Feudal Pacific

18

The next day, Isami wrote an official report and had it delivered to Matsudaira, the protector of Kyōto, who had filed most of the complaints against Serizawa. The report stated that Serizawa Kamo and Hirayama Gorō were killed by unknown assassins in the night.

Sometimes it's better to tell a small lie in order to protect a greater good. If we had told the truth, that Serizawa was killed by his own comrades in the Shinsengumi, that would have brought up many complications. We would have been reprimanded, perhaps severely punished. Serizawa was a samurai, and Isami technically wasn't. For Isami to kill a samurai was a crime punishable by death. Samurai don't fear death; they embrace it with courage and honor. But they can do much more good while alive than dead. The Shinsengumi still had a part to play in the coming war. Whether Serizawa died at the hands of his friends or a masked assailant, it made no difference. He was dead, and that's all that mattered.

We gave Serizawa and Gorō funerals that any samurai deserved. They were burned in their uniforms and given all honors. Serizawa was a maniacal murdering rapist, and I will never defend his actions. But he was a samurai.

Who knows what may have happened if he continued to live, continued to terrorize people. A war was coming—we all knew it—and Serizawa needed to be out of the picture. We burned and put to rest Serizawa Kamo the day after he died. That very same day, Shōgun Tokugawa Hidetada arrived in his palanquin to Ōsaka, accompanied by a hundred samurai on horses and three hundred foot soldiers. The procession moved slowly, and the shōgun was in the middle of the group; the first samurai to appear in the city arrived more than an hour before the shōgun himself. As I had some time before the Shinsengumi went out to meet him, I stayed in my room in the castle and wrote a letter.

I sat at my small wooden desk, a piece of parchment and a pen in front of me. The light from my lamp cast a soft glow over everything, highlighting the solemn quiet that was everywhere since Serizawa had gone. I dipped the pen into the ink, carefully composing my words.

Yasuke-san, Serizawa Kamo is dead. The question of his loyalty to Chōshū no longer matters. I hope with this news you will consider our task complete. Yasuo-san and I are eager to return to Awaji.

I stared at the words, wondering if they spoke truth. Yasuo hadn't expressed any desire to return to Awaji; he was perfectly at ease with the Shinsengumi, especially now that Serizawa was no longer part of it. As long as Yasuo had a stack of books to read, it didn't matter where he was. Why was I so eager to return? I wasn't the daimyō of Awaji anymore. Awaji was now part of Shikoku han, with a new daimyō.

Now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure who that was. The last daimyō of Shikoku was Hachisuka Taneharu, but he had died the year before without an heir. It had caused quite the uproar among the officials and lords of Japan, debating on who should take over as daimyō. Only now did it occur to me that I never found out for sure who finally was given the office. According to Isami, it was an Iwakura, but that family was old with several branches, so there was no telling which one it might be.

None of that mattered, though. Yasuke had sent Yasuo and me to join the Shinsengumi in order to find out about Serizawa's loyalty. Now he was dead, and our mission was over. It was up to Yasuke now to direct us as he wished. We were, after all, servants of the shōgun above all else, and Yasuke often spoke with the shōgun's voice.

I blew on the ink to dry it, then rolled it up and sealed it with wax, and rang for a servant. The same small girl that frequented the Shinsengumi's quarters knocked gently on my door. I called her in and gave her the small scroll.

"Send a bird," I told her. "This needs to reach Edo as soon as possible."

The girl bowed away and closed the door behind her. I sat a while in thought, looking out my window to the grey overcast sky. I hadn't slept at all the night before; I didn't know why. Lately my sleep had come and gone like the tide; sometimes I would stay awake for days at a time, other nights I would fall asleep and wake during the evening of the next day.