Tag: Japanese

…The Japanese have always shown a particular form of reverence toward the bow, quite beyond its use in battle. One has to go back as far as the Assyrians to find this same veneration for the bow, for they considered it to be the most noble of all weapons. As for the Japanese, the Way of the sword and the Way of the bow rule supreme. There is a Japanese expression: “the house of bow and arrows” which denotes a person’s quality as a result of noble birth. The arrow which draws the bow is like the strength in man which can draw in the subtle power of the universe.

Finally, the bow and arrow were considered to be sacred by the Assyrians when they belonged to kings or generals.

In Shinto, the arrow is often an aid to purification. In fact, many temples have taken to selling arrows, which are carried home and which, during the course of the year, absorb all things evil and impure. These arrows are then burnt during the end of year ceremonies. The manufacture of arrows itself has to follow a set of rules, which means the work always carries with it a deep significance.

— The Overlook Martial Arts Reader, pp. 283-4

The first law of [kenpō] states that when your opponent charges straight in and attacks, you should use your feet to move your body along a circular path. You should also consider moving your arms in a circular pattern to deflect the oncoming force. When your opponent attacks you in a circular fashion, however, you should respond with a fast linear attack—along a straight line from your weapon to his target. Just as the circle can overcome the line, the line can overcome the circle.

— 10 Kenpo Laws Every Martial Artist Should Know – Black Belt

Thank the gods for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, else I could not have linked to the source article.

For large swathes of its history Japan was riven by internecine warfare, notably the periods of ‘feudal anarchy’ in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries [C.E.]. During those years the feudal lords (Daimyo) kept large standing armies which were constantly on the move throughout the country. It stands to reason that adventurers traveling in such a setting would have a relatively high chance of stumbling across one or more military units. This is a system for generating random encounters with such units.

The results will generate encounters with units varying in size from 11 individuals to 10,000 soldiers. Larger armies will include scouts, usually mounted, so DMs should take their existence into consideration when such an encounter is rolled….

— Random Encounters with Military Units in a Feudal Japanese Setting – Monsters and Manuals

When the Emperor Kammu established Japan’s capital in the new city of Heian-kyo, he could not have foreseen the splendid success his action was to bring. Soon after the city was founded, in 794 [C.E.], it became a flourishing center of culture, the home of a decorative society that for more than 300 years was like an endless pageant embellished with art, literature and music and spiced with titillating love affairs.

The site chosen for the capital was almost ideal for the nurturing of such a society. The gently sloping site was open to the south but enclosed on other sides by forested hills or mountains. The dangerous northeast direction, from which demons were most likely to swoop, was shielded by Mt. Hiei and its protective Buddhist monastery. Many fast-running streams brought clear mountain water, and a navigable river, the Yodo, provided convenient barge transportation to the sheltered Inland Sea that separated Honshu from the island of Shikoku.

— Early Japan, p. 31

I wasn’t thinking about a murder. I was thinking about killing.

The Japanese martial dojo is a training hall remarkable for its beauty. Clean lines. A lack of clutter. The warmth of wood and the stateliness of ritual. Don’t be fooled. Look closely at us as we move in that space. We watch each other warily, alive to the sudden rush of attack. We’re controlled and focused. But there’s a murderous ferocity running like a deep current in us all. It gets exposed in many small ways.

Most dojo are big spaces. Sound bounces around in them in a jumble of shouts and thuds. But if you have enough experience, you can hear things distinctly. Asa Sensei was a kendo teacher of the old school. When you find a really good group of swordsmen training together, you can hear things in the quality of the noise they make. We were in Asa Sensei’s dojo, and the chant of the swordsmen was fierce, a pulse of sound generated in a circle of swordsmen that rang throughout the cavern of a room. It created an energy that I could feel as I swung my sword and shouted along with them.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see both Asa and Yamashita standing and watching us. Their dark eyes glittered, but beyond that, they could have been carved in stone. My teacher’s shaven head sat on his thick body like an artillery shell. Asa was thinner and had gray hair swept back from a wide forehead. But the way they held themselves—the thick, muscled forearms that were visible beneath the sleeves of their indigo training tops; the dense, rooted silence of both men—made them seem almost identical.

