by VIKING ADULT
kept them wakeful, imagining
armed warriors rowing in by night.
The bitter winds weathered their skin;
their black eyebrows and rosy looks
with passing time lost their last glow.
Hollow-eyed before endless blue waves,
they wept helpless streams of homesick tears.
Green curtains hung in crimson chambers206
now were reed blinds in mud-daubed huts;
smoke wafting from incense burners,
rush fires smoldering in hovels.
Scarlet tears of endless sorrow
so smeared the women’s eyebrows black
that one no longer knew them.
5. His Cloistered Eminence Appoints a Supreme Commander
In Kamakura, meanwhile, Yoritomo received from the cloistered emperor
a decree appointing him supreme commander of the imperial forces.
The documents clerk Nakahara no Yasusada, the envoy who brought it,
reached the Kanto on the fourteenth day of the tenth month. [1183]
Yoritomo said, “After years under imperial ban, success in battle has won me
His Cloistered Eminence’s appointment to supreme command.
Would I have the effrontery to receive it simply at home?
No, I shall accept it at the new shrine of Hachiman.”
He set forth there without delay.
Hachiman’s shrine stands at Tsuru-ga-oka.207
The landscape setting there resembles
the one familiar at Iwashimizu.
There is an encircling gallery,
an imposing gate, and an approach
along a new, mile-long avenue.
A discussion held to consider
precisely who should take the decree
from the hand of Yasusada
settled on Miura Yoshizumi.
Why? Because this great warrior,
famed throughout the eight provinces,
also counted among his forebears
Miura no Heitar Tametsugu.
Besides, his father, Yoshiaki,
had laid down his life for Yoritomo,
and this gesture would light his way
through the dark of the netherworld.
That was how the reasoning ran.
Yasusada, the envoy bearing the decree, arrived with two retainers and ten attendants.
By his order a servant carried the decree in a bag around his neck.
Miura Yoshizumi came with retainers and attendants in equal numbers.
The two retainers were Wada no Sabur Munezane and Hiki no Tshir Yoshikazu.
As to the ten attendants, he had had ten major local lords provide in haste one each.
He wore that day, over a blue-black hitatare, black-silk-laced armor,
with, at his side, a mighty sword and, at his back,
twenty-four black-and-white-banded arrows.
Under his arm he carried a black-lacquered, rattan-wrapped bow,
and his helmet hung over his shoulders on a cord.
He accepted the decree with a deep bow.
“You who take this decree in hand,” Yasusada said, “who are you? Name yourself!”
Miura proudly announced his full name:
Miura no Arajir Yoshizumi.
The decree was in a document case, which Miura presented to his lord.
Yasusada soon got the case back.
He opened it, because this time it was heavy:
It contained one hundred taels of gold dust.
Next he was treated to wine in the shrine’s worship hall.
Chikayoshi, an official in the Kamo Priestess’s household,
served him his meal, assisted by a man of the fifth rank.
Then three horses were led before him, one of them saddled.
Kud Ichir Suketsune led that one; he had served Her Grand Imperial Majesty.208
Finally the envoy was installed in an old, rush-thatched house, done up for the occasion.
A chest containing two thickly padded bed jackets awaited him there, together with a thousand bolts of cloth, some white, some printed with indigo patterns, dark or light. Wine and food were served him in plenty, with superb elegance.
The following day Yasusada
called on Yoritomo at home.
The guardhouse outside the compound
and a second within the gate
were, each of them, sixteen bays long.
The outer guards, kinsmen and allies,
sat formally, shoulder to shoulder.
The inner guards, seated above,
were Genji warriors, and below
sat greater and lesser local lords.
Yasusada was conducted
to the Genji seat of honor.
He paused there a little while,
then went on to the main house.
They seated him in the lower aisle,209
on a mat with a purple border.
Above him lay ready another mat,
black-and-white-bordered, behind raised blinds.
Then in he came: Yoritomo,
wearing the plainest of hunting cloaks
and on his head an eboshi.
Broad of face and short in stature,
he had pleasing looks and spoke language
untainted by any uncouth accent.
He set forth the situation at length:
“The Heike have fled the capital in fear of my might, but Kiso no Yoshinaka and Jūr Yukiie have come in behind them, and they have been collecting offices and promotions at will, as though the triumph were all their own. They have even been turning up their noses at the gift of this province or that. Their behavior is intolerable. In the north, Hidehira is now governor of Mutsu and Satake Takayoshi of Hitachi, and both ignore my orders. What I need is a decree from His Cloistered Eminence commanding me to crush them at once.”
Yasusada spoke in turn: “I should properly present you now with my formally recorded name, but because I am His Cloistered Eminence’s envoy, I will prepare it and send it to you as soon as I return to the capital. My younger brother, the clerk Shigeyoshi, wishes me to give you the same message.”
