by VIKING ADULT
“but he owes anyone of mine consideration. Instead, without a qualm,
he humiliates a mere boy. No, I will not forgive him for this!
This is the sort of thing that loses you people’s respect. I’ll teach him a lesson.
Oh, yes, I’ll take care of this regent!”
To all this, Lord Shigemori replied,
“I see no reason to feel offended.
An insult from Yorimasa or Motomitsu
would certainly humiliate our house,
but for a son of mine not to dismount
when he meets the regent on the road—
that is where the outrage lies.”
He summoned the housemen involved and reprimanded them sternly.
“Hereafter,” he told them, “you will do well to remember what I say.
For the folly of your offense,
I will apologize to the regent.”
So he spoke, then withdrew.
This is what happened next. Without a word to his son, Lord Kiyomori gathered ruffians from the depths of the countryside, together with others who feared only his orders—sixty and more of them, under Nanba and Seno-o. “On the twenty-first of next month,” he said, “the regent is to go to the palace, to arrange His Majesty’s coming-of-age. Ambush him wherever you please, cut off his outriders’ and attendants’ hair, and cleanse the shame suffered by Sukemori.”
The regent never dreamed what awaited him.
His Majesty was to come of age in the following year, don a man’s headdress,
and offer a banquet and new appointments to his assembled officials.
To plan all this, the regent needed time in his palace quarters.
He therefore made his train more elegant than for any commonplace outing.
He set off westward along Naka-no-mikado, planning to enter by the Taiken Gate.
The Rokuhara force lay in wait
near where Inokuma crossed i-no-mikado:
three hundred helmeted riders in full armor.
They surrounded him front and rear
and with one voice raised their battle cry.
His outriders and attendants,
dressed up for today’s grand occasion,
they chased and chivied in all directions,
dragged them down from their mounts,
trampled them into the dust,
and cut off every last man’s hair.
One who lost his was Takemoto,
a member of the Right Palace Guards
and one of the regent’s ten attendants.
There was also Takanori,
a Fujiwara and former chamberlain.
“This isn’t your hair, you realize,”
the man who took it informed him.
“No indeed, it’s your master’s.”
Next they ran the tips of their bows into the regent’s carriage,
tore down his blinds, cut the chest and rump straps of his ox,
and raced back to Rokuhara, whooping with glee.
“Well done!” said Kiyomori.
One of the regent’s grooms was an Inaba herald, Toba no Kunihisamaru by name.
He was junior, yes, but still a man of fine feeling.
He stayed with the carriage and brought it back to the regent’s residence.
The rite of the master’s return ensued, inexpressibly bitter.
To dry his tears, the regent pressed his court-dress sleeves to his eyes.
Lords Kamatari and Fuhito
naturally need no mention here;
never once, though, since the days
of Lords Yoshifusa and Mototsune
had a regent been treated this way.
This was when the Heike began to go bad.
In great agitation Lord Shigemori dismissed all the housemen involved.
“Whatever outlandish order my father may have issued,” he declared,
“you could at least have given me some inkling of it.
And you, Sukemori, are a disgrace.
They say that sandalwood smells sweet
the moment it puts forth its first two leaves.
By his eleventh or twelfth year,
a boy should understand right conduct
and uphold it on every occasion.
That you have committed this outrage
reflects badly on Lord Kiyomori.
Your behavior is grossly unfilial.”
For a time he banished his son
to the distant province of Ise.
For this, both sovereign and ministers
were, it seems, grateful to him.
12. Shishi-no-tani
Discussion of His Majesty’s coming-of-age was called off that day.
The meeting took place instead on the twenty-fifth,
in the cloistered emperor’s own privy chamber.
Under the circumstances the regent could hardly attend,
and on the ninth of the twelfth month he therefore received advance notice
of the decree that on the fourteenth elevated him to the office of chancellor.
On the seventeenth he formally expressed his thanks.
However, people at large seemed by no means pleased.
Meanwhile the year drew to a close.
Early in the next year, Ka 3, [1171] on the fifth of the first month, the emperor’s coming-of-age was held at last. On the thirteenth he set out on the customary round of imperial visits. Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa received him, as did Kenshunmon-in, and both must have found him enchanting in a man’s headdress. A daughter of Lord Kiyomori entered his service as a consort in her fifteenth year. She did so as the cloistered sovereign’s adopted daughter. It was then that the chancellor Moronaga, still only palace minister and left commander, resigned his commander’s post.
The Tokudaiji grand counselor, Sanesada, was rumored to be his successor.
The Kasan-no-in counselor Kanemasa had hopes of his own.
Then there was the newly appointed grand counselor Narichika,
third son of the late Naka-no-mikado counselor Fujiwara no Ienari.
