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

by Eiji Yoshikawa

  The soldiers carried a day's worth of provisions: a simple meal of uncooked bean paste, pickled plums, and brown rice. They had not eaten since the night before, and they now breakfasted happily.

  Three or four monks from the nearby Myoshin Temple, who had recognized the men as members of the Akechi clan, had invited them into the temple compound.

  Mitsuhide was sitting on a camp stool in the shadow of the curtain his attendants had set up. He had finished his meal and was dictating a letter to his secretary.

  "The priests of the Myoshin Temple… they'd make perfect messengers! Call them back!" he ordered a page. When the priests had returned, Mitsuhide entrusted them with the letter his secretary had just written. "Would you please take this letter quickly to the residence of the poet Shoha?"

  Immediately afterward he got up and walked back to his horse, telling the monks, “I’m afraid that we have no spare time on this trip. I'll have to forgo meeting the abbot. Please give him my regards."

  The afternoon grew hot. The road to Saga was extraordinarily dry, and the horses' hooves kicked clouds of dust into the air. Mitsuhide rode in silence, thinking through a plan in his characteristically careful way, weighing its feasibility, the likely public reaction, and the possibility of failure. Like a horsefly that always comes back no matter how often it is brushed away, the scheme had become an obsession that Mitsuhide could not drive from his mind. A nightmare had sneaked into him and filled his entire body with poison. He had already lost his power to reason.

  In all of his fifty-four years, Mitsuhide had never relied on his own wisdom the way he was doing now. Although objectively he would have had every reason to doubt his own judgment, subjectively he felt exactly the opposite. I haven't made the smallest mistake, Mitsuhide said to himself. No one could suspect what's on my mind.

  While he had been in Sakamoto, he had wavered: Should he go ahead with the plan or scrap it? But this morning, when he heard the second report, his hair had suddenly stood on end. In his heart he had resolved that the time was now, and that heaven had sent him this opportunity. Nobunaga, accompanied by only forty or fifty lightly armed men, was staying at the Honno Temple in Kyoto. The demon that possessed Mitsuhide whispered to him that it was a unique opportunity.

  His decision was not a positive act of his own will, but rather a reaction to external circumstances. Men like to believe that they live and act according to their own wills, but the grim truth is that outside events actually stir them to action. So while Mitsuhide believed that heaven was his ally in the present opportunity, part of him was beset by the fear as he rode along the road to Saga that heaven really was judging his every action.

  Mitsuhide crossed the Katsura River and arrived at Kameyama Castle in the evening just as the sun dropped below the horizon. Having been informed of their lord's return the townspeople of Kameyama welcomed him home with bonfires that lit up the night sky. He was a popular ruler who had won the affection of the people as a result of his wise administration.

  The number of days in a year that Mitsuhide spent with his family could be counted on the fingers of one hand. During long campaigns, he might not come home for two or three years. For that reason, those rare days he could be at home were animated by the delight of seeing his wife and children, and being a husband and father.

  Mitsuhide had been blessed with an exceptionally large family of seven daughters and twelve sons. Two-thirds of them were married or had been adopted by other families, but several of the younger ones, as well as children of his kinsmen and their grandchildren, were still living at the castle.

  His wife, Teruko, always said, "How old will I be when I no longer have to look after children?" She took in the children of clan members who had died in battle and even raised the children her husband had fathered with other women. This gentle, wise woman was contented with her lot, and although she was already fifty, she put up with the children and their mischief.

  Since leaving Azuchi, Mitsuhide had not found a comfort equal to being at home, and he slept peacefully that night. Even on the next day, his children's cheerfulness and his faithful wife's smile soothed his heart.

  It might be supposed that spending such a night would cause him to change his mind. But he did not waver in the least. On the contrary, he now had the courage to realize an even more secret ambition that lodged in his heart.

  Teruko had been with him from the time he had had no lord to serve. Happy with her present estate, she had no other thoughts than to be a mother to her children. Looking at her now, Mitsuhide formed silent words in his breast. Your husband is not going to be like this forever. Everyone will soon be looking up to you as the wife of the next shogun. And as he gazed at the children and other members of his large household, for a moment he was caught up in his own fantasy. I'm going to move you all from this provincial castle to a palace even more elevated than Azuchi. How much happier you will then!

