by Nogami Yaeko
Hidenaga agreed with his brother’s suggestion. He added that since Vengeance on Akechi was a story about a battle, they would need many people in the chorus. “And even though we’re picking our actors from among your close associates and retainers, we should avoid people who sing very loudly.”
“Yes, indeed. Owari’s voice is notorious.”
“The chorus will outshine him.”
They both grinned. Although there was nothing particularly unusual about Ieyasu’s speaking voice, when he sang loudly his voice became high-pitched and hoarse. The harder he tried, the worse his singing became, and he would end up sounding as if he were screaming. The servants had given him the nickname Night Heron.
“But I’m concerned …” Hidenaga’s cheeks reddened as he spoke, his smile fading. He wanted to change the subject back to Odawara, and he was trying to figure out if his brother shared the attitude of his chief advisors, like Mitsunari, who were still suspicious of Ieyasu.
Negotiations to bring the Hōjō family peacefully under Hideyoshi’s authority had started a couple of years before. Hōjō Ujimasa enjoyed power that stretched back for five generations, since the time of Hōjō Sōun, and he was not inclined to submit to Hideyoshi.
But after Hideyoshi had conquered Lord Shimazu in Kyūshū, Hōjō’s lands were the only thing stopping Hideyoshi from uniting all of Japan. Knowing this, Hōjō was attempting to negotiate, but secretly preparing for battle. He had no intention of coming to Kyōto and bowing to Hideyoshi even though Hideyoshi was pressuring him to do so, and so war was inevitable.
While Hōjō was preparing for war, as Mitsunari reported, his son Ujinao had married Ieyasu’s daughter, Tokuhime. Hōjō was exploiting this connection, asking Ieyasu to mediate between him and Hideyoshi. It was this family relationship that led Mitsunari and the other retainers to doubt Ieyasu’s loyalties.
During the struggle for power after Oda Nobunaga’s death at Honnōji Temple, Hideyoshi had moved quickly to attack Akechi at Yamazaki. If he had been slower, Ieyasu might have gotten his troops to Kyōto and seized power first. Then, during the battle of Shizugatake, Ieyasu had held back, waiting to see whether Hideyoshi or Shibata Katsuie—a former lieutenant of Hideyoshi’s who was making his own bid for power—would win. At the battles of Komaki and Nagakute, Ieyasu had allied himself with Oda Nobuo, Nobunaga’s brother.
After Hideyoshi emerged as the winner, he and Ieyasu had competed to see who could show the other more friendship. It was during that time that Ieyasu had given Hideyoshi the tea container named Hatsuhana, one of the treasures of the Ashikaga family that had not been burned during the battle of Honnōji Temple. For his part, Hideyoshi had arranged the marriage of his sister Asahi to Ieyasu, formally cementing the bond.
But there was no bridging the gap between superficial displays of political unity and true friendship.
Ieyasu ruled the Mikawa region, and kept a careful eye on the fertile Kantō region in central Japan, like an eagle waiting for the right moment to swoop. Although he appeared to have nothing to do with the conflict between the powers of east and west, he would be able to rule Kantō if he helped Hōjō. If Ieyasu dreamed of one day entering Kyōto, which Hideyoshi had seized for himself, a war between Hideyoshi and Odawara would put him in a very favorable position.
That was what Mitsunari and the other retainers told Hideyoshi. Ieyasu had promised that Ujimasa’s brother, Ujinori, would meet with Hideyoshi on behalf of the Hōjō clan, but so far Ieyasu had not made good on that promise. Hideyoshi’s retainers believed it was because Ieyasu was still waiting to see what would happen.
Hideyoshi listened to his brother with one plump earlobe cocked in Hidenaga’s direction, staring absentmindedly at the wisteria-covered screen, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger, something he often did when listening to some important information he didn’t want to hear. However, his face remained motionless, not even a single long eyebrow moving. Even though his smile had disappeared, the rest of his face had its usual look, showing that he had his own way to solve the problem.
Hideyoshi opened his mouth quietly. “I often talk to Sōeki about this.”
“What does Sōeki say?”
“He has the same opinion as I have. Ieyasu won’t move this time.
