Tomorrow Comes:
Lord Asunaro’s Ascent

At length Lord Asunaro’s father announced his retire­ment and, perhaps due to his rage at the news of his son’s antics, very soon afterwards died, leaving our young lord to succeed both in name and in actuality as heir. In truth he should now return to the main castle, but his father’s aura hung heavy in the air there, and the old guard who had favoured his father were still in place. For this reason Lord Asunaro remained at the West Castle, so let us continue to call him ‘the young lord’.

With the passage of time, this young lord’s inclination for the practice of poetry and literature intensified.

Actually, in this peaceful age all feudal lords to varying degrees replaced their now largely useless military skills with a lurch towards the cultural tastes of the aristocracy. Centuries earlier, back in the late Heian period of the 12th century, it was understood by all concerned that the armed retainers who protected the emperor and aristocracy were termed samurai, while the more lowly general military arms bearers went by the name of mononofu. There was little to distinguish these two, in fact, both being essentially groups of sanctioned murderers. In any other country, it would unsurprising if the emperor and his aristocrats, incapable as they were of gripping anything but chopsticks or a writing brush, were sooner or later exterminated and the nation seized; the fact that this didn’t happen in Japan was because, as we have seen with our young lord, despite their military power these people felt a deep admiration for the cultured aristocratic world of the capital, and a yearning to imitate its elegant ways.

Having sweated so hard over his response poem, it was natural that this should then become the breakthrough that set Lord Asunaro yearning to import the entire world of the capital lock, stock and barrel into his provincial world.

Designed as it was for warfare, the West Castle was a bleak and gloomy place without an ounce of cultured elegance. The so-called inner section was termed The Long Room – a large area in the middle of the long narrow building that was divided into a series of small apartments of equal size. The partitions were so thin that everything could be heard through them, in effect rather like a modern piggery or a cheap lodging house. Each small apartment consisted of a room of six tatami mats plus another half the size, and a cooking area. Essentially a version of the old Heian period architecture, with its large spaces divided into smaller ones by temporary partitions, there was no way to renovate beyond spending money on interior decoration with the aim of introducing court chic.

Lord Asunaro first set about hanging fine reed screens with scarlet cloth borders, in imitation of palace furnishings. He set up a statue of the Buddha ornamented with metal foil (a far cry from his father’s hostility to Buddhism), and bought in whatever money could purchase in the way of gold folding screens, long-handled silk parasols, multi-layered formal ladies’ gowns in the old style, traditional coiffures, hair ornaments, fans and so forth. He delighted in playing the old court football, dressed in courtier’s clothing, and indulging in the best Fushimi sake and side dishes. This was all very well, but there was something pathetic about these phoney pretentions.

Not only local girls but real live ‘ladies of the capital’ were imported from Kyoto, the old capital where the emperor still resided, to play the role of palace ladies-in-waiting, with names such as Wakana, Fujitsubo and Ukifune, taken straight from the heroines of the famous The Tale of Genji. He and his ladies of the capital conversed with each other in the refined old Kyoto language and composed charming poems together, and he yearned to somehow replicate the courtly Winding Waters Banquet, in which elegant ladies floated poems down a little winding stream. Days and nights spent tipping sake from flask into a lacquered cup and thence into his mouth, however, eventually led to even our paragon of potency lying sprawled dead drunk upon the floor.

For their own part, these ladies of the capital, acquired through the kind offices of a court noble and at unstinting expense, were happy enough to live there in luxury. It was a great improvement on their poverty-stricken existences back in Kyoto, even though they found provincial feudal lords far from attractive. In effect, these lasses had come with the full consciousness that they were essentially hand-me-downs from the capital and must relinquish all pride.

Naturally enough, it would be foolish to assume that just because they came from the capital they could all compose poetry, or be relied on always to provide witty conversation. But the local girls, brought up as they were among the mountains, no matter how pleasing to the eye were consistently boring… Yet in fact, for all the rumours, our young lord brought into his bedroom even the lowly kitchen maid who served the smug ladies of the capital, so what can one say?

Seeing how devoted were the feudal lords to indolence and dissipation, we today might imagine that they were heading for an early death from lifestyle-related disease due to nutritional over-indulgence. Actually, however, the food consumed by lords both at the time and later was far from luxurious; in fact, modern-day Japanese have the highest calorie intake in Japan’s history, approaching that of European aristocrats of earlier times.

