Tales of Old Japan eBook

Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 481 pages of information about Tales of Old Japan.

Tales of Old Japan eBook

Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 481 pages of information about Tales of Old Japan.
the farmers and peasants unjustly, imposing additional and grievous taxes, so that the tenants on his estates were driven to the last extremity of poverty; and although year after year, and month after month, they prayed for mercy, and remonstrated against this injustice, no heed was paid to them, and the people throughout the villages were reduced to the utmost distress.  Accordingly, the chiefs of the one hundred and thirty-six villages, producing a total revenue of 40,000 kokus of rice, assembled together in council and determined unanimously to present a petition to the Government, sealed with their seals, stating that their repeated remonstrances had been taken no notice of by their local authorities.  Then they assembled in numbers before the house of one of the councillors of their lord, named Ikeura Kazuye, in order to show the petition to him first, but even then no notice was taken of them; so they returned home, and resolved, after consulting together, to proceed to their lord’s yashiki, or palace, at Yedo, on the seventh day of the tenth month.  It was determined, with one accord, that one hundred and forty-three village chiefs should go to Yedo; and the chief of the village of Iwahashi, one Sogoro, a man forty-eight years of age, distinguished for his ability and judgment, ruling a district which produced a thousand kokus, stepped forward, and said—­

“This is by no means an easy matter, my masters.  It certainly is of great importance that we should forward our complaint to our lord’s palace at Yedo; but what are your plans?  Have you any fixed intentions?”

“It is, indeed, a most important matter,” rejoined the others; but they had nothing further to say.  Then Sogoro went on to say—­

“We have appealed to the public office of our province, but without avail; we have petitioned the Prince’s councillors, also in vain.  I know that all that remains for us is to lay our case before our lord’s palace at Yedo; and if we go there, it is equally certain that we shall not be listened to—­on the contrary, we shall be cast into prison.  If we are not attended to here, in our own province, how much less will the officials at Yedo care for us.  We might hand our petition into the litter of one of the Gorojiu, in the public streets; but, even in that case, as our lord is a member of the Gorojiu, none of his peers would care to examine into the rights and wrongs of our complaint, for fear of offending him, and the man who presented the petition in so desperate a manner would lose his life on a bootless errand.  If you have made up your minds to this, and are determined, at all hazards, to start, then go to Yedo by all means, and bid a long farewell to parents, children, wives, and relations.  This is my opinion.”

The others all agreeing with what Sogoro said, they determined that, come what might, they would go to Yedo; and they settled to assemble at the village of Funabashi on the thirteenth day of the eleventh month.

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Project Gutenberg
Tales of Old Japan from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.