Within a year of the fall of Osaka castle Ieyasu was dead. Early in March 1616, the great unifier fell ill having eaten tempura made of sea-bream. Growing weaker and weaker, he took to his bed. By the end of May he stopped eating, drinking only some hot water. Then, on the 1st of June, he passed away peacefully, having written his death poem:
Whether one passes on or remains behind—it is all the same.
That one can take no one with one is the only difference.
From that early morning in 1594, when Munenori and his father rode into Ieyasu’s camp on the bank of the Kamo River at Takagamine, Ieyasu had been the Yagyū’s benefactor. It was a sign of the man’s greatness that their recovery had started with his defeat when he and Munenori had dueled. A lesser Daimyō would have resented having bitten the dust at the hands of a mere swordsman. Not so Ieyasu. His very defeat had made him recognize the superiority of Nobutsuna’s mutōtori technique. Instead of angrily dismissing the swordsman, he had welcomed Munenori among his fencing instructors. From then on the Yagyū star had only risen, from the return of their former domains, through their role in the Battle of Sekigahara and Osaka campaigns, down to the establishment of their own yashiki on Edo’s outskirts.
Ieyasu’s generosity toward the Yagyū was continued by his descendants. By 1621 Munenori was official fencing instructor to Hidetada and his son Iemitsu. Born in 1604, the young man had just come of age and was rapidly being prepared to succeed his father. That moment came on August 23, 1623, when at a grand ceremony at the Emperor’s palace in Kyoto, Iemitsu was formally appointed Shōgun. Hidetada went into retirement and took up residence in the western wing of Edo castle, but he continued to occasionally practice with Munenori.
Edo Life
As a shihan to the Tokugawa, Munenori spent a lot of his time in Edo. It was only two miles as the crow flies from the Higakubo yashiki to Edo castle. Most of his time he would spend at the O-Keikoba, the huge training hall on the castle grounds.
Edo had changed dramatically since Munenori and his father had moved there early in 1596. Then, it had been no more than a large fishing village on Edo bay with a small castle, and even the castle had been in bad repair. The place had had the feel of a colony, an outpost, especially to Munenori, who was used to the high culture of Nara and Kyoto. Only Edo’s many old temples, scattered throughout the town and beyond, had given the place a vague resemblance to home. Now, Edo was rapidly turning into one of the country’s largest cities. Indeed, it had grown at such a pace, and in such density, that many of the temples and shrines that had hitherto adorned the town’s main roads, had to be moved farther afield, to places like Azabu, the area where Munenori had built his yashiki. In their place had come the grand residences of the country’s many Daimyō, crowded around Edo castle, the queen bee of Edo’s buzzing beehive.
Whenever he had the time, Munenori loved to walk around the city. Having spent much of his youth in seclusion, he still reveled in the sense of untrammeled freedom it gave him, as during the early nineties in Kyoto, when he had taken up studies at the Daitoku temple and explored the ancient capital with his friend Takuan. He loved to go up in the crowd and lose himself among the town’s many diversions. He would make long excursions, all the way north to Kanda Hill to make offerings at the famous Kanda Myōjin, the shrine that still stood at the bridge of Kandabashi when he had first arrived. On his way back home, exiting the castle through the main Ōtemon gate, he would pass through Daimyō Koji, the district with its impressive Daimyō residences skirting the castle’s eastern moat. From there it was only half a mile to the huge fish market of Nihonbashi, though the air was already full of its smell. He always wondered how the realm’s most powerful lords were able to endure living in such stench. As for him, he preferred the rarified air of Azabu and its surroundings—its smell of pine reminded him of home.
Being from the interior, Munenori preferred meat over fish, a food for which he never really developed a serious taste, though he was mad about broiled eel—an invigorating dish on which he could spar a whole day. Meat in Edo was considered medicinal food, and in a town that boasted one of the county’s largest fish markets, it was hard to come by. Only in Kōjimachi had he found a restaurant to his liking. Inside, heaped in piles for those who could afford the exorbitant prices, lay the carcasses of dear, antelope, boar, rabbit, otter, down to foxes, wolves, and bears. Then there were the Korean and Chinese shops. The pungent smells of the vapors that escaped through the split curtains over their entrances were intoxicating. So were the many geisha. Tripping through the cramped and crowded streets on their lacquered geta, they made their way to Edo’s many ageya, spending the night entertaining guests with song, music, and dance.
Munenori too had developed a taste for the ageya and its diversions. Ever since he had arrived in Edo, he had frequented these dens of pleasure, at first sporadically, but then more frequently, until it had become a habit. His father had invariably reproached him, reminding him of his uncle Shigeyoshi, how his dissolute ways had been his undoing. If anything, the criticism had caused Munenori to indulge even more, though he had moderated his habit with his father’s death more than a decade ago now. There had been an economic reason too: the way their womenfolk managed to hold off one’s advances while extorting ever more presents was infuriating. Yet he had taken a liking for one woman in particular. Her name was O-Yuri. She wasn’t the most ravishing in her trade, nor was she a high-class geisha. She was a tsubone, a low ranking geisha, but she had a quiet inner beauty that touched Munenori. It wasn’t long after he had met her that he made her his concubine. She bore him two daughters and a son by the name of Samon. Though illegitimate, Samon grew into a capable young man and entered the service of Tokugawa Iemitsu, the next man in line to be Shōgun.
Wounded
Not all of Munenori’s children were a source of pride. Especially Jūbei caused him grief. Born in 1607, Jūbei had been a troubled child from the start. Possessed of a dark and brooding disposition, he was given to sudden, inexplicable outburst of anger. As he grew older the outbursts became less frequent but deepened in intensity, especially when he took to drinking. As a father, Munenori couldn’t help but feel his son’s anger. It seemed as if all the hurt and frustration his ancestors had suffered had found their way into Jūbei’s heart. Secretly, he also admired him: of all his sons, Jūbei was the one with the true warrior spirit. If only the lad had been born a few decades earlier; then he would have been able to prove his mettle on the field of battle, in man-to-man combat, and rid himself of his inner demons.
Only when he entered the dōjō was Jūbei able to forget himself and shake off the dark thoughts that crowded in on his mind. Yet even here his hotheadedness got him into trouble. Intent on winning each and every bout, he would resort to every trick in the trade to gain the upper hand over his opponent, often taking great risks in his defensive stance. He became so feared by his fellow practitioners, that those in his age group refused to join him in practice. At length, only Munenori and equally fearless fellow shihan like Ono Tadaaki were willing to take on the young man.
And it was during one such heated bout that Munenori inadvertently added to his son’s woes. They had been going through the standard Yagyū Shinkage techniques for many hours at their private dōjō one day, when Munenori proposed to take a short break. Jūbei refused; he wanted to perfect his command of ma-ai in his execution of the main tachi techniques. Ma-ai referred to the relative distance between opponents, a most crucial aspect of any combat technique. In fencing, it was tied to a most delicate interplay of foot and handwork, requiring total concentration in the timing of one’s attack. In this case, it required Munenori to stop his katana just above his son’s forehead. It was something he had done so often that he could split a grain of rice stuck on a man’s forehead if he wanted to. Yet it required equal control in Jūbei. Being forty years older, Munenori assumed it was just himself who was feeling the strain of a long day of practice. But when they went through the paces for a third time, Jūbei lost his footing and lunged forward, causing the tip of his father’s katana to enter his right-hand eye. It didn’t go in far, but the damage was done: from then on the young man could only see with one eye.
