Warring States Survival Guide
Chapter 89 - 55: Fight, hurry up and fight, I want to see rivers of blood!

Chapter 89: Chapter 55: Fight, hurry up and fight, I want to see rivers of blood!

The location chosen by the Oda Danjo Chonosuke family to hold Oda Nobuhide’s funeral was Juewang Mountain Temple, not too far from Oda Nobuhide’s residence, Mosen Castle. If you looked at this place in modern times—as Harano roughly estimated—it would seem to be in the Chikusa Ward of Nagoya City, though he couldn’t be sure. After all, five hundred years had passed and the terrain had changed quite a bit.

Juewang Mountain Temple naturally sat atop Juewang Mountain itself, and now the local powerful clans, earth warriors, household samurai from the Oda Danjo Chonosuke family, as well as invited temple abbots, shrine priests, and other guests, with attendants easily numbering over a thousand, were all crowded onto this low little mountain.

Harano and Ah Man were also mingling among them. But here on Juewang Mountain, he was at best just a small fry, his assigned spot way at the back—so much so he was nearly squeezed in with the troupe of female dancers.

Yeah, unlike the present day, funerals at this time included dancing—a sort of shamanic ritual dance, a tradition. Just like it described in the Ancient Chronicles: when a person dies, for eight days and eight nights, songs and dances are performed to send them to the Plain of Heaven.

Of course, the monks also played a part. At this time in Japan, local wild traditions and foreign Buddhist culture were mingling, and the monks were in the process of taking over funerals across the country. You just had to have monks chanting sutras at funerals—Oda Danjo Chonosuke’s family was loaded, and splurged to invite over five hundred "high monks" to recite The Sutra of Kṣitigarbha’s Original Vow on Nobuhide’s behalf—to dissolve his worldly karma and build up blessings for his next life.

So, Oda Nobuhide’s funeral as a whole became a spectacle of "demons dancing outside while arhats chanted up front," with Nobuhide himself packed into a gold-and-silver-inlaid coffin, laid out amidst a swirl of incense and banners in the great hall.

"If I could have this kind of send-off when I die—this level of spectacle—I’d gladly trade ten years of my life for it!" Ah Man gazed at the extravagant scene, as if she could actually smell money burning in the air. For a moment, she was in awe and longing, completely forgetting how she’d been grumbling the whole way about Oda Nobuhide being Owari’s biggest loser, saying they may as well dig a pit and bury him, why waste money on a funeral? People these days really have more money than sense.

It was Harano’s first time witnessing a funeral of this scale, too. Just paying for five hundred arhats and five hundred "witches" was a massive expenditure, not to mention all the banners emblazoned with fancy family crests and the heap of incense and candles burning. This was real, literal money to the flames. Not that he cared much about his own afterlife—bury him or burn him, it was all the same. He hardly envied Ah Man’s starry-eyed longing.

Ah Man seethed with envy for a while, but when Harano didn’t play along, her boredom quickly returned. She stood on tiptoe for another look at the dazzling gold coffin, then seemed to notice something odd. She rubbed her eyes and looked again, frowning in puzzlement: "Hey, where’s Oda the Big Fool? What’s going on?"

Harano paused, pulling his eyes away from the wild, mysterious dancing witches and glancing toward the main hall. The distance was far, and he couldn’t see clearly, so he commented offhandedly, "The man next to the coffin, that should be him, right? Where else would he be at a time like this?"

"Not him!" Ah Man, whose eyes seemed almost superhuman after all her training, squinted so hard she nearly went cross-eyed. Very certain, she said, "If you look at the age, that’s probably his younger brother, Oda Kenshun."

Harano found it odd, too: "Really? Isn’t he the eldest son? And the Oda Danjo Chonosuke heir? Shouldn’t he be standing by the coffin?"

"Yeah, it should be him, but where is he?" Ah Man let her eyes return to normal, her dark irises whirling nimbly. Then she brightened, exclaiming in delight, "Could it be he’s already been bumped off?"

She’d actually bet with Harano before that within two years of Oda Nobunaga’s rise, the Danjo Chonosuke family would collapse for sure. If the clan self-destructed before Nobunaga could even take power, and he was killed in a coup, well, in her eyes that meant she’d won, and Harano would owe her five coins—fair and square.

Harano definitely didn’t believe Oda Nobunaga was dead—he knew well enough that Nobunaga died at Honnoji Temple, at least cursory knowledge. But it was strange not to see him here now. He’d even asked Ah Man before about the funeral procedures of this era, to avoid embarrassing himself, and knew that everyone present had to offer incense. When the time came, a representative of the Danjo Chonosuke family would give the return greeting—so aside from Nobunaga, the legitimate eldest son, who else could represent the family?

Could it be that Oda Nobunaga was up to his usual "wild and eccentric" tricks again, flouting ritual, and dared to skip his own father’s funeral?

This was just absurd, wasn’t it?

Unwilling to believe it, Harano squinted again to try to spot Nobunaga near the coffin, but still didn’t see him. The powerful local families and samurai, who’d been quietly, solemnly waiting to offer incense, also seemed to notice that something was off inside the hall—whispering to one another with odd looks on their faces.

Just then, a senior retainer of the Danjo Chonosuke family, completely ignoring the ongoing funeral ritual and the priest painting gold-character spells on the coffin, and nowhere near incense time, hurried straight into the hall to consult with a woman in her thirties standing near the coffin.

"That lady must be Oda Nobuhide’s widow, Lady Tsuchida, right?" Harano asked Ah Man.

Ah Man didn’t even need a second look. Now, aside from monks, everyone in the hall was from the Oda clan, and she was the only woman among them. So she answered directly, "That’s right, daughter of the Tsuchida family, a legitimate descendant of the Taira clan, very high-standing. Oda Nobuhide married her for her lineage, even took to using the Taira butterfly crest. Otherwise, those yokel ancestors of his would’ve had nothing to show."