"It's obvious."

"If that's so, then why are all these words necessary? A yes or a no will suffice."

"My lord, why are you the one who is refusing to speak? It is not only the fate of the Akechi clan that depends on what you say now but the future of the nation."

"What are you saying, Mitsuharu?"

"To think that you, of all people, should consider committing this outrage." Tears spilling down his cheeks, Mitsuharu drew closer to Mitsuhide and dropped both hands to the floor in supplication. "I have never understood human character less than I have tonight. When we were both young and studied together in my father's house, what was it that we read? Was there a single word in the books of the ancient sages that approved of killing one's own lord?"

"Speak more quietly, Mitsuharu."

"Who's going to hear me? All you have here is a.s.sa.s.sins behind secret doors, waiting for your command. My lord... I have never once doubted your wisdom. But you seem to have changed so much from the man I used to know."

"It's too late, Mitsuharu."

"I must speak."

"It's useless."

"I must, even if it's useless." Bitter tears fell on Mitsuharu's hands.

Just then something moved behind the hidden door. Perhaps the a.s.sa.s.sin had sensed that the situation had become tense and was eager to act. But there was still no signal from Mitsuhide. He turned away from his cousin's weeping figure.

"You have studied so much more than others, your intellectual powers are much greater than most people's, and you have reached the age of mature judgment. Is there anything you don't understand?" Mitsuharu pleaded. "I am so ignorant that I lack the words. But even someone like me can read the word 'loyalty' and meditate on it until it has become a part of me. Although you've read ten thousand books, it will all come to naught if you lose sight of that word now. My lord, are you listening? Our blood has been drawn from a line of ancient warriors. Would you stain the honor of our ancestors? And what of your own children and their descendants? Think of the shame you'll heap on endless generations."

"You could enumerate those kinds of things without end," Mitsuhide replied. "What I intend to do transcends them all. Forget about changing my mind. I've considered the good sense you've just spoken about night after night, turning them over again and again in my brain. When I look back over the road I've traveled for the past fifty-five years know I would not be this distraught if I had not been born a samurai. Nor would I be intent on such a thing."

"And it's precisely because you were born a samurai that you should not act against your lord, no matter how much you've had to bear."

"n.o.bunaga rose against the shogun. And everyone knows how much bad karma acc.u.mulated from burning down Mount Hiei. Look what befell his senior retainers-Hayashi, Sak.u.ma, Araki. I cannot think of their tragic fates as other people's affairs."

"My lord, you've received a province. The clan lacks for nothing. Think of the favors he has bestowed upon us."

At this point Mitsuhide lost control, and his words burst forth like a river in flood. "What is the favor of an insignificant province like this? I would probably have this, even if I weren't talented. Once he has everything he needs from me, I'll be nothing more than a lapdog to be fed at Azuchi. Or maybe he'll consider me a useless luxury. He's even put me under Hideyoshi's command and ordered me to the Sanin. If that isn't a p.r.o.nouncement of the Akechi clan's fate, I don't know what is. I was raised a samurai; I have inherited the blood of generations of warriors. Do you think I'm going to finish my days kowtowing while he orders me around? Can't you see through n.o.bunaga's black heart, Mitsuharu?"

Mitsuharu sat in stunned silence for a while, then asked, "To whom have you disclosed your intentions?"

"Besides you, a dozen of my most trusted retainers." Mitsuhide took a deep breath and listed the men's names.

Mitsuharu looked up to the ceiling and let out a long sigh. "What can I say now that you've told them?"

Mitsuhide suddenly moved forward and grabbed his cousin's collar with his left hand. "Is it no?" he asked. His right hand gripped the haft of his dagger, while his left shook Mitsuharu with terrifying strength. "Or is it yes?"

Every time Mitsuhide shook Mitsuharu, his head moved back and forth as though his neck contained no bones. Tears were streaming down his face.

"At this point it's no longer a matter of yes or no. But I don't know what it would have been if you had told me before you informed the others, my lord."

"Then you agree? You'll act with me?"

"You and I, my lord, are two men, but we are the same as one. If you were to die, I wouldn't want to live. Technically, we are lord and retainer, but we have the same roots and the same birth. We have lived our lives together until now, and I am naturally resolved to share whatever fate lies ahead."

"Don't worry, Mitsuharu. It's going to be all or nothing, but I feel our victory is certain. If we are successful, you won't be in charge of a minor castle like Sakamoto. I promise you that. At the very least, you'll have the t.i.tle next to mine and will be the lord of a great number of provinces!"

