by VIKING ADULT
The suit of armor called Karakawa and the sword named Kogarasu—
these heirlooms in my line came down to me across nine generations
from the great warrior Taira no Sadamori.
Should we by some miracle regain our standing in the world,
they must go to Rokudai.’ Tell them that.”
Takesato answered him,
“I shall start for Yashima, my lord,
when I have seen you to your end.”
“Very well,” Koremori replied, and he kept Takesato with him. He had Takiguchi accompany him, too, to guide him on the path.
So it was that he set out from Mount Kya toward Sand,244 in that same province, in the guise of a mountain ascetic. He worshipped at the ji Shrine in Fujishiro and at all the others along the way. He was before the Iwashiro ji Shrine, north of Senri-no-hama, when seven or eight horsemen came upon them. Assuming that the riders would seize them, he and his party put their hands to their daggers, ready to slit their bellies; but although the riders indeed approached, they showed no sign of threatening violence. Instead they dismounted in haste, bowed low, and passed on by. “They recognized me!” Koremori exclaimed. “Who can they be?” He quickened his pace.
At their head rode Yuasa no Shichirbye Munemitsu,
the son of a man of the province, Yuasa no Gon-no-kami Muneshige.
“Who was that?” his men asked.
“I can hardly bear to tell you,” he replied through his tears.
“That was Koremori, Lord Taira no Shigemori’s eldest son.
I wonder why he fled here all the way from Yashima.
He has renounced the world, and Shigekage and Ishidmaru, his companions, with him.
I wanted to go up and greet him,
but I was afraid to embarrass him, so I just passed on by.
What a pathetic sight he makes!”
He pressed his sleeves to his eyes, sobbing,
and every one of his men wept.
11. The Pilgrimage to Kumano
On Koremori went, and the passing days brought him to the Iwada River.
“For him who once crosses this river,” so he assured himself with deep faith,
“all evil karma, all the passions, all sins from beginningless time melt away.”
He came to the great shrine of Kumano Hongū, knelt there before the Shjden,
and for a time offered the divine presence there his chanting of the sutras.
He then gazed upon the inexpressibly majestic hills.
The mists of nurturing compassion
trailed about the Kumano mountains;
beside the Otonashi River,
the gods, workers of peerless wonders,
revealed their presence here below.
Upon these banks reigned devotion
to practice of the One Vehicle,245
while a spotless moon, aloft,
shone down in sign of generous boons.
No dewdrops of deluded thoughts
gathered in these holy precincts
where prevailed only repentance
for the sins of the six sense roots.
All this inspired his deepest faith.
Late that night, while others slept,
he prayed and movingly recalled
how his father before this shrine
had begged the gods to take his life
and save him in the life to come.
“You who make manifest the Buddha Amida himself,
O honor your Original Vow to gather each believer to you and abandon none!
Guide me, I beg, to your Pure Land!”
And to this prayer he added, the poor man,
“Grant peace, I beg, to the wife and children I have left behind!”
Alas, these words made it all too plain
that after spurning this sorry world
and entering at last the true way,
he still indulged in deluded clinging.
At dawn he sailed down from the shrine to Shingū
and worshipped there the sacred Rock Seat.246
Through the pines towering on those heights
sighed breezes to dispel deluded dreams;
the pure waters of the flowing streams
washed him clean of all polluting dust.
Having paid homage at the Asuka Shrine,
he traveled past the pinewoods of Sano
and on into the mountains of Nachi.
Water pouring down the triple cascade247
rebounded from below, thousands of feet,
and there appeared on the falls’ rocky lip
the mountain’s sacred figure of Kannon,
as though this were Mount Fudaraku itself.
Through the mist came the sound of voices
so devoutly chanting the Lotus Sutra
that the place could have been Vulture Peak.
Ever since the deity first descended,
Left panel: Koremori on a bluff overlooking the Nachi waterfall. Right panel: Takiguchi, followed by Ishidmaru and the others. In the background (center right): Yuasa Munemitsu and his men.
all in our realm, whether high or low,
have bent their steps thither, bowed their heads,
hands folded in prayer, and enjoyed blessings:
hence the rows of monks’ lodges,
the press of pilgrims, clerical and lay.
That summer during the Kanna years, [985–87]
Cloistered Emperor Kazan fled the throne
to seek rebirth in highest paradise,
and here was the site of his hermitage.
Perhaps to honor so noble a past,
an old cherry tree stood there in full bloom.