Jūbei didn’t hold a grudge toward his father. He merely reproached himself for the lack of concentration that had cost him an eye, and he was soon back at practice. Nor was he ashamed of his missing eye. Instead, he seemed to revel in the way his eye-cap added to his rogue appearance. Among’s Edo’s samurai community his fierce reputation gave him almost unlimited credit—a credit on which he capitalized with increasingly outlandish escapades as he grew older.
House Arrest
Partly out of admiration, partly out of guilt over his son’s handicap, Munenori found it hard to reproach his son for his misdemeanors—he remembered how hard his own father’s words had stung him. Only once did Munenori lose his temper with Jūbei. It was in the summer of 1624, a few months after Jūbei had gone through his genpuku ceremony and received his adult name of Mitsuyoshi, that they had a fierce argument.
Munenori had just been visiting his brother Yoshikatsu at the Momiji yashiki. It had been to celebrate a special occasion, for Yashikatsu’s son, Toshiyoshi, had recently been promoted to the position of shihan to none other than Ieyasu’s ninth son, Tokugawa Yoshinao, a man known for his passion for the martial arts. It was a great honor; next to Munenori, Toshiyoshi was the only member of the Yagyū clan to reach such a high position.
Munenori didn’t begrudge Toshiyoshi’s rise. He deserved it—and besides, it reflected well on the Yagyū clan. As the oldest son he was naturally destined to succeed his father, but due to Yoshikatsu’s disability, he had been forced to assume a lot of responsibilities at a far younger age than Munenori had. And thus, during the Battle of Sekigahara, when Munenori had gone off to fight in the hope of restoring the clan’s fortunes, Toshiyoshi had remained behind in Yagyū, looking after his crippled father and aging grandfather. Frustrated at being robbed of his opportunity to prove himself, the young Toshiyoshi developed had sought to make up for his lack of battle experience by pouring all his energy in his practice of fencing under the stern hand of his grandfather. In 1603, at the age of twenty-four, he had entered the service of Katō Kiyomasa, the Daimyō of the vast fiefdom of Kumamoto in the southern island of Kyushu. Twelve years later, he had moved to Owari to enter Yoshinao’s service. There, building on what he had learned from his grandfather, Toshiyoshi went on to develop a school of swordsmanship known as the Owari Yagyū Shinkage-ryū.
Toshiyoshi had just published a tract called the Jijūfujasho, The Indispensable Alpha and Omega of Fencing. He had proudly presented his uncle with a copy, and though Munenori found the title somewhat overly ambitious, he was impressed with Toshiyoshi’s learning. His classical training was conveyed by the tract’s foreword, which spoke of that distant mythical era in Chinese history of the Three Sovereigns and the Five Rulers:
Our style of heihō did not yet exist in the magnificent imperial reign of ancient times, when the Three Emperors set the world to their hand. The Five Rulers, too, adhered to the Way of Heaven, governing the whole nation through the rule of law. At the time of the Three Sovereigns, commoners were likewise ruled according to the Way, when powerful Kings, using inappropriate means to a worthy end to guard against a world of decadence, subdued the country using retainers on stipends. And thus, there was both good and evil in the relationship between ruler and ruled, and from this sprang the malady of strife and the recourse to the art of heihō. And thus too it follows that, in the eye of the commoner, the Way of the noblemen and the Way of the Emperors is one and the same thing. For to study the ways of the commoner is to merely learn how to govern one’s heart; to study the ways of our lords is to learn how to govern a province; and to study the ways of our emperor is to learn how to govern the realm.
The rest of the tract too had impressed Munenori. A detailed exposition of all the school’s techniques and rules, it was firmly rooted in the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, yet imbued with a fresh approach to the clan’s long-cherished traditions.
All the greater, then, was Munenori’s disappointment with his own son when, on his return to Edo, he learned Jūbei had again injured a fellow practitioner. This time he had fractured a man’s skull with a bokutō, and though the man still lived, he was bound to spend the rest of his days a cripple.
Arriving at the Higakubo late that evening, he found his son in a stupor; he had spent the day drinking with friends, most of them rōnin visiting the capital to enroll in one of its many schools of art.
‘How can you expect to serve a Shōgun,’ he reproached his son, ‘if you spend your career crippling his men?’
Jūbei glared at him with his one good eye, though Munenori wasn’t sure what it said. Was it a trace of contempt that lurked in its black depths?
‘What care I for a man bad at his craft? The man would never have stood his ground on the field of battle anyhow.’
Munenori winced. What did Jūbei know about the field of battle? Yet how could he reproach his son for being born too late?
‘But why the need to consort with rōnin?’ he tried again. ‘You know it reflects poorly on our clan! Look at your cousin Toshiyoshi! He is already a shihan to one of the Tenka-dono’s sons. If you carry on like this, you’ll never amount to anything!’
‘What’s wrong with being rōnin? Didn’t they almost defeat Ieyasu at Osaka? And speaking of rōnin—wasn’t my good cousin Toshiyoshi once a rōnin too? It doesn’t seem to have hurt his career a bit.’
This time Munenori had no words to counter. Why was it that some sons were born to torment their fathers? And Jūbei was right about his cousin too. Less than a year Toshiyoshi had been in Katō Kiyomasa’s service when peasant revolts had disturbed the peace in the Kumamoto domain. Being in charge of policing, Toshiyoshi had suppressed the revolts hard-handedly. In doing so he had gone directly against the advice of Kiyomasa’s most senior counselor, Itō Mitsukane, who had long favored a conciliatory approach. The revolt was crushed, but in another heated argument with Mitsukane, Toshiyoshi drew his sword and struck him dead. Forced to resign his post, the young swordsman had spent the next twelve years in the pursuit of musha shugyō, traveling throughout the country in search of a new master. For a while he had lived at Tanabe castle in Maizuru, honing his skills under Kamiizumi’s former disciple Hikida Bungorō Kagetomo. Then he had moved to Kumano, becoming a deshi to the great master of the halberd, Bōan Nyūdō. It had only been through the good offices of Naruse Masanari, a senior Bakufu counselor, that Toshiyoshi eventually got a second chance as Yoshinao’s shihan.
Never again Munenori argued with his son, partly out of fear for his son’s ability to cut to the quick, partly out of fear that the next time round it might end in more than just an argument. Perhaps it was the only way: some things were just too painful to confront. And besides, there was no curing rebels like Jūbei: it was simply their nature to defy authority. Had Jūbei been born fifty years earlier, he could have made it to chieftain; now, he was doomed to a life of obscurity. It was probably because of his refusal to accept the realities of life, too, that his adult name never stuck, and that he continued to be known simply as Jūbei, a man equal to ‘Ten Imperial Guards.’
Munenori still hoped his son might stand a chance with the future Shōgun, whose service he had entered as a page at the age of thirteen. Extremely fond of the martial arts, Iemitsu was one of Munenori’s most diligent students. Like Munenori he enjoyed getting out, and when young had regularly escaped from Edo castle to mingle with the people he would be governing. His behavior was frowned on by the court officials, staid and surly men, who seemed to have long forgotten what it is to be young. When Iemitsu did end up in a brawl with a drunken rogue, it was rumored they had hired the man to scare him into submission. After 1623, when he succeeded his father as Shōgun, the responsibilities of office forced him to desist from his secret excursions, but he still took every opportunity to travel and thereby escape the oppressive rigor of the Bakufu court. He enjoyed the long rides on horseback, and every now and then he would spur on his horse and leave his retinue far behind.
