Heaving a mournful sigh, Noguchi knelt, easing his body to the floor. “Sano-san. Please listen to reason. Do not ruin yourself over this murder investigation. When you see the shogun, convey to him that he should turn the job over to the police. You are intelligent; you can find a way to do this without a loss of face on your part or his. And Chamberlain Yanagisawa will help you-perhaps even reward you for yielding to him. Then leave the job to the police. They have the men. The expertise. Yanagisawa’s sanction.”
He gestured for Sano to sit opposite him. “Come. Save yourself before it is too late.”
Sano remained standing.
Then Noguchi said timidly, “Have you considered the full consequences of your rash behavior, Sano-san? While you toil alone at the murder investigation, the Bundori Killer remains free to kill again. How many lives might be saved if you conceded?”
As this last remark hit home, Sano hid his discomposure by turning his back to Noguchi. He might accept the danger to himself, but could he sacrifice innocent people to his goals and principles? When he’d begun this assignment, he’d thought only of the good he could do. But now he found himself in the exact situation that he’d hoped his new status would allow him to avoid: Because of him, others might die. The nightmare of his first murder investigation was beginning again. Slowly he turned to face Noguchi.
“Oh, you see now.” Noguchi’s smile anticipated his capitulation.
“No,” Sano had started to say yes, but the negative slipped out, spoken by that inquiring, truth-seeking part of his nature that he’d never been able to control. “I have to find out who the Bundori Killer is and why he kills, then bring him to justice.”
With a sense of incredulity, he felt the familiar pull between practical wisdom and personal desire within him. For what conflict could he have expected to encounter while obeying his lord’s orders? And how could he have foreseen that anyone would want to prevent his catching a multiple murderer who was terrorizing the city?
Even as he saw the futility of perseverance, he made one last appeal to Noguchi. “Will you help me?”
Noguchi looked away, and Sano understood that the meek, kindly archivist wanted to help a comrade, but feared punishment from Yanagisawa. Sano said nothing, hoping Noguchi’s love of scholarly research would sway him.
Patience won out. Sighing, Noguchi rose clumsily. “Oh, well. Come along. But please, for my sake, do not tell anyone that I came to your assistance.”
Noguchi picked up a lamp and led Sano out the back door, along a sheltered walkway through a garden scented with night-blooming jasmine, to a huge, windowless storehouse. Its thick, whitewashed earthen walls and heavy tile roof protected precious original documents from fire. Sano helped Noguchi swing back the massive, ironclad door.
The storehouse’s dark interior exuded a musty, metallic odor. As they entered, the wavering flame of Noguchi’s lamp revealed hundreds of iron chests, labeled with painted characters, stacked against the walls. As far as Sano could tell, they weren’t in any particular order. “Shimabara Rebellion,” about a peasant uprising that had taken place fifty years ago, sat wedged between “The Ashikaga Regime,” of some two hundred years past, and “Nobuo,” the name of a poet who had died last month. Never having understood the archival filing system, Sano was glad of Noguchi’s assistance.
“This one, I think,” Noguchi said. He tapped a chest labeled “Oda Nobunaga.”
“And these.”
The last two both bore the unpromising notation “To Be Sorted.” Sano helped shift the heavy chests, free the relevant ones, and carry them into the study.
With the reverent air of a priest conducting a sacred ritual, Noguchi knelt beside the chest labeled “Oda Nobunaga” and lifted the lid. His little eyes glowed. Sano, kneeling beside him, saw scrolls stacked to the brim, some clean and intact, others stained and crumbling. He smelled old paper and mildew: the odors of the past, which never failed to stir his intellectual curiosity. Feeling privileged to touch the old documents and read the words of witnesses to historic events, he’d disliked his assignment to the archives only because it offered no chance to distinguish himself. Now Sano’s love of history reclaimed him. As he and Noguchi scanned the records of Oda Nobunaga’s life, seeking any mention of his two allies, Araki Yojiemon and Endō Munetsugu, neither could resist reading irrelevant but fascinating passages.
“Oh, my, here are the writings of the Buddhist priest Miwa,” Noguchi exclaimed. Untying a faded silk cord, he opened the scroll and intoned:
“Lord Oda Nobunaga was a beast such as the world had never before seen. In his quest for power, he destroyed his own family to gain the territories of Matsuda and Fukada Provinces. He forced one uncle to commit suicide and had another murdered. He killed his younger brother, whom their mother plotted to install as head of the family in his place. Later he slaughtered another brother to become the ruler of Owari Province. In savage battles, he destroyed the Imagawa, Takeda, and Saitō clans and hundreds of thousands of their troops. By the time of his death at age forty-nine, he had strewn countless severed heads and rotting corpses across the countryside and conquered half the nation’s provinces.”
“Described that way, Oda Nobunaga sounds more like evil incarnate than like a great lord,” Sano said.
Noguchi laid the scroll aside. “You must remember that the clergy had no love for Oda Nobunaga. When the Ikko sect rebelled against him, he burned their temples and killed over forty thousand men, women, and children. But he was the quintessential warlord of his time-a master of gekokujō.”
The low overcoming the high: the process by which a warrior rose to power by overthrowing his superiors. Few had practiced it as effectively as Oda Nobunaga.
“But one might imagine that the clergy found much satisfaction in the manner of Oda Nobunaga’s death,” Noguchi continued. “For as he lived by treachery and violence, so did he die by it. Here is the account of what happened one hundred seven years ago.” Opening another scroll, he read:
“While Lord Oda was enjoying a holiday at the Honno Temple in Kyōto with but a small force to guard him, he was besieged by the army of an ally turned traitor, General Akechi Mitsuhide. Lord Oda’s troops died in the attempt to defend their master. Lord Oda fought the attackers alone. An arquebus ball shattered his arm. With no hope of survival, he retired within the temple hall and committed seppuku to avoid capture. His body was destroyed in the flames of the burning temple.”
“An unspeakable act, the murder of one’s lord,” Sano said, feeling the horror that this transgression of Bushido always inspired in him.
“And one for which Akechi received just punishment,” Noguchi reminded him. “Lord Oda’s loyal allies, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, fared much better.”
Sano quoted an old and apt saying: “ ‘Nobunaga quarried the stones to build the country’s foundations, Hideyoshi shaped the stones, and Ieyasu laid them in place. ’ ”
“Or: ‘Nobunaga ground the flour, Hideyoshi baked the cake, and Ieyasu ate it. ’ Heh, heh, heh.”
“Yes.” Sano smiled, appreciating Noguchi’s joke. No one could deny that Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi Hideyoshi had benefited from Oda’s ruthlessness-and his murder. Hideyoshi, Oda’s direct successor, had consolidated the domains he’d inherited. Ieyasu had eventually become the first shogun to rule over the unified nation whose construction his predecessors had begun. If not for Akechi Mitsuhide’s treason, neither might have achieved military supremacy.