Pink cherries fell against the ground, sunbeams striking through them, creating a great glaze of serrated light that pierced the heavens and human eyes alike. The grass that adorned the stone walkways was precisely manicured and maintained, leading up to the small groves hanging outside the manor, from the fixture of the moat to the high battlements of the stone walls with their straight-facing armaments, jutting out at the seams to create the impression of jaggedness and formularity at the same time. Everything was kept in harmony, ungeometric as much as it was orderly, the artful clasp of woodgrains and human mettle.
The articulation of the chrysanthemums and hydrangeas affixed to the western end of the castle's courtyard was a natural façade as well, tens of gardeners keeping the grounds hydrated and pared inward, though perhaps not with the obsessive fixations of neatness Japanese ukishiro makers held, but rather keeping the spirit of the Kanto plain embodied in the topsoil. An artificial lake rested at the shores of the garden, with little stone embankments littered in the midst of the waters, painted with moss to represent the jutting out of the world from the embrace of Suijin.
Murimachi Castle stood on the elevated plain, austere in its enclosed framework, despite the upward arch of its shingles at the ends, counteracting the decline of the roof tiles. Moreover, its structure was multilayered, with each 'segment' of the yagaras bearing a distinctive architectural veneer: whether it be the garish hues of the courtiers' section, offset by the elegance of the tea room housed inside—or the martial face of the warriors' quarters, unused by the daimyo except for the most stringent occasions of mind, where one's psyche had to be cleansed of uproar, and only the most staid style imaginable was permitted; the bamboo screens and modest décor allowed for an unperforated inner being. Fitting, then, that the tallest segment was itself an ode to the Zen belief: its wooden curvature exported from Beijing temples, outfitting the castle with an acclamation to Buddhist doctrine.
Toshiba strode down the walkway towards the entrance, the cobbles littering the grass blades like empty shells on the shore. The stiff ends of his boots clacked against the ground, small stepping sounds seeping out from below, creating a melodic beat with the water lapping and the birds cawing nearby. The sun neatly highlighted the cyan of his kimono, with beige contours supplementing his muted appearance. Reams of cloth flayed out his hands, his fingers peeking out from the holes, vaunted by inner shadow. His expression was calm, composed by the afternoon air like a woodblock carving, his eyebrows lilted upward, and the sable strands of his hair tied in a prim topknot, revealing the back of his neck save for the droop of a fibral tail.
The sashay of his legs held an innate grace, like the paddles of a suisha rolling against a river—though, as the former image implies, there was some force to each movement, some strength involved in the nimbleness. Toshiba knew that his current state left him exposed to surly acts if left unattended, his set of armor still lying at the warrior's den. And so, he only presented himself as nothing more than an agile courtier, carrying a fleet-footedness that could evolve into the deft strike of his katana at any moment. A wisdom of the backroads, he bore, like a hidden gift for perception; he could spot a bandit or brigand by smell and sound, feeling the energy in the air, and the tension left unsaid in the environment.
His skills of observation had been hardened during the prior decades of awaredatta that had engulfed the Rising Sun in an inferno of suffering. Born to a family of middling rice farmers, he found early acclaim in his service as an administrative official to the Owari branch of the Tokugawa clan, being named a retainer to his lord for his aptitude in meting out justice and maximizing tax revenues; he was a sort of samurai of the finances, a bushi of the local magistracy, his blade dealing out blows, blood, and bankrolls alike. It was this characteristic frugality and wit that had garnered him a favorable position within his master's court, but he did not find his maturation as a samurai with his nose stuffed in the scrolls of daily administration and farmer disputes. No, like many of his generation's comrades—the new breed of samurai who had matriculated to the art of war despite any peacetime talents they might've possessed—his crucible was on the battlefield.
Toshiba could still hear the cries of Tokugawa soldiers on the fields of Sekigahara, the banners of the clan flower shining in the limelight with all its black regality. Every man he knew then knew that Amaterasu herself had deigned the day a special moment in their history; they could feel the fatedness in the shimmer on their swords, and in their bellies with the fire of the digested rice paddies, and in their voices with the rising gale of approbation for their lord.
"For the Tokugawa! Only one flag shall fly across these thousand islands!"
"Bah! The Toyotomi think themselves heirs to Nobunaga's legacy? There is only one successor on this land!"
"Their arrogance will see them smote down by Bishamonten. Let the gates of war open before them and see them running like cowards into the night!"
Toshiba joined in on the pre-battle festivities, these long moments where speeches were held and the camaraderie of a manhood soon to be extinguished by blood could fully bestow itself upon all the men. It was felt in the jingling of the munitions stores and the armor pieces, the light rattle that the iron fragments made against the skin and cloth they wore; in the flow of their voices which was as sweet as honey, yet as bitter-foretold as salt to a wound. They spoke with furor and energy, a rising tonality to their exhausted windpipes, so tried by the demands of barbaric shouts, taunts, and battle-cries.
