A Time Traveller's Guide To Feudal Japan

And so commenced the first day of training. Five thousand men gathered in the palace courtyard. Where there had once been rows of beautiful flowers and carefully trimmed trees, there was nothing but the cold hard stone and the flat earth. It was a brutal sight on the senses.

Each man had a metre between himself and the next, and they were all arranged in orderly rows and columns, fully armoured with live steel sheathed at their h.i.p.s. They were ready to go to battle from the look of them. Red armour, blue armour, yellow armour and in places, black. Where peasants had once fielded a lone and measly dou over a ragged kimono, they had been equipped with full brown leather armour and twin swords to go with it, as befitted men who had endured what they had.

It was Jikouji that stood at the front, using the height offered by the palace steps so that all might see him. He was armoured as well as they, all in black, and his hand rested on the hilt of his weapon. He was an intensely intimidating sight with that sharp look on his face, and the demonic horns that shot up from his helmet.

Be they grand general or footsoldier, on the training field, the only man that outranked Jikouji was Gengyo, who now stood off to the side like a shadow, leaning against a pillar, drinking everything in. Even Matsudaira had been demoted to being amongst the rabble, but no man dared complain, for not a single one of them could match Gengyo’s blade, and so they knew more training to be needed.

There was a silence over the gathered men, but a gong had been set up in case there was not, and Jikouji would not let it go without use. He gave a nod to the serving-man with his hair tied up in an oiled top knot, and the servant drew back his hand, wielding his club, and he smacked the weighty bit of bronze metal right in the centre.

The gong trembled and oozed and it’s mournful sound, vibrating through their eardrums for a lengthy time. Only when its sound had completely stopped did Jikouji raise his voice to speak.

"Men of Takeda, men of Matsudaira, men of Miura. Greetings. I am General Jikouji of Toyone village. Today I will be overseeing your training session, and we will be getting very well acquainted," he announced. They had no trouble hearing what he had to say, for even as the old man’s body withered, his voice was still as firm as stone.

Gengyo smiled quietly to himself, enjoying the threatening nature of Jikouji’s speech. The most effective trainer was the one with a sadistic ilk, for he would enjoy your suffering, and that suffering would make you stronger.

"You have come dressed for war, as commanded. You can follow orders, but are you orderly? I think not. Looking at you now, you have about as much discipline as a herd of shitting cows. If I were to say," he paused for a moment, hoping to catch them off guard, "ABOUT TURN!... How many of you might respond?" As he had expected, the bulk – some three thousand Takeda men – all turned on their heel at once, their discipline engraved into them like dogs that feared the boot. They had been trained in the traditional way, and followed orders of that kind. Half the Matsudaira men turned, but it was done sluggishly. They had not drilled in decades.

"Look at that," Jikouji pointed with a tut, "half our army have vacated their brains. It is one thing to be a warrior, and another to be a soldier. Before I can teach you how to fight as men, I must teach you how to fight as an army."

He walked along the stairs so that he might see the full breadth of their forces. All the high ranking men had been put at the front, and so the generals were right in front of him. He could see a look of discontent on Rin’s face, and that Rokkaku’s lips were twisted in a snarl from his insults, all but ready to jump up there and strangle him. He paused in front of another man instead, and addressed him. "Yamamoto," he called out, speaking to the Takeda strategist, "what do you call men that can not obey orders?"

"Useless," the grizzled general replied dryly without missing a single beat.

Gengyo had to cover his mouth to quiet his chuckle at that, and even Jikouji could not stop himself from smiling. "Useless indeed," the old man agreed, continuing back along the line. "I am saddled with the task of making you better than useless, and only then will I offer to improve your martial skill. An army must be united, even if only in appearance. With that I answer the question you’ve all been asking yourselves: for what reason are you surrounded by vats of dye? You will remove your armour, and you will soak it in the dye, and you will do it now," His tone left no room for argument. It was full of authority. As soon as he finished his sentence, they began to move.

Rows of troughs and barrels and even buckets had been set up, all of them filled with dye of the purest black. It had been an idea Gengyo had come up with the night before. It was time for the Miura army to wear his colours, and so they did. Blood red armour soaked up the darkness and transitioned into a midnight black. The blue deepened and became coal. Yellow was overpowered in seconds and replaced by something much stronger. Even the white horse hair that clung to many of their helmets was steeped in dye, arising blacker.

They reformed their ranks as they left their equipment to steep. By the end of the day, it would be certain that the Miura army stood united.

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