Okubo Koshu

One autumn night, I happened to look into a secondhand bookshop in front of the university in Hongo. On the display stand outside, an old octavo volume had been tossed on top of a heap of miscellaneous books, still wrapped with a paper band bearing the handwritten label: "By Okubo Koshu, Ieyasu and Naosuke, no bargaining, fifty sen." I brushed the dust from the book and opened it at random. As the title suggested, it appeared to be a collection of historical essays on Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ii Naosuke. But the place I had happened to open to was a miscellaneous piece included among the appendices. "A Man’s Life"—I discovered that one of these short pieces bore that title.

A Man’s Life

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Do not be hasty.

If ambition stirs in your heart, remember the days when you were in want.

Think of anger as your enemy.

If you know only how to win and not how to lose, harm will come upon yourself.

Not reaching far enough is better than going too far.

Okubo Yosogoro

Do not lag behind.

If your heart loses ambition, remember the days when you prospered.

Think of servility as your enemy.

If you are content to lose and do not know how to win, injury will come upon yourself.

To accomplish something is better than accomplishing nothing.

I could not help smiling. This Koshu—this Okubo Yosogoro—was setting his own maxims for conduct beside those of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Seii Taishogun. And yet, strange to say, his maxims did not carry the stale odor of the schoolbooks current in the world. Somewhere in them there drifted the breath of a life he himself had directly confronted. "If your heart loses ambition, remember the days when you prospered." In a line like that one seems to glimpse the face of a passionate and gifted man. Idly, I moved my eyes on to the next piece, "Random Notes on Kamakura." Idly—and yet my curiosity at once felt a stimulus unlike anything it had felt in recent years. What first delighted me were a few lines appraising historians:

"Had Sorai studied history as thoroughly as Hakuseki, his historical vision would surely have surpassed Hakuseki’s. One need only read Nanryubetsushi to know it. It is mistaken to think Rai Sanyo a historian. Even in the essays of Nihon Seiki there are many shallow opinions not worth taking up."

Next, what interested me was a historical argument occupying not even half a page:

"They say the purpose of the Dai Nihon Shi lies in loyalty to the throne. It is said that Mito Komon conceived the book after reading the biography of Bo Yi and being deeply moved. King Wu of Zhou was the strong man of his time. Bo Yi was a man who tried to check the strong man of his age and set right the proper order, and for that was not employed. Why then did Komon sympathize with such a disgruntled partisan from China and set out to compile a national history expressing the spirit of loyalty to the throne? The bakufu was the strong power of the age. Was he trying to restrain it and restore the proper distinction? Yet the Tokugawa were precisely his own main house. Did he not care if the main house suffered? Komon is lavishly praised in the world as a man of wisdom. If he was such a man, how could he possibly have failed to see that the heavier the court became, the lighter the Tokugawa would become? Here one must gravely doubt his true intention. The motives behind his agreement with the malcontents demand scrutiny. It is also well known that he and the shogun Tsunayoshi were on bad terms. Had he been in favor, would he have compiled the Dai Nihon Shi or not? I do not know. More than the fine official preface, I should like to see the back of the matter.

"Ieyasu’s attitude toward the court lay in revering it while keeping it at a distance. Nobunaga and Hideyoshi both tried to accomplish their ends by carrying the court on their shoulders, but Ieyasu did nothing of the sort. In the campaigns of Sekigahara and Osaka, too, he did not take on the appearance of receiving an imperial command and leading the king’s army or the imperial host. He treated them as wars between warrior houses and borrowed no power from the court. Therein indeed lay Ieyasu’s deep foresight. In the last days of the Tokugawa, those who advocated loyalty to the throne accused the bakufu by arguing as though reverence for the court were the very intention of Tosho-gu, but that was the foolish talk of men ignorant of the facts. To think that once political power had been given to the court, shogunal rule could still continue, is laughable. Arai Hakuseki, to his credit, seems to have understood how matters stood between these two. Ieyasu, moreover, was a man who thoroughly disliked the courtier style."

But what pleased me most were, again, a few lines of reflection that vividly revealed the author’s own character:

"At thirty, a man should be able to associate both with the old and with the young.