But a year later, as he entered the gateway to Murimachi, offering regal nods to the armored footmen guarding the passage with their lives, Toshiba felt an inner pang of pain in his temple, plaguing his senses. It was when his face turned towards the tranquility of the artificial gardens that his mind broke into a full panic, his heart quickened, and his body nearly dropped dead into the water, clinging onto the stones overlaying the walls.
"…Sekigahara…" He whispered into the cobbles, like a twisted mantra.
The footmen rushed over to him, sweat creasing their brows.
"My Lord, are you well?"
"What's wrong? Water, food, calm—what is it!?"
He waved them off, still somehow retaining a Zen element to his disposition even in a beleaguered state, and turned his attention back to the vision that had grasped his imagination:
The Nagara River waters blanched with red. Yari spearpoints floating atop the mounds of broken bodies, their faces incomprehensible, only bare assemblages of flesh that were roughly hewn into a semianthropomorphic form.
There were still galloping horses along the ridges across the plain, looking back before their former masters with a mix of bliss and horror, free from the overlordship they once chafed under, but having lost the chivalry in their miens as a result. The moon loomed high into the night, too—Shinigami spirits crawling out from the shadowed spaces by the ridge to harvest the lost souls that bloomed across the fields. All of this was seen from the lip of the river's banks, as Toshiba shoved himself off the ground, his katana reflecting a scarlet face, ridden with bundles of cloth attached to his cheeks by a sanguine adhesive.
He remembered the distinctive 'AGH!' that permeated his voice as he saw his reflection, like a different soul had donned his body. He stepped back, then, looking over his hands, the joints of his armor, the corners of his shirt; seeking all the places where the entrails marked his character.
Toshiba wasn't a warrior by trade or by birth, but by ritual initiation. He conducted the financial reports of the upkeep gained and lost as a result of the casualty counters, seeing to it that the pressures on the grain supplies could be lessened if there were fewer mouths to feed. It was in these capital logistics that Toshiba, growing near mad from the monotony and hidden graveness of his task even as he reminded himself of his devotion to his lord, began to make a story in his mind for every number.
Of the merchant's sons who went from selling textiles and fresh vegetables in the growing marketplaces at Edo, to becoming salesmen of egos, bragging about the loot they'd won in the aftermath of their sieges at various castle towns; the booty won by the harshness of their ethics and the steeliness of their minds, believed un-ill-achieved by said characteristics.
"An honest man's game," they said later in life, after their service was no longer needed, "for those who cheat."
Of the sohei monk warriors who swore before Amida's teachings, religiously devoted to their ushering in of the Pure Land in a sinful archipelago, brandishing their swords with the words of the Buddha, hoping fanaticism by blade was superior to that by sutra. Toshiba chuckled at the thought: the hearts of the faithful, pooling into cynical men's rosters, fueling their worldly gambits for power and prestige. Were they deluded themselves, they thought, or were they the deluders, making all think they were simply in it for zeal alone?
Of the Kyoto nobles, all the same, who, languishing in the Imperial Palace at Kyoto with their veil of political intrigue, were made eager by the commission of their farm-boys on the Sho estates to the battlefields. Toshiba pictured them exchanging poems at the lush Konoe Pond, indulging in their elaborate tea ceremonies and little ideations about harnessing power in a world without strength; what did they envisage was happening on the fields of battle? Were they entertained by their own bloody mindscapes, though all the more divorced from the reality they conjured up than Toshiba himself, who knew that at some point, it was his turn to be called to action?
"Orders from Edo have arrived, Toshiba-san," a messenger told the man on horseback outside Murimachi, his hair combed back in the flare of a commoner, seeing to his finest moment as delivering the instructions for the march to death for so many of his countrymen. His smile was muted, yes, but one could still feel in the upward reach of his brows that a seminal moment had unearthed itself before the messenger's life; he was to be the thunderbolt of his lord's will, cast down like Raijin to electrify the dampened hearts of the men still lingering in the countryside, administering the land while the campaigns continued and the seasons passed swiftly.
Toshiba nodded. He himself hadn't worn the topknot yet—still in a transitional phase between farmer and retainer, and so his hair was only half a ponytail, with breadth covering the scalp—but his breath breathed the samurai spirit, a longing to prove his worth not simply by the logistical antecedents to bloodsport, but rather through the act of dirtying hands itself. An obsession for red rivulets to knead their way down his fingers, having felt so precious little of it in his own pursuits.
"I'm honored to take up arms," he said softly, his words emanating the aura of piety, like Amaterasu glowing out the sunrays; a pious essence that was nurtured not by the temples and recitations, but the yamajiro forts and military missives. He ordered his subordinates to sharpen his blade imminently, to rouse the horses that lazed in the stables in preparation for his galloping journey, and to pack a week's worth of rice in packets for storage; the tireless work of the mundane to effect his apotheosis as a samurai.
Toshiba had ample time to ponder the predicament awaiting him at Murimachi, unlike many of his comrades on the family farm who found themselves either at the laborious behest of their daimyo, or were commissioned into the ashigaru ranks before they could say goodbye to their parents, and say hello to the hereafter. He tended to the gardens alone at the castle's back, admiring the soft flowerings of green and the lapping reams of blue that blanketed the lakeside, accented with the golden bits of sand speckled from coastal beaches.