One monk on retreat at Nachi must have seen Koremori often in the past, for he said to his companion, “I was just wondering who that ascetic over there could be when I recognized Lord Shigemori’s eldest son, Koremori. Back in the Angen years, at Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa’s fiftieth jubilee, he was still a lieutenant at the fourth rank. His father was palace minister and left commander, and his uncle, Lord Munemori, sat below the steps as counselor and right commander.
Lord Tomomori and Lord Shigehira were there as well,
and likewise every Taira gentleman, in the full splendor of Heike glory.
When Lord Koremori stepped forth from their circle to dance Blue Sea Waves,
with a spray of blossoms in his hair,
he could have been a dew-laden flower.
The swaying of his wind-tossed sleeves
lit up earth and illumined heaven.
The cloistered emperor’s greatest lady248
sent him the regent, bearing a robe.
His father rose from his seat to take it
and laid it across his son’s right shoulder;
then he humbly bowed to the sovereign.
This gift was so plainly a signal honor
that the privy gentlemen looking on
must have felt, ah, what pangs of envy!
A palace gentlewoman even remarked,
‘No bayberry could stand out more
from any thicket of nondescript trees!’
He was so obviously destined then
to serve as minister and commander,
yet there he is now, a wreck of a man.
I never thought to see such a thing.
Talk about life’s vicissitudes!
Poor fellow! What an awful fate!”
He pressed his sleeves to his eyes and wept,
and all the monks on retreat at Nachi
likewise moistened the sleeves of their robes.
12. Koremori Drowns
His Triple Kumano pilgrimage safely accomplished,
Koremori repaired to the Seashore Shrine249
and rowed a boat out over the vast blue sea.
Far in the offing lay Yamanari Island.
He brought the boat up to it, disembarked on the shore,
and into the trunk of a large pine tree there carved h
is rank and name.
“Grandfather: Chancellor Taira no Kiyomori,
name in religion Jkai.
Father: Palace Minister & Left Commander Shigemori,
name in religion Jren.
His son: Third Rank Captain Koremori,
name in religion Jen,
in his 27th year, this day,
Juei 3, 3rd month, the 28th,
drowned himself in the sea off Nachi.”
So he wrote, then reboarded his boat
and rowed toward the open ocean.
He had made up his mind to do this,
but now that the time had come to act,
he felt sorrow and apprehension.
Late as it was in the third month,
haze veiled the sea into the distance,
evoking a mood of melancholy.
Sadness pervades the sunset sky
any spring day, and this one, of course,
weighed upon him like no other.
Just when he thought a distant boat
had vanished for good into the waves,
up it came again, plain as could be,
and his thoughts turned to his fate.
A line of homing geese flew by,
calling, toward the northern marches,
and he longed to send a message home,
as had Su Wu from that barbarian land,
filled with all the trials he had suffered.
“But what is this?” he reproached himself.
“Profane attachment must rule me still.”
He turned to the west, palms pressed together,
and called the Name, but these thoughts crept in:
“They could never suspect, in the city,
that this moment, for me, is my last.
No doubt they believe that news of me
is on its way to them even now.
But everyone will know in the end.
And when they learn that I am gone,
ah, how deeply they will despair!”
These thoughts besieged his calling the Name.
He stopped and dropped his hands. “Alas!”
he said, turning to Takiguchi.
“No man should have a wife and children.
In this life they are a constant worry,
and, even more unfortunately,
they hinder enlightenment in the next.
Just now, again, they troubled my thoughts.
That such things should still upset me
must be a grave sin, and I confess it.”
His words saddened Takiguchi, who shrank from betraying similar weakness.
The holy man wiped his eyes and began with a show of composure,
“I do not wonder that you should feel as you do.
No man, high or low, can keep from treading the path of love.
For a husband and wife above all, a single night spent side by side
confirms, they say, a bond established over five hundred lives.
A tie founded so long in the past is very far from casual.
All those who are born must die, it is true. All who meet must part.
That is simply the way of this world.
As one dewdrop may fall in its time from the tip of a leaf
and another trickle straight down the stem to the root,
one will precede the other sooner or later.
Could the moment for that parting then never come?
That autumn night in the Lishan Palace,
those lovers sealed between them a bond
that in the end only broke their hearts.
Love shared in life, in the Ganquan hall,
sure enough in the end came to naught.
Songzi and Mei Fu met their last hour.250
The loftiest among the bodhisattvas
still follow the law of birth and death.
