Kuroda Kanbei — The Man Who Wrote "What a Pity"

A Pity

"This time, I do not think the bow and arrow will have their day. It is a pity."

In the eighth month of the old lunar calendar, 1600, a fifty-five-year-old man wrote this in a letter to a friend.

Here, bow and arrow means war. And by then the war had already begun. About a month earlier, Ishida Mitsunari had raised an army, and this man too was handing out the gold and silver from his castle to gather soldiers.

And yet he wrote that it would not come to anything, and he wrote that it was a pity. What exactly he thought would not work out, the letter does not say.

The man's name was Kuroda Josui. He had already handed his house to his son and shaved his head, a retired man. When he was young, he was called Kanbei.

The man who received the letter, Kikkawa Hiroie, belonged to the Mori family, great lords in western Japan. In this war, the Mori would end up on Mitsunari's side.

The story goes back about twenty-five years.

In Harima (the southwest of today's Hyogo Prefecture), there was a lord named Kodera Masamoto. One of his chief retainers was a thirty-year-old man who used his lord's family name and was called Kodera Kanbei.

When his mother died, when he was fourteen, he is said to have cried far harder than most people do. At seventeen or eighteen he threw himself into writing waka poems (short Japanese poems), until a monk scolded him, and he thought better of it and stopped, so the story goes.

At that time the Kodera family could not make up its mind. To the west lay the great Mori. To the east, Oda Nobunaga was growing stronger. Which side should they take?

At a meeting of the senior retainers, Kanbei is said to have spoken plainly. The man who will take hold of the country, he said, is Oda.

The Kodera family bet on his reading. In 1575, Kanbei went to Gifu as a messenger and met Nobunaga.

Two years later, Hashiba Hideyoshi, one of Nobunaga's retainers, came to Harima to fight the Mori.

Kanbei offered Hideyoshi Himeji Castle, which had been his own. According to the Kuroda family's records, he welcomed Hideyoshi like this: the castle is run down, and we are cleaning it right now. It is shabby, but please come first to my house in the second compound. When the cleaning was done, he moved Hideyoshi into the main compound.

He also sent his ten-year-old son, Shoju, to Nobunaga as a hostage. It was a sign that he would not betray him.

He had even handed over his own son. He was betting everything on his own reading.

Hideyoshi is said to have liked this young man very much.

A letter Hideyoshi wrote to Kanbei with his own hand is copied in the Kuroda family's records. I feel as much at ease with you as with my younger brother Koichiro, it says. And near the end it says: you probably cannot even read this letter, so please look down on it as you read.

The man who would later rule the whole country was humbling himself over the way he had written a letter. It seems that Kanbei was someone he could lean on.

His reading was coming true.

But in 1578, Araki Murashige, a retainer of Nobunaga, turned against him. He shut himself in Arioka Castle in Settsu (the area from northern Osaka to southeastern Hyogo today) and joined hands with the Mori.

Kanbei's own lord, Kodera Masamoto, also began to lean toward the Mori.

Kanbei is said to have tried to stop him again and again. I am not saying this because my own child is a hostage, he told him. Nobunaga will one day be master of the country. Betraying someone you have already sided with goes against what is right.

Masamoto would not listen. Worse, word even reached Kanbei that the Kodera family's chief retainers were plotting to kill him.

Kanbei went back to Himeji in secret and told his father, Mototaka. His men urged him: let us hold this castle. Say you are ill, and send only a messenger to your lord.

Kanbei refused, according to the kafu, the written history of the Kuroda family.

"Nothing has happened yet. If I shut myself in this castle, I become a traitor to Lord Kodera."

"Born into a samurai house, I should not hold my life dear when what is right is at stake."

His father, Mototaka, said that he understood this resolve. If you truly cannot get out of it, then cut your belly open. Father and son parted, both with tears in their eyes, it is said.

Kanbei returned to his lord's castle, Gochaku, with only a few attendants. He behaved just as always, and people relaxed, it is said.

Then Masamoto made a request. Go to Araki, and somehow bring him back to Nobunaga's side.

