I drove the shogun out of Kyoto.
Ashikaga Yoshiaki. The fifteenth Muromachi shogun. The man who held in his hands the Ashikaga rule over the realm, which had lasted more than two hundred years.
I threw that man out of Kyoto.
Put into words, it sounds simple. But after I did it, my blood ran cold. It was a matter grave enough to turn the world upside down. After all, the Muromachi age was over.
Two hundred years. A name that had stood at the summit of this country since long before I was born. And it snapped in two.
By my hand.
"Oda Nobunaga has at last surpassed even the shogun."
"With his own hands he has folded away the Ashikaga realm and opened the door to a new age."
"Behold the fathomless ambition of the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven."
My retainers said it and trembled. People in later ages will surely write it that way too.
That I opened the door to a new age.
No.
I didn't want to open any door.
Far from opening it, if I could have, I'd have locked it, slid the bar across too, and stayed curled up inside it, perfectly still.
It was me who brought Yoshiaki to Kyoto in the first place. I carried him on my shoulders in the march on Kyoto and set him in the shogun's seat. I thought I was doing him a favor he'd owe me for. If the man at the summit was on my side, nothing could be more reassuring. And yet, before I knew it, that man had come to resent me and begun sending letters everywhere telling people to strike down Nobunaga.
Gonaisho, they're called. Letters written in the shogun's name, saying kill me. When I heard they were flying around all the provinces, I couldn't get food down.
Being betrayed scares me most of all.
The feeling of a blade coming around behind my back is what I hate most. The back of my head always feels exposed and cold. I feel like someone's aiming for it, and I can't sleep properly at night.
So I had no choice but to throw him out.
I didn't want to kill him. To cut down with my own hands a man I'd bowed to so much and carried on my shoulders—just thinking about it made me sick. So I left him his life, and had him leave Kyoto. That was the most kindness I could manage.
And then the Ashikaga realm came to an end.
When all I wanted was to protect my own back.
That same year, the Azai of Omi and the Asakura of Echizen were destroyed too. The ones who had betrayed me and cornered me again and again.
I fought, and fought, and fought, and in the end I destroyed them. Not because I wanted to. I just had nowhere to run. They kept pointing blades at me, so I kept brushing them away, trembling. When I looked up, they were gone.
Every time I destroyed someone, I hugged my knees in bed at night. I've gone and made it fewer again. Friend or foe, someone who had been around me, around this person I am, had vanished from my side again.
And so, before I knew it.
I was standing at the very highest point of the realm.
As the conqueror of a new age, who had surpassed the shogun.
When I looked down at my feet, the ground was far, far away. A high place has nothing to hide behind. No walls. No pillars. Just exposed on every side. Anyone can aim at you from anywhere. Anyone can push you off from anywhere.
Fall from here, and you won't get off lightly.
Made to stand at the very highest point of the realm.
I was just unbearably afraid.
I wanted to hurry back down to some low place where no one was watching.