"What! That is not the issue." Casting off the hand that held his collar, Mitsuharu pushed Mitsuhide back. "I'd like to cry... my lord, please allow me to cry."

"What are you sad about, you fool?"

"You're the fool!"

"Fool!"

The two called each other names back and forth and then embraced, tears rolling down their cheeks.

It certainly felt like summer; the first day of the Sixth Month was hotter than it had been for many years. In the afternoon, columns of cloud covered a section of the sky in the north, but the slowly setting sun continued to scorch the mountains and rivers of Tamba until dusk.

The town of Kameyama was now totally deserted. The soldiers and wagons that had packed its streets were gone. Soldiers, carrying firearms, banners, and spears, were marching out of the town in a long line, their heads baking in iron helmets. The townspeople crowded by the roadside to watch the army depart. Searching out the benefactors who had patronized their shops in the past, they wished them luck as loudly as they could and urged them on to great deeds.

But neither the marching soldiers nor the cheering crowds knew that this setting out was not the beginning of a campaign in the west, but the first step toward Kyoto. Except for Mitsuhide and a dozen men on his field staff, not one single person knew.

It would soon be the Hour of the Monkey. Booming through the blood-red western sun, conch sh.e.l.ls resounded high and low, one after another. The soldiers, who had been doing little more than crowding around various encampments, got up immediately to get into their proper columns. Dividing into three lines, they formed ranks, banners aloft.

The greenery of the surrounding mountains and the pale green foliage nearby rustled with fragrance as the slight evening breeze wafted across the innumerable faces. Once again the conch sounded-this time from the distant forest.

From the grounds of the shrine of the war G.o.d Hachiman, Mitsuhide and his generals moved forward in brilliant array through the slanting rays of the western sun. Mitsuhide reviewed his troops, who ma.s.sed together resembled a wall of iron. Every soldier looked up as Mitsuhide pa.s.sed by, and even the rank and file felt proud to be under the command of such a great general.

Mitsuhide wore black armor with light green threading under a white and silver brocade coat. His long sword and saddle were of exceptional workmanship. Today he appeared much younger than usual, but this was not true of Mitsuhide alone. When a man put on his armor, he was ageless. Even alongside a warrior of sixteen on his first campaign, an old man did not show or feel his age.

Today, Mitsuhide's prayers had been more beseeching than those of any other man in his army. And for that reason, as he pa.s.sed each soldier, his eyes looked strained by his resolve. The countenance of the commander-in-chief did not go unreflected in the martial spirit of his men. The Akechi had gone to war twenty-seven times. Today, however, the men were feverish with tension, as if they had intuited that the battle they were heading for was out of the ordinary.

Every man felt that he was setting out never to return. That ma.s.s intuition filled the place like a bleak mist, so that the nine banners emblazoned with blue bellflowers fluttering above each division seemed to be beating against a bank of cloud.

Mitsuhide reigned in his horse, turned to Saito Toshimitsu who was riding by his side, and asked, "How many men do we have altogether?"

"Ten thousand. If we include the various carriers and packers, there must be more than thirteen thousand men."

Mitsuhide nodded then said after a pause, "Ask the corps commanders to come here.

When the commanders had a.s.sembled in front of Mitsuhide's horse, he pulled back momentarily, and in his place his cousin Mitsutada came forward, flanked by generals to his left and right.

"This is a letter that arrived last night from Mori Ranmaru, who is now in Kyoto. I am going to read it to you so that it will be understood by everyone."

He opened the letter and read: '"By command of Lord Oda n.o.bunaga you are to come to the capital, so that His Lordship may review the troops before their departure for the west."'

"We will leave at the Hour of the Rooster. Until then have your soldiers prepare their provisions, feed their horses, and rest."

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 G.o.ds. Mitsuhide had persuaded himself that he was not acting purely out of the enmity and resentment he felt toward n.o.bunaga. The fear that he might end up like Araki or Sak.u.ma 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 n.o.bunaga's crimes over the past two decades. In the end, although he had served n.o.bunaga 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 n.o.bunaga: 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 n.o.bunaga for years, only to be driven to self-destruction. It was n.o.bunaga who was the enemy of righteousness, the destroyer of cullture, and the conspirator who had overthrown inst.i.tutions 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 n.o.bunaga 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 yes. When Mitsuhide stood up, the men shook with their strong feeling. They congratulated him loudly, as was the time-honored custom when leaving for the front.

