by VIKING ADULT
Jish 4, seventh month, fourteenth day
Received by former intendant of the Right Watch Mitsuyoshi for transmission to former Right Watch officer Minamoto no Yoritomo
Yoritomo, so they say,
put into a brocade bag
this most precious of decrees
and even during the battle
fought at Mount Ishibashi
kept it hung around his neck.
11. The Fuji River
Meanwhile at Fukuhara a council of senior nobles ordered a punitive force
dispatched in haste, before Yoritomo could gather an army.
Overall command lay in the hands of the Palace Guards lieutenant Koremori.
Tadanori, the governor of Satsuma, served as his deputy.
The force, thirty thousand strong, left Fukuhara on the eighteenth of the ninth month,
reached the old capital on the nineteenth,
and on the twentieth set off at once on its eastward mission.
In his twenty-third year, Koremori,
with his fine looks and his martial air,
made a picture no brush could convey.
With him he had borne, in a chest,
Karakawa, for so it was named:165
the heirloom armor of his house.
On the road he wore red brocade
under armor with green lacing,
mounted the while on a dappled gray
and seated on a gold-edged saddle.
His deputy, Lord Tadanori,
wore, over brocade of dark blue,
black-laced armor, and he rode
a sturdy, powerful black steed
bearing a black-lacquered saddle
sprinkled with flecks of silver and gold.
Horses, saddles, armor, helmets,
bows and arrows, daggers and swords—
all of them so glittered and shone
as to give pleasure to every eye.
Lord Tadanori had long frequented a certain gentlewoman, a princess’s daughter.
Once when he went there, she had a visitor with her,
another gentlewoman of the highest rank.
The two ladies went on talking rather a long time,
and the evening slipped by, yet the guest still made no move to leave.
For some time Tadanori paced about under the eaves,
fanning himself somewhat assertively.
The lady he had come to see murmured this, with elegant grace:
Dear me, how the crickets sing,
out there on the moor!
Tadanori gave up fanning himself and went home.
The next time he went to see her, she said,
“Do tell me why the other day you stopped your fanning.”
“Well,” he answered, “because I gathered that I was annoying you.”
Now that Tadanori was leaving, she sent him a short-sleeved underrobe
with this expression of regret that he was bound far away:
Down the eastward road,
brushing endless leafy fronds
in passing, your sleeves
still will gather no such dews
as mine, languishing behind.
Tadanori replied,
That I leave you now
need not move you to lament,
for before me lies
that barrier crossed of old
toward immortal glory.
“That barrier crossed of old”:
Tadanori had in mind,
surely, memories of the day
when Taira no Sadamori
led imperial forces east
to subdue Masakado.
What an elegant way to say it!
When in years gone by a commander
started out for some distant region
to suppress an enemy of the court,
he went first of all to the palace,
to receive the Sword of Command.
His Majesty by then had repaired
to the Shishinden, to await him,
while the Palace Guards stood, rank on rank,
below the great hall’s steps. Two ministers,
inner and outer, manned their posts,
and a banquet welcomed all nobles.
The commander and his deputy
received their swords as custom required.
Those precedents, however, were set
too long ago to be followed now.
The one invoked looked back instead
to the day when Taira no Masamori
marched off to Izumo, to crush
Minamoto no Yoshichika;
for this time the commander received
merely a traveling official’s bell,
to be carried in a leather bag
around the neck of some underling
on the way to execute his orders.
In the old days, such a commander,
charged with suppressing rebellion,
bore in mind on leaving the capital
three indispensable principles:
from the day he received the sword,
to forget his house; when on the road,
to forget his wife and children;
and, when engaged with the enemy,
to forget his very life.
This Heike commander, Koremori,
and his deputy, Tadanori, too,
must therefore have felt that way.
Theirs makes a rousing story.
On the twenty-first day of the same month, the retired emperor, Takakura,
set off on a pilgrimage to Itsukushima in the province of Aki.
He had been there already once before, in the third month.
Perhaps that is why the world was quiet for a month or two thereafter
and no misfortune afflicted the people. But then Prince Mochihito’s rebellion
again disturbed the realm and threw society into chaos.
His Eminence seems therefore to have gone
in order to pray that peace be restored, and with it his own health.
This time he left from Fukuhara, which greatly lightened his journey.
He personally drafted his formal prayer to the deity,
and the regent, Lord Motomichi, wrote out the fair copy.
The dharma nature is said to be unclouded. The mid-month moon shines high in a clear sky. With profound wisdom, sensible manifestations of the divine blend the opposing currents of yin and yang. At far-famed Itsukushima, wonders surpass comparison. Distant peaks enfold the sanctuaries, rendering visible lofty compassion; ocean waters lap the halls, conveying the depth of the Salvific Vow.
