by VIKING ADULT
191. Who this figure was is unclear.
192. Genj (a biwa) and Suzuka (a wagon, or “Japanese koto”) were prized imperial treasures.
193. The current generation of Fujiwara nobles.
194. A temple north of the city, in the present area of Murasakino.
195. Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204), the major poet of his time. He completed Senzaishū, the imperially commissioned anthology mentioned below, in 1187.
196. In episode 9 of Ise monogatari, the homesick Ariwara no Narihira reaches the Sumida River, which now runs through Tokyo. He sees white birds playing on the water. When told they are miyako-dori (literally, “capital birds”), he says in a poem, “If your name be true, / then I will ask you something. / Say, capital birds, / of the one who has my heart: / does she live or has she died?” Translation from Mostow and Tyler, The Ise Stories, p. 36.
BOOK EIGHT
1. The Imperial Journey to Mount Hiei
(recitative)
In Juei 2, deep in the night of the twenty-fourth of the seventh month,
and in the company only of Suketoki, son of the grand counselor Sukekata,
the cloistered emperor slipped out of his residence and made for Kurama.
When the priests there objected that this was still too close to the city,
he braved the precipitous path to Yokawa, via Sasa-no-mine and Yakuzaka,
and there he installed himself in the Jakuj lodge, in Gedatsudani.
When the Hiei monks rose up to demand that he go on to the East Pagoda,
he moved to the En’yū lodge in Minamidani,
where monks and warriors then mounted guard.
(song)
The cloistered emperor stole away
to seek refuge on Mount Hiei,
the emperor ventured from his palace
to set out for the western sea,
and the regent, so people said,
made for the depths of Yoshino.
Great ladies close to His Majesty,
princes and princesses, fled
to hide at Yawata, Kamo, Saga,
Uzumasa, or in the hills
to the east and west of the city.
The Heike were undoubtedly gone,
but the Genji had not yet entered.
The capital had no master at all.
Never since the city’s founding,
surely, had any such thing occurred.
One would like very much to know
what The Record of Future Time
left to us by Prince Shtoku197
might have to say on the subject.
The news spread that His Cloistered Eminence
had gone to Mount Hiei. Everyone rushed there:
the former regent, Motofusa;
the current regent, Motomichi;
the chancellor; both the ministers,
left and right; the palace minister;
the counselors and grand counselors;
the consultants; the privy gentlemen
of the third, the fourth, the fifth ranks—
yes, everyone who was anyone,
every man who hoped for promotion,
every man of wealth and high office
came; not a single one stayed away.
At the En’yū lodge, an enormous crowd
filled every space within and without.
Those present took all this as a tribute
to the Mountain and to their abbot.
On the twenty-eighth, the sovereign
made his way back to the city.
Kiso assigned to his protection
fifty thousand mounted warriors.
Yamamoto Yoshitaka,
a leader of the mi Genji,
rode near him in the forward guard,
white banner flying. No such banner
had been seen to enter the capital
for a good twenty years and more.
These were astonishing events.
Meanwhile Yukiie crossed the Uji Bridge to enter the city.
Yata Yoshikiyo, Yoshiyasu’s son, entered via eyama.
The Genji from Settsu and Kawachi poured in like swirling mist or cloud.
Genji warriors filled the capital.
(speech)
Tsunefusa, the Kade-no-kji counselor, and Saneie, the police chief and Left Gate Watch intendant, waited upon the cloistered emperor on the veranda of his lodging. From there they summoned Yoshinaka and Yukiie.
Kiso no Yoshinaka wore Chinese damask-laced armor over a red brocade hitatare and, at his side, an imposing sword. The arrows in his quiver were fletched in mottled black and white, under his arm he clasped a lacquered bow closely rattan-wound, and his helmet hung over his shoulders on a cord. Yukiie, for his part, wore scarlet leather-laced armor over dark blue brocade. A sword with gold fittings hung at his side, the arrows at his back were fletched in bold black and white bands, and his bow was lacquered black over closely wound rattan. He, too, had his helmet slung over his shoulders on a cord. Both men knelt respectfully.
His Cloistered Eminence issued them the command
to crush former palace minister Munemori and all the Heike beneath him.
Below, on the ground, they received it with all humility.
They then submitted that neither had anywhere to stay.
Yoshinaka was granted a house at Rokuj and Nishi-no-tin:
that of Naritada, the master of the cloistered emperor’s table.
Yukiie received “Kaya House,” the south pavilion of the Hjūji residence.
His Cloistered Eminence imagined
only with great unhappiness
the emperor spirited off, a captive,
by his commoner relatives,
roaming the waves of the western sea.
He therefore issued a decree
commanding that the emperor
and the three regalia with him
be returned forthwith to the city.