From the first moment they met, Iemitsu had taken a liking to Jūbei—just three years his junior. Together, they would go and swim in the castle moat or play pranks on their overseers. If they were caught out, Jūbei would generously take the blame so that Iemitsu could magnanimously pardon him. It was just a game, yet even this small pleasure was taken away from the young Shōgun when, in 1626, following another prank, the court officials successfully conspired to have Jūbei put under house arrest. Wounding a swordsman in practice was one thing; corrupting the future Shōgun was something else. Jūbei was sent to Odawara, where he was placed under the strict tutelage of Abe Masatsugu, one of the heroes of the Siege of Osaka castle. When, four years later, Masatsugu was promoted to another fief, Jūbei was allowed to return to the Yagyū domain, yet he remained under house arrest.
The Purple Robe
There were other worries that kept Munenori awake at night during these years, even if they were years of peace. One of them concerned his old friend the monk Takuan. Ever since they had met on the grounds of the ancient Daitoku temple, they had stayed in touch. Yet they had busy lives and their encounters had been short and far between. Like Munenori, Takuan had made rapid promotion, albeit in the realm of the Buddhist church. From being a novice he had quickly climbed the ranks of the temple’s elaborate hierarchy. The crowning moment came in 1609, when he became the Daitoku-ji’s head abbot. Munenori had been present when, at a grand ceremony at the imperial court, emperor Go-Yōzei presented Takuan with a beautiful robe made from silk of a deep purple hue, the color of the imperial court. Takuan had gracefully accepted, though not to enjoy the perks of high office. Within three days of his appointment, he hit the road. He had other plans. The temple, which dated back to the early fourteenth century, was in bad repair, and he wanted to put his influential position to good use. Though frail, he had spent the next decade traveling the length and breadth of the country, raising funds for its renovation. It was during this period that the two men were able to renew a friendship that had long remained dormant.
Munenori recalled one particular summer evening when Takuan had conducted a tea ceremony at his newly erected tea house on the Higakubo estate. It had been a particularly hot day, and the air was filled with the constant hum of locusts. Leaning back on his arm bench, Munenori had complained of the boredom of high office. As a warrior, he preferred the battlefield, movement, decisive action. He had just spent a gruelingly long day at court, having to wait for old and febrile men to decide on some trivial administrative matter concerning training schedules and the upkeep of the massive O-Keikoba: their self-important deliberations, their scheming prevarications, their half-hearted oscillations—they exasperated him no end. It felt as though the only relief from all the tedium were his furtive exploits among Edo’s nightlife. It wasn’t that he wanted the country to return to that terrible state of anarchy, when honest men like his father had ended up serving despicable men like Matsunaga Hisahide. Yet at times he yearned for the days of his youth, when Ōkage had swiftly carried him from one corner of the realm to the other. How different it all had been when the great Ieyasu was still alive—the great Battle of Sekigahara, the winter and summer sieges of Osaka castle!
Listening to his friend’s musings, Takuan had looked pensive. Silently he had poured hot water on the small heap of tea powder he had dropped into a carefully rinsed and beautifully sober tea bowl. Turning the bowl in his hands he had placed it on the tatami in front of his friend. Then he had straightened out a piece of paper, taken up his brush and written in bold strokes, Not twice this day, inch, time, foot, gem.
Munenori had looked bemused. ‘What does it mean?’
As was his habit, Takuan had shut his eyes, their eyelids trembling as he became immersed in thought. Then he had slowly opened them, blinking, as if dazzled by the light. ‘Every moment passes in an instant. What are human measurements like feet and inches against the eternity of time? Every moment in this short life of us is unique. It happens only once. One should cherish every minute as a priceless gem.’
It was these profound insights that made Takuan a favorite at the courts of Daimyō. They enjoyed the monk’s sharp wit and put on grand tea ceremonies so they could indulge in exchanges of witty repartees. Aware of their financial clout, Takuan was happy to indulge them, yet the strain of travel and the late nights with men of far greater stamina proved too much. He fell into a deep depression. In the winter of 1620, he returned to his hometown of Izushi, in Tajima Province, where he built a hermitage on the grounds of the Izushi temple. There, in the cool, rarified air of Japan’s west coast, he found the peace and quiet to work on his recovery, dedicating himself to an ascetic life of study, meditation and his favorite pastimes of poetry and making his delicious yellow daikon pickles.
Yet even from his small retreat, he continued to campaign on behalf of his Rinzai sect. One of his concerns was the Bakufu’s growing interference in religious affairs, especially in the Daitoku temple’s close relations with the imperial court. And it was here where he had landed himself in deep trouble. The sway of the great Buddhist sects in Kyoto had always been a threat to those in power. And like the great unifiers before them, the Bakufu wanted to curb the sect’s influence once and for all. Already in 1615 it had promulgated a directive by which only the Bakufu in Edo could make ecclesiastical appointments. A string of additional regulations dictated when such appointments were made. Thus an abbot could only be ordained after he had diligently studied no less than seventeen hundred kōan. Consisting of an unsolvable riddle, they helped acolytes to abandon their reliance on reason and instead gain enlightenment through a sudden intuitive insight.
The next time the two friends met, it was Takuan’s turn to express his frustration. ‘I know kōan are an important instrument in a novice’s training. I learned enough of them to last me a lifetime. Yet the study of words had its limitations. As in your art of swordsmanship, it is bunbu-ryōdō—the dual way of study and practice—that lead to the deeper insights in life. The study of words alone is fruitless.’
For a while the monk remained silent, but Munenori didn’t speak: he knew his friend was merely collecting his thoughts.
‘Were we, for instance, to discuss the nature of water and fire for a whole night, could either of us quench his thirst with one word, warm himself at a sentence even for a minute? To make the sole study of kōan a requirement for high office runs counter to all logic! Is it not possible to gain enlightenment having heard just one single kōan? Why then waste one’s time in their study if one can help others to gain equal insight through diligent meditation?’
Having been appointed head abbot long before the Bakufu had issued its directive, Takuan naturally assumed he was beyond reproach. In 1628 he penned a stinging rebuke to the retired Shōgun Hidetada for his clampdown on the Buddhist sects and the Bakufu’s interference in religious affairs. It didn’t take the Bakufu long to respond. Takuan was still living in Izushi when, in the autumn of the following year, he was summoned to Edo castle, where he was put on trial along with the abbots of three other temples. Munenori was present at the trial.
Takuan seemed undaunted. Sitting before the Shōgun’s commission in his plain Buddhist garb, he spoke quietly, looking down at the exquisitely brocaded rims of the tatami on which he sat: ‘I profoundly believe in the sanctity of the Buddhist church. Nor can anyone deny its ancient and holy ties with the imperial court.’
Munenori grew nervous: better not to press his case too hard before these men.
Raising his head and looking straight at the commission’s head, Takuan continued, ‘The Rinzai sect respects the authority of the Bakufu. It is a mighty institution. Yet do not the Shōgun’s servants also pray to the gods? Indeed, does not the Shōgun himself confess his loyalty to His Highness the Emperor?’
Munenori’s heart sank: he had warned his friend not to be his outspoken self. The best strategy was to show humility—if need be to grovel.
It didn’t take the commissioner long to reach their verdict; within an hour they reemerged from their chambers. The sentencing was swift and unceremonious. Being again led into the commission’s presence, all monks were sentenced to a life in exile. Takuan was sent northward, to the remote province of Dewa, to be placed under house arrest at Kaminoyama castle.
