by VIKING ADULT
and wandered in tears wherever her steps chanced to take her,
until she heard from someone on the way,
“In the hills beyond here is a temple known as Takao.
Mongaku, the holy man there, enjoys Lord Yoritomo’s highest respect,
and they say he is seeking a noble youth to be his disciple.”
The nurse kept this encouraging news to herself
and went alone to Takao, where she met the holy man.
“I have had a young lord in my care ever since he was born,” she said,
“and this year is his twelfth. Yesterday a warrior came and took him.
In your goodness, reverend sir,
will you not beg for his life and accept him as your disciple?”
She prostrated herself before him, wailing in a paroxysm of grief.
The holy man took pity on her
and asked her to tell him more.
She rose and answered, in tears, “The wife of Captain Taira no Koremori has been bringing up the son of a close relative, and someone must have reported him as her own son, because yesterday a warrior came and took him away.”
“What was the warrior’s name?” Mongaku asked.
“He was called Hj Tokimasa.”
“Then I shall go and inquire.”
What he had said promised nothing,
but it restored her mood a little,
and she hurried back to Daikakuji.
There she reported what she had heard.
“I was afraid you would drown yourself,”
her mistress said, “and my own wish
was to drown in some river or pool.”
She begged the nurse for the whole story.
She heard from the nurse a full account of all that the holy man had said.
“Oh, I so hope,” she cried, weeping,
her palms pressed together in prayer,
“that my son’s life will be granted him
and he will let me see him again!”
Mongaku went to Rokuhara to look into the matter.
Tokimasa replied, “Lord Yoritomo mentioned being informed that there were many Heike sons and grandsons hiding in the capital, especially Taira no Koremori’s son by the daughter of the Naka-no-mikado grand counselor Narichika. He said that this boy, the scion of the senior Heike line, was now apparently growing up and he wanted him found at all costs and executed. Such was the order that he gave me. I captured a number of such children recently, but I could not find this one, and I was about to leave for Kamakura when the day before yesterday, to my astonishment, I learned where he was. Yesterday I went to fetch him. He is so attractive that I feel sorry for him, and so far I have done nothing further with him.”
“I should like a look at him,” Mongaku replied.
Tokimasa took him off to show him Rokudai.
There he was, in a hitatare
double-layered, brocade and damask,
with a rosary on his wrist
strung with black sandalwood beads.
The sweep of his hair, his comely figure
lent him such true nobility
that he hardly seemed of this world.
The night before, he must not have slept,
and his face, now a little drawn,
looked all the more touchingly sweet.
What the sight of the holy man
stirred in his mind is hard to say,
but tears filled his eyes. Mongaku, too,
moistened the sleeves of his black robe.
Mongaku did not see how anyone could possibly execute this child, whatever threat he might pose in the future. Therefore he addressed Tokimasa. “Perhaps I have some past tie to this young gentleman,” he said, “because he strikes me as extraordinarily appealing. Please grant him another twenty days. I shall go to Kamakura and ask Lord Yoritomo to let me take charge of him. I was in exile at the time, but I nonetheless went up to the capital in the hope of giving Lord Yoritomo his proper place in the world, and on his behalf I requested a decree from the cloistered emperor. One night on the way there, I crossed the Fuji River, of which I knew nothing, and was nearly swept away. Then bandits attacked me in the Takashi mountains and only barely left me my life in response to my pleas. I reached Fukuhara and the residence to which the cloistered emperor was confined under house arrest, and Lord Mitsuyoshi obtained the decree for me. When I presented it to Lord Yoritomo, he promised that for as long as he lived, he would grant me whatever I wished; I had only to ask. After that I rendered him the further services to which you yourself can bear witness, so that I need not describe them. A man’s word matters more than life. Lord Yoritomo will not have forgotten his, unless success has gone to his head.” Mongaku set out at dawn the next day.
To Saitgo and Saitroku, the holy man now seemed a veritable living buddha.
They pressed their palms together in adoration and wept,
then hurried back to Daikakuji with their report.
How glad the boy’s mother must have been to hear it!
The decision was still up to Yoritomo, and the outcome remained uncertain,
but Mongaku had set off with such obvious confidence
that this twenty-day reprieve brought mother and nurse alike a degree of relief.
They felt that they owed it entirely to the mercy of Kannon.
Dusk followed dusk, dawn followed dawn,
until twenty days passed like a dream,
but of Mongaku there was no sign.
Oh, what could have become of him?
In a state of mounting worry,
they felt their old agony return.
Tokimasa now observed, “The days promised Mongaku have passed.
I cannot stay in the city into the new year. I shall return to Kamakura now.”
A hubbub of preparations arose.
