rage he sought his
room, and swallowed all the purges and emetics to hand. Occupied in
retching, and thinking, and other matters germane to his condition, he
concocted the plan by which he hoped to bring the foe to book, and
himself to the presiding chair which surely he had earned.

CHAPTER X

THE MEETING OF THE GAMAN KWAI

With the fall of O[u]saka castle (1615), and the culmination of the
uneasy movements of the years following in the conspiracy of Honda
Masazumi, the country entered on a long peace--the Tokugawa Taihei. The
Arima rebellion after all was but an affair of farming folk, in far off
Kyu[u]shu[u]. Masazumi struck right at the person of the Sho[u]gun
himself. A special ceiling was constructed in his castle at Utsunomiya.
This was to collapse on the sleeping Iyemitsu Ko[u] sheltered beneath
it. Caught between the heavy boulders above and beneath the couch, the
Sho[u]gun was to be sent to rest with, not worship of, his divinized
grandfather at Nikko[u]. Iyemitsu slept the night at Edo castle, owing
to the valour and strength of Ishikawa Hachiemon. Masazumi had failed,
and the set field of battle between the factions of the _samurai_ was a
thing of the past. The duel, forbidden in theory and compulsory in
practice, was to take its place. The substitute always had existed. It
tried men's courage, not the sustained endurance of campaigning. How
then was the old spirit of the warrior to be maintained? The desire to
emulate their sires worked on the younger generation. The relics of the
Tensho[u], Keicho[u] and Genwa periods (1573-1623) O[u]kubo Hikozaemon,
Matsudaira Montaro[u], Nagasaki Chiyari Kuro[u], were heroes who could
boast of having stood before the horse of Iyeyasu in his earlier trials
of battles, trials in which the veteran commander would pound with his
fist the pommel of the saddle until it was red with the blood from his
bruised knuckles. Their tales of actual war, the sly jeers at the
softening manners, spurred on younger members to find ways by which to
simulate practical experience of campaigning. The result was curious.
One of the organizations was the Undameshi Kwai, or Fortune Testing
Society. Loaded firelocks were stacked in the middle of the room of
meeting. Around them sat the members of the club, squeezed into full
armour, from helmet to the warriors shoes of skin. The match was set.
The weapons were exploded, sending a shower of balls in every direction.
"Ah! Ha! The bullet