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

by Eiji Yoshikawa

  Two pages suddenly came out of the room near the entrance where they had been stationed, and followed after him. They had been able to perceive the atmosphere that had pervaded the castle for two days, even from their room. But Hideyoshi had not permitted a large number of his retainers to enter the castle, so when the two pages saw that their lord was safe, their minds were set at ease.

  They had already stepped outside and were summoning the attendants and horses when a voice called out from behind.

  "Lord Hideyoshi! Lord Hideyoshi!"

  Someone was looking for him in the dark, open field. A crescent moon floated in the sky.

  "I'm over here."

  Hideyoshi was already mounted. Recognizing the sound of a slap against the seat of a saddle, Takigawa Kazumasu ran over to him.

  "What is it?" Hideyoshi asked with a glance of the same sort that a lord might give to his retainer.

  Takigawa said, "You must have gotten very angry this evening. But it was only because of the sake. And Lord Katsuie's nephew is still young, as you can see. I hope you'll forgive him." Then he added, "This is something that was arranged beforehand, and you may have forgotten about it, but on the fourth—tomorrow—the celebration announcing Lord Samboshi's succession will be held, and you should be sure not to miss it. Lord Katsuie was very concerned about this after you left just now."

  "Is that so? Well…"

  "Be sure to be there."

  "I understand."

  "And again, about tonight. Please forget about it. I told Lord Katsuie that you were a big-hearted person and not likely to be offended by the jests of a drunken young man on one occasion."

  Hideyoshi's horse had started to move. "Let's go!" he shouted to the pages, almost knocking Takigawa to the ground.

  Hideyoshi's lodgings were in the western section of town. They consisted of a small Zen temple and a wealthy family's house that he was renting. Quartering his men and horses at the temple, he himself occupied a floor of the house.

  It had been easy for the family to accommodate him, but he had been accompanied by seven or eight hundred retainers. That was actually not very many men, however, as the Shibata clan, it was rumored, had quartered approximately ten thousand of its soldiers in Kiyosu.

  As soon as Hideyoshi returned to his lodgings, he complained that it was smoky inside. Ordering the windows to be opened, he almost kicked off his ceremonial robes with the paulownia crest. Then he quickly stripped naked and requested a bath.

  Thinking that his lord was in a bad mood, the page warily poured a pail of hot water over Hideyoshi's back. Hideyoshi, however, yawned as he sank into the tub. Then, as if he were stretching his arms and legs, he let out a grunt. "I'm loosening up a little," he observed, then grumbled about the stiffness of the last two days. "Has the mosquito netting been put up?"

  "We've already put it up, my lord," responded the pages who were holding his sleeping kimono.

  "Fine, fine. All of you should turn in early too. And tell that to the men on guard as well," Hideyoshi said from inside the mosquito netting.

  The door was closed, but the windows were open to let in the breeze, and the light

  from the moon seemed almost to be quivering. Hideyoshi began to feel drowsy.

  “My lord?" called a voice from outside.

  “What is it? Is that Mosuke?"

  “Yes, my lord. The Abbot Arima is here. He says he'd like to see you in private."

  “What, Arima?"

  “I told him that you had gone to sleep early, but he insisted."

  For a moment no answer came from inside the mosquito netting. Finally Hideyoshi said, “Show him in. But give him my apologies for not getting up, and tell him that I was indisposed at the castle and took some medicine."

  Mosuke's footsteps quietly descended the steps from the mezzanine. Then someone could be heard climbing the steps, and very soon a man was kneeling in front of Hideyoshi on the wooden floor.

  “Your attendants told me you were asleep, but…"

  “Your Reverence?"

  “I have something of great urgency to tell you, so I ventured to come over in the middle of the night."

  “With two days of conferences, I've become both mentally and physically exhausted. But what brings you here in the middle of the night?"

  The abbot spoke softly. "Are you planning to attend the banquet for Lord Samboshi at the castle tomorrow?"

