by VIKING ADULT
but the fighting had worn him out,
and besides, he was an old man.
He ended up under Tezuka.
Tezuka entrusted the head to a man of his who had just galloped up and went in haste to report to Yoshinaka.
“I have just fought and killed a most unusual opponent,” he said. “He might have been a rank-and-file warrior, except that he was wearing red brocade. But if he was a commander, his followers were nowhere in sight. I demanded his name repeatedly, but he never gave it to me. He spoke like a man from the east.”
“Ah,” Yoshinaka replied, “I expect that was Sanemori. If so, then I saw him once when I was a boy, on a visit to Kzuke province. His hair was graying even then, though, and it must be snow white by now. I do not see how his hair and beard could be black. Higuchi no Jir spent a lot of time with him and will certainly recognize him. Call Higuchi over here.”
So Higuchi was summoned.
Higuchi took one look and exclaimed, “How awful! Yes, this is Sanemori.”
“But if it is,” said Yoshinaka, “at over seventy his hair should be white.
How can his hair and beard be black?”
Weeping copiously, Higuchi replied,
“I can explain this, and I will,
but the sight is too great a shock,
and weak tears have robbed me of speech.
It is fitting that a warrior,
on the slightest of occasions,
should speak words worth remembering.
I often heard Sanemori say,
‘If I go again to war
after passing my sixtieth year,
I will dye my beard and hair black,
so as to look like a young man.
You see, it would be undignified
for an old man to seek to best
the young in battle, and besides,
it would hurt an old warrior so
to be ridiculed and despised.’
So that is what he must have done.
Have his head washed, then, and see.”
It seemed likely that Higuchi was right.
Yoshinaka had the head washed,
and indeed the hair turned white.
This is how it happened that Sanemori wore red brocade.
He said when he came before Lord Munemori to bid him farewell,
“I know that I am far from alone in this, my lord,
but at any rate I feel acutely in my old age the shame
of having set out for the east a few years ago,
only to flee back to the capital from Kanbara in Suruga
without shooting a single arrow, at the mere whirring of waterbirds’ wings.
Now duty calls me to the north, where I mean to die in battle.
Although originally from the province of Echizen,
more recently I settled, in your service, on your Nagai estate in Musashi.
Now, a saying urges a man to return home wearing brocade.190
Please grant me leave to wear a brocade hitatare.”
“Well said!” Lord Munemori replied. He gave the permission requested.
Once upon a time, Zhu Maichen
waved brocade sleeves at Huiji-shan.
Now, Sait Bett Sanemori
had clearly won glory in the north,
but only his empty name lived on;
for his remains merged, alas,
with the earth of the northern marches.
It had been the fourth month past,
the seventeenth day, when a great force
numbering more than a hundred thousand
and surely invincible set forth,
but now, as the fifth month drew to a close,
only twenty thousand or so returned.
“Yes,” people said, “you catch many fish
when you completely fish out a stream,
but the next year there are no fish at all.
Burning the forest yields plenty of game,
but there is no game the following year.
They should have given thought to the future
and kept a few more men in reserve.”
9. Genb
Tadakiyo and Kageie, the governors of Kazusa and Hida,
both renounced the world after Lord Kiyomori’s death,
and the news that their sons had now perished in the north
seemed to crush them beneath too great a weight of grief,
for both in the end died of sorrow.
Parents lost their sons in provinces far and near, wives their husbands.
In the capital the gates to many homes remained closed.
Everywhere voices called the Name, amid loud cries of mourning.
On the first of the sixth month,
the chamberlain Sadanaga summoned nakatomi no Chikatoshi,
a midlevel functionary in the Bureau of Shrines,
to the southeast Seiryden doorway and there informed him
that once these military troubles were over and peace was restored,
His Majesty would make a progress to the Grand Shrine of Ise.
That divine presence, once descended
earthward from the High Plain of Heaven,
moved in the reign of Emperor Suinin,
the third month of his twenty-fifth year,
from Kasanui in Yamato province
to Watarai in the province of Ise
and to the banks of the Isuzu River,
where mighty boulders underground
bore up the deity’s new, sturdy pillars
and priests initiated the sacred rites.
Since then none of the three thousand
seven hundred and fifty shrines
in Japan’s sixty and more provinces,
no god, no unseen power great or small,
can compare with the Grand Shrine of Ise.
Nonetheless, for a long time no emperor made a progress there.
In the reign of Shmu, however, there lived one Fujiwara no Hirotsugi,
an assistant Dazaifu deputy and provisional lieutenant in the Right Palace Guards.
A grandson of the left minister Fuhito, he was a son of the consultant Umakai.
In the tenth month of Tenpy 15, in Matsura county of the province of Hizen, [743]
Hirotsugi rallied several tens of thousands of miscreants
to the cause of threatening the imperial sway.
A force under no no Azumdo, duly dispatched, therefore subdued him.
It was then that an emperor first went on pilgrimage to the Grand Shrine.
