"Well, then, where did you leave him?"
"As luck would have it, Oyu was just about to return to Fuwa, so I ordered him to go along as a guard for her palanquin."
"The man risked his life coming back from Kai, and you immediately ordered him to accompany your mistress? Isn't Tenzo going to resent that?"
"He went along with her happily. I may be a foolish master, but he knows me very well."
"You seem to employ people a little differently than I do."
"You can be doubly at ease, my lord. She may be a woman, but if it appears that Tenzo is about to spill any secrets to anyone, she'll protect our interests, even if she has to kill him."
"Put away your self-congratulations."
"Sorry. You what I'm like."
"That's not the point," Nobunaga said. "The Tiger of Kai has died, so we can't delay. We've got to move before Shingen's death is known by the world at large. Hideyoshi, leave tonight and hurry back to Yokoyama."
"I had planned to do that immediately, so I sent Oyu back to Fuwa, and—"
"Forget the rest. I've hardly got time to sleep. We're going to mobilize at daybreak."
Nobunaga's thoughts were perfectly in line with Hideyoshi's. The opportunity they had always sought—the time to finish up a former problem—was now at hand. The problem being, of course, the liquidation of the troublesome shogun and the old order.
Needless to say, as Nobunaga was an actor in the new age that was about to replace the old, his advance was quickly realized. On the twenty-second day of the Third Month, his army thundered out of Gifu. When it arrived at the shores of Lake Biwa, the army split into two. One half of the army was under the command of Nobunaga. He boarded ship and sailed across the lake to the west. The remaining half, composed of the troops led by Katsuie, Mitsuhide, and Hachiya, took the land route and advanced along the southern edge of the lake.
The land army ousted the anti-Nobunaga forces made up of the warrior-monks in the area between Katada and Ishiyama, and destroyed the fortifications that had been erected along the road.
The shogun's advisers quickly held a conference.
"Shall we resist?"
"Shall we sue for peace?"
These men had a big problem: they had not yet given a clear answer to the seventeen-article document that Nobunaga had sent to Yoshiaki on New Year's Day. In it, Nobunaga had itemized all his grievances against Yoshiaki.
"What audacity! I am the shogun, after all!" Yoshiaki had said angrily, conveniently forgetting that it was Nobunaga who had protected him and returned him to Nijo Palace. Why should I submit to a nonentity like Nobunaga?"
Messengers had come from Nobunaga one after another to work out peace terms, but had withdrawn without being granted audiences. Then, as a sort of response, the shogun had barricades erected on the roads that led to the capital.
The opportunity that Nobunaga had been waiting for and that Hideyoshi had been planning against was the arrival of the appropriate moment for reproving Yoshiaki for his lack of response to the Seventeen Articles. That opportunity had come sooner than either of them had imagined—hastened by Shingen's death.
In any period of history, a man on his way to ruin always holds on to the ludicrous illusion that he is not the one about to fall. Yoshiaki fell straight into that trap.
Nobunaga saw him in yet another way, saying, "We can use him, too." Thus he was handled with delicate disrespect. But the members of the worthless shogunate of this period did not know their own value, and no matter what the subject of their thoughts, intellectually speaking, their understanding did not go beyond the past. They saw only the narrow face of culture in the capital and believed that it prevailed throughout Japan. Entrusting themselves to the cramped policies of the past, they relied on the warrior-monks of the Honganji and on the many samurai warlords throughout the provinces who hated Nobunaga.
The shogun was still unaware of Shingen's death. And so he played tough. "I am the shogun, the pillar of the samurai class. I'm different from the monks on Mount Hiei. If Nobunaga were to aim his weapons at Nijo Palace, he would be branded a traitor."
His attitude indicated that he would not decline war if it was offered. Naturally, he called on the clans around the capital and sent urgent messages to the faraway Asai, the Asakura, the Uesugi, and the Takeda, setting up a showy defense.
When Nobunaga heard this, he turned toward the capital with a laugh and, without stopping his army for a single day, entered Osaka. The ones who were shocked this time were the warrior-monks of the Honganji. Suddenly face to face with Nobunaga's army, they had no idea what to do. But Nobunaga was content simply to line his men up in battle array.
"We can strike anytime we like," he said. At this point he wanted most strongly to avoid any unnecessary expenditure of military strength. And, until this time, he had repeatedly sent envoys to Kyoto asking for a response to the Seventeen Articles. So this was a sort of ultimatum. Yoshiaki took a highhanded view: he was shogun and he simply did not feel like listening to Nobunaga's opinions of his administration.
Among the Seventeen Articles, Yoshiaki was pressed quite firmly by two articles in particular. The first was concerned with the crime of disloyalty to the Emperor. The second article had to do with his disgraceful conduct. While it was his duty to maintain the peace of the Empire, he himself had incited the provinces to rebellion.
"It's useless. He'll never accept this kind of grilling—just written notes and messengers," Araki Murashige said to Nobunaga.
Hosokawa Fujitaka, who had also joined Nobunaga, added, "I suppose it's no use hoping that the shogun will wake up before his fall."
Nobunaga nodded. He seemed to understand only too well. But it would not be necessary to use the drastic violence here that he had employed at Mount Hiei; neither was he so poor in strategy that he would have to use the same method twice.
"Back to Kyoto!" Nobunaga had given this order on the fourth day of the Fourth Month, but it had seemed nothing more than an exercise to impress the masses with the size of his army.
"Look at that! He's not going to have them bivouac for very long. Just like the last time, Nobunaga's uneasy about Gifu and is hurriedly withdrawing his soldiers," Yoshiaki said, elated. With the reports that came to him one after another, however, his color began to change. For just as he was congratulating himself about the troops bypassing Kyoto, the Oda army flowed into the capital from the Osaka road. Then, without a single war cry and more peacefully than if they had been simply performing maneuvers, the soldiers surrounded Yoshiaki's residence.
"We're close to the Imperial Palace, so be careful not to disturb His Majesty. It will be enough to censure this impudent shogun's crimes," Nobunaga ordered.
There was no gunfire, and not even the hum of a single bowstring. It was uncanny, far more than if there had been a great commotion.
"Yamato, what do you think we should do? What is Nobunaga going to do to me?" Yoshiaki asked his senior adviser, Mibuchi Yamato.
"You're pitifully unprepared. At this point, do you still not understand what Nobunaga has in mind? He's clearly come to attack you."
"B-but… I'm the shogun!"
"These are troubled times. What good is a title going to do you? It appears that you have only two choices: either resolve to fight or sue for peace." As his retainer spoke these words, tears fell from his eyes. Along with Hosokawa Fujitaka, this honorable man had not left Yoshiaki's side since the days of his exile.
"I do not remain to protect my honor or to seek fame. Nor am I following a strategy for survival. I know what's going to happen tomorrow, but somehow I just can't abandon this fool of a shogun," Yamato had once said. Certainly he knew that Yoshiaki was hardly worth saving. He knew the world was changing, but he seemed resolved to stand his ground at Nijo Palace. He was already over fifty years old, a general past his prime.