They were watchers, those two. It’s how you must get after a while. They drink in their surroundings until they can feel it on their skin, taste it in their mouths. Until the breath flows in and out in the rhythm of what surrounds them. And then, when ready, they strike.

When you see them as they truly are, these men are frightening. They hold so much back, measuring you, judging you. They dole out knowledge in grudging bits, forcing you to struggle for each morsel. Looking back, you reluctantly admit that maybe it was necessary. But while you eventually come to trust them, it makes you wary.

I struggle with this. Yamashita is my teacher and I had once thought him perfect. I knew better now. He was still my sensei, but the relationship had changed. He looks at me with flat, emotionless eyes. And sometimes, I look back in the same way. I’ve learned a great deal. Not all of it is good.

The first time I stood across from Yamashita, any confidence that a black belt in two different arts had given me vaporized in the blast furnace of his intensity. Yamashita knows what you are up to before the nerve flash of your latest bright idea leaps across a synapse. As far as I can tell, he is without technical flaw. And without remorse. With Yamashita, every time you step onto the training floor, you are being tested. Over the years you accommodate yourself to it, but it’s still a reality that hovers just out of sight, like a prowling animal, both feared and resented.

— Deshi, chapter 2

While [Western] equestrians mount their horses from the left side, the samurai always mounted a horse from the right side. One of the reasons being that the sword, in this case the tachi, was worn slung on the left, and while wearing armour, the shorter wakazashi companion sword was tied firmly into the obi sash to the left. Mounting from the left risks catching or hitting the tsukagashira sword handle end caps on the saddle. Mounting from the right keeps one’s hips and shoulders pointing in the same direction as the tsukagashira on one’s wakazashi or daisho (paired katana and wakazashi).

— The Samurai Castle Master, Chapter 2

With the practical disappearance of the [Japanese] central government went disintegration of the old social order, a process that had long been accelerating as the Ashikaga shogun grew weaker and weaker. In the Age of the Country at War many ancient families were reduced to poverty or exterminated. Those that took their place were often headed by upstart soldiers with little or no aristocratic background. They did not owe allegiance to any great spreading clan like the Taira or Hojo of an earlier day; their families were families in the modern sense, groups of people closely related by blood or marriage, and the ambition of every man was to increase his immediate family’s wealth and prestige as much as possible.

This preoccupation forced many social innovations, one of which was a kind of primogeniture. During the stable Hojo regime in the 13th and 14th Centuries a landowner had dared to make a will dividing his land among all his children—including the daughters. Even if each received only a little land and therefore had few retainers, the firm power of the Hojo government would protect him in its enjoyment. But under the now-powerless Ashikaga shogunate such evenhandedness was no longer prudent. If there were too many inheritors, they might not be strong enough to defend themselves individually from greedy aggressors. They might lose their land, and the family as a whole might sink to a lower social level. This was to be avoided at all cost.

So a new custom developed. A father willed the bulk of his property to one of his sons, not necessarily to the first-born but to the most promising, or even to an adopted son if none of his own sons seemed likely to maintain the family prestige. Daughters were left out almost entirely because they were not considered able to keep land in the family. By the start of the Age of the Country at War the subordination of Japanese women, which went to such extremes in later ages, was already well advanced.

Along with these new inheritance customs, a new and more mature kind of feudalism developed. The rules and relationships were no longer imposed from above as they had been in Hojo times. The ghost of a central government in Kyoto had no power to impose anything. Instead, each daimyo in possession of a self-governing territory made his own laws, which usually combined traditional customs with new regulations to fit the times. Most of these family codes were rigidly autocratic, permitting few rights to anyone except the daimyo, but their regulations were seldom obeyed literally, and the picture of life they present does not give an altogether accurate view of Japanese society as it really was.