  Later that day, Mitsuhide left the castle, accompanied by a few attendants. He was lightly dressed and was not being waited upon by his usual retainers. Though there had been no official announcement, even the soldiers at the castle gate knew that their lord was going to spend the night at Atago Shrine.

  Before departing for the west, Mitsuhide was going to the shrine to pray for good luck in battle. Accompanied by a few of his closest friends, he would stay in the shrine to hold a poetry party and would return the following day.

  When he said that he was going to a shrine to pray for victory in battle, and that he was inviting some friends from the capital for a party, nobody suspected what was really Mitsuhide's mind.

  The twenty servants and half a dozen mounted retainers were dressed more lightly than they would have been had they been going hawking. On the day before, the monks of Itokuin Temple and the priests of Atago Shrine had been informed of the visit, so they were waiting to welcome their lord. As soon as he had dismounted, Mitsuhide asked for a monk by the name of Gyoyu.

  "Is Shoha coming?" Mitsuhide asked the monk. When Gyoyu replied that the famous poet was already there waiting for him, Mitsuhide exclaimed, "What? Here already? Well, that's perfect. Has he brought other poets from the capital?"

  "It seems that Master Shoha had very little time to prepare himself. He received your invitation yesterday evening, and found that whoever he tried to invite was unable to attend at such short notice. Along with his son, Shinzen, he was only able to bring two others: a disciple by the name of Kennyo, and a relative called Shoshitsu."

  "Is that so?" Mitsuhide laughed. "Did he complain? I knew it was an unreasonable request, but after honoring him time and time again by sending palanquins and escorts, this time I thought it would be much more elegant—and more enjoyable—if he was the one who went to some trouble to meet me. That's why I invited him to this place so suddenly. But just as you might expect, Shoha didn't even feign illness. He scurried up the mountain at once."

  With the two monks walking ahead and his attendants behind, Mitsuhide climbed a flight of high stone stairs. Just when it seemed as though there would be flat ground to walk on for a while, the stairs would begin again. As they climbed, the dark green of the cypress trees deepened even more, and the dark violet of the summer sky edged into evening. They felt the night approaching quickly. With every step, their skin could feel the sudden drop in temperature; it was considerably colder at the summit than it had been at the foot of the mountain.

  "Master Shoha sends his apologies," Gyoyu told Mitsuhide when they had reached the guest room of the temple. "He would have come to meet you, but since he thought

  you would probably pray first at the temples and shrines on the way, he said he would greet you after your devotions."

  Mitsuhide nodded silently. Then, after drinking a cup of water, he asked for a guide. "Before anything else, I'd like to offer a prayer to the patron deity, and then I'll visit the Atago Shrine while there's still some light."

  The shrine priest led the way along a neatly swept path. He climbed the
stairs of the outer shrine and lit the sacred candles. Mitsuhide bowed low, and stood in prayer for some time. Three times the priest whisked a branch of the sacred tree over Mitsuhide's head, and then offered him an earthen cup of sacred sake.

  "I've heard that this shrine is dedicated to the fire god. Is that true?" Mitsuhide asked afterward.

  "That is true, my lord," the priest replied.

  "And I've heard that if you pray to this god and abstain from using fire, your prayers will be answered."

  "That has been said since ancient times." The priest avoided giving a clear answer to the question, and turned it back on Mitsuhide. "I wonder how that tradition originated?" Then, changing the subject, he began to talk about the history of the shrine.

  Bored by the priest's monologue, Mitsuhide gazed at the holy lamps in the outer shrine. Finally he stood up silendy and descended the stairs. It was already dark when he walked to the Atago Shrine. Leaving the monks, he went alone to the nearby Temple of the Shogun Jizo. There he drew his fortune, but the first lot he pulled predicted bad luck. He drew again, and that one too read "Bad luck." For a moment, Mitsuhide stood as silent as stone. Picking up the box that held the fortunes, he lifted it reverentiy to his fore­head, closed his eyes, and drew for the third time. This time the answer was "Great good fortune."