Yoritomo smiled. “Your formal identification is the last thing on my mind at present,” he said. “However, I shall expect it from you, since you tell me to do so.”
Yasusada then announced his return to the capital that day,
but Yoritomo insisted that he stay a day longer.
The next day Yasusada returned
to Yoritomo’s residence.
Yoritomo had gifts for him:
a suit of green-laced armor,
a sword trimmed with silver,
and a rattan-wrapped bow accompanied by a set of arrows.
Thirteen horses were then led before him. Three were saddled.
Yasusada’s twelve men received clothing and even saddles.
Thirty packhorses bore all this,
including fifty bushels of rice
for each post station on the way
from Kamakura to Kagami.
The quantity was so great, they say,
that a good deal of it went in alms.
6. Nekoma
Yasusada returned to the capital, called at the cloistered emperor’s,
and there, in the inner court, described his journey to the Kanto.
His Cloistered Eminence was impressed,
and the senior nobles and privy gentlemen smiled with satisfaction.
Yoritomo was clearly a gentleman through and through.
Kiso, though—his comportment while he held the capital
was boorish in the extreme, and so, too, his manner of speaking.
Well, no wonder: Between infancy and the age of thirty,
he had lived in a mountain village in the Kiso region of Shinano.
How could he possibly have acquired any polish?
Once a gentleman, the Nekoma counselor Mitsutaka, had something to discuss with Kiso.
Kiso roared with laughter. “Nekoma, you say? A cat’s here to see me?”
“Sir, the gentleman is a senior noble known as the Nekoma counselor. I believe that Nekoma is the place where he lives.”
“All right, send him in.” But even then Kiso could not bring himself to call his visitor Lord Nekoma.
“Lord Pussycat’s turned up for once! Feed him something!” he ordered.
“Dear me, no, not now!” the counselor protested.
“But why? Here you are, it’s time to eat, and I must treat you!”
To him anything fresh was “unsalted,” salt fish being all he had ever known, so he went on, “We have some nice, unsalted oyster mushrooms. Serve them at once!”
Nenoi no Koyata served the meal: a lidded bowl, vast, rustic, and all but bottomless, heaped with rice; three side dishes; and oyster mushroom soup. He set the same before Kiso.
Kiso grabbed his chopsticks and ate.
Lord Nekoma eyed the rustic rice bowl dubiously and just sat there.
“That’s my bowl for when I’m fasting,” Kiso remarked.
His visitor, who knew how rude it would be to eat nothing,
picked up his chopsticks and went through a few motions.
Kiso noticed. “You don’t have much of an appetite, do you, Lord Pussycat!” he said.
“Well, they say kitties never finish their dinners. Come on, dig in!”
Lord Nekoma was so put out
that he never thought to say a word
about what he had to discuss.
No, he left as soon as he could.
Kiso had gathered that a newly promoted official
does not present himself for duty in a warrior’s hitatare,
so for the first time in his life he donned a hunting cloak.
From the tip of his tall eboshi to his baggy trouser bottoms,
he looked utterly absurd.
Somehow he managed nonetheless
to squeeze himself into his carriage.
How enormously better he looked
on horseback, in armor, bow in hand,
at his back a quiver of arrows!
The carriage belonged to Munemori,
just now away at Yashima.
The oxherd, too, was Munemori’s.
The boy had of course bent to the times.
Being a captive, he did his job,
but he so resented every minute
that he just left his master’s ox—
a magnificent animal—
tied up all day long in its stall.
When it came to be time to start,
trouble was nearly guaranteed
at the very first touch of the whip.
The ox hurtled forward. In the carriage
Kiso tumbled head over heels.
Sleeves spread like butterfly wings,
he struggled manfully to get up,
but the effort ended in failure.
“Oxherd” not being a word he knew,
he shouted instead, “Hey! Hey, you!
You, the brat leading the ox!”
What the oxherd got from this was
“Hey, you brat, give him his head!”
He galloped the ox several hundred yards.
Whip and stirrup, Imai no Shir Kanehira urged his horse to catch up.
“What do you mean by handling my lord’s carriage this way?” he roared.
“This ox is very hard to control, sir,” the oxherd explained,
and perhaps hoping to get back into Kiso’s good graces, he added,
“Please, my lord, keep hold of that hand grip over there.”
Kiso gripped it hard. “Very clever!” he exclaimed.
“Was this your bright idea, kid, or your old master’s?”
Eventually the carriage reached the cloistered emperor’s residence.
Kiso had the ox unhitched and was starting out the back of the carriage
when a servant of his, a man of the capital, made bold to remark,
“A gentleman boards a carriage from the rear and leaves by the front.”
“Just because it’s a carriage,” Kiso protested,
“why do you have to go in one end and out the other?”
