In mid-16th century Japan, the Emperor rules by tradition, the shogun rules by law: but the true master of the realm is Chaos. This tumultuous and violent epoch of Japanese history is known the Sengoku Jidai (the Warring States period). The zeitgeist of this era can be encapsulated by the Japanese phrase: “花は桜木人は武士” (Hana wa sakuragi, hito wa bushi; which means, as among flowers the sakura (cherry blossom) is foremost, similarly, among men the warrior is considered the best.”



Lacking any real cen

[In an ironic twist of fate, he is burnt to a frazzle due to his ardor (hide spoiler)

In mid-16th century Japan, the Emperor rules by tradition, the shogun rules by law: but the true master of the realm is Chaos. This tumultuous and violent epoch of Japanese history is known the Sengoku Jidai (the Warring States period). The zeitgeist of this era can be encapsulated by the Japanese phrase: “花は桜木人は武士” (Hana wa sakuragi, hito wa bushi; which means, as among flowers the sakura (cherry blossom) is foremost, similarly, among men the warrior is considered the best.”Lacking any real centralized authority, the nation is riven by conflict as scores of fiefdoms and potentialities vie with each other to control land and resources; some even hope to unify the realm under their banner.One of these fiefdoms is the province of Owari. Owari is a small and utterly nondescript province, a veritable minnow among Tritons. However, in spite of being minuscule in size and poor in resources, Owari is fortunate enough to be led by a man whose ambition knows no limit and who has the mental faculties and gumption to bring it about. That man is Oda Nobunaga and his foremost desire is to unify Japan. However, Taiko is not the story of this man.Verily, Taiko is a historical semi-fiction novel (the characters are real life figures although a bit romanticized) about ambition and the desire to mean something; to stand for something. Over the course of 1400 pages (on my kindle), we meet a bewildering and multifarious array of characters, but they all attempt to fill this cup of ambition. Indeed, this cup varies in size and this decides the pecking order of the dramatis personae.The character with the largest cup is probably Oda Nobunaga, and fittingly he is the prime mover of the events that lead to the unification of Japan. Filled with perfervid ardor ( (view spoiler) ) blessed with surprising sapience and possessing a proclivity for achieving goals without regard for methods, he is the ideal man to spearhead the reunification.However, subduing thousands of recalcitrant and proud clans is too arduous and hellacious even for a man like Nobunaga; and this is where Toyotomi Hideyoshi (the future Kampaku, regent of Japan and later to be the Taiko, retired regent) comes in.But the name and title were not his, to begin with. Born Hiyoshi (no last name indicating his low status), into an indigent soldier-farmer’s family –whose only desire was to have enough to survive –he was an eminently unlikely candidate for being the master of a nation. But, in spite of this, his cup of ambition was no smaller than Nobunaga’s. Filled with stars in his eyes, a fervent desire to become a great man and to put a smile on the haggard face of his work-weary mother, Hiyoshi left home at an early age, to chart his path to glory.After divagating across the country and failing to gain steady employment in a samurai household (the first step in becoming successful), Hiyoshi finally gets himself enrolled as a sandal-bearer (page) for a certain someone who was himself desirous of walking down the avenue of greatness: that man was Oda Nobunaga.Overawed by his master’s brilliance and ambition, Hiyoshi serves him with zeal. His diligence at work and his uncanny ability to use the insights into the human character gleaned from his travels to make men do his bidding gets him into the good offices of Nobunaga.So, begins the tale of the dyad of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi; a tale to fill the grail of ambition. However, they aren’t the only ones who thirst for greatness. Many others want to fill their grails too, but alas only one can slake his thirst.Who shall that be?This question is a Gordian knot, and to undo it one must do what Alexander the Great did to undo the original Gordian knot: to cut it with the sword.And so, begins a rollicking 1200 page ride replete with political machinations, intrigue, and sundry sanguinary battles. The Sakura blossoms fall, and so do castles and men; great lords hastily compose poignant death poems moments before receiving their quietus from this vale of tears; mountains are turned into funeral pyres and rivers are diverted to submerge castles.All the hallmarks of Japanese feudal history –gallant samurais treading the path of the warrior (the literal meaning of the Bushido code), dashing into battle