by Steve Bein
All the Okuma samurai went to their knees, as did the regent’s own. Daigoro’s leg never allowed him to kneel easily, so instead he bowed deeply at the waist. “You will kneel now,” he heard Shiramatsu say, and looking up he saw the man’s withering glare. This was a very different Shiramatsu from the one who had come a year before. That man was unflappable. This one actually bared his teeth when he repeated his command.
“At ease,” said the little goggle-eyed man who hopped out of the palanquin. His armor was black, orange, and gold, and he was so skinny that it hung on him as if on a wooden armor stand. His cheekbones were too high, his chin too long. Against his willing it, Daigoro thought of the macaques one sometimes found in the mountains. It shamed him to liken this man to a monkey, but at least now the nickname Monkey King made sense. This could only be Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
“It’s his house,” said Hideyoshi. “Let him bow if he likes.” He shot Daigoro a conspiratorial smile. His teeth were sharp, misaligned, haphazardly spaced, like a seer’s chicken bones tossed on the ground and pointing in all different directions.
“Yes, my lord regent,” said Shiramatsu. “Most gracious of you. You may stand, Okuma-san.”
Hideyoshi paid Shiramatsu no mind at all. Instead he looked at the assembled Okuma samurai and then around the compound. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
Daigoro’s thoughts stumbled over each other like drunks. All his associations and inferences had missed the mark. When Shiramatsu had first come almost a year ago, Daigoro thought him to be a high-ranking emissary, one so important that he warranted a legion of bodyguards. Now he could see the truth, reflected in Hideyoshi’s relaxed stance and in his emissary’s obsequious gaze toward him. Shiramatsu was nothing more than a lickspittle. Hideyoshi had sent him with a battalion for the same reason he himself had come on the wings of an invasion fleet: to cow the Okumas into submission. And yet Hideyoshi was anything but intimidating. Now Daigoro thought not of mountain monkeys but of his father: approachable, even gentle, but a master at deploying his forces for just the right effect. Psychologically speaking, Hideyoshi had put Daigoro on his heels before he’d even set foot on shore.
Even so, Daigoro immediately understood why the abbot had referred to him as Hideyoshi, not as General Toyotomi. There was nothing lordly about this man. His shoulders were relaxed, his gait bouncy. He’d done a sloppy job of tying his topknot. He couldn’t have been much taller than Daigoro, who by anyone’s account was a pipsqueak. He was the imperial regent, the highest-ranking military officer in the land, and yet the cording on his katana looked as if it had never been touched, to say nothing of having been drawn in battle. His hands were smooth and uncallused. His armor was surely crafted to evoke images of a tiger—orange and black for its stripes, gold for its gleaming, ferocious eyes—but it only called attention to the fact that Hideyoshi was the living antithesis of a tiger. His colors were garish, not subtle, his armor hard, not supple, his movements common, not majestic.
The man behind him was the regal one. He was thin like Hideyoshi, but tall, stately, with handsome features and a graceful air. Even as he stepped out of the palanquin, he preened his hair. He took in his surroundings with the practiced affectation of the highborn, cocking a disdainful eyebrow when his gaze finally fell on Daigoro. In truth he noted Glorious Victory first, studying her as an object of art rather than a weapon. He made a tiny adjustment to his golden kimono before dipping his chin toward Daigoro in an almost imperceptible bow.
He was a peacock, in short, and Daigoro wondered who he was.
The last to emerge from the palanquins was the giant Daigoro had seen in the launch. He was head and shoulders taller than the peacock, and the katana sheathed at his hip was almost as long as Glorious Victory. It seemed like a sword of no great length in comparison to his enormous belly. Despite his age he was not balding; it was clear that he still had to shave his pate. His white topknot and little white point of a beard were both well groomed. His black armor was polished to a gleaming sheen, with horse motifs embossed into the leather. He was the very embodiment of nobility and lordliness.
