Nobunaga and his entourage had missed the action. The invasion of Iga became a tour of inspection, rather than a march into true battle. Still, Nobunaga could glory in his victory and gloat at the defeated ninja who’d so long been an irritation and assassination threat. The warlord, Yasuke among the riders at his side, toured the now-desolate land where every building in every village had been torched and only white snow-capped trees speared the tired grey sky. They were escorted and guided by the field commanders responsible for each of the six districts and put up in hastily constructed, but luxurious, residences. The lords each competed to see who could provide the best banqueting and entertainment for their liege and so it became less a military campaign and more of a leisurely victory tour through the ravaged mountains, complete with stops at noted sightseeing points.
They rode through the deep snow which blanketed the ruins of one small village, a sharp contrast with the conqueror’s palatial, if temporary, accommodations. The remains of wooden house frames, charred black beneath the drifts, rose from the snow-mantled ruins. Headless bodies lay frozen solid, no doubt to stay until the spring thaw when they’d rot and bloat. Nobunaga would not waste his troops’ time on the enemy dead. There were no kin left to bury them either. Had these been the same beings who enjoyed such a fierce, almost superhuman reputation?
Yasuke took a closer peek at a headless corpse, toed it. This ninja was definitely dead, and had definitely been human. Not some mysterious specter from legend. A woman too, by the looks of things, although it was hard to tell the sexes apart with no heads and in full, if tattered, battle ninja dress; a dirty, washed-out, shadowy blue from head to toe. She still gripped a short sword in her right hand, but her left was affixed to her belly, clearly trying to keep in the exposed, now frozen, innards.
The party of horsemen surrounding Nobunaga trotted onward, the straw-bound horses’ hooves almost noiseless in the crackling frosty snow. Yasuke straightened, getting ready to mount his ride again.
Suddenly, the world exploded.
Where Nobunaga’s party had been there was now only smoke drifting in the frosty air. The pong of gunpowder filled the area, burned Yasuke’s eyes. The detonation had been more than gunfire. Something else. An explosion like five cannon going off at the same time. But there’d been no cannon. Was this the ninja magic people spoke of? The snow was spattered crimson. Limbs of Oda soldiers lay scattered across the forest pathway. Dying men screamed.
And to add to the shock, the dead were rising.
Several Iga bodies between Yasuke and the black fog which now engulfed Nobunaga’s party, had stood. Tossing smoking large-bore guns, they drew their swords. Iga men who’d been hiding among the headless villagers. These were not the walking dead, they were ninja. Very much alive and with total surprise on their side.
The shadow-like killers ran into the spreading smoke to find and smite their arch enemy Nobunaga, who seemed to have somehow, again, survived the initial explosion and their ensuing sharpshooting.
Yasuke charged in after them to save his lord.
Within the acrid cloud, all was chaos. Men and horses staggered and fell. Oda soldiers had drawn their swords too, but could not tell friend from foe, thrusting out blindly at empty air, cutting at each other, slashing horses in the chaos. Meanwhile, the ninja danced through the Oda soldiers, from all different directions, spreading death as they went.
Above it all, Nobunaga’s voice: “Kill them!” Loud and clear. “Kire!” And Yasuke struck at the darting shadows, heading toward where the voice had come from. The ninja had their backs to him as they tried to reach their target, Nobunaga, in the middle of the group. They had eyes for no one else, only Nobunaga, the arch devil who’d destroyed their world.
Yasuke swiped and missed one man who danced under a horse and onward. Another was not so lucky. Yasuke’s sword took him in the head, cleaving it in two. The Iga ninja, his grey clothing hardly visible in the smog, dropped into the churned, blood-splashed snow.
Yasuke charged directly into the dissipating smoke, past the whirling bodies and swords, just managing to reach Nobunaga who’d dismounted and was engaging a ninja with his own blade. Nobukatsu fought beside his father; their swordsmanship made it look easy and the last would-be assassins fell under the father’s and son’s blades even as Yasuke took on a final enemy, hardly more than a boy.
