The Fog of Sekigahara

Tokugawa Ieyasu, Lord of the Eastern Army

You have waited your entire life for this moment. Born as a hostage, raised as a vassal, you served Oda Nobunaga and then Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the two men who unified Japan. When Hideyoshi died two years ago, leaving a child heir, you began the patient work of building a coalition to take power. Ishida Mitsunari, Hideyoshi's loyal administrator, has gathered the Western lords against you. But you have spent decades cultivating alliances, and you believe the Western coalition is fragile. Kobayakawa Hideaki, who commands 16,000 men on Mount Matsuo overlooking the battlefield, has secretly promised to switch sides. But Kobayakawa is young, indecisive, and terrified. His promise may be worth nothing when the arrows start flying.

The narrow Nakasendo road passes through a valley flanked by mountains near the village of Sekigahara in central Japan. Tomorrow, the two greatest armies in Japanese history will collide here to determine who rules the nation. Tokugawa Ieyasu's Eastern Army of approximately 75,000 faces Ishida Mitsunari's Western Army of roughly 80,000. But the numbers are deceptive. Fully a third of the Western Army is commanded by Kobayakawa Hideaki, a young lord who has promised to defect to the Eastern side but has shown no sign of doing so. The night is cold, fog rolls through the valley, and in every camp generals are calculating odds, writing death poems, and sending final messages. By this time tomorrow, Japan will have a master.