by Nogami Yaeko
“Yes, I’m here!” answered the warrior who held Hideyoshi’s sword. The sword-bearer approached and knelt. He represented the soldiers who had come from Bicchū with Hideyoshi. “All of you gather round to hear my story.” The warriors sat behind Hideyoshi in a V-shaped formation.
The chorus began to chant. “Our human world is …”
“We attacked the castle in Takamatsu by flooding it with water from the river,” Hideyoshi said, describing the battle in Bicchū. “But when the attack was halfway completed, we were informed that our shōgun had been defeated. Our spirits and souls were filled with grief, and we all wept. But we had to keep our minds strong, so we pulled ourselves together. I ordered the lord of the castle to commit suicide. We ran day and night, thinking of nothing but attacking Nobunaga’s betrayer. Even the founder of the Han Dynasty tried seventy times to take revenge on Xiang Yū, who killed Huai Wang in the kingdom of Chū. To inflict our vengeance, we are going to defeat Akechi with a single attack. Our strength is unbeatable!”
“We should not waste time,” the chorus chanted. Hideyoshi stood up. The chorus continued, “Look at the shadows; the sun is going down in the west. There are clouds in the sky, although it is as dry as the Minase River in June. Depart to the front in the east, at the foot of the mountain in Yamazaki. Proceed to the enemy camp!” While the chorus was chanting, the soldiers moved from the right side of the stage to take up position in front of the drums, maintaining their V-shaped formation. It was a unique and well-organized usage of the Noh stage, preparing the way for the next characters that were to appear.
The next second, the sound of the flute became high pitched, and Akechi, played by the actor Shundō Rokuemon, appeared on the bridge. Four soldiers followed him. He stopped at the first pine tree on the bridge and said loudly, “I am Akechi Hyūganokami Mitsuhide. I once had the ambition to become the most powerful man in Japan, and in order to preserve my fame for later generations I attacked the shōgun. But now, Hashiba Chikuzennokami Hideyoshi is chasing me. Whether I win or not,” he said, projecting his voice again, “let’s fight and see who emerges victorious.”
While the chorus was chanting, “Hideyoshi’s soldiers let out a war cry and attacked,” the soldiers on both sides acted out the chaos of a battle. Finally, Akechi’s soldiers ran away along the bridge. Akechi made one final lament to the audience: “At that time, Akechi was …”
The chorus picked up the tale. “When the vanguard was defeated, there was no chance left for victory. He escaped, first to Shōryūji Temple, then into the bamboo forest for a day and a night. Then he hid himself among his enemies and fled to Yodotoba. But Hideyoshi pursued him, determined not to let him escape. When Hideyoshi finally caught up to him, he sank his sword into the front of Akechi’s helmet.
“The karma of a weak wheel is like this. Hideyoshi’s soldiers attacked a hundred times and a thousand times and finally achieved his revenge.” Akechi’s quick exit from the right-hand stage door symbolically demonstrated that revenge had been taken.
Hideyoshi tossed his sword aside and took two steps in place to indicate the play was at an end, holding up a bright red fan. The chorus chanted, “The one who receives his name under heaven displays his royal bearing. His virtue is resplendent.”
Hideyoshi was in an especially good mood at the banquet that night. The guest list included Kurematsu Shinkurō, Konparu Hachirō, Shundō Rokuemon, and the most important musicians, such as the flute and hand drum players. The official purpose of the party was to reward them for their work. The conversation turned naturally to an appraisal of the play, including Hideyoshi’s performance. Whenever Hideyoshi performed on stage—no matter what the play or the quality of his performance—his retainers would praise his work, and he enjoyed their praise as a child would. He knew that such compliments were as routine as saying “good morning,” so as the night wore on and alcohol made the guests honest enough to criticize Hideyoshi, he laughed with even greater amusement.
But no matter how drunk his retainers got, they always remembered to mind their tongues. For example, when Hideyoshi was performing in the play Pine Wind and a small seawater-collecting cart almost overturned, it was better to say, “They tried so many times to collect seawater! I wonder why that small cart could never hold enough water to make salt?” rather than pointing out that Hideyoshi had pulled the cart too roughly.