Soon the dancing shadows, those seemingly risen from the dead, had returned to that state. The Iga boy had been no match for Yasuke’s bulk and power, however much he feinted and twisted. He lay now at the African warrior’s feet, head severed and hanging from a few sinews of flesh. The smoke had now fully cleared to reveal the carnage hidden beneath. Interspersed by the dead ninja lay seven Oda clansmen. Some had been blown apart by the initial explosion and volley of high-bore lead, their bodies shredded, and mangled limbs were all that remained. Others were cut down by the enemy after the explosion had thrown them from their horses. They lay still in their magnificent armor, whatever wounds that had killed them largely hidden under hard leather and cold metal.
“Hoooooo!” shouted Nobunaga, raising his sword with the customary Japanese battle cry.
The Oda survivors gulped in the mountain air, the tinge of gunpowder smoke on every breath. “Hoooooo,” they repeated. It was good to be alive. Yasuke had had his first Japanese battle. He was a blooded samurai of the Oda. Yet, no one but him seemed to notice.
They left Iga quickly, shaken but in one piece. It felt good to depart this land of fairy tales, death and snow. He could feel the eyes of the few starving, sorry survivors watching them from deep in the icy forest. They dared not reveal themselves. Many more would soon die of starvation and exposure. Yasuke wondered whether they’d attempt another attack, but they never did. And the surviving Oda pages and horse guards returned to the warmth of their homes in Azuchi Castle and the town nestled beneath the mount.
Despite slaughtering more than one third of the province’s population in the war, Nobunaga approached the peace in a positive and magnanimous vein. The survivors who surrendered received immediate relief and came under the purportedly evenhanded governance of his son, Nobukatsu. Many were even granted the privilege of fighting for him or his vassals as samurai. Iga lived on, but the people’s resistance was finished. Now they would use their special talents to serve their former foe.
Two more enemies vanquished. The list of remaining adversaries was growing ever shorter. Those areas Nobunaga hadn’t yet addressed would fall all the more easily.
* * *
One day in winter, Nobunaga decided to pay the seminary a surprise visit so see what his resident Jesuits were up to. The warlord was eager to see the foreign conditions in their natural state, rather than having something prepared especially for him. Sudden tours of inspection like this were common with Nobunaga and they kept his people on their toes, sometimes costing their lives when things were not up to scratch. This time, he invited Yasuke along. Yasuke had passed by the seminary many times on trips to the Matsubara horse ground, but he’d not entered before and naturally was curious to revisit some of the world he’d left behind.
Father Organtino, acting school principal, was delighted and went about acting as tour guide of the thirty-four-room mission with gusto. It was a fine construction of wood and plaster, roofed with superior ceramic tiles, and the second floor, where Yasuke and Nobunaga now stood, boasted an internal verandah around the central courtyard. It was shady and cool in the hot months of summer, explained Organtino. Nobunaga was shown a clock as well as a harpsichord and a viola and he wanted to see them all demonstrated by the students straightaway. The instruments surprised and delighted him with their sound, and the bubbling of the brook flowing beside the mission below added the perfect accompaniment.
Nobunaga then spoke in a very affable, and informal, way with the Japanese students and their teachers. Trying to get their take on things, as opposed to Organtino’s spin.
When it was time for Mass, Nobunaga excused himself and returned to his castle on the mountain above. Yasuke, at Organtino’s invitation and with Nobunaga’s permission, stayed for the service.
* * *
As the New Year approached, tradition demanded that lords, great and small, flock to Azuchi to pay their respects. The castle was abuzz with activity, like snow caught in swirling winter winds. They made preparations for the three days after the New Year when the kitchens were, by tradition, not to be used. Even the women were allowed a rest and all food for the festival had to be prepared in advance.
At the same time, it was the season for a grand clean. The kitchens were scrubbed, the barns and pens all cleaned. Everyone had new clothes made. Yasuke’s house—with all the others in town and running up the mountain—was swept inside and out; mats, blinds and damaged doors were mended. Yasuke’s servants decorated the porch with two kadomatsu bamboo and pine sprig decorations as a sign for the New Year god to enter the house. They also hung an ensemble of pine, a small orange and a circular straw rope, a shimekazari, on his front door to keep misfortune and unclean spirits away.