However, the Heike ignored him.
Emperor Antoku’s father, Takakura, had had three other sons.
The Heike had taken the second with them in their flight,
so as to make him heir apparent.
The third and fourth stayed behind.
On the fifth of the month, His Cloistered Eminence had those two visit him.
“Come! Come to me!” he called to the third, then in his fifth year.
The little boy looked up at him and shrank back.
“Off you go, then!” the sovereign dismissed him.
Next it was the turn of the fourth, then in his fourth year.
“Come!” he called, and with no hint of shyness
the fourth prince did so and clambered up onto his lap.
He seemed delighted to be there. Go-Shirakawa wept.
“Truly,” he said, “no little child
but one so intimately related
could set eyes on an old monk like me
and still feel any affection.
Yes, this boy is my true grandson,
and just like his father at that age.
To think I had not seen him before!”
He simply could not stay his tears.
Present then in attendance on him
was the great lady of Jdoji,
still known then as Lady Tango.
“Why, then,” she said, “this is the prince
you should have succeed to the throne.”
“Obviously,” the sovereign replied.
Divination he had commissioned
yielded this solemn assurance:
“Should the Fourth Prince come to the throne,
his line will rule this land of Japan
for one hundred generations.”
The prince’s mother was a daughter of Nobutaka, the director of upkeep. She had served Kenreimon-in while this lady was still empress, and the emperor had called her to his side so often that she gave him a succession of children.
Nobutaka had several daughters, and he had aspired to see
one become a consort or an empress. Believing that a house with a thousand white chickens is sure to produce an empress, he secured a thousand of his own,198 and perhaps that is indeed why this one bore several princes. Privately, Nobutaka was delighted, but awe of the Heike and fear of the empress discouraged him from making much of them. However, Kiyomori’s wife, Lady Nii, urged him to set his mind at rest.
“I shall look after them myself,” she said, “and make one heir apparent.” She assigned several nurses to their care and saw to their upbringing.
It was Lady Nii’s elder brother Nen, the head monk of Hosshji,
who actually nurtured the Fourth Prince.
Nen had fled westward with the Heike,
but in the turmoil and confusion he left his wife and the prince behind.
A messenger from the west then arrived with the command
that Nen’s wife should join her husband immediately, with the prince and his mother.
Hugely relieved, Nen’s wife set off with the prince, as required.
She had reached the western stretch of Shichij when her elder brother,
Norimitsu, the governor of Kii, caught up with her.
“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded to know.
“Why, this prince has a golden future opening out before him!”
He stopped her right there,
and the next day the cloistered emperor sent a carriage to fetch the prince.
All this was probably fated anyway,
but Norimitsu had undoubtedly rendered the prince a signal service.
And yet, even after being enthroned, the new emperor forgot what he owed Norimitsu.
The months and years passed, and still Norimitsu enjoyed no imperial favor.
In disappointment and frustration, he posted two poems in the palace:
Think back, O cuckoo,
to that single call of yours
and renew it now:
As then in Oiso Wood,
at the midnight hour, you called.
The cage may be small,
but he so longs to come in—
the little titmouse,
hiding all too modestly
here among the moonflowers.
In due course His Majesty saw them.
“How very unfortunate!” he said.
“So Norimitsu is still alive?
I had forgotten him all this time,
as I certainly should not have done.”
At last imperial gratitude
touched Norimitsu: He was raised,
so the story goes, to the third rank.
2. Natora
On the tenth of that same eighth month,
an appointments list was read out in the cloistered emperor’s privy chamber.
Kiso no Yoshinaka, named chief left equerry, was granted the province of Echigo.
He also received, by the cloistered sovereign’s decree, the title of Asahi Shogun.
Yukiie became governor of Bingo.
Yoshinaka, however, objected to Echigo and so received Iyo.
Yukiie rejected Bingo and got Bizen instead.
A dozen other Genji became governors, police officials, or officers of the Gate Watch.
On the sixteenth, over one hundred and sixty Heike were stripped of their offices.
Their names were removed from the roster at the palace.
Only three names were not so removed: those of the grand counselor Tokitada; Nobumoto, lord of the Treasury; and Tokizane, a captain. That was because it was to Tokitada that His Cloistered Eminence had repeatedly sent a decree demanding the return of the emperor and the three regalia. On the seventeenth the Heike reached Dazaifu, in Mikasa county of Chikuzen.
Kikuchi no Jir Takanao, who had left the capital with the Heike,
announced that he would go on ahead and open the tsuyama barrier,
but instead he crossed the border into Higo, retired to his own fort,
and ignored repeated orders to return.
Only kura no Tanenao stayed on with the Heike.
