"It is said that a soldier respects the opportunity given him. How can we sit here and let this heaven-sent opportunity pass us by? Please leave the pursuit to me." Nobuo argued with increasing vehemence.
Ieyasu admonished him with two or three words, but Nobuo was parading his courage more than he ever had before. Arguing with Ieyasu, he acted like a spoiled child who would listen to nobody.
"Well then, there's nothing to be done. Do as you please."
Ieyasu gave his permission, knowing full well that disaster would follow. Nobuo immediately led out his own army and chased after Hideyoshi.
After Nobuo left, Ieyasu put Honda in charge of a group of soldiers and sent him along behind. Just as Ieyasu had thought he would do, Nobuo fought Hideyoshi's rear guard as it withdrew and, while he looked superior for a moment, was quickly defeated. In this way he caused the death in battle of a great number of his retainers.
If Honda's reinforcements had not come from the rear, Nobuo himself might have become one of the greatest prizes of Hideyoshi's rear guard. Retreating to Mount Komaki, Nobuo did not appear before Ieyasu right away. But Ieyasu heard the details of the situation from Honda. With no change of expression, he nodded and said, "It was only to be expected."
When Hideyoshi retreated, it was not just a simple withdrawal. As his army moved along the road he said to his retainers, "Shouldn't we take some nice souvenir?"
Kaganoi Castle stood on the left bank of the Kiso River, in an area to the northeast of Kiyosu Castle. Two of Nobuo's retainers had entrenched themselves there, prepared to act as one of Nobuo's wings in case of an emergency.
“Take it." Hideyoshi gave the command to his generals as though he were pointing at a persimmon on a branch.
The army crossed the Kiso River and took up a position at the Seitoku Temple. At the center of the reserve army, Hideyoshi opened the attack on the morning of the fourth day of the month. From time to time he went out on his horse and watched the battle from a hill in the vicinity of Tonda.
During the fighting on the following day, the commander of the castle was killed. The castle itself, however, did not fall until the evening of the sixth.
Hideyoshi had fortifications built for a later day at a strategic point in Taki, and returned as far as Ogaki on the thirteenth. At Ogaki Castle he met with Shonyu's surviving family, and comforted his wife and mother.
“I can imagine that you feel lonely. But keep the promising futures of your children in mind. You should try to live the rest of your lives in harmony, rejoicing in the growth of young trees and watching the flowers of the season."
Hideyoshi also called over Shonyu's two surviving sons and encouraged them to be strong. That night he became like one of the family and talked for hours about his memories of Shonyu.
“I'm a short man, and Shonyu was too. When that short little man entertained the other generals, he'd often do the spear dance when he got drunk. I don't suppose he ever showed it to the members of his family, but it went something like this." Doing an imitation, he made them all laugh. He stayed in the castle for a number of days, but finally, on the twenty-first of the month, he took the Omi Road back to Osaka Castle.
Osaka was now a large city, radically changed from the little port of Naniwa, and when Hideyoshi's army arrived, the people jostled together along the streets and in the vicinity of the castle, cheering them on until nightfall.
The external construction work for Osaka Castle had already been completed. When night fell, an otherworldly scene unfolded. Bright lamps shone from the innumerable windows of the five-story keep of the main citadel, as well as from the second and third citadels, adorning the night sky and illuminating the boundaries of the castle on all four sides: to the east, the Yamato River; to the north, the Yodo River; to the west, the Yokobori River; and to the south, the great dry moat.
Hideyoshi had left his camp at Gakuden, changing his mind and taking up the strategy of a "fresh start." But how had Ieyasu reacted to that change? He had sat and watched as Hideyoshi's retreating troops marched away. And even though he had heard about the distress of his allies at Kaganoi Castle, he had not sent reinforcements.
"What's the matter?" Voices of indignation rose among Nobuo's subordinates. Nobuo, however, had already ignored Ieyasu's advice, attacked Hideyoshi's rear guard, and met with an ignominious defeat. Saved by Honda, he had finally returned to camp. Thus Nobuo now felt that he had lost his right to say anything at all.
Thus, festering discord had become the weak point of the allied army. More than that, the main advocate of this great battle had been Nobuo, not Ieyasu. Nobuo had preached the cause of duty to Ieyasu, and the lord of Mikawa had risen up to help him. His standpoint, therefore, was one of an ally, and so it was all the more difficult to control Nobuo. Finally he made a suggestion. "While Hideyoshi is in Osaka, sooner or later he will move on Ise. Indeed, for our allies, some worrisome signs have already appeared. I think you should return to your main castle at Nagashima as soon as possible."
Taking this opportunity, Nobuo quickly returned to Ise. Ieyasu remained at Mount Komaki for a little while, but he too finally departed for Kiyosu, leaving Sakai Tadatsugu in command. The people of Kiyosu came out to greet Ieyasu with cheers of victory, but not in the same numbers as the people of Osaka had for Hideyoshi.