Throughout the town below, people visited each other, exchanging greetings, gifts and blessings for the New Year. The more prosperous citizens kept a scribe at their front door to record who’d visited. Nobunaga had multiple secretaries for the supplicants who’d traveled for days to Azuchi pay their New Year’s visit to him.
Yasuke stood to the side of Nobunaga in awe-inspiring attendance. His incredible size and foreign appearance one more adornment in a palace already bejeweled beyond compare. As he stood, the two swords of a samurai tucked into his belt, returning opens stares with calculated dead-eyed indifference—his instincts and training as a bodyguard remained firmly in place. He perused each person who stepped toward his liege; the parade of supplicants from all across Japan approached Nobunaga, prostrated themselves, offered sumptuous gifts through an Oda representative and then withdrew.
Prime among them was General Hideyoshi, flush from his northwestern victories against the Mori and clearly foremost in Nobunaga’s favor. The monkey jokes had not, Yasuke admitted, been completely out of hand. Hideyoshi was a small, dark man with a squat, lean and hard face. But this in no way took away from his behavior; Yasuke could not believe the gifts the conquering hero had brought. Despite the grandeur of all the other gifts Nobunaga received—gold and silver, works of art from China, ornate garments, fine bolts of cloth—Hideyoshi managed to outdo them all, in quality and quantity. His gifts of two hundred silken kimono for his lord and a magnificent present for each of the senior ladies of the court, Nobunaga’s mother, Dota Gozen; his wife, Nōhime; sister Oichi; and all the principle concubines. These were worth all the other supplicants’ tributes combined, and then some. It was a generous and noteworthy tribute, especially from a man whose first role in Nobunaga’s service had been nothing more than sandal bearer.
Then one of those curious moments occurred, when Yasuke still found it hard to understand the Japanese world. Nobunaga, with complete sincerity, honored Hideyoshi by ordering his favorite general to be given a few rough pots and a set of simple bamboo spoons to be used in the tea ceremony. The value attached to these simple and seemingly worthless items was clearly incalculable. Hideyoshi, a great practitioner of “the way of tea,” cried with joy and reverenced the valuable boxed gifts with deep bows, touching them to his forehead to show he received them with respect and gratitude. In Japan, these were priceless. For him, these would be items he would treasure throughout his life. Yasuke would never understand this tea culture of wabisabi, the cherishing of imperfection, rusticity and intransigence; he’d rather have the money and weapons that his lord gifted him.
Nobunaga had planned his own celebration for the first day of the first month—he would have his guests, hundreds of them, guided around the castle. The most important step on the tour would be the golden audience chamber, a space built especially for a future visit by the emperor. The emperor had never visited anywhere outside Kyoto, and the fact that Nobunaga was preparing for this would have awed his visitors. This was again another unsubtle Nobunaga message about his unassailable power and glory, his national hegemony.
Yasuke was again part of this splendor and majesty, and took his place in Nobunaga’s guard of honor. The vibrant winter day started well, with a ceremonial procession from the foot of the mountain up to the keep and the golden audience chamber.
Halfway up the mountain though, disaster struck.
The road fractured away from the mountain in a landslide; a whole section, and fifty-plus men tumbled down the steep face in a tangle of mud, ice and flesh, ripped by rocks and the sharp close-cropped bamboo which adorned the slopes.
At first Yasuke, at the front of the procession with Nobunaga, in bodyguard mode today, did not realize what was happening. Could it be another attack? An earthquake? The screams and the rumbling behind certainly sounded like one. But the ground under him remained firm, and the procession ahead continued as if nothing was happening. The only sign Nobunaga gave he’d noticed was a curt order to one of the other guards to go back and investigate.
The report was rendered, the butcher’s bill high. Many of the warriors of the castle had been at the end of the procession and they’d borne the brunt of the destruction. Dozens were wounded, countless priceless weapons mangled, sumptuous robes reduced to filth and shreds, and several men even killed. Nobunaga listened to the account, ordered that the damage was to be seen to, the wounded treated, and then quickly got on with his day. No major personage had been injured, and a day as important as this could not be interrupted.
