Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/59

 Chiuro to whom his addresses were thus ceremoniously conveyed, might reject them if she pleased. Naturally no small exercise of resolution was required to take such a stand. The young lady must be prepared to encounter threats that her father's estates would be confiscated if she continued obdurate,—a serious penalty, for the Chiuro were always daughters of bannerets,—and she must at least reckon on her own dismissal from Court. Yet several instances of refusal are on record, and it does not appear that the threat of confiscation was ever carried out. Indeed, such an arbitrary act would not have been endured. There appears to be something not easily explicable in the idea that a girl of comparatively humble origin, having wittingly accepted a post which exposed her to be the object of the Shōgun's importunities, and being well aware that the proposed honour might be turned into an instrument for satisfying high ambitions, should nevertheless reject it. Perhaps the explanation is to be sought in the fact that this side of Court life presented features which could not but shock the modesty of any lady. In the first place, those of the Shōgun's Chiuro who chanced not to be favoured with his attention,—and there were many such, since these ladies obtained their place by influence, not on account of personal attractions or accomplishments, —so far from finding themselves discredited by the