  “Well, I might be able to if I take some medicine. My malady could just be heatstroke, and people will be annoyed if I'm not there."

  “Perhaps your being indisposed is a premonition."

  “Well now, why do you say that?"

  “Some hours ago, you withdrew about halfway through the banquet. Soon after that, only the Shibata and their allies remained, and they were very intently discussing something in secret. I didn't understand what was going on, but Maeda Geni was anxious about the situation too, and we secretly listened in on them."

  Suddenly becoming silent, the abbot peeped inside the mosquito netting as if to make sure that Hideyoshi was listening.

  A pale blue bug was chirping at the corner of the netting, and Hideyoshi was lying down as before, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Go ahead."

  “We don't know in detail what they plan to do, but what we're sure of is that they are not going to let you live. Tomorrow when you go up to the castle, they want to take you into a room, confront you with a list of your crimes, and force you to commit seppuku. If you refuse, they plan to kill you in cold blood. Furthermore, they are planning to station soldiers in the castle and even take control of the castle town."

  “Well now, that's rather intimidating."

  “In fact, Geni was anxious to come here and inform you himself, but we were afraid that his leaving the castle would be noticed, so I came here instead. If you are sick just at this moment, it must be heaven's protection. Perhaps you should reconsider attending tomorrow’s ceremony."

  “I wonder what I should do."

  "I hope you won't be attending. By any means!"

  "It's a celebration for the accession of the young lord, and all are supposed to attend. I'm grateful for your good intentions, Your Reverence. Thank you very much."

  Inside the mosquito netting, Hideyoshi pressed his palms together in prayer toward the retreating footsteps of the abbot.

  Hideyoshi was very good at sleeping. To fall asleep immediately, wherever the thought occurs to one, may seem like an easy ability to acquire, but it is, in fact, quite difficult.

  He had acquired this mysterious skill—so close to enlightenment—out of of neces­sity, and he had formulated it into as a sort of motto to follow, both to alleviate the pres­sure of the battlefield and to preserve his own health.

  Detachment. For Hideyoshi, that simple word was a talisman.

  Detachment might not seem to be a very impressive quality, but it was at the heart of his skill at sleeping. Impatience, delusion, attachment, doubt, urgency—every kind of bond was cut through in an instant with his two eyelids, and he slept with a mind as blank as a virgin sheet of paper. And conversely, he would wake up in a moment, com­pletely alert.

  But detachment was not only for when he fought cleverly and his plans went as he intended. Over the years he had made many blunders, but during those times he never brooded over his failures and lost battles. On such occasions he recalled that one word: detachment.

  The kind of earnestness people often spoke of—sustained determination and perseverance, or singleminded concentration—was not a special quality for him, but rather a natural part of daily life. Thus for him, it was far more essential to aim toward that detachment that would allow him to remove himself from those qualities—even if just for a moment—and allow his soul to breathe. In turn, he naturally left the problems of life and death up to that one concept: detachment.

  He had been lying down just a short time. Had he slept an hour?

  Hideyoshi got up and went down the stairs to the toilet. Immediatel
y, a man on duty was kneeling on the floored veranda, holding up a paper lantern. Very soon thereafter, when he stepped from the toilet, another man was holding a small dipper filled with water, and, drawing near, he poured the water over Hideyoshi's hands.

  As Hideyoshi wiped his hands, he gazed at the position of the moon over the eaves, then turned to his two pages and asked, "Is Gonbei there?"

  When the man he had asked for appeared, Hideyoshi started back toward the stairs to the second floor, looking back at Gonbei as he walked.

  "Go to the temple and tell the men we're leaving. The division of soldiers and the streets by which to advance were all written down this evening when we left the castle and given to Asano Yahei, so get instructions from him."

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Wait a moment. I forgot about something. Tell Kumohachi to come see me."

  Gonbei's footsteps went from the stand of trees behind the house off in the direction of the temple. After he had left, Hideyoshi quickly dressed in his armor and went out.

