Yabu’s vassal status after submitting to Toranaga

Yabu’s vassal status after submitting to Toranaga turns a fragile alliance into a formal feudal bond without making their interests identical. Yabu publicly offers himself and the men of Izu as Toranaga’s vassals, presenting the Murasama blade that killed Toranaga’s grandfather as a token of filial duty. Toranaga accepts the submission and grants Yabu Izu, but retains the power to reclaim control. The pledge therefore brings real political consequences while exposing the gap between a lord’s authority and a vassal’s private calculations.

From Uneasy Independence to Submission

Before the pledge, Yabu is an independent daimyo whose conduct has made him feared by those under his rule. Mura remembers his cruelty, dishonor, and habit of depriving villages of their rightful shares of fish and crops. For people caught between Toranaga and Ishido, Yabu’s uncertain allegiance compounds the danger: they do not know which great lord he will support when war comes.

Yabu’s own position is also precarious. When Toranaga is away at Osaka for a confrontation with Ishido, Yabu and other neighboring daimyos are invited to wait in Yedo. Yabu recognizes that the invitation cannot safely be refused and that he and his family are effectively hostages, held as added protection for Toranaga’s safe return from an enemy fortress. The episode establishes the political world in which Yabu’s later submission takes shape: service and protection are intertwined with coercion, and a lord’s apparent freedom of movement may depend on another lord’s security.

Toranaga approaches Yabu privately rather than summoning him before armed retainers. He asks whether Yabu would like to rule Izu, Suruga, and Totomi if Toranaga does not lose the war, then asks whether Yabu will accept him as liege lord. Yabu answers that he wants the offer and agrees to the relationship. The exchange makes the practical incentive plain: vassalage promises a larger future position, but that promise depends on Toranaga’s victory.

The Public Pledge and the Murasama Blade

Yabu’s commitment becomes visible when he assembles a host and asks Toranaga to review it. Before his men, he kneels and offers himself as Toranaga’s vassal, extending the submission to all the men of Izu. The scene converts a private bargain into a public declaration: Yabu does not merely promise personal loyalty but places his territory’s military force under Toranaga’s authority.

The gift accompanying the pledge carries a separate and intimate weight. Still kneeling, Yabu offers his Murasama blade and identifies it as the sword that murdered Toranaga’s grandfather. Toranaga is startled and initially rejects the claim as impossible. Yabu explains the blade’s history and how he recently learned its identity; Suwo is summoned to confirm what he witnessed as a boy. A political act of submission thus becomes an occasion for revealing a family history of violence, and the weapon makes the new bond materially tangible.

Toranaga accepts Yabu’s proposal to take the blade out to sea and drown it, removing it from the possibility of threatening him or his descendants. Only after the sword sinks from sight, witnessed by Toranaga’s men, does Toranaga’s fear ease. The danger represented by the blade is ended through an action Yabu himself suggests, strengthening the appearance of loyalty at the moment his allegiance is being formalized.

What Vassalage Gives—and What It Leaves Unsettled

After the blade is disposed of, Toranaga thanks Yabu, stabilizes the tax division at sixty parts for the peasants and forty for their lords, and gives him Izu as his fief. The grant answers the earlier offer of rule over Izu, Suruga, and Totomi with a more definite settlement: Izu is the fief actually bestowed in the account of the pledge. Yet the transfer does not make Yabu an equal partner. Toranaga observes that everything is as before except that all power in Izu now belongs to him, should he choose to take it back.

That qualification defines the relationship more clearly than the language of allegiance alone. Yabu receives a recognized holding, but the ultimate authority over it remains Toranaga’s. The fief is both a reward and an instrument of rule: it secures Yabu’s service while making that service dependent on Toranaga’s continued willingness to permit his local power. The settlement also has consequences for the peasants, whose share of the tax burden is explicitly fixed rather than left to Yabu’s previous arbitrary exactions.

A Bargain with Two Interpretations

Yabu does not understand his submission as unconditional. Omi argues that offering the Murasama blade makes the bargain especially clever: with the old sword removed, Yabu has given Toranaga a powerful token of loyalty while remaining more valuable to him than before. Yabu accepts Omi’s reasoning and tells Igurashi that he is committed to Toranaga as a vassal—but then draws a boundary around that commitment. When Omi specifies that it lasts only until war comes, Yabu agrees. He expects that, once war begins, he can change sides or pursue another course.

Toranaga’s understanding is different. He welcomes Yabu as an ally while privately recognizing that Yabu has again done what he intended him to do. The pledge therefore serves Toranaga’s strategy even though Yabu imagines it preserves his own options. Their agreement is neither a simple reconciliation nor a transparent contract: the public ceremony announces unity, while each man assigns a different meaning to the loyalty being offered.

The resulting status is politically effective precisely because it contains that tension. Toranaga gains Yabu’s assembled force and the formal allegiance of Izu; Yabu gains a fief and the protection implied by service to a superior lord, while continuing to watch for a chance to maneuver. His vassalage makes him answerable to Toranaga without quieting his ambition or his suspicion. It secures a place for him in Toranaga’s order, but leaves the coming war as the test—and possible limit—of the oath.