Chapter 485: An Apology Is Required

Zheng Damu, the envoy of the Great Ming now staying at the Zheng family residence in Nagasaki, Japan, did not consider himself a great swindler — and not a single samurai in Japan would think Zheng Damu was a swindler either!

How could the story of the "Five Hundred Loyal Retainers" possibly be a fraud?

Five hundred loyal retainers of the Toyotomi house, who at the fall of Osaka Castle abandoned everything to protect their young lord, Lord Kunimatsu, fleeing overseas for more than thirty years, and now at last have revived the Toyotomi on Joseon's Jeju Island — how could such a deed of loyalty possibly be false?

The Toyotomi house was so glorious in its day, and so many samurai had received favors from Toyotomi Hideyoshi — if at the fall of the Toyotomi there had not been a few hundred especially loyal retainers to protect the young lord Kunimatsu in his escape, that would be the real lie!

One must remember that among the samurai and ronin who took part in the Summer Campaign of Osaka, quite a few are still alive today, and some have even openly entered the service of the very daimyo who took part in besieging Osaka Castle — the Tokugawa shogunate pardoned the Osaka remnants in the fourth year after the Summer Campaign of Osaka, so many of those Osaka remnants have now gone over to the enemies of the Toyotomi house!

So all of you vassals who received the Toyotomi house's favor, when your lord's house faced catastrophe, each of you thought only of himself, and not one of you could step forward at the critical moment to preserve your lord's bloodline?

How could the great land of Japan possibly be filled with such ungrateful samurai?

Therefore there must have been a few hundred Toyotomi loyalists — that is the only thing that makes sense!

Of course, if Zheng Damu had come to swindle thirty years earlier, the Japanese of that time would certainly have exposed him... In that era, few would have believed that the Toyotomi house, at the end of its rope, could still command five hundred loyal retainers who would never abandon it.

But the situation is different now. In the chaos of the Warring States period, everyone climbed upward by his own ability, and loyalty had to take second place.

Yet for more than thirty years now the realm has been at peace, so what else can samurai use to fool their daimyo and the shogun? Naturally, a heart of loyalty so loyal it could not be more loyal! And those in high places also want those below them to be loyal — loyal men are reliable. So from top to bottom, everyone has been preaching loyalty and righteousness together. After more than thirty years of preaching it, even those who do not believe must pretend to believe.

So now if anyone dares to call Zheng Damu a swindler, there is no need for the Zheng family's enforcers to step in — the samurai of Japan will line up to challenge that man to a duel. You do not believe in the samurai's loyalty? How outrageous! He must be struck down by heaven's punishment!

Since every Japanese Zheng Damu has met believes it, what reason does Zheng Damu have not to believe it too?

Perhaps — no, certainly — there were loyal retainers of the Toyotomi house who, in the Summer Campaign of Osaka more than thirty years ago, rescued the orphan of the Toyotomi house... And now that orphan and the surviving Toyotomi loyalists must still be hiding somewhere, waiting for the moment to revive the Toyotomi.

But within Japan there is also someone who does not care for the story of the "Five Hundred Loyal Retainers" — and that man is the third Sei-i Taishogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Iemitsu.

Tokugawa Iemitsu, forty-two years old this year, is plain of feature — the sort of utterly ordinary middle-aged man who, dropped on a street in the shitamachi of Edo Castle, would instantly vanish into the crowd — and somewhat flabby, his whole bearing exuding weariness and gloom.

Yet this man, who shows not the slightest trace of a great ruler, is the pride of heaven in the land of Japan. Apart from being disliked by his parents in childhood for his plain looks and frail body, and nearly losing his right of succession, his whole life has gone smoothly.

Twenty years ago he received the office of shogun from his father Hidetada and began to rule jointly with him — although Hidetada held a measure of power under the title of Ōgosho, Iemitsu was not his father's puppet; theirs was a dual rule of father and son governing together.

Thirteen years ago, after Tokugawa Hidetada's death, Tokugawa Iemitsu became the sole supreme ruler of Japan. And at that time the Tokugawa shogunate was at the height of its wealth and military power. As shogun, Iemitsu could not only force the emperor to abdicate — he could even place his own five-year-old cousin, the Imperial Princess Okiko, upon the imperial throne!

Just when he believed his power within Japan could not be challenged by anyone, a youth said to be "a heaven-sent child of God reborn," named Amakusa Shirō, actually raised the "Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion" on the territory of Hizen Province in Kyushu. The mighty Tokugawa shogunate dispatched an army of one hundred twenty thousand, and fought for several months, before barely suppressing a rebellion in which only twenty or thirty thousand Catholic peasants took part — and even then it suffered nearly four thousand casualties.

The scale and casualties of this "Battle of Shimabara" could compare with the Winter and Summer Campaigns of Osaka!

