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

you were with Hanbei at the siege of the castle at Choteiken in Mino. You played the koto and softened the hearts of soldiers who had become like demons, and they finally surrendered. If you would play now, it would be an offering to Hanbei's soul, I think, as well as becoming a remembrance for me. Also, if the notes were carried by the wind to the castle, they might shock the enemy soldiers into thinking of their own humanity and make them aware that their deaths now would be meaningless. That would be a great achievement, and even Hanbei would rejoice.'

He led her over to the pine tree, where a koto had been placed on top of a reed mat.

Having resisted a siege of three years with all their courage and integrity, the warriors the western provinces, who looked down on other men as being frivolous and vain, were now reduced to shadows of their former selves.

'I don't care if I die fighting today or tomorrow, I just don't want to die of starvation,' one of the defenders said.

They had fallen into such an extremity that dying in battle was their last remaining hope. The defenders still looked like men, but they were now reduced to sucking the bones of their own dead horses and eating field mice, tree bark, and roots, and they anticipated having to boil the tatami mats and eating the clay on the walls in the coming winter. As they consoled each other, sunken eye to sunken eye, they still had enough spirit to be able to plan on getting through the winter as best as they could. Indeed, even in small skirmishes, when the enemy drew near, they could suddenly forget their hunger and fatigue and go out to fight.

For more than half a month, however, the attacking troops had not approached the castle, and this neglect was more bitter to the defending troops than any desperate death. When the sun went down, the entire castle was sunk into a darkness so deep it might just as well have fallen to the bottom of a swamp. Not one lamp was lit. All of the fish oil and rapeseed oil had been consumed as food. Many of the small shrikes and sparrows that had flocked morning and night to the trees in the grounds had been caught and eaten, and recently the ones that remained had stopped coming to the castle, knowing, perhaps, what would be in store for them. The men had eaten so many crows that now they were rarely even able to catch one. In the midst of the darkness, the eyes of the sentries would quicken at the sound of something like a weasel scampering by. Instinctively, their gastric juices would begin to flow, and they would look at each other and grimace. 'My stomach feels like it's being wrung out like a damp cloth.'

The moon that evening was beautiful, but the soldiers only wished it could be eaten. The dead leaves fell in profusion on the roofs of the fortress and around the castle gate. A soldier munched greedily on them.

'Taste good? someone asked.

'Better than straw,' he answered, and picked up another one. Suddenly looking queasy, he coughed several times and vomited the leaves he had just eaten.

'General Goto!' someone suddenly announced, and everyone stood to attention. Goto Motokuni, chief retainer of the Bessho clan, walked toward the soldiers from the darkened keep.

'Anything to report?' Goto asked.

'Nothing, sir.'

'Really?' Goto showed them an arrow. 'Sometime this evening, this arrow was shot into the castle by the enemy. A letter was tied to it, asking me to meet with one of Lord Hideyoshi's generals, Kuroda Kanbei, here tonight.'

'Kanbei is coming here tonight! A man who betrayed his lord for the Oda. He's not fit to be a samurai. When he shows up, we'll torture him to death.'

'He's Lord Hideyoshi's envoy, and it would not be right to kill someone whose arrival has been announced beforehand. It's an agreement among warriors that one does not kill messengers.'

'That would be all right even for an enemy general if it were someone else. But with Kanbei, I feel like I wouldn't be content even eating the meat off his bones.'

'Don't let the enemy see what's in your heart. Laugh when you greet him.'

Just as Goto gazed out into the darkness, he and the men seemed to hear the intermittent sounds of a distant koto. At that moment Miki Castle became enveloped in a strange hush. In a night the color of India ink, it seemed as though no one could even breathe while the falling leaves swirled and danced formlessly in an uncanny sky.

'A koto?” one of the soldiers said, looking up into the void.

They listened almost in ecstasy to the nostalgic sound. The men in the watchtower, in the guardroom, and in every section of the fortress were caught by the same thoughts. Through storms of arrows, gunfire, and war cries—from dawn until dusk, and from dusk again until dawn—the men who had been in this castle for three years cut off from the outside world had steadfastly dug themselves in, without yielding or withdrawing. Now the sound of the koto suddenly called up various thoughts in their minds.

My ancestral home,

Will you wait

For a man who knows not

If tonight will be

His last?

This was the death poem that Kikuchi Taketoki, Emperor Godaigo's loyal general, had sent to his wife when he was surrounded by a rebel army.

As the men considered their own situations, there were some who unconsciously recited the poem to themselves. Surely there were soldiers, far away from their homes, who thought of their mothers, children, and brothers and sisters of whom they had had no news. Even the soldiers who had nothing to go back to did not have hearts made of stone, and were swayed by the feelings evoked by the koto. No one could stop his tears.

In his heart, Goto felt just the same as his men, but when he saw the expressions on the faces of the soldiers around him, he quickly pulled himself together. He spoke to his men with intentional cheer. 'What? Sounds of the koto are coming from the enemy imp? What fools! Why would they have a koto? That shows how soft the enemy warriors really are. They've probably gotten tired of the long campaign, have grabbed some singing girl from a village, and are trying to amuse themselves. For minds to be so disheveled is unpardonable. The steel and rock-hard souls of true warriors are not so weak!”

As he spoke, each man awoke from his reverie.

'Instead of listening to such foolery, let each man guard his own post. These castles are just like a dike that holds back a flood of dirty water. The dike is meandering and long, but if one little bit of it crumbles, the entire structure will collapse. Each of you should stand, and linked breast to breast, not move even if you die. As for Miki Castle, if it were said that someone abandoned his post and the entire castle collapsed as a result, his ancestors would weep from beneath the earth and his descendants would bear the shame of the province and be nothing more than laughing-stocks.'

Goto was urging his men on like this when he saw two or three soldiers running up to the castle. They quickly informed him that the enemy general whose visit had been announced earlier had come as far as the palisade at the bottom of the slope.

Kanbei arrived, carried in a litter. The litter was a light structure made of wood, straw, and bamboo. There was no roof, and the sides were low. He had learned to brandish his long sword from the litter when he fought with the enemy in battle. But tonight he had come as an envoy of peace.

Over a light yellow robe, Kanbei wore armor threaded with pale green, and a coat of silver embroidery on a white background. Luckily he was a small man, about five feet tall and lighter than average, so the men who carried him were not uncomfortable, and he himself did not feel cramped.

Footsteps could soon be heard inside the palisade gate. A number of soldiers from the castle had run back down the slope.

'Envoy, you may pass through!' they announced. At the same time Kanbei heard this stern shout, the palisade gate before him opened. In the darkness he thought that he could see a hundred or more soldiers jostling together. Each time the wave of men pitched and rolled, the glint of their spears pierced his eyes.

'I'm sorry to trouble you,' Kanbei said to the man who had shouted at him. 'I am lame, so I'll be coming through in a litter. Please excuse my lack of manners.' With this apology, he turned and spoke to his son,