The Tales of the Heike

by Burton Watson

  For a while Hōnen was choked with tears and did not reply. After some time, he said, “Because you have been fortunate enough to be born in human form, a state so difficult to achieve, it is unspeakably sad to think that in your next existence you might be reborn in one of the Three Evil Paths. But since you, weary of this sordid realm we live in and longing to attain rebirth in the Pure Land, are now determined to cast aside your evil mind and cultivate a mind of goodness, the Buddhas of the past, present, and future must surely rejoice.

  “There are many different ways to achieve this separation from the mundane world. But for those of us born in the Latter Day of the Law, this age of foulness and disorder, the invocation of the Buddha’s name is the one most highly recommended. There are nine grades to achieve within the Pure Land, and the religious practice to be carried out consists of merely reciting the six characters that make up the nenbutsu, Namu Amida butsu, or ‘Hail to Amida Buddha!’

  “Even the most stupid person, the most dull and benighted, can benefit from this recitation. Never think yourself contemptible because your offenses are grave. Even those who have committed the Ten Evil Acts or the Five Cardinal Sins can, if their heart is truly repentant, achieve rebirth in the Pure Land. Never give up hope because you feel your meritorious acts are too few. If in your mind you perform no more than one recitation or ten recitations of the nenbutsu, the Buddha will come to welcome you to his land. ‘Solely by reciting his name will you reach the Western region,’ says the commentary by the Chinese priest Shandao. ‘Moment by moment calling the name constitutes constant repentance,’ Shandao teaches us, by which he means that when we invoke Amida’s name moment by moment, we are performing an act of repentance. While we intone the words ‘A sharp sword is Amida’s name!’ no devils can come near us. While we bear in mind that ‘one voice reciting the nenbutsu banishes all sin,’ all our transgressions will be expiated.

  “I have tried to summarize the essential doctrines of the Pure Land sect and to concentrate on the most important points. But whether or not you actually attain rebirth in the Pure Land depends entirely on the mind of faith. Just be completely sincere in your faith and set aside all doubt! If you have deep faith in the teaching, if at all times and places, whatever the circumstances, whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, whether performing actions of the body, mouth, or mind, you never forget to concentrate on the nenbutsu and intone the sacred name, then, when your life has come to a close, you will, without the slightest doubt, leave this world of suffering and attain rebirth in a land from which you will never regress.”

  Shigehira listened to these instructions with great joy. “I would like to observe the Buddhist precepts,” he said. “Is it possible to do so without becoming a monk?”

  “It is very common for persons to observe the precepts even when they do not take formal monastic vows,” replied Hōnen. He then took a razor and touched it to Shigehira’s forehead, making motions as though shaving, and in this way administered to him the ten precepts for correct conduct. Weeping tears of joy, Shigehira signified that he would accept and obey them. Sensitive always to the deeper import of all things, Hōnen was momentarily quite overcome with emotion and cried as he explained the content of the precepts to Shigehira.

  To signify his gratefulness, Shigehira had Tomotoki bring an inkstone that Shigehira had left at the house of a certain samurai that he had frequently visited in the past. Presenting it as an offering to Hōnen, he said, “Do not give this away, but keep it somewhere within sight, and when you recall to whom it once belonged, think that I myself am there and recite a nenbutsu for my sake. And if you should find time,” he said through his tears, “recite a passage of scripture to aid me in my life hereafter.”

  The inkstone had originally been a gift from the emperor of the Song court in China, to whom Shigehira’s father, Kiyomori, had sent a present of gold dust. It was inscribed with the words “To the Taira Prime Minister of Wada in Japan.” It was known by the name Matsukage, Pine Shade.

  Shigehira is sent east to Kamakura to face Yoritomo. On his trip, which evokes numerous poetic places, he exchanges poetry with a courtesan at a traveler’s inn.

  Senju-no-mae (10:7)

  Since Shigehira had been responsible for the destruction of the temples in Nara, it was only to be expected that the monks of Nara would demand that he be handed over to them so they could exact their revenge. Accordingly, he was placed in the custody of Kano no Suke Munemochi, a native of the province of Izu. His lot resembled that of a wrongdoer who, upon his death, must go before the ten kings of hell, passing from one to another every seven days and being judged for his crimes, a pitiable process indeed!

