Grooms led away their horses. A pair of young guards took their weapons respectfully and stored them away.
Soon they were seated in Lord Date’s reception hall.
The greatest of the visiting lords sat close to Lord Date and the tokonoma while the humble retainers like Tōru knelt respectfully further away. They were in a wide, broad beamed room full of light from opened shōji doors on one side, overlooking a spectacular view of Sendai and the Horose river below.
The rustling of branches from many great trees filled the room.
The waiting men sat in expectant silence.
Lord Date Yoshitake greeted the assembly and thanked them for coming. He was a vital man in his 40s, not tall but fit and athletic, with a nervous energy that reached all the way across the room to Tōru, kneeling by the doorway. Unusually, Lord Date did not speak from a seated position, but prowled back and forth near the front of the room, like a leopard stalking prey. He spoke for a moment about the need to work together. He thanked them for the honor of so many great lords visiting his humble castle. He did not sound as arrogant and proud as his reputation had made him out to be.
Rather Tōru saw in Date a quick intelligence and a strong will.
Tōru’s thoughts drifted for the moment, thinking of Masuyo, who had remained on the Hakudo Maru with Jiro and the commoners. She’d been upset to be left behind, but had not argued the point. The small freedoms she had carved out for herself this past year existed only in the margins, in hidden places, where her father’s indulgence and affection allowed her to pursue her unconventional interests. Outside Lord Aya’s halls, the rules and conventions of society were too strong to defy. So Masuyo stayed behind, no doubt plotting new improvements for the airship with Jiro and designing an airship uniform for herself, something that did not involve either an action-limiting kimono or a peasant’s poor rags.
Takamori hissed, “Himasaki!” under his breath.
Tōru blinked out of his daze to discover every face turned his way. “He wants your plan,” whispered Takamori.
Lord Date had beckoned him forward.
Tōru moved to the front of the room, his thoughts spinning. What plan? When he arrived at the front, after bowing to Lord Date, he turned to face the assembly.
They looked expectantly at him, like older, grayer versions of the young samurai and blacksmiths he had been teaching for the past two and a half months. He bowed to the group. His face flushed with embarrassment, realizing he had nothing to say to the great assembly, suddenly glad Masuyo was not here to see his humiliation.
An awkward silence ensued, broken only when Lord Date said, “Please share with us your plan.”
Tōru stalled by thanking them all for assembling, and risking their lives on the experimental Hakudo Maru. A small burst of laughter at this encouraged him. “We are embarked upon a great experiment,” he proclaimed, rather grandly he thought. “We are asking ourselves ‘what is the next step?’ Lord Date has honored me with his request that I share with you my plan. I am too lowly a poor fisherman to even propose a plan among all these great leaders.”
A murmur filled the room. They all knew his story, Observations of Barbarian America being well dissected among these men. “But if I were not a poor fisherman, this is the plan I would propose.”
Tōru took a deep breath.
Suddenly he did have a plan. An obvious plan, perhaps, and certainly a crazy ambitious plan. It was the plan of his heart, a vision for pursuing the aims disturbing his thoughts this morning, of peacefully uniting the country for defense and of bringing prosperity to the common people.
“We are here to defend our homeland. We will do this, thanks to all of you, to your hard work and bravery in coming here, your commitment of your resources to building defenses in each of your domains. All this is excellent. By summer we will have a thousand gun batteries defending our borders. But it is not enough to defend a coastline. We must strengthen our people. Not just the mighty, gathered here in this room, but each of the villagers under your care.” Tōru stopped for a moment as a murmur rose up in the room. He imagined what they were thinking, surprise at his mention of poor commoners during a discussion of great military matters.
“We can drive the foreigners away once, with our dirijibi and our gun batteries. They will not expect such resistance from us, and will withdraw to consider the matter, like Biddle and Glynn before them.” He heard growls at the mention of the other two Americans who had attempted to challenge Japan’s sakoku isolation policy. “They will return, I promise you this. They will return in force, and lay siege to our homeland. A long siege.”
Tōru remembered his arguments with Lord Aya about allowing commoners to fight and command other men, even their social superiors, and how Lord Aya had pronounced his ideas ridiculous and refused to discuss the matter further. He knew they must involve not just the samurai but also the nine out of every ten Japanese who was a commoner. Tōru pushed on.
“To win a long siege, or better, to avoid one altogether because the foreigners do not believe they can conquer us, we need a strong economy. You cannot arm and feed your soldiers without more resources. Every village needs to turn its attention not to subsistence and survival but to building strength. Food, better food, for our soldiers and workers. Clothing and armor. Weapons and airships. Schools to train engineers.” Tōru had their attention. They were mystified at his focus on their villages and food production, expecting rather a plan for dirigibles and gun batteries.
“You, my lords, are powerful. Many of you are wealthy. You have committed your wealth, your fighting men and your courage to the defense of our homeland. This is good. This is a first step. But all your wealth and all your courage will not be enough to stand against all the world if the foreigners come at us in force, united against us.”
A rumbling growl arose as the lords resisted Tōru’s words.
“You need the lowly as well as the great made strong and educated and committed to strengthening our country. You’ve met Captain Jiro, of the Hakudo Maru.”