He openly coveted the post, and he enjoyed the cloistered emperor’s favor.
He therefore commissioned all sorts of prayers.
First, at the shrine of Hachiman,37 he assigned one hundred monks, on retreat,
to read the Great Wisdom Sutra in full, continuously, for seven days.
While they were so engaged,
three turtledoves flew in
from toward Otokoyama,
landed on the mandarin orange tree
before the Kra sanctuary,
and pecked one another to death.
“The dove is Hachiman’s messenger.
At this temple, here by his shrine,
no such wonder has ever been seen.”
So Kysei, the temple abbot,
testified to His Majesty.
At the Bureau of Shrines meanwhile,
divination disclosed this meaning:
“Disorder throughout the realm:
a threat less to the emperor
than to officials and ministers.”
Lord Narichika felt no alarm. By day there were too many people about,
so he walked nightly, for seven nights, from his home,
near the Naka-no-mikado and Karasumaru crossing,
all the way to the Upper Kamo Shrine.38
On the seventh and last night, he came home exhausted,
lay down at once, and dropped off to sleep.
In a dream he then found himself again at Upper Kamo.
The doors of the sanctuary opened wide, and a voice of eerie power intoned:
Ah, cherry blossom,
never blame the wind that blows
down the Kamo River:
There is nothing it can do
to spare you your coming fall.
Lord Narichika, undaunted,
confined an ascetic at Upper Kamo,
built for him a ritual dais
within the cryptomeria cave
/>
behind the sanctuary hall,
and launched him on one hundred days of performing the rite of Dakini.39
During this time a lightning bolt struck the mighty cryptomeria tree,
sending up great flames that also threatened the sanctuary.
The people of the shrine raced en masse to put them out.
Then they sought to banish the holy man and his most unholy rite,
but he would not move. “I have made a great vow,” he insisted,
“to spend a hundred days on retreat at this shrine, and this is the seventy-fifth.
No, I shall stay.” The shrine priests reported this to the palace.
“Banish him as your laws require,” came the decree in reply.
With their staffs of white wood, the shrine men battered his head,
then hounded him southward from their land, beyond Ichij.
The gods reject the unrighteous,
they say, and this Narichika,
with his prayers for appointment
above himself, to commander,
may well have provoked the blaze.
In matters of rank and office,
neither the cloistered emperor
nor the regent had his will;
only Heike desires counted.
So it was that both Sanesada
and Kanemasa lost out.
Lord Kiyomori’s eldest son,
Shigemori, from right commander
moved to left, and Munemori,
his second, a counselor,
over the heads of several seniors
rose to command the right.
For this there are simply no words.
Sanesada especially—
ranking grand counselor that he was,
scion of the highest nobility,
gifted scholar, firstborn of his house—
passing him over was dreadful.
People whispered among themselves,
“He’s certain now to renounce the world.”
But no, he decided to watch and wait.
He resigned his grand-counselor post
and, they say, retired to his home.
Lord Narichika declared, “I could not really have objected
if Sanesada or Kanemasa had been appointed rather than me.
But Kiyomori’s second son! That, I cannot stomach.
This comes from their always getting what they want.
I will find a way to bring down the Heike and get what I want.”
These were terrible words.
While his father had risen to counselor,
he, the youngest son, was a grand counselor at senior second rank.
He had been granted several large provinces, and his sons and retainers
prided themselves on the high esteem they enjoyed at court.
What can have possessed him, then, when he already had everything?
Some devil or other, surely.
In the Heiji years, too, as the governor of Echigo and a Guards captain,
he had sided with Nobuyori and was nearly executed,
but Lord Shigemori interceded for him, and his head remained on his shoulders.
A stranger, however, to gratitude,
he amassed arms in a secret location,
recruited a force of warriors,
and bent every effort to his designs.
Shishi-no-tani, a ravine below the Eastern Hills, runs at the back into Miidera land. It makes a perfect fortress. The prelate Shunkan had a villa there, and there the conspirators met regularly, to plot the downfall of the Heike. Once Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa himself made a progress to the villa, accompanied by the monk Jken, a son of the late minor counselor Shinzei.
His Cloistered Eminence mentioned the subject to Jken that night at the drinking party.
Jken was horrified. “How appalling!” he cried. “A lot of people know about it already, and there will be very big trouble if it gets out.”
Narichika paled and rose abruptly to his feet. The sleeve of his hunting cloak caught the wine jar that stood before the sovereign and knocked it over.
“What does that mean?” Go-Shirakawa asked.
Narichika shot back, “Down go the Heike!”
His Eminence laughed aloud. “Come up here, each one of you,” he called. “Come up and entertain us!”
