"The Nozawa family?" Ahei frowned and pondered for a moment, but couldn't recall which important figure carried the family name Nozawa. Yet after a moment's thought, she stopped trying to remember; in the end, knowing he was of noble status was enough. Affairs of the court and samurai were something commoners could never fully grasp.
She changed the subject and asked, "What else?"
Yayoi thought for a moment and said, "They seem to have come from very far away, and aren't very familiar with Owari Province."
Perhaps they had come from the direction of Koga, Omi, or Iga, or maybe they'd just finished visiting the Ise Grand Shrine and were on their way to Atsuta Shrine. Ahei had seen Nozawa emerge from the mountains with her own eyes; his accent was strange too, so he was likely a stranger who'd forced his way over the mountains into Owari Province. His martial skills must be impressive—deep in the Ise Mountains, wild boars run rampant, along with bears and wolves (Japanese wolves had not yet gone extinct at this time). Without courage and strength, most would die crossing those mountains. Anyone daring to climb them in these times was no ordinary person, not to mention that Nozawa managed to carry an injured companion out over mountain and ridge—he absolutely had to be an exceptional warrior.
Theoretically, when a companion is gravely injured deep in the mountains, the most survival-oriented choice is to leave them behind and escape at once; otherwise, just the wasted energy could be enough to drag down an average person and get them both killed.
Ahei pondered all this and glanced once more at her daughter, silently urging her to go on.
Yayoi thought again, then shook her head. "There's not much else. Lord Nozawa's clothes are really something—very smooth and thick, feels so soft and warm to the touch, and there are even gold threads and little decorations on them, so exquisite and beautiful."
In reality, they were copper alloy zippers and buttons she did not recognize.
"Maybe it's silk from Ming Country?" Ahei guessed offhand.
She'd heard Maeda Toshimasa owned a silk belt said to be extremely luxurious, shimmering in the sunlight, reflecting light—a simple servant like her had never seen it herself, but she supposed the material must be the same as Nozawa's clothes—so tightly woven it gleamed, with a slight sheen. The only fabric she could think of like that was the ornate silk from Ming Country.
Yayoi sighed dreamily; she too wished she could have such beautiful and warm clothing, even if it meant living a few years less. She couldn't help but mutter, "The style just isn't very good. Too strange. What a pity."
Ahei didn't mind. "Lord Nozawa is probably an Oddity—it's nothing if his attire is a bit strange."
"Oddity?" Yayoi heard a new word and was instantly very curious.
As a former rough servant who had worked in samurai households, Ahei had some experience and always took great care to nurture her daughter's knowledge, manners, and speech, hoping she might one day have the chance to work in Hosokawa Castle, perhaps even marry locally. After all, life for Japanese farming families was just too bitter. If stuck in Hibi Village, marrying a farmer, she'd likely go hungry all her life—Ahei herself was lucky enough to marry a "lower grade magistrate" (one who acts on high command), responsible for managing rural laborers as a "servant," and was already the envy of every woman in the village. Sometimes she even had enough to eat—common farm wives had it much worse, often hungry year-round, nothing but skin and bones.
She patiently imparted her knowledge: "Oddities are people whose words, actions, dress, and manners all surpass the norm. Generally, the stranger their look, the higher their status. You must always remember not to offend these nobles; they usually have pretty nasty tempers."
What she called "Oddity" had evolved from the earlier "Pusala" type of people.
"Pusala" originally referred to one of the twelve divine generals under Medicine Buddha—a figure with a bizarre appearance and extravagant clothes. Later, in the Nanboku-chō (Northern and Southern Courts) period, the word came to mean those with excessively extravagant dress, behavior, or both.
For example, the Kenmu Codes record: "Recently, those called Pusala are addicted to extravagance. Silks and brocades, exquisitely crafted silver swords—it's truly eye-catching, and can only be called madness."
So, having gone mad, could such people really be "good people"?
These people often clung to the principle of "all others are dirty, only I am pure"—striving for "the ultimate Pusala elegance," to "be different from the crowd," to "show off personal style." Their clothes couldn't be fine enough, their armor couldn't stand out enough, their behavior couldn't be strange enough.
