Covering her face with her sleeves, Katsuyori's wife chanted these lines and cried pathetically. One of her ladies-in-waiting choked back her tears and continued:
When they bloomed,
Their numbers were beyond measure;
But with the end of spring
They fell without one blossom left behind.
As her voice trailed off, a number of women unsheathed their daggers and cut through their own breasts or stabbed their own throats, the flowing blood soaking their black hair. Suddenly the hum of an arrow sounded close by, and soon arrows were thudding into the ground all around them. The echo of guns could be heard in the distance.
"They've come!"
"Prepare yourself, my lord!" The warriors stood up together. Katsuyori looked at his son, ascertaining Taro's resolution.
"Are you ready?" Taro bowed and stood up. "I am ready to die right here at your ide," he answered.
"This is good-bye, then." As father and son seemed ready to dash into the enemy, Katsuyori's wife shouted to her husband from behind, "I will depart before you."
Katsuyori stood stock-still and fixed his eyes on his wife. Holding a short sword, his wife looked up and closed her eyes. Her face was as pure and white as the moon rising over the edge of the mountain. She calmly intoned a verse from the Lotus Sutra, which he had loved to recite in former times.
"Tsuchiya! Tsuchiya!" Katsuyori called out.
"My lord?"
"Assist her."
But Katsuyori's wife did not wait for the man's blade, and pressed her own dagger straight into her mouth as she recited the sutra.
The instant the figure of his wife fell forward, one of her attendants began to encourage those left behind. "Her Ladyship departed ahead of us. None of us should be late in ccompanying her on the road of death." With these words, she bared her throat to her own dagger and fell.
"It's time." Crying and calling to each other, the fifty remaining women were soon scattered like flowers in a garden blown by a winter storm. They lay either sideways or face down, or stabbed themselves while embracing one another. In the midst of this pathetic scene, one could hear the crying of infants not yet weaned or too small to leave their mothers' laps.
Sozo desperately put four women and the infants on horseback and lashed them to the saddles.
"It will not be counted as disloyalty if you do not die here. If you can get away with your lives, bring up your children and see that they hold memorial services for their pitiful former master's clan." Thus reprimanding those mothers who were crying so loud with their children, Sozo ruthlessly beat the three horses he had set them on with the shaft of his spear. The horses galloped away as the mothers and their children sobbed and wailed.
Sozo then turned to his younger brothers. "Well, then, let's go." By that time they could see the faces of the Oda soldiers coming up the mountain. Katsuyori and his son were surrounded by the enemy. As Sozo ran to their side to assist them, he saw one of his lord's retainers running in the opposite direction in flight.
"You traitor!" Sozo shouted, chasing after the man. "Where are you going?" And he stabbed the man in the back. Then, wiping the blood from his sword, he ran straight into the midst of the enemy.
"Give me another bow! Sozo, give me another bow!" Katsuyori had broken the string of his bow twice already, and now took hold of a new one. Sozo stood close to his lord’s side, shielding him as well as he could. When Katsuyori had loosed all his arrows, he threw down the bow and picked up a halberd, and then brandished a long sword. By this time the enemy was right in front of him, and a battle of naked cutting blades would last no more than a moment.
"This is the end!"
"Lord Katsuyori! Lord Taro! I'm going to precede you!"
Calling back and forth to one another, the remaining Takeda men were struck down. Katsuyori's armor was stained in red.
"Taro!" He called for his son, but his vision was blurred by his own blood. All the men around him looked like the enemy.
"My lord! I'm still here! Sozo is still at your side!"
"Sozo, quickly… I'm going to commit seppuku."
Leaning on the man's shoulder, Katsuyori retreated about a hundred paces. He knelt but having received so many spear and arrow wounds, he could not use his hands at all. The more he hurried, the less his hands were able to function.
"Forgive me!" Unable to watch any more, Sozo quickly acted as second and cut off his lord's head. As Katsuyori fell forward, Sozo snatched up his head and held it, wailing in grief.
Handing Katsuyori's head to his eighteen-year-old brother, Sozo told him to take it and flee. But in tears, the younger man declared that he would die with his brother no matter what.
"Fool! Go now!" Sozo thrust him away, but it was too late. The enemy soldiers were now like an iron ring around them. Covered with wounds from numberless swords and spears, the Tsuchiya brothers died gloriously.
The middle brother had stayed with Katsuyori's son from beginning to end. The young lord and retainer were also struck down and killed at the same time. Taro was regarded as a beautiful youth, and even the writer of The Chronicles of Nobunaga, who showed no sympathy in describing the death of the Takeda clan, praised his wholehearted and beautiful death.
