B007V65S44 EBOK

by VIKING ADULT

  Ever since, the monks of Mount Hiei

  have liked to say on every occasion,

  “When Ery smashed open his brains,

  the younger prince gained the succession;

  when Son’i wielded the sword of wisdom,

  the spirit of Tenjin bowed to his will.”202

  But was dharma prowess all that did it?

  They say that in every other case

  the Sun Goddess made the final choice.

  Off in the west, the outraged Heike learned what had happened

  and rued not having fled with the Third and Fourth princes, too.

  “But even if we had,” Tokitada observed, “there is still Yoshinaka’s patron,

  that son of Prince Mochihito—the one that Shigehide, his guardian,

  made a monk and took with him to the north.

  His Cloistered Eminence would only have made him emperor instead.”

  Some objected that a prince who has left the world cannot succeed to the throne.

  “That is not so,” Tokitada replied.

  “There have surely been in China, too,

  sovereigns who once renounced the world.

  Here, Emperor Tenmu comes first to mind. [r. 673–86]

  During his time as heir apparent,

  in deference to Prince tomo

  he shaved his head and disappeared

  into the far depths of Yoshino,

  but then he destroyed Prince tomo

  and became emperor after all.

  Then, too, there is Empress Kken, [r. 749–58]

  who aspired to enlightenment,

  put off every worldly adornment,

  and came to be known as the nun Hki

  but who then rose to the throne again,

  this time as Empress Shtoku. [r. 764–70]

  No, Yoshinaka’s patron prince

  could perfectly well have given up

  religious life for the sovereign’s.”

  On the second of the ninth month of that year, by the cloistered emperor’s command,

  a senior noble went as imperial envoy to Ise.

  This envoy was the consultant Naganori.

  Earlier three retired emperors

  had sent just such an envoy to Ise:

  Suzaku, Shirakawa, and Toba.

  Each one of these did so, however,

  before giving up the profane world.

  None had ever done so after.

  3. The Reel of Thread

  Meanwhile the Heike in Kyushu had decided to build a new capital

  but had not yet been able to decide where.

  The emperor resided at Iwado, in the house of Tanenao.

  The houses of all the gentlemen

  stood scattered about in moor and paddy,

  and while no one there fulled hempen cloth,

  this could have been the village of Tchi.203

  The palace itself was in the mountains,

  just like the log house in the old poem,

  and had an elegance all its own.

  His Majesty went straight to the Usa Shrine,204

  where he took as his residence

  the house of the chief priest, Kinmichi.

  Senior nobles and privy gentlemen

  lodged in the shrine buildings themselves;

  officials of the fifth and sixth ranks

  had the surrounding gallery, and, in the court,

  warriors from Shikoku and Kyushu,

  in full armor, their weapons at hand,

  ranged like gathering clouds and mists.

  The red shrine fence, though venerable,

  seemed in this way brilliantly renewed.

  For seven days the retreat continued,

  until on the last day, at dawn, Munemori

  received an oracle in a dream.

  The door of the sanctuary opened,

  and an awesome voice spoke loud:

  Not even the gods

  command the vicissitudes

  life inflicts on all.

  What, then, moves such fervent prayers

  at Usa in Tsukushi?

  Munemori awoke, his heart pounding.

  Well, perhaps one day…

  Hope long harbored in the heart,

  shrilling cricket song

  fade into mournful silence

  this nightfall, as autumn ends,

  he said, sadly voicing an old poem.

  The tenth of the ninth month came and went.

  Evening winds swept the bending reeds

  while the men slept alone, fully clothed,

  weeping into desolate sleeves.

  Deepening autumn melancholy

  weighs on everyone equally,

  but never more unbearably

  than on those who are far from home.

  On the thirteenth night of the month,

  so famous for its brilliant moon,

  tears of longing for the city

  helplessly clouded every eye.

  For Tadanori, nights at the palace

  making poetry under the moon

  returned so vividly to mind

  that he offered this:

  Do only those friends

  who, this night a year ago,

  watched the moon with me,

  far off in the capital,

  now preserve my memory?

  Then Tsunemori:

  I miss her, I say!

  Just a year ago, it was,

  she and I, all night,

  sealed our love for each other.

  How it all comes back to me!

  And Tsunemasa:

  The way here was long,

  through broad wastes laden with dew,

  yet I, no dewdrop,

  The Heike nobles making poetry in Kyushu.

  live on still to watch the moon

  from a place so alien.

  The province of Bungo came under the sway of Fujiwara no Yorisuke, lord of Justice,

  and Yorisuke had installed his son, Yoritsune, there to act for him.

  From the capital he sent Yoritsune a directive:

  “The gods have abandoned the Heike, and so has His Cloistered Eminence.

  They have fled the imperial city and as fugitives roam the waves.

  The men of Kyushu accept them, however, and make them welcome.

