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

Nirasaki, they turned to look even as they walked. Flames and black smoke rose high in the morning sky as the castle at the new capital burned. They had set the fires at dawn.

'I don't want to live a long life,' said one of the women. 'What kind of future would I see? Is this the end of Lord Shingen's clan?' The nun who was Katsuyori's aunt, the charming young girl who was Shingen's granddaughter, the wives of the clan members and their servant ladies—all of them were drowning in their tears, holding each other as they cried, or calling out the names of children. Golden hairpins and other ornaments were left on the road, and no one even bothered to pick them up. Cosmetics and jewelry were smeared with mud, but no one gazed at them with regret.

'Hurry up! Why are you crying? This is what it is to be born a human being. You're going to shame yourselves in front of the farmers!' Katsuyori rode in among the slow-moving palanquins and litters, urging them on, to escape farther and farther to the east.

Hoping to reach Oyamada Nobushige's castle, they looked at the old castle in Kofu as they passed by but could only walk on toward the mountains. As they walked on, the carriers who shouldered the palanquins gradually disappeared, the menials who carried the baggage and litters ran off one after another, and their number was reduced by half and then by half again. By the time they had entered the mountains near Katsunuma, their entire force numbered only two hundred men, and less than twenty of those were mounted, counting Katsuyori and his son. When Katsuyori and his followers had struggled along as far as the mountain village of Komagai, they found that the one man they had been relying upon had suddenly had a change of heart.

'Take refuge somewhere else!' Obstructing the summit path to Sasago, Oyamada Nobushige prevented Katsuyori's party from passing through. Katsuyori, his son, and the entire group were at a complete loss. There was nothing they could do but change their direction, and they now fled toward Tago, a village at the foot of Mount Temmoku.  Spring was in full bloom, but the mountains and fields, as far as the eye could see, held neither comfort nor hope. So now the small group that remained put all their trust in Katsuyori, as they might in a staff or a pillar. Katsuyori himself was at his wits' end. Huddling together in Tago, his followers waited in a daze, swept over by the mountain wind.

The combined forces of the Oda and the Tokugawa entered Kai like raging waves. Led by Anayama, Ieyasu's army marched from Minobu to Ichikawaguchi. Oda Nobutada attacked upper Suwa and burned the Suwa Myojin Shrine and a number of Buddhist temples. The common people's homes along the road he burned to ashes as he hunted for surviving enemy soldiers and pushed on—day and night—toward Nirasaki and Kofu. Finally, the end came. It was the morning of the eleventh day of the Third Month.

One of Katsuyori's personal attendants had gone to the village the night before and returned after reconnoitering the enemy positions. That morning he gave the report to his lord as he gasped for breath.

'The vanguard of the Oda forces has entered the nearby villages and seems to have learned from the villagers that you and your family are here, my lord. It appears that the Oda have surrounded the area and cut off all the roads, finally starting their last push in this direction.'

Their group now numbered only ninety-one—the forty-one remaining samurai with Katsuyori and his son, and Katsuyori's wife and her ladies-in-waiting. In the preceding days they had ensconced themselves in a place called Hirayashiki and had even erected a sort of palisade. But when they heard the report, every one of them knew that the time had come, and they hurried to prepare themselves for death. Among them, Katsuyori's wife sat as though she were still in the mansion of the inner citadel. Her face was like a white flower as she looked off in a daze. The women who surrounded her had broken into tears.

'If it was going to come to this, it would have been better to stay in the new castle at Nirasaki. How pitiful. Is this how the wife of the lord of the Takeda should look?'

Left to themselves, the women cried miserably and lamented to each other without end.

Katsuyori went to his wife and pressed her to leave. 'I've just ordered my attendant to bring you a horse. Even if we could stay here for a long time, our regrets would never end, and now the enemy is closing in on the foothills. I've heard that we're close to Sagami, so you should go there as quickly as possible. Cross the mountains and go back to the Hojo clan.' His wife's eyes were filled with tears, but she made no move to leave. Rather, she looked as though she resented her husband's words.

'Tsuchiya! Tsuchiya Uemon!' Katsuyori called, summoning a retainer. 'Get my wife on the back of a horse.'

The attendant strode up to Katsuyori's wife, but she suddenly turned to her hus­band and said, 'It is said that a true samurai will not have two masters. In the same way, once a woman has taken a husband, she should not go back to live with her family again. Though it may seem to be compassionate of you to send me back to Odawara by myself, just those words feel so unsympathetic…I'm not moving from this place. I'll be at your side until the very end. Then, perhaps, you will let me go with you to the here­after.' Just at that moment, two retainers rushed up with the information that the enemy was closing in.

'They've reached the temple in the foothills.'

Katsuyori's wife strictly scolded her attendants for their sudden wailing. 'There is no time to do anything but grieve. Come here and help with the preparations.'

This woman was not yet twenty years old, yet she did not lose her sense of propriety even as death pressed in. She was as serene as a pool of water, and Katsuyori himself felt reproved by her composure.

Her attendants went off but returned shortly with an unglazed cup and a sake flask, and set them down in front of Katsuyori and his son. It appeared that his wife had thought far enough ahead to prepare even for this moment. Silendy she offered her hus­band the cup. Katsuyori held it in his hand, took a sip, and passed it to his son. He then shared it with his wife.

'My lord, a cup for the Tsuchiya brothers,' his wife said. 'Tsuchiya, you must say farewell while we are all still in this world.'

Tsuchiya Sozo, Katsuyori's personal attendant, and his two younger brothers had truly been devoted to their lord. Sozo was twenty-six years old, the next oldest was twenty-one, and the youngest brother was only eighteen. Together they had protected their ill-fated lord with fidelity all along the way, from the fall of the new capital to their last stand on Mount Temmoku.

'With this, I can leave without regrets.' Emptying the cup he had received, Sozo turned and smiled at his younger brothers. Then he turned to Katsuyori and his wife. 'Your misfortune this time is due entirely to the defection of your kinsmen. It must be fearful and unsettling for both you, my lord, and your wife to go through this without knowing what was in people's hearts. But the world is not filled only with people like those who betrayed you. Here at your final moment, at least, everyone with you is of one heart and one body. You can now believe in both man and the world, and walk through the portals of death with grace and an easy mind.' Sozo stood straight up and walked over to his wife, who was with her ladies.

Suddenly there was the heartrending shriek of a child, and Katsuyori yelled out frantically, 'Sozo! What have you done?'

Sozo had stabbed his own four-year-old son to death right before his wife's eyes, and now she was sobbing. Without even putting away his bloody sword, Sozo prostrated him­self toward Katsuyori from a distance.

'As proof of what I have just declared to you, I have sent my own son ahead on the road of death. Certainly he would have been an encumbrance otherwise. My lord, I am going to accompany you; and whether I be first or last, it will take only an instant.'

How sad to see the flowers

I knew would fall

Departing before me,

Not one to remain

Until the end of spring.

Covering her face with her sleeves, Katsuyori's wife chanted these lines and cried pathetically. One of her ladies-in-waiting choked back her tears and continued:

When they bloomed,

Their numbers were beyond measure;

But with the end of spring

They fell without one blossom left behind.

As her voice trailed off, a number of women unsheathed their daggers and cut through their own breasts