Narrow Road To The Deep North 32

The Tiger, Takeda Shingen, was born in 1521. An accomplished poet in his youth, his definition of samurai parental loyalty was equally figurative. Everyone knows that if a man doesn't hold filial piety toward his own parents he would also neglect his duties toward his lord. Such a neglect means a disloyalty toward humanity. Therefore such a man doesn't deserve to be called ‘samurai.’ At the age of 21, after his coming of age ceremony, he led a bloodless coup against his father. 
His war banner read Fū-Rin-Ka-Zan, ‘Wind-Forest-Fire-Mountain,’ taken from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and his aspiration to be as swift as the wind, as silent as a forest, as fierce as fire and as immovable as a mountain. 
Due to the prowess of his army’s ‘Twenty-Four Generals,’ Shingen turned the Takeda clan in the most powerful in the country. Of these, Kōsaka Masanobu was the Tiger’s best known homosexual lover, in Japanese shudo tradition. Shingen signed a pledge that he was not involved in, nor had any intentions of entering into, a sexual relationship with a certain other retainer, and asserted that ‘since I want to be intimate with you.’ He would in no way harm the boy, calling upon the gods to be his guarantors.
Shingen revered learning and, as you may have already forgotten, was the first to introduce soy sauce as a seasoning to his army.

   ‘Learning is to a man as the leaves and branches are to a tree, and 
    it can be said that he should not be without it. Learning is not 
    only reading books, however, but is rather something that we 
    study to integrate with our own way of life. One who is born into    
    the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first 
    aquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements 
    in loyalty, and, in listening to just one of his dictums each day, 
    will in a month know 30 precepts. Needless to say, if in a year he 
    learns 300 precepts, at the end of that time he will be much the 
    better. Thus, a man can divide his mind into three parts: he 
    should throw out those thoughts that are evil, take up those ideas 
    that are good, and become intimate with his own wisdom… I 
    would honor and call wise the man who penetrates this principle, 
    though he lacks the knowledge of a single Chinese character. As 
    for those who are learned in other matters, I would avoid them 
    regardless of how deep their knowledge might be. That is how 
    shallow and untalented this monk is.’

But Shingen was also a strict disciplinarian, and there is an exemplary story in the Hagakure, relating his execution of two brawlers, not because they had fought, but because they had not fought to the death.

   ‘Once a master was on his way to a reading at the Jissoin Temple 
     in Kawakami. One of his pages had gotten drunk and started a 
     quarrel with a boatman on a ferry. Once the ferry docked the 
     page drew his sword, but the boatman struck him on the head 
     with an oar, and the other boatmen gathered around ready to 
     beat the page to death with their oars. The master pretended not 
     to notice what was happening and walked away. Another page 
     ran to aid his friend, apologized to the boatmen, calmed down 
     the injured page, and took him back to the master’s house. That 
     night the master took the disorderly page’s swords. The master 
     is first to blame for not rebuking the drunken page and taking 
     control of the situation before it got out of hand. After the page 
     had been struck down there was no reason to apologize to the 
     boatmen, even though the page had acted unruly. At that point, 
     the master should have apologized to both the page and the 
     boatman for what he was about to do and killed them both in 
     one stroke. The master had a coward’s heart.’
  Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure- The Book of the Samurai, 1716


Soy sauce. No sauce.