For more than half a month, however, the attacking troops had not approached the castle, and this neglect was more bitter to the defending troops than any desperate death. When the sun went down, the entire castle was sunk into a darkness so deep it might just as well have fallen to the bottom of a swamp. Not one lamp was lit. All of the fish oil and rapeseed oil had been consumed as food. Many of the small shrikes and sparrows that had flocked morning and night to the trees in the grounds had been caught and eaten, and recently the ones that remained had stopped coming to the castle, knowing, perhaps, what would be in store for them. The men had eaten so many crows that now they were rarely even able to catch one. In the midst of the darkness, the eyes of the sentries would quicken at the sound of something like a weasel scampering by. Instinctively, their gastric juices would begin to flow, and they would look at each other and grimace. "My stomach feels like it's being wrung out like a damp cloth."
The moon that evening was beautiful, but the soldiers only wished it could be eaten. The dead leaves fell in profusion on the roofs of the fortress and around the castle gate. A soldier munched greedily on them.
"Taste good? someone asked.
"Better than straw," he answered, and picked up another one. Suddenly looking queasy, he coughed several times and vomited the leaves he had just eaten.
"General Goto!" someone suddenly announced, and everyone stood to attention. Goto Motokuni, chief retainer of the Bessho clan, walked toward the soldiers from the darkened keep.
"Anything to report?" Goto asked.
"Nothing, sir."
"Really?" Goto showed them an arrow. "Sometime this evening, this arrow was shot into the castle by the enemy. A letter was tied to it, asking me to meet with one of Lord Hideyoshi's generals, Kuroda Kanbei, here tonight."
"Kanbei is coming here tonight! A man who betrayed his lord for the Oda. He's not fit to be a samurai. When he shows up, we'll torture him to death."
"He's Lord Hideyoshi's envoy, and it would not be right to kill someone whose arrival has been announced beforehand. It's an agreement among warriors that one does not kill messengers."
"That would be all right even for an enemy general if it were someone else. But with Kanbei, I feel like I wouldn't be content even eating the meat off his bones."
"Don't let the enemy see what's in your heart. Laugh when you greet him."
Just as Goto gazed out into the darkness, he and the men seemed to hear the intermittent sounds of a distant koto. At that moment Miki Castle became enveloped in a strange hush. In a night the color of India ink, it seemed as though no one could even breathe while the falling leaves swirled and danced formlessly in an uncanny sky.
"A koto?” one of the soldiers said, looking up into the void.
They listened almost in ecstasy to the nostalgic sound. The men in the watchtower, in the guardroom, and in every section of the fortress were caught by the same thoughts. Through storms of arrows, gunfire, and war cries—from dawn until dusk, and from dusk again until dawn—the men who had been in this castle for three years cut off from the outside world had steadfastly dug themselves in, without yielding or withdrawing. Now the sound of the koto suddenly called up various thoughts in their minds.
My ancestral home,
Will you wait
For a man who knows not
If tonight will be
His last?
This was the death poem that Kikuchi Taketoki, Emperor Godaigo's loyal general, had sent to his wife when he was surrounded by a rebel army.
As the men considered their own situations, there were some who unconsciously recited the poem to themselves. Surely there were soldiers, far away from their homes, who thought of their mothers, children, and brothers and sisters of whom they had had no news. Even the soldiers who had nothing to go back to did not have hearts made of stone, and were swayed by the feelings evoked by the koto. No one could stop his tears.
In his heart, Goto felt just the same as his men, but when he saw the expressions on the faces of the soldiers around him, he quickly pulled himself together. He spoke to his men with intentional cheer. "What? Sounds of the koto are coming from the enemy imp? What fools! Why would they have a koto? That shows how soft the enemy warriors really are. They've probably gotten tired of the long campaign, have grabbed some singing girl from a village, and are trying to amuse themselves. For minds to be so disheveled is unpardonable. The steel and rock-hard souls of true warriors are not so weak!”
As he spoke, each man awoke from his reverie.
"Instead of listening to such foolery, let each man guard his own post. These castles are just like a dike that holds back a flood of dirty water. The dike is meandering and long, but if one little bit of it crumbles, the entire structure will collapse. Each of you should stand, and linked breast to breast, not move even if you die. As for Miki Castle, if it were said that someone abandoned his post and the entire castle collapsed as a result, his ancestors would weep from beneath the earth and his descendants would bear the shame of the province and be nothing more than laughing-stocks."
Goto was urging his men on like this when he saw two or three soldiers running up to the castle. They quickly informed him that the enemy general whose visit had been announced earlier had come as far as the palisade at the bottom of the slope.
Kanbei arrived, carried in a litter. The litter was a light structure made of wood, straw, and bamboo. There was no roof, and the sides were low. He had learned to brandish his long sword from the litter when he fought with the enemy in battle. But tonight he had come as an envoy of peace.
Over a light yellow robe, Kanbei wore armor threaded with pale green, and a coat of silver embroidery on a white background. Luckily he was a small man, about five feet tall and lighter than average, so the men who carried him were not uncomfortable, and he himself did not feel cramped.
Footsteps could soon be heard inside the palisade gate. A number of soldiers from the castle had run back down the slope.
"Envoy, you may pass through!" they announced. At the same time Kanbei heard this stern shout, the palisade gate before him opened. In the darkness he thought that he could see a hundred or more soldiers jostling together. Each time the wave of men pitched and rolled, the glint of their spears pierced his eyes.
"I'm sorry to trouble you," Kanbei said to the man who had shouted at him. "I am lame, so I'll be coming through in a litter. Please excuse my lack of manners." With this apology, he turned and spoke to his son, Shojumaru, the only attendant who had accompanied him, and ordered, "Walk in front of me."
"Yes, sir." Edging around his father's litter, Shojumaru walked straight through the enemies' spears.