They nodded. Jiro had been a great favorite during the drinking last night, challenging them to consume vast quantities of saké and regaling the lords with humorous stories of his first failed attempts at flight and later his successful escape from the Shogun’s men.
“Captain Jiro was a ragged blacksmith in a poor village a year ago, illiterate and knowing nothing beyond the borders of his village. Today he reads. He leads a skilled crew. He navigates from one end of our Emperor’s realm to the other. He personally designed, engineered and built the Hakudo Maru, working from the sketchiest of plans. Imagine a thousand of our common people, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, similarly skilled and educated and contributing to our nation like Captain Jiro instead of living in rags, hungry and cold, in our villages. Can you see the strength of our homeland if we raise up ten thousand Captain Jiros to fight by our side?” Tōru paused, fearing the grumbling of the lords, but was met instead with quiet attention from the room of men.
“You have asked me for a plan. I give you instead this vision, of ten thousand Captain Jiros. We must lead not just your soldiers, but your farmers and merchants to join this mission. We must educate not just your own sons, but also the sons of the village headmen. We must feed not just your fighters, but also your factory workers and merchants and servants. We must make every village a castle of prosperity and education, defending Japan with foodstuffs and textiles and weapons. We must show the world, through the wealth of our commoners, that we are not a nation to be trifled with, not a nation to be exploited and subjugated like great and fallen China. We must show the foreigners our Japanese ways are superior to theirs, that even the lowliest among us is blessed with education and prosperity. We must remake our land to bring prosperity to every village and unleash the full power of all our people.”
Tōru bowed and returned to his seat, spent. He could have gone on, for he had many ideas on how to accomplish this, but his throat suddenly clamped shu
t, dry and choked. How dare he address the lords this way? Surely he would be thrown from the room, stripped of his newly claimed samurai status and sent back to the Shogun to die.
A heavy silence filled the room.
Tōru could hear his heart pounding. He feared others could hear it as well, so loudly did it thud in his chest.
Lord Date stood. He began to laugh, a low chuckle that began in his throat and spread down to his belly as it rumbled forth louder and louder. The room stayed silent at this unexpected response. No one could find anything funny in Tōru’s earnest speech. Though most people expected the unexpected from Lord Date, his laughter was unexpected even so.
“You warned me, Aya-dono, you warned me this fisherman had unusual ideas. I see the truth in your words. You brought a wild revolutionary into our midst to stir up trouble.”
Lord Aya bowed to his host, not daring to look at Tōru.
“The fisherman is right. We must enrich our country while we strengthen our military. Fuguo qiangbing, as our Chinese scholar friends would put it, or fukoku kyōhei, in our own tongue. It is an ancient idea. It is a good idea.”
Such was Lord Date’s prestige in this group that heads began to nod in agreement.
Tōru breathed again.
“I have been mocked for my habit of planting trees. Why would I need more trees, people ask, when the forests around me stretch forever?” He paced to the open doorway, overlooking the tree-filled city and the surrounding deep forest, and waved his arm to indicate the sweep of tall pines below. “Those over there, the tallest, were planted by my grandfather. These here by my father. Those in the city are by my order.”
He paused, still gazing at his trees. “Trees remind us of the past, as my grandfather’s tall trees trace the decades between us. Planting a tree forces us to consider the future. Trees are resources, they are wealth. Like wealth, they only grow over time and slowly. I plant trees because planting trees teaches one to look far into the future, and plan for a day one will not see personally. A seed must be planted and nurtured patiently for many decades for the full bounty of the mature tree to come forth. Our people will only be wealthy if we in this room act now to plant the seeds of their wealth, as young Himasaki says, in their education and in their roles in our society. He asks us not only to war against the foreigners, but to make revolution against ourselves, to reach out our hands to help our commoners grow in strength.”
Lord Date turned and looked at Tōru.
“You propose dangerous ideas, Himasaki. You ask us to strengthen the weak and to transform the many. To plant and nurture the seeds of our own overthrow. You would change our world, and diminish our place in it. Do you understand this?”
Tōru nodded. He did not think of himself as a revolutionary. He only wanted to ease the suffering of the common people, his friends, his neighbors. He had not considered what the rise of the commoners meant for their rulers. He only saw that they needed to rise, like Jiro needed to rise to the level of his formidable talents.
Lord Date paced down the room, looking at each lord in turn.
“Do you all understand this? Do you see what the fisherman is truly asking us to do, to overthrow ourselves, not today, but in a generation? To rise up and make revolution upon ourselves?”
Tōru could see the implications dawning on the other lords in the room. Once they understood the idea, they did not like it.
“I see why the Shogun wants this fisherman dead. I had asked myself, ‘why bother killing a fisherman?’ but now I understand. The Shogun is right. If we allow him to live, and share his ideas, then both we and the Shogun are overthrown. The fight is not between the rebellious tōzama like myself and the Shogun. No, we are the same. The real battle here is between the fisherman’s ideas and the old ways, ways that made us powerful and impoverished our people. The fisherman must die, so we daimyōs can live on another generation as we have, ruling our lands as we see fit.”