In the end he went out the back.
Lots of other funny things happened,
but people feared to talk about them.
7. The Battle at Mizushima
From Yashima the Heike seized control of the eight San’yd provinces
and the six of the Nankaid: fourteen in all.
This news disturbed Kiso, who then and there sent a force against them,
commanded by Yata Yoshikiyo and, under him, Unno Yukihiro from Shinano.
Over seven thousand horse strong, they followed the San’y road
to Mizushima in Bitchū, where they assembled a fleet of boats.
Soon they were ready to sail and attack Yashima.
On the first of the intercalary tenth month, a small boat appeared off Mizushima. It looked like a fishing boat, but it was not. No, it bore a messenger from the Heike.
At the sight, the Genji with shouts and cries
dragged down to the water five hundred boats ready for them on the beach.
The Heike, in a thousand boats, stormed in to attack.
At the head of the main Heike force,
Tomomori; in the rear guard,
Noritsune, who shouted out,
“Men, what’s the matter with you,
waging such lukewarm battle?
You’ll be sorry, count on that,
if those ruffians from the north
ever manage to take you alive!
Get our boats tied up together!”
They roped the thousand boats,
bow, stern, and amidships together;
laid planks all the way across them;
and so made of the fleet one deck.
Both sides uttered their war cries,
traded arrows, drove their boats
together in a ferocious clash.
Those more distant wielded bows,
those nearer slashed away with swords.
Some fell afoul of grappling hooks,210
others grappling-hooked their man.
Some pairs, struggling hand to hand,
plunged into the sea; some died
run through by each other’s blades.
Every man fought as he pleased.
The Genji deputy commander,
Unno Yukihiro, was slain.
The sight moved Yata Yoshikiyo,
commander of the Genji force,
to run a boat, he and six men,
out into the thick of the fray,
but then some mishap occurred.
The boat sank, and they all died.
The Heike, who had brought on board
saddled horses, reached the shore,
disembarked the horses, mounted,
and with fearful war cries charged.
Undone by their commander’s loss,
the Genji all fled for their lives.
Mizushima cleansed the Heike
of the shame from old defeats.
8. The Death of Seno-o
This news shocked Kiso. Ten thousand men set off down the San’y road.
Now, the Heike retainer Seno-o no Tar Kaneyasu, from the province of Bitchū,
had been captured during the wars in the north
by Kuramitsu no Jir Narizumi, a man from the province of Kaga,
and given into the custody of Nariuji, Narizumi’s younger brother.
Seno-o was a warrior so well known for strength and prowess
that Kiso dismissed any thought of executing him.
He was also so pleasant and considerate that Nariuji treated him well.
Su Wu, captive among the Xiongnu,
Li Ling, who never returned to Han—
he was like t
hem. For as they say,
confinement in an alien land
deeply distressed the men of old.
Leather elbow guards and felt tents
gave them shelter from wind and rain,
raw meat and kumiss, food and drink.
At night Seno-o did not sleep.
He spent his days serving his captor
by doing any work assigned him,
save only cutting wood and grass,
and meanwhile he kept sharp watch
for any possible opening
that might let him rejoin his lord.
He was a man of daunting spirit.
One day Seno-o met Nariuji and said,
“Having my unworthy life spared this fifth month past
has shaken my old convictions about loyalty to one lord or another.
In the future I shall charge ahead in battle and give my life for Lord Kiso.
An estate of mine, at Seno-o in Bitchū, offers rich pasture for horses.
By all means speak to Lord Kiso about it and have him award it to you.”
Nariuji did so. Kiso replied, “How absolutely remarkable!
Then have Seno-o take you down there right away
and make sure that he has pasture enough for more horses.”
Nariuji thanked his lord and rode off, very pleased, to Bitchū,
accompanied by thirty men. Seno-o rode before them.
Seno-o’s eldest son, Kotar Muneyasu, was a Heike ally. At the news that Kiso had released his father, he called his established retainers together and, with fifty of them, set off to greet him. The two parties met at the Harima provincial seat and continued ahead together. On the way they stopped at the Mitsuishi post station in Bizen. Men close to Seno-o joined them there with wine, and the welcoming party went on far into the night. They got Nariuji and his thirty men dead drunk and then, one after another, killed them all. Now, Bizen was Yukiie’s province, and Yukiie’s deputy was in residence at the time. They attacked and killed him, too.
“I have been released,” Seno-o announced, “and here I am.
Let every man loyal to the Heike follow me when Kiso arrives,
and greet him with an arrow.”
The warriors of Bizen, Bitchū, and Bingo had offered the Heike
horses, arms, and every able follower. The old, retired ones
in haste secured across their chests
the cords of some persimmon-dyed
hitatare that came to hand,
