Taiko

by Eiji Yoshikawa

There are wives who have no idea what their husbands do. Such husbands lose an important incentive, and even a man who works for the sake of the nation or province is small, pitiful, and weak when he is at home. If only his wife is happy and interested in her husband’s work, he can go out on the battlefield in the morning with courage. To me, this is the best way a wife can help her husband.”

‘Off on a journey; the husband understands his wife’s value at the snow-laden inn.

I’ve lived a long life. Or I could say it’s been short, too. Truly long or truly short, only this one moment is eternal, I suppose. The moment of death…Can eternal life be anything more than that?

“Generally, there’s no one more likely to bring disaster to the world than a man who aspires to grasp the nation’s government but lacks the ability to govern.

If you consider only battle, intrigue, and power, and forget morality and human-heartedness, you won’t stop at being an enemy of Lord Nobunaga. You’ll be an enemy of all humankind and a plague to the entire earth.

I have felt that the world is an interesting place.

It would be a fault for the man who runs the government to let the poor get used to charity.”

but every cherry blossom falls and every ruler’s castle will burn.

Men like to believe that they live and act according to their own wills, but the grim truth is that outside events actually stir them to action.

When someone without the proper ability rules the country, it leads to certain chaos.

Detachment. For Hideyoshi, that simple word was a talisman.

the feeling that his own clear-sightedness had hit the mark.

You were born a woman, and have chanced to meet an extremely unusual man. I imagine that there must be faults in such a man, but his good points are numerous. When you are looking out from the midst of a large mountain, you can’t understand how big that mountain truly is. Be at peace, and enjoy living with this man in the way he wants to live. I am not saying that jealousy is a bad thing. To a certain extent, jealousy adds depth to the life of a married couple.

The patient Ieyasu would wait for his chance—perhaps the bird would yet sing for him.