Actually, the Age of the Country at War was something of an age of freedom for Japan’s lower classes. In some provinces the small landholders banded together, swept aside the laws of the daimyo and got full control of the local government; in others the ji-samurai (rural landholders of warrior descent) were so numerous, well armed and belligerent that their wishes, not the daimyo’s, had to be respected. Artisans, too, were often better off than they had been; in spite of drastic laws intended to keep them at home, many of them fled their native fiefs for the growing towns, where their skills were better paid.

As the new feudal system took shape, growing from below, Japan came to be divided into many compact, independent domains with well-defined though sometimes shifting boundaries. At the head of each was a warrior daimyo, who may have inherited his position, or won it or increased it in war. Since there was no central power to back him, as in Hojo times, his strength and security now depended altogether on the support of the lesser families holding land in his domain. He defended them and watched over them carefully to see that they did not combine against him or fall under the influence of another lord. In some fiefs the daimyo managed to reinforce the power and prestige of his own family by keeping control of every sale or division of property and every marriage, not only of samurai but also of lower ranks. Lesser families did the same; every smallest decision was made by the head of the family, always trying to keep the family’s position as high as possible at the cost of its individual members. Thus, while the Age of the Country at War brought some measure of class freedom, it took away individual freedom; within a family little initiative was possible for anyone but the leader.

For most young men such a system would have been unbearably oppressive except for the outlet of war. Most of the great landholders, and many of the lesser ones too, were forever on the prowl, hoping to catch some neighbor at a disadvantage and swallow his territory. And the predatory enterpriser, a chieftain with a reputation for successful aggression, never lacked adventurous young supporters. Not all such recruits were of samurai rank; the gorgeous mounted knights of ancient tradition had given way to larger units that included many foot soldiers armed with spears or other comparatively inexpensive weapons. The warrior barons who led these armies no longer exposed themselves recklessly, as the knights had done, in romantic single combat. The best of them learned to marshal their forces and take advantage of terrain. When they noticed a soldier among their lowborn followers who showed talent for this kind of fighting, they might raise him to officer status or even to high social rank. This would have been almost unthinkable in earlier ages, but now there was no power in Japan to tell an independent daimyo what he could or could not do.

When there was no war on land to occupy them, the young fighting men of Japan could find an outlet for their energies in piracy, which was now thriving once more. In the second half of the 15th Century fleets of hundreds of pirate vessels were crossing the East China Sea and attacking the whole coast of China. The marauders not only pillaged seaside towns but also penetrated far inland to raid the country around Nanking, 150 miles from the sea.

— Early Japan, pp. 104-105

In all this [Tokugawa Ieyasu] revealed the attitude to which he ever afterwards adhered through life. He wielded two weapons of reasonableness and force. And when he could use the former he did, for he gained his point with less expenditure and effort. But he knew this would be useless unless backed by force, and none had it readier at all times than he. Tokutomi observes that “his militarism was diplomatic, and his diplomacy was militaristic.” Nobody in the Empire valued armaments more or took more care of them. He took so much care of them that he never used them rashly, and unless driven to it by unavoidable necessity. Others in this age, of course, used these two methods also. But perhaps none made so few failures as he did, and that owing to his extraordinary patience and self-control.

— Shogun, Chapter 3

Nothing more clearly illustrates the power of war as a culture-shaping force than the eerie parallels between feudal Japan and feudal Europe. Both societies rested on the labor of relatively unfree peasants, and both were ruled by hereditary warrior classes—knights in Europe and bushi, or samurai, in Japan—representing, or at least serving, the landed aristocracy. If, through some magical transposition, a medieval knight and a samurai had met on the same road, they would have immediately recognized each other as kin. Both wore helmets and armor, fought on horseback, rallied to flags emblazoned with dynastic symbols or totems, invested their swords with mystic power, and subscribed to a special warrior ethic—chivalry in Europe, bushido in Japan—which codified, for its adherents, a kind of religion of war.