  Munemochi, however, was a kind and understanding man and showed no trace of harshness or severity in his treatment of Shigehira. Among his various acts of thoughtfulness, he had a special bathing apartment prepared and invited Shigehira to bathe there. “After getting all grimy and sweaty from the journey here, I suppose they want me to clean myself up before they do away with me,” thought Shigehira to himself. Just then, a young lady-in-waiting of around twenty, pale in complexion and strikingly beautiful, wearing a tie-dyed single robe and a figured bath apron, opened the door of the bathroom and slipped in. Some moments later, a maid of fourteen or fifteen wearing a blue-dyed single robe, her hair hanging down to her waist, appeared carrying a wash basin and combs. The lady-in-waiting tended to Shigehira’s needs while he bathed in a leisurely manner and washed his hair.

  When she was ready to take her leave, the lady said, “My master, Lord Yoritomo, sent me because he thought it might seem unmannerly to send a man when a woman might serve you better. He said that if there was anything you desired, I was to inform him of your wishes.”

  “Since I am now his prisoner, how could I make requests?” replied Shigehira. “My only wish at this point is to be allowed to become a monk!”

  When the lady returned and reported these words to Yoritomo, he said, “That is out of the question! If he were merely a personal enemy of mine, something might be done. But he has been turned over to me as an enemy of the state. His wishes cannot possibly be granted!”

  Later, Shigehira made inquiries among the warriors who were assigned to guard him. “That was a very refined young woman who waited on me just now,” he said. “I wonder what her name is.”

  “She is the daughter of the brothel keeper of Tegoshi,” they replied, “a person of quite exceptional beauty and refinement of character. She has been in his lordship’s service for around two or three years now. Her name is Senju-no-mae.”

  When evening came and a little rain had fallen, shedding an air of melancholy over the scene, the lady-in-waiting came to Shigehira’s rooms, bringing with her a biwa and a koto.1 Munemochi ordered that rice wine be served, and accompanied by ten or more of his family members and retainers, he took a seat near Shigehira. Senju-no-mae served the wine, but Shigehira took only a sip, appearing to be in a very dispirited mood.

  “I may have mentioned it before,” said Munemochi, “but the lord of Kamakura has ordered me to see that all measures are taken for your comfort. If I am lax in doing so, he says he will be most angry with me! I am originally from Izu, so I am only a sojourner here in Kamakura, but I would like to do whatever I can to serve you.” Then addressing Senju-no-mae, he suggested, “Sing us something before you serve more wine.”

  Senju-no-mae set aside the wine bottle and sang the following verses once or twice:

  These sheer gauze robes are so weighty—

  how could the weaving woman who made them be so heartless!

  “Ah—these verses were composed by Sugawara no Michizane, the deity of the Kitano Shrine,” said Shigehira. “He swore that when anyone recited them, he would fly through the air three times in one day to protect him. But in my present existence, I have been cast aside by the god. Even if I were to join in the recitation, what good would it do? But perhaps I might do so if they were the sort of verses that could help ligh
ten my sins.”

  Senju-no-mae immediately chanted the line:

  Though you commit the Ten Evil Acts, he will save you!

  She followed this with a song in the imayō style:

  All you who long for the Pure Land,

  raise your voice in invocation of Amida’s name!

  After she had sung this four or five times with feeling, Shigehira finally tipped his wine cup.

  Senju-no-mae then offered the cup to Munemochi. While he was drinking, she played an engaging air on the koto.

  “That music,” said Shigehira, “is usually referred to as the Five Constant Joys. But in my case, I must think of it as the Joy of the Life Hereafter. May it accompany me quickly to a favorable finale!” he said in a joking manner. Then, picking up the biwa and retuning it, he played the closing section of the piece called Ōjō, whose title suggests the word “rebirth.”

