by VIKING ADULT
Hotoke Gozen was a true beauty:
her hair, her face, her lovely figure,
her deliciously lilting voice.
Her dancing could not have failed to please.
By the time she had finished her dance—
most unwillingly—Lord Kiyomori,
entranced, could think only of her.
“I hardly know what to say, my lord,” Hotoke protested.
“When I came, I did so unasked and was ordered to leave.
Only Gi Gozen’s intercession moved you to call me back.
I blush to imagine her feelings if you keep me. Please allow me to withdraw.” “Certainly not,” answered Lord Kiyomori.
“Does Gi being here bother you? Then Gi will have to go.”
“But, my lord,” said Hotoke, “how could you?
It would be painful enough if you were to keep me here with her,
but I hate to imagine her opinion of me if you keep me alone.
If you do not forget me, my lord,
then I will come again when you call.
But today,” she pleaded, “I beg to go.”
He answered, “You will do no such thing.
Gi, leave immediately!”
He had her brought this order three times.
She had long known it might end this way
but never thought “yesterday or today.”19
Repeated commands to “get out now!”
decided her, but, she told herself,
“not until I tidy my room
and remove anything unsightly.”
It is never easy to part,
even for two who have only met
briefly, sheltering under a tree
or sharing the water from a stream,
and harder still after three years
spent sharing all of life together.
Gi, heartsick, shed tears in vain.
She could not stay. No, it was time;
but first (perhaps thinking to leave
Gi writes her poem on the sliding door.
something of hers, after all, behind)
she wrote, weeping, on a sliding door,
New shoots emerging,
wilting fronds are equally
grasses of the field,
destined, every one, to feel
the withering touch of fall.
She rode home again in her carriage
and collapsed, sobbing, within her doors.
“What is the matter?” her mother and sister
begged to know, but she could not answer.
Only the maid who had been with her
was able to tell them the story.
Soon the monthly rice and strings of cash stopped coming.
Now it was Hotoke Gozen’s relations who tasted at last the good life.
“They say his lordship’s sent Gi packing”:
This word went around the city.
“Good!” people said. “Let’s go and see her. Let’s have some fun!”
Some sent her letters, others approached her through messengers,
but Gi had no wish as things stood to see or entertain anyone.
She accepted none of the letters and of course turned every messenger back.
All this only made her feel worse, and she spent more and more time in tears.
So that year came to an end. The following spring Lord Kiyomori sent a man to Gi with this message: “How have you been getting on? Hotoke Gozen seems very bored. Come and cheer her up. Sing her some imay songs and dance for her.”
Gi did not even reply.
“Why don’t you answer me, Gi?” Lord Kiyomori demanded to know. “So you won’t come? Just say so, then. I have an idea how to deal with you.”
This upset Toji, Gi’s mother. In fear of what might come next,
she begged her daughter, in tears, “Oh, Gi, do please answer him,
instead of provoking him this way!” To which Gi:
“Had I the slightest wish to go,
I would send him word to expect me,
but since I most certainly do not,
I cannot think how to reply.
He knows just what to do, he says,
if I refuse. I suppose he means
he will expel me from the city
or claim my life—one or the other.
Expulsion would not trouble me;
as for my life, he is welcome to it.
Now that he is finished with me,
I want never to see him again.”
No, she would not send him an answer.
Her mother pleaded with her once more. “As everyone knows,” she said,
“you simply cannot live in this land and safely ignore Lord Kiyomori’s wishes.
The troubles that crop up between men and women are nothing new.
Some promise each other endless love
only in the next moment to part;
for others, what seemed a passing affair
unites them for the rest of their lives.
Nothing is so unfathomable
as the ways of men and women.
Besides, he was very fond of you for three years, and you should be grateful for that. Ignoring his summons could not possibly cost you your life. No, he will only expel you from the capital. You are young, you and your sister, and you will get on well enough out there among the rocks and trees. Your poor old mother will be expelled, too, though, and for her it is misery just to imagine life out in the wilds. Oh, please allow my life to end in the city! Then I will know you are filial in this life and the next!”
To Gi the thought was unbearable, but she could not bring herself to disappoint her mother. She set out in tears of pathetic distress. Going alone would have been too painful, so Ginyo went with her. Their party of four, including two other dancers, reached Nishi-Hachij in one carriage.
She was led not to her usual seat but to one far down from the place of honor.
“I don’t understand,” she said to herself. “I have done nothing wrong,
yet I find myself not merely rejected but seated ignominiously low.
This is too cruel! What am I to do?”
