Sunlight flashed a hundred li in an instant, leaving the Buyo-Kanham Tribe with its celebration and wedding behind and arriving in the south, beneath Mount Ezo Fuji, at the sturdy camp the Wajin had built. Above the camp, the Kakizaki Clan's banner fluttered weakly, like a snapped willow branch. The Wajin samurai had withdrawn a hundred li south in one breath, every one of them dusty-faced and dejected, and many had even lost their weapons and banners.
Yet what was even more despairing than losing weapons and banners was that they had lost their chief elder and general, lost the honor of samurai, and gained instead a bone-deep shame of having been "defeated by the Ezo People"! Beneath this shameful reputation, everyone's prospects and future seemed to totter on the brink, like a lame Hound facing an uneasy tomorrow.
"Hachiman Great Bodhisattva! Without Elder Kudo, who can gather the samurai together again at a time like this and revive our house's morale? I fear that aside from the legendary Lord Nobuhiro, there is no one else, is there? Not even his son can do it, can he?..."
The Kakizaki Clan's retainers were shrouded in the gloom after defeat. Even the most delicious army rations, precious rice balls wrapped around plums, had lost their proper fragrance. Sadder still was their commander, Kakizaki Mitsuhiro. He did not immediately restore the army's morale, nor did he have that kind of prestige, experience, or ability. He merely stared upward in a daze, gazing at the white snowcap of Mount Ezo Fuji, and recited an ancient waka from the Manyoshu.
"The more I came to know this world was empty, the deeper my sorrow grew..."
"I have truly come to understand the emptiness and impermanence of this world, yet I feel all the sadder for