On the second day of the Third Month, Nobuo returned to Ise in great joy. During his stay in Osaka, he had been told that he had been invested with a court title, thanks to Hideyoshi's good offices. Nobuo had remained in Kyoto for about five days, receiving the congratulations of many callers. It seemed to him that the sun would hardly rise if it were not for Hideyoshi.
The traffic of provincial lords to and from Osaka during the New Year, and the activities of Nobuo in particular, were reported in detail to Hamamatsu. Ieyasu, however, could now do nothing more than observe Hideyoshi's appeasement of Nobuo from the sidelines.
Epilogue
Between the spring and fall of that year Hideyoshi sent ships to the south and horses to the north in his campaigns to subdue the country. He returned to Osaka Castle in the Ninth Month and began overseeing the internal administration and foreign affairs of the Empire.
From time to time he would look back on the mountains he had climbed to get thus far, and at such moments he could not help congratulating himself on the first half of his life. In the coming year he would be fifty years old, the season in which a man reflects on his past and is made to think about his next step.
Then, because he was human and indeed was subject to carnal passions more than the common run of men, it was natural that at night he would reflect on those passions that had governed his life in the past and continued to do so in the present, and would wonder where they might lead in the future.
It is the autumn of my life. Not many more months remain of my forty-ninth year.
As he compared his life to climbing mountains, he felt as if he were looking down toward the foothills after having climbed almost to the summit.
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.
How boring would be a life lacking the confusions of many digressions or the difficult struggles! How soon would a man grow tired of living if he only walked peacefullyalong a level path. In the end, a man’s life lies in a continuous series of hardships and struggles, and the pleasure of living is not in the short spaces of rest. Thus Hideyoshi, who was born in adversity, grew to manhood as he played in its midst.
In the Tenth Month of the fourteenth year of Tensho, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu met in Osaka Castle for a historic peace conference. Undefeated in the field, Ieyasu nevertheless ceded the political victory to Hideyoshi. Two years before, Ieyasu had sent his son as a hostage to Osaka, and now he took Hideyoshi's sister as his bride. The patient Ieyasu would wait for his chance—perhaps the bird would yet sing for him.
After a great banquet to celebrate making peace with his strongest rival, Hideyoshi retired to the inner apartments of the castle, where he and his most trusted retainers hailed his victory over many cups of sake. Hours later, Hideyoshi rose shakily to his feet and bid the company good night. Slowly he stumbled down the hall, a short, monkeyfaced man surrounded by his ladies-in-waiting, almost hidden by the colorful, rustling silks of their many-layered kimonos. The laughter of the women could be heard all along the gilded corridors as the tiny figure of Japan's supreme ruler was led to his bed.
In the dozen years left to him, Hideyoshi solidified his grip on the nation, breaking the power of the samurai clans forever. His patronage of the arts created an opulence and beauty still celebrated as Japan 's Renaissance. Titles were heaped upon him by the Emperor: Kampaku. Taiko. But Hideyoshi's dreams did not end at the water's edge; his ambitions reached beyond, to the lands he had dreamed of as a child—the realm of the Ming emperors. But there the armies of the Taiko would fail to conquer. The man who never doubted that he could turn every setback to his own purpose, that he could persuade his enemies to be his friends, that he could even make the silent bird wish to sing a song of his own choosing—in the end he had to yield to a greater force, and a more patient man. But he left a legacy whose brilliance yet remains as the memory of a Golden Age.