"I do not drink, but it is amusing to make others drink and talk.

"When visiting someone for the first time, pretend not to notice and quietly observe the arrangement of the room. Thereafter, each time you visit, pay attention to changes in the room. Before long you will discover amusing traces of habits the master of the house keeps hidden in his conversation.

"If one wishes to know a person, the two things one most wants to see are how he spends his money and how he behaves toward his wife. If only there existed in this world a diary written in a wife’s own hand, carefully recording her husband’s everyday conduct, together with an account book of money in and money out, there could be no better materials for biography.

"Even those spoken of well by the world are in fact not such great men, and those spoken of badly are likewise not such great villains. So it has always been. If you wish to measure the true weight of a man, do not forget to remove the wrapping of public opinion.

"There are some whose wisdom grows and whose temper grows stronger. There are others whose temper grows weaker.

"One should devise means of conserving as much labor as possible while achieving as much success as possible. That is not to say one should become a speculator. Yet one should think that human affairs in general all bear something of the nature of speculation.

"A statesman who cannot look thoroughly pleased when dealing with fools is unfit to be a statesman in an age of government by public opinion."

To think that any creature is a full human being so long as male or female it has a tail hanging behind it—this has been an error of three thousand years. To become fully human, one must first provide that grayish lump called the brain with folds of a fully human sort. This student called Okubo Koshu certainly possessed a brain that had passed beyond peacocks and monkeys. Indeed, it may have been more than merely first-rate. His prose is strangely overflowing with passion within an outward coolness. There is no clearer signpost to the presence of a brain above the ordinary than prose of this kind. And besides—the actual price was fifty sen. I took out a crumpled fifty-sen note and decided to buy Ieyasu and Naosuke, with its blue-black cloth cover.

When I opened it after buying it, I found at the beginning not only a title inscription by Prince Konoe, but prefaces by Shigeno Yasutsugu, Tsubouchi Shoyo, Shimada Sonan, Tokutomi Soho, Taguchi Teiken, and others, as well as Mizutani Futo’s "A Brief Biography of Mr. Okubo Koshu" and a photograph of the author with the Meiji-style beard. The Koshu I had taken for an obscure scholar apparently had many distinguished acquaintances. Yet it is equally a fact that we, born in the modern age, do not know Koshu. If so, then all those jewel-like prefaces by famous men must be judged to have failed to preserve Ieyasu and Naosuke. That was a discovery enough to dishearten me as a reader. Perhaps Okubo Koshu, whom I had taken for a gifted man, was in fact one of those solemn fools so common among university professors. Harboring such doubts under the long-night lamp, I began first of all to read his major work, the section on Ieyasu. ...

This was already the autumn of the year before last—more precisely, if I put it down for the record, the autumn of Taisho 11. Since then, whenever the chance arose, I have meant to introduce this forgotten historian, and yet somehow I have let the present day arrive. Since I say I want to introduce him, it hardly needs saying that Yosogoro Okubo, called Koshu, was a gifted man. No—among the by no means numerous gifted men produced by Meiji, Koshu was one of the most distinctive. Of course you gentlemen will smile skeptically at such praise. According to your firm conviction, every gifted man of all ages has without exception enjoyed your favor. How then could a most distinctive gifted man have been left neglected? What you say is true enough. In the first place, gifted men of past and present have not won your approval because they were gifted; rather, they were able to become gifted because they happened to win your approval. In other words, it must be said that what makes a gifted man gifted is not so much the man himself as you gentlemen. In that one respect, you are indeed more omniscient and omnipotent than the gods. Any gifted man who is turned away from your gate will surely be unable even to keep the breath of life in him. Thus Ogata Kenzan died in misery in a desolate alley. And thus too Okubo Koshu, whose book published in Meiji 34 had a list price of one yen twenty sen, was being sold for "no bargaining, fifty sen"—and that for his only book.

