"You've become an itinerant priest."
"Yes, it's a convenient disguise for traveling around the country."
"When did you get here?"
"Just now. I wanted to see you in secret before setting off again."
"It's been four years, hasn't it? I've received your detailed reports, but not having heard from you after you went to Mino, I feared the worse."
"I ran into the civil war in Mino, and security at the border checkpoints and relay stations was tight for a while."
“You were in Mino? It must have been a good time to be there."
“I stayed in Inabayama for a year during the civil war. As you know, Saito Dosan’s castle was destroyed, and Yoshitatsu is now lord of all Mino. When the situation had settled down, I moved on to Kyoto and Echizen, passed through the northern province and went on to Owari."
"Did you go to Kiyosu?"
"Yes, I spent some time there."
"Tell me about it. Even though I am in Sumpu, I can guess what will happen to Mino, but the Oda clan's situation isn't very easily surmised."
"Shall I write a report and bring it to you this evening?"
"No, not in writing." Ieyasu turned to the rear entrance of the mud wall, but he seemed to be having second thoughts about something.
Jinshichi was his eyes and ears to the outside world. From the time he was five, Ieyasu had lived first with the Oda and then with the Imagawa, a wandering exile in enemy provinces. Living as a hostage, he had never known freedom, and this had not changed even now. The eyes, ears, and mind of a hostage are closed, and if he himself made no effort, there was no one to scold or to encourage him. In spite of this, or perhaps because of the restraint that had been imposed on him since childhood, Ieyasu had become extremely ambitious.
Four years before, he had sent Jinshichi to the other provinces so that he would be able to know what was going on—an early sign of Ieyasu's burgeoning ambition. "We'll be seen here, and if we talk in the mansion, my retainers will be suspicious. Let's go over there." Ieyasu walked away from the mansion with long strides.
Ieyasu's residence was in one of the quietest quarters of Sumpu. Walking a little way from the mud wall, they came to the bank of the Abe River. When Ieyasu was a child still carried on the backs of his retainers, it was to the Abe River that he was taken when he said that he wanted to go outside to play. The water in the river seemed to flow on eternally, and the riverbank never seemed to change. It brought back memories for Ieyasu.
"Jinshichi, untie the boat," Ieyasu said as he quickly stepped into the small fishing boat. When Jinshichi got into the boat with him and pushed on the pole, the boat floated away from the shallows like a bamboo leaf in the current. Master and retainer talked, knowing that they were hidden from the eyes of others for the first time. In the space of an hour, Ieyasu absorbed the information that Jinshichi had collected by traveling around for four years. Yet, more than what he had learned from Jinshichi, there was some distant, great thing hidden in Ieyasu's heart.
"If the Oda haven't attacked other provinces so much in the past few years—unlike in Nobuhide's time—it must be to put their house in order," Ieyasu said.
"It didn't matter whether the people against him were relatives or retainers, Nobunaga resigned himself completely to the task. He struck down the people he had to strike down and ran off the people he had to run off. He's nearly swept Kiyosu clean of them."
"The Imagawa laughed at Nobunaga for a time, and it was rumored that he was just a spoiled, stupid brat."
"There is nothing of the fool about him," Jinshichi said.
"I've long thought that it was only malicious gossip. But when Lord Yoshimoto speaks of Nobunaga, he believes the gossip and doesn't see him as a threat at all."
"The martial spirit of the men of Owari is completely different from what it was a few years ago."
"Who are his good retainers?" Ieyasu asked.
"Hirate Nakatsukasa is dead, but he has a number of able men like Shibata Katsuie, Hayashi Sado, Ikeda Shonyu, Sakuma Daigaku, and Mori Yoshinari. Just recently he's been joined by an extraordinary man by the name of Kinoshita Tokichiro. He's very
low-ranking, but for some reason his name is often on the lips of the townspeople."
"How do the people feel about Nobunaga?"
"That's the most extraordinary thing. It's common for the ruler of a province to devote himself to governing his people. And people obey their masters as a rule. But in Owari, it's different."
"In what way?"
Jinshichi thought about this for a moment. "How can I put it? He doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, but as long as Nobunaga's there, the people are confident of the future—and while they know that Owari is a small, poor province with a penniless lord, the strange thing is that, like the people of a powerful province, they are not afraid of war or worried about their future."
"Hm. I wonder why?"
"Maybe because of Nobunaga himself. He tells them what is going on today and what will happen tomorrow, and he sets the goals toward which they all work."
Deep down, without really meaning to, Jinshichi was comparing the twenty-five-year old Nobunaga with the seventeen-year-old Ieyasu. In some ways, Ieyasu was far more mature than Nobunaga—there was nothing of the child in him. Both men had grown up under difficult circumstances, but there was really no comparison between them. Ieyasu had been handed over to enemies at the age of five, and the cruelty of the world had chilled him to the very marrow.
The little boat carried Jinshichi and Ieyasu down the center of the river, the time passing during their secret conversation. When their talk was over, Jinshichi guided them back to the bank.
Jinshichi quickly shouldered his basket and took up his staff. Bidding Ieyasu farewell, he said, "I will pass on your words to your retainers. Is there anything else, my lord?"
Ieyasu stood on the bank, immediately anxious about being seen. "There's nothing more. Go quickly." Motioning Jinshichi off with a nod, he suddenly said, "Tell them that I am well—I haven't been sick once." And he walked back to his mansion alone.
His wife's attendants were looking for him everywhere, and when they saw him coming back from the riverbank, one of them said, "Her ladyship is waiting anxiously, ;and sent us to look for you several times. She's extremely worried about you, my lord."
"Ah, is that so?" Ieyasu said. "Calm her down and tell her I'm coming right away.” And he went to his own room. When he sat down, he found another retainer, Sakakibara Heishichi, waiting for him.
"Did you take a walk to the riverbank?"
"Yes… just to kill time. What is it?"
"There was a messenger."
"From whom?" Without answering, Heishichi handed him a letter. It was from Sessai. Before cutting open the envelope, Ieyasu raised it reverently to his forehead. Sessai was a monk of the Zen sect who acted as a military adviser to the Imagawa clan. To leyasu, he was the teacher from whom he had received instructions in both booklearning and martial arts. His letter was concise:
The customary lecture will be given to His Lordship and his guests tonight. I will wait for you at the Northwest Gate of the Palace.
That was all. But the word "customary" was a codeword well known to Ieyasu. It meant a meeting of Yoshimoto and his generals to discuss the march on the capital. "Where is the messenger?"
"He left already. Will you go to the Palace, my lord?"
"Yes," Ieyasu replied, preoccupied.
"I think the proclamation of Lord Yoshimoto's march on the capital is near at hand." Heishichi had overheard the important war councils that had touched on that subject a number of times. He studied Ieyasu's face. Ieyasu mumbled a reply, seeming to be uninterested.
The Imagawa clan's evaluations of Owari's strength and of Nobunaga were very different from what Jinshichi had just reported. Yoshimoto planned to lead a huge army, made up of the forces of the provinces of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa, to the capital, and they expected to meet resistance in Owari.
"If we advance with a large army, Nobunaga will surrender without bloodshed." This vas the superficial view expressed by some of the members of the war council, but alhough Yoshimoto and his advisers, including Sessai, did not have such a low estimate of Nobunaga, none of them took Owari as seriously as Ieyasu did. He had offered an opinon on this once before, but he had been laughed down. Ieyasu was, after all, a hostage and young; and among the field staff he counted for very little.