brandishing the famous katanas; officers and cavalry, resplendent in armor and seated upon richly caparisoned steeds, sortieing against the enemy; fleet-footed ninjas stealthily infiltrating enemy castles to sow the seeds of discord, to surreptitiously eavesdrop upon discussions, or to carry out assassinations; and Ashigaru (foot-soldiers) standing in serried ranks with their identity banners fluttering in the wind–are presented in copious detail for the delectation of history aficionados.Nobunaga’s strategic acumen and his ready adoption of the “Tanegashima” firearms –reverse engineered Portuguese arquebuses (matchlock firearms) that Portuguese priests and merchants brought as gifts to Japan–neatly dovetails with Hideyoshi’s ability to open the hearts of men and concomitantly the gates of castles to turn the Oda clan into a juggernaut that humbles mightier fiefdoms. The orchestra mounted atop this juggernaut plays a strange song that sounds like a dirge to their enemies and like a song of rejuvenation for their subjects; such is the genius of the composer: Nobunaga.However, are the Oda immune to the vicissitudes of life and the caprices of fate? Does the Sword of Damocles hang over Nobunaga too? Is Hideyoshi destined to remain at Nobunaga’s feet or might he one day grasp the reins of power in his own hands? And, what about the taciturn and sagacious Lord of Mikawa, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who is ostensibly an ally of the Oda? What devious stratagem lurks behind his inscrutable face?These questions are not explicitly raised but the discerning reader quickly sniffs them out and waits in painful suspense for the denouement: it is a worthwhile wait indeed; one brought out by machinations and political maneuvering in addition to overt military ones. Due to this, the novel manages to stay riveting despite its enormous length and numerous digressions.However, Taiko is not just 1400 pages of war, ambition, and intrigue; the author beautifully limns the ethos, mores, dressing styles, the relationship between husbands and wives, between lords and their retainers, and many quaint Japanese customs of the time. The one I found most intriguing was the art of tea in which the host and his/her guest quietly sit in a teahouse and listen to the water bubbling in the kettle. Supposedly, this practice unencumbers the war-weary samurai and their lords of their tensions and allows them to relax as they quaff their ocha (tea). Other old Japanese customs like the practice of bowel-cutting (Seppuku) and that of jotting down a death poem (Jisei) are movingly presented.Finally, yet importantly, it must be said that Eiji Yoshikawa’s prose is anything but prosaic.A few choice specimens of the beauty of his prose:-“Fragments of thought appear and disappear in the human mind, like an endless stream of bubbles, so that one’s life is carved out instant by instant. Right up to the point of his death, a man’s words and actions are decided by this chain of fragments. Ideas that can destroy a man. A day in a man’s life is constructed according to whether he accepts or rejects these flashes of inspiration”.“In a period of transition, a cataclysm separates the past and the future. Almost all those who perish are those who, because of their blind attachment to the past, fail to realize that the world has changed”.“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.”Richly embellished with metaphors, onomatopoeia, imagery and observations on human life, Yoshikawa-San successfully and effortlessly manages to add poetic elegance to his prose that makes it eminently enjoyable to read. He proves himself to be fully capable of expressing the gamut of emotions from the pathos of a beloved one's passing to the exuberance of a jamboree.However, a perspicacious Ming Chinese author once observed, “Translation can at its best be only the reserve side of a brocade –all the threads are there but not the subtlety of color or design”.Unfortunately, I had to contend myself with observing the obverse side of this brocade, as my Japanese is not yet advanced enough to read a Japanese novel in its native language (I barely manage to read manga in Japanese, so I have a long way to go). Still, I am certain that one day, after getting better with Japanese, I will return and try to observe the brocade from the front in order to truly grasp and appreciate its beauty.All in all, Taiko is a fantastic historical book, replete with well-etched characters and written in beautiful prose that would delight any historical fiction buff. Those with even an inkling of interest in Japan should read this book; even those who are not very interested or aren’t aware of Japanese history or its culture could give this book a try, for I believe that it would be an eminently interesting introduction to the Land of the Sakura and the Rising Sun.