Saitgo and Saitroku wrung their hands in despair,
but there was still no sign of Mongaku, nor even a messenger from him.
At their wits’ end, the pair returned to Daikakuji.
“The holy man is not here yet,” they said,
“and Lord Tokimasa goes down to Kamakura in the morning.”
They pressed their sleeves to their eyes and shed a torrent of tears.
Imagine, then, the mother’s anguish when she heard their news!
“Oh, please, please,” she implored them,
“tell him to have someone mature,
someone responsible, take Rokudai
to meet that holy man on the way.
It would be just too terrible
if his request met with success
yet they still executed my son
before he could return to the city!
Or are they, as far as you can tell,
planning to execute him at once?”
“I think it will be very soon, at dawn.
I say that because the Hj housemen
on duty now at Rokuhara
are all looking very downcast.
Some of them are calling the Name,
while others are simply weeping.”
“And Rokudai himself—how is he?”
“He seems calm in another’s presence
and fingers his beads, but when alone
he presses his sleeves to his eyes and sobs.”
“That is too easy to believe.
He is young, but grown up at heart.
He must know this night is his last.
Oh, how miserable he must feel!
He said that he would not be gone long,
since he would soon have leave to return,
but now more than twenty days have passed.
I have never once visited him,
nor has he come to see me here.
On what future day, at what hour
will I ever see him again?
Tell me, you two, what are you going to do?”
Saitgo and Saitroku replied, “We will stay with him to the end, and when he is gone, if that is to ha
ppen, we will take his bones to Mount Kya, then renounce the world and pray for him in the hereafter.”
“I am so terribly worried!” she said. “Then go back to him. Go back now!”
The two took their leave in tears and withdrew.
Meanwhile on the sixteenth of the twelfth month, in that same year,
Hj no Shir Tokimasa set out from the city with Lord Koremori’s son.
Saitgo and Saitroku, blind with weeping, went with him,
resolved as they were to stay by him to the end.
Tokimasa invited them to ride, but they refused.
“We are accompanying our master for the last time,” they said,
“and walking is good enough for us.”
They continued on their way, shedding tears of blood.
Rokudai, who had left behind,
in a parting most painful to him,
his mother and nurse, now looked back
from afar on the city, once his home,
and set out, this first and last time
down the highway toward the east,
in a mood easily surmised.
When a warrior urged his horse on,
Rokudai blanched, imagining
the man moving to behead him;
when others talked among themselves,
he trembled, sure that his time had come.
The riverbank at Shinomiya:
surely now! But before he knew it,
the barrier had dropped behind them,
and they reached the lakeshore at tsu.
At Awazu, then, he told himself;
but no, that day, too, turned to night.
On they went, province to province,
one post station after another,
until they came to Suruga.
Now, he gathered, his dewdrop life
was really and truly over.
At Senbon-no-matsubara the warriors dismounted, released the palanquin bearers,
spread an animal hide on the ground, and seated Rokudai on it.
Tokimasa approached him and said, “I have gladly brought you this far
in case we might meet that holy man on the way.
I have done all I could for you, but I cannot vouch for Lord Yoritomo’s response
if I were to take you from here over Mount Ashigara.
For that reason I mean to announce that I executed you in mi.
No matter who might appeal on your behalf to Lord Yoritomo,
you share the karma of all your house. No appeal could succeed.”
He spoke in tears, and Rokudai said nothing in reply.
Instead he summoned Saitgo and Saitroku.
“Once I am gone,” he said, “go back to the city
and breathe no word there about any execution on the way.
That story will come out in the end, of course,
but if my mother hears it now, she will mourn me too greatly,
and even after her passing, her grief will detain her on the path to higher rebirth.
Tell her that you saw me all the way to Kamakura.”
Overwhelmed, the pair remained speechless a moment.
Then Saitgo:
“Once you are lost to us, my lord,
I do not see how either of us
could go on living as before
and return to the capital!”
With downcast gaze he fought back tears.
The dreaded moment was now approaching.
Young Rokudai, with his own dear hands,
swept forward across his shoulders the beautiful hair that hung down his back.
“The poor boy!” murmured the warrior guards, wringing tears from their sleeves.
“Even now he shows such presence of mind!”
Rokudai turned to the west, palms pressed together, called the Name,
stretched out his neck, and waited.
Kano no Kudz Chikatoshi,
having been chosen to do the deed,
came around from behind, sword at his side,
and was getting ready to strike
when his vision darkened, his courage failed.
Blind to where the sword should fall,
he hardly knew anymore where he was.
“I simply cannot do it,” he said.
“You will have to choose somebody else.”
He dropped his sword and withdrew.
