Yasuke: In Search of the African Samurai

by Thomas Lockley

  The African samurai stood fully and crossed the room silently and swiftly, gently sliding open his door. A narrow strip of the rising sun cut the hallway in half through a narrow opening in the shutters at the end of the corridor. He looked up and down the hall but the guard was not outside Nobunaga’s room, which meant Nobunaga was not there; he must already be up. Yasuke clutched his sheathed blade tighter and, barefoot, stalked silently down the hardwood corridor. Nobunaga was probably outside at the spring washing his face. It was the time of day when he often cleaned out the cobwebs of the night and exercised his muscles for the day to come.

  Suddenly, the piercing wail of a conch shell sounded outside. It was a battle cry; someone had sounded an attack.

  * * *

  Several Oda samurai grooms, Yashiro Shōsuke, Nobunaga’s favorite horse boy, Tomo Shōrin and Murata Kitsugo, renowned sumo wrestlers, and Ban Taro, the son of a faithful old retainer who’d been getting the horses ready for the day’s journey realized what was happening and charged the advancing Akechi men in an attempt to slow their advance. Ten, twenty Akechi attackers fell dead before them. But then these young men were cut down, surrounded on all sides by ever-growing numbers of enemy warriors. Their bodies drowned beneath the tide of the Akechi soldiers. The other twenty grooms, those who’d been inside with the horses, recognized they did not have the time or position to retreat to Nobunaga’s quarters. Instead, they made their stand at the stables. The Akechi men ran onward, and took up firing positions against the main temple building where Yasuke and Nobunaga were.

  * * *

  Yasuke raced down the hallway toward where he thought Nobunaga would be. The fading night had erupted in the deep trumpeting of more conch-shell war calls, battle cries and the earthquake-like rumble of oncoming armored bodies. Then screams of men dying outside, and the clash of swords pierced the clamor. As Yasuke ran, the rest of the men within the Honnō-ji Temple stumbled out into the hallways, startled, grouchy, heads muddled by the sudden rude awakening.

  Yasuke had finally reached the secluded courtyard behind the lord’s quarters. He found Nobunaga and Ranmaru there, confused, but still both wielding their bows and clutching quivers full of arrows. Other men rapidly joined them on the run toward the front of the residence, grouping behind their leader and lord. Nobunaga cursed loudly, demanding an explanation.

  “Some of the locals are brawling,” someone suggested, but no one really believed this. Brawling locals would never dare approach Nobunaga’s presence under arms.

  Lord Nobunaga raged. “Yasuke, get my naginata from the room and—”

  The whole world exploded with a thousand cracks of thunder.

  The wood and paper walls around them shattered on both sides, vanished into thousands of fragments as Yasuke and the rest crouched down against the explosion of gunfire and flying ordnance. Pellets ripped through the walls. The men scrambled to find shelter behind columns; grabbing up bedding for protection, the covers still warm from the night’s slumbers.

  Splinters of wood and paper filled the corridor, drifting down on them like ghastly snow. The thumping of arrows and lead on wood and the soft thwack as a futon, sleeping mat or soft flesh was pierced. Another battle cry filled the early morning, the voices of thousands of warriors outside in the temple courtyard, unified in battle rage. Yasuke and the rest braced against the terrible sound which felt it would flatten the temple compound. Even as they chased that thought away, another noise swallowed the first.

  Volley after volley, unceasing, burst through the dawn in the signature shooting pattern of three ranks shooting in turn to provide continuous fire, a method which Nobunaga himself had patented and passed on to his vassals. This was, without doubt, an Oda attack. An Oda army attacking the clan head? Treachery. But who?

  Musket balls swept past again, slashing through the paper and wooden shutters. Between volleys, Yasuke and other Oda men moved, readying their weapons for the inevitable storming attack to come. Yasuke clutched his sword in its scabbard, and kept Nobunaga’s naginata in his right hand ready to pass to his lord when the order came. Nobunaga was not going down without a fight. As screams of terror and pain echoed down the hallway from every direction, the warlord, Yasuke and the surviving few men ran to the front of his quarters and took cover behind stout wooden columns and the dead bullet-ridden bodies of their fallen comrades.