I called Koshu a gifted man. Yet before your smile, perhaps I may suspend that word for a while. In its place, I must mourn the ill fortune of Koshu, who did not obtain the glory of enjoying your favor. From what I have heard since, Koshu has not been wholly forgotten, at least among certain knowledgeable people. Yet his alma mater, the Waseda Senmon Gakko of those days—today’s Waseda University—has sent into the world promising critics such as Katagami Noburu, Honma Hisao, and Miyajima Shinzaburo. And yet the name of Okubo Koshu has not once, not even once, appeared beneath the thick brush of any of them. They are all critics exceedingly faithful to their profession. Indeed, one might almost say they are a little too faithful to it. And yet their overlooking Koshu must be called not so much a sin of negligence as, like ourselves, a sin of ignorance. They know the names of minor writers in France, England, Russia, and elsewhere beyond ten thousand leagues of waves. But they do not know the name of the great talent who was their own senior. To call Koshu unfortunate is therefore hardly an exaggeration. And even if a statue or something of the sort were erected before Waseda University, he would still remain an unfortunate historian. True, Ieyasu and Naosuke may preserve something of his reputation. Yet the work of his life was the completion of a full biography of Ii Naosuke. For that undertaking he poured out the blood of his heart for thirty-six years. But death snatched away, along with his life, the Biography of Ii Naosuke as well. "Even I, whose aspiration remained only half fulfilled, have at last gone down the road that all must go"—according to Mizutani Futo’s brief biography of Mr. Koshu, on the verge of death he entrusted his full regret to that waka. If this is not to be called misfortune, then what is? At the very least, I must mourn the ill fortune of a predecessor who collapsed before reaching the end.

Okubo Koshu’s book consists first of "The Tokugawa Ieyasu Section," second of "The Ii Naosuke Section," and third of "On the Personal Testimonies of Elder Survivors." The third, "On the Personal Testimonies of Elder Survivors," is only a thirty-page essay considering the documentary value of the many reminiscences then coming into the world from old men who had taken part in affairs of state around the time before and after the Meiji Restoration. The second, "The Ii Naosuke Section," is also merely a gathering of three essays—"On the Claim That Ii the Great Elder Was Not an Advocate of Opening the Country," "Okamoto Koseki," and "Nagano Shuzan"—that form, as it were, one part of the city planned under the title Biography of Ii Naosuke. But the first section alone, "The Tokugawa Ieyasu Section," fortunately is not unfinished. Indeed, as I believe, it is rather a fully achieved work of independent creation, one that leaves its predecessors far behind.

The "Tokugawa Ieyasu Section" consists of three essays: "Tokugawa Ieyasu," on the young Ieyasu; "Oni Sakusa," on the middle-aged Ieyasu; and "Honda Sado-no-kami," on the old Ieyasu. (Koshu did not, however, write these in that order. "Tokugawa Ieyasu" was written in Meiji 31, "Oni Sakusa" in Meiji 30, and "Honda Sado-no-kami" in Meiji 29—in other words, in exactly the reverse of the order in which they appear.) These essays are not, to be sure, polished masterpieces of style. Nor do they particularly rest upon new historical materials. Yet the Tokugawa Ieyasu who rises before our eyes from these essays is many degrees more truly Ieyasu-like than the so-called historical Ieyasu. For example, read the following passage in "Tokugawa Ieyasu," where he discusses Ieyasu in relation to women:

"Ieyasu had sixteen children in all, sons and daughters together, born of ten wombs. Apart from the two borne by his lawful wife, all the rest were born of concubines. ... The last daughter was borne to him by O-Katsu after he had already handed over the office of shogun to his son and retired to Sunpu; at that time, it appears, he was still robust in old age, sixty-six years old. And doubtless there were not only one or two flowers that this hero plucked in play, only to let them scatter without bearing children. Truly, even Ieyasu cannot be excepted from the old rule that heroes delight in women. Hideyoshi once sent a letter from the camp during the Hojo campaign to Lady Yodo, saying, 'Around the twentieth I shall certainly come, and hold the young lord Tsurumatsu. So delighted shall I be that I shall make you sleep beside me as well. Do wait eagerly.' One may call this childlike openness, but does it not also carry a touch of lustful silliness? Nothing of that sort appeared outwardly in Ieyasu, but after all the difference is merely between speaking and not speaking it. In truth both heroes were men of deep feeling. Better the one who does not say so.

