Someone had tapped him on the shoulder. Turning casually, he had seen a man in a frock coat standing there, a man with a handlebar mustache and piercing eyes about whose bitter mouth there played a smile that was half aggressive and half placating.

‘Hello, Shirakawa! I still have to thank you for all you did for me in Fukushima.’

It was a young man called Hanashima, a follower of Unno Takachu, the political leader. At the period when Shirakawa, acting under orders from Governor Kawashima, had clamped down so fiercely on the civil rights movement in Fukushima, Unno had been bound fast and subjected to merciless interrogation, then tried in Tokyo and sent to jail where he was reported to have died of disease. Hanashima had apparently bragged that he could happily eat Shirakawa’s flesh and still hunger for revenge. Now, the broken-down, disheveled man of those days had given way to a figure of neat elegance with abundant hair parted in the very center and an aura of cologne that suggested a recent return from the West. Shirakawa was understandably taken aback.

Hanashima threw out his chest and let out a peal of laughter, from sheer pleasure, it seemed, at having so startled the normally imperturbable Shirakawa.

‘Don’t look so surprised. I suppose you thought I was dead, didn’t you? But come – how silly of you! What would the people do if I died while cunning officials like you were still at large? Look – you see this nightless city with its glittering chandeliers? Do you know what it is? It’s the death throe of the clan government – the flaring-up of the candle before it flickers out! However much you struggle against it, the Constitution will be promulgated in another year or two. Then, like it or not, there’ll be a National Assembly. The members will be chosen by the people, so there’ll be no more of your officials appointed at the discretion of the government. Your reign will soon be over. Very soon you lackeys of bureaucracy will be done for. You’ll see the rising strength of the masses – you men who use your authority only to grab after personal profit.’