If the sight of thirteen thousand men preparing their provisions in the field was quite a spectacle, it was a congenial one. In the meantime, the corps commanders who had been summoned were called once again—this time into the forest of the Hachiman shrine. There, enhanced by the shadows of dusk and the cries of the cicadas, the cool air felt almost like water.
A moment before, the sound of hands clapping in prayer could be heard from the shrine. It seemed as though Mitsuhide and his generals had been praying before the gods. Mitsuhide had persuaded himself that he was not acting purely out of the enmity and resentment he felt toward Nobunaga. The fear that he might end up like Araki or Sakuma had allowed him the rationalization that it was a matter of self-defense; he was like a cornered animal forced to strike first in order to stay alive.
From the shrine it was only five leagues to the Honno Temple, where his lightly protected enemy was staying. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Conscious that his treachery looked like opportunism, he could not concentrate on his prayer. But he had no trouble in justifying his actions: he enumerated Nobunaga's crimes over the past two decades. In the end, although he had served Nobunaga for many years, Mitsuhide was nostalgic for the old shogunate, with all of its stagnation.
The commanders waited, crowding together. Mitsuhide's stool was still unoccupied. His pages said that he was still praying at the shrine and would soon return. Not long thereafter, the curtain parted. Greeting the men who had gathered there, Mitsuhide's close retainers entered one by one. Mitsuhide, Toshimitsu, Mitsuharu, Mitsutada, and Mitsuaki were the last to appear.
'Are these all of the corps commanders?' Mitsuhide asked.
With alarming speed, the immediate area was completely surrounded by soldiers. Caution could be read on Mitsuhide's face, and a wordless warning was very clearly concentrated in the eyes of the generals.
Mitsuhide said, 'You may think it rather cold of me to take these kinds of precautions when talking to my retainers, and especially to retainers on whom I rely. Don't take this measure in the wrong way; it's only in order to disclose to you a great, long-awaited event—an event that will affect the entire nation and that will mean either our rise or our fall.'
Thus he began the disclosure of his intentions. Mitsuhide enumerated his grievances against Nobunaga: the humiliations at Suwa and Azuchi and, the final indignity, an order to join the campaign in the west that implied he was subordinate to Hideyoshi. He went on to list the names of the men who had served Nobunaga for years, only to be driven to self-destruction. It was Nobunaga who was the enemy of righteousness, the destroyer of cullture, and the conspirator who had overthrown institutions and brought the nation to chaos. He ended his speech by reciting a poem he had written.
Let a person with no understanding
Say what he will;
I will have no regrets for either
Position or fame.
While reciting the poem, Mitsuhide began to feel the pathos of his own situation, and tears began to run down his cheeks. His senior retainers, too, began to weep. Some among them even bit the sleeves of their armor or fell face down on the earth. There was only one man who did not weep—the veteran Saito Toshimitsu.
In order to bind their tears in a pledge of blood, Saito Toshimitsu broke in and said, I think His Lordship has opened his heart to us because he considers us men he can trust. If a lord is shamed, his retainers die. Is it our lord alone who is being pained? These old bones of mine have little time left, but if I can witness the downfall of Lord Nobunaga and see my lord become the ruler of the nation, I will be able to die without any regrets.'
Mitsuharu spoke next. 'Each of us thinks of himself as His Lordship's right-hand man, so once he has spoken, there is only one road to take. We should not be late for our own deaths.'
The corps commanders all answered in unison. The glint of emotion in every eye and open mouth seemed to say they knew no other word than
Yomoda Masataka looked up at the sky and then urged the men to prepare themselves mentally. 'It will soon be the Hour of the Rooster. It's about five leagues to the capital. If we travel across country, we should be able to surround the Honno Temple by dawn. If we can take care of the Honno Temple before the Hour of the Dragon and then destroy the Myokaku Temple, everything should be settled before breakfast.'
He had turned to Mitsuhide and Mitsuharu and had spoken with complete conviction. This speech, of course, was neither a recommendation nor counsel. It was to let the main commanders know that the country was already in their hands, and to exhort them to fire up their blood.
It was the second half of the Hour of the Rooster. The road was already dark in the shade of the mountain. The armor-clad men flowed in a black line through the village of Oji and finally reached the hill of Oinosaka. The night sky was full of stars, and the capital below looked like its reflection.
'Fifty Years under Heaven'
The reddish rays of the western sun fell into the empty moat of the Honno Temple. It was the first day of the Sixth Month. The sun had beat down relentlessly on the capital for the entire day, and now spots of dry mud were appearing even in the comparatively deep moat.
The tile-roofed mud walls ran for more than one hundred yards to the east and west, and for two hundred yards from north to south. The moat was over twelve feet wide, and deeper than usual for a temple. Passersby might look up at the roofs of the main temple and the ten or so monastery buildings, but nothing could really be seen from the outside. Only the famous honey locust tree in a corner of the compound was visible from quite some distance away. It was so large that people called it the Honno Forest, or the Locust Tree Grove.
The tree was as famous a landmark as the pagoda of the Eastern Temple. When the late afternoon sun filled its high branches, a multitude of crows raised a racket all at once. And no matter how fastidious and elegant the citizens of Kyoto tried to be, there were three things they could not avoid: stray dogs at night, cow dung in the streets in the morning, and crows in the afternoon.
Within the grounds of the temple there were still a number of vacant areas. Much construction was needed to complete the reconstruction of the twenty or so buildings that had been destroyed by fire during the civil wars in the capital. If a visitor walked in the direction of Fourth Street from the temple's main gate, he would see the mansion of the governor of Kyoto, the samurai quarter, and the streets of a well-regulated town. But in the northern part of the city, the slums remained like islands, just as they had been iring the shogunate, and one narrow alleyway still richly deserved its old name, Sewer Street.
The children of the neighborhood almost burst from the alleys between the rough walls that wound beneath the twisted eaves of the single-roofed houses. With their boils, rashes, and sniveling noses, they flew through the streets like giant winged insects.
'The missionaries have come!' the children shouted.
'The priests from the Namban Temple are walking by with a pretty birdcage!'
The three missionaries laughed when they heard the children's voices, and slackened their steps as though waiting for friends.
The Namban Temple, as the missionaries' church was popularly known, was on nearby Fourth Street. The chanting of the religious services at the Honno Temple could be heard in the morning in the slums, and in the evening the church bell echoed through the alleyways. The gate of the Honno Temple was very imposing, and the monks who lived there walked through the streets with haughty expressions, but when the missionaries came through, they were humble and friendly toward the locals. Seeing a child with boil on his face, they would pat his head and show him how to treat it; if they heard that someone was sick, they would visit that person. It was said that no one should interfere in a quarrel between husband and wife, but if the missionaries passed by on such an occasion, they would step in and try to settle it. Thus they earned a reputation for being kind and understanding. 'They're really working for the sake of society,' people said. 'Maybe they are messengers from the gods.'
The people had been struck with admiration for the missionaries for some time. Their good works extended to the poor, the sick, and the homeless. The church even had something like a charity hospital and a
