The inside of the keep was made of gold.
The walls and pillars were lavishly covered in gold leaf, and nanban paintings and glassware brought over from overseas were crammed into every available space.
The missionaries' eyes shone when they saw it.
"Oh, how advanced Lord Nobunaga is. To take in the culture of the distant West with such enthusiasm. Truly a forward-looking man who sees the new age ahead."
My retainers said the same, in chorus.
"Our lord is not bound by old things. Guns, nanban goods, all alike. He is a genius of the new age, who thinks of what no one else can."
No.
Everything about it, no.
The reason I collected nanban goods, to begin with, was that I wanted a nanban cuirass. That iron breastplate forged by craftsmen in a faraway foreign land, said to stop even bullets.
Even if an assassin aimed a gun at me, as long as I wore that, I might live. With that in mind, I invited missionaries to the castle, served them sake, listened to them with a smile, and while I was at it, begged them to find me one. Then the missionaries, delighted, started bringing in one thing after another—nanban paintings, glass vessels, chairs with tall legs.
All I'd wanted was one cuirass, and before I knew it, the keep was buried in nanban goods. That's all it was.
I'm not someone who loves new things. I'm just a coward who wanted armor that was a little sturdier. Just a man who's scared, scared out of his mind, of being stabbed to death, of being shot to death.
And why did I even cover the walls in gold? Because I loved luxury? No. For this too, I had my own reason.
Gold reflects light well. Even with a single candle, the walls shine it back, and every corner of the room becomes bright as day.
With ordinary wooden walls, you can light dozens of lamps and there'll still be black shadows in the corners. I feel like something's lurking in those shadows, and I can't settle down. But golden walls bounce the light back and forth and chase away every last shadow.
If it's bright, no assassin can hide in the dark.
At night, someone might be hiding behind a pillar in my bedchamber. Just thinking that makes my breathing shallow and the back of my nightclothes stick to me with cold sweat. In that case, I'd just get rid of the dark itself, from the whole castle.
In other words, that glittering golden keep wasn't a taste for the exotic, or the extravagance of a ruler of the realm. It was the crystallization of my desperate fear—"I don't want there to be a dark spot anywhere, not even at night."
The night scares me. What's behind me scares me. The dark scares me most of all.
So I made the whole castle bright, all of it. That's all it was.
But there was no one anywhere I could say that to. If I said something like "I am afraid of the dark," the realm would turn upside down. So today, too, I'm reverently led into the golden hall, and I listen in silence, my face stiff, to the admiration of the missionaries and retainers.
The world called it innovation. Called it progress, called me a genius.
When all I was doing was being too scared to let the lamps go out all night.