  Mitsuhide turned and walked toward his waiting attendants. They had watched him from afar as he drew his fortune, imagining that he was only indulging a fancy. Mitsuhide was, after all, a man who prided himself on his intellect and who was, above all else, rational. He was hardly the kind of man who would use fortune-telling to reach a decision,

  The flickering lamps of the guest room shone through the young leaves. For Shoha and his fellow poets, it would be a night of grinding ink on the inkstones as they recorded their own verses.

  The night's entertainment began with a banquet at which Mitsuhide was the guest of honor. The guests bantered and laughed and drank many rounds of sake, and they were so engrossed in their conversation that they seemed to have forgotten all about poetry.

  "The summer nights are short," their host, the abbot, announced. "It's getting late and I'm afraid it's going to be light before we finish our hundred linked verses."

  In another room, poetry mats had been arranged. Paper and an inkstone had been set in front of each cushion as though to encourage the participants to write elegant verses.

  Shoha and Shoshitsu were both accomplished poets. Shoha was regarded affectionately by Nobunaga and was on familiar terms with Hideyoshi and the leading tea master

  of the day. He was a man who had a large circle of acquaintances.

  "Well, my lord, would you give us the first verse," Shoha requested.

  Mitsuhide, however, did not touch the paper in front of him. His elbow was still on the armrest, and he seemed to be looking out into the darkness of the garden where the leaves were stirring.

  "It seems that you're racking your brains for your verse, my lord," Shoha teased Mitsuhide.

  Mitsuhide picked up his brush and wrote:

  The whole country knows

  The time is now,

  In the Fifth Month.

  At a party like this, once the first verse was composed, the participants added verses in turn until anywhere from fifty to a hundred linked stanzas had been added. The party had begun with a verse by Mitsuhide. The closing verse that tied the work together was also composed by Mitsuhide:

  Time for the provinces

  To be at peace.

  After the monks had extinguished the lamps and withdrawn, Mitsuhide appeared to fall asleep immediately. As he finally lay his head on the pillow, the mountain wind outside shook the trees and howled through the eaves of the roof as strangely as if that mythical, long-nosed monster, Tengu, were raising a fearful cry. Mitsuhide suddenly recalled the story he had heard from the priest at the shrine of the fire god. In his head he imagined Tengu rampaging through the jet black sky.

  Tengu gnaws on fire and then flies up into the sky. A huge Tengu, and smaller Tengus without number, turned into fire and mounted the black wind. As the fires fell to earth, the shrine of the fire god immediately became a mass of firebrands.

  He wanted to sleep. He wanted terribly to sleep. But Mitsuhide was not dreaming; he was thinking. And his brain could not stop the illusion in his mind. He turned over and started to think about the coming day. He knew that on the morrow Nobunaga would leave Azuchi for Kyoto.

  And then the borderline between wakefulness and dream began to blur. And in this state, the difference between himself and Tengu disappeared. Tengu stood on the clouds and looked over the nation. Everything he saw was to his own advantage. In the west, Hideyoshi was nailed down at Takamatsu Castle, grappling with the armies of the Mori. If he could collude with the Mori and take the advantage, the army under Hideyoshi, which had spent so many wearisome years on the campaign, would be buried in the west and would never again see the capital.

  Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was in Osaka, was a clever survivor. Once he saw that Nobunga was dead, his attitude would depend entirely on what Mitsuhide offered. Hosokawa Fujitaka would no doubt be momentarily indignant, but his son had married Mitsuhide's daughter, and he had been a devoted friend for many years. He would not be unwilling to cooperate.

  Mitsuhide's muscles and blood were tingling. In fact, his ears burned with such intensity that he felt young again. Tengu turned over. Mitsuhide let out a groan.

  "My lord?" In the next room, Shoha rose a little and called out, "What's the matter, my lord?"

