Lewis Wingfield
The Curse of Koshiu
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Table of contents
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER I.
BOY
AND GIRL.It was towards the end of the
fourteenth century that the grandeur of the Hojo family rose to its
acme, then fell with awful crash. The feudal story of the Land of the
Rising Sun is a long dark chronicle of blood and tears, of crime and
rapine, of vengeance and vendetta, out of which there glints at
intervals a gleam of glorious heroism, of holy devotion, of pure love
and unsullied faith.In the stately roll of the
great names of old Japan, there is none so terrible as Hojo. From
time to time the patient people were ruled by one race or another of
despots, cruel and selfish; the most cruel of all, the Hojos. Even
now, after five hundred years of war and havoc, of vain aspirations,
power misused, and wrecked ambitions, mothers still hush their babes
to silence by breathing the dreaded name. The most destructive insect
that ravages the fairest island in the world--the most voracious and
omnivorous--is yet known as the Hojo beetle. When the first of the
line erected a strong fortress--the Castle of Tsu, which will serve
as background to many scenes in this our chronicle--he gave to it a
bloody baptism, by burying beneath the foundations two hundred living
men. Although their baleful course was marked by an ensanguined
streak like a gory finger drawn across a map, they were not all
black, these gruesome daimios, or even Buddha, whom we know to be
deaf, and prone to somnolence, would earlier in the day have
bestirred himself to punish them. Maybe Buddha drinks too much saké,
for though we piously crack our finger-joints, and beat our palms,
each morn at sunrise, and bang the gongs and pull the bell-strings
each evening in the temple, he recks little of mere mundane worries,
letting things go from bad to worse in grievous fashion. And yet,
once roused to wakefulness, his vengeance is swift as the typhoon, as
destructive and as sweeping.No. The lurid Hojo cloud that
for a hundred years brooded over long-suffering Japan, had silver
breaks in it. The Mikados, as nominal rulers, dwelt at Kiŷoto; while
the Shoguns, as military viceroys, reigned at Kamakura; but the
dominating family, as wire-pullers, directed their movements from
behind. The father of Hojo No-Kami, last of the race, had his good
points. None of his supercilious ancestors was more superbly
overbearing, more sublimely indifferent to human pain; and yet his
worst enemies were compelled to admit that, if stern, his rule was
sagacious. The Mikado, and his court of
kugés or
lords-in-waiting, shivered before him, for his dirk was loose in the
scabbard, and the order promptly to depart into another world by
uncompromising
harakiri was ever
trembling on his lips. During his career three emperors had been
summoned to shave their heads and retire into monkish solitude, each
puppet bowled over in its turn for daring to dispute his will; and
yet the very fact of his disdaining to mask the iron hand under the
glove of silk, even in dealing with the highest, compelled the
unwilling admiration of his turbulent and light-hearted countrymen.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!