Yabu pledges allegiance to Toranaga in a wary political alliance

Yabu’s relationship with Toranaga develops from wary political alignment into a formal bond of vassalage, but it never becomes simple or unconditional loyalty. Their bargain joins Izu to Toranaga’s cause at a moment when refusal could mean execution for Yabu and his family. A public pledge, the surrender of a notorious sword, and the grant of a fief give the alliance visible form; beneath that form, Toranaga calculates how to control his new vassal, while Yabu treats commitment as something that might last only until war begins.

An alliance shaped by coercion

Yabu’s allegiance takes shape within a crisis in which every available course carries danger. Toranaga tells him that if he goes to Osaka, the Regents will punish him for the destruction of Jozen and his men. Ishido is especially angry, and Yabu’s exposure is not limited to his own life: Toranaga warns that Yabu could lose Izu and that the entire Kasigi family could be sent to execution. Staying does not offer safety either, because the Council could order the same punishment. Toranaga even suggests that Yabu might do what he had previously advised Toranaga to do: face death, with Toranaga willing to serve as his second. The offer underscores the extremity of Yabu’s dilemma rather than resolving it.

The relationship is therefore political before it is personal. Yabu must decide whether to follow Toranaga into danger, yet his decision also concerns his territory, his retainers, and his family. Toranaga presents the choice as Yabu’s own, but spells out the costs on both sides. This pressure makes the eventual pledge consequential: Yabu is not simply affirming an existing attachment; he is choosing a position in a conflict where either remaining or departing could destroy his house.

The pledge and the Murasama blade

Yabu first tells Toranaga that he will not go to Osaka before Toranaga does and that he has ordered all Izu mobilized. He grounds this decision in their solemn bargain, arguing that Ishido will move against Toranaga first and that if Kwanto falls, Izu will fall as well. He declares that he is on Toranaga’s side and invokes the Kasigi practice of honoring bargains. The pledge links their fortunes: Yabu’s security, as he frames it, depends on Toranaga’s position holding.

The following day, Yabu assembles a host and asks Toranaga to review it. In front of his men, he kneels and offers himself as Toranaga’s vassal, extending the act of allegiance to all the men of Izu. He then presents a Murasama blade as a token of filial duty and reveals that it was the sword that murdered Toranaga’s grandfather. The disclosure transforms the gift from a conventional sign of submission into an object bound to Toranaga’s family history. Yabu explains how the sword came down to him and how he learned its identity; the old retainer Suwo is summoned to recount what he witnessed as a boy.

Toranaga accepts Yabu’s offer to take the blade out to sea and drown it. Only after it has disappeared beneath the water, in full view of Yabu’s men, does Toranaga’s heart begin to return to normal. The episode gives the vassalage a striking material consequence: Yabu’s gift removes a weapon associated with danger to Toranaga and his descendants. Toranaga thanks him, stabilizes the division of taxes at sixty parts for peasants and forty for their lords, and gives Yabu Izu as his fief. The relationship thus takes institutional shape through both a territorial grant and a demonstration that the province’s power ultimately belongs to Toranaga, should he choose to reclaim it.

Toranaga’s calculation and Yabu’s reserve

The pledge does not produce equal trust. Toranaga privately recognizes that Yabu has once again done what he planned for him to do, and his expressed pleasure at having Yabu as an ally is explicitly a lie. He accepts the public submission because it serves his design, not because the ceremony has erased their history of suspicion. The difference between what Toranaga says before Yabu’s assembled men and what he knows privately makes the alliance an instrument of rule as much as a personal bond.

Yabu’s own commitment is similarly qualified. After hearing Omi’s reasoning, he acknowledges that offering the Murasama blade helped make the bargain effective: in his view, the Yoshitomo sword can take its place, and surrendering the other weapon has made him more valuable to Toranaga. He accepts that he is committed to Toranaga as a vassal, but adds the decisive reservation that this lasts only until war comes. When Omi emphasizes that boundary, Yabu agrees that he might then change sides or pursue other options. His public oath and private contingency coexist; the tension between them is central to the relationship.

A vassal within the Crimson Sky plan

Their bond is tested in the discussion of Crimson Sky, Toranaga’s final battle plan. Toranaga describes a sudden assault on Kyoto with his legions, intended to seize the capital, free the Emperor from Ishido’s influence, and seek a new mandate to replace the existing Council. The proposed advance would commit eighty to one hundred thousand men while leaving Toranaga’s lands unprotected, his flanks unguarded, and his retreat unsecured. Yabu responds by pointing out that the route would require fighting through obstacles, including the Tokaido and further Ishido strongholds. In this exchange, he is neither a silent subordinate nor a detached observer: he asks what the plan entails and tests its military feasibility against the terrain and opposition.

Yabu’s position in the plan remains complicated by the terms of his allegiance. He has mobilized Izu, knelt before Toranaga, and accepted vassal status, while privately imagining the possibility of future realignment. Toranaga, meanwhile, regards that same submission as a means of bringing Izu within his effective power. The relationship’s significance lies in this unresolved double structure: loyalty is enacted through oath, troops, territory, and ritual gifts, yet both men continue to read those acts strategically. Yabu is bound to Toranaga, but the bond is also a bargain whose limits each man watches closely.