Kiku's Prayer: A Novel (Weatherhead Books on Asia) by Shusaku Endo

Author:Shusaku Endo [Endo, Shusaku]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction/Historical, FIC026000, FIC014000, Fiction/Religious
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

Who cares? Who cares?

Spread some paper over whatever stinks,

If the paper rips, spread some more!

Who cares? Who cares?

Dancing with abandon, they paraded through the streets. The dance swept like a tsunami across the land, from Kantō in the east to Kamigata in the west.

The rebellion of the Urakami Kirishitans and their return to the faith were of an entirely different nature from the peasant rebellions in other parts of the country and the Ee ja nai ka Dance phenomenon, but that was because the vague premonition that “it’s pretty much all over for the shogun” had made its way to this impoverished village.

They knew nothing concrete about such matters, but in fact the shogun had already decided to surrender his political power.

The magistrate’s office in Nagasaki was thrown into disarray as these pieces of news arrived one after another. Just as the village head had predicted, when the magistrate was notified that there was more trouble among the Urakami Kirishitans, who should have been stifled by now, he was at his wit’s end. They’re in revolt again?!

Itō Seizaemon, with a dumbfounded look on his face, went to seek advice from Hondō Shuntarō. “Lord Hondō, what should we do about this?”

But with a sardonic smile Hondō replied, “It’s no longer a question of what to do. Of far more interest to me than the Urakami peasants is the problem of what will become of us, Lord Itō.”

“What do you mean, ‘what will become of us’?”

“If the shogunate falls, there will be no more military class. What will you do then, Lord Itō?”

With a tragicomic look on his face, all Itō could say was, “Hmph.”

In the tenth month of the third year of the Keiō period, the shogunate restored ruling power to the emperor. By the Western calendar, the date was November 1867.

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