As to myself, I first assumed the undeserved dignity of the sovereign; now, in the spirit of Laozi,166 I enjoy a retired emperor’s peace and ease. Yet I nonetheless summoned all my resolve, in private, to come on pilgrimage to this secluded isle. Here below the sacred fence, I begged for divine favor, with strenuous earnestness I offered up my prayers, and within the sanctuary I hearkened to an oracle that remains even now graven upon my heart. Divination revealed when peril most threatened me: late summer and early autumn. All at once sickness invaded my body, defeating the best that physic could do. Days and months passed. More and more clearly, I saw how right the divine response had been. No prayers I commissioned ever dispersed the miasma. Only one course of action remained. Rousing my courage, I prepared to repeat that arduous journey. Endless cold winds on the way broke my dreams, and by the light of comfortless suns my gaze descried only distant horizons.
Now at last I have reached the sacred grove and spread in reverent awe a pilgrim’s mat. I present my offerings: on colored paper and in black ink, a full copy of the Lotus Sutra accompanied, in single scrolls, by the sutra’s opening and concluding scriptures, by the Amida Sutra, and by the Heart Sutra; and, written out by me in gold, the “Devadatta” chapter of the Lotus.
The mighty pines and oaks here sow beneath their spreading boughs the seeds of beneficence, and voices chanting the scriptures merge in subtle
harmony with the murmur of rising and falling tides. A mere eight days ago, this disciple of the Buddha bade farewell to the clouds above the imperial dwelling, but thus braving a second time the waves of the western ocean has taught him the strength of the bond that drew him here, where every morning pilgrims come in no paltry numbers to pray and where each evening a pilgrim host gives thanks for blessings received. Many among the nobly born declare devotion to this shrine, but one hears of no prince or retired sovereign making the journey, with the exception of the current cloistered emperor. All unworthy, I have devoutly followed his example.
Under the moon of Mount Songgao, Emperor Wu of Han failed to behold the tempered radiance of the divine form, and the immortals of the Penglai grotto remained concealed behind intervening clouds. Eyes lifted to the heavens, I beg the divinity of Itsukushima; prostrate upon the earth, I implore the Lotus Sutra: Consider once more my ardent prayer and vouchsafe the boon that you only can bestow!
Jish 4, ninth month, twenty-eighth day
The Retired Emperor
Meanwhile off the brave warriors rode,
sallying forth from the capital
to march a thousand leagues to the east.
Whether they would return safe and sound,
no one knew, such danger they faced.
They would be lodging on dewy moors,
sleeping on the moss of high peaks,
crossing endless mountains and rivers.
So it was, after many days,
that on the sixteenth of the tenth month
they came to Kiyomi-ga-seki
in the province of Suruga.
Their force when they left the capital
had numbered thirty thousand men,
but they gathered more on the way,
to reach a full seventy thousand.
They established their advance camp
on the Fuji River, at Kanbara,
while the rear still lingered far back
at Tegoshi and Utsunoya.
Commander Koremori summoned his field commander, Tadakiyo, the governor of Kazusa.
“The way I see it,” he said, “we should cross over Ashigara and fight in the Kanto.”
Tadakiyo sought to discourage this rash idea. “When you left Fukuhara, my lord,
Lord Kiyomori enjoined you to leave military decisions to me.
The warriors of the eight eastern provinces have all flocked to Yoritomo,
who by now must have several hundred thousand of them.
You indeed command seventy thousand mounted men,
but they come from provinces widely scattered. They and their horses are worn out.
As yet there is no sign of the forces due to join us from Izu and Suruga.
I suggest that we stay where we are, with the Fuji River before us,
to await the arrival of reinforcements.”
Koremori had no choice. They went no farther.
In the meantime Yoritomo
crossed the Ashigara mountains
and came, in Suruga province,
to the banks of the Kise River.
There, from Kai and Shinano,
Genji men galloped to join him.
A muster of all forces present,
held on Ukishima-ga-hara,
registered two hundred thousand men.
A man in the service of Satake no Tar, of the Hitachi Genji, was on his way to the capital with a letter from his master when Tadakiyo stopped him, seized the letter, and read it. It was for a gentlewoman and apparently harmless. Tadakiyo returned it. “How many men does Yoritomo have?” he asked.
“I have been on the road eight or nine days,” the fellow replied, “and the whole time I have seen armed men everywhere. Moor and mountain, rivers and seas swarm with them. I can count up to a few hundred, or perhaps to a thousand, but beyond that I am lost. Whether there are many or few, I have no idea. But yesterday at the Kise River, I heard someone say that the Genji have two hundred thousand mounted men.”
