Kasigi Yabu—Kasigi Omi

Kasigi Yabu—Kasigi Omi is a lord-and-retainer relationship in which calculated appraisal grows into personal confidence. Yabu rewards Omi for reading and managing Blackthorne, enlarges his authority and household resources, and gives their connection a memorial object: a stone named for the foreign captive whose fate has bound their fortunes together. Later, when Yabu’s material advantage has vanished and danger presses, he still entrusts Omi with the foreigners and imagines him as a future military leader. The bond is neither simple affection nor mere appointment; its warmth develops inside the hard arithmetic of service, rank, and war.

Judgment and the Making of a Retainer

The relationship comes into focus in conversation after Omi has arranged for Blackthorne to be humiliated without provoking the uncontrolled violence that Omi fears. Asked why he did not piss in the captive’s face, Omi explains that touching a man’s face would be the gravest insult and might make Blackthorne lose control. He chose to piss on his back instead, judging that the lesser provocation would be sufficient. Yabu’s question tests the reasoning; Omi’s answer shows that he has considered both the prisoner’s danger and the meaning of the insult within Japanese customs.

Yabu responds not simply by approving the result but by identifying Omi’s judgment as a talent. He tells him, “Your reasoning is exceptional. Your planning and handling of this whole business has been splendid.” Omi answers modestly that his efforts could have been better. When Omi’s mother asks whether Blackthorne is broken permanently, Omi corrects the optimistic assumption: the submission is temporary. He advises that Blackthorne must learn the language quickly, that Yabu may have to destroy one or two of the foreigners to maintain control, and that the pilot’s knowledge could prove useful if the priest’s account of his long voyage is true. Omi is therefore valuable to Yabu not only as a disciplinarian but as an interpreter of risk and potential.

Yabu turns that assessment into an appointment. He increases Omi’s fief from five hundred to three thousand koku and gives him authority within twenty ri. He promises two horses, twenty silk kimonos, a suit of armor, two swords, and arms for another hundred samurai. When war comes, Omi will join Yabu’s personal staff as a hatamoto, a retainer with direct access to his lord and the right to wear swords in his presence. The scale and specificity of the grant make praise material: Yabu is placing resources and future responsibility behind his judgment of Omi.

Favor, Family, and the Waiting Stone

The promotion also reaches into Omi’s family. Yabu addresses Omi’s mother respectfully as “Oku-san,” then says that his brother should have told him sooner about the youngest son’s qualities. The compliment carries an implied criticism of Omi’s father as too retiring and thoughtless. Omi’s mother recognizes the rebuke and answers that her husband is too thoughtful for Yabu to worry about; she presents Omi’s service not as a claim to special reward but as the family’s duty. Her reply makes visible the household obligations surrounding the new favor: Omi’s advancement reflects upon his family, but she insists that service to the lord remains its own justification.

Yabu’s gift of a garden stone gives their political bond a more personal form. The stone comes from Kyushu, where Yabu found it about fifteen years earlier while serving in the Taikō’s army against rebels. He first called it “The Waiting Stone,” because the army had been waiting for an order to attack. He proposes that Omi place it in his own garden and rename it “The Stone of Barbarian Peace,” connecting the gift to Blackthorne and to the night they have just endured. Omi suggests “The Happiness Stone,” emphasizing the honor Yabu has shown him, but Yabu settles on “The Waiting Barbarian.”

In Yabu’s account, the stone joins the two men to the captive: Blackthorne was waiting as Yabu was waiting, but Yabu lived and the foreigner died. The rock’s flecks remind Yabu of tears, while its blue and reddish veins suggest flesh and the transience of life. He imagines that Blackthorne might be reborn Japanese and that his descendants could one day see the stone and be content. The gesture does not erase the coercion inflicted on Blackthorne. Instead, it reveals how Yabu turns an episode of violence and waiting into a shared emblem of fortune, mortality, and attachment between lord and nephew.

Practical Patronage and Its Limits

Yabu’s generosity is measured as well as expansive. Omi protests that he does not deserve the bounty, but Yabu considers it deserved. He also remembers that a fief can always be increased, whereas reducing one breeds enmity and treachery. Favor is thus an instrument of governance: Yabu rewards demonstrated ability while preserving room to reward Omi further. The promotion recognizes Omi, but it also makes his service more consequential to Yabu’s own power.

That calculation becomes explicit after Yabu reaches the jetty and discovers that he has lost the foreigners. Angry and preparing to take Blackthorne to Osaka, he orders Omi to bring the captive and to keep the others well cared for, using the pit if necessary. Omi, anxious for Yabu’s safety since the galley arrived, asks to accompany him, offering to repay Yabu’s kindness and perhaps help. Yabu refuses: he wants Omi to remain and look after the foreigners. The refusal assigns Omi responsibility at home rather than exposing him to the immediate danger of the journey.

Yabu’s response is kinder than he intends. He recalls that he had raised Omi’s salary and extended his fief because of the bullion and guns, both of which have now vanished. Yet Omi’s concern moves him to an involuntary warmth. The material basis for the reward has been lost, but Yabu’s judgment of the man persists. He imagines that, once he has recovered his guns, Omi will lead one of his units, and promises him an important role when war comes. The relationship has therefore advanced beyond a single exchange of gifts: Omi has gained responsibility and the prospect of command, while Yabu has begun to think of him as part of the force through which he hopes to build an empire.

The Bond’s Character

Yabu and Omi’s connection joins family hierarchy to political service. Yabu is Omi’s uncle as well as his lord, and the veranda conversation gives formal rank a domestic setting: Omi’s mother serves tea with ceremony, Yabu passes the cup to Omi with polite deference, and the discussion of military usefulness unfolds within the family household. Their mutual respect does not dissolve the hierarchy. Yabu grants the fief, defines Omi’s duties, and decides whether he will travel; Omi expresses gratitude and accepts the obligations attached to favor.

The later crisis tests what that favor means when its original material rationale has collapsed. Yabu has lost the bullion and guns, and he is angry enough to order Blackthorne taken away. Yet he does not withdraw Omi’s standing or treat his offer to help as disloyalty. Instead, he protects the younger man from the journey, entrusts him with the foreigners, and connects his future to command in the coming war. The stone called “The Waiting Barbarian” gives the relationship its governing image: people and armies wait upon decisions they cannot control, while Yabu tries to turn waiting into loyalty, memory, and power.