  Mitsuhide was dimly aware of Shoha's question but intentionally gave no answer. Shoha quickly went back to sleep.

  The short night was soon over. Upon arising, Mitsuhide bade farewell to the others and descended the mountain while it was still shrouded in a thick morning mist.

  * * *

  On the thirtieth day of the month Mitsuharu arrived at Kameyama and joined forces with Mitsuhide. Members of the Akechi clan had been coming in from the entire province, swelling the already significant army from Sakamoto. Thus the castle town was crowded with horses and men; carts of military supplies jammed every intersection, and the streets had become nearly impassable. The sun shone down brightly, and it was sud­denly almost like midsummer: porters filled the shops and argued with their mouths full of food; outside, the foot soldiers squeezing between the oxcarts yelled back and forth. Along the streets, flies buzzed and swarmed over the droppings left by the horses and oxen.

  "Has your health held up?" Mitsuharu asked Mitsuhide.

  "Just as you see." Mitsuhide smiled. He was much more amiable than he had been at Sakamoto, and the color had returned to his face.

  "When do you plan to leave?"

  "I've decided to wait it just a little, until the first day of Sixth Month."

  "Well, what about Azuchi?"

  "I've informed them, but I think Lord Nobunaga is already in Kyoto."

  "The report is that he arrived there without incident last night. Lord Nobutada is staying at the Myokaku Temple, while Lord Nobunaga is at the Honno Temple."

  "Yes, I've heard that." Mitsuhide's words trailed off into silence.

  Mitsuharu suddenly got up. "I haven't seen your wife and children for a long time. Perhaps I'll go pay my respects."

  Mitsuhide watched his cousin walk away. A moment later he looked as though his chest were so congested that he could neither spit nor swallow.

  Two rooms away, Mitsuhide's retainer Saito Toshimitsu was conferring with other generals, studying military charts and discussing tactics. He left the room to talk with Mitsuhide.

  “Are you going to send the supply train to the Sanin ahead of us?"

  “The supply train? Hm… well, we don't need to send it ahead."

  Suddenly Mitsuhide's uncle, Chokansai, who had just now arrived with Mitsuharu, looked in.

  "Hey, he's not here. Where did the lord of Sakamoto go? Anybody here know?"

  He looked around, goggle-eyed. Although he was an old man
, he was so sunny and cheerful that he drove others to distraction. Even if the generals were about to leave on a campaign, Chokansai seemed as cheerful as usual. He turned in another direction. When he casually showed up at the ladies' apartments in the citadel, however, the women and their many children ran up to him.

  "Oh, Lord Jester has come!" the children cried.

  "Lord Jester! When did you get here?"

  Whether he stood or sat, the happy voices around him did not cease.

  "Are you staying overnight, Lord Jester?"

  "Lord Jester, have you eaten yet?"

  "Lift me up, Lord Jester!"

  "Sing us a song!"

  "Show us a dance!"

  They jumped up on his lap. They played with him. They clung to him. They looked into his ears.

  "Lord Jester! There's hair growing out of your ears!"

  "One, two."

  "Three, four." Singing out the numbers, little girls pulled out the hairs while a little boy sat astride his back, pushing down his old head.

  "Play horsy! Play horsy and whinny!"

  Chokansai crawled around submissively, and when he suddenly sneezed, the little boy fell off his back. The ladies-in-waiting and attendants laughed so hard they held their sides.

  Even as night fell, the laughter and hubbub did not stop. The atmosphere of the ladies' apartments was as different from that of Mitsuhide's room in the main citadel as a meadow in spring might be from a snow-covered moor.

  "Uncle, now that you're getting on in years," Mitsuharu said, "I'd be grateful if you'd stay here and take care of the family rather than coming with us on the campaign. I think I should tell our lord that."

  Chokansai looked at his nephew and laughed. "My final role may have to be something like that. These little ones just won't leave me alone." Night had fallen, and they were badgering him to tell them one of his famous stories.

  This was the last day left before the departure for the campaign. Mitsuharu had expected that there would be a general conference that evening, but as the main citadel was quiet, he went over to the second citadel and slept.