MITSUNARI

In the autumn of 1600, a prisoner on his way to execution in Kyoto asked his guards for water. They offered him a persimmon instead. He refused it — persimmons, he said, were bad for the stomach. When the guards laughed, he answered that a man who hopes to do great things takes care of his health until the very last moment.

The prisoner was Ishida Mitsunari, who had led the army that fought Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara, and lost. For two and a half centuries, the winners called him a villain.

He began as a boy in the household of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler who unified Japan. He was no great swordsman. He counted, measured, and judged — running cities, organizing supplies, surveying lands — and became one of the most powerful officials in Japan. His honest reports made bitter enemies of Hideyoshi's generals. When Hideyoshi died, those enemies tried to kill him, and Ieyasu pushed him aside. In 1600 he raised an army to fight back. His best friend told him he would lose, and joined him anyway.

Told as a narrative history from beginning to end, with a cast of characters, a map, and a travel guide to the places you can still visit today, this book says plainly what the records show, what historians still debate, and which famous stories are only legends — including the three cups of tea and the persimmon.

Inside, you'll find:

- A village boy, three cups of tea, and Hideyoshi's household
- Cities, supplies, and land surveys: the work that made him powerful
- Shima Sakon, and the failed water siege of Oshi Castle
- Sawayama Castle, and the rules he gave his villages
- The war in Korea, and the generals who never forgave him
- The night seven generals set out to kill him
- His friend Ōtani Yoshitsugu, and the raising of the Western army
- The Battle of Sekigahara, seen from Mitsunari's hill
- Capture, the persimmon, and the long making of a villain
- A guide to visiting the places in this story today, from Nagahama and Sawayama to Sekigahara, Kyoto, and Oshi Castle

If you want a hero who won, this is not your book. If you want the real story of the man who lost Sekigahara and never changed sides, turn the page and meet the real Mitsunari.