"Shall I massage your hip?" Nene asked.

The old lady had a chronic condition that troubled her from time to time. When the evening winds blew in the early fall, she often complained of the pain. As Nene massaged her legs for her, the old lady seemed to slip gently into sleep, but during that time she must have been thinking something over. Finally she sat up and spoke to Nene.

"Listen, my dear. You want to be reunited with your husband. I'm sorry to have been so selfish. Tell my son that his mother would like to move to Sunomata."

The day before Hideyoshi's mother was due to arrive, an unexpected but very welcome guest came through the gate of Sunomata. The guest was dressed in plain clothes with a sedge hat pulled over his eyes, and was accompanied by only two attendants, young woman and a boy.

“When he sees me, he'll understand," the man said to the guard, who relayed word to Hideyoshi.

Hideyoshi hurried out to the castle gate to greet his guests, Takenaka Hanbei, Kokuma, and Oyu.

"These are my only followers," Hanbei told him. "I have a fair-sized household living in my castle on Mount Bodai, but I cut my ties with them when I withdrew from the world. As for my previous promise to you, my lord, I thought that perhaps the time had come, so I left my mountain retreat and came down to be among men once again. Would you please take in these three wanderers as the lowest of your attendants?"

Hideyoshi bowed with his hands to his knees and said, "You are much too modest. If you had sent me just a note beforehand, I would have come to the mountain myself to greet you."

"What? You'd come to greet a worthless mountain ronin who has come to serve you?"

"Well, anyway, please come in." Leading the way, he beckoned Hanbei inside; but when Hideyoshi tried to give him the seat of honor, Hanbei absolutely refused, saying, “That would be contrary to my intention of being your retainer."

Hideyoshi responded with his innermost feelings. "No, no. I don't have the talent to place myself over you. I'm thinking of recommending you to Lord Nobunaga."

Hanbei shook his head and refused adamantly. "As I said from the very first, I haven't the least intention of serving Lord Nobunaga. And it isn't just a matter of loyalty to the Saito clan. If I were to serve Lord Nobunaga, it would not be long before I would be forced to leave his service. When I consider my own imperfect personality together with what I have heard about his character, my intuition is that a master-retainer relationship would not be mutually beneficial. But with you I don't have to temper my disposition, you can tolerate my innate selfishness and willfulness. I'd like you to consider me the low­est of your retainers."

"Well, then, will you teach strategy not just to me but to all my retainers?"

With that, the two men seemed to arrive at a compromise, and that night they shared sake, talking happily until a late hour, with no thought of the time. The next day was the day of Hideyoshi's mother's arrival at Sunomata. Accompanied by attendants, he traveled a little more than a league from the castle to the outskirts of the village of Masaki to greet his mother's palanquin.

There was an azure sky, the chrysanthemums at the rough-woven fences around the people's houses gave off their fragrance, and shrikes sang their shrill songs in the branches of the ginkgo trees.

"Your honored mother's procession has come into view," announced a retainer.

Hideyoshi's face shone with a pleasure he was unable to conceal. His wife's and mother's palanquins finally arrived. When the escorting samurai saw their master coming out to greet them, they immediately dismounted. Hachisuka Hikoemon quickly drew near to the side of the old lady's palanquin and informed her that Hideyoshi had come to neet her.

Inside the palanquin, the voice of the old lady could be heard asking them to let her down. The palanquins were brought to a halt and lowered to the ground. The warriors knelt at either side of the road and bowed. Nene got out first and, going over to the old lady's palanquin, took her hand. When she glanced at the face of the samurai who had quickly placed straw sandals at the old woman's feet, she saw that it was Hideyoshi.

Deeply moved and with no time to say a word, Nene greeted her husband with a quick glance.

Taking her son's hand, the old lady pressed it to her forehead reverently and said, "As the lord of a castle, you are much too gracious. Please don't be so solicitous in front of your retainers."

"I'm relieved to see that you look so healthy. You tell me not to be solicitous, but, Mother, my very own Mother, I did not come out to greet you today as a samurai. Please don't worry."

The old lady stepped out of the palanquin. The other samurai had all prostrated themselves on the ground, and she felt too dazed to walk.

"You must be tired," Hideyoshi said. "Rest here for a little while. It's no more than a league to the castle." Taking his mother by the hand, he led her to a stool under the eaves of a house. The old lady sat down and gazed at the autumn sky that spread above the solid yellow line of ginkgo trees.

"It's just like a dream," she whispered. The words made Hideyoshi reflect on the years. He was unable to feel that this moment was like a dream. He saw very clearly the steps connecting the present reality and the past. And he felt that this moment was a nat­ural milestone in his career.

The following month, after Hideyoshi's mother and wife had moved to Sunomata, they were followed by his twenty-nine-year-old sister, Otsumi, his twenty-three-year-old half brother, Kochiku, and his twenty-year-old half sister.

Otsumi was still unmarried. Long before, Hideyoshi had promised that if she looked after their mother, when he became successful, he would find her a husband. The follow­ing year, Otsumi married a relative of Hideyoshi's wife in the castle.

"They've all grown up," Hideyoshi said to his mother, looking at the satisfaction in her face. This was his happiness, and his great incentive for the future.

It was late spring. Cherry blossoms fell in profusion from the eaves onto the armrest on which Nobunaga was napping.

“Ah… that's right." Recalling something, Nobunaga quickly jotted down a note and had a messenger take it to Sunomata. Because Hideyoshi had become the lord of a castle, he was no longer on hand to respond immediately whenever Nobunaga called, and this seemed to make his lord a little lonely.

Crossing the large Kiso River, Nobunaga's messenger delivered the note to the gate of Hideyoshi's castle. Here, too, the spring had passed peacefully, and the flowers of the mountain wisteria swayed in the shade of the artificial hill in the garden. Behind this hill, on the edge of the wide garden, were a newly built lecture hall and a small house for Takenaka Hanbei and Oyu.

The lecture hall was a dojo where Hideyoshi's retainers could practice the martial arts.  With Takenaka Hanbei as their teacher, the retainers were lectured on the Chinese classics in he morning, and vied with one another in techniques of the spear and sword in the afternoon.

Later Hanbei would lecture on the military precepts of Sun Tzu and Wu Chi late into the night. Hanbei applied himself zealously to the education of all the young samurai in order to discipline them in the martial habits and customs of the castle; most of Hideyoshi's retainers were the wild ronin who had once been members of Hikoemon's band.

Hideyoshi knew that he had to work constantly to improve himself, to overcome his faults, and to increase his capacity for self-reflection, and he was determined that his samurai must be made to do the same. If he was to play an important role in future, retainers armed with brute strength alone were not going to be useful. Hideyoshi was anx­ious about this. Thus, along with embracing Hanbei as a retainer, he also bowed to him as his own teacher and looked up to him as his instructor in military science, and en­trusted to him the education of his retainers.