Araki's real intentions were hard to know. Kanbei thought so, the kafu says. Even so, since it was for his loyalty to Nobunaga, he did not refuse.

In the last ten days of the tenth lunar month, Kanbei set out for Arioka Castle.

Araki welcomed Kanbei into the castle, hid strong men nearby, and had him seized. He locked Kanbei in a prison cell inside the castle, so it is said.

It was a castle Kanbei had walked into on his own.

Throwing Kanbei Away

The news that Kanbei had been captured reached Himeji too.

The family and the retainers pressed his father, Mototaka.

If they were to save Kanbei, they would have to abandon Nobunaga and side with the Mori. Then Shoju, the hostage with Nobunaga, would be killed. If they were to save Shoju, they would have to keep serving Nobunaga. Then Kanbei, in Araki's hands, would be in danger.

Which would he choose?

Mototaka answered like this, the kafu says.

"I throw Kanbei away, and I follow Nobunaga all the more."

We were the ones who chose to send the hostage. Following Nobunaga is my own wish. Kanbei went to reason with Araki, and Araki kept him without any right. It is Araki who is in the wrong.

"Even if Araki kills Kanbei, I will think of it as a disaster that nobody could have foreseen."

The family and the retainers agreed that this was fair, and followed him.

He would throw away his son. The father said it outright.

The retainers wrote a pledge on paper. Whatever happens to Lord Kanbei, we will obey Lord Mototaka's orders. The pledge was written in three copies, and about forty men signed it. Among them were the names of Mori Tahei and Kuriyama Zensuke.

Kaneko Kentaro, who wrote a biography in the Taisho era (the 1910s and 1920s), saw that pledge, still kept in the Kuroda family, and left a note that the color of the blood seals had faded.

Kanbei in his cell had almost no way of knowing what was going on outside.

Almost.

His retainers disguised themselves as merchants and took turns entering the town of Itami, spying around the prison to see how their master was, it is said.

Kuriyama Zensuke in particular talked a silver dealer in Itami into taking him in, and lived hidden in that house. The guards around the prison were strict, and it was hard to get near. But next to the prison there was a pond, and because of the pond, no guards were posted there.

Under the cover of night, Zensuke is said to have swum across that pond. He got close to the prison and told Kanbei how things stood in Harima and where the world was heading.

The silver dealer eventually won over the guards too, and coming and going became a little easier, they say.

Even inside the castle, there were people who held out a hand.

Kato Matazaemon, one of Araki's own retainers, felt sorry for Kanbei and is said to have treated him kindly in many ways. Kanbei made a firm promise to Kato. If I get home safely, send one of your sons to me. I will raise him like a younger brother to Shoju.

The kafu also keeps a story that the aunt of one of his retainers served Araki, and washed and mended the clothes of the locked-up Kanbei and sent them to him.

Here is one more story, passed down by an old man of Chikuzen, the land that would later become the Kuroda domain. Kaneko's biography wrote it down.

One day, a wisteria vine crept along the bars of the prison and put out a new shoot. In time, purple flowers bloomed. Kanbei saw it and quietly took heart, thinking it might be a sign that heaven was opening a road for him.

It is a story the old people of Chikuzen told one another for a long time.

Meanwhile, something else was happening outside.

Oda Nobunaga, the kafu says, became convinced that Kanbei had not come back because he had joined Araki and shut himself in the castle.

Nobunaga was furious.

And he is said to have ordered Takenaka Hanbei to kill the hostage, Shoju.

Hanbei was a clever strategist who served Hideyoshi. According to Kaneko's biography, he and Kanbei trusted each other deeply.

Shoju was eleven years old.

On a Door Board

Takenaka Hanbei did not obey right away.

Kanbei is loyal, he said. He would never throw away a strong ally and join a weak enemy. Hanbei is said to have warned Nobunaga again and again. Nobunaga did not listen.

Hanbei reported to Nobunaga that he had killed Shoju.

In truth, the kafu says, he had hidden Shoju in a castle in Mino (the south of today's Gifu Prefecture), on his own land.

