Messengers had come from Nobunaga one after another to work out peace terms, but had withdrawn without being granted audiences. Then, as a sort of response, the shogun had barricades erected on the roads that led to the capital.
The opportunity that Nobunaga had been waiting for and that Hideyoshi had been planning against was the arrival of the appropriate moment for reproving Yoshiaki for his lack of response to the Seventeen Articles. That opportunity had come sooner than either of them had imagined—hastened by Shingen's death.
In any period of history, a man on his way to ruin always holds on to the ludicrous illusion that he is not the one about to fall. Yoshiaki fell straight into that trap.
Nobunaga saw him in yet another way, saying, "We can use him, too." Thus he was handled with delicate disrespect. But the members of the worthless shogunate of this period did not know their own value, and no matter what the subject of their thoughts, intellectually speaking, their understanding did not go beyond the past. They saw only the narrow face of culture in the capital and believed that it prevailed throughout Japan. Entrusting themselves to the cramped policies of the past, they relied on the warrior-monks of the Honganji and on the many samurai warlords throughout the provinces who hated Nobunaga.
The shogun was still unaware of Shingen's death. And so he played tough. "I am the shogun, the pillar of the samurai class. I'm different from the monks on Mount Hiei. If Nobunaga were to aim his weapons at Nijo Palace, he would be branded a traitor."
His attitude indicated that he would not decline war if it was offered. Naturally, he called on the clans around the capital and sent urgent messages to the faraway Asai, the Asakura, the Uesugi, and the Takeda, setting up a showy defense.
When Nobunaga heard this, he turned toward the capital with a laugh and, without stopping his army for a single day, entered Osaka. The ones who were shocked this time were the warrior-monks of the Honganji. Suddenly face to face with Nobunaga's army, they had no idea what to do. But Nobunaga was content simply to line his men up in battle array.
"We can strike anytime we like," he said. At this point he wanted most strongly to avoid any unnecessary expenditure of military strength. And, until this time, he had repeatedly sent envoys to Kyoto asking for a response to the Seventeen Articles. So this was a sort of ultimatum. Yoshiaki took a highhanded view: he was shogun and he simply did not feel like listening to Nobunaga's opinions of his administration.
Among the Seventeen Articles, Yoshiaki was pressed quite firmly by two articles in particular. The first was concerned with the crime of disloyalty to the Emperor. The second article had to do with his disgraceful conduct. While it was his duty to maintain the peace of the Empire, he himself had incited the provinces to rebellion.
"It's useless. He'll never accept this kind of grilling—just written notes and messengers," Araki Murashige said to Nobunaga.
Hosokawa Fujitaka, who had also joined Nobunaga, added, "I suppose it's no use hoping that the shogun will wake up before his fall."
Nobunaga nodded. He seemed to understand only too well. But it would not be necessary to use the drastic violence here that he had employed at Mount Hiei; neither was he so poor in strategy that he would have to use the same method twice.
"Back to Kyoto!" Nobunaga had given this order on the fourth day of the Fourth Month, but it had seemed nothing more than an exercise to impress the masses with the size of his army.
"Look at that! He's not going to have them bivouac for very long. Just like the last time, Nobunaga's uneasy about Gifu and is hurriedly withdrawing his soldiers," Yoshiaki said, elated. With the reports that came to him one after another, however, his color began to change. For just as he was congratulating himself about the troops bypassing Kyoto, the Oda army flowed into the capital from the Osaka road. Then, without a single war cry and more peacefully than if they had been simply performing maneuvers, the soldiers surrounded Yoshiaki's residence.
"We're close to the Imperial Palace, so be careful not to disturb His Majesty. It will be enough to censure this impudent shogun's crimes," Nobunaga ordered.
There was no gunfire, and not even the hum of a single bowstring. It was uncanny, far more than if there had been a great commotion.
"Yamato, what do you think we should do? What is Nobunaga going to do to me?" Yoshiaki asked his senior adviser, Mibuchi Yamato.
"You're pitifully unprepared. At this point, do you still not understand what Nobunaga has in mind? He's clearly come to attack you."
"B-but… I'm the shogun!"
"These are troubled times. What good is a title going to do you? It appears that you have only two choices: either resolve to fight or sue for peace." As his retainer spoke these words, tears fell from his eyes. Along with Hosokawa Fujitaka, this honorable man had not left Yoshiaki's side since the days of his exile.