You would not escape that final sorrow, my lord, even if you came to pride yourself on the pleasures of a long life. The same grief would find you in the end, as it does now, even if you were to live a hundred years. That heretic Ma in his sixth heaven, who lords it over all six heavens in the realm of desire, resents that in our world sentient beings should free themselves from birth and death, and to keep them from doing so he assumes the guise now of a wife, now of a husband. In contrast the buddhas of the Three Ages love all sentient beings like their own child and urge them to enter the immutable Pure Land paradise. To this end, the Buddha emphatically discourages love for any wife or child, for through the aeons of beginningless time these have always bound one to the wheel of transmigration.
So do not, I implore you, allow your resolve to falter.
The great Genji founder, the Iyo novice Yoriyoshi,
spent twelve years in the north, by imperial order,
warring against the barbarians Sadat and Munet.
In that time he beheaded sixteen thousand men and more,
quite apart from killing by the millions beasts of the field and fish of the rivers.
And yet when the end came for him,
they say he aroused a faith so pure
that he attained his cherished goal:
rebirth in Amida’s paradise.
Above all, to renounce the world and become a monk is to gain the very greatest merit. A man might build a pagoda of the seven precious substances as high as the heaven of the thirty-three gods, and still not earn the merit of one day as a monk. He might make offerings to the Hundred Arhats251 for a hundred or a thousand years and still fail to earn the merit of that one day. So the Teaching tells us.
The profoundly sinful Yoriyoshi was also a man of ardent courage,
and that is why he achieved rebirth.
You, then, who have done nothing especially sinful—
why should you not go straight to the Pure Land?
Besides, the divinity of these mountains reveals the very presence of Amida.
Every single one of his vows,
from the first—to abolish the three evil realms—
to the last—to triply enlighten all bodhisattvas—
was conceived for the salvation of sentient beings.
Among these vows the eighteenth says,
‘Should I reach the brink of buddhahood
and sentient beings everywhere,
in faith and joy believe my vow,
desiring birth in my Pure Land,
and call on me by name ten times
yet not have the birth they wish,
I shall decline final enlightenment.’
So the Buddha Amida taught.
Therefore call the Name ten times
or only once, and trust in him.
Let no doubt invade your heart.
Arouse ardent, peerless faith,
call on him ten times or once,
and the Buddha Amida
will draw down his infinite vastness
into a body sixteen feet tall
surrounded by Kannon and Seishi,
by a great host of holy beings,
by transformed buddhas and bodhisattvas
rank on rank into the distance,
and come forth, singing hymns of praise,
from the east gate of paradise
to welcome the newly departed soul.
You will believe that you are sinking
into the depths of the blue ocean
but really will mount the purple cloud.
Once enlightenment dawns for you
and you are free in buddhahood,
you will return to your home in this world
to guide your wife and your children,
as do all those from the Pure Land
who ‘return to this sullied earth
to save both humans and devas.’
Of this there is no doubt at all.”
The holy man now rang his bell
and urged Koremori to call the Name.
Trusting his true spiritual friend,
Koremori righted his error,
faced th
e west, palms pressed together,
one hundred times called out the Name,
and with a last “Hail!” plunged into the sea.
Shigekage and Ishidmaru
called the Name as he had done,
then followed him into the depths.
13. The Three-Day Heike
The servant Takesato moved to follow, but the holy man stopped him.
“For shame!” he cried. “Why, you nearly disobeyed Lord Koremori’s final command!
Servants! What a hopeless lot!
Just devote yourself to prayer for him in the life to come!”
So, in tears, he reproved the man,
but so distraught was Takesato at being left behind
that the idea of praying for his late master meant nothing to him.
He only writhed in the bottom of the boat, groaning and crying,
his grief no less profound than Chandaka’s
when Prince Siddhartha long, long ago
retreated to the Mount Dandaka wilds
leaving him Kanthaka, his steed,
to take back to the royal palace.
The holy man rowed about for a while,
peering down into the water, but the three
had sunk too deep; there was no sign of them.
In time he chanted scripture, called the Name,
and prayed that they enter paradise.
His tender concern was very moving.
Meanwhile the sun sank toward the west
and darkness spread across the ocean.
With many a pang of lingering sorrow,
he rowed the empty boat back to the shore.
Drops from the oar, teardrops on his sleeves—
which was which, there was no telling.
Takiguchi again climbed Mount Kya.
Takesato returned, weeping, to Yashima.
There he gave Sukemori, Koremori’s brother, a last letter from his master.
“How awful!” Sukemori cried.
“If only he had understood
how much he meant to all of us!
Lord Munemori and Lady Nii,
suspecting him of being in league
with Yoritomo—like Yorimori—
assume that he went off to the city
and so look askance at me, too.
But no! Apparently he has drowned himself in the sea off Nachi!
He could have taken me with him, so that we might drown together,
and I hate to think that our bodies must now lie apart.