The citizens and soldiers hailed the battle of Nagakute as a great victory for the Tokugawa clan, but Ieyasu cautioned his retainers against frivolous pride and sent the following message to his troops:
Militarily, Nagakute was a victory, but in terms of castles and land, Hideyoshi has taken the real advantage. Do not be so happily dull-headed as to get drunk on a false reputation.
During the stalemate at Mount Komaki, the fact was that in Ise, where there had been no battles for a while, Hideyoshi's allies had taken the castles at Mine, Kanbe, Kokufu, and Hamada, and attacked and destroyed the castle at Nanokaichi. Before anyone was aware of it, most of Ise had fallen into Hideyoshi's hands.
Hideyoshi was at Osaka Castle for about one month, looking to the affairs of its internal administration, making plans for regulating the areas around the capital, and enjoying his own private life. For the present, he regarded the Mount Komaki crisis as someone else's concern.
During the Seventh Month he traveled to Mino and back. Then, in about the middle of the Eighth Month he said, "It's boring to drag this out for too long. This autumn I’llhave to finish the matter up once and for all."
Once again, he announced that a great army would depart for the front. For two days before the departure, the flutes and drums of Noh plays resounded through the depths of the main citadel. From time to time the boisterous laughter of a large crowd of people could be heard.
Engaging a troupe of Noh actors, Hideyoshi invited his mother, his wife, and his kinsmen in the castle to share one day of enjoyment together.
Among the guests were the three princesses who were being raised in seclusion in the citadel. Chacha was seventeen that year; the middle sister was thirteen; and the youngest of the three was going to be eleven.
Just one year before, on the day Kitanosho Castle fell, the girls had looked behind them at the smoke enshrouding the death of their foster father, Shibata Katsuie, and their mother. They had been moved from the camp in the northern provinces and had seen no one but strangers, no matter where they looked. For a while their eyes were swollen with tears day and night, and not a single smile appeared on the youthful faces that ordinarily would have been full of mirth. But the three princesses finally got used to the people in the castle and, humored by Hideyoshi's easygoing style, became fond of him as "our interesting uncle."
That day, after a number of performances, that "interesting uncle" went into the dressing room enclosure, changed into costume, and came out on the stage himself.
“Look! It's uncle!" one of the girls called out.
“ My, he looks so funny!"
Ignoring the presence of the others, the two younger princesses clapped their hands and pointed, unable to stop laughing. As might be expected, the eldest sister, Chacha, reprimanded them. "You shouldn't point. Just watch quietly," she said. She did her best to sit modestly, but Hideyoshi's antics were so funny that, in the end, Chacha hid her mouth behind her sleeve and laughed as though her sides would burst.
“What's this? When we laugh, we get scolded. But you're laughing now."
With her two sisters poking fun at her, Chacha could only laugh more and more.
Hideyoshi's mother also laughed from time to time as she watched her son's comic dance, but Nene, used to her husband's antics and his constant joking inside the family circle, did not look particularly amused.
What interested Nene today was the peaceful observation of her husband's concubines, who were sitting here and there, surrounded by maids.
While they were still in Nagahama, he had had only two mistresses, but after they had moved to Osaka Castle, before she knew it there was a concubine in the second citadel, and another in the third.
It was hard to believe, but in his triumphal return from the siege of the north, he had brought back Asai Nagamasa's three orphaned daughters and was lovingly raising them in the second citadel.
It pained the ladies who served Nene—Hideyoshi's true wife, after all—that the eldest sister, Chacha, was even more beautiful than her mother.
“Lady Chacha is already seventeen years old. Why does His Lordship gaze at her the way he'd look at a flower in a vase?"
They only added fuel to the fire with comments like that, but Nene simply laughed.
"There's nothing to be done; it's like a scratch on a pearl," she'd say.
Formerly, she, too, had been as jealous as any other wife might be, and when she was living in Nagahama she had gone as far as to complain to Nobunaga, who had sent her a written reply:
You were born a woman, and have chanced to meet an extremely unusual man. I imagine that there must be faults in such a man, but his good points are numerous. When you are looking out from the midst of a large mountain, you can't understand how big that mountain truly is. Be at peace, and enjoy living with this man in the way he wants to live. I am not saying that jealousy is a bad thing. To a certain extent, jealousy adds depth to the life of a married couple.
So in the end, it was she who had been reprimanded. Having learned by that experience, Nene had set her mind on self-control and had planned on becoming a woman who could overlook her husband's affairs. Recently, however, there were days when she felt threatened, wondering if her husband wasn't beginning to indulge himself too much.
At any rate, he was now approaching the age of forty-seven, the most prosperous time for a man. While he had his hands full with external problems like the battle at Mount Komaki, he was also very busy with internal affairs like the administration of his bedroom. And so he lived insatiably, day by day, with the vitality of a healthy man—so much so that an observer might have wondered how he was able to sort out the common from the uncommon, the magnanimous gesture from the discreet, and grand public actions from the ones that should be totally hidden away.
"Watching the dance is amusing, but when I go out and perform on stage, it's not so much fun at all. In fact, it's hard."