Munenori was somewhat reassured when not long afterward he received a long letter from Toki Yoriyuki, the master of Kaminoyama castle. Though a staunch Bakufu supporter, he was a devout practitioner of Takuan’s Rinzai sect. He described how impressed he was with the monk’s uncompromising dedication to truth, noting how the monk, who was already in his late fifties, ‘lightly suffers physical hardship in the knowledge that his conscience is clear.’ To accommodate the monk, he had ordered his carpenters to build a small thatched house inside the walls of his castle, where Takuan was visited by a steady stream of followers seeking his advice.
Being close to the center of power, Munenori was more aware than his friend of the scale of the clampdown. Following the trial, the Bakufu had stripped some seventy abbots of their imperially bestowed robes and ranks. There was little he could do. Earlier that year he had been promoted to the position of Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade, receiving the honorary title Tajima no Kami. It was a great honor. Yet it didn’t give him the kind of leverage at court to get his friend released. Indeed, he hardly ever saw the old Shōgun these days. When still young Hidetada had been an eager student, but now he was too old and frail to practice. And even when he did see him, there was no way he could go against a law that bore the official seals of both Ieyasu and Hidetada. Even the emperor was clearly unable to oppose the might of the Bakufu. Within weeks he abdicated in favor of his daughter, Okiko. He did so without any prior notice, an unmistakable snub toward the Bakufu.
It was clear: they would have to wait for the right moment to present itself.
The Contest
On March 14, 1632, the old Shōgun Hidetada passed away after a short illness. With both his father and grandfather gone, all authority now came to lie with Iemitsu. Unlike his father, Iemitsu was an outgoing and fun-loving man, who enjoyed fresh views, especially when they went against the staid opinions of his father’s counselors. Within weeks of his ascension, he had most of them removed, replacing them with men from his own circle. One of them was Munenori, who was now appointed ō-metsuke1, the Bakufu’s senior censor. From now on it was Munenori’s task to report on the activities of the country’s many Daimyō, many of whom still harbored grudges toward the Tokugawa. It was a task for which the Yagyū and their long shinobi traditions were cut out. Yet in order to carry out his new duties, Munenori had to be of equal stature as these powerful men. And thus the size of his domain was increased to ten thousand koku, making Munenori the first Daimyō of the Yagyū fiefdom. Never before had a mere swordsman made such stellar promotion.
Munenori knew why Iemitsu favored him: the new Shōgun was mad about all things martial. He recalled how, as a child, Iemitsu had loved to sit on his grandfather Ieyasu’s lap as the latter told of his exploits: how he and Nobunaga had underestimated Takeda Shingen at Mikatagahara, crushed his son at Nagashino, outwitted Hideyoshi at Komaki, and how he had routed the western forces in glorious battle at Sekigahara and Osaka castle. Yet Iemitsu was the first Shōgun who had never seen action—it was a void he sought to fill through his indulgence in fencing as he grew older.
Iemitsu wasn’t a bad martial student. He was diligent, almost fanatical about his practice. Yet from day one it was clear to Munenori that the boy would never be a serious swordsman. He just lacked the dexterity, the precision, the timing of an ace swordsman. Sometimes Munenori felt sorry for the youth and his innocent pursuit of a perfection he would never attain. And what was it all in aid of? The country was now at peace; the Shōgun would never know—nor need to know—what it was to grapple with a foe at close quarters. And what, indeed, was Munenori’s own role? Had he come all this way to teach a novice? Had he and his ancestors fought so hard, suffered so much, for him to spend the rest of his life in this gilded cage just to enjoy the perks of office, the nightly escapades, the occasional payments for favors?
With Iemitsu’s ascension, the martial arts had at least gained a new champion. Within weeks of his inauguration, Iemitsu ordered Munenori to stage a fencing contest at the O-Keikoba. Munenori had told him of the great contests organized by Hōzōin In’ei at Nara’s Hōzō monastery. This was to be a similarly huge event, and over the next seven months, Munenori busied himself to enlist the realm’s greatest swordsmen. It would consist of eleven omae shiai, so called because they were to be held ‘in the presence’ of the Shōgun. All the major fencing schools would be represented: the Sekiguchi-ryū, the Asayama Ichiden-ryū, the Chūjō-ryū, the Shingyōtō-ryū, the Sekiguchi Shinshin-ryū, the Enmei-ryū, and of course Munenori’s Yagyū Shinkage-ryū.
For Munenori the event was a welcome relief from the tedium of the last few years, and he went about his new task with an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt for years. One of the first swordsmen he was able to enlist was Ōkubo Tadataka, the commander of the Shōgun’s color guard. Tadataka was already a legend in his day and the epitome of bunbu ryōdō. He had just published his third volume of the Mikawa monogatari, a detailed history of the proud history of the Tokugawa and Ōkubo clans. He was also a philosopher and had often conversed with Munenori on a warrior’s purpose in a time of peace. Though now an old man Tadataka was still a splendid fighter, with behind him some fifty years on the field of battle. Like Munenori, he had last seen action during the siege of Osaka castle, when he had commanded a garrison of lancers. Already then in his sixties, he had still emerged unscathed. There wasn’t a trick in the book Tadataka didn’t know, and where his physical strength had waned, his uncanny ability to sense an opponent’s weak spot had only grown.
This became painfully clear when, in the fourth match of the day, Tadataka was pitted against the twenty-year-old Kagatsume Naozumi. Both men were in full armor. Emboldened by the age-gap, Naozumi was full of zest. Yet facing the old man, it seemed as if his energy dissipated on some invisible shield of energy. Repeatedly he tried for a crack in the old man’s defense, only for his katana to be deflected by a light parry, his body thrown off-balance by a subtle move. Despite the young man’s thick armor, Munenenori could sense how he got more unnerved with every charge, his timing less precise, his poise less confident. Then, just as he raised his katana aloft for another attack, Tadataka was upon him. With a minimum of movement, a minimum of force, yet as swift as lightning, he pierced Naozumi’s nodowa, the crescent-shaped plate protecting his throat. As if a puppeteer had dropped his doll, the young man fell on his knees, clutching his throat with both hands in an effort to get air. He wasn’t fatally wounded; just enough to drive home the old man’s point: never ever neglect your defense.
Most important to Munenori was the presence of a practitioner of the Enmei-ryū, the art of fighting with two swords invented by the enigmatic Miyamoto Musashi. For some years now, Musashi had been living in Akashi, where his adopted son, Iori, was a senior retainer to Ogasawara Tadazane. The latter had just been promoted to the Kokura fief in Kyushu and it seemed Musashi had gone on another of his famed musha shugyō. Only recently, there had been an encounter with Munenori’s nephew, Toshiyoshi, still chief fencing instructor to Ieyasu’s ninth son Tokugawa Yoshinao. Mad about the martial arts, Yoshinao had invited Musashi to test his style of fencing against the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū at his dōjō on the grounds of Nagoya castle.
It hadn’t gone well. Fearful of a loss of face, Yoshinao had barred Toshiyoshi from dueling with the swordsman himself. Instead, he had been forced to pit Musashi against his deshi, none of whom were acquainted with the Enmei-ryū. Two of them had bravely taken up the challenge. Yet no sooner had they opened the attack than Musashi drawn his two katana, trained their kissaki on their noses, and steadily forced them to retreat until they had traced the circumference of the huge dōjō.