Tōru did not dare reach up to rub the back of his neck in such august company, but the urge to do so was nearly overwhelming.
Lord Aya looked miserable, his prisoner turned protege in mortal peril once again.
“And yet,” Lord Date whirled around, his hakama swinging around his legs at the sudden violence of the movement, “the fisherman is right!”
Lord Date slammed the side of his fist against the wall. “He speaks the truth! If we do not plant these seeds today, of prosperous and educated commoners, we will perish within a generation, fallen to the foreign barbarians and our own stagnation.”
This time, the murmurs sweeping the room were not whispers and sighs but the growling roar of an angered crowd, not a single voice distinct in the buzz, but an inarticulate rumble. Lord Date held up his hands, demanding silence.
A hush fell across the assembly.
Lord Date turned to Tōru and bowed.
Tōru sat frozen, fearing the next bellow from Lord Date. Was he to live? To die? Nothing could have prepared him for Lord Date’s next statement.
“House Date will raise up ten thousand Captain Jiros, as our fisherman suggests. Who is with me? What say you?”
Lord Aya understood the challenge.
He climbed to his feet, his old limbs stiff from the long meeting. “We are a small han, but we will seek out and nurture five hundred Captain Jiros. We already have one!”
The other daimyōs laughed. The mood in the room shifted, became light, joyous.
Lord Tōmatsu stood.
“House Tōmatsu will bring ten thousand.” The other lords began to stand and shout out their pledges to join the revolution. Soon the whole room was standing and shouting out “Ten thousand Captain Jiros! To our fisherman, banzai, banzai, banzai!”
CHAPTER 17
DEFIANCE
“Ransack the history of revolutions,
and it will be found that every fall of a regime
has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished.
It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago
that a Power from which the magic virture has gone out, falls.”
– Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power
No one ever records the tedium of revolution.
The historians record the battles at the barricades, the names of the martyrs for the cause, the documents soaring with uplifting language. But no revolution has ever been launched without hours, many hours, of tedious bickering over strategy, tactics and immediate plans. And finances.
Tōru’s revolution was no different.
After the roars of approval for his “Ten Thousand Captain Jiros” speech, followed by a fine dinner, the lords settled down the next day for the hard work of the strategizing and planning. They had a vision— ten thousand Captain Jiros — and a slogan — fukoku kyōhei or “Enrich our country while strengthening our military.” But details, millions of details, had to be worked out.
Doing so took weeks. Lists had to be made, of resources held and resources needed. And lists of the domains loyal to the fukoku kyōhei revolution, those that would remain neutral or pick a side that looked to be winning, and those that would fight to the death to maintain the Shogun’s power. Messengers had to be dispatched on horseback, the old-fashioned way, to the allied hans, carrying key codes, for their telegraph surely did have listening ears. Engineers were sent to assist where Tōru’s poor instruction had failed to convey enough technical detail in his workshops for the building of engines and telegraphs and factories.
Spies were sent out throughout the land to observe the Shogun’s forces and track their locations and directions. Coded intelligence flowed over the growing network of telegraph lines snaking across the entire country. Informants within the Shogun’s household were sought.
A rumor had taken hold in the pleasure district of Yoshiwara in Edo that Tokugawa Ieyoshi, the sixty-year-old Shogun, was ill and failing, even near death, according to some. His bureaucrats and household servants were, of course, long forbidden under ancient laws to frequent the geish
a houses and kabuki theaters of the ukiyo pleasure district, a ban they honored mostly in the extraordinary care they took in their disguises as peasants and merchants on their visits there. The brothels and restaurants and geisha houses known to be frequented by the Shogun’s men were abuzz with nothing else but the Shogun’s failing health and his lack of suitable heirs.
The Shogun’s 29-year-old son Tokugawa Iesada was considered by all to be a weak man, physically and mentally, not competent to rule, especially at a time of such turmoil. This was also a topic of much conversation in the gossipy pleasure district.
In any case, whether due to the Shogun’s illness or a watch-and-wait policy decision or a stalemate among the leaders of the Council, little action was observed. No new defenses were built, no armies raised, no plans promulgated from the Shogun’s court. No pursuit was launched for the missing four young people who had left the Shogun’s troops circling in frustration below the Hakudo Maru. From the Shogun’s court came only silence, a silence that rang loud against the hum of furious building activity throughout the countryside controlled by the rebel daimyō.
The rebel lords were effectively taxing themselves to provide the resources for this huge burst of building. Creative minds were put on the task of figuring out how to involve the wealthier peasants and merchants and craftsmen, many of whom had more actual liquid wealth than the impoverished samurai and their daimyō lords, to fund companies to create what was needed and employ the many workers needed to fulfill all the demands of defense and building prosperity. Savvy merchants invented shared ownership schemes and set up financial mechanisms to funnel cash from cash-rich but labor-poor domains to those with rich labor pools but no capital to invest in building trains and telegraphs and factories. New tracks crawled across the land, new telegraph wires sprang from tall poles. New factories rose from ravaged plains of ugly tree stumps, belching black smoke as steam engines powered the factories.
Toru: Wayfarer Returns (Sakura Steam Series Book 1) Page 21