  As the night advanced, Shigehira, now calmer and his mind more at ease, declared, “I would never have expected to find persons of such refinement here in the eastern region. Perhaps you could sing us something more …”

  Senju-no-mae then chanted a shirabyōshi-style passage in a highly intriguing and expressive fashion:

  Those who merely stop one night under the same tree,

  who merely dip the waters of the same stream—

  all are bound by ties from a past existence!

  Then Shigehira recited the lines:

  The lamp grows dimmer, Lady Yu’s tears stream down

  The lines refer to a time long ago in China when Gaozu, the founder of the Han dynasty, and Xiang Yu battled each other for mastery of the empire. In seventy-two encounters Xiang Yu emerged victorious, but at last he was defeated. He had a horse named Dapple, so fast it could run a thousand miles in one day, and his thought was to flee on this horse with his consort, Lady Yu. But the horse—who knows why?—stood firm and refused to move. “My strength has deserted me, there is nowhere now to flee!” Xiang Yu lamented. “I care nothing for the enemy’s assaults, but how it pains me to part with my Yu!”

  So he grieved as the night wore on. The lamp grew dimmer, Lady Yu wept tears of despair, while from all four sides in the deepening night came the din of the enemy soldiers. Councillor Tachibana Hiromi2 composed a poem in Chinese on the subject, which Shigehira now remembered and quoted. It was a truly apt allusion.

  With the hour growing late, the warriors attending Shigehira took their leave, and Senju-no-mae returned to her quarters as well.

  The next morning, as Yoritomo was reciting from the Lotus Sutra before his Buddhist altar, Senju-no-mae came to wait on him. Turning to her with a smile, he said, “I paired you up with someone very interesting last night, don’t you think?”

  “What happened?” asked Saiin Chikayoshi, who was sitting nearby writing something.

  “I always used to think that these Heike men were ignorant of anything other than bows and arrows and battle gear,” said Yoritomo. “But I stood outside for a long time last night listening to this Middle Captain Shigehira play the biwa and recite lines of poetry—it was a truly remarkable performance!”

  “I should have been there with the others,” said Chikayoshi, “but I was not feeling well. From now on, though, I’ll surely be among the listeners. For generations the Taira family has been known for its poets and persons of literary talent. People used to compare the various members of the family to flowers, and they said that Shigehira was like a peony.” For some time afterward, Yoritomo continued to talk of how fine Shigehira’s biwa playing and poetry recitations had been. “A man of true refinement!” he said.

  Senju-no-mae, too, found the events of that night lingering long in her memory. Later, when she heard that Shigehira had been handed over to the monks in Nara and beheaded, she took off her customary attire, put on the dark black robe of a nun, and devoted herself to religious practice at the Zenkō-ji in Shinano. There she prayed that Shigehira might attain enlightenment in the life hereafter, and she herself, it is said, in time fulfilled her long-cherished hope for rebirth in the Pure Land.

  The story of Koremori, the eldest son of Shigemori and the grandson of Kiyomori, who struggles to seek salvation, is foreshadowed by that of Takiguchi, a priest at Mount Kōya, and Yokobue, a woman of lesser social status. Yokobue became a legendary figure in the Muromachi period.

  Yokobue (10:8)

  Middle Captain Koremori of the Komatsu mansion was, in a physical sense, residing in the Heike headquarters at Yashima, but his mind constantly journeyed to the capital. His wife and the young ones he had left behind there were forever in his thoughts, their faces alone haunting him. Not for a moment could he forget them, and to go on living like this seemed to him utterly meaningless.

  In the Third Month of the first year of the Genryaku era [1184], at dawn on the fifteenth day, he made his way stealthily out of his Ya shima quarters. Accompanied by Yosōbyōe Shigekage, a young boy named Ishidōmaru, and a retainer named Takesato who had some knowledge of boats—three men only—he set out in a small vessel from the harbor of Yūki in the province of Awa. Rowing across the straits of Naruto, they reached the province of Kii, passing Waka, Fukiage, the Myōjin Shrine of Tamatsushima where the goddess Sotoorihime3 made her divine appearance, and the shrines at Nichizen and Kokuken, and thus arrived at the harbor at Ki-no-minato.