"Yet, as one would expect from the prudent Ieyasu, he did not, like Hideyoshi, sow in the inner chambers the seeds of a family’s ruin; nor did he allow the foremost evil there—luxury—even among the women, and a frugal spirit prevailed in the women’s quarters, as may be known from the episode in which Honda Sado-no-kami was reproved by the old nurse of Shogun Hidetada and had no answer to give. In Sunpu, when the women complained to Ieyasu that the pickled daikon were too salty, he summoned Matsushita Jokei, who oversaw the kitchen, and told him the seasoning should be improved somewhat. At that, the old retainer stepped close to his lord and whispered something, whereupon the master merely smiled without a word, and the man withdrew as he was.

"What the old man had whispered was this: 'Even with the pickles salted as they are now, the quantity used morning and evening is enormous; if they are seasoned to the ladies’ liking, there is no telling how much the expense would amount to. Better that Your Lordship not listen to what the women say.' Since Jokei too was a salty man, the disposition of Ieyasu’s smile must have been salty enough. If he was like this even after taking the realm, one may imagine what things were like in Mikawa. ...

"From his saying, 'People tell me that in recent years chanting the nembutsu sixty thousand times each day is needless toil for an old man, and that I should reduce the number. True, if I reduce the number, it would be easier; but since I was born in a time of war and have killed many men, perhaps it will serve at least as atonement for my sins. Moreover, having from youth never spent a day in idleness, I should like to take up some occupation, but there is no need of that, and so I make the nembutsu my daily practice. Therefore I rise every morning and never retire too early at night, taking care not to grow lax. For that reason my appetite does not fail and I remain healthy; I believe it is the blessing of the nembutsu,' one may infer that in his conduct behind the scenes there was nothing greatly dissolute. Yet even Hideyoshi warned that one must not relax one’s guard with women, so Ieyasu’s talk of pure and spotless nembutsu should be understood as the words of a man who at one time had several concubines at once. Did he finger his rosary only in repentance for lives taken, and not for other confessions harder to put into words? Since it is told that when a foot soldier sent a letter to a woman in the inner chambers, Matsudaira Wakasa-no-kami, the head of the foot soldiers, was punished with dismissal, we may see how strict the discipline of the women’s quarters was. But one must not forget that even within such constricting rules there remained means by which the master could slip past them at will. In his Mikawa days especially, everything must have been more informal. And as Ieyasu grew older and more practiced in the ways of the world, ...

"Just as the traces remain clearly in history that in public politics he always listened to the collective judgment of his old retainers and strove not to let power be monopolized by any one man, so too there is no doubt that he applied the same method to the control of the women in his inner chambers, restraining them so that no single woman should enjoy exclusive favor. Among the ten wives and concubines who bore his sixteen children, not one bore more than two; there may have been deep reasons for this. It can hardly have been mere accident." (The emphasis points are preserved from the original.)

This Tokugawa Ieyasu is not merely an old man fond of women; he is also a statesman practicing birth control. This is plainly not the Ieyasu we have been used to seeing for three hundred years. He is far more human than the Ieyasu we have been accustomed to. Far more human—some of you may smile at the banality of my phrase. "Human" is of course not a remarkable word. Every new novel and play advertises itself by selling some "human suffering," some "human life," some human something or other. But how much do those novels and plays actually capture anything human, as advertised? Writers of heroic biography in particular are either innocent worshippers of heroes or else moldy moralists. To be sure, some of them may talk about humanity. Yet whether their humanity is really as human as they trumpet it to be is doubtful. They always say to you in grave tones something like this: "A hero is of course not an ordinary person. But since he is not born a god, it is certain that he also possessed the side of an ordinary person. Therefore, in order to place before our eyes a figure called So-and-so and make us recognize his heroism, it is necessary, while pointing out the side of him that was not ordinary, to point out at the same time the side of him that was ordinary. That older biographies of heroes lack humanity is due to their failure in this preparation. ..."