And yet in the company of the giant and the peacock, it was Hideyoshi that the emperor had named regent, Hideyoshi who had brought a thousand daimyo to heel, Hideyoshi who commanded the attention of everyone in the courtyard. Daigoro could not help it: his eyes followed the man wherever he went. He wondered what Hideyoshi’s secret was. He and Daigoro were both puny. Both fell short of what it meant to be a man. From birth neither of them was cut out to be samurai—Daigoro because of his disfigurement, Hideyoshi because of his parentage—and yet both had to play the role. And while Daigoro had trouble commanding even the loyalty of his own father-in-law, Hideyoshi had the emperor himself at his back.
The imperial regent walked up to Daigoro and bowed. “Good morning. I’m Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Let’s have a seat and chat.”
Soldiers and servants scurried like leaves before a typhoon. Soon enough all the required parties were seated in the Okuma audience chamber: Hideyoshi on the dais, the giant on his left, and the peacock on his right, a dozen Toyotomi samurai on either side of them, still as statues. Daigoro was seated before the regent, Katsushima on his right, his lieutenants in a row behind them, the rest of his officers ranked and filed in the back. Shiramatsu, Tomo, and a few other attendants were kneeling at the door, all of them duly submissive and subdued. Sixty men in the room all told, and of all of them only Hideyoshi was relaxed.
“Shichio here tells me we’ve got a problem,” he said, nodding his head toward the peacock. “Something about a monk.”
So this is Shichio, Daigoro thought. The man put him on edge. Ever since his arrival, his eyes repeatedly drifted to Glorious Victory Unsought. He seemed drawn to it somehow. Daigoro had seen that obsession before, and he knew it never ended well.
But he could not afford to ruminate on that now. The island’s most powerful warlord had asked him a question. “Yes, the abbot of Katto-ji,” Daigoro said. “He is under house arrest. His temple is on the next peak north of here.”
“Is he of the Ikko sect?”
“No, my lord regent. His is a Zen order.”
“Was he ever?”
“Of the Ikko Ikki? No, my lord regent.”
“Does he harbor any Ikko monks? Does he preach insurrection? Does he keep a hidden arsenal in the monastery?”
“No, my lord regent.”
Hideyoshi looked over his shoulder to the peacock—no, Daigoro thought, correcting himself: to General Shichio. He could almost hear Katsushima chiding him. Make the slightest misstep and this man will have your head. Best be careful.
“You see?” the regent told Shichio. “The monk is no threat.”
“We’ve come an awfully long way just to take this boy’s word for it,” Shichio said with a sneer. His voice was so soft that he could barely be heard past the dais, yet Daigoro noticed he used none of the honorifics one would expect in speaking to a man second only to the emperor in rank. Was it because Hideyoshi was so informal that he didn’t require such niceties? Or was it the pride of a preening peacock?
Hideyoshi shrugged. “Lord Okuma,” he said, “I’m sure you understand my concerns. I’ve given an execution order. You haven’t followed it. Even a common platoon sergeant cannot abide disobedience from his troops. In my office insubordination looms larger still.”
“Yes, my lord regent.”
“But I respect your title, your name, and your authority. It does me no good to strip a daimyo’s sovereignty over his fief. I have no use for your anger; what I want is your loyalty. And there’s my problem. The easy solution is to kill you, kill this monk, and sail back home. I’ve killed disobedient daimyo before. So remind me, Lord Okuma, how is it that you show me loyalty by refusing to carry out my will?”
“My lord regent has no desire for enemies in Izu,” Daigoro said, then stopped himself. The abbot’s warning about General Shichio echoed in his mind: this was a man who reshaped words like clay.
Daigoro’s answer could already be reinterpreted as a veiled threat; he chose his next words more carefully.
“The abbot is a very popular man. He presides over the funerals of every family within three days’ ride of here. Parents are known to travel twenty ri just to have him bless their babies. Killing him is certain to raise the farmers’ ire, my lord regent; any daimyo who killed him would have a hard time collecting taxes.”
“I see,” said Hideyoshi, but Shichio leaned forward and whispered something in his ear.
“Sir, I agree with Lord Okuma,” said the giant. He shifted to face his liege lord. “It is no secret that you plan to move against the Hojos. Create a disturbance among the northern daimyo and you only create allies for the enemy.”
“And yet disobedience is disobedience,” said Hideyoshi. Shichio gave a little nod. Daigoro wondered whose words had just come from the regent’s mouth.
