TAIKO: AN EPIC NOVEL OF WAR AND GLORY IN FEUDAL JAPAN

by Eiji Yoshikawa

  This report made everyone in the castle turn pale. But Ieyasu continued his military preparations. He was especially careful to secure his lines of communication, and had been taking care of the defense of that area until nearly the end of the Tenth Month. And, to secure Futamata Castle at the Tenryu River, he had sent reinforcements of troops,weapons, and supplies.

  The army left Hamamatsu Castle, advanced as far as Kanmashi village on the bank of the Tenryu River, and found the camp of the Kai army, each position linked to Shingen’s headquarters like spokes around a hub.

  "Ah, just as you'd expect." Even Ieyasu stood on the hill for a moment with his arms folded and let out a sigh of admiration. The banners in Shingen's main camp were visible even at this distance. From closer up, one could make out the inscription. They were the words of the famous Sun Tzu, familiar to enemy and ally alike.

  Fast as the wind,

  Quiet as a forest,

  Ardent as fire,

  Still as a mountain.

  Still as a mountain, neither Shingen nor Ieyasu made any move for several days. With the Tenryu River between the opposing camps, winter came in with the Eleventh Month.

  * * *

  Two things there are

  Surpassing Ieyasu:

  Ieyasu's horned helmet

  And Honda Heihachiro.

  One of the Takeda men had posted this lampoon on the hill of Hitokotozaka. Ieyasu's men had been soundly defeated and routed there—or at least that was the opinion of the Takeda ranks, elated by their victory. But as the poem admitted, the Tokugawa had some fine men, and Honda Heihachiro's retreat had been admirable.

  Ieyasu was certainly not unworthy as an enemy. But in this next battle the entire forces of the Takeda would be up against the entire forces of the Tokugawa. They would strike at one another in a battle that would decide the outcome of the war.

  Anticipation of the fight only heightened the spirits of the men of Kai. That was the kind of composure they had. Shingen moved his main camp to Edaijima and had his son, Katsuyori, and Anayama Baisetsu move their forces against Futamata Castle, with strict orders not to delay.

  In response, Ieyasu quickly sent reinforcements, saying "Futama Castle is an impor­tant line of defense. If the enemy captures it, they'll have an advantageous place from which to make their attack."

  Ieyasu himself gave orders to his rear guard, but the ever-changing Takeda army quickly went through yet another transformation and began pressing in on all sides. It seemed that if he made a false move now, he would be cut off from his headquarters in Hamamatsu.

  Futamata Castle's water supply—its weakest point—was cut by the enemy. On one side the castle abutted the Tenryu River, and the water that sustained the lives of the sol­diers inside had to be lifted into the castle with a bucket lowered from a tower. To put an end to this, the Takeda forces launched rafts from upstream and undermined the base of the tower. From that day on, the soldiers in the castle were afflicted by a lack of water, even though the river flowed right in front of their walls.

  On the evening of the nineteenth, the garrison surrendered. When Shingen learned that the castle had capitulated, he gave new orders: "Nobumori will occupy the castle. Sano, Toyoda, and Iwata will maintain communications and get ready along the enemy's road of retreat."

  Like a go master watching each move of the stones, Shingen was cautious with his army's formation and advance. The twenty-seven thousand soldiers of Kai moved slowly but surely, like black clouds across the land, as the beat of the drums resounded up to heaven. After that, Shingen's main force crossed Iidani Plain and started to move into eastern Mikawa.

  It was midday on the twenty-first, and the cold was sharp enough to slice off a man's nose and ears. A red dust rose in Mikatagahara, mocking the weak winter sun. There had been no rain for days; the air was parched.

  "On to Iidani!" came the order. It caused a divergence of opinion among Shingen's generals.

  "If we're going to Iidani, he must have decided to surround Hamamatsu Castle. Wouldn't that be a mistake?"

