Taiko

by Eiji Yoshikawa

The fighting style of Nobunaga had been characterized by an irresistible force; it was said that “where Nobunaga advances, the grasses and trees wither.” But Hideyoshi’s fighting style was different. Where he advanced, where he made his camp, he naturally drew people to him. Winning over the local people was an important matter to attend to before ever trying to defeat the enemy. Strict military discipline is vital, but even on days when blood seemed to flow, there was something of a spring breeze wherever Hideyoshi set up his camp stool. Someone even wrote: “Where Hideyoshi lives, the spring wind blows.”

The more dangerous the situation and the deeper his hardships, the happier he became. It was the happiness-that arose from surmounting adversities and being able to turn and see them behind him, and he had experienced it to greater and lesser degrees since the time of his youth. He himself claimed that the greatest happiness of life was to stand at the difficult border between success and failure.

Kindness makes a deep impression on a man in the abyss of destruction and causes him to abandon any suspicions and bitterness. It is the only thing that will make him think that there is still light in the world.

Watching the trends of the day, even Ieyasu could not help scolding himself for the stupidity of rowing against them. Of the men who had gone against the tide of fortune, not one had escaped with his life since time immemorial, as he knew very well. At the foundation of his thinking was the cardinal rule that the observer should distinguish between the smallness of man and the vastness of time, and not resist the man who had grasped the moment.

The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object—the joy of living—is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life’s very road.