Munenori had tried to get Musashi to take part in the contest, but Musashi had declined. It couldn’t be out of cowardice; he had fought plenty of duels, winning all of them. He had fought hard at Osaka, too, and had been part of Mizuno Katsunari’s advance guard of lancers, the first to enter the castle’s southern gate. Yet Musashi’s refusal to show up didn’t really surprise Munenori. He remembered how, not long after the Edo Bakufu had been established, Hidetada had invited Musashi to demonstrate his Enmei-ryū2 at court. Then, too, Musashi had declined. It was a moment Munenori recalled with some glee, for Musashi had told the Shōgun’s messenger that, ‘it seems futile to me to give a demonstration to someone who already esteems the Yagyū-ryū so highly.’ Yet if this was so, why visit Tokugawa Yoshinao’s court in Nagoya? Yoshinao was known for his support of Toshiyoshi’s Owari style of the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, which did not differ that much from Munenori’s Edo style. Was Musashi happy with the status quo? There was no way to know. It was certainly a source of frustration. True: Musashi had merely dueled with one of his nephew’s deshi. Yet he wanted to test his own style on Musashi’s unique approach to the art of swordsmanship.
Munenori was delighted, therefore, when he managed to persuade Musashi’s son to take part in the contest. It had required a lot of cajoling. Lord Tadazane had charged Iori with preparing his move to the Kokura fiefdom, a complicated affair, requiring months of careful preparation. Yet in spite of his busy schedule, the swordsman had graciously accepted.
Being Master of Ceremony, Munenori was barred from taking part. And thus he had pitted Iori against the thirty-three-year-old Araki Mataemon. A native of Iga province, Mataemon had been born in the village of Araki, some ten miles east of Munenori’s hometown. Mataemon knew Musashi and his style of fencing. In 1613 his father had remarried, and he and his brother had been adopted by a retainer of Honda Tadamasa, the master of Himeji castle. It had been two years later that Mataemon had first seen Musashi, who had just taken part in the summer siege of Osaka castle. Extravert, boastful, and outlandishly dressed, the already famed swordsman had made a deep impression on the youth. He had been one of the first to enlist when shortly afterward Musashi had opened a dōjō with Lord Tadamasa’s permission. For six years Mataemon had studied under Musashi. Then, at the age of twenty-two, he had returned to Araki to have his genpuku ceremony. Back in Iga, he had studied under a string of teachers from different schools, including the Shintō- and Chūjō-ryū. His father, too, was an avid swordsman. And it was through him that Mataemon was introduced to Yagyū Jūbei, spending the next years in Yagyū as his deshi. Mataemon had withstood Jūbei’s withering training regime and gone on to become one of his best students. He had remained in Yagyū village until 1630, when he had come up to Edo to perfect his skills under Munenori. Now the moment had come for Mataemon to show his worth.
It was just a little past noon, in the day’s fifth match, when Mataemon and Iori took their positions at the middle of the O-Keikoba. They had chosen not to wear full battle dress, but newly developed training gear, a padded upper garment and a mask with a mesh of iron bars. Munenori could feel the sweat rise in his palms as he looked over toward where Iemitsu was sitting. Dressed in full regalia he was a sight to behold. He was nervously fanning himself with his battle fan, even though it was already November. Obviously, he too was keen to find out which of the two would come out on top. For a moment the two men measured each other up, each calmly but deliberately training his bokutō on the other in the stance of their school. Then, in a flash, it was all over. Both had struck out simultaneously; both with a full blow to the forehead—an uchiai! Had they been fighting in earnest, both would have been dead.
Munenori wasn’t unhappy with the outcome. The match hadn’t proven which of the two schools was superior. Yet neither had it made one inferior to the other. Iemitsu, too, seemed relieved by the draw and generally delighted how the event was going. There were six more matches to go, and he wanted to evaluate them with each and every contestant afterward. It was late in the afternoon, therefore, before the great taikō drum at the head of the dōjō was sounded to mark the close of the event. Munenori realized now was the time to take up Takuan’s cause. For more than three years he had bided his time. He knew it had chiefly been Takuan’s rebuke of the former Shōgun that had landed him in trouble. The monk might have been banished to Dewa in Iemutsu’s name, but it had been on Hidetada’s orders. This was the moment to seek clemency for his friend.
‘Does the Shōgun know that the monk Takuan has written with great insight on the art of swordsmanship?’ Munenori tried.
For a moment the young Shōgun looked genuinely surprised. Then he began to laugh: ‘Ha! Takuan! I know he is a friend of yours. Yes, why not: let’s have an amnesty for all!’
Posterity
Munenori was now in his early sixties and his sons were rapidly reaching adulthood. Even Jūbei seemed to make an effort to grow up. In 1632, following Munenori’s repeated petitions, the Shōgun had finally lifted his house arrest; he was now free to travel, though he was barred from ever again entering the Shōgun’s service. It didn’t seem to bother the young swordsman too much; he accepted the Bakufu’s punishment with the same stoic resignation as the handicap inflicted by his father. He had put his years in exile to good use, honing his art, studying his grandfather’s writings, expanding on them, and teaching an ever-widening circle of students from among the highest echelons of military society. Jūbei’s sporadic drinking binges and accompanying bouts of bad temper still worried Munenori, yet he was also a highly talented swordsman who enjoyed the Shōgun’s secret support.
Munenori’s other two sons, Samon and Matajūrō, were rapidly coming of age. They had both been born in 1613 and though they had different mothers, they were inseparable. Samon, who was born a few months before Matajūrō, showed great promise. Five years earlier, he had had his first audience with the Shōgun and, like Jūbei before him, entered Iemitsu’s service as a page. And while he wasn’t his older brother’s equal in physical strength and endurance, he was a capable swordsman, who made up for his physical shortcoming by a mind that seemed to have no limits in its scope for learning. Taking after his mother, he was the most obedient of the three, and when his oldest brother was placed under house arrest, it was Samon who took his place as Iemitsu’s regular fencing partner.
Matajūrō, too, became a page to Iemitsu. Being the youngest, he was the opposite of his illegitimate brother. He frequently skipped fencing classes and seemed more interested in literature and the exciting performances staged at the Nakamuraza, the newly erected kabuki theatre near Kyobashi. This in itself was a worry to his father. One of the reasons behind the theatre’s success was that women played the roles of both sexes in ribald pieces that left little to the imagination. He had been to a few himself and knew that performers could be bought for the night if one had the means. It had only been a few years since the theatre had been founded, but its actresses were so loose that it was commonly known as yūjo kabuki, or prostitution kabuki. The Bakufu condoned theatre as a means for the populace to blow of steam, as it did the many ageya. Yet in its regimented world view, everything had its place. So did paid-for sex, and its officials were already drafting laws to bar the actresses from performing, be it on the planks or under a futon.
It was to coax his sons away from the Nakamuraza and its temptations that Munenori arranged for Matajūrō and Samon to attend a nō performance by the famous Kita Shichidayū Chōnō3. In contrast to kabuki, the art of nō was actively endorsed by the Bakufu, and regular performances were held in the Shōgun’s presence.
It wasn’t long after, while taking a break from one of their sparring sessions at the Higakubo yashiki, that Matajūrō turned to his father and said, ‘Father, I think I now understand something I hadn’t before. Chōnō’s stunning performance has caused me to look at our Yagyū Shinkage-ryū tradition with new eyes. For I now see the nobility in total commitment to an art, be it acting or fencing. I see how the long hours we spend in the dōjō are the only true way to attain the level of excellence that enable actors like Chōnō to move their audience to tears.’
Munenori smiled inwardly—luckily not all his sons were like Jūbei.
