Man in the time of Odai
There is a Japanese analogy, telling that Oda Nobunaga piled and milled the rice all the way and Toyotomi Hideyoshi kneaded the rice to make cakes. Then waiting Tokugawa gulped down the cakes. Tokugawa was a victor of his time starting the Tokugawa Shogunate for the Edo period but how people regard him is not generous, citing him as a sly person or the raccoon in the Kanto, guessingly because he already devoured all the historical glamorization. Thus people backlash against it. Even for him, how could he not have unbearable hardships in his life either? While childhood, he was sent as a hostage to the Oda clan and then to the Imagawa clan in turn for around 10 years. Fighting against Takeda Shingen, well known for his military ferocity, overwhelmingly defeated Tokugawa clenched his teeth not to forget all the shame and wretchedness, reminding him in his later years of not making the same mistake. Also to maintain his allegiance with the Oda clan, he ordered his wife accused of conspiracy against Oda Nobunaga to be executed, and his first son born from the executed wife to commit seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment), to prevent future vengeance against the Oda clan for his dead mother.
He was also continuously politically checked by the later years’ Toyotomi. What one gets patient doesn’t mean idling away but means that one endures and still carries on under his life burden. So, his quote ‘life is a long journey to be carried on with his heavy burden on his back’ must represent his life itself. From Tokugawa’s perspective, even he must have been tempted too to escape from the situation of being a hostage, trigger uncautious wars, and purge the unpleasing vassals, taking off his life burden. Tokugawa who is told to be thoroughly calculative as well as wise didn’t risk his future to make the stupid mistake in the present, only to take his anger out on. If three people, Oda, Toyotomi and Tokugawa of their respective characters were to be around me, I must be sure that all three are quite intimidating and the last one I want to be around must be Tokugawa Iyeyasu. While dealing with these three heroes from Sengoku Jidai, I hoped to muse on them in-depth with more details. As Empress Myeongseong and Odai have been dealt with already, these are the figures whom mom chose so I couldn’t find much to empathize with. Thus, I expected there must be ongoing emotional arousing from these warlords whom I chose to ponder on.
The sudden death of Oda Nobunaga sent me into an emotional upheaval to research all the anecdotes and conjectures regarding his death till I got exhausted. In a certain aspect, history is a fantasy formed by kneading the historical facts with what people wish to have envisioned. While it was my insignificant recounting of three protagonists, I couldn’t help but continuously compare them with one another and dodge the preference for one over the others. As unashamedly declared, most of the preference and empathy went to Oda Nobunaga. But contrary to my expectation, I was quite prone to take continuous notice of Toyotomi Hideyoshi; the one who was not highly regarded like Oda as a worthy warlord with a colorful personality and military ability and didn’t garner the reputation like Tokugawa, being a winner of history. It must be because of the human tendency, inclined to side with the weak and the unpopular.
Toyotomi’s atrocious extremity for survival must hold the space inside my personality too. Calculative and sly aspects, fairly evaluated as being wise of Tokugawa and rudely ruthless but magnanimous quality of Oda exist in people in general as well as in me. One lives sometimes employing these dispositions when the conditions and circumstances allow them to and otherwise, containing these to be concealed. It is the pleasure only history can provide; one takes a step back and with a secured emotional distance looks on people who desperately endeavored to survive within their unescapable time.
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