As the unhurt guests entered the main gate to the upper complex, Nobunaga stood at the stable entrance. Each guest handed their “voluntary” courtesy fee of one hundred copper coins directly to Nobunaga, a notable breach of protocol, which normally demanded an intermediary received presents before offering them up reverently to the warlord. But Nobunaga was Nobunaga, and could do as he liked. Each time, he’d throw the coins behind him into the stable, again a breach of behavioral protocol that only he could get away with, as receivers were supposed to show they valued their gift, not simply throw it away.
The guests carried on with their tour, oohing and ahhhing at every turn. A happy New Year’s Day for all, topped off with feasts and drinks. The year had, all agreed publicly—carefully ignoring the road collapse and ensuing deaths—begun well.
Two weeks after the initial celebrations came the traditional New Year bonfire feast to mark the end of the festive season and the time to get back to business. All the decorative trimmings, the shimekazari, the great kadomatsu, which had adorned the castle and city houses were piled into a great pyramid-shaped pile and burned in a massive purifying conflagration. The pine needles and cones, the fern leaves, the felicitous calligraphy, wreaths of braided rice straw, the now long-dead flowers, and sprigs of early plum blossom, the huge bamboo decorations all burned fiercely. Nobunaga had started his own tradition for this bonfire event, combining it with another cavalcade of horsemanship and spectacle for the huge crowds of citizens who turned out to be both entertained and to revere their lord and guarantor of peace.
Yasuke and the other samurai pages were the first band of horsemen to enter the Matsubara horse ground near the Jesuit seminary for the festivities. As they rode by the large mission building, the bell pealed out to celebrate their passing and the boys waved in excitement. Following the pages were the senior lords, then Nobunaga’s sons and finally, again in glorious isolation, Nobunaga himself, accompanied only by a groom to lead the three horses he’d chosen to ride that day. Once more, the warlord was dressed to astound the crowd—in scarlet, plum and sheer white—and he wore a four-cornered black hat nonchalantly, not a care in the world.
As the bonfires burned away the old year, Nobunaga and his samurai pages heralded in the new with wondrous displays of their equestrian skill. It is reasonable to
imagine Yasuke, who’d been riding again for some time now, also joined them for part of the performance. It was near dusk when softly glowing embers were all that was left of the decorations, the horses stabled and the crowds dispersed, satisfied they were to be led once more into a prosperous and profitable new year.
As if to substantiate that belief, only weeks later, in early March 1582, treachery again provided Nobunaga with an excuse to address an old enemy.
The hated Takeda clan territories to the northeast in Shinano Province were no longer the existential threat to Nobunaga they’d once been in his youth. Takeda Katsuyori’s father, Shingen, had once led tens of thousands of cavalry samurai, mounted on the local Kiso horses, terrorizing Nobunaga’s home province of Owari in a generations-old battle for supremacy in the region. He’d even narrowly beaten an Oda/Tokugawa allied army once in 1573, one of Nobunaga’s very few defeats in a life of victories. But shortly after vanquishing the Oda and Tokugawa, Shingen died of unknown causes.
His son Katsuyori took over the leadership, and although initially successful in battle, succumbed to Nobunaga’s invention of the massed musket volley at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575. Katsuyori lost some 80 percent of the fifteen thousand samurai he’d brought to the field that day, including the cream of his commanders and advisors. The Takeda clan had never recovered and ceased to be a major threat. But having that strong and mountainous region near holy Mount Fuji in enemy hands, however impotent they’d become, was theoretically dangerous and—more frankly—an insult.
Fortuitously, rule of law in the domain had apparently disintegrated to such an extent that even the most loyal of Takeda retainers were considering defection to the Oda, and in the end one did: Lord Kiso. Nobutada, informed of Kiso’s intentions, sent to his father for permission to invade and support Kiso’s rebellion. Once more Nobunaga grabbed an unexpected opportunity with both hands. Nobutada, whose own domain bordered Takeda lands, was ordered to cross the border with as much force as he could muster and without delay. Nobunaga would join him as soon as possible and together they would pulverize the Takeda heartlands, rewarding those—like Lord Kiso—who welcomed Oda power, while burning any who resisted.
Yasuke: In Search of the African Samurai Page 21