Moreover, there were greater physical demands. Feudal lords were required to spend a year, albeit every other year, in the governmental seat of power in Edo, setting out from their country domains in the spring on a journey to Edo lasting well over two weeks – probably not something that a grossly overweight man could withstand. Then there were the physical arts, which included the wrestling and hand-to-hand combat mentioned earlier, although both these involved certain constraints and hence Lord Asunaro found them rather tedious. There were no less than eighteen fundamental military arts to choose from, and the young lord was particularly fond of, and skilled at, archery and horsemanship (neither of which allowed for restraint). Indolent though he was, he was fit and robust.

Even back in the feudal era the main roads were well-maintained and policed, thanks to those lordly processions to and from Edo, while in Europe even into the 20th century brigands apparently infested the highways. Japan’s 250 or so feudal lords travelled in state, sometimes with a large retinue. In due course the roads were further flooded by the immensely popular Ise pilgrimage known as Oise-mairi. Young and old, men and women – several million people a year took to the roads to visit the famous Ise Shrine. Hard though it is to believe, Edo folk even sent dogs off on this pilgrimage on their behalf. The dogs bore a special tag around their neck saying ‘Proxy Pilgrim’, and carried a bag containing funds for travelling expenses incurred. These dogs were helped on their way by people they encountered and apparently managed to travel the full 400 kilometres of the return journey from Edo, duly arriving home carrying the sacred Ise amulet for their master. Additionally, it is said that their travelling expenses weren’t stolen, but increased. Such was the Edo period… but I digress.

Conveyed along in a splendid palanquin on their way to and from Edo, most feudal lords were unbearably bored – there was no way of opening a window to take in the comings and goings around you, and both retinue and bearers were single-mindedly intent on pushing on and getting through the journey as quickly as possible. When they arrived at one of the larger post stations the men could delight the crowds with the elaborate waving of the feathered spears that preceded the processions of feudal lords, but the lord himself could not witness any of this, and could only sit there in the cramped box clinging to the dangling rope handle provided and grimly attempt to withstand the constant lurchings of the palanquin. It was, in other words, an act of challenging austerity for the whole 600-strong procession.

Lord Asunaro’s late father had whiled away the tedious days of these journeys with a selection of sizeable books from his library that he piled into the palanquin, leading his bearers to grumble behind his back at the impossible weight they had to lug, but the young lord was quite the opposite, and looked forward to the journeys with childlike delight. He noted down on a map everything of novelty, interest or fame that he would pass, and made a point of pausing to raise the blinds and investigate them. Declaring that Mount Fuji was marvellous, he would halt the procession on both inward and outward journeys at the same spot, and one and all they would gape at the mountain in slack-jawed amazement.

It was the practice when crossing paths with a feudal lord’s procession to sink to one’s knees at the roadside, and Lord Asunaro was likely to address a man who knelt before his palanquin thus:

‘What say you? A fine view of the mountain again today, is it not? You must be delighted.’

‘Indeed, begging your pardon, your lordship, it is a quite incomparable mountain, but we locals see it morning, noon and night so it’s nothing special for us you see,’ the unfortunate man might reply, desperate to be released from his discomfort as soon as possible.

‘But, from what I hear, a single glance can extend one’s life by days.’

‘Well perhaps such a thing might once have… But actually, sir, there’s bad weather on the mountain today.’

‘Is that so now? Well well…’ Lord Asunaro’s gaze travelled from the foot to the summit of Mount Fuji, where a spring storm was swirling the snow, and his mouth gaped open again. And truly anyone seeing this mountain, whatever the weather, would find themselves gaping and forgetting to so much as blink.

If the night’s lodgings happened to provide some old man who liked to talk, our young lord would ask to be regaled with tales strange and marvellous, and lean on his elbow rest, listening with deep delight, later writing them down in what was becoming a fat book.

Wherever you may travel, of course, you find professional ladies offering the horizontal pleasures, but naturally such things aren’t always provided to order. Here is a poem he wrote that just happens to have survived, on the subject of being deprived of them:

Melancholy it is

to sleep alone

a moon afloat

upon the pillowing waves

on a wild rocky shore

Here too, as touched on further below, the poem reaches for metaphors of flowing seas and waves.

Once he arrived in Edo, though, he could really go to town. Pleasures enough to indulge in to his heart’s delight were on offer at every turn, and he quickly forgot the tribulations of the journey. Back in those days, even upper echelon samurai would go out in disguise and frequent not only the red-light district but the various theatres as well. Some reached the point where they quite forgot to carry their swords on these excursions, resulting in a terrible dressing-down once they got back.