Legacy
As the new Daimyō of the Yagyū fief, Munenori had greater responsibilities than just raising his sons and managing his fief. Having known the depths to which a clan could sink, he was determined to lay the foundations for his clan to prosper long after he was gone. That foundation consisted of bunbu ryōdō, the ‘Dual Way of the Martial and the Literary.’ Martial excellence (bu) was the indispensable wheel that supported the cart on one side; equally indispensable was the wheel of learning (bun). Only when the two were practiced in tandem was a samurai able to yield his katana with wisdom and fight for a righteous cause. And for someone of Munenori’s stature, it wasn’t sufficient to merely study the works of great warriors; he had to write one.
Ever since his appointment as Ieyasu’s shihan, the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū had gained in status. For the first few decades, Munenori had to compete hard with other schools, among them the Arima Shintō-ryū, the Okuyama Shinkage-ryū, and of course Ono Jirōemon Tadaaki’s Ittō-ryū. Tadaaki had passed away in 1628, but his influence on the world of fencing was still being felt. Ever since Munenori had arrived in Edo, the man who had studied under the great Itō Ittōsai Kagehisa had beguiled the young Yamato swordsmen with his uncompromising dedication to excellence. It was, at the same time, his undoing: the man just couldn’t obey orders, especially if he thought they weren’t worth obeying.
Tadaaki had really got into trouble when, during Hidetada’s siege of Ueda castle, and taunted by enemy soldiers, he had taken a number of men and launched a sortie. Had the siege been a success he might have been promoted. Of course it had been a disaster. And when Hidetada himself was punished by his father for his failure to arrive in time at Sekigahara, the swordsman was charged with insubordination. Tadaaki had been placed under house arrest, though, partly through Munenori’s efforts, he was reinstated within a few years. Brawls with fellow swordsmen during the siege of Osaka castle—in which he broke both wrists of a fellow practitioner with a bokutō during practice—again landed him in trouble. Not willing to look soft, and aware of the man’s great reputation, the Tokugawa had kept him on. Following Tadaaki’s death, they had remained patrons of the Ittō-ryū, and Iemitsu continued to practice with Tadaaki’s talented son, Tadatsune. Yet by then, the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū had well eclipsed Tadakaki’s Ittō-ryū.
Another reason for the Ittō-ryū’s demise was the lack of written sources. Tadaaki just hadn’t been the literary type. Yet he had been close friends with Obata Kagenori, whose Kōyō gunkan had been an overnight sensation. The work was largely based on the records of Kōsaka Masanobu4, the lord of Kaizu castle and a close vassal of the great Warring States chieftain Takeda Shingen. Published in 1616, the work comprised no less than twenty scrolls covering fifty-nine chapters. Never before in Japan’s feudal history had a work gone into the art of warfare in such depth and with such breadth. It gave a complete breakdown of Shingen’s huge army, down to kitchen staff and horse doctors. It exhaustively described its commanders’ philosophy on the art of warfare, their tactics, their weaponry, their reliance on ability rather than brute force. It gave an in-depth history of Shingen’s rapid rise to greatness, how he ousted his father, how he clashed repeatedly with Uesugi Kenshin, how he outwitted no lesser men than Nobunaga and Ieyasu. And, drawing from Masanobu’s and Masamori’s experience, it listed all of the clan’s major battles and their outcomes.
The Kōyō gunkan not only immortalized the high years of the Takeda clan under Shingen, but also described in painful detail the clan’s decline under his son, Katsuyori—the poor appointments, the bad advice, the disastrous results. First the crushing defeat at Nagashino, and finally that dramatic scene in which Katsuyori and his men were cornered and outnumbered by the Oda-Tokugawa alliance:
Soon the enemy banners came in sight. At this time Lord Katsuyori’s consort, her assistant Ohara Tango no Kami, and his younger brother Shimōsa Kinmaru Sukerokurō were at his side. This Sukerokurō had formerly taken on the name of Kanemaru, but was, in fact, the older brother to Tsuchiya Masatsune. Including Lord Katsuyori and his son, Lord Nobukatsu, there were forty-three in all.
Tsuchiya-dono, was on Katsuyori’s left hand, shooting arrows from his longbow to fend off the enemy, who were advancing in such great numbers, he had to savor each and every arrow.
Lord Katsuyori, taking a white towel and twisting it into a headband, took his tachi and struck out on all sides. Master Nobukatsu, who was on his right side, had now also dropped his cross-shaped yari and was fighting in hand to hand combat wielding his long sword.
At length, having exhausted all his arrows, Tsuchiya-dono was about to draw his sword when he was struck by six enemy yari at once. Rushing to his side, Lord Katsuyori parried the yari and singlehandedly struck down the six enemy warriors. Yet three more warriors struck out with their yari, one piercing his throat, the two others his lower side, and pinning down Lord Katsuyori to the ground, they took his lordship’s head.
There was no reason to doubt the Kōyō gunkan’s general veracity—Takeda Shingen had undoubtedly been one of the warring states period’s most formidable chieftains. It was true, too, that the brilliant Tsuchiya Masatsune, leading only a handful of warriors, had held out against an overwhelming Nobunaga force. Even Ieyasu’s men had been impressed with his valor; in his Mikawa monogatari, Ōkubo Tadataka had described him as ‘the man who kept a thousand enemy at bay single-handedly.’ Yet he had only been able to postpone Katsuyori’s inevitable demise. Munenori knew from old hands who had fought among Ieyasu troops that Katsuyori’s demise had been far less glamorous. Intercepted at the foot of Mount Tenmoku by one of Nobunaga’s generals, he, his son, and his family had been captured and forced to commit seppuku.
Munenori shuddered at the thought of some distant chronicler ever describing the decline of his own clan, be it heroic or otherwise. For not even the patronage of the house of Tokugawa could ensure its longevity. The Yagyū Shinkage-ryū might have become the undisputed fencing school of the Tokugawa Bakufu, but just like them, the famed Yoshioka clan too had once enjoyed the patronage of the Ashikaga Bakufu. They, too, had had their family record, the Yoshioka-den. Yet none of their practitioners had ever written a definitive treatise on the actual school itself. Instead, they had relied solely on the transmission from father to son. With the notorious defeat of the two Yoshioka brothers in their duels against Miyamoto Musashi, the clan had gone into decline, a decline hastened by the demise of the Ashikaga. Munenori was determined the Yagyū would not in time come to share their fate, and one of the ways to ensure their continuity was to write a definitive work on the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. It not only had to define its techniques but also convey a sense of its continuity, the long path from Kamiizumi Nobutsuna’s Shinkage-ryū down to his own clan’s Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. Indeed, there were really two Yagyū schools now: his nephew Toshiyoshi’s Owari school, and Munenori’s Edo school.
For some time now he had been working on just such a work. Unlike his father’s Gyokuei shūi, the ancient records of the Yagyū clan, it was a specific work on the techniques and the philosophy behind their school of swordsmanship. His great inspiration was Kamiizumi Nobutsuna. His father had often told him how, during his stay at the Yagyū castle, Nobutsuna had written the Kage-ryū no mokuroku, a copy of which was now kept in the family’s private library at the Higakubo. Nobutsuna’s desire to record for posterity all that the great Aisu Ikkō had taught him had impelled him to do so. Munenori had never met Nobutsuna, but he had often read his writings, and each reading had given him new insight, revealed another nuance.