In her study of the bushi tradition, Catharina Blomberg lists these parallels, only to dismiss them as “entirely fortuitous” since, after all, there had been no contact between medieval Europe and Japan. What she misses is the entirely unfortuitous effect of the means of destruction which these two cultures shared: Both employed metal blades to cut human flesh and horses to transport warriors to and about the battlefield. This technology leads to, and even seems to require, the kind of social arrangement we know as feudalism, which has been defined as an “essentially military…type of social organization designed to produce and support cavalry.” A very similar pattern emerged in precolonial western Africa: a social and economic elite of mounted, knightlike warriors, subscribing to a quasi-religious warrior ethic.

The knight and the samurai are in some ways special cases, preferring, as they did, to fight at close range with their cherished swords. Other warriors of the pre-gun era, no less proud and individualistic, fought from a distance with metal-tipped arrows propelled by compound bows. The European knight was again and again shocked to encounter, during the Crusades and the various incursions of nomadic Asian “hordes,” highly skilled mounted warriors who announced their attacks with a hail of arrows and used their bladed weapons primarily to dispatch the wounded. But all—swordsmen and archers alike—were part of a system of warfare that depended on the synergy of metal and muscle. The metal could be worked to a point as an arrow tip or pounded to a cutting edge as a sword. The muscle could be that of the human arm alone or that of the arm reinforced by the speed and strength of the horse. Either way, the metal-and-muscle approach to warfare imposed certain common themes on the cultures that engaged in it, whether they did so reluctantly or with zest.

— Blood Rites, pp. 144-45

Ankokuji Eikei…had his hiding-place revealed by a Ronin, who bore him a grudge for turning his former master out of his fief…. How gratified [Tokugawa Ieyasu] was may be gathered from his presenting ten pieces of gold to the Ronin, who at first emphatically refused to take it, declaring that his motive was only the very proper one of revenge, and that he did not wish to profit otherwise. But Ieyasu would not take a refusal, and so he received this quite large sum, but distributed it among the people of his village in true recluse style.

— Shogun, Chapter 23

…In Japan the great monasteries have always tended to accumulate possessions owing to the freedom from taxation and control by the civil governors that they enjoyed, and the right they had of affording refuge to those who wished to escape from the oppression of the competitive world outside. These rights needed guarding in a land like Japan, where the military were not much inclined to be frightened by the ghostly terrors with which the monks tried to threaten them, and so the soldier monk consequently eventuated. Since the temples had so much property there would be no lack of volunteers for the honor of guarding it, and the great groups of temples like Hieizan and Nara (Tendai and Ritsu sects), and later the Amida and Nichiren sects, not to speak of the Shingon of Koya and Negoro, not only resisted the military government, but fought viciously among themselves, in all cases for loaves and fishes, or fish and saké rather, and not for any particular belief in the efficacy of their doctrines….

— Shogun, Chapter 4

It is noticeable that the introduction of firearms through the Portuguese made it easier to get some sort of an army of comparatively untrained farmers, though the matchlock did not prove such a great asset as they may have hoped, since it was not very convenient to use when the weather was wet, as it often is in Japan, and its range was possibly not greater, and its accuracy not as great, as the bow and arrow. It is here that there is some difference between conditions in Japan and Europe, for in Japan the samurai was an archer, either horse or foot, and did not trust so much to his armor as the European knights did, neither did he advance in the massed charging formation that would be more vulnerable to gun fire.

— Shogun, Chapter 4

[Anegawa in 1570 C.E.] was a real feudal battle judging by the account in the Mikawa Fudoki, which gives a vivid picture of the bands of retainers fighting in groups, the lopping of heads by sword and bill, the confused mingling of the armies, the clouds of black smoke and dust, and above all the streams of perspiration that bathed the combatants, for it was the hottest season of the year….

