So many marvelous things to do, once I’ve won, if I win, when I win. We are a very predictable people.
It will be a golden age. Ochiba and the Heir will majestically hold Court in Osaka, and from time to time we will bow before them and continue to rule in his name, outside of Osaka Castle. Within three years or so, the Son of Heaven will invite me to dissolve the Council and become Shōgun during the remainder of my nephew’s minority. The Regents will press me to accept and, reluctantly, I will accept. In a year or two, without ceremony, I will resign in Sudara’s favor and retain power as usual and keep my eyes firmly on Osaka Castle. I will continue to wait patiently and one day those two usurpers inside will make a mistake and then they will be gone and somehow Osaka Castle will be gone, just another dream within a dream, and the real prize of the Great Game that began as soon as I could think, which became possible the moment the Taikō died, the real prize will be won: the Shōgunate.
That’s what I’ve fought for and planned for all my life. I, alone, am heir to the realm. I will be Shōgun. And I have started a dynasty.
It’s all possible now because of Mariko-san and the barbarian stranger who came out of the eastern sea.
Mariko-san, it was your karma to die gloriously and live forever. Anjin-san, my friend, it is your karma never to leave this land. It is mine to be Shōgun.
Kogo, the goshawk, fluttered on his wrist and settled herself, watching him. Toranaga smiled at her. I did not choose to be what I am. It is my karma.
That year, at dawn on the twenty-first day of the tenth month, the Month without Gods, the main armies clashed. It was in the mountains near Sekigahara, astride the North Road, the weather foul—fog, then sleet. By late afternoon Toranaga had won the battle and the slaughter began. Forty thousand heads were taken.
Three days later Ishido was captured alive and Toranaga genially reminded him of the prophecy and sent him in chains to Osaka for public viewing, ordering the eta to plant the General Lord Ishido’s feet firm in the earth, with only his head outside the earth, and to invite passersby to saw at the most famous neck in the realm with a bamboo saw. Ishido lingered three days and died very old.
a cognizant original v5 release october 26 2010
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Copyright © 1975 by James Clavell
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eISBN: 978-0-307-49089-6
November 1986
OPM 80 79
v3.0_r2
James Clavell Page 141