But it was easy to praise Vengeance on Akechi. In other plays, Hideyoshi had occasionally skipped difficult dances or danced slow, subtle parts more boldly than he should have, but in this play there were no such complicated dance forms. Hideyoshi’s Noh, however, was still only an imitation of what a real actor could do, and he moved awkwardly in the unfamiliar costume. Every time he acted in an elegant role, his elaborate costume would loosen from the movement, looking unsightly. Today, the ties on the front of his two-piece costume [hitatare] had almost come undone during the performance. But despite his appearance, his retainers could genuinely praise his acting in the fighting scene. That was his great accomplishment of the day, and it put him in a self-satisfied mood.
Ōmura Yūki, the author of Vengeance on Akechi, was considered the finest scholar among Hideyoshi’s group of intellectual retainers. He was older than Hideyoshi. Whenever he got drunk, his lightning wit came out, and he would criticize Hideyoshi without hesitation. “Well,” he said as a preface, “I guess we don’t have any more praise today.” He started to talk about how difficult it had been to write Vengeance on Akechi. “My first idea was to make it so that Akechi went to hell as a suffering soul for the sin of killing his master. But that would have made him the main actor, with my lord Hideyoshi as the supporting actor. In order to show my respect to you, my lord, I decided to write in a different way. I had to think on it for a long time. I worked my fingers to the bone, and finally wrote it as a two-man fighting play.”
“No wonder you’ve lost so much weight since this summer,” Hidenaga said, deadpan. Hideyoshi was sitting on the top level of a three-level dais, and Hidenaga was sitting near him on the next level down. Although Hidenaga wasn’t drinking because of his illness, he smiled and joked as the party became livelier. He kept his expression serious despite the joke, but his comment provoked gales of laughter.
Ōmura Yūki was short and fat. His stomach protruded so much that his servant had given him the nickname Daruma, after the popular portly figure of Buddhist legend. Ōmura hadn’t lost weight at all—if anything, he had gained more. His jacket, which had been specially made to fit him, was getting too tight, as if it belonged to somebody else. Ōmura shot Hidenaga a mischievous look from under his wide, Daruma-like forehead with eyes that had become moist and reddish from alcohol. But his words were polite as he bowed, placing his hands in front of him next to a tray of food and a bottle of sake.
“Hidenaga-sama, it’s amazing that I haven’t melted away by now,” he quipped. His nickname was “the Snowman,” a play on his name, Yūki, and the word yuki, which meant snow. The group laughed at his response.
Hideyoshi laughed loudest of all. He lifted his big, red lacquer cup full of sake and gave it to Ōmura as a reward for not melting at all, but keeping his full figure.
Although Ōmura’s difficulties in writing the play had been exaggerated for the benefit of the drunken company, the true difficulties couldn’t be expressed out loud. First of all, the play had to be written so that all of the glory went to Hideyoshi as the star of the play, right down to the act of killing Akechi singlehandedly.
Also, when Hideyoshi wanted to put on a Noh play, each of the retainers traditionally volunteered to act in it. One in particular, Gamō Ujisato, was a good friend of Hosokawa Tadaoki, who was married to Akechi’s daughter. When Hideyoshi had performed Momijigari the previous fall, Ujisato and Tadaoki had acted the major roles together. Ujisato acted under the stage name Tadasaburō and Tadaoki used the name Yoichirō. Vengeance on Akechi was a different situation. Although Tadaoki was not involved in his father-in-law’s rebellion, and was
liked by Hideyoshi for his unshakable loyalty and honesty, it would have been awkward to give him a major role in this play. But if Tadaoki was not able to join the play, then out of fairness, Ujisato could not be given a role, either. After some thought, Ōmura had decided to use professional Noh actors to play the soldiers rather than Ujisato and Tadaoki. Thus, Torigai Yahei had been given a chance to join the chorus.
