Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [163]
There remained the question of the certificate made out to Sasaki Kojirō. The man appeared to have been a rōnin, but mightn’t he instead have been in the service of some daimyō? Matahachi had found no clue to where the man was from, hence had no idea where to take the certificate. His only hope, he decided, would be to locate the master swordsman Kanemaki Jisai, who no doubt knew all there was to know about Sasaki.
As Matahachi made his way from Fushimi toward Osaka, he asked at every teahouse, eating house and inn whether anyone knew of Jisai. All the replies were negative; even the added information that Jisai was an accredited disciple of Toda Seigen elicited no response.
Finally, a samurai with whom Matahachi struck up an acquaintance on the road displayed a glimmer of recognition. “I’ve heard of Jisai, but if he’s still alive, he must be very old. Somebody said he went east and became a recluse in a village in Kōzuke, or somewhere. If you want to find out more about him, you should go to Osaka Castle and talk to a man named Tomita Mondonoshō.” Mondonoshō, it seemed, was one of Hideyori’s teachers in the martial arts, and Matahachi’s informant was fairly sure he belonged to the same family as Seigen.
Though disappointed at the vagueness of his first real lead, Matahachi resolved to follow it up. Upon his arrival in Osaka, he took a room at a cheap inn on one of the busier streets and as soon as he was settled in asked the innkeeper whether he knew of a man named Tomita Mondonoshō at Osaka Castle.
“Yes, I’ve heard the name,” replied the innkeeper. “I believe he’s the grandson of Toda Seigen. He’s not Lord Hideyori’s personal instructor, but he does teach swordsmanship to some of the samurai in the castle. Or at least he used to. I think he might have gone back to Echizen some years ago. Yes, that’s what he did.
“You could go to Echizen and look for him, but there’s no guarantee he’s still there. Instead of taking such a long trip on a hunch, wouldn’t it be easier to look up Itō Ittōsai? I’m pretty sure he studied the Chūjō Style under Jisai before developing his own style.”
The innkeeper’s suggestion seemed sensible, but when Matahachi began looking for Ittōsai, he found himself in another blind alley. As far as he could learn, the man had until recently been living in a small hut in Shirakawa, just east of Kyoto, but he was no longer there and hadn’t been seen in Kyoto or Osaka for some time.
Before long, Matahachi’s resolution flagged and he was ready to drop the whole business. The bustle and excitement of the city rekindled his ambition and stirred his youthful soul. In a wide-open town like this, why should he spend his time looking for a dead man’s family? There were plenty of things to do here; people were looking for young men like him. At Fushimi Castle, the authorities had been single-mindedly implementing the policies of the Tokugawa government. Here, however, the generals running Osaka Castle were searching out rōnin to build up an army. Not publicly, of course, but openly enough so that it was common knowledge. It was a fact that rōnin were more welcome and could live better here than in any other castle town in the country.
Heady rumors circulated among the townspeople. It was said, for instance, that Hideyori was quietly providing funds for such fugitive daimyō as Gotō Matabei, Sanada Yukimura, Akashi Kamon and even the dangerous Chōsokabe Morichika, who now lived in a rented house in a narrow street on the outskirts of town.
Chōsokabe had, despite his youth, shaved his head like a Buddhist priest and changed his name to Ichimusai—”The Man of a Single Dream.” It was a declaration