Yabu secretly takes the Erasmus's weapons and valuables

Yabu’s secret seizure of the Erasmus’s weapons and valuables transforms a ship’s cargo into a private arsenal, a treasury, and a source of political leverage. Rather than simply report the discovery or hand its contents to another lord, he orders the goods hidden and moved to Mishima, preserving for himself the choice of whom to empower—and how far he might rise.

Discovery and the scale of the cargo

Yabu’s mood changes with the contents of the ship. Lying in a hot bath, he feels more confident than ever: the wealth revealed by the Erasmus offers power beyond anything he had imagined. Its military cargo is especially consequential. He counts five hundred muskets, more gunpowder and shot than Toranaga possesses across the Eight Provinces, twenty cannon, five thousand cannonballs, and crates of fire arrows. He regards the weapons as first-rate European equipment, not merely a collection of unfamiliar objects.

The cargo also includes a strongbox containing twenty thousand minted Spanish silver pieces. The silver is separate from the arms in both use and political meaning: Yabu can imagine spending it on the castle keep, specialist horses for the cannon, or an expanded network of spies. The ship has also yielded plate, cups, candelabra, ornaments, religious paintings, and elaborately embroidered women’s clothing. Though Yabu initially takes some of these objects for pirate plunder, the silver and military supplies are the discoveries that most directly enlarge his strategic possibilities.

A concealed transfer to Mishima

Yabu orders the cargo taken ashore the following day. The muskets are to be repacked in their crates and concealed beneath nets or sacking, disguising the scale and nature of the shipment. He assigns Mura to provide porters and places the movement of the armament, including the cannon, under Igurashi’s responsibility. The destination is Yabu’s castle at Mishima, and secrecy is part of the order, not an afterthought.

Yabu specifically instructs Igurashi to travel by night and maintain strict security. He warns Mura that the village will be obliterated if its people reveal the operation. Mura promises that the villagers will say nothing, but distinguishes what he can guarantee from what he cannot: he cannot speak for the journey or for other villages, where spies may be present. The exchange makes the transfer’s vulnerability plain. Concealment depends on a chain of people and places beyond Yabu’s complete control, even as he tries to bind those nearest him through fear and responsibility.

The operation begins after Yabu has secretly left Yedo with only fifty men. Three days earlier, he had been there while Toranaga was away in Osaka for a confrontation with Ishido. Yabu understood that he and other independent daimyos, with their families, were effectively being held as protection for Toranaga’s safe return. Instead of remaining in that politically dangerous position, he slipped away when Omi’s message about the ship arrived. The secret transport is therefore also an act of personal maneuvering: Yabu has removed himself from Yedo and acquired resources before Toranaga can direct their use.

A weapon against the old order

The muskets matter not only because of their number but because of their place in Japanese warfare. The narrative contrasts their European quality with a military culture in which guns have long been treated as a novelty, while bows are considered more accurate and individual hand-to-hand combat more honorable. The sword is associated with the samurai code, Bushido, which demands loyalty, fearlessness, and honor in life and death. Firearms, by contrast, are widely regarded as cowardly and dishonorable.

Yabu has privately questioned that inherited standard for years. He imagines five hundred chosen samurai trained to use muskets as a unit, leading twelve thousand conventional troops, with the twenty cannon operated by specially trained men. In his conception, the weapons are not simply added to existing practice: they are the basis of a new strategy for a coming war. His acquisition gives material form to an idea that had remained beyond his means. He had never expected to afford five hundred guns; now he possesses them without payment and believes he alone understands how to use them.

That confidence does not resolve the conflict between innovation and Bushido. Yabu’s private question about what the code requires receives no answer from the ancestral voices he imagines questioning him. The silence leaves the practical decision with him. His act does not show that he has rejected the samurai order; it shows him testing whether its inherited standards can survive the military advantage offered by the guns.

Leverage, ambition, and uncertainty

The arsenal gives Yabu options, not an immediate allegiance. He considers whether to use it for Toranaga or Ishido, or to wait and see who ultimately prevails. He calculates that the weapons could help determine which contender wins, while his own role in choosing a side might raise him to a vacant regency seat—and perhaps, in his most expansive private imagining, to the position of Shogun. These are ambitions he entertains, not outcomes secured by the seizure.

The silver widens that field of calculation. Yabu considers concrete uses for the twenty thousand pieces, including rebuilding the keep and buying horses for the cannon, as well as less direct political uses such as bribery. He wonders whether money could be used to poison Ikawa Jikkyu through his cooks. The thought establishes the range of power he associates with the hoard: it can strengthen a fortress, support new weapons, enlarge espionage, or attack a rival by covert means.

The scene ends not with the cargo’s final deployment but with Yabu luxuriating in its unrealized possibilities. He has ordered the arms and bullion sent secretly toward Mishima, but has not yet decided whose victory they will serve. The seizure’s decisive consequence is thus an alteration in the balance of choice: Yabu can imagine himself as the broker of either side’s success, while the ship’s concealed cargo makes that dangerous independence materially possible.