It was because of the political significance of the baptism that he had refused to administer the sacrament. What would happen if his secret—that he was a bakufu spy—was revealed? He couldn’t risk undermining the religious foundation of David Date’s legitimacy as a Christian ruler.
Yajiro’s thoughts turned to the conflict between Christianity and Buddhism. Not for the first time, he wondered why Christians were so, so exclusivist, in their teachings. Buddhism, like Christianity, was a foreign religion, and yet it had made its peace with the Shinto priests. The Shinto kami, it judged, were manifestations of the buddhas.
The use of water for ritual purification was hardly unique to Christianity. In the misogi ritual, the shugendo, the mountain ascetics, would stand under a cold waterfall, before communing with the kami. And the Tendai Buddhists practiced kanjo, the sprinkling of water on the head as part of the ordination of a monk.
Yajiro couldn’t help but wonder whether it was possible to reconcile Christanity with Buddhism, even as Buddhism and Shintoism had been reconciled.
* * *
“David Date,” as he would now be known, boarded Yamaguchi’s ship. Since Yamaguchi didn’t have a cabin of his own, the captain lent him his own for the final ceremony. David made confession, and Yamaguchi gave him wheat mochi and grape wine. Then he made the sign of the cross on David’s forehead, anointed him with oil, and slapped him on the right cheek. Date Munesane was now a kirishitan.
Map 5: SF and Monterey Bays SF
Map 6: Gold Country
Wild Geese
September 1634 to Fall 1635
A line of calligraphy:
wild geese above the foothills—
and a red moon for the seal.
—Taniguchi Buson (1716–1783)3
Early September 1634
Like a dog waiting impatiently for scraps from the master’s table, Lord Matsudaira Tadateru’s ship, the Sado Maru, marked time in central California waters, waiting for the heavy fog that blanketed the coast to dissipate.
For the moment, Tadateru had company in his misery. The First Fleet, carrying the first wave of Japanese Christians to California, had passed between Point Reyes and the Farralones, and descended to a little below thirty-eight degrees north. It then headed east, hoping to at least catch a glimpse of the Golden Gate, the narrow opening to San Francisco Bay. Lord Matsudaira Tadateru expected to do more than that; he thought of it as his gateway to restored honor and fortune.
The weather, however, had been disappointing. For several days, the First Fleet had languished in the waters between the Farallones and the presumed location of the Golden Gate, without ever sighting the latter. The east was a featureless gray mass.
Tadateru reached up and, self-consciously, fingered his topknot, one of the marks of his samurai status. When he was disgraced and forced to become a Buddhist monk, his old one had been cut off and thrown onto a fire. When Tadateru accepted the shogun’s invitation to sail for the Golden Gate, and seek out the gold fields of California, he was given permission to grow it back. The shortness of his topknot was indicative of how recently he had been rehabilitated.
While Tadateru insisted on being addressed as “Lord Matsudaira,” he was unpleasantly aware of the emptiness of the title. He had been “provisionally” awarded a ten-thousand-koku fief, the minimum for daimyo status. However, the fief had been depopulated when its Christians came out of hiding and accepted exile to America. Hence, at least in the short term, it was virtually worthless.
It was quite a come down for a man who had once held a fief that annually produced over four hundred fifty thousand koku.
But it was better than being a monk. And at least his wife, Iroha-hime, was with him once more.
* * *
Belowdecks, in Iroha’s cabin, the floor was covered with clamshells. One hundred and eighty pairs take up a fair amount of room.
Iroha, sitting seiza style—buttocks on heels, knees together—had her eyes half-closed. She opened them, reached forward, and turned over two of the shells, a left and a right. Her action revealed that the insides of both were painted with the same image: Prince Genji visiting the holy man in his cave.
“Awase!” she called out. Match!
Iroha and her maid Koya were playing Kai-awase, a game centuries old. The set had been part of her trousseau.
Iroha put the matched pair in her pile. It was much larger than Koya’s.
“I think you never forget a shell, Iroha-hime,” Koya said ruefully.
“Winning is all about remembering. And I don’t like to lose,” said Iroha. “Your turn.”
Koya gave her a sly look. “Do you think the real Prince Genji looked much like his picture, mistress?”