"I do not remain to protect my honor or to seek fame. Nor am I following a strategy for survival. I know what's going to happen tomorrow, but somehow I just can't abandon this fool of a shogun," Yamato had once said. Certainly he knew that Yoshiaki was hardly worth saving. He knew the world was changing, but he seemed resolved to stand his ground at Nijo Palace. He was already over fifty years old, a general past his prime.
"Sue for peace? Is there any good reason why I, the shogun, should beg someone like Nobunaga for peace?"
"You're so obsessed by the title of shogun that your only course is self-destruction."
"Don't you think we'll win, if we fight?"
"There's no reason why we should. It would be completely laughable if you put up a defense of this place with any thought of victory."
"Well then, w-why are you and the other generals dressed up in your armor so ostentatiously?"
"We think it would at least be a beautiful way to die. Even though the situation is hopeless, to make our final stand here will be a fitting end to fourteen generations of shoguns. That is the duty of a samurai, after all. It's really nothing more than arranging flowers at a funeral."
"Wait! Don't attack yet! Put down your guns."
Yoshiaki disappeared into the palace and consulted with Hino and Takaoka, two courtiers with whom he was on friendly terms. After noon, a messenger was secretly sent out of the palace by Hino. Following that, the governor of Kyoto came from the Oda side and, toward evening, Oda Nobuhiro appeared as a formal envoy from Nobunaga.
“Hereafter, I will carefully observe each of the articles," Yoshiaki assured the envoy. With a bitter look on his face, Yoshiaki pledged himself with words that were not in his heart. That day he begged for peace. Nobunaga's soldiers withdrew and peacefully returned to Gifu.
Only one hundred days later, however, Nobunaga's army once again surrounded Nijo Palace. And that was because, of course, Yoshiaki had fallen back on his old tricks once again after the first peace.
The great roof of the Myokaku Temple at Nijo was beaten desolately by the rains of the Seventh Month. The temple served as Nobunaga's headquarters. There had been a terrible wind and rain from the time his fleet had started across Lake Biwa. But this had only increased the determination of the troops. Soaked by the rain and covered in mud, they had surrounded the shogun's palace and were poised, waiting only for the command to attack.
No one knew if Yoshiaki was to be executed or taken prisoner, but his fate was entirely in their hands. Nobunaga's troops felt as though they were looking into the cage of a fierce, noble animal that they were about to slaughter.
The voices of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi drifted on the wind.
"What are you going to do?" Hideyoshi asked.
"At this point there are no two ways about it." Nobunaga was firm. "I'm not forgiving him this time."
"But he's the—"
"Don't belabor the obvious."
"Is there no margin for a little more deliberation?"
"None! Absolutely not!"
The room in the temple was gloomy from the darkening rain outside. The combination of the lingering summer heat and the long autumn rains had resulted in such humid weather that even the gold leaf of the Buddhas and the monochrome ink drawings on the siding doors looked mildewed.
"I'm not criticizing you for being rash when I ask for a little more deliberation," Hideyoshi said. "But the position of shogun is granted by the Imperial Court, so we cannot treat the matter lighdy. And it will give the anti-Nobunaga forces an excuse to call for justice against the man who killed his rightful lord, the shogun."
"I suppose you're right," Nobunaga replied.
"Happily, Yoshiaki is so weak that though he is trapped, he'll neither kill himself nor come out to fight. He's just going to lock up the gates of his palace and rely on the water in his moat to keep rising from all this rain."
"So, what is your plan?" Nobunaga asked.
"We purposely open one part of our encirclement and provide a way for the shogun to escape."
"Won't he become a nuisance in the future? He might be used to strengthen the ambitions of some other province."
"No," Hideyoshi said, "I think that people have gradually become disgusted with Yoshiaki's character. I suspect that they would understand even if Yoshiaki were driven from the capital, and they would be satisfied that your punishment was fitting."
That evening the besieging army created an opening and made an obvious display of a shortage of soldiers. Inside the palace, the shogun's men seemed to suspect that this was some sort of trick, and by midnight they had still made no move to leave. But during a lull in the rain near dawn, a corps of mounted men suddenly crossed the moat and fled from the capital.