Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [151]
Book III • FIRE
Sasaki Kojirō
Just south of Kyoto, the Yodo River wound around a hill called Momoyama (the site of Fushimi Castle), then flowed on through the Yamashiro Plain toward the ramparts of Osaka Castle, some twenty miles farther to the southwest. Partly owing to this direct water link, each political ripple in the Kyoto area produced immediate repercussions in Osaka, while in Fushimi it seemed that every word spoken by an Osaka samurai, let alone an Osaka general, was reported as a portent of the future.
Around Momoyama, a great upheaval was in progress, for Tokugawa Ieyasu had decided to transform the way of life that had flourished under Hideyoshi. Osaka Castle, occupied by Hideyori and his mother, Yodogimi, still clung desperately to the vestiges of its faded authority, as the setting sun holds fast to its vanishing beauty, but real power resided at Fushimi, where Ieyasu had chosen to live during his extended trips to the Kansai region. The clash between old and new was visible everywhere. It could be discerned in the boats plying the river, in the deportment of the people on the highways, in popular songs, and in the faces of the displaced samurai searching for work.
The castle at Fushimi was under repair, and the rocks disgorged from the boats onto the riverbank formed a virtual mountain. Most of them were huge boulders, at least six feet square and three or four feet high. They fairly sizzled under a boiling sun. Though it was autumn by the calendar, the sweltering heat was reminiscent of the dog days immediately following the early summer rainy season.
Willow trees near the bridge shimmered with a whitish glint, and a large cicada zigzagged crazily from the river into a small house near the bank. The roofs of the village, deprived of the gentle colors their lanterns swathed them in at twilight, were a dry, dusty gray. In the heat of high noon, two laborers, mercifully freed for half an hour from their backbreaking work, lay sprawled on the broad surface of a boulder, chatting about what was on everybody’s lips.
“You think there’ll be another war?”
“I don’t see why not. There doesn’t seem to be anybody strong enough to keep things under control.”
“I guess you’re right. The Osaka generals seem to be signing up all the rōnin they can find.”
They would, I suppose. Maybe I shouldn’t say this too loud, but I heard the Tokugawas are buying guns and ammunition from foreign ships.”
“If they are, why is Ieyasu letting his granddaughter Senhime marry Hideyori?”
“How should I know? Whatever he’s doing, you can bet he has his reasons. Ordinary people like us can’t be expected to know what Ieyasu has in mind.”
Flies buzzed about the two. A swarm covered two nearby oxen. Still hitched to empty timber carts, the beasts lazed in the sun, stolid, impassive and drooling at the mouth.
The real reason the castle was undergoing repairs was not known to the lowly laborer, who assumed that Ieyasu was to stay there. Actually, it was one phase of a huge building program, an important part of the Tokugawa scheme of government. Construction work on a large scale was also being carried out in Edo, Nagoya, Suruga, Hikone, Otsu and a dozen other castle towns. The purpose was to a large extent political, for one of Ieyasu’s methods of maintaining control over the daimyō was to order them to undertake various engineering projects. Since none was powerful enough to refuse, this kept the friendly lords too busy to grow soft, while simultaneously forcing the daimyō who’d opposed Ieyasu at Sekigahara to part with large portions of their incomes. Still another aim of the government was to win the support of the common people, who profited both directly and indirectly from extensive public works.
At Fushimi alone, nearly a thousand laborers were engaged in extending the stone battlements, with the incidental result that the town around the castle experienced a sudden influx