But how could twenty or thirty thousand peasants of Hizen Province compare with the tens of thousands of samurai holding Osaka Castle? And how could the "enlightened ruler" of Japan, Tokugawa Iemitsu, not know what lay behind it?

There must have been many remnants of the Toyotomi house, or ronin who had lost their domains and lords after the Battle of Sekigahara, among the participants in the Shimabara Rebellion!

Therefore the "enlightened ruler" Iemitsu, after the Shimabara Rebellion, tightened his suppression of the western provinces. And in order to cut off contact between the ronin who longed for the Toyotomi house and any Toyotomi remnants who might have fled overseas, the "enlightened ruler" Iemitsu also issued an extremely strict policy of national seclusion. Only merchant ships of Holland, China, and Joseon were permitted to enter Nagasaki harbor to trade, and only with a vermilion-seal permit. Moreover, the Dutch merchants' range of activity was restricted to the tiny island of Dejima in Nagasaki, and the merchants of China and Joseon were likewise forbidden to leave the confines of the Nagasaki port town. He also dispatched reliable hatamoto or daimyo to serve as Nagasaki bugyō, so as to keep a firm grip on Japan's foreign contacts.

Even if the Toyotomi remnants wished to return from overseas, it would be very difficult for them to make contact with the Toyotomi loyalists within Japan. And under the control of the Nagasaki bugyōsho, the Toyotomi loyalists inside Japan would also find it very hard to learn of the activities of the remnants overseas.

Let another ten or twenty years pass, and the Toyotomi loyalists at home and abroad would die of old age to the last man — and even if a few remained, they could no longer accomplish anything.

But what the enlightened ruler Iemitsu never dreamed was that the wandering Toyotomi loyalists would actually come up with the desperate scheme of seizing Joseon's Jeju Island to achieve the "Toyotomi revival."

Although seizing Jeju Island would not harm the Tokugawa shogunate in the slightest, it would drag the Great Ming and Joseon into the matter...

Now the Great Ming Empire has already sent an embassy to Japan to demand an accounting — how can the Tokugawa shogunate still cover it up? And covering it up alone will not solve the problem. Once the Toyotomi remnants on Jeju Island have secured their footing and strike back at Japan, will the affair not grow even larger?

So upon learning that the Ming envoy had brought word of the "Toyotomi revival on Jeju Island," Tokugawa Iemitsu was seized by an ominous premonition that the realm was about to descend into chaos again. He therefore discussed countermeasures with his trusted senior ministers while urgently summoning the Nagasaki bugyō, Baba Shigetoshi, to Edo Castle to report.

The day after he personally summoned Baba Shigetoshi and finally confirmed the "Toyotomi revival" affair, Shogun Iemitsu convened the three heads of the Gosanke — Tokugawa Yorinobu, Tokugawa Yoshinao, and Tokugawa Yorifusa — in the Shippo-no-ma of Edo Castle's honmaru to deliberate countermeasures.

These three "Tokugawa" were all sons of Tokugawa Ieyasu and uncles of Tokugawa Iemitsu, and at the same time the daimyo of the highest house rank beneath the shogun's own house.

Compared with the plain-featured, perpetually exhausted Iemitsu, these three uncles of his, only slightly older than him, were all dignified and vigorous in bearing — far more the look of enlightened rulers.

Yet faced with the sudden "Toyotomi revival," all three found the matter extremely thorny. The three looked at one another, and for a moment none knew what to say.

After a moment, the head of the Gosanke, the lord of Kishū Domain, Tokugawa Yorinobu, spoke to Iemitsu: "Kubo, when this vassal was transferred to Kishū, he swore to defend the western provinces at any cost. Now is the time to fulfill that oath. I beg Kubo to order this vassal to lead troops on an expedition to Jeju Island!"

He of course had no real desire to send troops to war; he was merely declaring his position, and he had no fear of his bluff being called, because he had a very reliable little brother.

Tokugawa Iemitsu nodded with satisfaction, and was just about to order Tokugawa Yorinobu to dispatch troops when Tokugawa Yorifusa of Mito Domain spoke up: "Dainagon should not be hasty to send troops. Jeju Island is not Japanese territory, and it lies far out in the open sea. Sending troops to Jeju could very well provoke a conflict between Japan and the Ming and Joseon."

Iemitsu was somewhat disappointed, while Yorinobu inwardly breathed a sigh of relief — he had known his little brother Yorifusa was reliable... for when Tokugawa Ieyasu was on his deathbed, he had commanded that Yorifusa and his descendants serve as the shogunate's vice-shogun for generations, bearing the duty of oversight.

Therefore, on the question of dispatching troops overseas, Tokugawa Iemitsu could not disregard Tokugawa Yorifusa's counsel. And Yorifusa was a prudent man who would not lightly start a foreign war.