“Ieyasu may be two-faced, but he’s smart. He’s not going to be Hōjō’s puppet. If he shows loyalty to me, he knows that eventually I’ll give him eight provinces as a reward. If one can feed a horse well and keep him in the stable, that’s fine. We don’t have to let the horse go out in the fields or let him run wild.”
He continued, “Sōeki is an experienced man, and he has common sense. But Mitsunari is still very young, and he has a bad habit of seeing Sōeki as his enemy. I often tell him he should practice tea, but he won’t. He doesn’t like the new wabi style of tea ceremony at all; he thinks that the old-style tea ceremony using Chinese utensils is the real tea ceremony. Wabi tea ceremony, to him, is suitable for merchants and townspeople, but not for warriors. So he says to me that he doesn’t think crawling into a tearoom is appropriate for me as imperial regent. But my idea is that everything is interesting, whether it’s wabi tea ceremony or the old-style tea. Depending on the occasion and the people, each style can create a different effect. But Mitsunari is a punctilious man.”
Hidenaga had never heard his brother talk about Ieyasu so openly before. This was also the first time Hideyoshi had said anything about the relationship between Rikyū and Mitsunari—the disharmony and the struggle, the way Mitsunari harbored jealous feelings even though they were both polite on the surface.
Perhaps Hideyoshi wanted to air his thoughts to make sure he wasn’t wrong. His voice was serious, although that could change quickly once he knew the problem was resolved.
He turned to look at the European clock on a nearby shelf, and he saw that it was three o’clock. “Did you go over there?” he asked his brother abruptly.
That was the phrase the brothers used. “Over there” was where their mother lived.
“I’m about to go over there right now,” Hidenaga said.
Hideyoshi said that he would join him, and ordered a servant to send a message to his mother’s house that they were coming.
Even though their mother’s residence was also in Jurakudai, it was quite a way from Hideyoshi’s. The building where Hideyoshi lived was like the sun in the middle of the solar system. The resident lords and retainers like Rikyū were required to live around the center, while Hideyoshi’s mother lived on the outskirts.
Jurakudai’s gardens had been created using the same landscaping techniques that were refined during the building of Ōsaka Castle and Azuchi Castle. There was a miniature mountain with a stream and large, distinctive boulders with plants skillfully placed in between. The gardens were surrounded by a mud wall, and the paths running through it were covered with little white pebbles so there was no space for the spring grasses to grow.
There were still many natural meadows and trees in the garden around Hideyoshi’s mother’s house, however. In the same way that the grass-hut atmosphere of the teahouse garden at Fushinan reminded Hideyoshi of his past, he knew his mother never wanted to forget the village in Owari where they used to live, so her garden was not created in the same formal style as the rest of Jurakudai.
The gardeners had left a big, old chinquapin tree in the sunny southern part of the garden. It was more than just part of the scenery; they had left it there because of the unusually large nuts it dropped in the fall, which were good to eat. Short grasses grew around the base of the thick, gray trunk like a blue European rug. In the springtime, butterbur, horsetail, and other wild plants grew nearby. There was a stream running through the garden with Japanese parsley growing beside it. Last fall their mother had gathered the chinquapin seeds from the thick grasses around the base of the trunk, roasted them, and put them into a hand-sewn bag. She had given the bag to Hideyoshi, just as she used to do when he was very young. The gift had made Hideyoshi hap
py, but that small pleasure had been planned by Rikyū, who had asked the gardeners to let the tree stand when they were creating the garden.
When Hideyoshi had been preparing to build Jurakudai, he had consulted with Rikyū about the planning, and the gardens in particular, including his mother’s garden. Knowing that Hideyoshi wanted to demonstrate his affection for his mother, Rikyū had given the garden a true country flavor, which had endeared him to the old lady. Because of this warm relationship between Rikyū and Hideyoshi’s mother, Riki had started to do tea with her.
Following the custom of the highest rank of nobility, Hideyoshi’s palanquin did not stop in front of the entrance to his mother’s house; instead, he was carried up the set of wooden stairs that extended the width of his mother’s house to the porch, where he would enter the house through the door to his mother’s formal waiting room. Hidenaga’s palanquin stopped at the bottom of the stairs, in accordance with his lowlier rank.