Emperor Antoku’s announced pilgrimage apparently rested upon this precedent.
Now, this Hirotsugi had a horse that in one day
could travel all the way from Matsura to the capital and back.
After Hirotsugi’s defeat, his allies all fled and came to grief,
while they say Hirotsugi himself charged on this horse into the depths of the sea.
His violent spirit then caused many frightening incidents.
On the eighteenth of the sixth month of Tenpy 16, [744]
the great prelate Genb was to conduct a solemn rite at Kanzeonji in Dazaifu.
When he mounted the high seat and rang the bell to begin,
the sky suddenly darkened, thunder roared,
and a lightning bolt struck him and whipped his head off into the clouds.
This happened because Genb had worked rites to quell Hirotsugi.
Genb had accompanied the minister Kibi no Makibi on his embassy to Tang China. It is he who had brought the Hoss doctrine to Japan. The men of Tang had laughed at his name. “Your ‘Genb’ sounds like the characters that mean ‘go home to destruction,’” they declared, or so the story goes. “You can expect trouble once you are home again in your country.” And on the eighteenth of the sixth month of Tenpy 19, [747] something dropped a skull inscribed “Genb” into the grounds of Kfukuji, while laughter as of a thousand voices resounded through the sky.
This was because Kfukuji is a Hoss t
emple.
Genb’s disciples took the skull
and to contain it built a barrow
known as Zuhaka, the Head Tomb.
It is still there. And all this was due
to the spirit of Hirotsugi.
Hence that spirit received honor
at Matsura, in the sanctuary
formally named the Mirror Shrine.
During Emperor Saga’s reign, Heizei, the previous emperor, [809–23]
urged on by his mistress of staff, Kusuko, provoked turmoil in the realm,
whereupon Princess Yūchi, Saga’s third daughter,
was appointed high priestess of Kamo to pray that he should fail.
That is how the office of Kamo High Priestess began.
In the reign of Emperor Suzaku,
Masakado and Sumitomo
raised rebellion, so inspiring
the Yawata special festival.
Under the current circumstances,
these precedents gave rise in turn
to prayers of many kinds.
10. Yoshinaka’s Letter to Mount Hiei
Yoshinaka arrived at the Echizen provincial seat
and assembled his housemen and retainers in council.
“I plan to enter the capital via the province of mi,” he announced,
“but as usual there are the monks of Mount Hiei to consider;
they might well seek to block my way.
No doubt I could break through easily enough,
but these days it is the Heike who ignore the sanctity of the Buddha’s Teaching,
burning temples, slaughtering monks, and perpetrating one outrage after another.
To go up to the capital as a protector and then to fight the Hiei monks
on the grounds that they had thrown in their lot with the Heike
would only be to repeat the ways of the Heike themselves.
So grave a mistake would be all too easy to make.
But then, what should I do?”
Kakumei, Yoshinaka’s personal scribe, stepped forward to speak.
“There are three thousand monks on the Mountain,” he said,
“and they cannot be all of one mind. Their views on the subject surely differ.
Some must favor joining the Genji while others support the Heike.
So you might try sending them a letter.
Their reply will reveal which way they lean.”
“I like that idea,” Yoshinaka replied. “Very well then, write!”
He had Kakumei write the letter and sent it to Mount Hiei.
The letter said:
To the master of discipline resident in the Ek lodge:191
Due reflection on the evil deeds of the Heike suggests that ever since Hgen and Heiji they have failed to uphold the conduct expected of His Majesty’s subjects. Nonetheless, high and low bow before them with folded hands, while clerics and laymen alike prostrate themselves at their feet. They enthrone and dethrone emperors at will; they appropriate provinces and counties until gorged with their spoils. They confiscate the wealth of great houses, oblivious to justice or injustice. Heedless of guilt or innocence, they punish ministers and senior nobles; purloin their property, which they then pass to their followers; and assume possession of their estates, which they distribute as they please among their children and grandchildren. In the eleventh month of Jish 3, they even confined the cloistered emperor to a Seinan Palace and exiled the regent to a remote region of the west. The people said nothing; they merely exchanged glances as they passed one another on the road.
That is not all. In the fifth month of Jish 4, the Heike surrounded the residence of Prince Mochihito, causing consternation throughout the city. To escape ignominious harm, the prince sought secret refuge at Miidera. I had already received a command from him, and I was ready and eager to rush to his aid, but the streets swarmed with the enemy and there was no way through. No Genji from the nearby provinces could reach him, still less one from so much farther away. Alas, Miidera proved unable to safeguard him, and he therefore left for the southern capital. He was on his way there when a battle broke out at Uji Bridge. The escort commander, Minamoto no Yorimasa, and his sons ignored all danger to themselves in His Highness’s righteous cause and performed wonders of martial valor, but the enemy overwhelmed them. Their bodies lay on the moss of those hallowed banks; the waves of the river washed their lives away. The prince’s order remained graven on my heart, and I deeply mourned my kinsmen’s deaths.
