by VIKING ADULT
I could do nothing to stop him.
Shall I summon and deliver him to you, if he has erred?
Then there is the dagger. I entrusted it to a palace lady.
You might call for it and weigh the matter by considering whether or not it is real.”
His Eminence agreed. He called for the dagger and examined it:
Scabbard and handle were no doubt black lacquer,
but the blade was only silver foil over wood.
“Keen to avoid threatened dishonor,
he showed himself armed with a dagger,
yet knew doing so might lead to charges,
so prudently gave it a wooden blade.
This was a stroke of genius!
All those who in life wield bow and arrow
should show equal sense in what they do.
As for that man of his in the small court,
that is what a warrior’s man does.
Tadamori has committed no offense.”
The retired emperor was so impressed
that all talk of punishment ceased.
3. The Sea Bass
Tadamori’s sons all became second-in-command of a corps of guards,
and now that they had admission to the palace,
no one could object to their being there.
Tadamori came up to the capital again from Bizen.
“How did the Akashi coast strike you?” Retired Emperor Toba asked.
Aloft in the dawn
the moon shone down Akashi
coast, while the sea wind
dashed upon the brightening shore
waves dark with the last of night,
Tadamori answered, to his patron’s delight.
The poem went into A Collection of Golden Leaves.8
Tadamori was visiting at his patron’s palace a gentlewoman whom he adored.
Once he forgot in her room a fan that bore on its edge a painted moon.
“Where is this moon from?” the others asked, laughing.
“We were wondering where you got it.”
She answered,
This moon you mention
happened to steal in to me
from above the clouds,9
sealing at a stroke my lips
to further revelations.
For that poem he loved her even more.
The son she gave him was Tadanori,
the future governor of Satsuma.
Birds of a feather flock together,
so they say, and Tadamori
had an eye for the very best:
For that is exactly what she was.
So it was that Tadamori became the lord of Justice. He died in his fifty-eighth year, on the fifteenth of the first month of Ninpei 3. [1153] Kiyomori, his eldest son, succeeded him. In the seventh month of Hgen 1, [1156] the Uji Left Minister provoked unrest, and Kiyomori, who then governed Aki, so distinguished himself in His Majesty’s service that he moved as governor to Harima. Appointment as the Dazaifu deputy followed in Hgen 3. [1158]
Then in the first year of Heiji, Lord Nobuyori raised rebellion, [1159]
and in the twelfth month Kiyomori led imperial forces to quell the rebels.
Many a deed of signal valor, and his consequent claim to weighty reward,
won him the following year senior third rank.
Next, in succession he rose from consultant
to intendant of the Gate Watch,
police superintendent, counselor,
grand counselor, and then minister.
Not for him either left or right:
No, he rose straight to palace minister,
then to chancellor at junior first rank.
Never granted the post of commander,10
he was nonetheless given leave
to travel as he pleased with armed guards.
An imperial decree granted him, too,
use of an ox carriage and a hand carriage;11
and in and out the palace gate,
borne in his carriage, he went, like a regent.
The statute reads, “In the chancellor
the emperor finds his proper teacher
and the four seas12 their paragon.
* He governs the realm, expounds the way,
and attunes the yin and the yang.
Should no one suitable be at hand,
the office is to be left vacant.”
Hence the office’s jocular name:
People call it the “Left Vacancy.”
This was certainly no position
for the wrong appointee to sully;
but Kiyomori held in his hands
at once the realm and the four seas,
and nobody could gainsay him.
They say that the Heike owed their success to the god of Kumano.
The story goes that, while still governor of Aki,
Kiyomori was sailing down the Ise coast to call at the Kumano shrines
when a huge sea bass jumped straight into his boat.
The ascetic guiding his pilgrimage cried,
“This fish is a boon from the gods!
You must partake of it at once!”
Kiyomori replied, “Of old, they say,
a white fish leaped into the boat
carrying King Wu of Zhou.
Yes, this is an excellent omen.”
On the way he had taken care
to keep the ten precepts,13 eschewing flesh,
yet now he prepared the fish to eat
and shared it out with all his men.
Perhaps that is why unblemished fortune
lifted him even to chancellor.
His children, too, rose faster in office
than a dragon can mount the clouds.
Outstripping nine generations this way
made him a model of shining success.
4. The Rokuhara Boys
In time Lord Kiyomori fell ill. To lengthen his days,
he renounced the world in his fifty-first year, Nin’an 3, [1168]
on the eleventh month and day.
He became a novice monk with the religious name Jkai.
Perhaps this step took effect, for his prolonged discomfort ceased
and his allotted span of years remained unbroken.
Men bowed to his will as grass to the wind.
The world looked up to him as the land looks up to the blessings of rain.
As for his sons, no scion of a great house,
no stellar talent could look them in the eye or stand equal beside them.