The warriors of Kyushu, Iki, and Tsushima,
who had promised to join them at once, never arrived.
The Heike went to Anrakuji, where they served the deity
by composing poems and making linked verse.
Lord Taira no Shigehira wrote,
Desperate longing
for the most noble city
many years our home:
You, too, O Divinity,
surely felt it in your time.
This drew tears from all present.
On the twentieth, in the capital, the Fourth Prince acceded to the imperial dignity
by decree of the cloistered emperor, in the Kan’in Mansion.
The regent continued to be Motomichi.
All withdrew once the chamberlains and their heads had been appointed.
The nurses of the Third Prince wept
tears of bitterest regret
but, alas, gained nothing from them.
In the sky there are not two suns
nor, in the realm below, two sovereigns—
so they say, yet Heike evil
nonetheless had created two:
one in the city, one in the country.
Emperor Montoku, of old,
passed away on the twenty-third day
of the eighth month of Ten’an 2. [858]
Every one of his several sons
yearned ardently to succeed him
and secretly prayed to do so.
The eldest of them, Koretaka,
known as the hara Prince,
aspired to the highest wisdom,
saw as though written in his palm
peace and peril within the four seas,
and in his heart of hearts discerned
the rights and wrongs of emperors past.
In short, he seemed destined to fame
for judgment and sagacity.
The Second Prince was Korehito, born of the Somedono Empress,
daughter to the current regent, Lord Yoshifusa.
The greatest Fujiwara lords so favored him that he could not be excluded.
Koretaka had all the cultivation expected of an emperor;
Korehito enjoyed the support of the emperor’s highest officials.
The choice seemed impossible and caused intense concern.
Koretaka, the First Prince, entrusted prayers on his own behalf
to the great Shinzei,199 abbot of Tji and a disciple of Kb Daishi.
The Second Prince, Korehito, entrusted his to Yoshifusa’s personal chaplain,
the distinguished Ery of Mount Hiei.
“Those two monks are equally holy,” people whispered among themselves.
“The issue will not be decided quickly.”
The emperor having passed away, the senior nobles met in council.
“If, solely on our judgment,
we choose one prince over the other
and elevate him to the throne,
it will seem as though we did so
purely from personal motives.
Everyone will condemn our verdict.
The better course might be to discover the fated choice
through a horse race and a wrestling match
and to confer the throne on the winning side.”
So that is what they decided to do.
On the second of the ninth month,
each of the princes made his way
to the Right Palace Guards’ riding ground.
Imperial scions, senior nobles
were all there, dressed in their best,
bridle to bridle, great clouds of them,
ranged as though in ranks of stars.
This exceedingly rare event
now riveted the realm’s attention.
Each candidate’s noble partisans
split into separate, rival sides,
wringing their hands with anxiety.
The holy monks charged with the prayers
> went at it just as hard as they could,
desperate, each, to carry the day.
Shinzei built his altar at Tji,
Ery his at the Shingon chapel
there in the inner palace compound.
Ery fancied that if he published
an announcement of his own death,
Shinzei might just slacken a little,
so he did and prayed fit to bust.
Meanwhile the horse race in ten rounds began.
Victory in the first four went to the elder, Koretaka,
but the last six went to the younger, Korehito.
Then it was time for the wrestling.
From Prince Koretaka’s camp stepped forward the intendant of the Right Watch,
Natora, an awesome figure as strong as sixty men.
From Prince Korehito’s came Yoshio, a Palace Guards lieutenant,
small and elegant enough, it seemed, for his foe to dismiss with one hand.
A sacred dream, no less, had convinced Yoshio to accept the challenge.
The two, Natora and Yoshio,
met, grappled fiercely, and withdrew.
An instant later Natora
grasped Yoshio, lifted him high,
and threw him all of twenty feet.
Yoshio nimbly straightened up,
landed upright, and dove at his foe.
With a great cry, he seized Natora
and attempted to flatten him.
Natora, too, with a mighty roar
struggled to flatten Yoshio.
Neither looked like the lesser man.
Still, Natora was so very big
that he did seem to be winning.
With Yoshio plainly in peril
the mother of Prince Korehito,
the Somedono Empress herself,
sent a volley of messengers
racing off to inform Ery.
“It looks bad for Her Majesty’s man,”
they said. “Something needs to be done.”
Ery was engaged at the time
in performing the rite of Daiitoku.
“Well, we simply can’t have that!”
he declared. Smashing his vajra200
into his skull, he pounded his brains
to paste that he burned in the goma fire.201
Black smoke rose, and on he prayed,
rubbing his hands with frantic vigor,
until Yoshio claimed victory
and Prince Korehito the throne,
under the name of Emperor Seiwa [r. 858–76]
or, later, the Mizuno-o Emperor.