As Hideyoshi entered the main room, his brother at his side, he joked, “Look, Mother, today Hidenaga is my retinue.”
He bowed to his mother, who was sitting in front of a screen decorated with white and red peonies on a gold background, and apologized for not having contacted her for a while. He gazed at her ivory-colored face, sluggish with the weight of seventy-six years. He added, “You have a very good complexion. You should eat lots of rice and keep getting your moxa treatment.”
His mother smiled, her toothless mouth looking like a wrinkled money pouch. She exchanged glances with Hidenaga, who was smiling complacently.
Hideyoshi wanted everyone to have the moxa treatment, which he considered an infallible remedy. His mother pretended that she was following his advice, but in truth she didn’t like it. Hidenaga had an aversion to it, too. Hideyoshi knew that; he would scold his brother, saying that the reason he was so unhealthy was because he did not do as Hideyoshi said. But he wouldn’t scold his mother. Instead, he mentioned moxa every time he greeted her.
Mother and brother laughed affectionately. They knew that Hideyoshi was going to try to convince them to use moxa. They had heard it all many times—that it was beneficial for headaches, diarrhea, dizziness, and heat stroke, among other things. According to Hideyoshi, it was so effective that it was almost as good as Dr. Genpaku’s medicine.
Hideyoshi smiled. “Mother, when Hidenaga was a young boy, he was so naughty that he had to have the moxa treatment all the time.”
“Everyone knows you were worse than me, so you must have had so much moxa that you’re sick of it,” teased Hidenaga.
“Oh, no, I was the best-behaved boy in the village,” Hideyoshi joked.
The brothers exploded with laughter, and their mother laughed, her wrinkled mouth puckered and rounded. She said that she’d heard that Europeans drank cow’s milk, and that was why they were big and strong enough to sail to Japan over such a long distance. She wanted to know if it was true. “I heard that they don’t feel mother’s milk is enough, so they drink cow’s milk. It seems rather strange, but it’s easier to get cow’s milk than mother’s milk, so they can drink a lot of it, can’t they?”
She was always very careful not to speak the dialect of their home province in front of anyone except for her family. It made her very talkative when she was with them, as if she had returned from a trip to China or India where she couldn’t speak the native language.
She said that the servants were arguing about why the babies who were fed cow’s milk did not grow horns. “But the head servant convinced them that if such strange things happened, nobody would let their babies drink cow’s milk.”
“She is a wise woman.” Hideyoshi praised the servant, adding that it was foolish of the other servants to believe such a thing. He spoke in the same broad dialect as his mother, as did Hidenaga. The dialect came naturally whenever the three of them talked together. Their mother enjoyed watching them as they became as they were when they were children. They reminded her of a time when they were both genuine, crawling around in their diapers and sucking at her breast.
“By the way, Hidenaga.” Hideyoshi’s tone became more serious. “You should drink it, too.”
“You mean cow’s milk?”
“That’s right. In Europe, not only children drink milk a lot; adults do too, as if it were hot water or tea. They also eat meat because it gives them energy. It must be very good for someone like you who has a serious illness. I can’t drink milk, but I eat meat. It’s quite tasty when marinated in miso. Why don’t you try it? We can have it together tonight.”
“If it’s good for my health, I’d rather have the meat than the moxa.”
It was taboo to eat cows or horses, because they were indispensable for farming. If anyone else had said that they preferred meat to moxa, it would have sounded like they were insulting Hideyoshi, who had issued an official decree that those animals should not be eaten. Nobody but Hidenaga could have talked to Hideyoshi like that.
The year before, when Hideyoshi had ordered all of the Jesuit missionaries in Japan deported, one of the accusations he had leveled at them was that they ate cow and horse meat. Hideyoshi had issued the deportation order unexpectedly, just after his defeat of Lord Shimazu, before he had even left Kyūshū.
Hidenaga was well aware that Hideyoshi didn’t mind eating meat. Hidenaga had heard a rumor that the servants in Jurakudai sometimes cooked beef or horse meat, pretending that it was venison or wild boar. He appreciated that his brother cared so much about his health that he was willing to disclose the secret.
