"So naturally the cousins allied themselves with powerful men who sought to unify Japan. This tale extends across three generations and as many shoguns—the first two being Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi—and has more twists and turns than a game trail over the mountains. The long and the short of it is that they threw in their lot with Tokugawa Ieyasu, who, a hundred years ago, won the Battle of Sekigahara, in part by using foot-soldiers armed with guns. In that battle my cousins won glory, and they won even more in the storming and the destruction of Osaka Castle, which took place in the Year of Our Lord 1615. My father was eighteen years old at the time, and he was one of the defenders of that castle, and of the Toyotomi family which was extinguished on that day.