But even if one makes just that much preparation, can one really, as they claim, present a human hero? Open, for example, the Han-So Gundan, which you gentlemen despise. The Gaozu of Han in Han-So Gundan enters the dreams of Qin Shihuang and cuts down the great serpent, child of the White Emperor, showing a grand non-ordinary side; but then he is also fond of female entertainers, and arrogant toward men of talent, displaying no less grandly a side no better than that of common men. Yet if anyone discovers in the Gaozu of Han-So Gundan the true countenance of a king, it must be said it is only children three feet high. To give another example while we are at it: look at the newspaper articles—the history you gentlemen trust even less than Han-So Gundan. The ministers in newspaper articles display a great non-ordinary side by embodying the people’s will and defending constitutional government; but they also lie, steal money, and display in full a side even baser than that of ordinary men. Yet anyone who discovers in the ministers of newspaper articles not to mention the true face of heroes, but even the true face of ordinary men, must again be said to be only children three feet high—or if not that, then children six feet high. So to point out, as they say, the ordinary side along with the non-ordinary side does nothing whatever to clarify what makes a hero heroic. Paying no attention to this logic, they created their so-called human heroes like a Jehovah stricken with neurasthenia. What was the result? From among their mountain of biographies there rises before our eyes a ludicrous spiritual monster, like a two-headed snake, sticking out to right and left one side that is not ordinary and one side that is ordinary. The hero of the hero-worshipper is perhaps more god than hero. The hero of the moralist, unless he is too much a paragon, may instead be too much a villain. But so long as their heroes preserve a certain unity, then even if they cannot be called human, they at least possess a doll-like charm. The so-called human heroes of one class of biographers, however, possess not even that charm. Above all, the Tokugawa Ieyasu they have created is the most disagreeable of monsters, a monster more disagreeable than any demon that tempted Saint Anthony.

Koshu’s Tokugawa Ieyasu, without even needing comparison with those monsters, is by nature a hero who is human. From where does that difference arise? In discussing Ieyasu, Koshu did not point out the ordinary side together with the non-ordinary side. He pointed only to the one point at which the ordinary and the non-ordinary fuse—or rather, he pointed to the whole human being silently living its life within the hero. If one merely splits hairs over words, this may seem to differ from pointing out the ordinary side together with the non-ordinary by no more than a hair’s breadth. But in fact it is a difference equal to that between lands separated by a thousand miles of mountains and rivers. To point out the ordinary side along with the non-ordinary is something even a mediocre writer can do. But to point out the whole human being, radiant with living spirit, requires a gifted man of an age. What enables Koshu to surpass his predecessors lies in the keen eye with which he pointed out that whole human being. Koshu himself seems to have constantly labored to discover the whole human being in historical figures. For instance, in an essay entitled "Record of Impressions" from around Meiji 27 or 28, he wrote the following passage:

"Reading books, one’s feelings suddenly touch the ancients; gazing up at the moon on a quiet night, emotions well up and reach the ancients. A sense of sympathy rises bubbling within. Observe these things, ponder those men deeply. In general, one cannot go far wrong."

And his "Several Private Remarks on Biography," written at roughly the same period, is entirely concerned with this matter:

"By means of facts, discern the workings of the heart; having discerned the workings of the heart, then again understand the facts. Yet between the two there are often contradictions. Men are constrained by outward circumstances and bend their own will, doing what they do not truly wish to do. To explain these hidden connections is the essential task."

"A person is a thing stitched together out of strengths and weaknesses. If there is one strength, a weakness will always accompany it. If you look at a weakness, you should at once understand the strength that goes with it. When the noble man sees a person's faults and thereby knows his benevolence, that too is this same idea. Only one who clearly discerns what a man can and cannot do is fit to speak of men.

"Each person, in making his way through the world, occupies a position of his own. Whoever looks at him must do so from a position equal to his. Never look down from above. Never look up from below. A man of one village should be seen with the eyes of that village; a man of one country should be seen with the eyes of that country; a man under heaven should be seen with the eyes of all under heaven."

