In his heart, Goto felt just the same as his men, but when he saw the expressions on the faces of the soldiers around him, he quickly pulled himself together. He spoke to his men with intentional cheer. "What? Sounds of the koto are coming from the enemy imp? What fools! Why would they have a koto? That shows how soft the enemy warriors really are. They've probably gotten tired of the long campaign, have grabbed some singing girl from a village, and are trying to amuse themselves. For minds to be so disheveled is unpardonable. The steel and rock-hard souls of true warriors are not so weak!”
As he spoke, each man awoke from his reverie.
"Instead of listening to such foolery, let each man guard his own post. These castles are just like a dike that holds back a flood of dirty water. The dike is meandering and long, but if one little bit of it crumbles, the entire structure will collapse. Each of you should stand, and linked breast to breast, not move even if you die. As for Miki Castle, if it were said that someone abandoned his post and the entire castle collapsed as a result, his ancestors would weep from beneath the earth and his descendants would bear the shame of the province and be nothing more than laughing-stocks."
Goto was urging his men on like this when he saw two or three soldiers running up to the castle. They quickly informed him that the enemy general whose visit had been announced earlier had come as far as the palisade at the bottom of the slope.
Kanbei arrived, carried in a litter. The litter was a light structure made of wood, straw, and bamboo. There was no roof, and the sides were low. He had learned to brandish his long sword from the litter when he fought with the enemy in battle. But tonight he had come as an envoy of peace.
Over a light yellow robe, Kanbei wore armor threaded with pale green, and a coat of silver embroidery on a white background. Luckily he was a small man, about five feet tall and lighter than average, so the men who carried him were not uncomfortable, and he himself did not feel cramped.
Footsteps could soon be heard inside the palisade gate. A number of soldiers from the castle had run back down the slope.
"Envoy, you may pass through!" they announced. At the same time Kanbei heard this stern shout, the palisade gate before him opened. In the darkness he thought that he could see a hundred or more soldiers jostling together. Each time the wave of men pitched and rolled, the glint of their spears pierced his eyes.
"I'm sorry to trouble you," Kanbei said to the man who had shouted at him. "I am lame, so I'll be coming through in a litter. Please excuse my lack of manners." With this apology, he turned and spoke to his son, Shojumaru, the only attendant who had accompanied him, and ordered, "Walk in front of me."
"Yes, sir." Edging around his father's litter, Shojumaru walked straight through the enemies' spears.
The four soldiers shouldering the litter followed through the palisade gate behind Shojumaru. When they saw how composed the thirteen-year-old boy and the lame warrior looked as they walked into their camp, the bloodthirsty and ravenous soldiers could hardly feel any anger, even though they were looking at the enemy. They could now understand that the enemy was fighting this battle with a determination and perseverance equal to their own and so could sympathize with the envoys as warriors. Strangely, they even felt a sort of compassion for them.
After passing through the palisade and the castle gate, Kanbei and his son quickly came to the main entrance, where Goto and his picked troops were waiting with solemn indifference.
I can see how this castle has been defended by these men, Kanbei thought as he approached the gate. The castle won't fall even though there's no food. They'll hold out, no matter what the cost. He could see that the courage of the men had not waned in the least, and he felt the weight of his own responsibility even more. This feeling immediately became transformed into a deep concern for the grave situation that Hideyoshi now faced. Kanbei silently renewed his pledge in his own heart. Somehow, he thought, this mission I've been entrusted with has got to succeed.
Goto and his men were surprised by the envoy's demeanor. Here was the general of the attacking troops, but, instead of looking at them with arrogance, he had come accompanied by only a charming young man. Not only that, but when this Kanbei greeted Goto, he hurriedly had his litter lowered to the ground and, standing on his legs, greeted him with a smile.
"General Goto, I am Kuroda Kanbei, and I am here as Lord Hideyoshi's envoy. I'm certainly obliged that everyone has come out to meet me."
