Daijiro's City Page
The following info is all either common knowledge or easily obtained by asking around.
Hitotsubashi Daijiro arrived briefly in Portsmouth in 1905, just at the start of Prince Cynric’s reign, during the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War. One of several Japanese Kindred present at the time, Daijiro and the elder who was always in close association were both withered, corpse-like vampires. To those present at the time, Daijiro clearly manifested a strong distaste for the elder Kindred he traveled with, and a discomfort with his political and social situation, and carried himself with a noble bearing despite the low regard which the other Asian vampires accorded him. As one of the few present who was even passingly fluent in English, however, Daijiro was afforded a number of opportunities to speak with the Prince and his court, and made contacts that persisted in his return to Japan.
In 1930, Daijiro returned to Portsmouth, where for a number of decades (until the late 1970’s) he was an on-and-off presence, a curiosity of the court. He was an eloquent and social fixture in the courts, dressed in a samurai’s garb and wearing an expressive mask from the Noh theater tradition over his corpse-like features. However, the aura of loss and displacement he radiated, and the stench of decay and silence of the grave he bore, combined with his outsider status to prevent him from being a real power in the area, and few remarked for long when he was or was not present. For the most part, it is unknown and not of much consequence whether he spent the years not in Portsmouth residing in Japan, traveling, or in torpor.
Upon his return to the public eye in 1978, however, much of that changed. He began to be a more vocal and active presence, and with the rising prominence of Japan and the cross-cultural acceptance growing in the world, his words took more weight. He requested and was granted Domain over the city’s morgues, and became a notably close associate of Dr. Thaddeus Grey, one of the Prince’s childer, soon forming a public Coterie. Meanwhile, he sporadically assisted investigations of the Hound’s Pack until its dissolution in the mid-80’s. When the Pack re-formed in 1993, he was invited to be a full member. Recently, his Noh masks and his foreign accent have been frequent in court, and as he has become more public, his temperament has become better known. Something was his in the past, or should have been, and he feels it was stolen away.
Daijiro is a shadow-dweller, an exile, a dessicated freak, and a dealer in death and fear who acts as though he should have been a lord, a powerful youth, and a courtier-philosopher. He is an exercise in conflicting desires, warring outlooks, sublimated bitterness, and contradiction, packaged in a rigid samurai code of conduct that he holds to despite its anachronism. He is more at home here, on the foreign coast of New England, than he has ever been elsewhere, ever since the world as he knew it began to fail around him in his boyhood. He has come so close to tasting power, so often, and watched it shatter around him. Now he simply survives, does what he thinks he must, watches the shattering, contemplates the flesh, reflects on the beauty and the irony of court and life, and wields his anger and the terrors he has seen as a weapon and a shield.
Hitotsubashi Daijiro arrived briefly in Portsmouth in 1905, just at the start of Prince Cynric’s reign, during the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War. One of several Japanese Kindred present at the time, Daijiro and the elder who was always in close association were both withered, corpse-like vampires. To those present at the time, Daijiro clearly manifested a strong distaste for the elder Kindred he traveled with, and a discomfort with his political and social situation, and carried himself with a noble bearing despite the low regard which the other Asian vampires accorded him. As one of the few present who was even passingly fluent in English, however, Daijiro was afforded a number of opportunities to speak with the Prince and his court, and made contacts that persisted in his return to Japan.
In 1930, Daijiro returned to Portsmouth, where for a number of decades (until the late 1970’s) he was an on-and-off presence, a curiosity of the court. He was an eloquent and social fixture in the courts, dressed in a samurai’s garb and wearing an expressive mask from the Noh theater tradition over his corpse-like features. However, the aura of loss and displacement he radiated, and the stench of decay and silence of the grave he bore, combined with his outsider status to prevent him from being a real power in the area, and few remarked for long when he was or was not present. For the most part, it is unknown and not of much consequence whether he spent the years not in Portsmouth residing in Japan, traveling, or in torpor.
Upon his return to the public eye in 1978, however, much of that changed. He began to be a more vocal and active presence, and with the rising prominence of Japan and the cross-cultural acceptance growing in the world, his words took more weight. He requested and was granted Domain over the city’s morgues, and became a notably close associate of Dr. Thaddeus Grey, one of the Prince’s childer, soon forming a public Coterie. Meanwhile, he sporadically assisted investigations of the Hound’s Pack until its dissolution in the mid-80’s. When the Pack re-formed in 1993, he was invited to be a full member. Recently, his Noh masks and his foreign accent have been frequent in court, and as he has become more public, his temperament has become better known. Something was his in the past, or should have been, and he feels it was stolen away.
Daijiro is a shadow-dweller, an exile, a dessicated freak, and a dealer in death and fear who acts as though he should have been a lord, a powerful youth, and a courtier-philosopher. He is an exercise in conflicting desires, warring outlooks, sublimated bitterness, and contradiction, packaged in a rigid samurai code of conduct that he holds to despite its anachronism. He is more at home here, on the foreign coast of New England, than he has ever been elsewhere, ever since the world as he knew it began to fail around him in his boyhood. He has come so close to tasting power, so often, and watched it shatter around him. Now he simply survives, does what he thinks he must, watches the shattering, contemplates the flesh, reflects on the beauty and the irony of court and life, and wields his anger and the terrors he has seen as a weapon and a shield.