Tokimasa was assigning the task
to one of his men after another
when a black-robed monk on a russet roan
galloped toward them, whip raised high,
crying, “No, no, this is terrible!
Over there, in among those pines,
this man, Hj Tokimasa,
is arranging to execute
the loveliest boy in all the world!”
People flocked toward the place
while the monk—shouting “Murder! Murder!”—
urged them on with sweeping gestures;
then, lest waving his arms not suffice,
took off his broad, conical hat
and goaded them with it to greater haste.
Tokimasa thought he had better wait.
The monk raced up to him at top speed,
quickly dismounted, and caught his breath.
“I bring a stay of execution,”
he announced. “Lord Yoritomo
gave me the letter. I have it here.”
Tokimasa read it. Sure enough:
TO: Hj Tokimasa
FROM: Yoritomo
I understand that you now have in your custody the son of Taira no Koremori. Mongaku, the holy man of Takao, wishes to take him under his care. You may confidently give the boy into his charge.
The note bore Yoritomo’s seal.
Tokimasa read it several times,
put it down, and called it a miracle.
Saitgo and Saitroku
of course, and all Tokimasa’s men
greeted the news with tears of joy.
8. Rokudai at Hasedera
Mongaku himself then arrived, clearly enchanted to receive Rokudai.
He said, “Lord Yoritomo objected that Koremori, the father,
commanded his side during the opening battle
and that no plea from anyone could excuse that.
In reply I warned him that he would lose divine protection if he crossed me in this,
but he still refused. So when he went hunting at Nasuno,
I stayed with him and managed to change his mind.
You must have feared that I would never get here.”
“The twenty days you and I agreed on were over,” Tokimasa replied,
“and in the absence of authorization from Lord Yoritomo to extend them,
I very nearly made the mistake of executing him on the way.”
He gave Saitgo and Saitroku each a saddled horse, sent them back up to the city
and accompanied them a good distance in person.
“I should like to see you off even farther,” he assured them,
“but I have important affairs to discuss with Lord Yoritomo. Farewell.”
So they parted, and he continued his journey.
He was truly a kind, generous man.
Mongaku now took charge of Rokudai and hastened as fast as he could toward the capital. He saw the year out at Atsuta, in the province of Owari. On the fifth of the first month, in the new year, he reached the city and gave Rokudai a rest in a lodge of his at Nij-Inokuma. They came to Daikakuji in the middle of the night. Mongaku knocked at the gate, but all was silence within. There was nobody there. Then Rokudai’s pet white puppy came scampering out through a gap in the compound wall, wagging its tail. “Where’s Mother?” the despairing Rokudai asked it.
Saitroku got over the wall and let them in through the gate.
There was no sign that anyone lived there.
Rokudai lamented,
“I so wanted to stay alive,
little though I deserved to do so,
; if only I might see once more
the people I love so much!
Oh, what can have happened to them?”
All night he wept, and, poor boy, no wonder.
When day came, they questioned a neighbor, who replied,
“I gather that they went off last month on a pilgrimage to the great Buddha of Tdaiji
and that in the new year they were planning a retreat at Hasedera.
No one has been to their place since then.”
Saitgo rushed to Hase and told his mistress the story.
Neither she nor the nurse could believe that it was true.
“Is this real,” she exclaimed, “or am I only dreaming?”
She hurried back to Daikakuji,
and such was her joy upon seeing her son that she just burst into tears.
“Quickly, have him renounce the world!” she urged,
but to Mongaku that seemed too great a shame. He did not do it.
They say that he took Rokudai straight to Takao
and from there assisted his mother in her reduced circumstances.
Great in mercy and compassion,
Kannon’s salvation touches all,
the guilty and the innocent.
Many a tale from ancient times
bears witness that that is so,
but this was still a rare wonder.
[The eighteenth-century score that supplied voicing information lacks the text below, hence the translation into continuous prose.]
Hj Tokimasa was on his way to Kamakura with Rokudai when a messenger from Yoritomo met him at the Kagami post station.
“What brings you here?” Tokimasa asked.
“It appears that Jūr Yukiie and Shida no Sabur Yoshinori have thrown in their lot with Yoshitsune. Lord Yoritomo wishes you to deal with them.”
But Tokimasa had an important prisoner with him. At Oiso-no-mori he therefore told his nephew, Hj no Heiroku Tokisada, who had been with him on the road, “Hurry back, find those two, and kill them.”
Tokisada obeyed and located a Miidera monk who claimed to know where Yukiie was. Under questioning, however, the monk said that he did not know personally but rather knew another monk who did.
Tokisada’s men broke in on this second monk and arrested him.
“Why are you arresting me?” the monk asked.
“Because you’re supposed to know the whereabouts of Jūr Yukiie.”