Kanbei was completely unaffected. As an envoy from the enemy, he had made an exceptionally favorable impression. This was probably because he had approached them from his heart, disregarding concern for victory or defeat, and had acted with the custom and understanding that both he and his enemy were samurai. This, however, was not reason enough for the enemy to accept the point of his mission: to persuade them to capitulate. Kanbei talked with Goto in a room in the lightless castle for an hour or so and then rose from his seat, saying, "Well then, I'll wait for your answer."
“I’ll give you one after conferring with Lord Nagaharu and the other generals," Goto said, also standing up. Thus the pattern of the interview that night indicated that the negotiations were to be successful beyond Kanbei's and Hideyoshi's expectations—but five days passed, then seven, then ten, and still there was no sign of an answer from the castle. The Twelfth Month came and went, and the opposing armies greeted the third New Year of the siege. In Hideyoshi's camp, the men at least had some rice cakes to eat and a little sake to drink, but they could hardly forget that the men in the castle, although they were the enemy, had nothing to eat and were barely holding on to their fragile lives. From the time of Kanbei's mission at the end of the Eleventh Month, Miki Castle had truly sunk into desolation and silence. It was understood that the soldiers lacked even bullets to shoot at the attackers. Hideyoshi, however, still refrained from an all-out offensive, saying, "Perhaps the castle will not hold out much longer."
If, then, the siege was simply an endurance contest, Hideyoshi's present position was hardly difficult or unfavorable. But the fact was that neither the camp at Mount Hirai nor Hideyoshi's position were matters of his own private battle. He was essentially striking against one link in the enemy alliance made up of those who opposed Nobunaga's supremacy; and he was nothing more than one of the limbs of Nobunaga's body that was trying to break open a hole to break through the encircling chain of his enemies. Little by little, therefore, Nobunaga had started to wonder about the lack of action in the protracted western campaign.
And Hideyoshi's enemies on Nobunaga's field staff were wondering about his choice of commander, saying that Hideyoshi's responsibilities had been too heavy for him from the start.
His rivals cited as proof their feelings that, either Hideyoshi was wasting military expenses in a bid for popularity among the local people, or he was not very strict about the prohibition of sake in camp because he was afraid of the soldiers' antipathy. But whatever his rivals wished to question, it was easy to see that, one by one, all the trifling matters that were not worth reaching Nobunaga's ears were heard in Azuchi and were considered material for slander. But Hideyoshi never paid much attention to the talk. Certainly he was a human being and had normal feelings like everyone else, and it wasn't that he didn't notice such things; he simply didn't worry about them.
"Trivial matters are nothing but that," he said. "Whenever they're investigated, they'll be cleared up." The only thing that did make him unhappy was the thought that with every passing day, the anti-Nobunaga coalition was getting stronger: the powerful Mori clan was building up its defenses, making plans with the Honganji, calling on the faraway Takeda and Hojo in the east, and inciting the clans of the Japan Sea coast. How strong these forces really were could be understood by observing the fact that Araki Murashige's castle in Itami, which the central army was presently besieging, had still not fallen.
What Murashige was depending on, and what the Bessho clan was stubbornly holding on to, was not only their own strength and their
own castle walls. Soon the Mori army will come to our aid! Nobunaga will be defeated soon! That was it. Generally, the worst state of affairs was not in the enemy Nobunaga faced directly but in the enemy waiting in the shadows.
The two ancient forces of the Honganji and the Mori were quite correctly Nobunaga's enemies, but it was Araki Murashige at Itami and Bessho Nagaharu, at Miki Castle, who were grappling directly with Nobunaga's ambition.
That evening Hideyoshi suddenly decided to have a bonfire lit, and was warding off the night cold, when he turned to see the carefree young pages drawing up close to the fire. They were half naked even in the cold of the First Month, and were making a noise over something that seemed to be amusing them.
"Sakichi! Shojumaru! What in the world are you two in an uproar about?" Hideyoshi asked, almost envious of their lightheartedness.
"Nothing at all," answered Shojumaru, who had recently become a page, and he hurriedly dressed and adjusted his armor.
