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

Shojumaru, the only attendant who had ac­companied him, and ordered, 'Walk in front of me.'

'Yes, sir.' Edging around his father's litter, Shojumaru walked straight through the enemies' spears.

The four soldiers shouldering the litter followed through the palisade gate behind Shojumaru. When they saw how composed the thirteen-year-old boy and the lame war­rior looked as they walked into their camp, the bloodthirsty and ravenous soldiers could hardly feel any anger, even though they were looking at the enemy. They could now un­derstand that the enemy was fighting this battle with a determination and perseverance equal to their own and so could sympathize with the envoys as warriors. Strangely, they even felt a sort of compassion for them.

After passing through the palisade and the castle gate, Kanbei and his son quickly came to the main entrance, where Goto and his picked troops were waiting with solemn indifference.

I can see how this castle has been defended by these men, Kanbei thought as he approached the gate. The castle won't fall even though there's no food. They'll hold out, no matter what the cost. He could see that the courage of the men had not waned in the least, and he felt the weight of his own responsibility even more. This feeling immediately became transformed into a deep concern for the grave situation that Hideyoshi now faced. Kanbei silently renewed his pledge in his own heart. Somehow, he thought, this mission I've been entrusted with has got to succeed.

Goto and his men were surprised by the envoy's demeanor. Here was the general of the attacking troops, but, instead of looking at them with arrogance, he had come ac­companied by only a charming young man. Not only that, but when this Kanbei greeted Goto, he hurriedly had his litter lowered to the ground and, standing on his legs, greeted him with a smile.

'General Goto, I am Kuroda Kanbei, and I am here as Lord Hideyoshi's envoy. I'm certainly obliged that everyone has come out to meet me.'

Kanbei was completely unaffected. As an envoy from the enemy, he had made an exceptionally favorable impression. This was probably because he had approached them from his heart, disregarding concern for victory or defeat, and had acted with the custom and understanding that both he and his enemy were samurai. This, however, was not rea­son enough for the enemy to accept the point of his mission: to persuade them to capit­ ulate. Kanbei talked with Goto in a room in the lightless castle for an hour or so and then rose from his seat, saying, 'Well then, I'll wait for your answer.'

“I’ll give you one after conferring with Lord Nagaharu and the other generals,' Goto said, also standing up. Thus the pattern of the interview that night indicated that the negotiations were to be successful beyond Kanbei's and Hideyoshi's expectations—but five days passed, then seven, then ten, and still there was no sign of an answer from the castle.  The Twelfth Month came and went, and the opposing armies greeted the third New Year of the siege. In Hideyoshi's camp, the men at least had some rice cakes to eat and a little sake to drink, but they could hardly forget that the men in the castle, although they were the enemy, had nothing to eat and were barely holding on to their fragile lives. From the time of Kanbei's mission at the end of the Eleventh Month, Miki Castle had truly sunk into desolation and silence. It was understood that the soldiers lacked even bullets to shoot at the attackers. Hideyoshi, however, still refrained from an all-out offensive, saying, 'Perhaps the castle will not hold out much longer.'

If, then, the siege was simply an endurance contest, Hideyoshi's present position was hardly difficult or unfavorable. But the fact was that neither the camp at Mount Hirai nor Hideyoshi's position were matters of his own private battle. He was essentially striking against one link in the enemy alliance made up of those who opposed Nobunaga's supremacy; and he was nothing more than one of the limbs of Nobunaga's body that was trying to break open a hole to break through the encircling chain of his enemies. Little by little, therefore, Nobunaga had started to wonder about the lack of action in the pro­tracted western campaign.

And Hideyoshi's enemies on Nobunaga's field staff were wondering about his choice of commander, saying that Hideyoshi's responsibilities had been too heavy for him from the start.

His rivals cited as proof their feelings that, either Hideyoshi was wasting military expenses in a bid for popularity among the local people, or he was not very strict about the prohibition of sake in camp because he was afraid of the soldiers' antipathy. But whatever his rivals wished to question, it was easy to see that, one by one, all the trifling matters that were not worth reaching Nobunaga's ears were heard in Azuchi and were considered material for slander. But Hideyoshi never paid much attention to the talk. Certainly he was a human being and had normal feelings like everyone else, and it wasn't that he didn't notice such things; he simply didn't worry about them.

'Trivial matters are nothing but that,' he said. 'Whenever they're investigated, they'll be cleared up.' The only thing that did make him unhappy was the thought that with every passing day, the anti-Nobunaga coalition was getting stronger: the powerful Mori clan was building up its defenses, making plans with the Honganji, calling on the faraway Takeda and Hojo in the east, and inciting the clans of the Japan Sea coast. How strong these forces really were could be understood by observing the fact that Araki Murashige's castle in Itami, which the central army was presently besieging, had still not fallen.

What Murashige was depending on, and what the Bessho clan was stubbornly hold­ing on to, was not only their own strength and their own castle walls. Soon the Mori army will come to our aid! Nobunaga will be defeated soon! That was it. Generally, the worst state of affairs was not in the enemy Nobunaga faced directly but in the enemy waiting in the shadows.

The two ancient forces of the Honganji and the Mori were quite correctly Nobunaga's enemies, but it was Araki Murashige at Itami and Bessho Nagaharu, at Miki Castle, who were grappling directly with Nobunaga's ambition.

That evening Hideyoshi suddenly decided to have a bonfire lit, and was warding off the night cold, when he turned to see the carefree young pages drawing up close to the fire. They were half naked even in the cold of the First Month, and were making a noise over something that seemed to be amusing them.

'Sakichi! Shojumaru! What in the world are you two in an uproar about?' Hideyoshi asked, almost envious of their lightheartedness.

'Nothing at all,' answered Shojumaru, who had recently become a page, and he hurriedly dressed and adjusted his armor.

'My lord,' Ishida Sakichi interjected. 'Shojumaru's embarrassed to talk to you about it because it's disgusting. But I'm going to speak up, because if we don't tell you, yc might get suspicious.'

'All right. What is this disgusting thing?'

'We've been picking lice off each other.'

'Lice?'

'Yes. At first someone found one crawling on my collar, then Toranosuke found one on Sengoku's sleeve. Finally, everybody was saying that everyone else was infested, and in the middle of it all, when we came here to warm ourselves by the fire, we found lice crawling all over everyone's armor. Now they've started to itch, so we're going to massacre the entire enemy army. We're going to purge our underwear just like the burning of Mount Hiei!'

'Is that so?' Hideyoshi laughed. 'I guess the lice are also worn out from being besieged in this long campaign.'

'But our situation is different from that of Miki Castle. The lice have plenty of provisions, so if we don't burn them out, they'll never give up.'

'That's enough. I'm beginning to itch, too.'

'You haven't taken a bath for over ten days, have you, my lord? I'm sure the 'enemy’ must be holding out all over you in swarms!'

'That's enough, Sakichi!' To the delight of the pages, Hideyoshi rushed over and shook his body at them as further proof that the lice were not swarming over them alone. They laughed and danced around.

Just then a soldier peeked in from outside the camp enclosure at the happy, laughing voices and the billowing warm smoke.

'Is Shojumaru here?'

'Yes, I'm here,' Shojumaru said. The soldier was one of his father's retainers.

'If you're not busy with some errand, your father would like to see you.'

Shojumaru asked for Hideyoshi's permission. Since this request was not ordinarily made, Hideyoshi looked surprised, but quickly gave his assent. Shojumaru ran off, accompanied by his father's retainer. Fires were burning