Specifically: wearing only half their clothes (sometimes half-naked, not always the upper body), sporting all kinds of bizarre hairstyles, forging swords inlaid with gold and silver, painting totems and charms onto armor, attaching crescents, bull horns, tiger fangs, halos, or even flowering trees as outlandish ornaments onto their helmets, even playing tricks on high officials, setting maples ablaze, hurling dung at temples, or riding horses naked but for a braid and bearing an entire tree on parade—acts like these became their amusements.
At one time, Kyoto's culture of madness became extreme: if you weren't like this, you couldn't get famous; without fame, you couldn't get an official post; without an official post, you couldn't become a Guardian in the provinces; without being a Guardian, you couldn't levy excessive taxes; and without collecting taxes, you couldn't get rich.
And by the end of the Muromachi Shogunate, the "Pusala chic" intensified and became the "Oddity fashion."
For example, suits of armor grew more and more bizarre, with useless decorations piling up, haori and the Mother's Robe became even more brilliant in color, and there emerged such half-transparent, not-quite-military outfits as the "polka-dot sheer battle haori," and even helmets sprouted frontal crests as tall as two meters—paper-mâché covered in silver paint and shaped like crescents.
Helmets taller than a person—'strange' wasn't nearly strong enough to describe it.
Hairstyles followed suit—shaved heads, spiked tufts, the reverse-moon style—hair only on the forehead, all else gone—on and on, a grotesque parade, each more odd than the next.
Society's mood, too, was like this. For instance, the witch Okuni of Chiyu Shrine—to raise funds for shrine repairs, she adapted the "Buddha Chant Dance" (a religious dance for chanting and blessing), added storylines, dressed as a man, and took in large numbers of courtesans (much like Japan's later prostitutes) to perform for a living, famed for their bold and flamboyant style—a thing impossible before the Muromachi period, when Confucian morality would have seen Okuni executed at once, not widely celebrated.
Okuni later even became the founding mother of Japanese kabuki, though the birth of kabuki followed a twisted path:
"Courtesan kabuki" involved massive public orgies (while Okuni's performances had a rather pious, religious tone and targeted a high-end audience, the courtesans focused on stripping on stage under the pretext of storytelling, often simulating marriages between women) and clandestine ring-led prostitution, causing countless security problems and deaths, and was outlawed.
It was then forced to become "Wakashu kabuki," where beautiful boys performed in drag—the boys, more alluring dressed as women than women themselves, sparked widespread homosexuality and rampant affairs with the wives of samurai away at war, stoking public outrage, and so was banned as well.
Finally, it evolved into "Yarou kabuki," which only allowed adult men to act (in masks, with an emphasis on acting skill over looks), and so Japanese kabuki became what it is today.
In short, from any angle, life among the people during Japan's Warring States Period was incredibly chaotic, bizarre, and open. Nozawa wearing mountain gear and hiking boots, with short hair—those were nothing! However strange he might look, was he stranger than a naked man on horseback, with little braids and a sapling on his shoulder?
Ahei told Yayoi some stories she'd heard of Oddities; her daughter had never seen one, but Ahei herself had run across a few back in Hosokawa Castle, all forever burned into her memory. Yayoi listened in astonishment, her pupils dilating, her young mind greatly shaken—she hadn't expected that this Nozawa, who seemed so gentle and amiable, was secretly a lunatic, actually delusional. No surprise he'd just space out from time to time.
By the time Ahei's mouth had gone dry, she figured this counted as broadening her daughter's horizons. Night had grown deep, so she urged her to rest: "That's enough for now, go sleep for a bit, we'll take turns on watch tonight."
Yayoi was still unsatisfied, wanting to listen to more strange and marvelous Oddity tales, but being an obedient girl, she simply assented and went off to bed, leaving Ahei by the fireside to pick weeds from the grain and keep watch through the long night.
There was no help for it. With nobles in the house, someone needed to be awake in case the great lord needed something in the night and found no one to answer, lest a fit of rage end in family ruin. Best one of them stay up at all times.
Hopefully these two nobles will leave soon!