She pressed a sleeve to her eyes to hide her tears, but they still trickled through.
Hotoke saw, and she felt very sorry.
“This is not right!” she said. “It is not as though you had never summoned her before.
Please bring her up here, or else let me go to her myself.”
“Certainly not,” Kiyomori replied.
Hotoke could do no more. She left it at that.
Kiyomori then spoke to Gi, in utter disregard of her feelings.
“How are you getting on these days?” he said.
“Hotoke seems very bored. I want you to sing her an imay.”
In his presence Gi knew that she could not refuse.
Fighting back tears, she sang this song:
“The Buddha himself, long ago
was like anyone,
and we ourselves, in time to come,
will be buddhas, too.
What misery it is to share,
as we do, the buddha nature
yet to be so far removed
from that happy state!”
Weeping, she sang the song through twice,
and the assembled Taira lords—
senior nobles, privy gentlemen,
ranking officials, retainers, too—
all of them wept with emotion.
Lord Kiyomori looked pleased. “You got the feeling just right,” he said.
“I’d gladly see you dance, too, but I’m busy today. Something has come up.
Don’t wait for another invitation. I want you here often,
to cheer Hotoke up with your dancing and singing.”
Gi could not manage an answer. She left, pressing her sleeves to her eyes.
“I shrank from disobeying my mother and set out on a painful errand,
only to suffer a new blow. It is too much! More blow
s will follow if I go on.
No, my mind is made up: I will throw myself into the water and drown.”
So she spoke. Ginyo replied, “If you drown yourself, my sister, I will, too.”
Their horrified mother wondered what was to become of them all.
She wept as she strove again to talk sense into Gi.
“You have every reason to blame him,” she said.
“I never imagined such a thing, and I deeply regret having convinced you to go.
But Ginyo says that she will drown herself, too, if you do.
Then your poor old mother will have lost both her daughters,
and her life will mean nothing anymore. So she will join you.
To drive your mother to drown herself before her appointed time—
that must be one of the five deadly sins.20
We lodge in this life only briefly.
Whether or not we suffer humiliation hardly matters,
beside the darkness of lives to come. Whatever trials this one may bring,
consider the horror of passing from it into the evil realms!”21
She argued her case with passionate tears.
Gi replied, trying not to cry, “When you put it like that, yes,
I would indeed commit one of those crimes. So I will not take my life.
But more miseries will follow if I stay in the capital. I will leave at once.”
Gi became a nun in her twenty-first year.
In the hills beyond Sagano,22
she put together a brushwood hut
and made her home there, calling the Name.
In only her nineteenth year, Ginyo,
her younger sister, did the same,
saying, “I promised to drown myself
with you, if ever you took that step.
Now I am just as glad as you
to reject the world and its ways.”
In retreat with her sister, Gi,
she prayed for bliss in the hereafter:
a moving sight that touched their mother.
Toji, now that her girls were nuns,
knew her white hair was no excuse.
In her forty-fifth year, she shaved it
and, in company with her daughters,
gave herself to calling the Name,
longing for birth in paradise.
So spring fled, summer blazed,
and autumn winds began to blow—
when, our eyes lifted heavenward
toward the meeting of the Stars,
we write down our fondest wish
on a mulberry-paper slip
slender as that lover’s oar,
rowing across the celestial stream.23
The sun sank westward down the sky,
toward the ridgeline of the hills,
bringing to mind what they say:
that it drops straight from our sight
into the Western Paradise.
Ah, we, too, the sisters sighed,
shall be born there in good time,
to life beyond the weight of care!
But all too often in their thoughts
they dwelled on sorrow from the past,
and their tears flowed on and on.
Now twilight faded into dark.
They barred at last their wattled door,
lit the flame of their dim lamp,
and were all three calling the Name
when suddenly they heard a knock.
Terrified, they cried together,
“How awful! Some demon thing
has come—no, no, there is no doubt!—
to frustrate our humble prayers!
By daylight, even, no one comes
to visit such a brushwood hut,
tucked away in this far village.
Who, then, would call by dark of night?
It is so light, our bamboo door!
Why, anyone could break it down!
No, we had better open it.
If, a stranger to all mercy,
that thing has come to claim our lives,
then our only hope is trust
in Amida’s Original Vow,
so long our refuge anyway,
and in ceaseless calling of his Name.
They say that with his host of saints
he comes to where he hears that cry
and welcomes the believing soul.
Then shall that welcome not be ours?
Now call the Name and never pause!”
Each urging the others to be brave,
they did indeed open the door.