In the sixth lunar month of 1579, Hanbei died of illness. It happened in the camp, while Hideyoshi's army was surrounding the castle of Miki. He was thirty-six.

Kanbei was still in his cell.

That same year, Araki Murashige slipped out of Arioka Castle in secret. Nobunaga's army attacked the castle he had left behind, and a fire broke out inside. The guards ran away too.

Kuriyama Zensuke saw the burning castle, feared for his master, and is said to have gone in.

"Lord Kanbei! Lord Kanbei!"

He called out in a loud voice, and a voice answered from the cell. Zensuke smashed the lock of the cell with an axe.

But Kanbei could not stand.

The kafu says that after being shut in for so long, his strength was gone and his legs gave out when he tried to walk. The Taisho-era biography adds that a sore had formed on his knee and one leg had become bent.

The castle he had walked into of his own will, he left on someone's back. According to the Taisho-era biography, Zensuke and Shinshichi, the silver dealer, carried him out together.

He was carried to Nobunaga on a door board, as a stretcher, it is said. The Taisho-era biography quotes an old record on how he looked. His hair had grown long like a woman's. His clothes were in shreds and crawling with lice. It was almost too much to look at.

Nobunaga had been regretting what he had done. He had mistakenly had the hostage Shoju killed. He could not face Kanbei. He had been saying so, the kafu says.

Then news arrived.

Shoju is alive. Hanbei had hidden him.

Nobunaga was glad, it is said.

Hanbei, who saved Kanbei's son, was no longer in this world by then. He had died several months before Kanbei left the prison.

Kanbei rested his body at the hot spring of Arima, and then went home to Harima. The man who had lent him a room in Arima gathered local people, and a few of them saw him on his way, it is said.

In Himeji, the family gathered and rejoiced as if a dead man had come back to life, the kafu says.

His father, Mototaka, the family, and the retainers could not say a word. They only stood with tears in their eyes, celebrating each other's safety, the Taisho-era biography says.

This was the father who had said he would throw Kanbei away.

After a while, Kanbei went to see Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi took his hand and wept, it is said. To go into an enemy castle at the risk of your life is true loyalty. How hard that long time in prison must have been. I am glad you were saved and that we can meet again.

But the leg never went back to normal. The bent leg stayed hard to use for the rest of his life, the Taisho-era biography says.

The promise made in the prison was kept.

After Arioka Castle fell, Kato Matazaemon's young son came to Kanbei. Kanbei gave the boy the Kuroda name and raised him, it is said, as if he were his own child.

Kanbei dropped the name Kodera and went back to his old name, Kuroda. Hideyoshi had told him to change it, because it was the name of a man who had plotted treachery, the Taisho-era biography says.

Kodera Masamoto himself abandoned his castle and fled, and died at Tomo in Bingo (the east of today's Hiroshima Prefecture). The son and daughters he left behind were living in poverty.

Kanbei and his father, Mototaka, grieved over this. With Hideyoshi's permission, they sent retainers to Tomo and brought the family back. They built a new house by the sea for them to live in, and when the family stepped off the boat, Kanbei went out to the beach to meet them himself, it is said.

It was the family of the lord who had doubted him and put his life in danger. Repaying harm with kindness is something like this, people felt, the kafu says.

The name of Kuriyama Zensuke, who smashed the prison lock with an axe, comes up once more twenty-five years later, at Kanbei's deathbed.

Hard to Trust

The middle of the night of the third day of the sixth lunar month, 1582. In Bitchu (the west of today's Okayama Prefecture), a courier from Kyoto dashed into Hideyoshi's camp, where his army was besieging a Mori castle.

The person who received the news from the courier was Kanbei, the Kuroda family's records say. Nobunaga and his eldest son had been killed by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide. It had happened in Kyoto the day before.

Kanbei first made the courier promise to keep quiet, it is said. You came fast. Never tell anyone about this. Only then did he tell Hideyoshi.

After grieving, Hideyoshi ordered the courier killed so that the secret would not leak.

