THE CURSE OF KOSHIU.

A CHRONICLE OF OLD JAPAN.

BY

The Honble. LEWIS WINGFIELD,

AUTHOR OF
"LADY ORIZEL," "IN HER MAJESTY'S KEEPING," "ABIGEL ROWE,"
"BARBARA PHILPOT," ETC.

LONDON:
WARD & DOWNEY,
12 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

1888.

[All Rights reserved.]

EDINBURGH
COLSTON AND COMPANY
PRINTERS

THE CURSE OF KOSHIU.

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