Munenori had no trouble in describing the various fencing techniques. But there was one aspect he grappled with. It wasn’t so much related to the techniques of a warrior but to the profession itself. In his conversations with Ōkubo Tadataka, he had often discussed the role of the warrior. They both realized that the end of hostilities had profound consequences for their role in society, but also believed that the ultimate aim of a loyal retainer was to achieve such piece through the dual Way of bu and bun, the martial and the civil. To discuss such matters was one thing; to get them onto paper was a different thing. He needed help in organizing his thoughts. He thought of Takuan, the man whose mind was as clear as Lake Tazawa, its thoughts as deep, the arguments it put forth as forceful as the thrust of a katana. Takuan, too, had a profound interest in the martial arts. When young, he had studied the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū under Munenori and had shown a remarkable ability. Now the time had come for Munenori to become his friend’s pupil.
The Visit
It was a bright spring day in 1632, when Munenori drew up his horse at a large yashiki at the center of Komagome, like Azabu a small village on Edo’s outskirts. Far more grand than Munenori’s Higakubo, the yashiki overlooked the beautiful lake of Shinobazu, a few miles north of Edo castle. Unlike in Edo, where the constant threat of fire stilted vertical growth, this yashiki stood several stories tall. Built in the modern irimoya style, its heavy, curved eaves seemed to reach out in blessing over wide cedar verandas below, its tiles embossed with three hexagons, the family crest of the powerful Hori clan. Munenori had been here often. It was the second residence of Hori Naoyori, a Shōgunal counselor and a good friend of his.
Munenori loved to come here. Komagome was stunningly beautiful, as well as a place of prestige. Not far from his friend’s yashiki stood the residence of Tōdō Taketora, one of Ieyasu’s most trusted advisers. Ever since the capital had been moved to Edo, Komagome had been a favorite playground of influential Daimyō. Not anymore. Now the hugely influential monk Tenkai held sway around Lake Shinobazu.
Tenkai, too, had made his career as an adviser to Ieyasu and his son, Hidetada. By now he was an old man. He had a martial temperament, and though he no longer practiced, he had fought in numerous battles and been with Ieyasu during the Battle of Sekigahara. His age and martial disposition spawned many rumors, some that he had started out as a sōhei. Munenori’s favorite one claimed the old monk was none other than Akechi Mitsuhide, the retainer who had assassinated Oda Nobunaga. It was nonsense of course—were it true, Tenkai would have been more than a hundred years old. Yet it did speak of the respect he enjoyed among the warrior class.
It had been in reward for his services that, in 1622, Hidetada gave Tenkai the grounds around Lake Shinobazu, as well as fifty-thousand pieces of silver. Using the money Tenkai had built himself a residence set in a large court surrounded by high walls with a roofed entrance toward the lake. More buildings followed, including a five-storied stupa only just completed. Now Tenkai had hatched an even more ambitious plan. A former student of the Enryaku temple, he envisioned a temple complex on the scale of Mount Hiei. Magnificent structures were being erected along the three-mile stretch of flat land from his residence to the lakeshore, all aligned in a straight line from east to west like the old capital. The main building, a mirror image of the Enryaku temple’s Konpon Chūdō, was to dwarf all around it. Most eye-catching, and already under construction, was its grand entrance, two towers connected by an arched and roofed bridge spanning some twenty yards across.
Naoyori received Munenori in good grace, but in a foul mood nevertheless. To accommodate Tenkai’s desire for grandeur the Bakufu had impounded the very land it had granted Naoyori only a decade before. Naoyari’s beautiful yashiki would also have to move. Hundreds of carpenters and masons already filled the air with the sound of their work, the sawing, the knocking, the chiseling—it reverberated around the lakeshore in an endless clatter. Every now and then all was drowned out when the voices of a huge workforce of laborers rose in unison to heave into place some massive foundation stone or huge beam. Executed to the highest standards, it would take decades to complete.
Naoyori cast an angry eye at the buildings that arose on his grounds and grumbled, ‘It feels as if the Bakufu takes with one hand what it gives with the other.’
Munenori commiserated. He knew what it felt like to lose one’s home.
‘Ah well…’ Naoyori reflected as he patted the sun-burned wood of the gate he had just opened for his friend. ‘At least I can hold on to my yashiki a few more years. Of course they’ve offered to pay for the move. Yet I doubt I’ll ever again find such a beautiful spot.’
‘Have you found a new location yet?’ Munenori inquired.
Naoyori shook his head. Then he laughed: ‘Who knows? I might come and join you at Azabu!’
Preceding him into the vestibule, Naoyori led his friend straight through to a guest room overlooking the lake and tapped on its fusuma, for Munenori had come to visit another guest: his old friend Takuan. Following his release, the monk had moved back to Edo. He had first taken up lodgings at the Kōtoku temple in Edo’s Kanda district. But his arrival didn’t go unnoticed. The purple robe incident had gained such notoriety that when he entered Edo, its citizens came out in droves to watch the dissident monk. Over the next weeks, a constant stream of well-wishers and acolytes visited him at the temple. It was too much. He wanted to get away, escape the attention. And what better place to hide than at Naoyori’s yashiki? In the shadow of Tenkai’s grandiose temple complex, whose expanding grounds invariably swarmed with monks, the self-effacing Takuan could go about his business unnoticed.
Takuan’s face beamed as he slid aside the fusuma and saw his friend. ‘Tajima no Kami-dono! What a delight to see you again! Come in, and please excuse the mess!’
The room was cramped and stuffy; it smelled of learning, a strange mix of incense, Indian ink, and the exotic mix of herbs that kept scrolls free from harmful insects. Piles of books lined the walls, and yet more covered the small desk beneath the shōji. A wide format scroll filled the bit of wall space left: a calligraphy with just one bold character, yume: ‘dream.’
Takuan looked at his friend as Munenori admired the work’s craftsmanship, a smile flashing across his emaciated face. ‘Most of my calligraphies I have given away, but not this one. It is strange for a monk, I know, to cling to worldly things, even writings,’ he said apologetically, ‘But this one I somehow can’t let go of.’
Always a master of timing, Munenori carefully unwrapped the bundle of papers he had brought with him. It was his manuscript.
Ah! A dream of your own!’ Takuan smiled as he respectfully took the manuscript from Munenori’s hands.
Making room on his desk, the monk placed the manuscript carefully at its center. Then he turned toward a small cabinet along the wall. Pulling up his right-hand sleeve he reached into it, took out a scroll, and handed it to Munenori. Its title was written in longhand on a narrow strip of washi paper glued to its spine. It read: Fudō chinmyō-roku, the Wondrous Record of Immovable Wisdom.
‘Please read this for me,’ Takuan said, ‘and I will read your work for you.’
The Letter
Munenori was pleased with himself. Along with Takuan, he had also presented the Shōgun with a copy of his work. Not that he thought that Iemitsu could in any way contribute. The young ruler had never seen war, never had a serious duel; and while he was a dedicated student, he was a mediocre talent at best. Shōgunal endorsement nevertheless could help him to promote his work among the Daimyō, and thus promote the spread of the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. It was something he was good at: playing the Shōgun. Iemitsu was thirty years his junior. He had just lost his father and, except for Munenori, there were few men in his immediate circle in whom he put his trust. In many ways he looked up to Munenori like a father. Munenori didn’t mind. It was the way in which he could bring his influence to bear.