Kanbei stopped it, they say. This man ran more than sixty ri (a Japanese measure of distance), over two hundred kilometers, in a day and a half. He is a messenger from heaven. He has done nothing worth killing for, and he has earned praise for coming so fast. If you kill him, heaven will punish you. Kanbei took the courier to his own quarters and hid him, letting no one see him.

From there, Hideyoshi was fast. He made peace with the Mori and turned back, and defeated Akechi at Yamazaki. Then he raced up the road to ruling the country.

But Kanbei's reward was not as large as people expected.

In 1587, after Kyushu was brought under control, what Kanbei received was six districts of Buzen (from the east of today's Fukuoka Prefecture to the north of Oita Prefecture). People saw it as small for what he had done, it is said.

Hideyoshi thought this man was a dangerous schemer who must not be made the master of a large territory, an old writing quoted in the Taisho-era biography says.

A saying Hideyoshi is said to have always repeated also survives, in a collection of anecdotes put together at the end of the Edo period and the start of the Meiji era.

"The frightening ones in this world are Tokugawa and Kuroda. But Tokugawa is a gentle man. That sore-headed Kuroda, I really cannot trust."

The word he used meant a head with a sore on it. It was a nickname for Kanbei.

In 1589, Kanbei handed his house to his son Nagamasa. He was forty-four, still in the prime of his working life. Perhaps it was because he had noticed that Hideyoshi was wary of him, the Taisho-era biography says.

Even so, he did not leave Hideyoshi's side.

The next year, 1590, Hideyoshi besieged the Hojo family of the Kanto region in Odawara Castle.

Inside the castle, a father and an elder brother tried to betray their lord and go over to Hideyoshi, while the younger brother reported it to the lord. Later Hideyoshi ordered Kanbei to kill that younger brother.

Kanbei, putting on a face as if he had misheard, killed the father and the elder brother instead, says Rojin Zatsuwa, a collection of recorded talk from the early Edo period. Even when Hideyoshi blamed him, he only said that he had misheard, and gave no further reason.

That younger brother later served a lord in Kaga and received a stipend of five thousand koku (a measure of rice). The book ends by calling it the great achievement of his life.

In the Taisho-era biography, Hideyoshi only smiled wryly at this and said: you lame rascal, playing dumb again.

In 1593, while Japan's army was in Korea, Kanbei earned Hideyoshi's anger. A misunderstanding began when he kept three magistrates waiting while he was playing go, the board game, and he was badly reported, the kafu says.

Kanbei shaved his head and took the name Josui Ensei.

Josui. The name means to be like water.

Kobayakawa Takakage, a senior retainer of the Mori family, is said in the kafu to have told Josui this. You sometimes regret things after you have decided them. Your mind is so sharp that when you hear someone, you decide right away whether it is good or bad, like water flowing downhill. I am slow, so I decide only after thinking it over carefully. That is why I regret little.

Josui also had a reputation for being stingy.

While the army was in Korea, a warlord named Hineno Bitchu had no money to prepare for the campaign, and came to borrow silver from Josui through a go-between. Josui lent him a hundred pieces of silver.

After coming home from Korea, Bitchu came to give thanks with the go-between, Miyoshi Shinemon. He added ten pieces as interest to the hundred he had borrowed.

Josui called a servant and gave orders. Take the sea bream we received earlier and cut it into three pieces. Make a soup from the bones and bring out sake.

The two men felt a little let down inside, it is said.

When the sake was over, Miyoshi held out the silver and said his thanks, and Josui is said to have answered.

"I never meant to lend it to you. I meant to help you."

However many times they urged him, he would not take the silver. The two went home deeply moved, Rojin Zatsuwa says.

In the eighth lunar month of 1598, Hideyoshi died.

Hearing the news, Josui wrote a letter to Kikkawa Hiroie, of the Mori family.

I Am an Old Man

About a month after Hideyoshi's death, Josui wrote in his letter to Kikkawa Hiroie that he had heard of it for certain. He ended it like this.

"But in times like this, fortune can come. Things will not fall apart right away. Please keep this in mind."