  This is intolerable. The men of Bungo are not to acknowledge them.

  They are single-mindedly to drive the Heike away.”

  Such was the burden of his message.

  Yoritsune transmitted his order to the Bungo warrior Okata Koreyoshi.

  Now, this Koreyoshi had a fearsome forebear.

  In a far-off mountain hamlet of Bungo province, there once lived a young woman, her parents’ only daughter. She had no husband, and her mother never knew that a man visited her every night. The months and years passed, and in time the young woman came to expect a child.

  Her mother was baffled. “Who has been visiting you?” she asked.

  “I see him come,” her daughter answered, “but I do not see him go.”

  “Very well,” her mother told her. “When he leaves, attach a thread to him and follow it to where he goes.”

  The daughter did so. The man had put on his light blue hunting cloak one morning, in preparation for leaving, when she stuck a needle into the collar. A thread ran back from the needle to a full reel. She followed it all the way to the Bungo border with Hyūga, the neighboring province. It entered a huge cave under a peak named Uba-dake.

  The young woman stood at the mouth of the cave and listened.

  She heard loud groaning inside.

  “Here I am!” she called. “I want to see you!”

  “My form is not human,” a voice replied.

  “To look on me as I really am

  would terrify you out of your wits.

  Go home now, as fast as you can.

  The child you carry will be a son.

  With bow and arrow and all weapons

  he will be the mightie
st warrior

  known in Kyushu and the islands.”

  “Never mind: Whatever your form,”

  the woman answered, “you cannot dismiss

  The great serpent.

  the love you and I have shared so long.

  Let us two look upon each other.”

  “As you wish,” then came the reply,

  and from the cave a serpent emerged,

  five or six feet across when coiled

  and some hundred and fifty feet long.

  The needle she believed she had slipped

  into her lover’s hunting cloak

  was caught in the serpent’s gullet.

  The young woman’s wits indeed left her at the sight. The dozen or so women with her collapsed with terror, screamed with fear, and fled. At home again, she soon gave birth—and yes, it was a boy.

  Her father, Daitayū, agreed to bring the boy up. Before even his tenth year, he was broad of back, long of face, and tall. He came of age in his seventh year, and they named him Daita, in keeping with his grandfather’s name. His arms and legs were so heavily chapped, summer and winter, that people knew him as “Chapped Daita.”

  The great serpent of the story

  is actually the vehicle

  of the god of Takachio,

  whom all of Hyūga reveres,

  and whom Okata Koreyoshi

  claimed as his direct ancestor,

  only five generations back.

  And just because he descended

  from a being so terrifying,

  the provincial governor’s letter—

  sent as from the sovereign himself—

  to all the warriors of Kyushu,

  of Iki and of Tsushima,

  secured obedience from each one

  to Koreyoshi’s orders.

  4. The Flight from Dazaifu

  The Heike had decided to establish their capital, with a new palace, in Kyushu,

  when the news of Koreyoshi’s rebellion threw them into confusion.

  The grand counselor Tokitada suggested to Munemori,

  “This Koreyoshi was Shigemori’s retainer.

  A son of Shigemori might go to him and try to talk him around.”

  Munemori approved. Sukemori therefore crossed over into Bungo

  with five hundred horse, and he did his best to be persuasive,

  but Koreyoshi would not listen. He even went so far as to declare,

  “By rights I should detain you here at once, but, as they say,

  ‘Grand design ignores petty detail.’

  Releasing you could hardly make any difference.

  So go straight back to Dazaifu

  and with the others suffer whatever fate awaits you all.”

  He sent Sukemori packing.

  Next he dispatched his second son, Nojiri Koremura, to Dazaifu to say,

  “I owe the Heike a weighty burden of gratitude,

  and properly I should therefore remove my helmet and unstring my bow.

  By His Cloistered Eminence’s command, however,

  I am required to expel you at once from Kyushu.

  You are to leave immediately.” Such was Koreyoshi’s message.

  Tokitada came out to receive him wearing a hitatare with red sleeve cords,

  a kudzu-cloth divided skirt, and a tall eboshi hat.

  “His Majesty, our sovereign lord,”

  he said, “descends in direct line

  forty-nine generations long

  from the great Goddess of the Sun.

  He is the eighty-first human emperor.

  The Sun Goddess and Hachiman

  keep him under their protection.

  Consider that the late chancellor

  twice during Hgen and Heiji

  suppressed revolts against the throne

  and, furthermore, that he invited

  men of Kyushu to join the court.

  Yoritomo and Yoshinaka have successfully convinced the ruffians of east and north that meritorious service will win them provinces and estates, and you believe them. But you would be making a great mistake to follow the orders of Bungo the Nose.”

  By “Bungo the Nose” he meant Yorisuke, the Bungo governor, whose nose was enormous.

  Koremura returned to his father and reported all this.

  “What nonsense!” Koreyoshi exclaimed. “The past is past; now is now.

