Toranaga–Yabu alliance bargain

The Toranaga–Yabu alliance bargain transforms an uneasy political understanding into a secret military compact, while stopping short of making Yabu Toranaga’s vassal. Its terms join Yabu’s proposed gun regiment and control of his inherited domain to Toranaga’s campaign for power; its seal is an extraordinary physical ritual on a castle parapet. The bargain is at once practical and personal: its armies and appointments are negotiated in detail, but its credibility rests on a remembered precedent and a shared act performed above a seventy-foot drop.

Political Stakes and Unequal Allegiances

Toranaga brings Yabu to speak privately and offers him the rule of Izu, Suruga, and Totomi if Toranaga does not lose the coming war. The offer makes the stakes explicit: Yabu could gain a greatly enlarged domain, but the bargain would place his ambitions inside Toranaga’s political and military project. Toranaga asks whether Yabu will become his vassal and accept him as liege lord. Yabu’s answer is an emphatic refusal, not a rejection of alliance. He is willing to follow Toranaga as leader and to put his life and possessions on his side, but insists that Izu remains his own.

Yabu grounds that limit in inheritance and obligation. He says he swore to his father that he would never surrender power over Izu, and that the Taikō reaffirmed the hereditary fief to his father and then to him. The Taikō, Yabu says, was the liege lord to whom he had sworn; he would acknowledge no other until the Taikō’s heir came of age. Thus the disagreement is not simply over rank. Yabu can offer substantial service without yielding the domain that defines his inherited authority, and Toranaga must negotiate with that boundary rather than erase it.

The wider crisis sharpens the bargain. The Taikō’s death left five Regents to rule during the minority of Yaemon, while Toranaga and Ishido are the two men with real power. Yabu argues that war between them is inevitable and that the realm needs a sole Regent during the Heir’s minority. Yet Toranaga questions the assumption that he wants that outcome. The exchange makes the alliance’s political objective explicit without making the men’s ambitions identical: Yabu presents the conflict as a route to Toranaga’s supremacy, while Toranaga probes what Yabu has offered elsewhere and what, precisely, he is prepared to commit.

Yabu’s Military Proposal and the Terms

Yabu offers more than personal allegiance. He describes a gun-based plan for the war, proposing five hundred gun-samurai trained to operate as one force, supported by twenty cannon. Hiro-matsu reacts with astonishment at the scale of the proposal. Yabu’s weapons are not an incidental addition to the alliance: they are the means by which he claims he can help Toranaga defeat Ishido and become sole Regent.

Toranaga tests whether the plan is genuinely his to offer. He points out that it might be as valuable to Ishido, perhaps more so, and asks whether Yabu has already told him about it. The challenge exposes the central problem of a political alliance between men who both preserve room to maneuver: Toranaga needs Yabu’s support, but cannot simply assume that Yabu has committed himself. Their negotiation therefore proceeds through command arrangements as well as declarations of loyalty. Yabu would command the regiment; Toranaga’s appointee would serve as second-in-command. Yabu accepts both conditions.

A further condition concerns Blackthorne. Toranaga requires that the Anjin be made permanently his property, cared for as the Heir is, and subject to Toranaga’s direction. Yabu agrees that Blackthorne will train the men as gunners and cannoneers. This provision ties the alliance’s military design to specialist instruction: the proposed regiment depends not only on firearms and cannon but on Blackthorne’s ability to teach their use. The negotiation thus assigns command, oversight, and expertise rather than leaving the proposed force as an abstract promise.

Yabu ultimately says he will accept Toranaga as leader if Toranaga agrees to the plan, and he offers to receive Suruga and Totomi as part of his fief after victory. That promise remains conditional: Toranaga answers that Totomi depends on the plan’s success. Yabu then pledges obedience by Bushido, the Buddha, and the lives of his mother, wife, and future descendants. His commitments are formidable, but their scope remains carefully defined by the earlier refusal to surrender Izu.

The Parapet and the Precedent

Toranaga responds to the pledge by saying, “Let’s piss on the bargain.” He steps onto the parapet, with the inner garden seventy feet below, and beckons Yabu to stand beside him. Hiro-matsu watches, aghast at the danger of even the slightest movement. Toranaga and Yabu adjust their garments and urinate together, mixing their urine as it falls and dew-like marks the garden below. The gesture makes their agreement bodily and public to the few witnesses present, though the political compact itself is to remain secret.

Toranaga explains that he sealed his last bargain in the same way—with the Taikō, when the Taikō granted him the Kwanto, the Eight Provinces. At that time the Hojo still held the region, and Toranaga had to conquer it; in exchange for the grant, he immediately gave up his hereditary fiefs of Imagawa, Owari, and Ise. He recalls that he and the Taikō conquered the Hojo and took more than five thousand heads within a year. The precedent gives the crude ritual a political history: a past bargain joined personal trust, territorial exchange, and conquest, and Toranaga presents it as a compact that succeeded for both parties.

That memory also complicates the present agreement. Toranaga says that he helped make the Taikō what he became, while Yabu now offers to help make Toranaga sole Regent. Yet Yabu draws a line at making him Shōgun, and Toranaga answers that this is the honor he does not seek, however much his enemies accuse him of wanting it. The scene distinguishes the power the men discuss from the ambition attributed to Toranaga: their stated object is rule as sole Regent, not the shogunate.

Secrecy and Immediate Consequences

Once the bargain is sealed, Toranaga orders that it remain secret and says Yabu should leave within two or three days. Yabu asks whether he will go with the guns and the Anjin; Toranaga confirms that he will go by ship and orders Hiro-matsu to prepare the galley. Hiro-matsu reports that the ship is ready and that the guns and powder remain in its holds. The exchange converts the negotiation into an imminent movement of people and military supplies, even though the alliance’s secrecy means it cannot yet be treated as an open declaration.

The bargain does not dissolve distrust or settle the men’s differences over authority. Instead, it gives those differences a workable form: Yabu keeps his claim to Izu, receives command of the proposed regiment, and accepts Toranaga’s leadership for the campaign; Toranaga gains Yabu’s forces, the proposed gun-and-cannon organization, and Blackthorne’s training role under his own control. The urine mixed above the garden seals neither equality nor submission. It seals a conditional partnership whose value lies precisely in converting competing claims into coordinated action without requiring Yabu to surrender the inheritance he has sworn to keep.