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. Pa.s.sersby 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 paG.o.da of the Eastern Temple. When the late afternoon sun filled its high branches, a mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds."

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 home for the aged. And if that wasn't enough, the missionaries liked children.

But when these selfsame missionaries ran into Buddhist priests on the streets, they did not treat them with the same humility as they did the children. Indeed, they looked at the priests as if they were bitter enemies. For this reason they would take the long way around through Sewer Street, avoiding the Honno Temple as much as possible. Today and the day before, however, they had had to make daily visits to the temple itself, because it had become the headquarters of Lord n.o.bunaga. This meant that the most powerful man in j.a.pan was now their neighbor.

Carrying a small tropical bird in a gilded cage and some pastries made by the cook they had brought from their own country, the three missionaries now seemed to be on their way to offer presents to Lord n.o.bunaga.

"Missionaries! Hey, missionaries!"

"What kind of bird is that?"

"What's in the box?"

"If it's cake, give us some!"

"Give us some, missionary!"

The children of Sewer Street came up and blocked their way. The three missionaries did not look annoyed at all, but smilingly admonished them in broken j.a.panese as the walked along.

"These are for Lord n.o.bunaga. Don't be disrespectful. We'll give you all cakes when you come to the church with your mothers," one of the priests said.

The children tagged along behind, and ran around ahead of them. While the priests were thus surrounded, one of the children ran to the edge of the moat and fell in, making a sound just like a frog. The moat was empty, so there was no danger of the boy drowning, but the bottom of the moat was as muddy as a swamp. The child squirmed in it like a mudfish. The sides of the moat were made of stone, so even an adult would have had trouble climbing out. Indeed, sometimes a poor drunk would fall in and drown on a night when rainwater had filled it to overflowing.

Someone immediately notified the boy's family. The curious neighbors of Sewer Street clamored out of their houses like water boiling out of a pot, and the parents came running out barefoot. It was a calamity. But by the time they had arrived, the little boy had already been rescued. He looked like a lotus root plucked from the mud, and he was sobbing loudly.

He and two of the missionaries had mud splattered all over their hands and clothes, the third missionary had jumped into the moat after the boy, and he was completely covered in mud.

When the children looked at the missionaries, they ran around happily, hooting, clapping their hands, and shouting, "The missionary has turned into a catfish! His red beard all muddy!"

But the parents of the boy thanked them and praised their G.o.d, even though they were not Christians. They bowed at the priests' feet and shed tears of thankfulness with their hands folded in prayer. In the black mountain of people that had formed behind them, words of praise for the missionaries went from mouth to mouth.

The missionaries showed no regret at having come this far only to have to turn back the way they had come, carrying their now useless presents. In their eyes, n.o.bunaga and the boy from the slums were exactly the same. Moreover, this incident had become talk that would spread from house to house, and the missionaries knew very well what a large and inspiring wave it might grow into.

"Sotan, did you see that?"

"Yes, I was impressed."

"That religion is frightening."

"Yes, it is. It really makes you think."

One of the speakers was a man of about thirty, while the other was much older. They looked like father and son. There was something about them that set them apart from the important merchants of Sakai-a part of their character, perhaps, that spoke of a liberal breadth and depth of upbringing. Nevertheless, looking at them, one knew at once they were merchants.

With n.o.bunaga in residence, the Honno Temple was no longer a simple temple. From the night of the twenty-ninth on, at the main gate of the temple there was a tumult of carts and palanquins, and the din of people going in and out. The audiences n.o.bunaga was now granting seemed matters of grave concern to the entire nation. Thus, a man might withdraw after having obtained at least a word or smile from n.o.bunaga and go home with the happy feeling that he had gained something worth a hundred or a thousand times the value of the rare utensils, fine wines, delicacies, or other gifts he had presented.

"Let's wait here for a moment. It looks as though a courtier is going through the gate."

"It must be the governor. Those look like his attendants."

The governor, Murai Nagato, and his attendants had stopped at the main gate and seemed to be waiting discreetly as the palanquin of an aristocrat was brought out. Very soon afterward, a few samurai led two or three bay and dappled horses behind a small procession of palanquins and litters. When the samurai recognized Nagato, they bowed as they went by, taking the horses' reins in one hand.