“Sir,” said the giant, “there is disobedience and then there is obeying the spirit of a command without obeying it to the letter.”
“Why, General Mio,” Shichio said, “I hadn’t expected hairsplitting from you.”
“And I hadn’t expected you to sail the command fleet halfway across the empire to indulge a petty grudge. Someday you’ll have to tell me why this monk is so important to you.”
The peacock glowered. The giant, Mio, shifted again where he sat, rotating to face Daigoro. “Lord Okuma, we have your word that no one outside this Katto-ji will ever see the abbot in question again?”
“On my own life, Mio-dono, you have my word.”
“He will speak with no one outside his monastery?”
“Yes, Mio-dono.”
“And what of visitors to the monastery? Will he speak with them?”
Daigoro bowed low. “My lord regent has only to tell me his preference and I will make it law. Toyotomi-dono, please understand, the abbot had the utmost respect for my departed father. He could have taken the tonsure anywhere, and chose to do it at Katto-ji in order to be close to my father and learn from him. If I command him to a lifetime of silence, he will obey.”
General Mio opened his mouth to ask another question, but Shichio cut him off. Speaking loudly for the first time, he said, “It seems to me that if this man is so beloved by the people, then confining him to his monastery will be no more popular than having him killed. In fact, it may be worse; force him into a vow of silence and he will either violate it or else anger the people further by being present yet refusing to speak to them. So what benefit is it to leave him alive?”
Daigoro’s stomach clenched. He had no answer to that. Outfoxed by a peacock, he thought.
But Mio answered for him. “General Shichio speaks directly to my point,” said the giant. “For all intents and purposes, the abbot is dead to the world. Lord Okuma was not disobedient. He fulfilled the spirit of the regent’s command as fully as anyone could ask of him.”
“No,” said Shichio. “To carry it out fully would be to deliver a bald head in a box.”
“My lord regent,” Daigoro said, his heart pounding; he’d never interrupted commanders of this station before. “The abbot himself offered me just that solution. I turned him down.”
Hideyoshi fixed his overlarge eyes on Daigoro. “Did you? Well, look at the balls on this one.” He laughed and said, “Explain yourself, Lord Okuma.”
“My lord regent, my father told me many times that when we are faced with choosing between taking an easy path and taking a hard one, the path of bushido is almost never the easy path.”
A knowing smile touched Hideyoshi’s lips. “I remember him. I met him only briefly, but I remember thinking, ‘Now this one is a samurai.’”
“He was the best,” said Daigoro.
“You misunderstand me,” said Hideyoshi. “He was an impressive man, your father. The consummate samurai. But this honor of his—this honor of yours—never made the slightest bit of sense to me.”
Daigoro was confused. He was sure his ears had deceived him. He could not have heard the regent, a man the emperor himself had raised to the station of samurai, admit he didn’t believe in honor. It was impossible. Wasn’t it?
Hideyoshi went on. “I’ll grant you, I wasn’t born into all this honor nonsense, but even if I had been, I’m still not sure I would understand it any better. How did it become fashionable to prefer death to disloyalty? Why not praise self-interest? Why not ambition? Aren’t people better suited to pursue their own interests anyhow?”
“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Daigoro said honestly. To him the dictates of honor were as indisputable as the stars in the heavens. They were not something one questioned; they simply were. Those who navigated without them did so at their peril. But Hideyoshi had it right as well: left to their own devices, human beings would surely pursue their own selfish interests, wouldn’t they?
“Think on it,” said Hideyoshi. “I defy you to explain why I should live within the straits of this thing you call honor. Wouldn’t your life be easier without it? Here you are, right in the dragon’s den, and yet if you had killed that monk as I ordered, you and I would never have met. In fact, if you weren’t so damned honor-bound, you could have sent along any old head, neh? You could have lied and saved your skin. Yet here you are. I can kill you at whim. Your honor makes you weaker than me, doesn’t it?”
Daigoro could almost feel the energy bristling from General Mio—and not just from Mio, but from Katsushima too. Both of them were born samurai and both were too incensed to speak. They gave off heat like a pair of volcanoes. Was Hideyoshi goading them? Was he goading Daigoro? Or was he really so ignorant of what it meant to be samurai?