— Shogun, Chapter 6

The word “hostage” has negative connotations of a captive being held against their will and with a loss of freedom. The samurai understood that hostage-taking was a political move and a way of forming close familial bonds. As a hostage under both the Oda and the Imagawa, [Tokugawa] Ieyasu was treated as a family member, well cared for and properly educated with the expectation that he—and in turn the Matsudaira/Tokugawa clan—would be a future close ally of the Imagawa. In a way, this bears comparison to a form of Stockholm Syndrome, a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity. As a long-term [(ten years)] hostage, Ieyasu took part in the 1560 [C.E.] battle between the Imagawa and the Oda at Okehazama in the invading Imagawa forces. In this battle, 25,000 Imagawa soldiers were defeated in a surprise attack by an estimated 2,500 Oda samurai. Luckily, Ieyasu had been leading a supply mission to nearby Odaka Castle when the Oda attacked. With the death of Imagawa Yoshimoto, Ieyasu was at last free. Upon his return home to Okazaki Castle he soon allied himself with Oda Nobunaga, who had indirectly brought about his freedom.

— The Samurai Castle Master, Chapter 4

On the first day of January 1544, Yagyū castle was brimming with secret activity, and it wasn’t just for the New Year’s festivity of O-Shogatsu. That evening Ieyoshi had convened a council with the headmen of his shinobi, the ‘secret men.’ Trained in the art of stealth, their main task was the gathering of information. For a clan the size of the Yagyū, intelligence meant survival. Ever since they had joined Emperor Go-Daigo’s cause, the Yagyū had relied on intelligence rather than brute force to achieve their aims. Go-Daigo’s defeat at Kasagi had taught them an important lesson: it had been the stealth of their night attack rattier than their superior numbers that had made the enemy victorious.

The Yagyū were one of the few clans to have their shinobi. Powerful chieftains simply hired mercenaries to do their dirty work—spying and winning by stealth wasn’t part of their mindset. Proud of their martial prowess, they relished the challenge of testing it in battle and poured their heart in the strength and valor of their armies. The spies they hired were of low stock, shallow, unreliable men who massaged their message to suit their client and were known by a large number of names: rappa, suppa, toppa, dakko, all of them derogatory.

Being only a small clan, the Yagyū knew they had to rely on more than just military might. For almost two centuries now, they had maintained a small force of shinobi. Recruited from local clans, these men of stealth passed their skills on from father to son, forming a large regional network of spies who could be mobilized at the drop of a hat. They had proven their effectiveness in the recent battle for Kasagi-dera when they had helped both to anticipate and trace the attack from Iga.

The Yagyū shinobi had developed skills surpassing those of the average spy. Called ninjutsu, or hidden technique, it was a skill-set that embraced a great variety of disciplines. They were able swimmers, could go on next to no food for days on end, and could climb the steepest walls. To do this they used a so-called uchikugi, a small iron anchor attached to a long rope, which they would hurl over a defense until it caught. Even without it, they were able to scale a castle wall making use of the crevices between even the most tightly laid stones.

Unlike regular warriors, who had just one or two weapons of choice, shinobi used a large range of weapons, including the popular shuriken and makibishi, but also a variety of farm tools like the nata (billhook) and kama (sickle). Their sword was the shinobigatana, long enough to hold its own against the regular katana, short enough to carry on one’s back. Their favorite weapon was the kusarigama, the notorious chain sickle, after the piece of chain that connected the sickle to a small weight. Whipping the weight forward, they could entangle an opponent’s weapon or limb and draw them in to strike with the sickle.

There was a strict hierarchy among the Yagyū shinobi, and each group had its own specialty. The secretive Kitanoyama, who lived among the mountains on the eastern edge of the Yagyū domain and had served them since the very beginning, specialized in teisatsu, reconnaissance. They could make their way into any stronghold and memorize troop numbers, weaponry, down to the place where a harness had been made. Only the teisatsu wore the typical dress of the shinobi, a dark, short-sleeved uwagi tucked into a dark karusan hakama, the hakama with trouser legs, but tapered down to fit tightly around the shins. In winter they would wear warm, padded garments, but never any form of armor. Nor did they wear the regular headgear. Instead, they wore a dark cowl, leaving only their eyes exposed. Their sinister appearance and exceptional ability to disappear soon gave rise to outlandish rumors that spread among a superstitious populace who came to believe shinobi could fly through the air and walk on water. The last one had a kernel of truth, for one of their shinobi had once escaped by staying under water and breathing through a reed.