It was the norm for lords from all the provinces to maintain several residences of varying importance in Edo and other important cities, and one of the astonishingly modern aspects of this arrangement was the ‘diplomatic immunity’ enjoyed in these residences, which exempted them from the usual feudal bureaucratic intrusions. The main residence was, as it were, the public face of the domain, but even here our self-indulgent young lord would brazenly bring in his women and indulge virtually nightly in his ‘penchant’.

One year, not long after this delightful season in the metropolis had drawn to a close and he had returned home to sigh over the boredom of provincial life again, word reached him that up in the north country Lady Unokimi had suddenly found herself widowed, and apparently planned, in her grief, to become a nun.

It was now or never! Seething with excitement, he gave it his best and produced the following poem to send her:

Now as the season freezes

oh turn your boat’s prow

back to the warm currents of the past

Whether by sheer chance or following the natural progression of the imagery, flowing water again figures here. For a month or so he waited, heart racing with anticipation.

Clinging to one now gone

I look about me –

frost settles even on fall’s sacred flowers

Even he could see that this implied not only a hardening of the will to take the Buddhist tonsure, but also perhaps the added meaning that her own hair was now frosted with white. Biting his upper lip in that habit of his, he valiantly suppressed his tears – and sure enough, almost obsessively, his usual activities began again with renewed vigour.

The underlying psychology of this suggests that it all started when his meeting with Lady Unokimi coincided with the recent death of his mother – who had dispensed neither hugs nor scoldings – so that the experience of first love had merged with the mother figure. It may be that if this meeting had progressed easily to marriage, all his subsequent outrageous behaviour would have been avoided.

According to a fine succinct translation of the historical records relating to this domain, Lord Asunaro was reputed to have had 70 children. The records that have come down to us list 21 sons and 31 daughters. With the addition of his heir, this gives a tally of 53; taking into account perhaps 16 or 17 who died in infancy and are therefore unrecorded, plus one or two adopted daughters, we have a total of around 70.

Or so it is written (see Afterword). This bizarrely meticulous totting up of numbers, with not only the careful inclusion of the one heir, but the calculation of survival rates (a reflection of our modern-day scepticism regarding the state of hygiene at that time), may have been aided by the records kept by Nursey, but it is nevertheless laughably typical of the pedantic Japanese mindset.

Brave warriors of the earlier Warring States period, intent on producing an outstanding heir, all had prolific numbers of offspring. In the later age of peace, the eleventh Shogun Ienari Tokugawa, a man in the mould of our Lord Asunaro in terms of virility, engendered 55 children; this is considered a record, but it falls considerably short of our young lord’s tally. This was an age when barbarous acts against women were treated indulgently, but even so, there was no hiding these enormities of his, either within the domain or further afield.

It may be that, in this case, his father’s invisible power as a Forebear ironically played a part. Such difficult relations with an overpowering predecessor have in fact been far from unusual in history. Think, for instance, of the interesting example of Louis XVI of France, who reigned at the height of Bourbon power but seemed to have been so intimidated by his illustrious forebears that he shrank from approaching princesses as potential partners and instead stayed in his room obsessively making omelettes, or so dark rumour had it – quite the opposite response to that of our young lord.

Anyway, so it was that at the West Castle it was an everyday event to see young Asunaro look-alikes of all ages at play, and women with bellies like watermelons waddling about – and, since warring factions naturally form when those who are similar proliferate, there would be much hurtling at considerable speed up and down corridors and through halls by children in clusters or in single file. Residents and neighbourhood folk referred to the place as ‘The Watermelon Residence’.

Lord Asunaro kept a detached eye on all this while nonchalantly summoning actors to entertain him, holding musical parties, immersing himself in poetry composition with litterateurs, and cheerfully ignoring status distinctions to exchange convivial sake cups with his inferiors. An old record detailing the situation of the domains at this time castigates him for this, declaring that he should have modelled himself on previous generations, but it oddly refrains from severe criticism, let alone outright condemnation.

At length there were too many children for the castle to hold, and resort was made to distributing some among the retainers. This caused them huge problems, as they were landed not only with a child but with an accompanying supervisor as well. There is one instance, noted in a domain history that touches on the unhygienic conditions of the time, in which a child was handed over with the vague instruction to ‘raise him in a relaxed fashion’, only for him to die two years later.

A count was kept of the number of children, but of course there were the mothers to consider too. Childbirth was very risky for women, and there would certainly have been some who died in the process. Factoring in the unknown rate of pregnancies, it must have involved an incalculable amount of time and effort to produce 70 children. When you consider that beyond the women who successfully produced children there were no doubt many others – the one-night stands, the women who didn’t become pregnant – it seems likely that he would have slept with well over 100 women.