"My lord," Ishida Sakichi interjected. "Shojumaru's embarrassed to talk to you about it because it's disgusting. But I'm going to speak up, because if we don't tell you, yc might get suspicious."
"All right. What is this disgusting thing?"
"We've been picking lice off each other."
"Lice?"
"Yes. At first someone found one crawling on my collar, then Toranosuke found one on Sengoku's sleeve. Finally, everybody was saying that everyone else was infested, and in the middle of it all, when we came here to warm ourselves by the fire, we found lice crawling all over everyone's armor. Now they've started to itch, so we're going to massacre the entire enemy army. We're going to purge our underwear just like the burning of Mount Hiei!"
"Is that so?" Hideyoshi laughed. "I guess the lice are also worn out from being besieged in this long campaign."
"But our situation is different from that of Miki Castle. The lice have plenty of provisions, so if we don't burn them out, they'll never give up."
"That's enough. I'm beginning to itch, too."
"You haven't taken a bath for over ten days, have you, my lord? I'm sure the 'enemy’ must be holding out all over you in swarms!"
"That's enough, Sakichi!" To the delight of the pages, Hideyoshi rushed over and shook his body at them as further proof that the lice were not swarming over them alone. They laughed and danced around.
Just then a soldier peeked in from outside the camp enclosure at the happy, laughing voices and the billowing warm smoke.
"Is Shojumaru here?"
"Yes, I'm here," Shojumaru said. The soldier was one of his father's retainers.
"If you're not busy with some errand, your father would like to see you."
Shojumaru asked for Hideyoshi's permission. Since this request was not ordinarily made, Hideyoshi looked surprised, but quickly gave his assent. Shojumaru ran off, accompanied by his father's retainer. Fires were burning at all of the small encampments, and every one of the units was in a cheerful mood. They had already run out of rice cakes and sake, but some of the New Year's spirit remained. This evening marked the fifteenth day of the First Month. Shojumaru's father was not in camp. Despite the cold, he was sitting on a camp stool that had been placed at the crest of a hill far from the makeshift barracks.
There was no shelter from the wind, and it stung the flesh and almost froze the blood. But Kanbei stared out intently into the dark expanse, as though he were a wooden statue of a warrior.
"Father, it's me."
Kanbei moved slightly as Shojumaru stepped to his side and knelt.
“Did you receive your lord's permission to come?"
"Yes, and I came right over."
"Well then, sit on my camp stool for just a little."
"Yes, sir."
"Look at Miki Castle. The stars are not out, and there's not a single lamp lit in the castle, so you probably can't see a thing. But the castle will appear dimly out of that void as your eyes get accustomed to the darkness."
"Is that what you wanted me for, sir?"
"Yes," Kanbei said, as he yielded the camp stool to his son. "For the last two or three days I've been watching the castle, and somehow I get the feeling that there is movement going on inside. We haven't seen a bit of smoke for half a year, but some is rising now, and perhaps that's evidence that the grove that envelops the castle—and the only thing that screens it from the outside—is being cut down and used for firewood. If you listen very carefully late at night, it seems that you can hear voices, but it's difficult to say whether they are crying or laughing. Whichever it is, the fact is that something unusual has happened inside the castle over the New Year."
"Do you really think so?"
"There's nothing that has actually appeared in form, and if I made a mistake and talked about it carelessly, it might cause our men to become tense for no reason. That could be a serious mistake on my part and create an unguarded moment the enemy could take advantage of. No, it's simply that I sat here on this camp stool looking at the castle last night and the night before, feeling that something was going on. Not just looking with my eyes but with my mind's eye."
"This is a difficult watch."
"Yes, it is difficult, but you could also say that it's easy. All you have to do is calm your mind and get rid of delusion. That's why I can't call any of the other soldiers. I want you to sit here instead of me for just a little while."
"I understand."
"Don't doze off. You're right in the middle of a chilly wind, but once you get used to it, you'll get sleepy."
"I’ll be all right."
