Hideyoshi and Rikyū

"Hideyoshi made a strangled noise, words stifled by his rage. . . . [He] flew down from the dais, the toes of his gold brocade socks flashing over ten green grass mats in a second. Soji's body was kicked from the corridor like a ball, hitting the stepping stone and rolling into the garden. . . . At the time, Rikyū was still in the tearoom, and knew nothing about it. On his way to see Hideyoshi, to inform him that the tea gathering had concluded successfully, Ōmura Yūki intercepted him and whispered urgently in his ear. But by that time, Soji's head was already separated from his torso, lying in the corner of the stone wall." —from Chapter 12Nogami Yaeko's compelling novel of political intrigue in sixteenth-century Japan depicts the intertwined lives of two iconic historical figures. Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose through the ranks from a common foot soldier to become the military ruler of Japan but struggled to win respect among the cultured nobility. He found both a friend and...