I seem to remember that Houjou Yasuie was a somewhat divisive character among manga readers. But I loved the guy from the first panel. Uncle Yasuie is a total bro, first of all. Easily dismissed as a coward, but I see it this way – his survival has tangible benefits for his clan and cause. Plus, it’s good to have Tokiyuki get the chance to see that his family isn’t entirely gone – it’s not only for himself that he’s fighting. And the whole forehead thing is so utterly ridiculous that it’s hard to imagine anyone but Matsui doing it. It’s exactly the sort of troll he loves.

As the narration notes, maybe Tokiyuki inherited his keen survival instincts from Yasuie. But it’s not only Yasuie that’s a recent arrival at Suwa Grand Shrine. As Genba is out picking his nose and debating whether he wants to keep his wagon hitched to the Houjou Clan’s star, he senses something in the trees. That something turns out to be a shinobi – like himself but not like himself. This ninja wears a tengu mask and has an answer for all Genba’s tactics, disdainfully dismissing them as tricks rather than technique. Genba is deeply unsettled by this even if he doesn’t really understand it, but there’s no time to dwell on such things.

At this point the story references the Taiheki, a chronicle of the Nanboku-chou and this era in Japanese history. Like most of its type (including The Elusive Samurai in some sense) the Taiheki is thought to have considerable embellishment layered on top of broad fact. It does talk of the dual attack on Kamakura and Kyoto staged by the Ashikaga forces, which should have been impossible to coordinate given the technology of the time. It’s also a known fact that early shinobi practice was closely tied to the Ashikaga Clan, though I think the tengu part is entirely fanciful.

Yorishige has, in fact, seen an unsettling future – one in which Tokiyuki is slain if he stays in Suwa. With the Ashikaga’s spies now at their very door it does seem that the Wakagimki’s identity is very much at risk of discovery if he stays. Suwa therefore decides to send him to Kyou (as Kyoto was known at the time, a sort of transition between “Heian-Kyou” and Kyoto). He can more easily blend in among the masses of people there, Suwa reasons – not to mention that as theoretically the future ruler of Japan, he needs to learn the ways of the capital and the important people of all walks of life based there.

Yasuie’s arrival gives Yorishige an opportunity to send the boy off in someone else’s protection, someone with a vested interest in protecting him. This is hard for him of course – he flat-out calls Tokiyuki his surrogate son and declares that he’s doing this out of love. But there’s no time for long goodbyes – a distraction is staged, and the boy and his uncle slip away from the shrine in the confusion (with Yorishige following for a time). Not that Yasuie is the ideal guardian – always broadcasting his state of mind (including “Houjou”) on his forehead carries some obvious downsides.

The journey itself is relatively peril-free, apart from to Fubuki’s purse. But there’s the matter of checkpoints, be they Imperial or Ashikaga. When they reach one on the outskirts of the capital Yasuie says he has an idea, and sends the youngsters to kill time in a post time they passed on the way. There Genba plies Fubuki with onigiri for advice on what “tricks vs. techniques” means, and gets an answer. His tactics have no menace, Fubuki tells him. And on a battlefield where most everyone has accepted that possibility of imminent death, such things will have little impact. The answer is obvious for the little ninja, the execution of it less so.

Yasuie gets the Elusives into Kyoto in pure Yasuie fashion. He’s spent the day making himself look and feel as destitute as possible and instructed the children to cover themselves in dirt before their rendezvous, and he sells the notion – with expansive theatricality and collateral damage – that he’s a widower who’s been offered a job in Kyou, a last chance for a lowly samurai to provide for his desperate children. It works, but that’s really the easy part – now the party truly enters the lion’s den, and I don’t mean the crush of tourists. There will indeed be much for the Young Lord to learn here, but he’ll have to do so right under the enemy’s nose.