Consequently the Genji of the east and those of the north laid plans to march on the capital and destroy the Heike. In the autumn of last year, I raised my banners and took my sword in hand to achieve this immovable goal. On the very day I left Shinano, J no Shir Nagamochi, of Echigo, was dispatched against me at the head of several tens of thousands of men. Our two sides met in battle on the Yokota riverbank in Shinano.
With a mere three thousand men, I bested those tens of thousands. The news drew a Heike army of one hundred thousand men toward the north. I met them repeatedly in Echizen, Etchū, and Kaga, at such forts as Tonami, Kurosaka, Shihosaka, and Shinohara. Each time I devised a new strategy, and each time I saw victory. I had but to strike for the Heike to fall, to attack for them to yield. Just so do autumn winds break plantain fronds and winter frosts wither every leaf. I owe this success not to my tactics but to divine aid. And now that the Heike army has been defeated, I mean to move on the capital.
My passage into the city will take me below Mount Hiei. One aspect of this route concerns me, however. Do the sympathies of the Tendai monks lie with the Heike or with the Genji? Should they support the traitors, I will be obliged to fight them, and destruction of Enryakuji will swiftly follow. When the Heike have so distressed our sovereign and so damaged the Buddha’s Teaching, it is painful to imagine righteous warriors intent on chastising them having suddenly to do battle with three thousand monks. It is also troubling to foresee that, should I delay my progress in deference to Yakushi and Sann, I might risk being known forever after, in a manner most injurious to a warrior’s good name, for dilatory service to the court. I have therefore decided to inform you of my dilemma.
I beseech the three thousand monks of Mount Hiei, for the sake of the gods and buddhas, of the realm, and of our sovereign, to join forces with the Genji, punish the evildoers, and so receive His Majesty’s grateful blessing. Such is my heartfelt prayer.
With all respect,
Minamoto no Yoshinaka
Juei 2, sixth month, tenth day
11. The Reply
Sure enough, after reading the letter,
the monks of Mount Hiei expressed divergent views in council.
Some advocated joining the Genji, others making common cause with the Heike.
All sorts of opinions received an airing.
The senior monks’ deliberations yielded the following conclusion:
“In the final analysis,
our major role is to offer prayers
that ensure our sovereign long life.
The Heike are, in the current reign,
His Majesty’s commoner relatives,
and they therefore command respect
from all of us here on the Mountain.
That is why we have always, so far,
prayed that they, too, should flourish greatly.
However, their evil passes all bounds,
and the people have turned against them.
The armies they have sent to quell
rebellion in this province or that
have all met, at the rebels’ hands,
ignominious destruction.
For some years now, the Genji have triumphed repeatedly in battle.
Their time is coming. Why should only our Mountain
ally itself with the Heike, whose time is past,
and oppose the Genji, whose future stretches before them?
The right course for us will be to distance ourselves from the Heike
and resolutely lend our s
trength to the Genji side.” Such was their opinion.
With one mind the full council agreed and sent an answer to that effect.
Yoshinaka assembled his housemen and retainers,
then had Kakumei open and read the letter.
Your esteemed communication of the tenth reached us on the sixteenth. Perusing it cleared the gloom that has recently oppressed us. Yes, the Heike over the years have behaved deplorably, and turmoil has continually troubled the court. Such talk is on everyone’s lips, and endless material feeds it.
Now, the position of Mount Hiei, northeast of the imperial city, inspires at Enryakuji devout prayers for peace in the realm—a realm so long troubled by Heike crimes that it knows no peace at all. The exoteric and esoteric teachings are ignored, and again and again their divine protectors are spurned. But you, sir, born into an ancient warrior line, have achieved by blessed fortune unique distinction in our time. Following a sagacious plan, you swiftly raised a righteous force and, heedless of risk to yourself, established at one stroke exceptional merit. Less than two years have passed since then, and already your fame fills the four seas.
We monks of Mount Hiei rejoice. For the realm’s sake and for that of your house, we delight in your prowess and in your brilliant success. Advance further on your present course and you will give us the joy of knowing that our prayers have not been in vain and reassure us that the land enjoys stalwart protection. The eternal buddhas of our temple and others and the gods honored in our Hiyoshi sanctuaries great and small will rejoice that their teaching is to flourish once more and that they are to enjoy again the reverence they knew of old. We beg you to discern our profound sincerity. Thus shall the Twelve Divine Generals, in the world unseen, add their might by order of the Medicine King to that of the champions who smite evil, while in the visible world we three thousand monks will for a time suspend study and practice in order to assist the imperial forces intent on chastising the wicked. The enlightened wind of Tenfold Cessation and Contemplation will blow the scoundrels far from our shores; the blessed rain of divine union in the Three Mysteries will restore our world to the ancient age of Yao. Such is our council’s decision. Please mark it well.
Juei 2, seventh month, second day
The monks of Mount Hiei