  Another volley ripped through the temple.

  Oda Nobunaga’s last stand at the Honnō-ji Temple. Nobunaga can be seen on the right, and on the left Mori Ranmaru is running to try and save him.

  Nagoya City

  Yasuke and other Oda men moved again, taking cover behind anything they could find. Then another volley. The outer walls were in tatters. The gunfire ceased and the enemy charged in with hand weapons, spears stabbing and swords raised. The clan symbols on the flags were clear to the defenders now.

  The five-petal bellflower symbol of the Akechi.

  It was stalwart Akechi Mitsuhide who’d betrayed his lord. Yasuke and the others couldn’t fathom it. Akechi? Akechi had—

  “What’s done is done,” grunted Nobunaga. The how and why of it mattered not to him. The next hour had already been decided by the actions of days and years before, and the vagaries of fate. He was resigned to the inevitable, and as the crane in the story he’d once shared, Nobunaga would surely meet his death with a calm and reconciled defiance.

  He and his men burst out firing their arrows again and again at the horde of advancing traitors. These highly skilled men had trained in archery since they could stand. The proof came in Akechi deaths, men forming piles at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the main temple edifice. But there were simply too many.

  Nobunaga’s bow string snapped. With no spare on hand, he called for Yasuke to pass over his naginata. The enemy had reached the top steps to the residence, and the warlord slashed out with his new weapon and then stabbed, impaling an Akechi samurai on his wide, long blade.

  Fifty more traitors started up the steps toward them.

  Yasuke drew his sword and charged.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Honnō-ji Incident

  Bodies lay strewn across the gore-splashed steps, some still quivering in impending death, others crawling over each other to die away from the incessant slaughter. Yasuke had lost count of the men he’d killed.

  Still, there was no escape here.

  More and more Akechi soldiers wielding swords and spears fought their way steadily up the stairs, overwhelming the ever-dwindling number of defenders. The traitor lord had clearly brought several thousand men. With no other choice, Oda’s men fell back, retreating into the main building. The shattered hallways behind the audience chamber were narrow, the only advantage against the numbers waiting outside.

  Yasuke stood gasping beside Nobunaga. With them were Ranmaru, Ranmaru’s two brothers and a dozen other surviving comrades. All now had the look of men accepting their fate—this morning, they would die—but before that fate was met they would exact as much vengeance as they could manage together.

  For now, their retreat had worked. The attack had slowed, and the first six Akechi men to enter after them into the tight passage were cut down easily. More Akechi troops had filled the opposite end of the hall, but held their position. The hallway grew still within the chaos brewing outside as the two groups, on opposite sides of the hall, now studied each other with wide eyes, sizing up their opponents before the imminent bloodletting.

  Nobunaga breathed deeply, looking away. What he was seeing against the shredded wall, Yasuke could only guess: A future that now would never be? His children? Some imagined hellish punishment for the traitor whom he’d trusted so? Or, maybe some simple memory from the past? The coy smile of a passing peasant girl, an accomplished courtesan’s touch. Or, the dark silhouette of a wild hawk passing directly overhead. Nobunaga took only a moment. The warlord tur
ned back to the others, glaring, his face alive and fierce, destiny was destiny. Yasuke could have sworn the man was smiling.

  They pushed forward together to take on the next wave of attackers. Battle cries and combat erupted again in the hallway. It was now twenty against fifty, a hundred, pushing and screaming through the corridors and sleeping chambers that led off them, where the defenders had, only minutes before, lain peacefully asleep.

  The fighting was steel-against-steel, hot spit and blood splashing as the two sides slammed together. Guns were useless in close quarters, and this battle concluded in a more time-honored way. Spears and samurai swords sliced through doors and stuck in crossbeams. Wooden pillars provided protection but also obstacles, massive splinters carved by downward sword strokes flung dangerously through the air.

  Yasuke used his massive body to drive back several attackers, shouldering the smaller men, punching them with the sword hilt in his right hand, and then reversing the cut to dip his blade in their lurching bodies. They died quickly, which would not be Akechi’s fate, should Nobunaga, or any of the Oda, ever get his hands on the usurper.

