Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [126]
“If I’m going to match arms with anybody,” thought Musashi, “it should be with somebody strong. It’s worth risking my life to see whether I can overcome the great Yagyū name. There’s no use in following the Way of the Sword if I haven’t the courage to try.”
Musashi was aware that most people would laugh outright at him for entertaining the idea. Yagyū, though not one of the more prominent daimyō, was the master of a castle, his son was at the shōgun’s court, and the whole family was steeped in the traditions of the warrior class. In the new age now dawning, they were riding the crest of the times.
“This will be the true test,” thought Musashi, who, even as he ate his rice, was preparing himself for the encounter.
The Peony
The old man’s dignity had grown with the years, until now he resembled nothing so much as a majestic crane, while at the same time retaining the appearance and manner of the well-bred samurai. His teeth were sound, his eyes wonderfully sharp. “I’ll live to be a hundred,” he frequently assured everyone.
Sekishūsai firmly believed this himself. “The House of Yagyū has always been long-lived,” he liked to point out. “The ones who died in their twenties and thirties were killed in battle; all the others lived well beyond sixty.” Among the countless wars he himself had taken part in were several major ones, including the revolt of the Miyoshi and the battles marking the rise and fall of the Matsunaga and Oda families.
Even if Sekishūsai had not been born in such a family, his way of life, and especially his attitude after he reached old age, gave reason to believe he would live to reach a hundred. At the age of forty-seven, he had decided for personal reasons to give up warfare. Nothing since had altered this resolution. He had turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshiaki, as well as to repeated requests from Nobunaga and Hideyoshi to join forces with them. Though he lived almost in the shadow of Kyoto and Osaka, he refused to become embroiled in the frequent battles of those centers of power and intrigue. He preferred to remain in Yagyū, like a bear in a cave, and tend his fifteen-thousand-bushel estate in such a way that it could be handed on to his descendants in good condition. Sekishūsai once remarked, “I’ve done well to hold on to this estate. In this uncertain age, when leaders rise today and fall tomorrow, it’s almost incredible that this one small castle has managed to survive intact.”
This was no exaggeration. If he had supported Yoshiaki, he would have fallen victim to Nobunaga, and if he had supported Nobunaga, he might well have run afoul of Hideyoshi. Had he accepted Hideyoshi’s patronage, he would have been dispossessed by Ieyasu after the Battle of Sekigahara.
His perspicacity, which people admired, was one factor, but to survive in such turbulent times, Sekishūsai had to have an inner fortitude lacking in the ordinary samurai of his time; they were all too apt to side with a man one day and shamelessly desert him the next, to look after their own interests—with no thought to propriety or integrity—or even to slaughter their own kinsmen should they interfere with personal ambitions.
“I am unable to do things like that,” Sekishūsai said simply. And he was telling the truth. However, he had not renounced the Art of War itself. In the alcove of his living room hung a poem he had written himself. It said:
I have no clever method
For doing well in life.
I rely only
On the Art of War.
It is my final refuge.
When he was invited by Ieyasu to visit Kyoto, Sekishūsai found it impossible not to accept and emerged from decades of serene seclusion to make his first visit to the shōgun’s court. With him he took his fifth son, Munenori, who was twenty-four, and his grandson Hyōgo, then only sixteen. Ieyasu not only confirmed the venerable old warrior in his landholdings but asked him to become tutor in the martial arts to the House of