“My lord, I think I am weaker than you,” Daigoro said at last. “But not because of my honor. I am weaker because my influence is smaller. I have a few hundred warriors at my command; you have hundreds of thousands. And yes, I believe you have it right: I think men are naturally inclined not to be honorable but to be selfish. But that is precisely why honor is important; it bids us to transcend ourselves. Without it, we are only clever animals. With it, we can be better than our animal instincts allow us to be.”
“Is that what you think of peasants?” said Hideyoshi. “That we’re animals?”
“No, my lord, I—”
“Let me ask you this: would you agree that the peasants of our country—the clever little animals—would like to see an end to war?”
“Of course, my lord regent.”
“And would you agree that as long as there have been samurai, there has been war?”
“We are born out of war. That is what it means to be a warrior.”
“Don’t you see what that means? As long as there are warriors, war will never end. What we need is an end to it. When every last province is brought under the reign of one man, that man can stop being a warlord. He can simply be a ruler.”
Hideyoshi smiled. It was an ugly thing, his sharp teeth not so different from the sharp rocks jumbled along the coastline. But ugly as it was, there was legitimate kindness in the smile. “Tell me, Lord Okuma, wouldn’t your father have preferred to see the end of all wars?”
“Yes, my lord regent. Without a doubt.”
“Then what good is this honor of yours if it always leads to more fighting? Would it not be better if all samurai abandoned their honor and started thinking more like peasants?”
“Begging your pardon, my lord regent, but I respect my father above all other men. It was his unfailing adherence to bushido that I admired most. If he were still alive, if he were in this room and you commanded me to behead him, I would do it in a heartbeat and I believe he would be proud of me for doing so. To sacrifice family for one’s liege is the hardest path, and it leads to the highest height of honor. But to sacrifice an innocent is the easy path. To sacrifice an innocent to benefit oneself is even worse. And to do so at the expense of one’s liege lord is unforgivable.”
“Who gave you the right to decide what is unforgivable?” said Shichio, his voic
e loud and sharp, verging on a snarl. His angry outburst was totally at odds with his genteel appearance. “Are you the regent now? Has the emperor given you his blessing?”
Daigoro bowed his forehead to the floor. “My most abject apologies, Shichio-dono. I chose my words poorly.” And you didn’t wait long to capitalize on that, he thought.
Hearing no further objection, Daigoro continued. “My lord regent, you are correct: I could have sent you the head of any bald man. I could have shaved a common criminal. And I could have sent you the head you requested—”
“The imperial regent does not request anything,” Shichio hissed. “He speaks and his underlings obey.”
Again Daigoro’s forehead touched the floor. “As you say, Shichio-dono. A thousand apologies, my lords. A thousand times thousand.”
“Go on,” said Hideyoshi.
“My lord regent, I could have beheaded the abbot as you ordered and all of this business would be over. But to do so would be to kill an innocent for no other reason than to make life easier for my family and myself. Worse yet, I believe it would have been a disservice to you. I believe General Mio is correct, Toyotomi-dono: if I were to kill this abbot, it would strengthen your enemies and drive the northern territories further from your grasp.”
“The regent’s arm extends everywhere,” said Shichio. “Nothing is beyond his grasp. And even if it were, is someone of your station powerful enough to deny him? I think not.”
“And I think you talk more than you should,” said General Mio. “Shut your mouth and let your superior make his own decision in peace.”
Shichio scowled across the dais at Mio but kept his mouth shut. Yet Daigoro noticed a change in Hideyoshi. He sat somewhat taller than before; he’d squared his shoulders and ever so slightly lowered his chin. All this talk of his own power seemed to make him feel more powerful, and in hindsight Daigoro realized that Shichio’s words were aimed not just at Daigoro but at Hideyoshi too. It was as if he’d been inflating the man, puffing him up, stiffening his resolve, yet all the while drawing Hideyoshi’s position closer toward his own, like iron filings shifting their alignment toward a magnet. Daigoro wondered how many others in the room had even noticed. Mio was oblivious, as was Hideyoshi himself. The peacock truly was a master manipulator.
