Toranaga reveals to Hiro-matsu that his Osaka surrender is a ruse, transforming a quarrel over the next move into a test of trust and a disclosure of the campaign behind it. Hiro-matsu believes that Toranaga is abandoning a lifetime of political effort; Toranaga discloses that the apparent concession was meant to buy time. The reversal also gives Hiro-matsu a new duty: he must help preserve the deception, even from Toranaga’s other loyal retainers.

The dispute over Osaka

The disclosure begins with Hiro-matsu asking Toranaga for a decision about the future of his house: whether he truly intends to go to Osaka and bend to Ishido. Toranaga refuses the premise that he has made a final decision. Hiro-matsu finds this evasiveness difficult to reconcile with the patience and decisiveness that have, in his experience, brought Toranaga victory. To the old general, the proposed departure looks like an uncharacteristic surrender of hard-won power.

The legal situation sharpens the disagreement. Hiro-matsu acknowledges that Ishido and the other Regents remain the lawful rulers under the Taikō’s will, but declares that his allegiance belongs to Yoshi Toranaga-noh-Minowara alone. Toranaga announces that he has chosen to leave for Osaka the day after tomorrow and assigns Hiro-matsu command of the escort, with Buntaro second-in-command. The order makes the apparent submission immediate and concrete: Hiro-matsu is not being asked to discuss a possibility, but to lead the force that will carry Toranaga away from Yedo.

Hiro-matsu responds by asking whether Toranaga’s orders should temporarily be overruled. When Toranaga answers that this would be done on his own authority, Hiro-matsu sets down his sword and speaks without the protection of arms. His duty, he says, seems to require him to take command and prevent the departure, even though the resulting clash with Ishido would end in defeat. In Hiro-matsu’s judgment, a doomed resistance would at least preserve honor; escorting Toranaga to Osaka would instead make him complicit in throwing away a lifetime of work.

The order and its reversal

Toranaga presses Hiro-matsu to say whether he will refuse the escort order. The exchange pauses over the weather: a cloud passes over the sun, the two men look out at the windows, and they acknowledge that the year’s excessive rain threatens the harvest. The immediate danger in the conversation is political, but the threatened harvest places it against a wider pressure on the Kwanto. Toranaga then asks whether Hiro-matsu is formally asking if he orders him to lead the escort from Yedo and begin the journey to Osaka.

Once the question is put in that form, Toranaga appears to yield to the advice of his counselors. He says he will delay his departure. Hiro-matsu is unprepared for the reversal and asks whether Toranaga will not be leaving after all. Toranaga laughs, drops the mask of resignation, and tells him he never intended to go to Osaka. What had sounded like a genuine decision was a performance; Toranaga’s agreement at Yokosé had been a trick to gain time.

The trick has worked because its targets include more than Ishido. Ishido expects Toranaga in Osaka within weeks, while Zataki has also accepted the apparent agreement. Toranaga says that his own vassals, including Hiro-matsu, had to be taken in as well. If spies learned that his submission was false, Ishido could move against him at once, before Toranaga was ready. Hiro-matsu’s hurt at being deceived gives way to delighted recognition when he understands the plan, but the reveal makes clear that even loyalty could not exempt him from the deception.

A deception that must be maintained

Toranaga describes the benefit of the feigned agreement in practical terms. Without making a real concession, he has gained a month and thrown Ishido and his allies into confusion. They are already scrambling for the Kwanto, with both Kiyama and Zataki promised it. The rival leaders’ competing expectations and claims are part of the opening Toranaga has created: the appearance of his retreat has forced his opponents to maneuver around a future that he does not intend to accept.

The deception cannot end with Hiro-matsu’s discovery. Toranaga orders him to hold the generals together while the pretended departure remains in prospect, warning him to guard his face and sleep because he alone now knows the truth. Hiro-matsu, who had just offered his head and clan’s lives rather than permit Toranaga to abandon his cause, agrees to carry out this new duty. Toranaga instructs him to tell the generals that he persuaded his lord to accept their advice. The departure is formally postponed for seven days; later, Toranaga will postpone it again, this time on the pretext of sickness. The staged account is to be repeated even to those who share Hiro-matsu’s opposition to the journey.

That secrecy also gives new meaning to the earlier dispute. Hiro-matsu’s refusal was not simply an obstacle for Toranaga to overcome: it supplied a credible reason for delay, one that could be presented to the generals as their own counsel having prevailed. By directing Hiro-matsu to repeat that explanation, Toranaga turns the general’s genuine resistance into cover for a strategy neither the generals nor the enemy are meant to see. The trust between the two men is restored not by ending the deception, but by assigning Hiro-matsu responsibility for keeping it alive.

Delay, defense, and the eventual attack

Hiro-matsu asks whether Crimson Sky will follow. Toranaga replies that it was always a last plan and that, at the time of the earthquake, he ordered it as another feint to confuse Ishido. He had also arranged for selected parts of the discussion to reach the wrong ears. Toranaga does not present Crimson Sky as an immediate, decisive assault: Ishido’s forces remain, in his assessment, invincible, and Kiyama and Onoshi are implacably against him. He expects all the Christians to oppose him, with one exception whom he intends to put to use along with his ship.

Time, rather than a sudden attack, is the center of Toranaga’s battle plan. He says that allies and secret friends exist throughout the Empire and that every day gained weakens Ishido. Once the rains end, he expects Ishido to launch a simultaneous pincer against the Kwanto: Ikawa Jikkyu will lead the southern force, while Zataki advances from the north. Toranaga intends to contain Jikkyu at Mishima, then fall back toward Hakoné Pass and Odawara for a final stand. In the north, he plans to hold Zataki in the mountains along the Hosho-kaidō Road, somewhere near Mikawa.

The plan is to withstand the first attack and wait behind the mountains, fighting only to delay the enemy until the alliances against Toranaga begin to fracture. Crimson Sky remains in reserve for the moment when the opportunity is ripe. Toranaga links this patient defense to two larger stakes: securing the Kwanto and preserving the Taikō’s testament, so that Yaemon’s future will be assured. The reveal therefore replaces the apparent abandonment of Toranaga’s cause with a longer and more conditional strategy. Hiro-matsu’s charge is no longer to escort his lord into submission, but to maintain unity and silence until delay has made the intended attack possible.