Because their mother had grown up in a poor village where they had had to eat whatever food was available, she didn’t dislike meat either. In the past, when they got a big chunk of boar’s meat from a hunter in the village, she would cook a big pot of stew for the family. They all ate to the bottom of the pot, enjoying each bit of the nourishing food. She didn’t eat beef now only because nobody else ate it. But she told Hidenaga to eat meat to strengthen his energy as if he were a three-year-old.
Then she asked them whether they came to see her by palanquin or by horse.
“Of course we came by horse,” Hidenaga lied. “That’s why I didn’t get tired. Don’t you think I look better?”
“Don’t exhaust yourself. Your health is the only thing that worries me. You know that, don’t you, Hideyoshi?”
“I do, I do,” Hideyoshi confirmed.
“But anyhow, I’m always telling you how lucky I am. I must be the luckiest person in the world. I feel like I’ve gone to heaven, even though I’m still alive. It’s all thanks to you, Hideyoshi. I know that if I complain about something, the gods will punish me. But human desire is endless. Every time I see you both …”
As he listened, Hideyoshi put his hand on his chin and gave his brother a sharp glance. In response, the wrinkles gathered at the corners of Hidenaga’s eyes. Suddenly, Hideyoshi’s facial resemblance to his mother and brother was clear.
Both Hideyoshi and Hidenaga knew what their mother was going to say. She did not see her daughters very often, and she missed them greatly. The oldest, Toki, had married a man called Miyoshi Musashinokami, and the youngest one, Asahi, had married Tokugawa Ieyasu. Their mother, who had a strong build from her years as a farmer’s wife, and who in spite of her age was not senile, cried like a child whenever she talked about her daughters. Watching his mother cry, Hideyoshi told her that it was difficult for Asahi to visit, but Toki might be coming to see her soon.
“Have you heard anything from Magoshichirō?” he asked his brother. Hideyoshi had no children of his own, so he adopted the sons and daughters of his relatives and warrior friends. Magoshichirō, formally named Dainagon Hidetsugu, was his older sister’s son. He lived at Ōsaka Castle.
“Yes. Toki went to Mount Kōya Temple a while ago to make some kind of petition to the gods, and Magoshichirō said that Toki was planning to go there again to give thanks.”
It had been Toki’s habit to pray at Mount Kōya since she was younger. Hideyoshi told his m
other that this time Toki’s priority would be to see her mother instead of making the long trip to the temple. Since the weather had been so lovely, it would be nice for his mother to go sightseeing with her. He said it casually, as if it had just occurred to him, but he was hoping to reassure his mother.
Picking up on the thread, Hidenaga told her it would be fun to go to some of the historical sites in Yamatoji in the late spring. He had a residence in nearby Kōriyama that they could use as a base.
Usually that kind of talk banished her hysteria right away. If anyone even mentioned her grandson Dainagon Hidetsugu, for example, her mood changed immediately, and she would start to talk about him. But today was different. She buried her face in a piece of soft, folded paper and sobbed like a little girl. Her slender shoulders, encased in a kimono the color of brown leaves, twitched endlessly.
Hideyoshi stopped talking, staring at his mother closely. His eyebrows came together, and his eyes widened, became more severe. His expression had changed from that of a dutiful son who was trying to comfort his little old white-haired mother to one of hatred.
Hidenaga pretended that he didn’t notice the change, but his elegant, tranquil face grew paler. Clearly bewildered, he kept his lips tightly closed. He didn’t dare say anything to his brother, but he knew that their mother’s grief was about more than not being able to see her daughters. Hidenaga watched Hideyoshi’s expression harden; he knew that his brother too was thinking about the past. Hideyoshi had lost his father when he was very young and afterwards his mother had remarried. Hideyoshi had left home at the age of thirteen. First, he had served under a lord named Matsushita Kaheiji, and then under Oda Nobunaga, but he had never dreamed that he would reach the rank of imperial regent. His desires had been modest, in keeping with his status as the son of a humble farmer.
