The Nightingale and the Shoguns

This year's NHK historical drama was about Atsu-hime, the little girl from Kyushu who grew up to be the mainstay of the Tokugawa ruling family.

Tokugawa is the family name of the longest-lasting line of warlords (shogun) in Japanese history. The founder was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He succeeded Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was the successor to Oda Nobunaga. There were only those three who could claim control over Japan in its then entirety, though there are many others whose names live in Japanese history.

Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu were vastly different in style and temperament, and they are sometimes used as personality prototypes. One summation of their characters provides the theme of a children's song about nightingales.

The song asks the rhetorical question, "What will you do if the nightingale won't sing?"

In the song, Nobunaga answers, "I will kill it. Kill it I will."
Hideyoshi answers, "I'll make it sing. Make it sing, I will."
Ieyasu's reply goes, "Then I will wait. I will wait until it sings."

What do you do when you have a dream you want to bring into the world? Do you kill it off? Do you muscle it into reality? Do you wait for it to happen all by itself?