In Jurakudai, it was customary at night to use special oil lamps to light the sitting room of the ladies-in-waiting. In the big banquet hall, they used large candle holders of either red-orange or black lacquer as well as the oil lamps. The lamps were scattered around the room, burning with soft rings of light like the moon on a misty spring night, leaving the corners of the room dark. The dais upon which Hideyoshi sat was much brighter, lit by a pair of large candles that each weighed three-quarters of a pound and were handled like priceless treasures. The orange light illuminated both sides of his face, accentuating the lines more deeply than sunlight. There was a long, shallow horizontal wrinkle on his forehead that resembled the vein on a leaf. It had appeared there after he attacked Lord Shimazu. His obliquely angled, sunken eyes could shift instantly from ferocious and keen to gentle and engaging with his changes in mood. He had a small chin, nose, and mouth, with a thin mustache on his upper lip, so when he wore a nobleman’s formal clothing and put on an artificial beard, he looked more dignified.
That night, he not only looked happy, but healthy. Usually when he was away from battle, his skin was pale, but now he was tan from an expedition to the country hunting quail. He looked rejuvenated. Aside from his travels, his mistress, Cha Cha, was pregnant. He was exultant, and also quite self-satisfied, that he, a man of fifty, could impregnate a young mistress.
Hideyoshi had spent two days hunting with falcons in Ibaraki in Settsu province at the beginning of the month. The strong mid-autumn sunlight had left his forehead and cheeks glossy and tanned. They had captured an abundance of quail during the hunt, and Hideyoshi, full of thoughts about his family, had immediately sent a box to his mother; a box to Gōhime, the daughter he had adopted from the Maeda family; and three boxes to his wife.
“That hunting was a great vacation, and I hadn’t had one in a long time,” Hideyoshi recalled. Every time the conversation turned to this event, he repeated those words, not wanting to forget the pleasure of his success. “Starting at dawn, we rode from the mountains to the fields, and whatever we ate was delicious. At night, we could talk at our leisure, and when we fell asleep, we slept through to the next morning. When we woke up, there were no chores to do. Surely times like that make my life longer, don’t they, Yūki?”
Ōmura Yūki had been among the retainers who had accompanied Hideyoshi on the hunting trip, and had spent much of the time telling amusing stories and making Hideyoshi laugh. Prompted by Hideyoshi, Ōmura recalled, “The bitterness of waking so early in the morning was sweetened later when we drank hot sake by the mouthful and enjoyed fresh grilled quail.”
Hearing that, one of Hideyoshi’s retainers, Asano Nagayoshi, who was sitting with Mitsunari and Maeda Gen’i, looked up at Hideyoshi on the dais. “Well, if you really like falconry, why don’t you do it again sometime soon? Since I wasn’t able to join you before, I’d like to be included next time.”
“Well,” Hideyoshi said, “I wouldn’t mind hunting on a bigger scale if we can find a good place to do it.”
“I have a good idea,” said the warlord Katō Kiyomasa.
Hideyoshi looked at him with a mixture of expectation and amusement. “What is your great idea?”
Kiyomasa’s bearded face was so red with excitement that it might have been painted. On the battlefield, Kiyomasa’s skill was second to none, and he was known to be honest and straightforward. But he was not a quick thinker, and sometimes his ideas were outrageous. In a loud voice, he told Hideyoshi that for the next hunt they should cover the area from Mount Ibuki and Mount Futakami to Lake Biwa, not just the Kinai region. “It would be as grand a hunt as the one that Yoritomo held at the foot of Mount Fuji,” Kiyomasa concluded, referring to Japan’s first shōgun, who had lived in the twelfth century. “After our victory in Kyūshū, our soldiers are getting too used to peace. This will invigorate them.”
Hideyoshi guffawed, displaying his big, white teeth, to show his appreciation of Kiyomasa’s warrior-like suggestion. The rest of the company laughed with him. They thought they knew the significance of Hideyoshi’s mirth—that he truly did want to do a hunt on the same scale as the one at the foot of Mount Fuji.
Mitsunari laughed noiselessly, as was typical for him. His thin, pale face looked even more bloodless by candlelight, which accentuated the dark hollows in his indented temples. But his beautiful eyes, which formed a pronounced triangle with his nose, shone in an almost sensual way. They were strikingly different from the rest of his gloomy features, and occasionally they gave the impression that he was a completely different person.
