by VIKING ADULT
12. The Heike Appeal to Mount Hiei
The Heike, who suspected no such correspondence,
understood that Kfukuji and Miidera were now furious with them.
“No approach to them would achieve anything,” they reflected.
“But we have done nothing to incur the wrath of Mount Hiei.
Enryakuji has no thought of turning against us.
Let us appeal solemnly to the great Sann Deity
and convince the three thousand monks to make common cause with us.”
Ten Heike senior nobles therefore signed a joint letter
and sent it to Mount Hiei. The letter said:
Reverend Sirs,
Enryakuji counts for us as our tutelary temple and Hiyoshi as our tutelary shrine. Our wish is to revere none but the Tendai teaching. Therefore we of the Taira house address to you the special appeal set forth below.
Founded in Emperor Kanmu’s reign, when Dengy Daishi returned from Tang China, Enryakuji disseminated thereafter the full and perfect Tendai doctrine and transmitted on the Mountain itself the teaching of Vairochana. The fountainhead since then of the flourishing of the Teaching, your temple sustains the peace of the realm.
Currently the Izu Exile, Minamoto no Yoritomo, shamelessly flouts the law of the land, and other Genji—Yoshinaka, Yukiie, and their ilk—fall in with his evil designs. They seize provinces near and far, appropriating local goods and tax revenue. Under these circumstances we humbly received, in recognition both of signal service past and of military prowess in the present, an imperial order to crush the rebels at once and to suppress their evil horde, and we set out repeatedly to do precisely that. Alas, our imperial army’s every battle plan failed. Despite our overwhelming numbers, the rebels appear to prevail. How can we quell their traitorous revolt unless the gods and buddhas assist us?
So it is that we take sole refuge in the Tendai teachings and place our trust in the beneficence of Hiyoshi. Our line, too, can be said to spring from the imperial founder of Enryakuji. Rightly indeed do we accord your temple growing reverence and honor. Hereafter the joy of Enryakuji shall be our joy and the wrath of Hiyoshi our own, and so shall we instruct our loyal descendants. For their tutelary shrine and temple, the Fujiwara have Kasuga and Kfukuji; therefore the Hoss teachings have long been their refuge. We Taira, for ours, have Hiyoshi and Enryakuji, and henceforth we shall prize the Tendai doctrine of full and swift enlightenment. For the Fujiwara, their association stems from the past and offers them their own prosperity and good fortune. Ours arises from our present prayer—to wit, that for our sovereign’s sake the rebels shall be duly punished.
O Seven Sann Shrines, O Noble Scions of the Unseen Powers, O Protectors ranged far and wide around the Mountain, O Medicine King Buddha of the Twelve Lofty Vows, O Nikk, O Gakk! Consider this, our most earnest plea, and vouchsafe us your wondrous aid! Then shall these wickedly scheming traitors bow, vanquished, before their sovereign’s gate; then shall the severed heads of the evildoers pour into the imperial city. We senior nobles of the Taira house therefore present with one voice this most urgent appeal.
Taira no Michimori, governor of Echizen, junior third rank
Taira no Sukemori, Right Palace Guards captain, junior third rank
Taira no Koremori, acting Right Palace Guards captain and governor of Iyo, senior third rank
Taira no Shigehira, Left Palace Guards captain and governor of Harima, senior third rank
Taira no Kiyomune, Right Gate Watch commander, governor of mi and Ttmi, senior third rank
Taira no Tsunemori, master of the empress mother’s household, director of palace upkeep, governor of Kaga and Etchū, consultant at senior third rank
Taira no Tomomori, counselor, Left Watch intendant, commander in chief of the imperial forces, junior second rank
Taira no Norimori, acting counselor, governor of Hizen, junior second rank
Taira no Yorimori, acting grand counselor, inspector general for Dewa and Michinoku, senior second rank
Taira no Munemori, junior first rank
Juei 2, seventh month, fifth day
Deeply affected, the Tendai abbot
revealed for the moment none of this
but withdrew instead on retreat
to the shrine of Jūzenji Gongen,
where he prayed for three full days.
Only then did his monks, by his leave,
read the appeal that he had received.
A poem not seen at first now became visible on the outer cover:
Even to a house
long and peacefully in bloom,
the passage of years
brings a month to join the moon
sinking westward down the sky.
“O Sann Deity, have pity on us!
O three thousand monks, add your might to ours!”
Such was the gist of the Heike appeal,
but their conduct over the years
had too greatly offended the gods
and betrayed every hope of men.
Their prayers elicited no response;
their entreaties won over no one.
In truth the monks felt sorry for them,
understanding their situation,
but, as they reminded themselves,
“We have already told the Genji
that our strength is at their service.
We simply cannot capriciously
retract our announced decision.”
None of the monks endorsed the appeal.
