"There is some resentment in my heart concerning Lord Ieyasu that will not easily be cleared away, but I can endure it for the sake of your honor. And since you've decided to take on this task, it would be distressing to delay it too long. Why don't you send a messenger to Okazaki right away?"

Thus instructed, Nobuo sent two of his senior retainers as representatives to Okazaki that very day.

The conditions could not really be called severe, but when he heard them, even Ieyasu had to call on his reserves patience.

Even though Ogimaru was said to be adopted, he was truly a hostage. And sending the sons of senior retainers to Osaka was clearly a pledge of the defeated. Though his retainers were upset, Ieyasu remained calm so that Okazaki would remain calm as well.

"I agree to the conditions, and I'll ask you to take care of the matter," he replied to the envoys.

Back and forth they went, a number of times. Then, on the twenty-first day of the Eleventh Month, Tomita Tomonobu and Tsuda Nobukatsu came to Okazaki to sign a peace treaty.

On the twelfth day of the Twelfth Month, Ieyasu's son was sent to Osaka. Kazumasa and Honda's sons went with him. The warriors who saw off the hostages lined up along the streets and wept. Their action at Mount Komaki—an action that had temporarily shaken the entire nation—had ended in this.

Nobuo came to Okazaki on the fourteenth, toward the year's end, and stayed until the twenty-fifth. Ieyasu did not say one unpleasant word. For ten days he entertained that good-natured man whose future was so obvious, and then sent him home again.

The eleventh year of Tensho came to a close. People had an inordinate number of feelings about the passing year. Among the things they felt keenly was the certainty that the world had changed. It had been only a year and a half since Nobunaga's death in the tenth year of Tensho. Everyone was surprised that such sweeping changes had come so quickly.

The exalted position, the popularity, and the mission that had formerly been Nobunaga's had quickly become Hideyoshi's. Indeed, the liberality of Hideyoshi's character wa in accord with the times, and helped create subtle revolutions and advances in society and government.

Watching the trends of the day, even Ieyasu could not help scolding himself for the stupidity of rowing against them. Of the men who had gone against the tide of fortune not one had escaped with his life since time immemorial, as he knew very well. At the foundation of his thinking was the cardinal rule that the observer should distinguish between the smallness of man and the vastness of time, and not resist the man who had grasped the moment. Thus he deferred at each step to Hideyoshi.

At any rate, the man who saw in the New Year while he was at the very height of prosperity was Hideyoshi. He was now in his forty-ninth year. At the age of fifty, in one more year, he would be in the prime of manhood.

The New Year's guests numbered many times more than they had the year before, and, dressed in their finery, they filled Osaka Castle, bringing with them the feeling of the springtime that was close at hand.

Ieyasu, of course, did not come, and a small number of provincial lords who paid deference to Ieyasu followed suit. Moreover, there were certain forces that even now decried Hideyoshi and rushed around making military preparations and gathering secret intelligence. Those men also refrained from tying up their horses at the gate of Osaka Castle.

Hideyoshi observed all that as he continued to greet guest after guest.

As the year entered the Second Month, Nobuo visited from Ise. If he had come at New Year's with all the other provincial lords, it would have been as though he were making a New Year's call on Hideyoshi, and that would have been beneath his dignity. Or so he reasoned.

There was nothing easier than satisfying Nobuo's conceit. Using the same courtesy he had shown when he knelt in front of Nobuo at Yadagawara, Hideyoshi demonstrated a perfect sincerity in his hearty welcome. What Hideyoshi had said at Yadagawara was not a lie, Nobuo thought. When rumors surfaced about Ieyasu, Nobuo criticized the man's calculating nature because he thought it would please Hideyoshi. But Hideyoshi simply nodded silently.

On the second day of the Third Month, Nobuo returned to Ise in great joy. During his stay in Osaka, he had been told that he had been invested with a court title, thanks to Hideyoshi's good offices. Nobuo had remained in Kyoto for about five days, receiving the congratulations of many callers. It seemed to him that the sun would hardly rise if it were not for Hideyoshi.

The traffic of provincial lords to and from Osaka during the New Year, and the activities of Nobuo in particular, were reported in detail to Hamamatsu. Ieyasu, however, could now do nothing more than observe Hideyoshi's appeasement of Nobuo from the sidelines.

Epilogue

Between the spring and fall of that year Hideyoshi sent ships to the south and horses to the north in his campaigns to subdue the country. He returned to Osaka Castle in the Ninth Month and began overseeing the internal administration and foreign affairs of the Empire.

From time to time he would look back on the mountains he had climbed to get thus far, and at such moments he could not help congratulating himself on the first half of his life. In the coming year he would be fifty years old, the season in which a man reflects on his past and is made to think about his next step.

Then, because he was human and indeed was subject to carnal passions more than the common run of men, it was natural that at night he would reflect on those passions that had governed his life in the past and continued to do so in the present, and would wonder where they might lead in the future.

It is the autumn of my life. Not many more months remain of my forty-ninth year.

As he compared his life to climbing mountains, he felt as if he were looking down toward the foothills after having climbed almost to the summit.

The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object—the joy of living—is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life's very road.

How boring would be a life lacking the confusions of many digressions or the difficult struggles! How soon would a man grow tired of living if he only walked peacefullyalong a level path. In the end, a man’s life lies in a continuous series of hardships and struggles, and the pleasure of living is not in the short spaces of rest. Thus Hideyoshi, who was born in adversity, grew to manhood as he played in its midst.

In the Tenth Month of the fourteenth year of Tensho, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu met in Osaka Castle for a historic peace conference. Undefeated in the field, Ieyasu nevertheless ceded the political victory to Hideyoshi. Two years before, Ieyasu had sent his son as a hostage to Osaka, and now he took Hideyoshi's sister as his bride. The patient Ieyasu would wait for his chance—perhaps the bird would yet sing for him.

After a great banquet to celebrate making peace with his strongest rival, Hideyoshi retired to the inner apartments of the castle, where he and his most trusted retainers hailed his victory over many cups of sake. Hours later, Hideyoshi rose shakily to his feet and bid the company good night. Slowly he stumbled down the hall, a short, monkeyfaced man surrounded by his ladies-in-waiting, almost hidden by the colorful, rustling silks of their many-layered kimonos. The laughter of the women could be heard all along the gilded corridors as the tiny figure of Japan's supreme ruler was led to his bed.