Usually Hideyoshi could talk about falconry for hours, but now he suddenly fell quiet. Mitsunari looked up at him with a calm, knowing smile. Mitsunari knew that Hideyoshi wasn’t thinking about trying to compete with the long-dead Yoritomo. Hideyoshi was thinking of an even grander hunt, one that would take his troops to Odawara.
The banquet was still lively when Hidenaga excused himself. Even if he didn’t exert himself, his health was so poor that keeping up with his daily routine tired him. Nobody was concerned that his seat, above Mitsunari’s, was empty; as Hideyoshi’s brother, Hidenaga could leave whenever he wanted. While the company laughed at Kiyomasa’s grand hunting proposal, Hidenaga walked toward a room along the inner garden where he loved to go and relax. Along the long hallway to the toilet, the dim yellow light of the hanging lamps looked like constellations.
Suddenly, Hidenaga had a coughing fit. He stopped to cover his mouth with paper, knowing that what was pushing up from his lungs was heavy and smelled of blood. He didn’t have to look closely at the red dot that dyed the paper to know it wasn’t mere phlegm. “Bring some hot water so I can gargle,” he ordered his attendant.
“Yes, my lord.” Recognizing Hidenaga’s grave condition, the servant ran quickly to obey. But before the servant could return, Rikyū emerged from a back room and passed close by.
“Are you all right?” he asked Hidenaga. Like the attendant, Rikyū understood what was happening as soon as he saw Hidenaga leaning against the wall with his eyes half-closed, indifferent to anyone’s approach as he waited to see if anything else would come out of his lungs. It wasn’t the first time he had seen Hidenaga like this. “How do you feel?”
“Better than before.” Hidenaga told Rikyū that he had asked his attendant to bring hot water.
“Well, why don’t you come inside and rest?”
“All right, I will.”
Hideyoshi often wanted to drink tea after a party. The tea masters kept everything ready, just in case. Whenever there was a night banquet, Rikyū avoided using the tearoom next to the tea garden, instead using a larger room that he had divided with a golden folding screen in the old-fashioned style. Tonight, that was what he had done. Rikyū told a young disciple to find Hidenaga’s attendant and tell him not to bother with the water, and then led Hidenaga into the room.
The faint smell of incense greeted them as he opened the door. On top of the brazier was a kettle in a shape called otogoze after the moon-faced women’s mask used in comic plays. Its bulging body was singing faintly as the water within it boiled. Rikyū opened the sliding door of a shelf built into the wall and took out a contemporary Raku-ware tea bowl. Pouring two full ladles of hot water into the bowl, he placed it next to an empty bowl on a square tray. Hidenaga stood up before Rikyū could bring him the tray and said, “I will come over there.”
With a delicate consideration for the serenity of the tearoom, Hidenaga went behind the screen and gargled, the rolling sound rising from his beautiful, womanly white throat. “I feel much better now.”
“You aren’t tired
?”
“No, I’m fine.” True to his word, he came into the tearoom and sat with a relieved expression. He looked deliberately around the area contained within the golden screen, as if seeing it for the first time. In the alcove was a horizontal scroll painted by South Sung Dynasty artist Baen, of a mountain in the morning light. A rare jar costing forty koku was placed underneath it. In the center of the tearoom was the brazier, its kettle murmuring like a stream heard in the distance. Underneath the kettle, the red embers shone like flowers on the white ash. There was no formal, lacquered Chinese-style stand to display the utensils, as would have been used by other tea masters. Hidenaga appreciated this simple, tranquil space all the more having just come from the lively banquet hall.
“Would you make a bowl of tea for me?” Hidenaga asked.
“Certainly.”
Rikyū wasn’t the only one who heard the request. Each utensil that was carried into the tearoom, even the wooden waste-water bucket, responded. Rikyū had only to touch the ladle, the tea whisk, the eggplant-shaped tea container, and the tea scoop and, just as pure water springs out from between rocks in a forest, tea the color of fresh, young leaves in May swelled softly from the bottom of the white Chinese-style tea bowl, bitter but sweet, thick and warm. That was Rikyū’s way of making tea—not to prepare tea, but for the tea to prepare itself.