Indeed Tokitada, the Taira grand counselor and Kiyomori’s son-in-law, said,
“No one else really counts as human at all.”
No wonder everyone sought, by hook or by crook, alliance with the Heike.
All alive within the four seas mimicked the ways of Rokuhara,14
down to the mere cut of a robe or crease of a hat.
Now the sway of the sage king,
the reign of the wise sovereign,
the steady guidance of the regent
still fail to reach degenerates
who, where nobody can hear them,
mouth foul slander and rebellion,
for some people are just like that;
not, though, under Kiyomori.
In his day there was no loose talk.
And this is why.
Lord Kiyomori chose three hundred youths
in their mid-teens, with a boy’s short-trimmed hair,
and dressed them in red. They were everywhere in the city.
If anyone spoke ill of the Heike and no such youth overheard him,
well and good. Otherwise the report went out.
They would burst into the offender’s house, seize goods and chattels,
arrest him, and drag him off to Rokuhara.
People saw what they saw and thought their thoughts, but no one spoke.
“The Rokuhara Boys,” everyone called them.
Riders and carriages gave them wide berth.
>
They might march straight in through the gate of the palace,
and still no one dared even ask their names.
The city elders seemed to avert their gaze.
5. One Man’s Glory
One man had scaled the heights of glory,
and with him prospered his whole house.
Shigemori, the first of his sons,
was palace minister and left commander;
his second, Munemori, counselor
and at the same time right commander;
while his third son, Tomomori,
held the third rank and the post of captain.
His eldest grandson, Koremori,
held the fourth rank as a lieutenant.
Sixteen senior nobles were Taira,
and of the privy gentlemen, thirty;
while sixty more served as governors,
guards officers, or diverse officials.
No other house seemed to exist.
There was established in Jinki 5, during the reign of Emperor Shmu, [729] [r. 724–49]
a Central Guard for the sovereign, with a commander.
In Daid 4 this corps was renamed Palace Guard, and since those days [806]
brothers have only three or four times led both its left and right divisions.
In the reign of Emperor Montoku, [r. 850–58]
the right minister, Yoshifusa,
commanded the left, and Yoshi,
a grand counselor then, the right:
both men were sons of Fuyutsugi,
the Kan’in minister of the left.
In the reign of Emperor Suzaku, [r. 930–46]
Saneyori, Lord Ononomiya,
commanded the left division
and Morosuke, Lord Kuj, the right;
these men were sons of Tadahira.
In the days of Emperor Go-Reizei [r. 1045–68]
Norimichi, Lord nij, took the left
and Yorimune, Lord Horikawa, the right;
both men were sons of Michinaga.
In the reign of Emperor Nij, [r. 1158–65]
the left followed Motofusa, Lord Matsu,
the right Kanezane, Lord Tsukinowa.
Tadamichi was the father of both.
All belonged to the line of regents.
No lesser house could boast the same.
Now a grandson of Tadamori—
once, for his access to the palace,
fiercely resented—sported at will
finery in the forbidden colors,
damask, brocade, and embroidered silks,
and held dual office, minister and commander,
while the other commander was his brother.
Even in these latter, degenerate days,
all this remained exceedingly strange.
Kiyomori had eight daughters, too, and fortune smiled on them all.
One was betrothed in her eighth year to the Sakuramachi counselor,
Lord Shigenori, but the Heiji Conflict ended that.
Instead she went as senior wife
to the left minister, Kanemasa, and bore many children.
Now people dubbed Shigenori “Sakuramachi” because,
fastidious as he was in his tastes, he loved the Yoshino cherry blossoms,
planted rows of Yoshino cherry trees in his grounds,
built a retreat among them, and took up residence there.
Those who saw his blossoms each spring spoke of Sakuramachi, the Cherry Grove.
Blossoms fall after seven days.
Saddened to lose them, Shigenori
prayed so hard to the Bright Sun Goddess
that his endured three times longer.
Our emperor, too, being a sage king,
the goddess let divine virtue shine,
and the blossoms understood her:
They lasted all of twenty days.
A second daughter became empress
and gave His Majesty a son,
first heir apparent, then enthroned;
so she was called Kenreimon-in.
Beyond being Kiyomori’s daughter,
she was the mother of the realm.
Of her, one need hardly say more.
The third daughter of Lord Kiyomori became senior wife to the regent Motozane. She acted during the reign of Emperor Takakura as his foster mother, and she received an edict appointing her honorary empress. A grand figure, she was called Lady Shirakawa. The fourth daughter likewise married the regent Motomichi and the fifth the grand counselor Takafusa. The sixth married the director of upkeep, Lord Nobutaka.
Another daughter, from an Itsukushima Shrine maiden in Aki,
went to Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa and lived like an imperial consort.