  Hideyoshi's lodgings stood near the crossroads of the Ise and Mino roads. He passed by the corner of the store house and walked off in the direction of that crossroads.

  At that moment Kumohachi, who had just received Hideyoshi's summons, ran tottering up from behind. "I'm here and at your service!" He came around and knelt in front of Hideyoshi.

  Kumohachi was an old warrior of seventy-five years, but he was not easily bested even by younger men, and Hideyoshi saw that he had come with his armor already on.

  "Well now, this is not a matter that necessitates armor. I'd like you to do something in the morning. I want you to stay behind."

  'In the morning? You mean at the castle?"

  'That's right. You've understood well, typical of your years of service. I want you to go with a message to the castle that I fell ill during the night and suddenly had to return to Nagahama. Also say that I deeply regret not being able to attend the ceremony, but that I hope everything will be well. I imagine that Katsuie and Takigawa will dwell on that for a while, so I want you to wait there, appearing to be senile and hard of hearing. Don't react to anything you hear, and then leave as though nothing had happened."

  “I understand, my lord."

  The old warrior was bent at the waist like a shrimp, but his spear never left his hand. Bowing once before standing up, he turned his body as though his armor weighed heavily upon him, and shuffled off.

  Almost all of the men at the temple had already lined up on the road in front of the gate. Each corps, which was identified by its banner, was in turn divided into companies. The commanders readied their horses at the head of each unit.

  The fires on the fuse cords flickered back and forth, but not a single torch was lit.

  The moon in the sky was only a slender crescent. Along the row of trees, the seven hundred troops swayed silently in the dark, like waves on a shore.

  'Hey! Yahei!" Hideyoshi called out as he walked along next to the line of officers and men. The men were not easily distinguishable in the shadows of the trees, and here was a short man beating a bamboo staff on the ground as he walked along with six or seven men following behind. Most of the soldiers probably thought he was the head of a group packers, but when they realized it was Hideyoshi, they became even more hushed, tig their horses back so they would not get in the way.

  “Here I am! Over here!"

  Asano Yahei had been at the base of the stone steps giving instructions to a group of men. When he heard Hideyoshi's voice, he finished up quickly and ran over to him.

  “Are you ready?" Hideyoshi spoke to him impatiently, hardly giving him time to kneel. "If you're all set, move out."

  “Yes, my lord, we're ready."

  "aking charge of the commander's standard with the golden gourds that had been propped up in a corner of the gate, he carried it out into the middle of the ranks and quickly mounted his own horse to join the troops.

  Hideyoshi rode out, accompanied by his pages and about thirty mounted men. The conch shell might have been blown at that moment, but circumstances prohibited the use of the conch or of torches. Yahei had received the golden fan of command from Hideyoshi and, in his stead, waved it once, twice, and then a third time. With that signal, the seven-hundred-man army began gradually to advance.

  The head of the procession then changed direction and, turning on the road, passed by Hideyoshi. The position of corps commander was filled exclusively by trusted retain­ers. That one saw almost none of the faces of the old and experienced veterans was most likely because many of them had been left at Hideyoshi's castles in Nagahama and Himeji, and at his other estates.

  At midnight, Hideyoshi's soldiers left the castle at Kiyosu, looking as though they were the main force accompanying their lord. Taking the Mino road, they started out for Nagahama.

  Hideyoshi himself departed immediately afterward with no more than thirty or forty men. He took a completely different route and hurried along the back roads where no one would notice him. He finally arrived in Nagahama the following day at dawn.

  * * *

  "We slipped up, Genba," Katsuie said.

  "No, it was a plan that really had no room for mistakes."

  "Do you really think there is such a plan? Somewhere there was an oversight, and that's why the fish slipped out of the net so easily."

  "Well, it's not that I didn't say anything about it. If you're going to strike, strike! If we had attacked that scum's quarters, we'd have been able to look at Hideyoshi's head by now. But all you could talk about was doing it in secret. Now all our efforts have come to nothing because you wouldn't listen to me."