According to Koshu, all these words describe the proper attitude for contemplating historical figures. But did Koshu apply this sort of contemplation only to the men of the past? No. Can one really say that Okubo Koshu, who gazed coolly even at Tokugawa Ieyasu, reserved this kind of vision only for figures in history? According to Mizutani Futo's short biography of Mr. Koshu, "When dealing with others, he was generous and knew well how to receive guests. Therefore there was never a day when those who knocked at his gate ceased, and if one asks what sort of visitors they were, they were, by and large, politicians, men of letters, poets, artists, historians, philosophers, and businessmen belonging to the future." Those future politicians, men of letters, poets, artists, historians, philosophers, and businessmen must of course have been, for the most part, mere students. Koshu must surely have turned his singular bright gaze upon them as well. At the same time, among them too he must have found humanity as a whole: the greedy, the crafty, the vulgar, the foolish, the slack and disorderly, and yet beings for whom one cannot help feeling sympathy. If I may say what I believe, what made Koshu Koshu was this: before discovering humanity as a whole in the hero Tokugawa Ieyasu, he had already discovered humanity as a whole among that group of so-called future politicians, men of letters, poets, artists, historians, philosophers, and businessmen. The great sage of China said, "Review the old and know the new." Certainly, by studying the ancient Empress Jingu one may perhaps come to understand the modern female advocate of suffrage. But conversely, it is equally true that by examining the new one may come to know the old. More than that, if a man knows nothing of the new and only pores over the old, he is certain to fall into a vast demonic wilderness where old and new alike are dim and trackless. Unfortunately, most writers of biography today have made themselves at home in precisely that wilderness. They believe they know the great figures of history. Yet they have never truly understood even the humanity of themselves, their parents, their wives, or their children; so how much can the hazy figures of history really have laid bare their hearts to such men? Koshu, beginning from this very point, had already set himself diligently on a path opposite to theirs. It was no accident, then, that his Tokugawa Ieyasu became a hero who still remained human.

"Ieyasu ... sent his natural son Ogimaru to the capital, accompanied by Katsuchiyo, son of Ishikawa Kazumasa, and Senchiyo, son of Sakuzayemon. (I say: this was after the Battle of Komakiyama, when he sent hostages in fact to Hideyoshi, then in the capital.) Ogimaru was the childhood name of Lord Hidemasu—later Hideyasu—and was born of O-man, a household maid. Because Ieyasu loved her and had made her pregnant, she had hidden herself at the house of Honda Hanzayemon, retainer to Honda Bungo no Kami Hirotaka, in order to escape the resentment of the jealous Lady Tsukiyama; and Sakuzayemon secretly informed Ieyasu of this and brought about her rescue. ... When the child was born, Sakuza once again raised him as though he were his own son, and when the boy was three years old, his elder brother Nobuyasu brought this beloved younger brother before Ieyasu, and only then was he first taken in the arms of his real father. The one who rejoiced in this most of all, perhaps more than the father, more than the brother, more even than the little child himself, must in truth have been the outsider Sakuzayemon. ...

"Instead of rejoicing that the child had become a fortunate adopted son sent to a great house among allied warriors, he could only think of him as a hostage sent into an enemy land with which peace had been made for the moment. Sakuzayemon, especially, must have felt this keenly; and if he saw in it the trickery of an unforgiven foe, then even though such things were common in an age of warring states, how could a man of his fierce and intrepid nature dismiss it all with a single cold laugh? Yet now there had directly fallen upon this same Sakuza the painful duty of offering up, as the sacrifice for it, the young prince whom he himself had raised for so many years. ... To bring the blunt and outspoken Sakuza to assent, Ieyasu must surely have had to labor no little; and Sakuza too, in suppressing himself and obeying a lord's command that he could scarcely bear in silence, must have summoned a will of a thousand-weight force. And then, unable to endure sending away an eleven-year-old child into the care of strangers, he finally went so far as to send along one of his own beloved sons as well, so that the boy might accompany the prince on the journey. How beautiful was the loyal heart in that service. At the moment of parting, the rough old warrior's sorrow seems to rise vividly before the eyes. From then on, Sakuza's heart must always have run toward the capital, and as his thoughts turned to the fate of those two boys, his watchfulness over Hideyoshi's conduct must likewise have grown ever more severe. ...