As he was but fifteen and from an illustrious family, Taro's face was quite refined and his skin was as white as snow. He had excelled others in manliness, had been reluctant to stain the family name, and had kept this spirit right up to the death of his father. There was no one who felt that his actions could be matched.
The entire affair was finished by the Hour of the Serpent. It was thus that the Takeda clan met its end.
* * *
The Oda soldiers who had attacked Kiso and Ina assembled at Suwa, eventually filling the city. Nobunaga's quarters were located at the Hoyo Temple, which had now become the headquarters for the entire campaign. On the twenty-ninth day of the month, the distribution of awards for the entire army was posted at the temple gate, and on the next day Nobunaga met with all his generals and held a congratulatory banquet in honor of their victories.
"It seems that you've done some heavy drinking today, Lord Mitsuhide. Quite rare for you, I think," Takigawa Kazumasu said to his neighbor.
"I'm drunk, but what am I going to do?" Mitsuhide looked completely inebriated, a condition he was never in. His face, which Nobunaga liked to compare to a kumquat, was bright red all the way up to his slightly receding hairline.
"How about another cup?" Pressing Kazumasu for more, Mitsuhide continued to talk in an excessively cheerful manner. "We don't often experience happy occasions like the one today, even if we live a long time. Look at that. We've gotten results from all our years of taking pains—not just on the other side of these walls or even just in all of Suwa—but now both Kai and Shinano are buried in the flags and banners of our allies. The desire we've cherished for so many years is being realized right before our eyes." His voice, as usual, was not very loud, but his words were heard quite distinctly by every person there. All those who had been talking noisily had fallen silent and were looking back and forth between Nobunaga and Mitsuhide.
Nobunaga was staring fixedly at Mitsuhide's bald head. There are times when the eye that is too perceptive discovers an unfortunate state of affairs that would have been better left unnoticed; this creates unnecessary disasters. Nobunaga had been perceiving Mitsuhide in just such a fashion for two days now. Mitsuhide had been doing his best to affect a bright and loquacious manner that did not fit him at all, and in Nobunaga's view there was absolutely no good reason for him to be doing that. There was a reason, however, for Nobunaga's view, which was quite clearly that at the distribution of awards he had intentionally excluded Mitsuhide.
To be left out of the distribution of awards should cause a warrior an acute feeling of desolation, and his shame at being a man without merit was worse than the actual rebuff itself. Mitsuhide had not been displaying that sense of dejection at all. On the contrary, he mixed with the other generals, talking happily and exhibiting a smiling face.
That was not honest. Mitsuhide was a man who would never really open himself up, and there was not much that was lovable in him. Why couldn't he grumble just once? The more Nobunaga stared at him, the more severe his look became. His drunken state probably intensified his feeling, but his reaction had been unconscious. Hideyoshi was absent, but if Nobunaga had been looking at him instead of Mitsuhide, there would have been no danger of such emotions being provoked. Even when he looked at Ieyasu, he did not become so ill-tempered. But when his eyes lighted upon Mitsuhide's balding head, they underwent a sudden change. It had not always been like this, and he could not have said for certain when the change had occurred.
But it was not a matter of a sudden change at a particular time or on a specific occasion. Indeed, if one searched for such a time, one came upon the period when—out of an excess of gratitude—Nobunaga had presented Mitsuhide with Sakamoto Castle, awarded him the castle at Kameyama, arranged his daughter's wedding, and finally endowed him with a province of five hundred thousand bushels.
This was extremely kind treatment, but it was soon after that that Nobunaga's perception of Mitsuhide had begun to change. And there was one clear cause: the fact that in Mitsuhide's bearing and character there was no trace of a willingness to change. When Nobunaga looked at the clear luster on the hairline of that "kumquat head" that never made a mistake—ever—Nobunaga's emotions turned their attention toward what he perceived as the stink of Mitsuhide's character. Perverse, almost scorched feelings would arise within him.
So it was not simply Nobunaga aiming his ill-tempered eye at someone, but rather Mitsuhide himself instigating the situation. One could see that Nobunaga's perversity manifested itself in his words and expression to the same extent that Mitsuhide's wise reasoning power shone. To be fair, it would be like judging whether the right or left hand claps first. At any rate, Mitsuhide was presently chatting with Takigawa Kazumasu, and the eyes that were staring fixedly at him were clearly in no laughing mood.
Mitsuhide noticed—perhaps something startled him unconsciously—for Nobunaga suddenly got up from his seat.
"Hey, Kumquat Head!"
Mitsuhide restrained himself and prostrated himself at Nobunaga's feet. He could feel the cold ribs of a fan lightly strike the nape of his neck two or three times.