Mito Yashiki, a Tale of Old Japan

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Excerpt from Mito Yashiki, a Tale of Old Japan: Being a Feudal Romance Descriptive of the Decline of the Shogunate and of the Downfall of the Power of the Tokugawa Family In the year 1875, when I was in the service of the Japanese government at Tokio, it chanced that my place of residence was located north of the old Yedo castle grounds, while my office lay to the south of them, thus rendering it necessary for me to pass twice each day through the centre of that vast system of feudal fortification. One stormy day, as I was trudging homeward in company with an inveterate pedestrian, - a young Englishman who persisted in taking "constitutional exercise" in all kinds of weather, - he suddenly halted at the bridge that crossed the broad moat before the Sakurada gateway and exclaimed: "Here is the spot where was enacted the most thrilling episode in modern Japanese history. On a day like this, about fourteen years ago, the de facto ruler of the Japanese empire was attacked at the head of this bridge, in the very midst of his guards, by a band of seventeen Mito ronins, and was ignominiously beheaded. For adroitness and daring I will match the deed against any found in the annals of any nation." Being deeply interested in his graphic account of the tragedy, I eagerly read up all the narratives of the sanguinary occurrence that could be found, and came to the conclusion that the affair was worthy to be woven into the warp and woof of a romance by some novelist, - little imagining, however, that I myself would ever attempt such a work. For many years the incidents of this thrilling episode in Japanese history have lain fallow in my mind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.