  If that is all he has to say, then drive them out of Kyushu at once!”

  News reached the Heike that Koreyoshi was mustering his forces.

  The Heike warriors Suesada and Morizumi declared,

  “We cannot let this corruption spread. We must arrest him.”

  To do so they rode off with three thousand men to Takano-no-honj, in Chikugo,

  and attacked for a night and a day,

  but Koreyoshi’s men swarmed like clouds and mists.

  They were too much for the Heike, who could only withdraw.

  The next word to reach the Heike

  warned that Okata Koreyoshi

  was already bearing down on them

  with thirty thousand mounted men.

  They dropped everything and fled Dazaifu.

  The deity present there, Tenman Tenjin,

  had seemed to offer sure protection,

  and now it was very painful indeed

  to leave behind his most sacred shrine.

  In the absence of any bearers,

  the emperor’s majestic conveyance

  bore in no more than august name

  the golden flowers, the shining phoenix;

  actually, in sober truth

  he boarded the sketchiest palanquin.

  His mother and her noble ladies

  tucked up their divided skirts,

  ministers and the greatest nobles

  likewise hitched up their baggy trousers,

  and out they poured through the single gate

  in the ancient Dazaifu moat,

  as fast as they could possibly go,

  toward the harbor of Hakozaki.

  Alas, it was raining cats and dogs,

  sand was blowing on a stiff wind,

  and their tears mingled with the rain.

  They worshipped at Sumiyoshi,

  Hakozaki, Kashii, Munakata,

  praying at each one of these shrines

  that His Majesty swiftly return

  to their home, the old capital.

  Mount Tarumi, Uzura beach—

  those craggy heights, those endless sands

  they endured, and on they went.

  Not one had done the like before.

  Their bleeding feet reddened the strand,

  the scarlet of their divided skirts

  darkened in hue, and their trousers’ white

  turned at the ankles into red.

  Xuanzang, crossing the Shifting Sands

  or laboring across the Pamirs,

  could hardly have suffered worse trials.205

  He, though, had gone to seek the Law

  for the benefit of all beings,

  whereas the Heike, in full flight

  from an implacable enemy,

  learned from their present misery

  what agony their next lives would bring.

  Harada Tanenao went with them,

  leading two thousand of his men,

  while, with several thousand more,

  Yamaga Hidet received them.

  Tanenao and Hidet

  so heartily detested each other

  that Tanenao, fearing trouble,

  turned around before the two met.

  Passing the harbor of Ashiya,

  the Heike remembered having seen,

  between the city and Fukuhara,

  a village with exactly that name,

  and they felt pangs of desperate yearning.

  Very gladly they would have fled

  to Paekche, Koguryŏ, or Khitan,

  to where the clouds and the ocean end,

  but wind and wave w
ere dead against them.

  Hidet escorted them on

  to refuge in the Yamaga fortress.

  But then came news that the enemy was bearing down on Yamaga, too.

  They boarded small boats and through the night

  sailed to the province of Buzen, to Yanagi-ga-ura.

  Here their plan was to build a palace, but the site was too small.

  Next, word had it that the Genji were on their way over from Nagato.

  The Heike boarded little fishing boats and started once more across the sea.

  Kiyotsune, Shigemori’s third son, had always been given to gloomy reflection.

  “The Genji drove us from the capital,” he said,

  “and now Koreyoshi has forced us from Kyushu.

  We are like fish caught in a net. What escape do we have?

  No, there is no future left us.”

  Outside the cabin this moonlit night,

  he sought to compose his feelings,

  played his flute, sang rei songs,

  quietly turned to chanting sutras

  and calling Amida’s holy Name;

  then he sank into the ocean depths.

  The men and women mourned in tears,

  but they had lost him forever.

  The province of Nagato was Taira no Tomomori’s, and his deputy there was a man named Michisuke. Upon learning that the Heike were at sea in small boats, Michisuke furnished them with over a hundred large ones. On these the Heike crossed to Shikoku.

  There Shigeyoshi mobilized the population to build, at Yashima in Sanuki,

  a poor, board-roofed semblance of an imperial palace.

  Meanwhile it was unthinkable

  that His Majesty should inhabit

  some wretched house of the local folk;

  therefore his ship became his dwelling.

  The ministers, nobles, and officials

  spent their days in reed-thatched huts

  that housed the village fishermen

  and night after night lay where they lay.

  The dragon barge rode out to sea,

  and aboard this wave-borne palace

  not an instant was ever still.

  The moon shone up from an abyss

  as bottomless as their despair,

  and in reeds burdened with frost

  they saw the fragility of their lives.

  Plovers crying on the sandbars

  added new poignancy to dawn;

  the sound of oars below the cliff

  stirred agony deep in the night.

  White herons flocking in distant pines

  seemed to their eyes Genji banners;

  wild geese calling far out at sea