No demon stood there before them:
It was Hotoke Gozen.
“What? Hotoke Gozen? Am I dreaming? Is this real?”
Hotoke fought back her tears. “It may shock you to hear all this,” she answered, “but it would be wrong of me not to tell you. So here is the whole story. It was entirely my idea to present myself at Lord Kiyomori’s residence, and when I did, I was ordered to leave. Only your intervention convinced him to call me back. We women can so seldom follow our wishes! I wanted to leave, but he made me stay. I hated it. And then one day he got you back, and you sang an imay. That brought it all home to me: One day the same would happen to me. I did not like that at all. And then there was the poem you left on the sliding door, the one that said ‘destined, every one, to feel the withering touch of fall.’ I knew you were right.
I did not know where you had gone,
but I envied you, once I heard that you had all become nuns together.
I kept asking for leave to go, but he always refused.
Reflection reveals worldly glory
for what it is: a dream in a dream.
Pleasure and riches are vanity.
Human birth is a rare privilege;
so, too, hearing the Buddha’s Teaching.
Should I now fall to the pit of hell,
no aeons of lives might raise me again;
nor can youth save me, for many die young,
and breathing out never assures
that the breath will pass in again.
Summer heat shimmer, a flash of lightning:
Life vanishes still more swiftly.
I could not bear to ignore the life to come just for the sake of a moment’s pleasure; so this morning I stole away, to come to you as you see me now.” She slipped the robe from over her head, and there she was: already a nun. “Please forgive me my past misdeeds now that I am with you in this new guise. Say that you will, and I will call the Name with you, until we are reborn together on the same lotus throne. If you prefer not to, then I will wander wherever my steps lead me, until I collapse on the moss beneath some pine, there to call the Name while I still have breath and achieve that priceless rebirth in paradise.” She spoke in tears.
Gi pressed her sleeves to her eyes.
“Why, I never imagined you feeling that way! I had no idea!
Life is hard for us all, and I should have accepted what happened to me
solely as my own misfortune; but there have been times
when the thought of you made me so bitter
I knew I would never get where I longed to go.
I felt like a failure in this life and the next. But now here you are, so changed
that that stubborn weakness of mine is gone.
I will be reborn in paradise.
Hotoke Gozen comes to Gi’s hut.
What a joy it is, to be certain that I will reach my goal!
When we became nuns people said, and I agreed,
that no one like us had ever done such a thing before.
The decision made sense enough—I was angry with life and with myself—
but it was nothing compared to your renouncing the world.
You nursed no grudge or sorrow. In only your seventeenth year,
you have mastered aversion to this polluted world and longing for the Pure Land.
That, to me, is powerful aspiration indeed.
Welcome, then, friend an
d guide in the Teaching!
Come, let us all pray together!”
The four of them, confined in retreat,
decked the altar morning and evening
with offerings of incense and flowers,
praying with single-minded devotion
until each in her time reached her goal,
or so they say. And, sure enough,
at the Chg-d, the chapel
of Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa,
the death register lists the four,
all together, as departed:
Gi, Ginyo, Hotoke, Toji.
Their story is profoundly moving.
7. Empress to Two Sovereigns
From ancient times to this day, the Heike and Genji
have jointly chastised in His Majesty’s service anyone who flouted his will.
Thus the realm long remained undisturbed.
But after Tameyoshi was slain during the Hgen years [1156–59]
and during Heiji Yoshitomo, too, came to grief, [1159–60]
their Genji successors were all exiled or killed.
The Heike alone flourished. No one stood against them.
Their triumph seemed assured for all time.
However, a succession of armed skirmishes followed Retired Emperor Toba’s passing. There were repeated executions, banishments, and dismissals from office. The world within the seas was not at peace. Insecurity still reigned. During the Eiryaku and h years [1160–63] especially, imperial reprimands began reaching the circle around Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, while those around the reigning emperor [Nij] began receiving expressions of Go-Shirakawa’s displeasure. Each man addressed, high or low, trembled with fear, like one poised on the brink of an abyss or treading on thin ice. The two emperors, reigning and retired, should have been of one mind in all things, since they were father and son, but strange incidents occurred. This was because the world had entered a degenerate age, and men gave pride of place to evil ways.
The reigning emperor rejected time and again what his father had to say,
and one among the issues between them caused widespread shock and scandal.
Her Grand Imperial Majesty,
empress to the late Konoe, 24 [r.1141–55]
was a daughter of Lord Kin’yoshi,
the i-no-mikado right minister.
Once bereaved, she left the palace