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

the villages of Imaichi, Yogo, and Sakaguchi. The main army of twenty thousand men under the com­mand of Shibata Katsuie and Maeda Inuchiyo is steadily advancing southward.'

'Strike camp immediately,' Hideyoshi ordered. And then, 'On to northern Omi.'

Leaving the Ise campaign to Nobuo and Ujisato, Hideyoshi turned his army toward Omi. On the sixteenth he reached Nagahama, and on the seventeenth his troops were snaking their way along the lakeside road that led to northern Omi. He himself rode on horseback. The spring breeze played on his face as he rode beneath the commander's standard of the golden gourds.

At the border of Omi in the mountainous area of Yanagase, the fresh snow lay in pleats and folds. The wind blowing over the area and swooping down on the lake from the north was still cold enough to redden the noses of the warriors. At dusk the army divided to take up positions. The soldiers could almost smell the enemy. And yet not a single column of smoke from an enemy campfire, or a single enemy soldier, could be seen.

But the officers pointed out the enemy positions to their men. 'There are Shibata units along the base of Mount Tenjin and in the area of Tsubakizaka. There is also a large division of the enemy stationed in the areas of Kinomoto, Imaichi, and Sakaguchi, so stay on your guard, even when you sleep.'

But the white mist trailed into camp, ushering in an evening so peaceful it could hardly be imagined that the world was at war.

Suddenly, sporadic gunfire was heard in the distance—all from Hideyoshi's side. No a single shot was returned throughout the night. Was the enemy asleep?

At dawn the gunners who had been sent to test out the enemy's front line pulled back. Hideyoshi ordered the commanders of the musket corps to report to his headquarters, where he listened carefully to their reports of the enemy positions.

'Have you seen any trace of Sassa Narimasa's troops?' Hideyoshi asked.

Hideyoshi wanted to be sure, but all three commanders answered in the same way.

“The banners of Sassa Narimasa are nowhere to be seen.'

Hideyoshi nodded, acknowledging that it might be true. Even if Katsuie had come, he would be unable to do so without anxiety because of the Uesugi at his rear. Hideyoshi could imagine that Sassa had been left behind for precisely that reason.

The order to eat breakfast was issued. The rations carried during a campaign were unpolished rice balls packed with bean paste and wrapped in oak leaves. Hideyoshi talked his pages while chewing his rice noisily. Before he had eaten half of it, the others had finished.

“Don't you chew your food?' he asked.

“Aren't you just a slow eater, my lord?' the pages answered. 'It's our custom to eat quickly and shit quickly.'

'That's a good way to be,' Hideyoshi replied. 'Shitting quickly is good, I guess, but you all should try to eat like Sakichi.'

The pages looked at Sakichi. Like Hideyoshi, Sakichi had eaten only half of his rice and was chewing it as carefully as an old lady.

“I'll tell you why,' Hideyoshi continued. 'It's all right to eat quickly on days when there's going to be a fight, but it's different when you're besieged in a castle and there are limited provisions that you have to stretch out for the day. At that time you'll be able to see the wisdom of eating slowly both in the well-being of the castle and in your own health. Also, when you're deep in the mountains and plan to hold out for a long time out provisions, you may have to chew on anything—roots or leaves—just to satisfy stomach. Chewing well is an everyday matter, and if you don't get into the habit you won’t be able to do it voluntarily when the time comes.' Suddenly getting up from his camp stool, he waved them along. 'Come on. Let's go climb Mount Fumuro.'

Mount Fumuro is one of a cluster of mountains at the northern edge of two lakes—the smaller Lake Yogo and the larger Lake Biwa. From the village of Fumuro at its foot to its summit is a height of almost eight hundred meters and a walking distance of over two leagues. If the traveler wanted to climb its steep slope, he would have to plan on taking at half a day.

“He's leaving!'

“Where's he going so suddenly?'

The warriors guarding Hideyoshi noticed the retreating figures of the pages and ran after them. They could see Hideyoshi happily walking on ahead, grasping a bamboo staff, looking for all the world as if he were off on a hawking expedition.

“Are you going to climb the mountain, my lord?'

Hideyoshi pointed halfway up the slope with his staff. “Right. Up to about there.'

When they had climbed about a third of the way up the mountain, they came to an area of level ground. Hideyoshi stood looking around, as the wind cooled the sweat on his forehead. From his position he had a bird's- eye view of the area from Yanagase to lower Yogo. The road to the northern provinces, which wound its way through the mountains and connected several villages, looked like a single ribbon.

“Which one is Mount Nakao?'

'That's it over there.'

Hideyoshi looked in the direction in which the warrior was pointing. That was the enemy's main camp. A large number of banners followed the lines of the mountain and continued down to its base. There a single army corps could be recognized. But if one looked further, one could see that the banners belonging to the forces of the north filled the mountains in the distance and occupied the strategic areas on peaks closer at hand and all along the road. It was just as though some military expert had made that piece of heaven and earth his base and was trying his hand at a tremendous expansion of his for­mation. There were no cracks or spaces in the subtlety of the arrangement or in the strat­egy of the positioning of troops. The grandeur with which they showed themselves ready to swallow the enemy was beyond words.

Hideyoshi silently looked out over the scene. He then looked back toward Katsuie's main camp on Mount Nakao and gazed fixedly at it for a long time.

Looking closely, he could see a group of men working like ants on the southern face of the main camp area on Mount Nakao. And not in just one or two places. He could de­tect activity in all of the slightly elevated locations.

'Well, it looks like Katsuie intends to make this a long campaign.'

Hideyoshi had the answer. The enemy was building fortifications at the southern end of the main camp. The entire battle array, which spread out like a fan from the central army, had been positioned with great care. It would make a steady, carefully controlled advance. There was no sign of preparations for a surprise attack.

Hideyoshi could read the enemy's plan. In a word, Katsuie intended to keep him pinned down here to give his allies in Ise and Mino the time to prepare for a combined offensive from the front and rear.

'Let's go back,' Hideyoshi said, and started off. 'Isn't there another way down?'

'Yes, my lord,' a page answered proudly.

They came to an allied camp just between Mount Tenjin and Ikenohara. From the banners, they knew it was Hosokawa Tadaoki's post.

'I'm thirsty,' Hideyoshi said after presenting himself at the gate.

Tadaoki and his retainers thought that Hideyoshi was conducting a surprise inspec­tion.

'No,' Hideyoshi explained, 'I'm just on my way back from Mount Fumuro. But since I'm here…' As Hideyoshi stood before Tadaoki, he drank some water and gave orders: 'Strike camp immediately and go home. Then take all of the warships docked at Miyazu in Tango and attack the enemy coast.'

Hideyoshi had conceived of the idea of a navy when he was climbing the mountain. The plan did not seem to have anything to do with what he was involved with at the time, but that kind of discrepancy was, perhaps, peculiar to his way of thinking. His thought processes were not limited by what he saw in front of him.

After half a day of military observations, Hideyoshi had almost completely deter­mined his strategy. That night he summoned all of the generals to his headquarters and told them what he was going to do: because the enemy was preparing for extended hos­tilities, Hideyoshi's forces would also construct a number of ramparts and prepare for protracted hostilities.

The construction of a chain of fortresses was begun. The engineering was on a grand scale—geared to encourage morale. Hideyoshi's decision to begin building right in front the enemy, at a time when a decisive battle seemed imminent, could be called either reckless or courageous. It could easily have lost him the war. But he was