  Having cut the heads off several spears, Yasuke nimbly danced between the splintered wooden poles and slashed his sword down into the attackers’ faces before they could draw their own blades to counter his cut. Arrows flew past him from behind, the enemy dancing back and falling at the end of the hallway as Oda arrows struck home. The white walls were now spattered in hundreds of crimson blossoms.

  In the courtyard, Yasuke knew, several hundred more soldiers waited to replace the first fifty who’d dared enter and commit the treacherous sacrilege of turning on their ultimate liege. However many foes were felled by Yasuke and Nobunaga’s dwindling vassals, there were always more to take their place. Yasuke fought beside half as many Oda pages now as wave after wave of attackers crashed in, seemingly from all directions. Perhaps they’d burst through the wall at his back. He no longer knew. His forearms were gashed from multiple cuts, his hands swollen and sore, soaked in blood. Nobunaga had taken a spear to the shoulder, the warlord’s left arm dangling, his white sleeping robe stained in dark, scarlet blood.

  The samurai beside Yasuke wiped the gore from his eyes as the slash across his forehead continued to run hot down his face. Within the next surge of attackers arrived two Oda comrades—Yuasa Jinsuke and Ogura Matsuju—samurai who’d been staying in town but rushed to the temple when they heard the commotion, concealing themselves among the Akechi troops until they’d reached the dwindling Oda samurai.

  The two men joined the defenders joyfully, to cheers from Yasuke and the others, but were soon cut down by the Akechi soldiers they’d pushed between to achieve their deaths. Loyalty had its price.

  A new smell filled the air and a strange glow suddenly filled the gaps in the walls. Fire. Whether it was Akechi’s men who’d set the temple on fire, the defenders who’d rather perish in the flames than surrender, or simply a stray spark from the guns, who could say. The result was the same. To the smell and smoke of lingering gunpowder, was added the sweet perfume of burning pine and cedar.

  An Akechi arrow struck Nobunaga in his leg, sinking deep. The Oda warlord cursed, collapsing to one knee as more Akechi soldiers forced through the entrance. Yasuke and the others met them, fresh hot blood splashing against the shattered walls. “Form up on me, close ranks,” Nobunaga commanded and the men clustered together, retreating again slowly down the main hallway. Toward the inner chambers, Nobunaga’s hegemony was reduced from a nation to a few small rooms within a matter of minutes.

  Within the doorways of other rooms, servant women crouched and wept. “Get out!” Nobunaga snarled, passing them. “Hurry! They won’t harm women.” Whether this proved true or not, the men did not know, but little could be worse than burning to death in the growing inferno. The last few men continued their tactical retreat toward Nobunaga’s personal quarters as the women scurried down the hall to the courtyard and the approaching soldiers. This residence was an annexed place of worship, not some warlord’s stronghold. The temple walls and most of the secondary buildings were made of wattle and daub, paper, and wood. They’d provided very little cover from the initial salvoes of bullets and arrows and had never been designed to. And now, they burned exceptionally well.

  This morning’s end was already written. Death. But Nobunaga could still decide where the final stand would be. It was his last command in a life of orders.

  There were less than ten Oda men left standing now.

  Nobunaga commanded all, except for Yasuke and Ranmaru, to hold out as long as possible. Those men left behind on no account were to perform seppuku, as Nobunaga himself needed the time to do that. Holding out to the last would be their final sacrifice for their lord. The teenager Takahashi Toramatsu rushed to the kitchen entrance at the rear of the building to stop a rear attack, and his quick thinking won his master precious minutes.

  Nobunaga stepped into one of the last inner chambers and waved Yasuke and Ranmaru into the room.

  “It is time,” Nobunaga said and Yasuke followed.

  * * *

  A block away, at his residence in the Myōkaku-ji Temple, Nobutada woke to the sounds of battle, the strange glow to the south over the city, the acrid smoke. He’d heard the commotion and now gotten word of the reason. He had only two hundred men with him, but it was his duty to try and rescue his father. If he’d perished, Nobutada was now the clan head and must lead—whatever the circumstances, and for however long. Even if only another hour.