The four soldiers shouldering the litter followed through the palisade gate behind Shojumaru. When they saw how composed the thirteen-year-old boy and the lame warrior looked as they walked into their camp, the bloodthirsty and ravenous soldiers could hardly feel any anger, even though they were looking at the enemy. They could now understand that the enemy was fighting this battle with a determination and perseverance equal to their own and so could sympathize with the envoys as warriors. Strangely, they even felt a sort of compassion for them.
After passing through the palisade and the castle gate, Kanbei and his son quickly came to the main entrance, where Goto and his picked troops were waiting with solemn indifference.
I can see how this castle has been defended by these men, Kanbei thought as he approached the gate. The castle won't fall even though there's no food. They'll hold out, no matter what the cost. He could see that the courage of the men had not waned in the least, and he felt the weight of his own responsibility even more. This feeling immediately became transformed into a deep concern for the grave situation that Hideyoshi now faced. Kanbei silently renewed his pledge in his own heart. Somehow, he thought, this mission I've been entrusted with has got to succeed.
Goto and his men were surprised by the envoy's demeanor. Here was the general of the attacking troops, but, instead of looking at them with arrogance, he had come accompanied by only a charming young man. Not only that, but when this Kanbei greeted Goto, he hurriedly had his litter lowered to the ground and, standing on his legs, greeted him with a smile.
"General Goto, I am Kuroda Kanbei, and I am here as Lord Hideyoshi's envoy. I'm certainly obliged that everyone has come out to meet me."
Kanbei was completely unaffected. As an envoy from the enemy, he had made an exceptionally favorable impression. This was probably because he had approached them from his heart, disregarding concern for victory or defeat, and had acted with the custom and understanding that both he and his enemy were samurai. This, however, was not reason enough for the enemy to accept the point of his mission: to persuade them to capitulate. Kanbei talked with Goto in a room in the lightless castle for an hour or so and then rose from his seat, saying, "Well then, I'll wait for your answer."
“I’ll give you one after conferring with Lord Nagaharu and the other generals," Goto said, also standing up. Thus the pattern of the interview that night indicated that the negotiations were to be successful beyond Kanbei's and Hideyoshi's expectations—but five days passed, then seven, then ten, and still there was no sign of an answer from the castle. The Twelfth Month came and went, and the opposing armies greeted the third New Year of the siege. In Hideyoshi's camp, the men at least had some rice cakes to eat and a little sake to drink, but they could hardly forget that the men in the castle, although they were the enemy, had nothing to eat and were barely holding on to their fragile lives. From the time of Kanbei's mission at the end of the Eleventh Month, Miki Castle had truly sunk into desolation and silence. It was understood that the soldiers lacked even bullets to shoot at the attackers. Hideyoshi, however, still refrained from an all-out offensive, saying, "Perhaps the castle will not hold out much longer."
If, then, the siege was simply an endurance contest, Hideyoshi's present position was hardly difficult or unfavorable. But the fact was that neither the camp at Mount Hirai nor Hideyoshi's position were matters of his own private battle. He was essentially striking against one link in the enemy alliance made up of those who opposed Nobunaga's supremacy; and he was nothing more than one of the limbs of Nobunaga's body that was trying to break open a hole to break through the encircling chain of his enemies. Little by little, therefore, Nobunaga had started to wonder about the lack of action in the protracted western campaign.
And Hideyoshi's enemies on Nobunaga's field staff were wondering about his choice of commander, saying that Hideyoshi's responsibilities had been too heavy for him from the start.
His rivals cited as proof their feelings that, either Hideyoshi was wasting military expenses in a bid for popularity among the local people, or he was not very strict about the prohibition of sake in camp because he was afraid of the soldiers' antipathy. But whatever his rivals wished to question, it was easy to see that, one by one, all the trifling matters that were not worth reaching Nobunaga's ears were heard in Azuchi and were considered material for slander. But Hideyoshi never paid much attention to the talk. Certainly he was a human being and had normal feelings like everyone else, and it wasn't that he didn't notice such things; he simply didn't worry about them.
"Trivial matters are nothing but that," he said. "Whenever they're investigated, they'll be cleared up." The only thing that did make him unhappy was the thought that with every passing day, the anti-Nobunaga coalition was getting stronger: the powerful Mori clan was building up its defenses, making plans with the Honganji, calling on the faraway Takeda and Hojo in the east, and inciting the clans of the Japan Sea coast. How strong these forces really were could be understood by observing the fact that Araki Murashige's castle in Itami, which the central army was presently besieging, had still not fallen.
What Murashige was depending on, and what the Bessho clan was stubbornly holding on to, was not only their own strength and their own castle walls. Soon the Mori army will come to our aid! Nobunaga will be defeated soon! That was it. Generally, the worst state of affairs was not in the enemy Nobunaga faced directly but in the enemy waiting in the shadows.
The two ancient forces of the Honganji and the Mori were quite correctly Nobunaga's enemies, but it was Araki Murashige at Itami and Bessho Nagaharu, at Miki Castle, who were grappling directly with Nobunaga's ambition.
That evening Hideyoshi suddenly decided to have a bonfire lit, and was warding off the night cold, when he turned to see the carefree young pages drawing up close to the fire. They were half naked even in the cold of the First Month, and were making a noise over something that seemed to be amusing them.
"Sakichi! Shojumaru! What in the world are you two in an uproar about?" Hideyoshi asked, almost envious of their lightheartedness.
"Nothing at all," answered Shojumaru, who had recently become a page, and he hurriedly dressed and adjusted his armor.
"My lord," Ishida Sakichi interjected. "Shojumaru's embarrassed to talk to you about it because it's disgusting. But I'm going to speak up, because if we don't tell you, yc might get suspicious."