"One other thing. Inform the other generals as soon as you get even a glimpse of something like fire in the castle. And if you see soldiers leaving the castle from any point, light the fuse of the signal flare and then run to His Lordship."
"Yes, sir."
Shojumaru nodded as he looked calmly at the flare that had been planted in the ground in front of him. It was a natural battlefield situation, but his father did not once ask him if the task was difficult or painful, nor did he ever try to soothe the boy. Shojumaru understood quite well, however, that his father was always teaching him the common sense of military science, according to the event or time. He could feel an inward warmth, even in his father's gravity, and considered himself to be extremely lucky.
Kanbei picked up his staff and limped off toward the barracks. But instead of entering the camp, he seemed to be continuing on alone down the mountain, and his attendants asked nervously where he was going.
"To the foothills," Kanbei answered simply, and even though he was supporting
himself with the staff, he began to hop down the mountain path almost with a lightness in his step. The men who had been accompanying him, Mori Tahei and Kuriyama Zensuke, bounded down the mountain after him.
"My lord!" Mori called. "Please wait!"
Kanbei stood,folding his staff for a moment, and looked back toward them. "It's you two?"
"I'm surprised how fast you're going," Mori said, panting. "With that injured leg, I’m afraid you'll get hurt."
"I've gotten used to the limp," Kanbei laughed. "I'll only fall down if I think about it when I walk. Recently I've been able to get around fairly naturally. But I don't want to show off."
"Could you do that in the middle of a battle?"
"I think the litter is best on the battlefield. Even in close fighting, I'm free to hold the sword with both hands or to grab the spear from the enemy and even to thrust it back at him. The only thing I can't do as I am is to run back and forth. When I'm up on top of the litter and see the surging enemy troops, I'm filled with an irresistible feeling. I feel like the enemy's going to retreat just at the sound of my voice."
"Ah, but it's dangerous now. There's still snow in the shaded areas of the steep cliff roads around here, and you're liable to slip in the wash from the melting snow."
"There's a mountain stream right below here, isn't there?"
"Shall I carry you across?" Mori offered his back.
&nbs
p; Kanbei was carried piggyback across the stream. Where were they going? The two retainers still had no idea. A few hours before, they had seen a warrior come down from the palisade at the foot of the mountain and hand Kanbei something that looked like a letter, and soon thereafter, they had been called abruptly to accompany Kanbei to the foothills, but they had heard nothing more.
When they had walked a good distance, Kuriyama broached the subject. "My lord did the commander at the post in the foothills invite you this evening?"
"What? Did you think we'd been called out for a meal?" Kanbei chuckled. "How long do you think the New Year lasts? Even Lord Hideyoshi's tea ceremonies are over."
"Well then, where are we going?"
"To the palisade at the Miki River."
"The palisade near the river? That's a dangerous place!"
"Of course it's dangerous. But the enemy considers it dangerous, too. It's right where the two camps meet."
"Well, shouldn't we bring more men?"
"No, no. The enemy isn't bringing a big crowd either. I think there will be only one attendant and a child."
"A child?"
"Right."
"I don't understand."
"Well, just come along quietly. It's not that I can't tell you, but it's better to keep it a secret for the time being. After the castle falls, I will inform Lord Hideyoshi about it, too, I think."
"The castle is going to fall?"
"What are we going to do if it doesn't? First of all, the castle is probably going to fall in the next two or three days. It might even happen tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!" The two retainers stared at Kanbei. His face shone dimly white with the shimmering of the clear water. The dry reeds rustled in the shallows. Mori and Kuriyama stopped in fear. They could see a figure standing among the reeds on the far bank.
"Who is it?" Their next surprise was different from their first. The man appeared to be an important enemy general, but his only attendant was carrying a young child on his back. There was no indication the three of them had come with a hostile intent. They simply seemed to be waiting quietly for Kanbei's party to approach.
TAIKO: AN EPIC NOVEL OF WAR AND GLORY IN FEUDAL JAPAN Page 83