“Ah!” Tadakiyo exclaimed. “How I wish our supreme commander, Lord Munemori, had taken less time to act. Had he sent off the punitive force just one day earlier, we would have been over Ashigara by now and into the eight provinces, where the Hatakeyama men and the ba brothers would undoubtedly have joined us. With them on our side, not a leaf nor a blade of grass in the Kanto would have failed to bow before us.” But his bitter regret did nothing to remedy the situation.
Commander Koremori summoned Sait Sanemori, from Nagai in Musashi,
to receive advice from him on the men of the east.
“Tell me, Sanemori,” he said, “how many of their bowmen can match your strength?”
Sanemori smiled ruefully. “So, my lord,” he replied, “you think I shoot a long arrow?
Mine are only thirteen handbreadths long. Any number of them can do that.
No one known as a powerful archer shoots an arrow less than fifteen hands long.
And the bow, too—a strong man shoots one that it takes five or six to string.
An arrow from such a bowman can pierce a double or triple suit of armor.
And the smallest of their local lords commands at least five hundred riders.
Once in the saddle, those men never fall,
nor do they let their horses fall, galloping through the roughest terrain.
Should a father or son be killed in battle,
they ride straight over the body to fight on.
The way war is fought in the provinces of the west,
when a warrior’s father falls, he gives him a proper funeral and mourns him;
only then does he fight again.
Should the fallen be his son, his grief removes him from combat.
When the troops’ rice stores give out, they till the fields in spring,
harvest the crop in autumn, and only then resume their campaign.
Summer is too hot for them, and winter too cold.
Things are not like that in the east.
The Genji of Kai and Shinano know the terrain well.
They will probably come up on our rear around the lower slopes of Mount Fuji.
You may imagine, my lord, that I speak this way only to alarm you, but not so.
As they say, what matters in war is less numbers than strategy.
For myself, I do not expect to survive this campaign and return to the capital.”
The listening Heike warriors shook with fear.
Then came the twenty-third of the tenth month.
The initial exchange of arrows
between the Heike and the Genji
was to take place the very next morning,
there beside the Fuji River.
Night fell. Looking out toward the Genji positions,
the Heike saw cooking fires lit by peasants from Izu and Suruga,
peasants who for fear of battle had fled either into the wilds
or onto boats now riding on the river or out at sea.
“Oh, no! Look at all those Genji fires!” the Heike warriors cried.
“Moor and mountain, rivers and seas, yes—the enemy is everywhere.
Oh, what are we to do?” They were terribly upset.
In the middle of that same night,
something startled the waterbirds
that in colossal flocks frequented
the Fuji marshes; suddenly
all rose with a beating of wings
like thunder or the roar of a storm.
“Heaven help us!” the Heike cried.
“Here come the Genji! He had it right,
Sanemori, when he told us
they’d be coming around at our rear.
We can’t let ourselves be surrounded!
No, we have to escape from here
and dig in at the Owari River
and Sunomata!” With that they fled
pell-mell—too fast even to grab
their belongings. In the panic
one took his bow but forgot his arrows,
>
another his arrows but not the bow.
Some jumped onto others’ horses;
some lost their own mounts the same way.
The disaster at the Fuji River.
Some leaped onto tethered steeds
and rode endlessly around in circles.
From nearby establishments they had called in, for their pleasure,
courtesans and singing girls, whose desperate screams now rent the air,
for some were having their heads kicked in, some their backs broken underfoot.
The next morning, the twenty-fourth,
at the hour of the hare, the Genji, [ca. 6 A.M.]
a full two hundred thousand strong,
bore down on the Fuji River
and thrice raised their great battle cry.
The heavens rang, and the earth shook.
12. The Gosechi Dances
From the Heike camp, dead silence. Yoritomo sent men to investigate. “They are all gone,” he was told. Some brought back armor that the Heike had abandoned, others great curtains that had surrounded the enemy camp. “Not a fly buzzing in there,” they reported.
Yoritomo dismounted. He removed his helmet, rinsed his mouth, and prostrated himself toward the capital. “I myself deserve no credit for what has happened,” he declared. “All thanks are due Great Bodhisattva Hachiman.” After so suddenly winning the day, he entrusted the province of Suruga to Ichij no Jir Tadayori and that of Ttmi to Yasuda no Sabur Yoshisada. He might well have pursued the Heike farther, but he remained anxious about his rear. He therefore withdrew from Ukishima-ga-hara and fell back to the province of Sagami.
The singing girls laughed and laughed in post stations all along the Tkaid.
“Talk about pathetic!” they cried. “The attacking commander
beats a retreat without shooting a single arrow? I can’t believe it!
It’s bad enough to flee an enemy you don’t much like the look of,
but to run away just from a noise!” They could not get over it.
Lampoons appeared on every wall.
The supreme Heike commander in the capital was Lord Munemori,