  Some had misgivings because the Oda troops had been arriving at Hamamatsu, and no one knew for sure how many soldiers might be there now. Such was the secret intelligence that had been trickling in since the morning. No matter how much they pressed the enemy, his real situation could not be calculated. The reports were always the same: there was some truth to the rumors that were circulating in the villages along the road— which probably contained a good many of the enemy's own false reports—that a large Oda force was heading south to join Ieyasu's troops at Hamamatsu.

  Shingen's generals offered their opinions:

  "If Nobunaga arrives with a great army acting as a rear guard for Hamamatsu, you should probably give the matter careful thought right here, my lord."

  "If the attack on Hamamatsu Castle takes us into the New Year, our men will have to winter in the field. With constant surprise attacks from the enemy, our supplies will run out and the troops will fall victim to disease. In any case, the men will suffer."

  "On the other hand, I fear that they may cut off our retreat along the coast and elsewhere."

  "When reinforcements are added to the Oda rear guard, our men will be trapped on a narrow strip of enemy territory—a situation that will not easily be reversed. If this hap­pens, Your Lordship's dream of marching into Kyoto will be frustrated, and we will have to open up a bloody path to retreat. Since we're mobilized at this point, why not go on with your foremost objective and march on the capital instead of attacking Hamamatsu Castle?"

  Shingen sat on a camp stool in the middle of his generals, his eyes narrow slits, like needles. He nodded at each of their opinions, then said deliberately, "All your opinions are extremely reasonable. But I am certain that the Oda reinforcements will amount to no more than a small force of three or four thousand men. If the greater part of the Oda army was to turn toward Hamamatsu, the Asai and Asakura, whom I have already con­tacted, would strike Nobunaga from the rear. Furthermore, the shogun in Kyoto would send messages to the warrior-monks and their allies, urging them on. The Oda are not a major worry for us."

  He stopped for a moment and then went on calmly, "Entering Kyoto has been my fervent desire from the very beginning. But if we just bypassed Ieyasu now, when we got to Gifu, Ieyasu would come to the aid of the Oda by obstructing our rear. Isn't the best policy to smash Ieyasu at Hamamatsu Castle, before the Oda can send him suffi­cient reinforcements?"

  There was nothing the generals could do but accept his decision, not just because he was their lord but because they had faith in him as a superior tactician.

  As they returned to their regiments, however, there was one among them, Yamagata Masakage, who thought as he looked up at the cold, pale winter sun, This man lives for war, and he has an uncommon genius as a general, but this time…

  It was the night of the twenty-first when the report of the sudden change in direc­tion of the Kai army arrived at Hamamatsu Castle. Just three thousand men under Takigawa Kazumasu and Sakuma Nobumori had arrived at the castle as reinforcements from Nobunaga.

  "A miserably small number," a Tokugawa retainer said, disappointed, but Ieyasu displayed neither joy nor dissatisfaction. And as the reports came in one after another, a war council began, at which many of the castles generals and the Oda commanders prudently recommended a temporary retreat to Okazaki.

  Ieyasu alone did not move from his former position of holding out for battle. "Are we going to retreat and not let one arrow fly in reprisal while the enemy insults my province?"

  There was an elevated plain north of Hamamatsu, more than two leagues in breadth and three leagues in length—Mikatagahara.

  In the early dawn of the twenty-second, Ieyasu's army left Hamamatsu and took a position north of an escarpment. There they waited for the approach of the Takeda forces. The sun rose, then the sky clouded over. The silhouette of a single bird peacefully crossed the wide sky above the dry, wilted plain. From time to time the scouts of both arm
ies, looking like the shadows of birds, crawled through the dry grass and then hurried back to their lines. That morning Shingen's army, which had previously camped on the plain, crossed the Tenryu River, continued marching, and arrived at Saigadani a little after noon.

  An order went out to the entire army to halt. Oyamada Nobushige and the other generals collected at Shingen's side to ascertain the positions of the enemy that would soon be directly in front of them. After a momentary deliberation, Shingen ordered one company to be left behind as a rear guard, while the main army continued as planned across the plain of Mikatagahara.

  Nearby was the village of Iwaibe. The vanguard of the army had already entered the village. The men at the head of this serpentine procession of well over twenty thousand men could not see the men at the rear of it, even if they stood in their stirrups.

