Yabu of Izu

Yabu of Izu is a lord caught between military ambition and the immediate demands of political survival. His encounters with Toranaga show how quickly a promised advantage can become a test of loyalty: Yabu welcomes Toranaga into Izu, accepts the strategic opening created by the Regents’ paralysis, and later concludes that he cannot risk opposing Ishido while his forces remain unready.

Position and Political Vulnerability

When Toranaga’s galley approaches Izu, Yabu greets him and explains that he has arranged an escort. The welcome is courteous, but the armed samurai gathered around the bay make clear that this is also a meeting shaped by force. Yabu receives a powerful visitor on his own ground while remaining alert to the danger surrounding his position.

Toranaga presses on that vulnerability by pointing out that Ishido could take Izu and that Ikawa Jikkyu covets the province. He then reframes the danger: because the Council of Regents cannot function without five members, Ishido does not yet possess the authority Yabu fears. Toranaga presents his resignation as the reason for the Council’s paralysis and argues that the resulting delay gives Yabu room to strengthen his position. The explanation turns a political crisis into a temporary opportunity, but it does not remove the threat that made Yabu anxious in the first place.

The Promise of Military Strength

Yabu wants more than a defensive force. He asks Mariko to tell Anjin-san that, beginning the next day, Blackthorne is to teach his men to shoot and explain how foreign armies wage war. Although the guns expected for the regiment will not arrive for six days, Yabu insists that his men can begin with the weapons already available. His urgency shows that he sees military knowledge and training as essential to securing his future, not as preparations that can wait for ideal supplies.

The regiment is also embedded in a larger, secret strategy. Yabu has arranged for five assistant officers to be responsible for killing Blackthorne and the other foreigners if necessary, using Plum Tree as the code for the killings. Igurashi is to select the men, and Yabu intends to approve each personally while keeping them ignorant of his overall plan for the regiment. His effort to acquire Blackthorne’s expertise therefore coexists with a contingency for destroying the foreigners who provide it. The arrangement makes his military modernization an instrument of political calculation as much as battlefield preparation.

A Choice Under Time Pressure

Yabu’s calculations change when news of a summons to Osaka makes the timetable immediate. He believes that failing to appear if the Council is convened could mean death for him and his entire clan. At the same time, he estimates that the regiment needs at least two months of training; even a trained force, he fears, could not defeat all the opposing lords. On those grounds, he decides that he must support Ishido rather than gamble on an alliance with Toranaga.

Omi urges him to use the interval before departure to tell Toranaga about Nebara Jozen, arguing that Ishido will eventually betray Yabu and that Izu and the Kasigi house are also at risk from Jikkyu. Yabu’s decision is thus not presented as confidence in Ishido. It is a choice made under competing dangers: the summons, the threat to his clan, the unfinished regiment, and the prospect that Ishido’s faction may consume him once it has gained power. Igurashi’s questions about Jozen, the guns, and the strategy further expose how little time remains to reconcile Yabu’s immediate political obligations with his longer military plan.

Characterization and Narrative Role

Yabu’s position repeatedly turns on the gap between what he hopes to secure and what he can safely do now. Toranaga offers him future domains and vengeance against Jikkyu as reasons to wait and cooperate; Yabu, facing a summons that could endanger his whole clan, instead weighs those promised gains against the present risk of absence. His attempts to build a regiment while concealing its larger purpose reveal a lord who prepares for power through secrecy, but whose plans remain vulnerable to the political clock. The evidence leaves his ultimate fate unresolved while showing the bind that shapes his choices.