The police lieutenant Yasuyori responded first. “Ah, these wine jars!” he complained.40 “There are too many, and I’m so drunk!”
“What are we going to do about it?” asked Shunkan.
“There’s nothing like taking heads!” the monk Saik answered. He knocked the head off a wine jar and vanished into an inner room.
Jken remained speechless with shock. The whole thing was terrifying.
Who were they, then, these conspirators?
The mi captain and novice monk Renj,
in lay life known as Narimasa;
Shunkan, the superintendent of Hosshji;
Motokane, the governor of Yamashiro;
Masatsuna, from the Bureau of Ceremonial;
police lieutenants Yasuyori, Nobufusa, Sukeyuki;
the chamberlain Yukitsuna, of the Settsu Genji;
and many others beside them,
all members of the cloistered emperor’s guard.
13. The Fight over Ugawa
This Hosshji superintendent, Shunkan, was a grandson of Lord Masatoshi,
the Kygoku Genji grand counselor:
a gentleman from no very warlike line, but excessively evil-tempered.
Resenting that anyone should pass his residence, near the crossing of Kygoku and Sanjbmon,
he constantly posted himself at his gate, teeth clenched in visible rage.
Perhaps descent from this man made Shunkan,
monk though he was, testy and haughty enough to join this absurd conspiracy.
Lord Narichika summoned the chamberlain Yukitsuna. “I look to you as my battle commander,” he said. “Whatever provinces and estates you desire will be yours if our enterprise succeeds. In the meantime here is material to make bags for the bows.” He gave Yukitsuna fifty bolts of white cloth.
On the fifth of the third month of Angen 3, [1177] when Lord Moronaga became chancellor, Shigemori rose to palace minister in his stead, over the head of Grand Counselor Sadafusa. It was a fine thing indeed to be both minister and Palace Guards commander. A congratulatory banquet was held at once. The guest of honor was apparently Lord Tsunemune, the i-no-mikado right minister.
Moronaga’s birth would normally have forbidden so high an appointment,
but there was his father, Yorinaga, the Haughty41 Left Minister, to consider.
The cloistered emperor’s North Guard did not exist of old.
It was established in the time of Retired Emperor Shirakawa,
and many of its members had served in the Palace Guards.
Tametoshi and Morishige, in their youth Senjumaru and Imainumaru, were the stalwarts among them.
In Retired Emperor Toba’s day, Suenori and Sueyori, father and son,
served their sovereign and sometimes apparently conveyed petitions to him.
All these acted strictly within the limits imposed by their station.
Under Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa, however,
the men of the North Guard overreached themselves egregiously,
scorned senior nobles and privy gentlemen alike,
and broke every rule of right conduct. Juniors rose to command rank,
and some ranking guardsmen were even granted access to the privy chamber.
The more this sort of thing went on, the more arrogant they became.
No doubt that explains why they supported this ill-conceived plot.
Two among them had once served
the late Shinzei, a minor counselor first,
then a novice in religion:
Moromitsu and Narikage.
One began as a local official
active in the province of Awa;
/> the other was from the capital.
Being, both of them, of low birth,
they had tasted mean employment,
but quick wits had lifted them up:
Moromitsu to junior officer
in the Left Palace Guards and Narikage
to the very same rank in the Right.
In unison, then, both at once
moved to posts in the Gate Watch.
When the Shinzei affair arose,
the two together renounced the world.
Now both novices, Saik and Saikei,
still served His Cloistered Eminence
by overseeing his storehouses.
Saik had a son, Morotaka by name. Being a lively fellow, too,
he steadily rose to the fifth rank and a junior officer post in the police.
On the twenty-ninth of the twelfth month of Angen 1, [1175]
the year-end appointments list named him to govern the province of Kaga.
In the way of running his province,
he violated law and decorum,
confiscated land and estates
equally from shrines and temples,
from the wealthy and the mighty,
with disconcerting abandon.
Certainly, long ages have passed
since the wise Duke Zhao ruled Zhou,
but government with a light hand—
that, at least, one could have asked.
While he pursued his arrogant ways,
in the summer of Angen 2
his younger brother, Morotsune,
went to Kaga as deputy governor.
The monks of Ugawa, a mountain temple near the provincial seat,
had heated water and were taking their bath
when Morotsune, just arrived in the province,
burst in on them, threw them out of the bathhouse,
got into the bath himself, and had his underlings dismount to wash their horses.
The monks were furious.
“Never before,” they cried, “has a provincial official violated these precincts.
Respect precedent at once and desist from this outrage!”
“Past deputies were incompetent,
and the people looked down on them.
This one you will find to be different.
Obey the law!” Morotsune ordered,
but the monks moved resolutely to repel these officious intruders.
The government men seized every chance to break into the temple again.