  “If only I could follow these mountain paths and journey to the capital to see my loved ones once more!” thought Koremori. “But it is bad enough that my uncle Shigehira was taken captive and paraded through the avenues of the capital, subjected to humiliation there and in Kamakura. If I too were taken captive, think what ignominy I would heap on the name of my deceased father!” Thus, while his thoughts warred with one another, his heart hesitating a thousand times, he set off at last in the direction of Mount Kōya.

  At Mount Kōya lived a holy man whom Koremori had known for many years. His name was Saitō Tokiyori, the son of Saitō Mochiyori, a courtier of Sanjō. He had originally been a samurai in service at the Komatsu mansion, but at the age of thirteen he was selected to serve in the Takiguchi guard of the imperial palace. There he fell very much in love with a young woman named Yokobue, a lesser maid-in-waiting to Empress Kenreimon’in. When his father learned about this, he berated Tokiyori angrily. “I had meant for you to marry into some influential family so you could easily pursue an official career. But instead you take up with a person of no worth!”

  Tokiyori thought to himself, “The fabulous queen mother of the West may have existed long ago, but she’s not here today. The immortal Dong-fang Shuo is a mere name—no one’s ever laid eyes on him. In this world where neither young nor old know what fate awaits them, life is briefer than a spark from a flint. Even the longlived seldom last more than seventy or eighty years, and of those, hardly twenty or more years are lived in good health. In this dreamlike, this phantom world of ours, why should I marry someone who is ugly? But if I go on seeing the one I love, I will be disobeying my father’s command. Let this dilemma, then, be a good friend for what it teaches me. Better to forsake this world of sorrow and embark on the true path of religion!” Thus at the age of nineteen he cut off his topknot and retired to the Ōjō-in cloister in Saga to devote himself entirely to the religious life.

  “It was one thing for him to have abandoned me,” said Yokobue when word of this reached her, “but to cast aside secular life altogether—how terrible! If he were planning to withdraw from the world, he at least might have told me. I will go there and show him how I resent it, no matter how cold he may be, hard as it may be for him to bear!”

  One evening, therefore, she left the capital and set off uncertainly toward Saga. It was around the tenth day of the Second Month, and from somewhere the spring breeze blowing through the village of Umezu wafted the nostalgic scent of plum blossoms, while over the Ōi River the moon shone hazy and half-veiled in mist. “And whose fault is it,” she thought to herself, “that I must suffer these pangs of longing!”

  She h
ad inquired about the location of the Ōjō-in but was uncertain which retreat to call at, hesitating here, pausing a moment there, perplexed as to how best to proceed. Then from a tumbledown monk’s hut, she heard someone intoning the nenbutsu and reciting a sutra. She was sure it was Tokiyori’s voice. “I have come this far,” she thought. “Even though he has taken the tonsure, if I could see him just once more!” She sent the maid who had accompanied her to make inquiries.

  Tokiyori’s heart was in turmoil as he peered out through a gap in the sliding panel. How pitiful that she had gone to such pains to find him! Firm as he was in his dedication to the religious life, it seemed as though he might weaken. But in the end he sent a fellow monk to the door with this message: “There is no such person here. You must have the wrong place!” Yokobue was sent away without a glimpse of him. Bitter and heartless as she found this, she had no choice but to make her way back to the capital fighting back her tears.

  “In a quiet and secluded spot like this I can devote myself to nenbutsu practice without interruption,” said Tokiyori to the monk with whom he shared his lodging. “But I parted from a woman, though I still loved her, and now she has discovered my whereabouts. I had strength of mind enough to send her away once, but if she should come again, I’m afraid my resolve will falter. I had better be on my way.” Thus he left Saga and went to Mount Kōya, where he took up residence in the Shōjōshin-in.

  Later, when word came to him that Yokobue had entered religious life as well, Tokiyori, now known as Priest Takiguchi, sent her this poem:

  Till you shaved your head, you hated me.

  Now I rejoice you’re launched on the path of Truth, firm as a catalpa bow.

  Yokobue replied with this poem: