by VIKING ADULT
On the fifteenth of the third month of Juei 3, he stole away from his Yashima quarters [1184]
in the company of three others: Yosbye Shigekage, a page named Ishidmaru,
and a servant named Takesato, a fellow who knew all about boats.
Boarding a small craft at the village of Yūki in Awa,
they rowed via Naruto toward the province of Kii.
Waka-no-ura, Fukiage,
the Tamatsushima Myjin Shrine
where Princess Sotri resides,
present as a divinity—234
these he passed and passed as well
the noble sanctuaries
of Nichizen and Kokuken.
At last he reached the harbor of Ki.235
From there he longed to continue on
through the mountains up to the city,
to be again with the family
he loved so much, but he reflected,
“They took Shigehira prisoner,
they paraded him through the streets,
they subjected him to ghastly shame
in the city and in Kamakura,
and should I fall into their clutches,
my fate would bloody my father’s grave.
No, that I could never bear to do.”
A thousand times his heart said Go!
and a thousand times he fought it.
In this tormented state of mind,
he traveled to sacred Mount Kya.
There lived on Mount Kya a holy man whom he had long known:
Sait Takiguchi Tokiyori, son of Sait Mochiyori of the Left Gate Watch.
Tokiyori had once served in Koremori’s household.
In his thirteenth year, he moved to the palace, to join the corps of Takiguchi guards,236
and there he met Yokobue, a girl in the service of Kenreimon-in.
He fell desperately in love.
“There I was,” his father raged, “looking to make you some fine gentleman’s son-in-law
and set you up well in life—but no, you have to fall for a girl who is nothing!”
This was his son’s response:
“There lived, once upon a time,
a Queen Mother of the west,237
but no longer: She is gone.
So, too, the wizard Dongfang Shuo:
His name remains, but he does not.
In this world of ours, the young
too often die before the old,
extinguished like a flint-struck spark.
Common talk of a ‘long life’
means seventy or eighty years,
no more, and of all these the best
number perhaps barely twenty.
Life is a dream, an illusion—
why then suffer while we live
any distasteful company?
For me to make my love my own
would be to disobey my father.
Very well then: I will spurn
the fleeting sorrows of the world
and follow the true path instead.”
In his nineteenth year, he shaved his head
and, at j-in in Saga,
began a life of ardent devotion.
Yokobue said to herself when she heard what he had done,
“How awful of him to abandon me and make himself a monk!
All right, so he renounced the world—but he could at least have let me know!
Perhaps he believes he is above all that now,
but I will go and find him and let him know just what I think of him!”
At dusk one day, she left the city and wandered off toward Saga.
The tenth of the second month was past.
The spring breeze through Umezu village
wafted, from somewhere, plum-blossom scent.
The moon shed upon the i River
a radiance dimmed by veils of mist.
Sorely troubled, she knew all too well
at whose door to lay bitter reproach.
She learned the way to j-in
but did not know which lodge was his
and so faltered in her search.
The poor thing just could not find it.
At last, from a tumbledown monk’s lodge she heard a voice calling the Name. It was Tokiyori’s—no doubt about that. She had the girl with her take him this message: “Here I am. I have found you. I have come to see you a last time, in your new guise.”
The heart of Tokiyori—now the Takiguchi Novice—beat fast. He cracked open a sliding panel and peeped out: Yes, there she was, looking all the more pitiful for having had such trouble finding him. The sight was enough to sway any devout practitioner. He sent someone out at once: “There is no one here by that name. You must have the wrong place.” So she had to leave after all without seeing him.
Yokobue visits her lover, now a monk (right panel).
Angry and hurt, Yokobue could only go home again, trying to swallow her tears.
To his fellow monks in the lodge, the Takiguchi Novice said,
“This is a very peaceful place
where nothing hinders calling the Name,
but a woman I regretted leaving
came and discovered where I live.
That first time, yes, I steeled myself,
but if she ever turns up again,
I know that my heart will go to her.
So good-bye now to all of you.”
He left Saga, climbed Mount Kya,
and settled at Shjshin-in.
Yokobue, too—so he soon heard—
took the step that he had taken.
He sent her this poem:
Yes, I shaved my head,
having much against the world,
but if truth be told,
it is still a joy to me
that you now tread the true path.
She answered,
Shave your head you did,
but why hold that against you?
For if truth be told,
you could not have changed your mind,
nor could I, who follow you.
For Yokobue, grief, it seems,
led her to Hokkeji in Nara,
where before long she was gone.
The Takiguchi Novice heard
and redoubled his devotions.
His father pardoned him at last,
and his family revered him.
The Holy Man of Mount Kya—
that was what they called him then.
And there Koremori visited him.
In the old days, in the capital,
the Takiguchi Novice wore
the costume and eboshi hat
proper to his worthy station,
neat and clean, his sidelocks smooth.
He had been a striking youth.
But now that he had left the world,
this first glimpse revealed a monk
who looked old, emaciated,
although not yet even thirty,
his robe and stole as black as ink:
the picture of a saintly man.
Koremori must have envied him.
No Seven Sages of Jin in their bamboo grove,
no white-haired hermits of Han on Mount Shang
could ever have impressed him more.
9. Mount Kya
The Takiguchi Novice recognized Koremori.
“I can hardly believe my eyes,” he said.
“What brings you all this way from Yashima?”
Koremori replied, “You may well ask.
With the others I left the capital and went down to the provinces of the west,
but I missed my children too much ever to forget them.
I suppose it was all too obvious that I had dark worries on my mind,
because Lord Munemori and Lady Nii suspected me of divided loyalty, like Yorimori,
and they took care to keep me at a distance.
Life lost all meaning for me, and I could bear it no longer.
So I fled Yashima and made my way here.
If only I could somehow follow the mountains back to the city and be together again with those I love! But the awful fate of Lord Shigehira makes that impossible. I might as well instead renounce the world here and extinguish my life in fire or water. I did once solemnly vow, though, a pilgrimage to Kumano.”
“This dream, this illusion that is life
does not matter,” Takiguchi replied.
“Endless birth and rebirth in darkness—
that is where true misery lies.”
Under Takiguchi’s guidance
Koremori set off straightaway
to salute every hall and pagoda.
Soon he came to the Oku-no-in.
Between Mount Kya and the city
lies a distance of two hundred leagues.
The nearest settlement is far off;
no human voices break the silence.
Only breezes rustle the green leaves;
the setting sun sheds a tranquil light.
Eight peaks rise, eight valleys drop away.
The heart there can be truly at peace.
Flowers bloom on the misty forest floor,
while bells ring from clouded heights.
Ferns grow from between the tiles;
mosses cloak the long compound walls
in this realm of timeless stars and frosts.
During the Engi Emperor’s reign, a sacred dream moved His Majesty [Daigo, r. 897–930]
to present a dark brown robe to the Great Teacher, Kb Daishi.
His envoy for the purpose, the counselor Sukezumi,
took with him to Mount Kya the Hannyaji abbot, Kangen.
They opened the portals of the Great Teacher’s tomb,
meaning to lay the robe across his shoulders,
but a thick vapor veiled him from them,
and their reverent gaze distinguished nothing.
In profound affliction, Kangen wept.
“Never,” he said, “since I was first born
and became my master’s disciple238
have I broken a single precept.
Why, then, can my eyes not see him?”
Prostrating himself on the ground,
he shed bitter tears of repentance—
whereupon the vapors melted away
and, as though the full moon shone forth,
the form of the Great Teacher appeared.
Kangen clothed him in the robe, weeping with joy. The Teacher’s hair had grown so long that Kangen enjoyed the blessing of shaving him. But while the envoy and Kangen both beheld the Teacher, Kangen’s disciple Shun’yū, the palace chaplain from Ishiyama—still an acolyte at the time, accompanying his master—was deeply distressed to find that he could not. Kangen took his hand and touched it to the Great Teacher’s knee. For the rest of Shun’yū’s life, that hand gave forth a delicious fragrance.
The fragrance passed, so they say, to the scripture scrolls of Ishiyama.
To the emperor the Great Teacher replied,
“Of old I came before the bodhisattva,239
who gave me all the mudra and darani.
I then declared a sacred, peerless vow
to be present in this distant, alien land,
where I bestow compassion on the people
and uphold the vow of merciful Fugen.
In my own body I entered samadhi240
and now wait for Miroku to come.”
Such was his answer, and just so, it seems,
Mahā-Kāshyapa, the Buddha’s great disciple,
waits in the depths of the cavern where he dwells
for spring winds announcing that glorious day.
The Great Teacher entered into samadhi
on the twenty-first day of the third month of Shwa 2, [835]
in the first quarter of the hour of the tiger. [ca. 3 A.M.]
Three hundred years have passed since then,
and there lie ahead, until the King of Mercy241
addresses that morning his Three Assemblies,
five billion six hundred and seventy million years.
The patient waiting has a long time to run.
10. Koremori Renounces the World
“This is what is left of me,”
the unhappy Koremori said,
tears starting from his eyes:
“Like that Himalayan bird
(the one that only cries and cries)
I tell myself, I must! I must242
today, today or tomorrow!”
Darkened by the salt sea winds,
wasted by endless wretchedness,
he looked nothing like himself,
yet still surpassed other men.
The two of them returned at dark
to Takiguchi’s hermitage
and talked over through the night
old times and new, the past and now.
The holy man’s every gesture
soon persuaded Koremori
that devotion beyond sounding
moved him toward enlightenment
and that the bell calling to prayer
in the last hours of the night,
and again at break of day,
must awaken him from sleep
to the truth of birth and death;
and he longed to be just like him,
could he but summon the resolve.
When day returned, Koremori called in the saintly Chikaku, of Tzen-in,
and prepared himself to renounce the world.
He summoned Shigekage and Ishidmaru.
“For myself I suffer from a secret grief,” he said,
“and the narrow path ahead offers little escape.
Soon I may be no more.
Many others, though, are prospering even now.
Nothing need keep you two from doing equally well, one way or another.
So stay by me to the end; then hurry on up to the city.
Secure your livelihoods there, look after your wives and children,
and pray for me at the same time in the life to come.”
The two men wept bitterly. For a time neither could speak.
At last, however, Shigekage swallowed his tears to say,
“My father, Yoszaemon Kageyasu,
during the tumult of the Heiji years,
attended his lordship your late father
until, near the Nij-Horikawa crossing,
he was obliged to fight Kamadabye
and died at the hands of Akugenda.
Shall I, Shigekage, show less devotion? I was not yet then into my second year, so I do not remember his death. In my seventh my mother died, and I had no close family to look after me. His late lordship, though, said, ‘The boy’s father gave his life for me, after all,’ and he brought me up himself. In my ninth year, on the night when you, my lord, came of age, he kindly had my hair, too, put up into a topknot. And he did me the great honor of saying, ‘The mori character belongs to our house, so it goes to Godai.243 Matsu shall have the shige. And so it was that he named me Shigekage. In fact, I got Matsu, my childhood name, when my father took me in his arms and presented me to his lordship on the fiftieth day after my birth.’ Lord Shigemori said, ‘Komatsu is the name of my house, so matsu should bring him good luck.’ And he called me Matsu.
It was a blessing for me, I think, that my father died a noble death.
All the retainers were very good to me, too.
On his deathbed Lord Shigemori gave no thought to the world and never spoke,
but he called me nonetheless to his side.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said.
‘To you I have been as your father;
to me you have been the presence
as of Kageyasu himself.
In the next round of appointments,
I was planning that you should have
an officer post in the Gate Watch
so I could call you by the title
I used then to address your father,
but, alas, it is too late now.
Never p
art ways with Lord Koremori.’ That is what he said to me.
How could you for one moment imagine me, during these days,
unprepared to see you through whatever you must face?
I blush with shame that you should think such a thing of me.
‘Many are prospering even now,’ you said.
No doubt they are, but all at present are on the Genji side.
Whatever might be my success,
once you, my lord, have passed aloft
to the realm of gods and buddhas,
could I prosper a thousand years?
And should I last even ten thousand,
would my life really never end?
No, this moment proposes to me
a lesson in the highest truth.”
With his own hand, he cut his topknot
and, weeping, had Takiguchi
shave his head. Ishidmaru
severed his topknot at the sight.
He had been with Koremori
since his eighth year and enjoyed
favor to equal Shigekage’s.
He, too, had Takiguchi shave him.
Seeing these two take so momentous a step before him,
Koremori felt more downcast than ever.
There was only one thing to do.
“Transmigration among the Three Worlds
only perpetuates the bonds of love.
Who gives up love to enter the true way,
through him love yields its truest reward.”
After chanting these lines three times,
he at last rid himself of his hair.
“Alas,” he said, all too sinfully, “I would have no regrets now if only my dear family could have seen me one last time as they used to know me!” He and Shigekage were both in their twenty-seventh year, Ishidmaru in his eighteenth.
Koremori now called the servant Takesato to his side. “I want you to go straight back from here to Yashima,” he told him. “Do not go up to the capital. Of course everyone will find out in the end what I have done, but I know that my wife will become a nun at once if she has clear confirmation. So go to Yashima. This is what you are to say there for me: ‘Life had become a burden to me, as you noticed yourselves. Too many terrible things were happening. That is why I kept from you what I have now done. Kiyotsune died in the west. Moromori was killed at Ichi-no-tani. Now I know how it will pain you to learn that even I have become what I am. That is the only thing that I deeply regret.
