Around the time when the castle tower of the Matsumoto castle was finished, Kiyomasa Katou came to visit after his trip to Edo.Yasunaga Ishikawa, the man who had built the castle, welcomed Kiyomasa, and when Kiyomasa was about to return home, Yasunaga offered to give him one of the two finest hoses. Then Kiyomasa said, “How can I choose between two horses that a cognoscente like you have chosen for me?” and took both of the horses with him.

If he had chosen one of the horses, the other will automatically become a dray horse.If Kiyomasa had chosen the inferior horse, people will laugh at him for not having the skills to judge horses. By taking both of the horses with him, Kiyomasa avoided all of the trouble. When people heard about this story they were impressed by his intelligence and exclaimed, “Kiyomasa is such a genius!”This story is in the “Biography of Kiyomasa Kato” written in the Edo era.