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Updated: May 22, 2025
Ando watched every movement with admiration and a certain weighing of possibilities in his shrewd face. He nodded as if to himself, and leaned toward Kano. "Was that not Kano Umè-ko, your daughter?" "Yes," said the old man, gruffly; "but she is not a son." "Fortunately for the eyes of men she is not," smiled Ando. "That is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and I have seen many.
In the great days, who dared to speak of patronage to us. Emperors were artists and artists Emperors! It was to us that all men bowed." "Yes, yes, that is honorably true," Ando hastened to admit. "And so would they in this age bow to you, if you would but allow it." "I am not worthy of homage," said Kano, his head falling forward on his breast.
His initial visit to old Kano had been made not so much to renew an illustrious acquaintance, as to relieve his own mind of its exciting news, and his hands of a parcel which, at every stage of the journey, had been an incubus. Ando knew the paintings to be unusual. He had hoped for and received from Kano the highest confirmation of this belief.
Kano's irritation vanished. "Ando Uchida!" he cried aloud, springing to his feet, and hurrying to the edge of the veranda. "Ando Uchida, is it indeed you? How stout and strong and prosperous you seem! Welcome!" "A little too stout for warm weather," laughed Ando, as laboriously he removed his foreign shoes and accepted his host's assistance up the one stone step to the veranda.
Surely my karma was evil that I needed to be reborn into this age of death!" Ando looked sympathetic and a little contrite. "Since we are indeed hopelessly of the present," ventured he, "may it not be as well to let the foreigners teach us their methods of success?" "Success?" cried Kano, almost angrily. "What do they succeed in except the grossest material gains? There is no humanity in them.
I tell you, Ando!" he cried, in a small new gust of irritation, "sometimes I have wished that she had been left utterly untouched by art. She paints well now, because my influence is never lifted. She knows nothing else. I have allowed no lover to approach. Yet, some day love will find her, as one finds a blossoming plum tree in the night.
I am an old man. I have hoped and prayed too long. I must go down to my grave without an heir, even an adopted heir, for there is no disciple worthy to succeed!" "Dear friend, believe that I would not willingly add to a grief like this. I assure you " Ando was beginning, when his words were cut short by the entrance of Umè-ko.
In 1323, a question concerning right of succession to the Ando estate was carried to Kamakura for adjudication, and the chief judge, Nagasaki Takasuke, son of the old lay priest mentioned above, having taken bribes from both of the litigants, delivered an inscrutable opinion.
An instant later came the whisper, "very, very strange!" "Why do you repeat it?" cried Kano, irritably. "There was nothing strange in what I said." The parcel was now untied. Ando held a roll of papers outward. "Examine these, Kano Indara," he said impressively. "If I do not greatly mistake, the gods, at last, have heard your prayer." Kano went backward as if from fire. "No!
In 1632, Iemitsu confiscated his fief and exiled him to Takasaki in Kotsuke, where he was compelled to undergo confinement in the Yashiki of Ando Shigenaga. Fourteen months later, sentence of death was pronounced against him at the early age of twenty-eight. Other instances might be quoted showing how little mercy the Tokugawa shoguns extended to wrongdoers among their own relatives.
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