The last one, from Tokiwa, a maid at the residence of Lady Kuj,
oversaw for Lord Kanemasa his staff of gentlewomen.
“The Mistress of the Gallery,” people called her.
This, our island land of Japan,
has only sixty-six provinces,
and the Heike ruled over thirty.
Half the realm and more was theirs,
quite apart from all their estates,
their countless fields, paddy and dry.
Precious silk, damask, and gauze
like flowers overflowed their halls.
Horses and carriages thronged their gates,
as though gathered there for market day.
Yangzhou gold, pearls from Jingzhou,
Wujun damasks and Shujiang brocades—
the treasures of the world were theirs.
Pavilions for singing, halls for dancing,
magic shows and circus amusements—
no emperor, reigning or retired,
could have enjoyed more varied pleasures.
6. Gi
Lord Kiyomori, who held in his hands the world within the four seas,
dismissed censure, ignored mockery, and indulged every odd whim.
For instance, two shirabyshi dancers were then the talk of the town:
Gi and Ginyo, daughters of the dancer Toji.
Gi, the elder, was Kiyomori’s favorite, so people prized Ginyo as well.
He built Gi’s mother a fine house and provided her monthly
with rice in the amount of one hundred bushels and one hundred strings of cash.
The household prospered and lived very comfortably.
In our land shirabyshi dancing
began in Emperor Toba’s reign,
long ago, when a pair of women,
Shima no Senzai and Waka no Mai,
first devised it. They wore in those days
suikan robes; tall, black-lacquered hats;
daggers silver-trimmed, hilt and scabbard;
and called this dance of theirs “Manly Grace.”
But hat and dagger dropped out in time,
leaving only the suikan robe;
hence the current name: shirabyshi.15
Every shirabyshi dancer in the capital learned of Gi’s success.
Some envied her, others were jealous.
“Oh, she’s a lucky girl, that Gi Gozen!” the envious cried.
“Who wouldn’t want to be just like her?
I know: The only reason she’s done so well is that gi in her name.
I’ll use it, too!”
One dubbed herself Giichi, another Gini, others Gifuku, Gitoku, and so on.
“How could anyone succeed on the mere strength of a name?”
the jealous objected. “It all depends on the karma you bring from past lives.”
So many also ignored the gi.
This had been going on for three years when another famous shirabyshi dancer appeared in the capital. She was from Kaga province, and her name was Hotoke. This was her sixteenth year. Everyone in the city, high or low, praised her to the skies. “There have always been plenty of shirabyshi around,” they kept saying, “but never one who could dance like this!”
Hotoke Gozen remarked, “Everyone everywher
e has heard of me, but it is disappointing that Lord Kiyomori, who stands so high in the world these days, has not yet called me to his residence. I shall go there on my own, as entertainers do. I see no reason not to.”
So off she went to Nishi-Hachij.16
“Your Excellency,” they told him, “Hotoke Gozen is here. Everyone in the city knows her.”
“Here?” exclaimed Kiyomori. “She’s an entertainer—she comes when called.
The nerve of her, to turn up uninvited! Kami or hotoke, god or buddha,
she has no business appearing in Gi’s presence. Send her away!”
Hotoke, bluntly dismissed, was leaving when Gi addressed her lord and master:
“It is normal for any dancer
to present herself uninvited.
Besides, they say she is only a girl.
Now that she has come so bravely,
you are too harsh to order her gone.
I would feel sorrow and shame for her!
Her profession is mine. I understand.
You need not have her dance or sing,
but it would simply be a kindness
at least to see her before she goes.
Do please, this once, call her back.”
“Fine, fine,” Kiyomori replied. “I’ll get her back and ask her in,
if you feel that strongly about it.” He sent someone after her.
Hotoke Gozen was in her carriage, leaving after that sharp rebuff,
when his summons reached her. She turned back and entered.
He came forward to greet her.
“I didn’t mean to see you today,” he said,
“but for some reason Gi insisted, so in the end I humored her.
Now that you’re here, I might as well hear your voice. Sing me an imay.”17
“As you wish, my lord,” she said. And she did.
“Seeing you, my lord, this way,
as never before,
a maiden pine feels the gift
of a thousand years.
On the Tortoise Island rock
rising from your lake,
cranes gather in flocks, it seems,
for their own delight.”18
She sang the song through three times,
amazing everyone who heard her.
Lord Kiyomori seemed captivated.
“You can certainly sing imay! You must be quite a dancer, too.
Dance for me, then! Get us a drummer!”
She did him a dance to the beat of a drum.
Hotoke Gozen dancing. At lower left: Gi. Behind her: Ginyo. At upper right: Munemori (left) and Shigemori (right). Below them: Norimori. Kiyomori is too grand to be shown.