The Obo, who lived a few miles south along the road to Uda, were different. They had specialized as kanchō, spies who mixed with the troops of hostile clans, thus extracting valuable information on troop movement and influencing morale. The best of them were able to insinuate themselves into the highest ranks, gaining direct insight into an enemy’s strategy. Their’s was one of the most dangerous roles, but also the most valuable.

The Sakahara, whose village lay a few miles down the Yagyū Kaidō toward Nara, had developed a special talent for kakuran, ‘agitation.’ They were masters in stirring up resentment and spreading rumors among the subjects of enemy warlords. They were looked down upon by the other shinobi, but not by the Yagyū chieftain, who knew how to value psychological warfare.

Only the shinobi from Iga and Koka rivaled those of the Yagyit in stealth and subterfuge. Yet, as the recent events at Kasagi had proven, when it came to a pitched battle, the Yagyū warriors amply made up for that.

— Victory Through Endurance, Chapter 2

By around 1585 [C.E.], the growing power of [Japan’s] militaristic monks, the Ikko Ikki and the Shingon sect’s warrior priests of the Negoro-ji Temple in Kii Province…was becoming a concern for the Toyotomi [clan]. The Negoro-ji had been established around 1087, and at its peak during the Muromachi period (approximately 1335-1573), some 2,700 temples graced the spacious complex. They had been throwing their weight around in the political arena for some time now. and in particular their support of Tokugawa leyasu against [Toyotomi Hideyoshi] in the Battle of Komaki Nagakute the previous year had earned them his great displeasure. That the Toyotomi clan had recently taken their gates and various structures for use in Hidenaga’s castle gave them cause for greater offence.

Having watched Nobunaga before him struggle with the protracted sieges against the militant monks of the Hongan-ji Temple, and not wanting to have the same experiences himself. Hideyoshi launched a preemptive attack of Negoro-ji Temple, Having first attacked other local warrior-monk temples. Hideyoshi’s forces approached the Negoro-ji Temple from two directions. Many of the monks quickly fled to nearby Ota Castle and Hideyoshi ordered the temples razed. Any remaining Buddhist monks fleeing the flames were cut down. Hideyoshi then turned his attentions to Ota Castle, and built dams on three sides of the castle to divert the rivers and allow heavy rains to flood the castle. Those trapped on the hill by the rising waters soon succumbed to hunger, and the samurai, monks and peasants inside finally surrendered. In a last-ditch effort, some fifty warrior monks made a final suicidal charge against Hideyoshi’s forces. All were destroyed….

— The Samurai Castle Master, Chapter 3

2,700 temples! Spacious, indeed—even if most of them were merely (small) shrines.

Two dawns later Toranaga was checking the girths of his saddle. Deftly he kneed the horse in the belly, her stomach muscles relaxed, and he tightened the strap another two notches. Rotten animal, he thought, despising horses for their constant trickeries and treacheries and ill-tempered dangerousness. This is me, Yoshi Toranaga-noh-Chikitada-noh-Minowara, not some addle-brained child. He waited a moment and kneed the horse hard again. The horse grunted and rattled her bridle and he tightened the straps completely.

“Good, Sire! Very good,” the Hunt Master said with admiration. He was a gnarled old man as strong and weathered as a brine-pickled vat. “Many would’ve been satisfied the first time.”

“Then the rider’s saddle would’ve slipped and the fool would have been thrown and his back maybe broken by noon. Neh?“

The samurai laughed. “Yes, and deserving it, Sire!”

— Shōgun, Chapter 61

“Listen, Omi-san, the battle will begin in a few days. You’ve served me loyally. On the last battlefield, after my victory, I’ll appoint you Overlord of Izu, and make your line of the Kasigi hereditary daimyos again.”

