Yabu–Ishido alliance

The Yabu–Ishido alliance is a contested, strategic relationship shaped by rival offers, private intelligence, and Yabu’s effort to preserve his own power. Ishido proposes that Yabu join the coming war against Toranaga in return for Jikkyu’s head and his province; Yabu, in turn, tells Toranaga that he remains his ally and offers support for Toranaga’s rise to sole Regent. The account leaves a deliberate tension between Yabu’s professions, the reported secret bargain, and the practical value he finds in keeping both powerful men engaged with him.

Political Setting

Three days before the central exchange, Yabu was in Yedo when word arrived from his nephew, Omi, that a foreign ship had come ashore at Anjiro. Toranaga was away in Osaka for a final confrontation with Ishido. He had asked Yabu and neighboring friendly daimyos to wait for his return, an invitation they could not safely refuse. Yabu understood that their presence and their families served as protection for Toranaga while he was inside the enemy fortress. The arrangement makes the distinction between ally and hostage unstable from the outset: Yabu is politically aligned with Toranaga, but his freedom of action is constrained by the larger contest with Ishido.

Yabu’s own claim to autonomy is explicit. He tells Toranaga that he will serve as an ally and subordinate, putting his life and possessions on Toranaga’s side, but will not surrender Izu. He grounds that refusal in an oath to his father and in the Taikō’s confirmation of Izu as a hereditary fief for Yabu and his successors. His alignment with Toranaga therefore has a limit: loyalty does not mean yielding the domain that underwrites his status. This distinction helps explain why Ishido’s offer could tempt him, and why Toranaga has reason to test what Yabu has promised elsewhere.

Ishido’s Offer and the Secret Bargain

When Toranaga asks what Ishido offered, Yabu says the reward would be Jikkyu’s head once Toranaga was dead, along with Jikkyu’s province. The price was support when war began, including an attack on Toranaga’s southern flank. Toranaga asks whether Yabu accepted. Yabu’s answer is evasive rather than a plain account of the terms’ acceptance or rejection; he appeals to Toranaga’s knowledge of him, then returns to his commitment to serve his ally.

That assurance is complicated by intelligence from Toranaga’s spies in Ishido’s household. They have reported that a bargain was struck and that it included responsibility for the assassination of Toranaga’s three sons, Noboru, Sudara, and Naga. Toranaga presses Yabu on whether the arrangement went beyond military support and specifically asks about assassination. Yabu replies that he intends to fight with every means at his disposal. He does not directly confirm the reported plot against the sons, but neither does the exchange provide a clean account that would dispel the suspicion. The gap between the spies’ report and Yabu’s guarded answers is central to the relationship: his declared loyalty to Toranaga coexists with evidence that he may have offered Ishido far more than battlefield assistance.

Yabu then makes his own counterproposal. He says he can be valuable to Toranaga and help him become sole Regent, turning the conversation from a defense of his conduct into a bid for influence. Toranaga asks why he would want a sole Regent, a question that leaves Yabu’s political objective under scrutiny rather than treating his offer as proof of uncomplicated allegiance. Yabu’s loyalty is real enough to state, but it is also expressed in terms that preserve his room to maneuver: he can offer force and counsel without relinquishing Izu or surrendering his own political judgment.

A Useful Intermediary in a Rival Camp

Yabu’s dealings with Ishido continue to matter even when the two are not discussing the terms of a military pact. During the confrontation over John Blackthorne, Ishido is prepared to kill him after striking him and seeing him appear mad. Yabu intervenes, arguing that a general should not kill with his own hands and urging Ishido to leave Blackthorne alive. He says that Blackthorne is valuable to them and that Ishido can have him killed later if he wishes. Ishido lowers his bow, though he warns that he will want Blackthorne alive in the future and threatens to hang him over the pit.

The episode does not establish that Yabu and Ishido share a settled allegiance, but it shows Yabu acting as a broker within Ishido’s circle while still pursuing his own interests. His appeal combines an argument about a general’s proper conduct with a direct claim about Blackthorne’s strategic value. Ishido recognizes desperation in Yabu’s face, but also truth in what he says. The exchange demonstrates the kind of leverage Yabu seeks: not command over Ishido, but influence over decisions that could preserve a valuable asset and keep Yabu useful to competing powers.

War Plans and the Limits of Alignment

The alliance question returns when Toranaga asks Yabu and the others for advice about what will happen and what he should do. Yabu first asks what Crimson Sky means. Toranaga explains it as a final, violent rush toward Kyoto with his legions, intended to seize the capital and free the Emperor from the forces surrounding him. He describes a campaign that would commit eighty to one hundred thousand men while leaving his lands unprotected, his flanks open, and retreat unsecured. He does not reveal the elite samurai cadres already placed in castles and provinces to rise at the same time and create the chaos the plan requires.

Yabu immediately identifies the exposed route and its danger: Toranaga would have to fight at every step, with Ikawa Jikkyu controlling a hundred ri of the Tokaido and further Ishido strongholds ahead. His question and response make him more than a name in rival intelligence reports; in the council of war, he tests the plan against the terrain and the enemy positions. Yet the exchange also underscores the limits of any alliance. Yabu can advise Toranaga and promise to fight for him, while Ishido’s offer and the reported conspiracy continue to shadow that promise. The relationship remains a negotiation under pressure, in which loyalty, territorial independence, and access to power are repeatedly weighed against the approaching war.