Yoshimoto's silk clothes whispered perceptibly in the silence. He took his seat, unaccompanied by either page or attendant. His only two attendants were holding back at a distance of two or three yards.
"Excuse my lateness," Yoshimoto said in reply to the bows of his field staff. Then, paying sppecial attention to Sessai, he said, "I'm afraid this is an imposition on you, Your Reverence." It was Yoshimoto's habit of late to inquire about the monk's health whenever they met. Sessai had been prone to illness for the last five or six years, and recently he had aged perceptibly.
Sessai had instructed, protected, and inspired Yoshimoto since childhood. Yoshimoto knew that he owed his greatness to Sessai's statecraft and planning. Thus, at first, Yoshimoto could not help feeling Sessai's age very much as he felt his own. But when he realized fhat the strength of the Imagawa had not suffered by not relying on Sessai, and that it was, in fact, more vital than ever, he began to believe that his successes were due to his own ability.
"As I am now an adult," Yoshimoto had told Sessai, "please don't worry yourself about the administration of the province or military matters. Spend your remaining years pleasantly, and concentrate on the promulgation of the Way of the Buddha." It was clear that he had begun to keep Sessai at a respectful distance.
But from Sessai's point of view, watching Yoshimoto was like watching a stumbling child, and he felt the same kind of distress. Sessai looked at Yoshimoto exactly as Yoshimoto looked at his son, Ujizane. Sessai thought that Yoshimoto was unreliable. He knew that Yoshimoto felt uncomfortable in his presence and had kept him away, using Sessai's illness as a pretext, but he still tried to assist in both administrative and military matters From the beginning of spring that year, he had not missed one of the more than ten conferences in the Mandarin Orange Pavilion, even when he was ill. Would they move now, or wait a little longer? This conference was going to decide one way or the other, and the rise or fall of the Imagawa clan would depend on the decision.
Enveloped in a light shower of cricket songs, the conference that would transform the government of the nation was conducted in the strictest privacy. When the chirping of the insects stopped suddenly, the group of guards paced back and forth along the hedges outside the pavilion.
"Did you investigate what we talked about at the last conference?" Yoshimoto asked one of his generals.
The general spread out some documents on the floor and opened the conference by explaining them in outline. He had written a report on the military and economic power of the Oda clan. "It's said to be a small clan, but recently it would seem that its economy has rallied remarkably." As he spoke, he showed diagrams to Yoshimoto. "Owari is said to be a united province, but within its eastern and southern sections there are places, like Iwakura Castle, which owe their allegiance to you, my lord. Additionally, there are men who, although they are Oda retainers, are known to feel ambivalendy about their loyalties. Thus, under the present circumstances, the possessions of the Oda clan are less than one-half, possibly only two-fifths, of all of Owari."
"I see," Yoshimoto said. "It seems to be a small clan, just as we've heard. How many soldiers can they muster?"
"If you look at their possessions as being only two-fifths of Owari, the area would produce about one hundred sixty to one hundred seventy thousand bushels of rice. If you figure that ten thousand bushels supports about two hundred fifty men, then even if the entire Oda force were raised, it would not exceed four thousand men. And if you subtract those garrisoning the castles, I doubt that they could call up more than about three thousand men."
Yoshimoto suddenly broke into laughter. Whenever he laughed, it was his habit to tilt his body a little and cover his blackened teeth with his fan. "Three or four thousand, you say? Well, that's hardly enough to prop up a province. Sessai says that the enemy to watch on the way to the capital would be the Oda, and all of you have repeatedly brought up the Oda, too. So I commissioned these reports. But what are three or four thousand men going to do in the face of my military forces? What kind of trouble is it going to be to kick him around and then knock him down with a single blow?"
Sessai said nothing; the other men also kept their mouths shut. They knew that Yoshimoto was not going to change his mind. The plan had existed for some years now, and the aim of all their military preparations and the administration of the Imagawa domains was Yoshimoto's march on the capital and his domination of the entire country. The time was ripe, and Yoshimoto was unable to hold himself in check a moment longer.
Yet, if several conferences had been held since the spring, aiming at decisive action, and the goal had still not been attained, it meant that within this pivotal group there was someone who argued that it was still premature. The dissenting voice was Sessai's. More than arguing that it was still premature, Sessai conservatively advocated recommendations concerning internal administration. He did not criticize Yoshimoto's ambition of unifying the country, but neither did he ever express approval.
:The Imagawa is the most illustrious clan of its generation," he had said to Yoshimoto. If there comes a time when there is no successor to the shogun, someone from the Imagawa clan would have to take a stand. You, by all means, must have this great ambition and begin to cultivate yourself for the capacity of ruling the nation from now on." It
was Sessai himself who had taught Yoshimoto to think on a broad scale: Rather than being the master of a single castle, be the ruler of an entire province; rather than being the ruler of a single district, be the governor of ten provinces; rather than being the governor of ten provinces, be the ruler of the country.
Everyone preached this. And all samurai children faced the chaotic world with this in mind. This was also the main point in Sessai's training of Yoshimoto. So, from the time Sessai had joined Yoshimoto's field staff, the armed forces of the Imagawa clan expanded precipitously. Steadily, Yoshimoto had stepped up the ladder towards hegemony. But recently Sessai had felt a great contradiction between his training of Yoshimoto and his role as an adviser: somehow he had started to feel uneasy about Yoshimoto's plans to unify the country.
He hasn't got the capacity, Sessai thought. Watching Yoshimoto's growing confidence, especially in recent years, Sessai's thoughts had become acutely more conservative. This is his peak. This is as far as his capacity as a ruler can go. I've got to get him to drop the idea. This was the source of Sessai's anguish. Yet there was little reason to believe that Yoshimoto, so proud of his worldly advancement, would suddenly drop the idea of making his bid for supremacy. Sessai's remonstrations were laughed at as symptoms of his dotage, and went unheeded. Yoshimoto considered the country to be already in his grasp.
I should put an end to this quickly. Sessai no longer admonished him. Instead, every e there was a conference, he stressed extreme prudence.
"What kind of difficulties am I going to encounter when I march on Kyoto with all my power and the great armies of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa?" Yoshimoto asked again.
He planned a bloodless march on the capital, ascertaining the actual conditions of all the provinces on the way and planning a diplomatic policy ahead of time to avoid as much fighting as possible. But the first battle on the road to Kyoto was not going to be with the strong provinces of Mino or Omi. It was going to be, first and foremost, against the Oda of Owari. They were small fry. But they were not to be conciliated by diplomacy, or bought off.