13. The Emperor’s Flight from the Capital
On the fourteenth of that same seventh month, Sadayoshi, governor of Higo,
entered the capital with three thousand mounted men,
including the Kikuchi, Harada, and Matsura leagues,
after successfully quelling rebellion in Kyushu.
So Kyushu at least was quiet again,
but fighting still raged in the provinces of east and north.
On the twenty-second, in the depths of the night,
a tremendous commotion arose around Rokuhara.
Men saddled horses, tightened girths, and galloped north, south, east, and west,
carrying things to hide. An attack clearly seemed imminent.
The next morning the story came out.
There was among the Mino Genji one Sado no Shigesada.
During the fighting back in the Hgen years,
he had captured and delivered Chinzei no Hachir Tametomo,
a fugitive after the defeat of the retired emperor’s forces.
Appointed in reward a lieutenant in the Watch,
Shigesada eventually rose to lieutenant in the Right Gate Watch.
The Genji therefore shunned him, and he curried favor instead with the Heike.
In the depths of the night in question, he galloped to Rokuhara
to announce that Yoshinaka had come from the north with fifty thousand men,
who were swarming then through Higashi-Sakamoto, under Mount Hiei.
Two of Yoshinaka’s men, Tate no Chikasada and the scribe Kakumei,
had charged with six thousand up Mount Hiei,
where the three thousand monks had joined them.
Now, Shigesada reported, they were on their way to attack the city.
Deeply alarmed, the Heike sent men off hither and yon to face them.
Their main force, three thousand under the counselor Tomomori
and the Palace Guards captain Shigehira, first stopped at Yamashina.
Michimori and Noritsune, the governors of Echizen and Noto,
led two thousand to hold the Uji Bridge, and with one thousand
the chief left equerry Yukimori and Satsuma governor Tadanori guarded the Yodo road.
As to the movements of the Genji,
word spread that Yukiie was on his way up from the Uji Bridge
with several thousand men, and so, too, Yoshikiyo,
Yada no Yoshiyasu’s son, from eyama.
When told that the Sett
su and Kawachi Genji,
hordes of them, were pouring into the city,
the Heike resolved to gather themselves in one place
to face what might follow. They recalled every man to the city.
In the imperial city are won
fortune and fame. After cockcrow
no one there can afford sloth—
no, not even in times of peace,
let alone when disaster threatens!
The Heike wanted only to vanish
into a Yoshino wilderness
remote beyond the farthest bourn,
but every province in the land,
every one of the seven circuits
now had risen up against them.
What haven would have welcomed them?
“In the three worlds there is no peace,
for they are like a burning house”:
The Buddha spoke these golden words
when he taught the One Vehicle.
How could they possibly be wrong?
On the twenty-fourth of the seventh month, in the small hours of the night,
Lord Munemori went to Rokuhara for a word with Kenreimon-in.
“I believed that the world would somehow always be as we knew it,”
he said, “but now, you see, everything has changed.
People are talking about meeting our fate, whatever it may be, in the city,
but I cannot bear to have you face so cruel a spectacle.
I have therefore decided to take you,
and with you the cloistered emperor and His Majesty as well,
on a journey to the provinces of the west.”
“Whatever is to happen now,” Kenreimon-in replied,
“I leave, my brother, in your hands.”
The tears that overflowed her sleeves
defied her efforts to contain them.
So, too, Munemori, from his sleeves
could well have wrung many a drop.
His Cloistered Eminence must have learned that the Heike were to flee the capital that night and that they secretly planned to take him with them, for he stole away from his residence and headed toward Kurama, accompanied only by the chief right equerry Suketoki, Sukekata’s son. No one else knew.
Now, there was among the Heike housemen one Sueyasu, a sharp fellow who served the cloistered emperor as well. Much agitation and whispering could be heard in the sovereign’s private part of the house, and gentlewomen quietly crying. He strained his ears to catch what was going on and heard a voice say, “His Cloistered Eminence has disappeared! Oh, dear, where can he have got to?”
“This is bad!” Sueyasu thought. He galloped straight to Rokuhara and reported the matter to Lord Munemori.
“There must be some mistake,” Munemori answered, but he rushed straight there nonetheless, to see for himself. His Cloistered Eminence was indeed gone.
There was no sign either of Lady Tango or of his other intimate gentlewomen.
“What has become of him?” Munemori kept asking,
but no one confessed to knowing where he had gone.
All were in a state of shock.
Meanwhile news that the cloistered emperor was gone from the capital
spread pandemonium swiftly through the city.
Imagine, then, what panic struck
the Heike ladies and gentlemen!
The enemy might just as well
have broken straight into their homes—
the blow could hardly have been worse.
They had been making ready for days
to take possession of both sovereigns
and escort them toward the west—
and now to be abandoned this way!
They felt as though a mighty tree,
certain to shelter them from rain,
had let a downpour through.
