Toranaga Arrives at Anjiro is the moment when Yabu’s secret experiment with firearms becomes a project of Toranaga’s military command. Ten days after the deaths of Nebara Jozen and his men, Toranaga comes ashore with troops and demands an immediate exercise by the original five hundred musketeers. He does not merely inspect a novelty: he sets out to enlarge the force, supplies additional weapons and men, and assigns its command to Buntaro. Yet the arrival ends not with a declaration of war but with Toranaga’s insistence that no one has declared war on him yet.

Arrival and Immediate Inspection

At the Hour of the Horse, eleven o’clock in the morning, a convoy of three troop-filled galleys rounds the headland at Anjiro. Toranaga comes ashore beside Buntaro. His arrival follows the killing of Nebara Jozen and his men, making the demonstration of Yabu’s regiment a matter of immediate political and military importance rather than an exercise that can be postponed at leisure.

Toranaga asks to see the original five hundred attack at once. Yabu, caught unprepared by the sudden arrival and angry that his spies gave him no warning, asks for a day to prepare. Toranaga refuses. He says he needs neither defenders nor elaborate staging, screams, or pretend deaths; his experience with staged performances is enough for him to imagine the conditions of an actual attack. The demand strips away the spectacle and makes the regiment’s tactical reality, not its presentation, the point of inspection.

The scale of Toranaga’s presence makes the request more than a private test. Elite guards surround him on the beach, more troops pour off the moored galley, and another thousand heavily armed samurai remain packed into the two galleys offshore. Yabu has only just hurried to the shore with a guard of honor. The imbalance between the host’s improvised reception and Toranaga’s carefully assembled force establishes who controls the terms of the encounter.

The Regiment Behind the Demonstration

Yabu’s force grows out of a long-standing conviction that firearms might overturn established battlefield assumptions. He has obtained five hundred muskets, twenty cannon, and large supplies of powder, shot, cannonballs, and fire arrows from the European ship. His intention is to train selected samurai as a unit and use them to spearhead conventional troops, with cannon handled by specially trained men. The weapons’ potential matters partly because samurai warfare has treated individual hand-to-hand combat as honorable, while guns have been regarded as cowardly and contrary to bushido.

The earlier exercise before Jozen and his men showed how Yabu meant to answer that objection in practice. Five disciplined phalanxes, each four ranks deep and containing twenty-five men, advanced in formation. They fired in sequence: the front rank discharged its weapons and knelt to reload while the ranks behind it fired over it. The ammunition was blank and the attackers were acting, but the coordinated volleys made the imagined casualties unmistakable to the observers.

The display also showed that a firing line need not stand still and be overwhelmed. When the defenders charged with swords and spears, the phalanxes broke and fled, then regrouped at a distance in a V formation and resumed firing. The change from apparent rout to renewed volleys demonstrated how disciplined movement and coordinated reloading could frustrate a conventional assault. Jozen, initially appalled by the prospect of swordless samurai, ended by congratulating Yabu after recognizing what the exercise had demonstrated. Toranaga’s arrival takes that proof out of the realm of local experimentation and places it under his own scrutiny.

Expansion and Command

After the inspection is requested, Toranaga establishes his military presence on the plateau. He orders a permanent camp there for his men, while two hundred guards remain with him at the fortress. He then tells Yabu that, if the exercise proves as effective as reported, the force will become nine assault battalions of five hundred samurai apiece. The regiment is to be commanded by Buntaro.

Toranaga has brought another thousand selected samurai and a thousand muskets, with ample powder and shot. He says that further supplies and another thousand men will arrive within a week. Yabu objects that there are not enough guns and questions the train of supplies; Toranaga answers that he has brought what is needed and that more is on its way. The change is both material and organizational: the experiment is no longer simply Yabu’s body of five hundred trained men but the proposed basis for a much larger regiment, equipped through Toranaga’s resources and placed under a different commander.

Yabu asks whether he might command it himself. Toranaga points to the Council meeting in a few days and Yabu’s expected journey to Osaka: he cannot lead the regiment if he is leaving. The answer exposes the practical limit on Yabu’s ambition. Although he initiated the project and claims to have kept his agreement with Toranaga, the new force will not be organized around his personal command. Buntaro receives the appointment, while Yabu is required to continue his obligations within the larger political contest.

Allies, Authority, and the Unsettled War

The exchange makes their alliance visible as an agreement under pressure, not a simple transfer of trust. Yabu reminds Toranaga that they agreed Toranaga would lead and that he has kept the bargain. He asks directly whether they are going to war. Toranaga’s answer is that no one has declared war on him yet. The distinction leaves the military preparations advanced but the political threshold uncrossed: troops are arriving, the regiment is to expand, and a Council meeting is imminent, but open war has not been announced.

The episode’s central reversal lies in the relationship between technical promise and political control. Yabu’s original insight—that disciplined firearms could challenge the sword-centered conventions of samurai battle—has been substantiated by the regiment’s staged performance. Toranaga recognizes its potential and enlarges it, but that recognition also removes the project from Yabu’s sole command. The arrival therefore advances both a change in warfare and a reordering of authority: the muskets promise a new battlefield method, while Toranaga’s personnel, supplies, and appointments determine who will wield it.