The Ninja Complains (Again)

 
It is not enough, in war, to merely take a territory. You must be able to hold it afterwards. To hold a territory, you must have the respect and the love of the peasants. (This is not the only necessity, of course. Whatever disharmony you provoke, you must quiet it, and make your lands harmonious. More on this later.)

In my recent work in Torānzu (one of the smaller cities of Izumi Province), I have largely been using the simple, straightforward techniques of the Journey of a Thousand Steps school. Now I have discovered that in the neighboring city of Aikontō, Bunmei has been doing everything in the Living Stone style.

This will cause great disharmony later on, as the peasants are already beginning to perceive us a two completely different clans. If their loyalties are divided, we may soon have an uprising to deal with.

Our clan's strategy is still fractured. We must find the time to unify our approach, before things get worse.

Also, I wish Jimon would stop asking me questions about everything we're doing. I know he's new to the clan, and I know I'm the one most appropriate to teach him our ways. But when he pesters me with questions about why Bunmei did something a particular way, in a city that I've only visited once or twice, I really have no good answers. (And he can't ask Bunmei right now, because Bunmei is visiting his home province for some personal business.)

In other news at Castle Nettobuku, Binya, the Sōtō Zen monk, walked in today with a new acolyte. Her name is Airi, and we hope that she will be able to help us keep to the ways of harmony. Binya has been chanting as fast as he can, but there's far too much for any one monk.

About the New Head of the Okane-gumi...

 
There has been some upheaval in Fujiwara-kyō. A few months ago, I did a fair bit of work to gain the alliance of the Okane-gumi, an underworld merchant group who will help smuggle some of our supplies through. Now, it turns out that a new leader has come to power among the Okane-gumi. He does not wish to honor his commitments with our clan.

I have been in discussions with Iyona and Sakura of the Nichiren priestesses, who were trying to determine if there might be some other righteous action to take. We are now all agreed: The righteous action is to remove this dishonorable man.

I now have some work to do back in Fujiwara-kyō.