Chapter 1110: Cut the Belly Later — First, Go Take the Gaokao! (Please Subscribe)

At seventy, Yamamoto Jin'emon Shigesumi had spent most of his life coasting on luck. Samurai of his age had largely missed the stormy Sengoku era, had not even caught the invasion of Joseon or the Battle of Sekigahara, and at most had put in an appearance at the Winter and Summer Sieges of Osaka. Trying to land a good post by the genuine skill of cutting men down was harder than climbing to heaven. If you wanted to do well, it mainly came down to being born into the right womb!

Fortunately, Yamamoto Shigesumi's skill at picking a womb was of the first order. He could not compare with those lucky ones who had been born as domain lords, but compared with those below him, he had more than enough.

His father had been a senior retainer of the Nabeshima clan of Saga Domain, and at the Battle of Sekigahara he had assisted the second Nabeshima lord, Katsushige, in a "turtle-paced march" that successfully avoided the decisive battle. Avoiding the decisive battle meant avoiding a falling-out with Tokugawa Ieyasu. On top of that, Tokugawa Ieyasu needed someone in Kyushu to keep an eye on that old wretch Kuroda Josui, so the Nabeshima clan, which had belonged to the Western Army at Sekigahara, was let off lightly. And Yamamoto Shigesumi's father was rewarded for his "meritorious lateness," leaving his son a hereditary stipend of 1,000 koku.

Having inherited his father's 1,000 koku, and being looked after by Lord Katsushige as the son of a meritorious retainer, Yamamoto Shigesumi's life was certainly one that the great majority of Japanese samurai, who struggled even to fill their bellies, would have envied. He spent his whole life eating, drinking, and making merry in the lord's company, and in his sixties he even married a young and beautiful wife. At the advanced age of seventy he had been blessed with a young son.

Just when he thought he was surely a winner in life, disaster suddenly struck! The Tokugawa realm, once as steady as a boulder, was suddenly thrown into turmoil, and Kyushu became the worst-hit region of the troubled times. And the ever-cunning Nabeshima clan had placed the wrong bet in this chaos and suffered calamitous misfortune.

At first, the Nabeshima clan adopted the line of prudently pledging loyalty to the shogunate — that is, continuing the "lateness" at which their house most excelled, waiting until the general situation became clear before sending troops to chastise the Shimazu or defecting to the Toyotomi.

Moreover, the Nabeshima clan was not the only house practicing "lateness." They had also contacted the neighboring Kuroda, Hosokawa, Tachibana, and Arima houses to be late together.

With so many people all being late, surely the Tokugawa shogunate would have no recourse and would have to let the many go unpunished?

Of course, being late was not the same as never arriving. When word came that the Spanish fleet had suffered a crushing defeat in the great naval battle of Kagoshima Bay, the Nabeshima, Kuroda, Hosokawa, Tachibana, and Arima houses all felt the situation had become clear.

The Shimazu clan's backers, the Spanish, had been smashed — the Shimazu clan was doomed!

So the five houses of Nabeshima, Kuroda, Hosokawa, Tachibana, and Arima stopped being late and went running together toward the battlefield.

Among these five houses, all except the Arima could fight! The five-house allied army, fifty thousand strong, swept majestically to the walls of Funai Castle, on the verge of capturing Toyotomi Kunimatsu alive and cutting down Shimazu Mitsuhisa on the spot — when the Shimazu clan sent out a twenty-thousand-man Japanese-Spanish allied force, drawn up in the newest-style Spanish tercios, and brought out twenty cannons. A round of cannon fire and musketry, followed by a pike charge, directly shattered the fifty-thousand-strong allied army of Nabeshima, Kuroda, Hosokawa, Tachibana, and Arima.

The five houses of Nabeshima, Kuroda, Hosokawa, Tachibana, and Arima, returning in utter defeat, were suddenly dumbfounded. For they abruptly realized they could no longer even play the fence-sitter! Although the five houses had been given a thorough beating by the Shimazu clan, the Tokugawa house still enjoyed the full backing of the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty. Its troops had entered Nagasaki and had even cordoned off the entire Nagasaki Peninsula.

And the Shimazu, despite their great victory at the Battle of Funai Castle, did not dare approach the Nagasaki Peninsula.

If even the Shimazu clan itself lacked confidence, how could the five houses of Nabeshima, Kuroda, Hosokawa, Tachibana, and Arima dare to defect to them? Was that not making a joke of one's own belly? How much would it hurt to slice it open!

But if they did not defect to the Shimazu clan, Shimazu Mitsuhisa would not accept it. It would have been one thing if they had stayed off to the side with their eyes shut and not provoked the Shimazu clan, but they had insisted on sending troops to attack Funai Castle!