Here, fortune means a turn of luck. The ruler of the country was dead, and luck was starting to move. It seems this is how Josui read it.

At the edge of the same letter there is one more line he added.

"I have trouble with my muscles, but my spirits are good. You do not take care of yourself, so please rest well and stay healthy."

He made light of his own illness and worried about his younger friend's health.

In the first lunar month of 1599, the next year, Josui wrote down the rules for the tea ceremony himself. He hung them in the water room of his tea house, according to the biography by Fukumoto Nichinan, published at the end of the Meiji era.

When grinding tea, turn the mill quietly. Wash the tea bowl many times. If you draw one dipper of hot water from the kettle, add one dipper of cold water. Do not throw things away or drink them down and be done.

And near the end he wrote this.

"We owe much to our parents and our lord, and also to our friends and our retainers. And yet if we have no heart to repay those debts, in the end we will be punished by the gods and the Buddha."

So that he would think hard about it each morning and evening when he handled hot water and cold, he wrote it down here, he said.

In the tenth lunar month of that year, Josui went home to his domain and wrote to Hiroie again.

For the next two or three years, it would be best to watch how the world goes, he advised. Spend as little as you can, according to your means. After this advice, he wrote about himself.

"I am an old man, so I do not need to ask for anything in the future. I will only manage my land, while I amuse myself on outings."

Amusing himself on outings means wandering about for pleasure. Managing his land means the work of governing a territory. He was fifty-four. I suppose it meant he no longer had any big hopes.

After Hideyoshi, the lords of the Toyotomi side were split between Tokugawa Ieyasu's side and Ishida Mitsunari's side. Ieyasu was heading east with his army, and Josui's son Nagamasa had joined him. Josui stayed at his castle in Nakatsu, in Kyushu.

In the seventh lunar month of 1600, news reached Nakatsu that Mitsunari had raised an army. The battle that would decide the country had already begun. Get the camp ready quickly, Josui said, according to the kafu.

Josui had the gold and silver stored in the castle tower brought out and piled up in the great hall. Then he sent word through his territory. Anyone who wants to serve, whatever their rank, will be given this gold and silver and taken on.

Because he had always kept a large store, he had no shortage of money for this war. Josui is said to have told them so. The record says over three thousand six hundred people gathered.

Among them were some who took the gold and silver once and tried to line up a second time. One of his retainers caught such a man, and Josui scolded the retainer instead, they say. At a time like this, it is better to have even one more man in the count, so that both enemy and ally hear of it. Such questioning is unnecessary.

The man they called stingy was handing out the gold and silver from his castle tower.

It was in the middle of this, in the eighth lunar month, that Josui wrote that letter to Hiroie.

"This time, I do not think the bow and arrow will have their day. It is a pity."

He wrote it while he was gathering soldiers.

On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, Josui marched out of Nakatsu. In Kyushu, he went on to attack, one after another, the castles of lords who had joined Mitsunari's side.

In the middle of this, on the sixteenth day of the ninth lunar month, Josui wrote a private letter to Todo Takatora, a lord on Ieyasu's side.

"For Lord Kai, please arrange that he be given land in the Kamigata region (the Kyoto and Osaka area), so that he can serve the Lord Naifu as a house separate from mine."

Lord Kai is his son Nagamasa. The Lord Naifu is Ieyasu. In the same letter, Josui also asked Takatora to speak for him so that he could keep the land he had taken in this war.

The day before, the Battle of Sekigahara had already ended. In just one day, Ieyasu's side had won.

On the fourth day of the tenth lunar month, Josui wrote this to Hiroie.

"If the fighting on the Mino road in Kamigata had lasted until this month, I had thought I would go up through the Chugoku region (western Honshu) and fight one splendid battle. But it has all been for nothing, and things have gone as the Lord Naifu wished. It is a pity."

Perhaps, when he wrote two months earlier that the bow and arrow would not come to anything, he had also read that this would not be a war big enough for him to step into.

I am an old man, so I do not need to ask for anything in the future. He had written that, and not even a year had passed.

