Free Ninja by John Man Page B

where the intruders are from. They come out with convincing answers, “giving the names of such and such persons and thus and so provinces.”
    And finally they and their fifty comrades fulfill their mission, lighting a fire that tells their waiting forces to attack, while they themselves run from place to place yelling war cries and starting fires in offices and towers. It’s still dark, and the defenders think a whole army has broken in. They cast off their armor, throw down their weapons and flee, “falling and tumbling over cliffs and into ditches.” Only one warrior has the courage to fight back, leading his son and thirteen servants, but having shot off all his arrows and broken his sword, he sees death looming, and all fifteen commit seppuku.
    The emperor, too, flees, barefoot and aimless, along with his princes and nobles, all but two losing their master in the wind, rain, and darkness. Thus did the Son of Heaven “transform his august person into the figure of a rustic and wander forth without an object. How shocking it was!” Hiding behind hillocks by day and by night stumbling through dewdrops on desolate moors, he is eventually captured, along with his entourage and hundreds of courtiers and retainers. Kasagi Castle is left burned out and abandoned, while the emperor is sent into exile, from which he will shortly escape.
    On goes the shogun’s vast army to the next hilltop castle, Akasaka, forty kilometers to the southwest. (The Taiheiki says the army numbered 300,000 riders, and scholars agree it was large, though not that large, consisting of three divisions attacking the loyalists from three directions. No one knows the true numbers of the shogun’s army, but a likely figure is 100,000.) Akasaka is Kusunoki’s base. But it doesn’t seem all that formidable. “The moat was not a proper moat and there was but a single wooden wall, plastered over with mud. Likewise in size the castle was not more than 100 or 200 yards around, with but 20 or 30 towers within, made ready in haste. Of those who saw it, not one but thought: ‘Ah, what a pitiable spectacle the enemy presents!’” They try a frontal assault. But it isn’t so easy. Archers (scholars estimate their numbers at 200) fire devastating volleys, and contingents of horsemen mount raids that throw the attackers into confusion. They try again. This time they scale a wall—which turns out to be a false wall, built to fall when the supporting ropes are released. “More than a thousand of the attackers became as though crushed by a weight, so that only their eyes moved as the defenders threw down logs and boulders on them.” A third assault is met by cascades of boiling water. So the attackers decide to starve the castle into surrender.
    Kusunoki opts for deception in a rousing speech announcing that he will, in effect, become a shadow warrior:
    During the past weeks we have overcome the enemy in one engagement after another and killed countless quantities of his soldiers. Yet so great are his numbers that these setbacks mean nothing to him. Meanwhile we have used up all our food, and no one is coming to our rescue. Being the first warrior in the land to enlist himself in His Majesty’s great cause, I am not likely to begrudge my life when virtue and honour are at stake. Nevertheless in the face of danger the courageous man chooses to exercise caution and devise stratagems. I therefore intend to abandon this castle for a while and to make the enemy believe I have taken my life. If they are convinced that I have killed myself, those eastern soldiers will no doubt return to their provinces rejoicing. If they leave, I shall return; and if they come back here, I shall withdraw deep into the mountains. After I have harassed them a few times in this way, they are sure to grow weary. Such is my plan for fulfilling my [mission] and destroying the enemy. 5
    Luckily, a storm, with “rain violent