<p>Many years ago, long before the present prosaic era in ancient japan, there lived in Yedo a young samurai named Toshika. His family belonged to the aristocratic rank of the hatamoto samurai, those knights who possessed the right to march to battle directly under the Shogun's flag (hata), and his father was a high official in the Tokugawa Shogunate.<br>Toshika, whose disposition was of a dreamy and indolent nature with scholarly tastes, ha...