Let It Go as It Will

After the war, Josui told his son Nagamasa the following, the kafu says.

If Lord Ieyasu had lost at Sekigahara, the country would have fallen into chaos again. In that case, I meant to bring Kyushu under me first, then conquer the Chugoku region, march up to Kamigata, help Lord Ieyasu, make the country one, and serve him with all loyalty.

About the same war, in a letter to a friend, he had written: it is a pity.

According to the kafu, Josui went on.

"I have no more duties in this world. From now on I will just be a man with free time, and quietly enjoy the rest of my life."

Nagamasa became the lord of Chikuzen (the northwest of today's Fukuoka Prefecture). The place for his new castle was named Fukuoka, after a village in Bizen that had ties to the Kuroda ancestors.

Josui's life in retirement was plain. He kept only a few servants, and even when he went out to a neighbor's house, he took just one samurai carrying his sword and one man to carry his sandals. People who did not know Josui thought he was only stingy, the kafu says.

Gold and silver are no different from earth and stones if there is no use for them. I do not want to be employed by others and praised. Josui is said to have talked like this.

In 1604, Josui's illness grew worse. Nagamasa stayed by his side and cared for him.

From about a month before his death, Josui is said to have started cursing his retainers harshly.

The retainers were shocked. His illness has become so bad that he has lost his mind. There is no one who can reason with him. In their trouble, they told Nagamasa.

Nagamasa quietly went near his father and said in a low voice: the retainers are frightened and worried. Please be a little gentler.

Josui told him to bring his ear close, and answered in a low voice, it is said.

"This is for your sake. I have not lost my mind."

He wanted the retainers to dislike him and to start thinking that they wished Lord Nagamasa's time would come soon, Rojin Zatsuwa says.

One day, Josui called Kuriyama Bingo to his sickbed. This was Kuriyama Zensuke, who twenty-five years earlier had smashed the lock of the Arioka Castle prison with an axe.

In front of Nagamasa, Josui said he would pass the armor he wore on the battlefield to Bingo. According to a record quoted in the Taisho-era biography, he declared this.

"From today, think of this armor as me."

This should have gone to Nagamasa, he said, but he had his reasons for giving it to Bingo. When I die, support Nagamasa as if he were your own son. And to Nagamasa he said: think of Bingo as me, made young again, and do not go against his advice.

His last words differ depending on the record.

In Josankidan, a collection of anecdotes from the middle of the Edo period, Josui told Nagamasa that he was a gambler without equal. If Ishida had held out a little longer at Sekigahara, he said, he would have marched up from Kyushu and taken Japan in the palm of his hand.

In the kafu, Josui is said to have named the hour of his own death. It will be the hour of the Dragon (around eight in the morning), on the twentieth. Do not make the funeral grand. Do not put the Buddhist rites first. Governing the land and giving the people peace was the goal I loved. Make that your way of honoring me after I am gone.

And he wrote a death poem on a strip of paper, it is said, and gave it to Nagamasa.

It was a waka. The same kind of poem he had thrown himself into at seventeen or eighteen, until a monk scolded him.

"I have no words left to leave behind. / The road I take at last, / I will not lose my way on it, / letting it go as it will."

There are no words left that I would leave behind. I will not lose my way on the road I take at last. I leave it to what will be.

On the morning of April 19, 1604 (the twentieth day of the third lunar month), Josui died. He was fifty-nine.

When he wrote that the bow and arrow would not come to anything, Josui added: it is a pity. When the war ended almost at once, he wrote again: it is a pity.

Did he really have no words left to leave behind? He is also the man who is said to have talked about gambling on his deathbed.

But in the year he spent in the prison at Arioka, he could not even leave his cell by himself.

In that time, there was a retainer who swam across a pond at night to reach him. There was a friend who kept hidden to the end the son who had been ordered killed. There was someone who washed his clothes and sent them to the prison. There was a man who smashed the lock and carried out, on his back, the master who could not walk.

That man, in the end, was given his master's armor to keep.

The man who twice wrote that it was a pity put these words at the end of his death poem: let it go as it will.