Ishido appoints Ito and summons the daimyos

Ishido’s appointment of Ito Teruzumi and summons to the daimyos transform Toranaga’s apparent withdrawal from the Council of Regents into a fresh test of allegiance. Delivered to Yabu by Nebara Jozen, Ishido’s order couples an officially authenticated appointment with an invitation to Osaka, where the lords are expected to renew their oaths. Its force lies not only in the gathering it calls but in the claim that Ishido can act for a Council whose authority is being reassembled around him.

The Mission to Yabu

Twelve days after Yabu had joked that the Anjin should be taught seppuku, a courier arrived from Osaka in the afternoon with ten samurai. Their horses were lathered and near death; the flags at their spearheads bore the cipher of the Council of Regents. The heat, overcast sky, and humidity frame a mission whose urgency is visible before its purpose is explained.

The courier, Nebara Jozen, was a lean, hard samurai of senior rank and one of Ishido’s chief lieutenants. His Gray uniform kimono was muddy and torn, and fatigue had reddened his eyes. He refused food and drink and demanded an immediate audience with Yabu. Jozen’s appearance and manner make the summons feel less like routine correspondence than a forceful intervention in Izu’s affairs.

On Yabu’s veranda, Kasigi Omi sat just behind his lord, while Igurashi—recently forgiven—sat nearer to Jozen, surrounded by intimate guards. Yabu answered Jozen’s courtesy with courtesy of his own, though it fooled no one present. The exchange had an audience and a guarded setting: a conversation in which every formal phrase carried the pressure of armed men and contested loyalties.

Military Questions and Political Pressure

Before announcing the summons, Jozen pressed Yabu about military arrangements that had attracted Ishido’s attention. He asked why Yabu trained Toranaga’s soldiers alongside his own and why they drilled with so many guns. Ishido also wanted to know why Toranaga’s son, Naga, was second-in-command, what force he commanded, and why the foreigner seemed to be directing the training. The questions connect the invitation to the growing military importance of the men assembled in Izu; the summons is not detached from the scrutiny of their preparations.

Yabu’s stomach twisted when the conversation turned from training to Osaka. He had understood that Toranaga had resigned from the Council. Jozen confirmed the resignation, then explained that Ito Teruzumi would take Toranaga’s place and that Ishido would become the new president of the Regents. What Yabu had regarded as an enduring obstacle—the four Regents’ inability to agree on a fifth—had apparently been overcome without Toranaga. Yabu was panic-stricken, but concealed his alarm by saying that he would be honored to receive the invitation and buying himself time to think.

Ito’s Appointment and the Summons

Jozen delivered an invitation for Yabu to attend the Council’s next meeting in Osaka and renew his oath of fidelity. The meeting was set for the first day of the new moon, twenty days away. Ishido, Jozen added, thought Yabu might wish to leave at once; all the daimyos were receiving the same summons so they could reach Osaka in good time for the twenty-first day. An authorized Flower-Viewing Ceremony, approved by Emperor Go-Nijo, would honor the occasion. The ceremony gives the political gathering a public and courtly setting, while the demand to renew fidelity makes its underlying purpose explicit.

Yabu noticed that the invitation did not carry the seal of the Council of Regents. Jozen’s explanation was itself a claim of authority: Ishido had issued it because loyal vassals of the late Taikō and his heir, Yaemon, would understand that the new Council would approve his action. The document therefore invited attendance while asserting that approval could follow the act. Yabu did not challenge the claim further in Jozen’s presence.

Jozen then produced a copy of Ito’s appointment letter, accepted, signed, and authorized by Ishido, Lord Kiyama, Lord Onoshi, and Lord Sugiyama. He displayed it triumphantly, confident that it closed the trap on Toranaga and his allies and that the document made him and his men invulnerable. The letter presented the appointment not as Ishido’s unsupported proposal but as a decision already accepted by the other Regents.

Authentication and Immediate Consequences

Yabu took the appointment scroll with trembling fingers. Its authenticity was confirmed by Yodoko, the Taikō’s wife, who stated that it had been signed in her presence. It was one of six copies being sent throughout the Empire, dated eleven days earlier, and designated for the lords of Iwari, Mikawa, Totomi, Sugura, Izu, and the Kwanto. The copies and countersignature establish that the appointment had been circulated and authenticated beyond Jozen’s word, lending institutional weight to Ishido’s new arrangement.

Jozen reported that the lords of Iwari, Mikawa, Suruga, and Totomi had already accepted, showing Yabu their seals. Yabu was the last but one on Jozen’s list; Toranaga was last. Yabu responded that he would thank Ishido and looked forward to greeting and congratulating him. His words signal outward compliance, but the scene has already shown his alarm and his attempt to gain time. The summons gathers the daimyos under a common demand even as it places Yabu and, ultimately, Toranaga under increasing pressure.

The episode’s political reversal is precise: Toranaga’s resignation does not leave the fifth seat vacant or dissolve the Council’s authority. Instead, Ito’s appointment supplies a replacement, Ishido claims the presidency, and the lords are summoned to reaffirm their fidelity. The invitation’s missing Council seal complicates its formal standing, but the appointment letter, Yodoko’s authentication, and the displayed seals of other lords give Jozen’s mission formidable practical force. The event thus makes the struggle over legitimacy visible in its instruments—ciphered flags, appointment copies, signatures, seals, and a summons—and ends with Yabu required to answer a political move whose consequences are still unfolding.