Now the Shōgun had sent him a letter. Breaking the seal and opening it, Munenori opened it. Yet what he read made his heart miss a beat:
Recently you gave me a copy of your manuscript, and I, in turn, gave you a written pledge of my commitment to the Yagyū art of heihō. Indeed, you told me you had taught me the extent of your teachings, and I, being satisfied with your conduct, raised you to the rank of Daimyō. Yet, even though you taught me, your heart wasn’t in it, and thus, in one way, my mastery is not what it could have been. I would like you to put your heart into it for my sake, for there is no benefit in teaching someone in such a perfunctory manner. What is the use if I cannot make a katana follow my will? It is up to you, then, to decide whether I should make progress or not. If you are content to let things be as they are, even while you know so well how dedicated I am to the art of heihō, then it seems to me that our friendship has meant nothing.
Munenori felt ashamed. The letter confronted him with a truth he had been loath to admit. Iemitsu might be his junior, yet the wisdom of his words was that of a man his senior—not just in rank. The Shōgun was right. It wasn’t a man’s talent that counted; it was his commitment to perfection. Iemitsu might not be a natural talent, but his dedication to the martial Way was beyond question. Had it not been Munenori’s own father’s same honest dedication to perfection that had eventually saved the Yagyū? Had it not been the lesson his own son had gained from seeing Chōnō perform nō?
Another thing now came to mind, a thought that caused him to break out into a cold sweat for the first time in many years. Except for his promise to read Munenori’s manuscript, Takuan had said little at their last meeting. Munenori hadn’t yet read Takuan’s work, even though he was going to meet him again soon. Something told him he should do it right now.
Walking to his library he picked up Takuan’s Fudō chinmyō-roku. Feverishly he began to scroll through his friend’s work, and what he read hit him with its forthright clarity:
I want to confront you with something that has been troubling me for a long time. It might be foolish of me, but I think this is a good moment to write them down for you.
A master without equal in past or present, you are now at the apex of rank, stipend, and worldly fame. Yet you must never forget this great privilege, whether you walk or sleep, and wholeheartedly devote yourself to repay this favor by exerting yourself in your loyalty day and night. In doing so, you must first set your heart straight, be moderate in conduct, and never ever entertain thoughts that go against your lord.
Munenori’s hands trembled as they transported the text from one to the other. Never before had he felt so nervous, not even on the field of battle. Feverishly he read on, eager to fathom the full depth of the monk’s message:
If one cannot refrain from evil in the full knowledge that it is evil, it is only so because one is fully aware that one enjoys it. It is precisely because one is lustful, arrogant, and bent on living as one pleases that the presence of good men fails to rub off, that their counsel is not heeded. And thus the idiot, because of one single favor, is promoted. If, due to such favors, good men are not hired, even though they do exist, they might just as well be dead.
As yet, Takuan’s tone was detached, his words chosen as if he might be talking about no one in particular. But Munenori knew full well what he was on about:
It seems that this is even the case when you select your deshi. I find this utterly disgusting. All this is because you do it in a single moment’s whim, and thus, falling prey to this affliction, fail to see how you fall into evil. You may think that people do not know, yet since you yourself know, it follows that all the gods in heaven and all men on earth will know, as sure as day follows dawn. Is it not perilous to govern the realm in such manner? Just think how disloyal such a state of affairs would be!
A sinking feeling took hold of Munenori as he continued:
That being what it is, with respect to your son’s dissolute life, it is immoral for a father to admonish his son if his own conduct is not beyond reproach. First you must set yourself straight; only then will his conduct naturally correct itself when you voice your opinion.
But it was the closing lines of his friend’s work that hurt most:
That you enjoy wild dancing, take pride in your abilities in nō, and insinuate yourself among Daimyō to show off to them your dancing skills—this I truly see as an affliction. Worse still, I hear that you liken the Shōgun’s recitals to sarugaku, while in his presence you only speak highly of those Daimyō who flatter you. All this you should consider carefully. Does not the poem go:
It is the mind that leads the mind astray.
Be mindful of the mind!
For a moment Munenori was overcome by rage. Had he not saved his friend? Where was Takuan’s gratitude? Who did this purple-robed egg-head think he was? Then he saw his folly. It struck him, like a koan—the sound of one hand clapping. If the monk thought anything of himself it was that he was mu: nothing. Only a true friend would go so far out of his way, be so blunt in his words, to bring another friend to reason. Munenori had strayed—and not without warning. He groaned as he thought of his father, his strong hand on his head when a boy, his hard words when he grew up, his sorrowful reproaches when a man. The little relief he felt was that his father hadn’t lived to see him become so complacent. Yet it wasn’t too late to mend things…
Writing
Munenori’s initial urge was to rewrite his manuscript from scratch—immediately: it was too full of pride, too full of himself. But Takuan was right. He needed to set himself straight first. And what better way to do so than to remove himself from the temptations of the capital? Asking leave for an indefinite time, he withdrew to his Higakubo yashiki to meditate and study. He had to find himself.
With every day his heart felt a bit lighter, his head clearer, his soul more cleansed. He went on long walks, not through Edo this time, but through the surrounding countryside. He was stunned to find how unfamiliar the area around Azabu still was to him. Setting off southward along the coast he would walk all the way to Kamakura at the foot of the Miura Peninsula to visit the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, the shrine dedicated to the God of War. Or he would strike inland, following the magnificent Tama River, toward Hachiōji. Or farther inland still, up into the mountains, to the forested slopes of the Kantō Mountains. On such pilgrimages he could stay away for days, enjoying the refreshing hospitality of locals. As he shared their meager meals amidst their poor living conditions, he began to better understand his Buddhist friend. It also cast his mind back to his childhood days, when his family had lived on the handouts of the Enjō temple. He had been in the Shōgun’s service for nigh-on forty years now. He had gained fame and fortune. Yet, through his own indulgence, he had lost touch with the things that truly mattered.
It was a miracle, really, looking back, that he and Takuan had remained friends. Munenori was beginning to see now how much they had grown in different directions. A born and bred warrior, he himself had been taught to concern himself with the material world; his senses trained to deal with an armed opponent, his faculties dedicated to swift action. Takuan, by contrast, had been taught to concern himself with the immaterial world; his senses trained to connect with his unarmed inner self, his faculties dedicated to patient meditation. Takuan’s insight into his own soul had not detached him from the outside world; but Munenori’s focus on the outside world had detached him from his inner self. Given his calling, Munenori would never be able to follow his friend’s example. Yet in order to follow the Way, he had to stay in touch with his inner self.
Most cathartic to Munenori were the long hours he spent amid the quiet seclusion of his study, pouring over the works he admired, Obata Kagenori’s Kōyō gunkan, Ōkubo Tadataka’s Mikawa monogatari, Nobutsuna’s Kage-ryū no mokuroku, and Takuan’s Fudō chinmyō-roku. There was something in these works that connected them; they all shared a deep reverence for the ancient traditions, be they religious or martial. Reading their works Munenori always had to think of his father.
It was already winter, and the hushed landscape around the Higakubo lay covered in thick a blanket of snow, when the sixty-one-year-old warrior was finally ready to put brush to paper. It seemed to Munenori, as he took up his brush and wetted its tip in the dark pool of Indian ink, that everything he had experienced throughout his long and eventful career now finally fell into place. It felt as if history came rushing in on him, the struggles of his ancestors, the long chain of events that had led his clan to the present. Then he began to write, beginning with his father, the man who had built everything, the man who had lost everything, the man who had endured everything:
My father pondered the art of swordsmanship every day, even when he slept or ate. Having thus gained new insights, he would daily discuss and explain the subtleties and profundities with me at his side, and whenever there was something I thought I understood, I tucked it away, deep in my mind…