  "Ah, you're still young. You were asking me to use a flawed plan, and the plan I had devised was superior. The best strategy was to wait until Hideyoshi came up to the castle and force him to disembowel himself. Nothing could have been better than that. But according to the reports last night, Hideyoshi was suddenly striking camp. Now, at first, I thought that was unfortunate, but then I reconsidered. If that bastard was leaving Kiyosu at night, it was a gift from heaven—because he was leaving unannounced, I could have denounced his crimes. I instructed you to lie in ambush and strike him down on the way so that justice might be served."

  "That was a careless mistake on your part, Uncle, from the very beginning."

  "My mistake? Why?"

  "Your first mistake was in thinking Monkey would play into our hands by coming to today's celebration. Then, although you instructed me to go with some soldiers to am­bush him, your second mistake was in forgetting to take the precaution of ordering men to guard the backroads."

  "Fool! I gave you the orders and had the other generals follow your instructions solely because I had faith that you would not overlook things like that. And you have the impudence to say that hiding soldiers only on the main road and letting Hideyoshi slip through is my fault! You should reflect a little on your own inexperience!"

  "Well, I apologize for my error this time, but hereafter, Uncle, please refrain from rattling on with too much artifice. A person who gets carried away with his own clever schemes is going to drown in them someday."

  "What are you saying? You think I use too much cunning?"

  "It's your constant habit."

  "You…you fool!"

  "It's not just me, Uncle. Everybody says so. 'Lord Katsuie makes people cautious, because no one can never tell what he is plotting.'" Katsuie was silent, knitting his thick black eyebrows.

  For a long time, the relationship of uncle and nephew had been far warmer than that between lord and retainer. But too much familiarity had eroded authority and respect in the relationship, and those qualities were now missing. That morning Katsuie could hardly restrain the sullen look on his face.

  It was a complicated sense of displeasure. He had not slept at all the night before. Having ordered Genba to strike down the fleeing Hideyoshi, Katsuie had waited until dawn for the report that would clear the gloom that filled his heart.

  When Genb
a returned, however, he did not make the report Katsuie had been waiting for so tensely.

  "The only people who passed by were Hideyoshi's retainers. Hideyoshi himself was nowhere to be seen. I thought it would be disadvantageous to attack them, so I came back with nothing to show for my efforts."

  That report, added to Katsuie's fatigue from the night before, put him in a state of despondency.

  Then, when even Genba found fault with him, there was little wonder that he was feeling depressed that morning.

  He could not remain in such a mood, however. Today was the celebration of the announcement of Samboshi's succession. After his breakfast Katsuie took a nap and had a bath, then he once again arrayed himself in his sweltering ceremonial robes and headgear.

  Katsuie was not the kind of man who, once depressed, remained visibly so. Today the sky was filled with clouds and it was even more humid than the day before, but his demeanor on the road to Kiyosu Castle was far more majestic than that of anyone else in castle town, and his face sparkled with sweat.

  The fierce men who only the night before had fastened the cords of their helmets, crawled through the grass and bushes with their spears and firearms, and looked to take Hideyoshi's life on the road were now arrayed in court hats and ceremonial kimonos. Their bows were in their cases and their spears and halberds sheathed, and they now meandered in innocent-looking attire up to the castle.

  The men who climbed to the castle were not from the Shibata clan alone, of course, but were also from the Niwa, the Takigawa, and other clans. The only men who had been there the day before but who were no longer present were those under the command of Hideyoshi.

  Takigawa Kazumasu informed Katsuie that Kumohachi had been waiting in the castle since early morning, as a representative of Hideyoshi.

  “He said Hideyoshi would not be able to attend today because of illness and was sening his apologies to Lord Samboshi. He also mentioned that he had hoped for an audience with you, my lord. He's been waiting for a little while."

  Katsuie nodded bitterly. While it angered him that Hideyoshi was scrupulously feigning ignorance of the whole affair, he too had to pretend to know nothing, and now