  Shingen turned and said to the retainers around him, "Something's going on at the rear!"

  The men stared hard, trying to pierce the yellow dust rising in the distance. It seemed that the rear guard was under enemy attack. "They must have been surrounded."

  "They're only two or three thousand! If they're surrounded, they'll be wiped out." The horses had lowered their heads and were moving off at a clatter—but the gener­als all sympathized with the men beneath the dust. Grasping their reins, they watched together uneasily. Shingen was silent, speaking to no one. Though it was what they had expected, their men were being struck down and falling one after another in the far-off cloud of dust, even as they looked on.

  Some surely had a son, a father, or a brother in the rear guard. And not just among the retainers and generals that had gathered around Shingen. The whole army—right down to the foot soldiers—now looked to the side as they marched.

  Riding up along the column, Oyamada Nobushige galloped to Shingen's side. Nobushige's voice was unusually excited and could clearly be heard by those nearby as he spoke from horseback: "My lord! We'll never have an opportunity like this again to massacre ten thousand of the enemy. I've just come from reconnoitering the enemy formation attacking our rear guard. Each company is spread out in a stork-wing formation. At a glance, it looks like a huge army, but the second and third ranks have no depth at all, and Ieyasu's center is protected by a small force hardly amounting to anything. Not only that, but the companies are in extreme disorder, and it's clear that the Oda reinforcements have no will to fight. If you'll take this opportunity and attack, my lord, you are bound to win."

  As Nobushige blurted this out, Shingen looked back and then ordered some scouts to verify Nobushige's report.

  Hearing the tone of Shingen's voice, Nobushige reined in his horse a little and held himself in check.

  The two scouts galloped away. It was known that the enemy force was much smaller than their own, and Nobushige respected Shingen's refusal to make unconsidered movements, but he himself had the impatience of an unruly horse stamping at the ground and he was almost unable to restrain himself.

  A military opportunity can disappear in the instant it takes lightning to strike!

  The two scouts returned at a gallop and made their report: "Oyamada Nobushige's observations and our own reconnaissance are in complete agreement. This is an opportunity sent by heaven."

  Shingen's voice boomed out. The white mane of his helmet shook back and forth as he gave out commands to the generals on his right and left. The conch rang out. When the twenty thousand men heard its sound, as it reverberated from the vanguard to the rear of the army, the marching line broke up with a pounding of the earth. And just as it appeared to be breaking up completely, it re-formed into a fish-scale formation and marched toward the Tokugawa army to the beating of drums.

  Ieyasu was overawed when he saw the speed with which Shingen's army was moving and how it responded to his every command. He said, "If I ever reach Shingen's age, just once I'd like to be able to move a large army as skillfully as he does. Having seen his style of command, I wouldn't want him killed, even if someone offered to poison him right now."

  Shingen's ability to command impressed even the generals of the enemy to that extent. Battles were his art. His brave generals and intrepid warriors decorated their horses, armor, and banners to achieve a more glorious passage to the next world. It was almost a though tens of thousands of hawks had been released at once from Shingen's fist.

  In a single breath, they dashed close enough to see the enemies' faces. The Tokugawa turned like a huge wheel, holding their stork-wing formation, and faced the enemy like ahuman dam.

  The dust raised by the two armies darkened the sky. Only the spears shining in the setting sun glittered in the darkness. The spear corps of Kai and that of Mikawa had advanced to the front and now stood facing each other. When either side raised a war cry the other side answered—almost as an echo. When the clouds of dust began to settle, the two sides could clearly see each other, but the distance that separated them was still considerable. No one would take a step out from the twin lines of spears.

  At a time like this, even the bravest warriors shook with fear. One could say they were “scared," but this was completely different from ordinary fear. It was not that their wills were shaken; when they trembled, it was because they were making the change from everyday life to the life of battle. This took only seconds, but in that instant a man's skin turned to gooseflesh as purple as a rooster's comb.

