(Voice actor) Mr.David Radtke

The Edo period is when the Tokugawa administration ruled over Japan. They say there was a fish vender named Isshin Tasuke during the time of the third Shogun, Iemitsu Tokugawa. He was actually a fictional character but was said to be modeled after a real person, the master of a long standing fish store in Odawara called “Awabiya". Isshin Tasuke is said to have been a vassal of Hikozaemon Okubo, a younger brother of Tadayo Okubo who was the domain lord of Odawara at the time. From this too, Isshin Tasuke seems to have had some kind of connection to Odawara. Isshin Tasuke’s master, Hikozaemon Okubo served Ieyasu Tokugawa as a vassal and was the author of “Tales from Mikawa" that depicted samurai who lived in the time of the warring states. His reputation as the “wise advisor to a lord” was shaped from this book which he wrote with the intention of teaching young samurai the real samurai way through his own experiences. He is portrayed in kodan (*storytelling performances) as a bold advisor who could talk frankly even to Ieyasu. The fact that a bold and frank Hikozaemon had a quick tempered but compassionate servant like Isshin Tasuke may suggest to us that upper vassals and commoners in the town of Edo used to have very close relationships back then. The society became stabilized during the time of Iemitsu Tokugawa. Instead of the warrior samurai of Hikozaemon’s time, samurai with academic and political powers were taking over the world. Would it be too much to assume that Hikozaemon and the supporters of the old samurai way, worrying about young samurais losing the samurai instincts, were subtly criticizing the new type of samurai of the Tokugawa regime by these stories? What is your impression of Isshin Tasuke’s story?