So after Shimazu Mitsuhisa sent men to demand their surrender without success, he began attacking the castles controlled by the Nabeshima, Kuroda, Hosokawa, Tachibana, and Arima families. One after another he stormed Kurume Castle, Yanagawa Castle, Miike Castle, Kumamoto Castle, Saga Castle, and others. Truly it had the momentum of splitting bamboo!

And most of the domain lords who had lost their castles and territories were quite philosophical about it. They did not cut open their bellies, but preserved their useful bodies and slipped away to the Nagasaki Peninsula.

The seventy-year-old Yamamoto Jin'emon Shigesumi was one of the many rather philosophical samurai — he had a young and beautiful wife at home and a wailing infant, so how could he casually commit seppuku?

Besides, he had waited his whole life for a return of the Sengoku chaos. How could he die without accomplishing some great undertaking?

The Nabeshima clan's old superior, Ryuzoji Ieharu, was over ninety and still vigorous in old age. Not only could he lead troops into battle, but he had also revived his house after a massacre that wiped out his family.

Hojo Soun had seized Odawara Castle at sixty-eight, and only at eighty-eight had he pacified the two provinces of Sagami and Izu, laying the foundation for the Hojo clan's later hegemony.

And the divine lord Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, had also endured until nearly sixty before the Battle of Sekigahara came to him, founding the Tokugawa shogunate!

So at seventy, Yamamoto Shigesumi believed he was very likely the Ieharu, Soun, or Ieyasu of a new age — yet here he was, two days without food!

Yamamoto, who had lived well his entire life, had never dreamed that when the age of chaos that samurai yearned for finally arrived, he, a high-ranking domain samurai who had swum like a fish in water during times of peace, would sink to the point of having nothing to eat!

His 1,000 koku was gone. His lord, Nabeshima Mitsushige, could barely save himself, let alone support an old man like him!

And when he had fled his home he had been in too much of a hurry, and had not brought anything of value. Everything was now pawned away, and all he had left in the world was his wife and young son, plus his ancestral treasured sword and a wakizashi.

Oh, the treasured sword had gone missing two days ago, and his wife and son had disappeared around the same time. Only the wakizashi, usable for seppuku, remained.

"A samurai should die with dignity!" Yamamoto Shigesumi muttered, then propped himself up in a dilapidated thatched hut, took out the wakizashi, stared at it fixedly for a while, and sighed. "If only I could have one more rice ball to eat!"

There was probably no rice ball to be had, and he did not intend to keep waiting. If he waited any longer, he would not even have the strength left to cut his belly.

At that thought, the old man threw caution to the wind, drew the wakizashi in one motion, gritted his teeth, glared, and pointed the tip at his belly.

Then, time passed second by second.

This was his belly! His own! How could he just stab it on a whim?

No one knew how long passed before a rumbling gurgle sounded from his abdomen.

The old man sighed. "Baka... I'm old, useless! I can't even cut my belly properly anymore. What use is there in living?"

At that, tears came to his eyes! Just as he was weeping, the cry of a baby suddenly came from outside the thatched hut, and then he saw his wife Okiku enter from outside, holding their young son and carrying a basket, the hand holding the basket also gripping a katana.

"My lord, are you... are you committing seppuku?" Okiku was the daughter of a samurai family. Seeing her old husband with a tear-streaked face, bare-chested, holding a wakizashi in the posture of stabbing his belly, she was greatly astonished. "Why is there no blood flowing out? What is going on?"

"Baka!" Yamamoto was furious. This woman's conscience was greatly bad — she was hoping for his death!

"It hasn't been thrust in yet, so of course there's no blood!" Grandpa Yamamoto gritted his teeth again and, hands trembling, made to stab the blade into his belly.

"Wait, wait!" Okiku cried out.

Grandpa Yamamoto looked hopefully at his wife, who was young enough to be his granddaughter, waiting for her to dissuade him. A day of marriage, a hundred days of grace!

"My lord, don't cut your belly just yet." Okiku set down their wailing son, then placed before her husband the worn basket containing a few rice balls and a battered katana. "You can't die yet — perhaps you're still useful!"

What kind of talk was that? The old man glared at his wife, then asked, "Is it that you can't bear to lose me?"

"No!" Okiku shook her head. "The day before yesterday I took your sword into the city to sell it, and I heard people saying that the shogunate and the Ming Emperor were going to jointly hold some kind of — some kind of examination. If you pass, you get food, two taels of silver a month! Hurry and eat something, then go into Nagasaki city to take the examination. You must pass! If you don't pass, then please find a place with no one around and commit seppuku! Do not hesitate — just thrust it in hard!"

(End of Chapter)