One of the actors answered, 'Yes indeed, it looks to me like a game of kickball between blind people.'
'Even a dog wouldn't nibble at that,' Hideyoshi laughed.
'Come on. There's no end to such winning and losing.'
'You there, the flutist, what did you think?'
'Well, I was watching it as I might my own business. Who's to blame, who's to fault Blame! Fault! Blam! Foom! Blam! Foom!'
Hideyoshi suddenly snatched Nene's over-kimono and threw it out as a prize.
On the following day Hideyoshi's family was unable to get even a glimpse of him, even though they were in the same castle. Throughout the day Hideyoshi was pressed with the work of giving instructions to his retainers and generals.
On the twenty-sixth day of the Eighth Month, Ieyasu received an urgent report that Hideyoshi was coming. He hastened from Kiyosu to Iwakura with Nobuo, and set up a position opposing Hideyoshi. Ieyasu again took up a totally defensive position and warned his men not to initiate any movement or challenge on their own.
'This is a man who doesn't know the meaning of enough.'
Hideyoshi had already found Ieyasu's patience difficult to deal with, but he was not completely without such resources himself. He knew that it was impossible to open the wreath shell's cap, even with a hammer, but if the tail end of its shell was roasted, however, the meat could be taken out easily. It was this sort of ordinary reasoning that now occupied his thinking. Quietly sending Niwa Nagahide to see about concluding a peace agreement was like heating the wreath shell's tail.
Niwa was the most senior among the Oda clan's retainers and was a dependable and popular character. Now that Katsuie was dead and Takigawa Kazumasu was in reduced circumstances, Hideyoshi did not forget the necessity of winning over that warm, good man as his own 'chessman in reserve' before the hostilities at Mount Komaki began.
Niwa was in the north with Inuchiyo, but Niwa's generals, Kanamori Kingo and Hachiya Yoritaka, were participating in the war on Hideyoshi's side. Before anyone even knew it, those two generals had gone back and forth a number of times between Hideyoshi and their home province of Echizen.
The content of the letters that were being sent was unknown even to the envoys, but finally Niwa himself made a secret journey to Kiyosu and had an interview with Ieyasu.
Such talks, however, were conducted in extreme secrecy. The only men who knew about them on Hideyoshi's side were Niwa and his two generals. At Hideyoshi’s suggestion, Ishikawa Kazumasa became his go- between.
Eventually, however, someone within the Tokugawa clan leaked a rumor that secret peace talks had been initiated. That set off great agitation in Ieyasu's defenses centered at Mount Komaki.
When rumors leak out, they are always accompanied by malicious gossip. In this case the name that surfaced was one that was already held in suspicion by his fellow retainers—that of Ishikawa Kazumasa.
“It's being said that Kazumasa is the mediator. Somehow there's always something that smells funny between Hideyoshi and Kazumasa.'
There were some people who spoke about it directly to Ieyasu, but he rebuked whoever spoke to him and never doubted Kazumasa in the least.
But once that kind of doubt had arisen among the retainers, the morale of the whole clan began to suffer.
Ieyasu, of course, was in favor of holding peace talks, but when he saw the internal condition of his forces, he suddenly rejected Niwa's messenger.
“I have no desire for peace,' Ieyasu said. 'I have no hopes for a settlement with Hideyoshi, no matter what conditions he offers. We're going to fight a decisive battle here, I'm going to take Hideyoshi's head, and we'll let the nation know what true duty is.'
When this was announced officially throughout Ieyasu's camp, the soldiers were d, and the dark rumors about Kazumasa were swept away.
“Hideyoshi's started to break down!'
Their spirits revitalized, they became all the more aggressive.
Hideyoshi received the bitter cup with resignation. To him, the result seemed not altogether bad. So he did not venture to use military strength that time either, but ordered his forces to occupy strategic areas. Toward the middle of the Ninth Month, he sent his soldiers back once more and entered the castle at Ogaki.
How many times was it now that the citizens of Osaka had watched Hideyoshi and his army leave for the front and then return, going back and forth between the castle and Mino?
It was now the twentieth day of the Tenth Month—already late autumn. Hideyoshi's army, which usually passed through Osaka, Yodo, and Kyoto, suddenly changed its route atSakamoto and this time passed through Koga in Iga and went on toward Ise. There it left the Mino Road and took the one that led to Owari.
Dispatch after urgent dispatch was sent out from Nobuo's branch castles and spies in Ise, almost as though a dike had unexpectedly opened in a number of places and the muddy waters of a turbulent river were rushing that way.
“It's Hideyoshi's main force!'
“These are not soldiers under the command of a single general, as we've seen until now.”
On the twenty-third of the month Hideyoshi's army camped at Hanetsu and built fortifications at Nawabu.
With Hideyoshi's army closing in on his castle, Nobuo was unable to keep his composure. For about a month now he had had forebodings that the storm was approaching Which is to say that Ishikawa Kazumasa's actions—which had been kept an absolute secret by the Tokugawa clan—had been mysteriously exaggerated and discussed bysomeone, though nobody could quite say who.
The rumor went that the inner circle of the Tokugawa clan was not really united. It appeared that a number of Ieyasu's retainers were hostile to Kazumasa and were just waiting for the right moment.
It was also being widely rumored that the Tokugawa had been negotiating with Hideyoshi, that Ieyasu was trying to make peace quickly, before news of the rupture of his inner circle leaked out, but that negotiations had been broken off because the conditions set by Hideyoshi were too severe.
Nobuo was frankly pained. What, after all, would happen to him if Ieyasu made peace with Hideyoshi?
'If Hideyoshi changes direction and heads out on the Ise Road, you had better be resigned to the fact that there is already a secret understanding between Hideyoshi and Ieyasu to sacrifice your clan, my lord.'
And, just as Nobuo had feared, Hideyoshi's army suddenly confirmed his worse nightmares. There was no plan he could follow other than to report the emergency to Ieyasu and call for his help.
Sakai Tadatsugu was in charge of Kiyosu Castle during Ieyasu's absence. When he received the urgent report from Nobuo, he immediately had a runner relay it to Ieyasu, who raised all his forces on the same day and marched to Kiyosu. He then quickly sent reinforcements under Sakai Tadatsugu to Kuwana.
Kuwana is the geographical neck of Nagashima. Nobuo also took soldiers there and placed them facing Hideyoshi, who had set up his headquarters in the village of Nawabu.
Nawabu was on the bank of the Machiya River, about one league to the southwest of Kuwana, but the mouths of the Kiso and Ibi rivers were close by, and it was an excellent place from which to threaten Nobuo's headquarters.
Late autumn. The numerous reeds in the area concealed several hundred thousand soldiers, and the smoke of the campfires spread out thickly over the riverbank, morning and night. The order for battle had still not been given. The relaxed soldiers even went fishing for gobies. At such times, when the lightly armored Hideyoshi made a tour of the encampments and suddenly appeared on horseback, the flustered rank-and-file would quickly throw away their fishing rods. But even if Hideyoshi noticed this, he would just pass by smiling.
The fact is that if it hadn't been this particular place, he too would have wanted to fish for gobies and walk barefoot. He was still, in some ways, a boy at heart, and such scenes called forth the pleasures of his childhood.
Across this river was the earth of Owari. Under the autumn sun, the smell of the earth of his birthplace tantalized his senses.
Tomita Tomonobu and Tsuda Nobukatsu had returned from a mission and were waiting impatiently for his
