advantage of Honda, so that she had at least this grievance. And she was united in intention with the wife of the shogun Hidetada. This was a beautiful and wilful woman,—known to us by her after-death name of Sogenin, whose preference for IyÉmitsu's brother, her son also, had met Honda's resistance. You can realize that I am not capable of even discussing the question, and that I am only doing it to amuse you and to bring in more pictures.

As the shogun was to be received by the lord of Utsunomiya, new additions were ordered for his castle, the bridges and roads were repaired, which works required all the laborers, skilled or otherwise, of his domains, and even obliged him to draw upon his retainers and soldiers. Such enormous preparations were, of course, noised abroad. Now, it so happened that at one time Honda's father had been concerned in an insurrection, or levy of arms, of certain members of the Buddhist sect to which he belonged, and had fought the great IyÉyasu, whom afterwards he served so faithfully. Among the upholders of the faith were fighting monks, a variety of the militant church well known in the annals of Japan. At the close of this rebellion a band of these monks—something like a hundred—and a hundred other warriors were intrusted—Japanese-way—to the wardship of their former fellow partisan, and there they were handy for use. But they had retained something of both the clergyman and the warrior, keeping their priestly names and wearing their hair unshorn, and they refused to work, which in their eyes would have assimilated them to common soldiers and laborers. Thereupon,—and this was thought to be queer even in those days,—the lord of the castle invited them to go about the country and report upon certain matters in various places, at which places they were met by bodies of armed men, who put an end to them. I suppose that, according to strict views of the country and time, this was justifiable, though excessive, and this is one of the little pictures that I wish to frame. You see how the unpleasantness of the occasion might help the later stories of assassination.

And now, in correcting another error, I can give you another picture of feudal Japan, a Japan now broken up, against whose last rulers, the Tokugawa, I hear daily so much. That lady in the story just given you, where she is the mother of IyÉmitsu and the concubine of his father, the shogun, was a very different person.

Little IyÉmitsu was the legitimate son; moreover, the one who by date of birth was the probable heir, notwithstanding the preference shown by his father and his mother, Sogenin, for his younger brother. So that the succession was decided abruptly by the stern head of the family, IyÉyasu.

Great attention was paid by the grandfather, the great IyÉyasu, to the education of this grandson. As a Japanese friend remarked, he believed that the important place in the generation was that of the third man. So that three distinguished noblemen were appointed his governors: Sakai, to teach benevolence; Doi, to teach wisdom; Awoyama, to teach valor. Besides these great professors for the future, the little boy needed an immediate training by a governess good in every way. Kasuga, a married woman, the daughter of a well-known warrior of imperial descent who had lost his life in some conspiracy of the previous generation, was chosen by the government for the position. This was, perhaps, as great an honor as could be offered to any lady. Besides, there was an opportunity to clear the memory of her father. And she begged her husband to divorce her that she might be free to give all her life to this task. So devoted was she that the boy being at one time at the point of death, she offered herself to the gods for his recovery, vowing never to take any remedy. In her last illness she refused all medicine, and even when IyÉmitsu—now ruler—begged her to take a commended draught from his hand, she merely, out of politeness, allowed it to moisten her lips, saying that her work was done, that she was ready to die, and that her life had long ago been offered for the master. Nor would she allow the master to indulge her with regard to her own son. He was in exile, deservedly, and the shogun asked her permission to pardon him, in the belief of possible amendment. She refused, bidding IyÉmitsu to remember his lesson: that the law of the country was above all things, and that she had never expected such words from him. Moreover, that had he revoked the law for her, she could not die in peace. There is a Spartan politeness in all this, for which I think the stories worth saving to you.

And they will help to give IyÉmitsu existence for you. He seems too vague in the temple dedicated to him at Nikko, even when we look at his bronze tomb and are told that he lies there packed in vermilion: our minds have become so far removed from the ways of thinking of Japan that a divinized mortal is an empty phrase for us.

The details of such stories as I have told would not have seemed very antiquated across the seas, at their date, to those who remembered the days of Queen Elizabeth. The change has been as great in Europe as in Japan, but here it has been sudden, like the shifting of the scene of the theater; so that I can realize that when I was a boy such things as I am telling you would not have seemed very old-fashioned hereabouts.

And now I make my notes in this little railroad coach, with the telegraph wires running in and out of the picture that I see through my window; and, indeed, it is this implied contrast which I think has urged me most to tell you these more or less accurate anecdotes.

If you wished to learn more about IyÉmitsu from the Japanese biography that I have with me, you might be puzzled. One has felt so distinctly the all-powerfulness of the men whose names and stories are the outer history of Japan. So full is the impression forced upon one by the outside of the life of such a ruler as IyÉmitsu, bounded between the worship of his grandfather in golden temples and his own worship in almost equal splendors, and filled in by despotic use of power, that it leaves little place for the theory of all this power coming from the Mikado, who practically lived upon a narrow income apportioned to him by his lieutenant, the shogun. But in my little biography, written evidently to keep to present views and theories, I learn that toward the emperor our impatient hero was "faithful and humble"—and part of his story consists of visits to the emperor and of his receiving honors from this source of all honor. Thus, upon his coming of age, and having his hair trimmed, cut, and shaved in a manner to indicate this important event, the emperor sends a great court officer to compliment him, gives him the name of IyÉmitsu, honors him with the rank of Junii, and appoints him a Go Dainagon. Also, later he appoints him to be the commander of the right wing of the imperial guard, and also superintendent of the Right Imperial Stable. Thereupon IyÉmitsu calls upon his majesty at Kioto to pay his homage, and is made commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and moreover Naidaizin, with the rank of Shonii; and he is also permitted to ride in an ox-carriage and to have armed body-guards; the latter privilege one that he had been obliged to enjoy perforce from early days, as we have seen. Whereupon, says my chronicler, IyÉmitsu had the honor of presenting to his majesty a yearly income of twenty thousand bags of rice; and this goes on until after his death, when the emperor gives him these titles for the future, the name of Daiken-In, the rank of Shoichi, and the premier office of Daijo-Daizin. "The favor of Five Imperial poems was also extended to the deceased."

IyÉmitsu was fond of painting, and studied under the instruction of Kano Tanyu. He liked to paint the sacred mountain Fuji, and the same courteous chronicler tells me that some of his work was better than Tanyu's. But I should prefer seeing, before deciding; though Tanyu's imperturbable security makes one not a little bored.

It is dark; we are approaching IyÉmitsu's city, Tokio, formerly Yedo, the city of the Tokugawa, now finally returned to the emperor, to whom they gave the thousands of bags of rice for income. We shall sleep at No. 22 Yokohama,[8] and look out on the water again.