  For a province at war, the life of a soldier was no different from that of the farmer carrying the hoe or the weaver at his loom. Each was equally valuable, and if the province should fall, all would perish with it. Those who nevertheless ignored the rise and fall of their province and led lives of sloth were just like the dirt that clings to the human body—of less value than a single eyelash.

  All of that aside, it was said that the instant of meeting the enemy face to face was terrifying. Heaven and earth were dark even at noon; You could not see what was right before your eyes, you could not go forward or retreat, and you were only jostled and shoved around on a line of readied spearheads.

  And the man who was brave enough to step out from this line before all the others was granted the title of the First Spear. The man who became the First Spear won glory in front of the thousands of warriors of both armies. That first step, however, was not so eaily taken.

  Then one man stepped forward.

  "Kato Kuroji of the Tokugawa clan is the First Spear!" a samurai shouted out. Kato's armor was plain and his name unknown; he was most likely a common samurai of the Tougawa clan.

  A second man dashed from the Tokugawa ranks. "Kuroji's younger brother, Genjiro, is the Second Spear!"

  The older brother was swallowed by the enemy and disappeared into the confusion. "I'm the Second Spear! I'm Kato Kuroji's younger brother! Take a good look, you Takeda insects!" Genjiro brandished his spear at the mass of warriors four or five times. A Kai soldier, turning to meet him, yelled an insult and leaped forward to strike, Genjiro fell backward, but grabbed the spear that had slipped across the breastplate of his armor and jumped to his feet with a curse.

  By that time his comrades had pushed their way through, but the Takeda had also turned and now came charging toward them. The scene was like billowing waves of blood, spears, and armor crashing into one other. Trampled by his own comrades and the horses' hooves, Genjiro screamed for his brother. Crawling on his hands and knees, however, he grabbed a Kai soldier by the foot and brought him down. He immediately cut off man's head and threw it away. After that, no one saw him again. The battle erupted in total confusion. But the clash between the right wing of the Tokugawa and the left wing of the Takeda had not reached this pitch of violence. The lines were spread out over a wide area. The droning of the drums and the sound of the conch shells rang within the dust clouds. Somehow, Shingen's retainers seemed to be situated to the rear. Neither army had the time to send their gunners to the front, so the Takeda sent the Mizumata—lightly armored samurai armed with stone slings—to the front line. The stones they shot fell like rain. Fa
cing them were the forces of Sakai Tadatsugu, and behind them the reinforcements from the Oda clan. Tadatsugu was on horseback, clicking his tongue in annoyance.

  The stones raining down on them from the front line of the Kai army were hitting his horse and making it go wild. And not only his horse. The horses of the mounted men who were waiting for their chance behind the spearmen reared and became so panicked they broke formation. The spearmen waited for orders from Tadatsugu, who had been holding them back with hoarse cries: "Not yet! Wait until I give the word!"

  The slingers on the front line of the enemy had played the part of army sappers open­ing up an avenue of attack for the main force. Therefore, although the Mizumata corps was not particularly fearsome, the hand-picked troops behind them were waiting for their chance. Here were the banners of the Yamagata, Naito, and Oyamada corps, famed for their valor even within the Kai army.

  It looks as though they're trying to provoke us by sending in the Mizumata, Tadatsugu thought. He could see through the enemy's strategy, but the left wing of the Tokugawa troops was already engaged in hand-to-hand combat, so the second line of the Oda was on its own. Furthermore, he couldn't be sure how Ieyasu was viewing this from his position in the center.

  "Charge!" Tadatsugu yelled, opening his mouth almost wide enough to snap the cords of his helmet. He knew full well that he was falling into the enemy's trap, but he had been unable to gain the advantage since the beginning of the battle. The defeat of the Tokugawa and their allies began here.

  The shower of rocks suddenly stopped. At the same moment the seven or eight hun­dred Mizumata broke off to the right and left and abruptly fell back.

  "We're done for!" Tadatsugu yelled.

  By the time he had seen the second line of the enemy, it was already too late. Lying concealed between the slingers and the cavalry was yet another line of men: the gunners. Each man was lying on his stomach in the tall grass, his gun at the ready.