  Nobutada started for the Honnō-ji, but several Oda faithful rushed into the courtyard with more news. “The temple has fallen,” they related. “It’s collapsed in flames. They’ll come here next.”

  His father was surely dead. Betrayed.

  As heir, Nobutada thought briefly of escape. Regroup, pull together his father’s many allies, but it was already too late for escape really—his father’s power, he knew, would end this morning. Whoever had turned on them—Akechi? Takayama?—would have already eliminated such options. He needed to make a stand somewhere and straightaway.

  The new Nijō Palace next door, which Nobunaga had constructed at great cost and where he’d just spent his last evening on earth, had strong defenses. There, Nobutada would hold out as long as possible and procure what revenge he could. And, if it were destiny, there he and his men would die also.

  * * *

  As the final Oda survivors in the burning Honnō-ji Temple held the door to the chamber with Nobunaga, the Akechi troops withdrew to let the flames do their work for them.

  Within the growing inferno, there was no time to stand on ceremony—no seppuku formality of white robe and death poem for posterity and no paper-wrapped blade for the stomach cut. Nobunaga must die by his own hand right away to avoid capture and humiliation.

  The warlord knelt, took a short sword, and held it to his belly. He looked up at Yasuke. “My head and sword to Nobutada,” he ordered. “Never let them fall to the enemy.”

  Yasuke bowed deeply, understanding his role. Neither could fall into the hands of Akechi as they would become a powerful symbol of Nobunaga’s downfall and Akechi’s legitimacy as his conqueror. With the head, Oda vassals would more easily accept Akechi as their new overlord.

  Nobunaga had a chance to stop that, striking one final blow of revenge at the man who’d betrayed him while giving his own son, Nobutada, a shot at legitimate succession. Nobunaga chose Yasuke for this extraordinary task.

  Yasuke swore he’d deliver the head and the power of legitimacy it would provide. He bowed again, his eyes never leaving the warlord’s.

  It was the last order Nobunaga ever gave.

  * * *

  Throughout the city, people gathered at windows and doorways arguing and shushing each other and crying over what might be happening. Kyoto had been at peace for a decade, but memories were long and much of the inhabited city was still surrounded by b
urned-out blocks, crumbled walls and a waste-strewn no-man’s-land from the preceding hundred years of war and strife. They’d gone to bed thinking the nearest enemy was a hundred miles away, that their protector and benefactor Lord Nobunaga was untouchable here. But they had been wrong.

  * * *

  Nobunaga breathed in deeply as smoke snaked through the joints in the room’s panelling. He rammed the short sword fully into his belly, doubling over before starting to draw it across horizontally.

  Ranmaru, acting as Nobunaga’s second in this ritual suicide (his kaishakunin), stepped forward with his sword and neatly severed his lord’s head, skillfully leaving the skin at the very front intact to avoid the head bouncing to the floor in an undignified manner. The beautiful samurai knelt to the floor and prostrated himself before Nobunaga’s remains, then deftly cut the final lappet of skin. He picked up the head, his right hand grasping Nobunaga’s topknot, his left the bloody remains of the neck as he’d been taught, careful not to get any more blood on his lord’s already paling face. With great gentleness, an almost caressing touch, he wrapped the head deftly into his jacket, tying the package at the top.

  Bowing once more to the floor, Ranmaru offered up the bundle to Yasuke who, kneeling also, bowed back more deeply. There were no tears in the young samurai’s eyes as the teen asked Yasuke to spare another minute for one last request before he escaped, the ultimate honor of acting as his second. Wasting no more time, Ranmaru quickly knelt and stabbed himself in the stomach with his own short sword.

  Yasuke did as asked, and as kaishakunin, sliced the boy’s neck to sever it, copying the technique he’d just witnessed, leaving it hanging by a narrow strip of muscle and skin. His cut had not been as good as Ranmaru’s, but it had done the job; keeping the boy’s head off the floor, the face now hung upside down facing Ranmaru’s chest. Yasuke made the last cut tenderly, lifted the head, and placed it reverentially next to Nobunaga’s body. Master, mentor, hero, lover.