“We still have His Majesty, though, so let us start him on his way.”
It was only the hour of the hare when they advanced the imperial palanquin. [ca. 6 A.M.]
Young as he was, in his sixth year, the emperor boarded it, unsuspecting.
Kenreimon-in, his mother, entered it with him.
They gave him the mirror, the jewel, and the sword.
“Take the seal and keys, too,” the grand counselor Taira no Tokitada demanded,
“and the hour markers, and Genj, and Suzuka!”192
But in the confusion many things were left out.
They even forgot the sword from the emperor’s dayroom.
In haste Tokitada and his sons Nobumoto, the head of the palace storehouse,
and the Sanuki captain Tokizane—just the three of them—
set off in full court dress with His Majesty.
The bearers from the Palace Guards office and the officials to hold the palanquin cords
wore full armor, with bows and arrows.
The palanquin moved west along Shichij, then south down Suzaku.
The next day, the twenty-fifth,
first light broke in a sky filled with the stars of the River of Heaven.
Clouds trailed about the Eastern Hills, and a bright moon lit the dawn.
Everywhere cocks were crowing.
No one dreamed it would come to this.
The turmoil, so few years ago,
attending the move to Fukuhara
now stood all too clearly revealed
as a portent of what lay ahead.
Lord Motomichi, too, the regent,
had joined the imperial cortege,
but where Shichij crosses miya,
a boy with his hair bound in side loops
ran right in front of his carriage.
Written on the boy’s left sleeve,
Motomichi saw the words “spring sun.”
He realized that, read “Kasuga,”
these spell the name of the deity
who watches over the Hoss teachings
and protects the heirs of Kamatari.
A voice, no doubt the boy’s, reached him:
And so there it is:
These newest wisteria leaves193
are truly dying;
still, they might yet think to heed
the counsel of spring and sun.
Lord Motomichi summoned his attendant, Takanao.
“I have been thinking,” he said. “His Majesty, yes, is on his way,
but not the cloistered emperor. To me the Heike future seems bleak.
What is your opinion?”
Takanao traded glances with the groom who led the ox.
The groom understood. He turned the carriage around,
and northward they went, up miya,
oh, so fast they seemed to be flying,
up to the city’s Northern Hills,
and in through the gate of Chisoku-in.194
14. Koremori’s Flight from the Capital
A Heike houseman named Moritsugi demanded when he heard the news
that they should pursue the regent and stop him,
but the others restrained him, and he stayed where he was.
For some days now, Lord Koremori had been steeling himself
to face what he feared was coming, but it still hurt when it came.
He had married the daughter of Narichika, the Naka-no-mikado grand counselor.
Face, peach blossoms laden with dew;
eyes, all the graces of powder and rouge;
hair, willow fronds in the wind, swaying—
such beauty surely was hers alone.
Rokudai, the son she had borne him,
had now entered his tenth year,
while their daughter was still in her eighth.
All three pleaded not to be left behind.
Koremori then spoke to his wife:
“As I have told you, the Heike are now fleeing toward the west.
I only wish that I could take you with me,
but they say that the enemy will be lying in wait for us on the way.
We cannot possibly pass unch
allenged.
Please, if you hear that I have been killed, do not for that become a nun.
I want you instead to marry again, never mind whom,
to provide for yourself and properly bring up our children.
I cannot imagine that no one would wish to look after you.”
So he addressed her consolingly, but she did not answer.
She only lay there in silence, a robe over her head.
He was about to leave when she clung to his sleeve.
“Here in the capital,” she said,
“I have neither father nor mother.
Where will I ever find a husband
once you have gone off without me?
Marry, you say, anyone you please—
oh, I could almost hate you for that!
Past lives brought us together, you know.
You, yes, may feel affection for me,
but would just anyone do the same?
We promised always to stay together,
right to the end, to disappear
like dewdrops side by side in a meadow,
like flotsam sunk to the same ocean floor.
So did you just make them all up,
those sweet nothings of yours in the night?
If all this concerned no one but me,
I could manage life here alone,
nursing the pain of being forsaken.
But who, I ask, will look after the children?
What do you want me to do with them?
You are too cruel not to take us with you!”
So she spoke, now reproachful, now pleading.
Koremori answered her.
“Yes,” he said, “it is perfectly true.
You were in your thirteenth year,
I in my fifteenth when we first met,
and I swore then that, fire or flood,
I would always remain beside you,
till we reached that last fork in the road.
But heartless, yes, I would be indeed,
now that in so dismal a manner
I am about to set off to war,
were I to subject you to bitter trials
on a journey to who-knows-where.
Besides, I am not ready to take you.
Once we settle on some far shore,
then I will send somebody for you.”
With these words he left, resolutely.
In the gallery by the middle gate,
he donned his armor, then caught his horse
and was almost in the saddle