It was a scene so idyllic, so hyper-natural, that it simultaneously represented man's suzerainty to the gods of nature and emphasized his creative soul—the will and wit that was needed to tame these scattered rocks and flowers and align them into such a serene setting was enormous, and Toshiba at once felt himself absorbed in this project.
He could see himself in the foreground of an ukiyo carving: the whites and blacks of Murimachi standing tall from the left side, the panorama of the garden itself filling up at the right, and Toshiba at the center, this master of artifice and nature, striding the boundaries of human achievement. While one of his hands saw fit to hoe the ground with the end of the farmer's tool, his other culminated in the sway of the philosopher's finger perched at his chin, as thoughtful as a monk.
In preparation for Sekigahara, Toshiba had used every scrap of spare time from administrative duties he had to dive into the rich worlds of the Heike and The Taiheki epics, cogitating on the rhetorical pleasantries of Atsumori, and the resourceful gambits of loyalty by Matsushige; it was in these past lives of samurai glory that Toshiba found the promise of a nation so often seduced by war.
What was it about his homeland, he thought, that made it so ripe for seeing the great disputes between the headstrong bushi and elegant kuge classes solved by blood and iron alone? What was the cause behind the fragility of the Emperor's mandate, that made the raving warlords of the land so empowered to take arms and lay down their personal ambitions before the empire?
He clasped his hoe tight, and tilled the ground with the forceful stroke of his fists, feeling the violent energy inherent to the ground as a measure of his curiosity.
What was 'loyalty' in a state where treason was as natural as the seasons: waning and waxing with the passing weeks and months, yet always enduring as an established institution, deceit and subterfugal skullduggery the wanting tools of the daimyo? Where every act of devotion was the abetting of treachery; every service granted, an accomplice to malice.
The world remained at an impasse, unbalanced, scarred by conflict, with the food stores running low and the peasants chafing under the eternal rice requisitions and levy campaigns. At this point, the only solace available was to embrace the devastation, and, inured to it, purvey it with the metaphysical embodiment of battle. Meaning was garnered at the end of a blade, where the sword fights were tests of will as much of strength, the bow volleys sending arrows tipped with the flames and poison of the human condition.
Toshiba looked to his daimyo, like many other retainers, touched by fortune and talent alike to be tapped from the ranks of the common noumin by a lord seeking loyal servants, as a semi-divine icon. There was beauty in the abstraction of man, the distillation of the lord's influence into a fine powder of sorts, a sparkle of authority given to him by Bishamonten himself.
It helped that Toshiba rarely had a long moment with his lord, to take a whiff of his human imperfections; the shortness of their meetings aggrandized the aura of his power, inflected in the depth of his voice and sharpened by the pricks of his black beard, and even the sway of his topknot in the war room. It was like Toshiba was speaking to and bowing before an ideal, a notion clad in armor, and a nation on foot.
"My lord," Toshiba's tone held low in a deferential modulation, taking extra care to attenuate the syllables as he closed his eyes and bowed.
His lord didn't smile, but merely affected a humorous expression, his cheeks creasing upward a tad.
"The supplies are in order," Toshiba continued, "for your grand assault."
The daimyo clasped his hands, and inclined his head.
Everything in Toshiba's life was leading up to the day of the attack. That's what he reasoned, by the forcefulness of his spirit, adapted to fit the mold of his lord. His faith, his purpose, his worth of self, now so inexorably linked to the fate of his superior—was to be writ in victory, or shattered in defeat.
His imagination became realized on that cool day at Sekigahara. Standing before his contingent of matchlock riflers mixed with the bowmen, of no-dachi warriors and katana swordsmen, of a line replete with mangonels and cannons aimed towards the heads of the enemy, Toshiba could feel the heartbeat of a movement.
"Men, do not forget what you are fighting for!"
His soldiers raised their weapons and banged them against each others' armor, a cacophonous tune laid as the chorus to his speech.
"From all corners of Japan do we come: from the rolling rice fields of Kyushu to the cavernous mountain ranges of Osaka; from the bustle of the cities at Kyoto and Edo, to the fortresses at Kai and Echigo. Disparate as we may be, we are not desperate, for we are united by a common language: the spoken and slashed word of loyalty!
Our lord watches from his camp above, inspecting our every movement, each breath and stagger and feint. Let us not disappoint his watchful eye, and instead, shall we march with fervor into the lines of the enemy—not with the brashness of a fool, but the even-keeled confidence of men who know that victory is all at hand!
Disgrace be to all those who flee before us and slight the grace of their lord! Honor, triumph, steel, goes to the men of the Tokugawa!"
The cheers roiled the lines, and Toshiba could barely hear the footsteps of the enemy approaching on the plain.
He smirked. This was his time, and the time of all his comrades.
The nature of the Tokugawa Clan was driven by its sentinels.
And wait not to deliver the killing blow, they did.