"And so it came about that ... within the Tokugawa house, people gazed toward the skies over the capital with ever-increasing hostility and suspicion, uneasy on their pillows, fearing that the changeable Hideyoshi might attack at any moment. At such a time all manner of rumors spread, and among them the report that Hideyoshi meant to kill Ogimaru and the others struck painfully at the hearts of the whole household. ... Ieyasu, true to form a man of iron self-command, said coolly, 'Hideyasu is no longer my son now, but Hideyoshi's. If he kills him, the unrighteousness will be Hideyoshi's. Let him kill him if he will.' One imagines that though Hideyoshi was often in the habit of cowing men by intimidation, he was hardly the sort of brute who would uselessly slaughter a little caged bird. How could Ieyasu's intelligence have failed to recognize this? That he remained perfectly composed and paid no mind to groundless rumors was probably due, at least in part, to such judgment. But Sakuza, on the other hand, could not coldly overlook the matter in the same way. He thought, 'No, no—if Senchiyomaru remains in the capital, there is no point in exposing him to suspicion. He is my only child; it would be pitiable to lose him.' So he at once used the mother's grave illness as a pretext and called him back, saying it was for a final farewell. Yet although Sakuza's love for his own child was certainly real enough, once he heard that the prince he had raised for so many years might be in danger, the pain of that wound can hardly have been less than his concern for Senchiyo. Since the boy had already been given to Hideyoshi, there was now no way to take him back; but he could not endure to leave him there in the capital, tormented by anxiety, and before Senchiyo's own case was raised he must surely have spoken to Ieyasu first about the prince. One can also imagine the gallant indignation with which, in the audience chamber, he railed against Hideyoshi's lawless conduct. Ieyasu, if not in the case of Ogimaru, must at least have gladly permitted Senchiyo's recall, taking account of Sakuza's feelings in old age; and the excuse of the mother's grave illness sounded smooth enough and was hard to refuse. Fierce old Sakuza too must have clothed the matter in these milder terms, if only his son might be brought back. Perhaps there was also attention to the suspicions of a dark-hearted master. For Katsuchiyo, who had gone along with Senchiyo, was the son of that Ishikawa Hoki no Kami, so highly esteemed by Hideyoshi, and within the Tokugawa house there had long been some who secretly suspected him of double loyalties. Therefore, although Sakuza was a man of nothing but straightforward loyalty, at a time when wild talk was flying everywhere, there may well have been gossip in the camp asking whether even his heart, a father worried for his son together with Hoki no Kami, might not also have been moved. Stung by the thought that a blameless heart might be probed and his innocence stained, impatient Sakuzayemon at last hurried to draw back the very seed of suspicion."

This is a passage from "Oni Sakuza," in which Ieyasu, lying low under Hideyoshi together with Honda Sakuzayemon, is discussed. Will you gentlemen still laugh away my ignorance for counting Okubo Koshu among the gifted men of Meiji? Whether you laugh it away or not is, of course, entirely up to you. Only this: when, in the "Several Private Rules on Biography" quoted earlier, I read the words, "Heaven itself does not speak; it makes men speak. Yet the voices of men do not always accord with the voice of Heaven, and men's praise and blame, censure and acclaim, often conflict with Heaven's just verdict. The most pitiable of all in this world are those who die without hearing Heaven's voice while alive. Those who come after must, on their behalf, become the friends who know them after death, in Heaven's stead," I felt a deep ache of sorrow for Koshu, whom we had forgotten. Whatever my own writing may be, it certainly does not presume to speak in place of any solemn voice of Heaven. Indeed, it may be nothing more than the human voice of one eager to boast before you of his own discovery. And yet it cannot be said impossible that, taking my writing as an occasion, someone may come truly to praise Ieyasu and Naosuke, in that genuine voice of Heaven. If so, then my essay too should amount to some small memorial service for a predecessor who fell by the wayside. One might say that I have pointed out, as carefully as I could, the whereabouts of a lonely grave. When will people come to bow before this desolate mound? And when, too, will innumerable bouquets at last be laid upon it?