“So sorry, Sire, please excuse me, but I don’t deserve such honor,” Omi said.

“You’re young but you show great promise, beyond your years. Your grandfather was very like you, very clever, but he had no patience….”

“May I ask what you mean by patience, Sire?” Omi said, instinctively feeling that Toranaga wanted the question to be asked….

“Patience means restraining yourself. There are seven emotions, neh? Joy, anger, anxiety, adoration, grief, fear, and hate. If a man doesn’t give way to these, he’s patient. I’m not as strong as I might be but I’m patient. Understand?”

“Yes, Sire. Very clearly.”

“Patience is very necessary in a leader.”

“Yes.”

— Shōgun, Chapter 61

Author’s emphasis is in italics. Mine is in bold.

After a brief ritual salutation, Marangan’s student came at me. He was using two sticks, wielding them in a series of complex patterns that made it difficult to judge potential angles of attack. I engaged my opponent cautiously, then backed out of range again and again as I assessed his skills.

Most times in the Japanese arts, you’re going up against a single weapon. They have a preference in Japan for the commitment this engenders. But, of course, it also tends to create a flaw in your training. After all, the old samurai carried a long and a short sword. What if an opponent used them both?

There are varieties of double-handed weapon systems in the Japanese arts. Miyamoto Musashi was famous for his nito style, using long and short blades simultaneously. And you occasionally run up against people in a kendo dojo who use it today. As a matter of fact, Yamashita would sometimes insist that I watch these people and train with them. Not to adopt their style—”the road to perfection is steep enough carrying one weapon, I think, Professor”—but to learn how to combat it.

And what had I learned? Basically that if you’ve got one weapon and the other person has two, you’re in for a rough ride. And the only way to beat them is to use an attack that is so precise, well timed, and focused that it cuts through the cloud of uncertainty that the opponent has created. And that’s not even it. You have to feel the opponent’s pattern in your gut and then when it happens—if it happens—your response snaps out like an electric spark, almost independent of your control.

You just have to hope you don’t get pounded to death while you’re waiting for the spark.

— Tengu, Chapter 15

“Yabu-san, what do you know about the Amida Tong?”

“Only what most people know: that it’s a secret society of ten—units of ten—a leader and never more than nine acolytes in any one area, women and men. They are sworn by the most sacred and secret oaths of the Lord Buddha Amida, the Dispenser of Eternal Love, to obedience, chastity, and death; to spend their lives training to become a perfect weapon for one kill; to kill only at the order of the leader, and if they fail to kill the person chosen, be it a man, woman, or child, to take their own life at once. They’re religious fanatics who are certain they’ll go directly from this life to Buddhahood. Not one of them has ever been caught alive.” Yabu knew about the attempt on Toranaga’s life. All Osaka knew by now and knew also that [Toranaga]…had locked himself safely inside hoops of steel. “They kill rarely, their secrecy is complete. There’s no chance of revenge on them because no one knows who they are, where they live, or where they train.”

“If you wanted to employ them, how would you go about it?”

“I would whisper it in three places—in the Heinan Monastery, at the gates of the Amida shrine, and in the Johji Monastery. Within ten days, if you are considered an acceptable employer, you will be approached through intermediaries. It is all so secret and devious that, even if you wished to betray them or catch them, it would never be possible. On the tenth day they ask for a sum of money, in silver, the amount depending on the person to be assassinated. There is no bargaining, you pay what they ask beforehand. They guarantee only that one of their members will attempt the kill within ten days. Legend has it that if the kill is successful, the assassin goes back to their temple and then, with great ceremony, commits ritual suicide.”

“Then you think we could never find out who paid for the attack today?”

“No.”

“Do you think there will be another?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. They contract for one attempt at one time, neh? But you’d be wise to improve your security—among your samurai, and also among your women. The Amida women are trained in poison, as well as knife and garrote, so they say.”

“Have you ever employed them?”

“No.”

“But your father did?”

“I don’t know, not for certain….”

— Shōgun, Chapter 18