by VIKING ADULT
for her home at Konoe-kawara.
Empress no longer, she lived quietly, out of the light.
By the Eiryaku years she was somewhat past her prime, [1160–61]
being then perhaps in her twenty-second or -third year,
but people still called her the greatest beauty in the land,
and the emperor, who, with his single-minded passion for women,
secretly had his own Gao Lishi scouting for prospects beyond the palace,
wrote her love letters. When she ignored them, he made himself perfectly clear:
He issued her father a decree demanding her for palace service.25
For the realm this was a grave matter.
The senior nobles met in council, each to state his view.
“Consider first a precedent from the Other Realm:
In China there was Zetian,
empress to Taizong of Tang
and stepmother to Gaozong,
who became, after Taizong died,
empress to Gaozong, too.
This is a foreign precedent
and constitutes a special case.
In our realm, however, in the more than seventy reigns after Emperor Jinmu,
there is no such example of anyone being empress twice.”
So with one voice the lords declared.
The retired emperor disapproved, too, and sought to dissuade his successor.
His Majesty declared, “The Son of Heaven has no mother or father.
I owe the priceless office of supreme command
to merit gained from upholding the ten excellent precepts.
On so inconsequential a matter,
why should your emperor not have his wish?”
Forthwith he decreed the very day [in 1160]
when she was to enter the palace.
The retired emperor could do no more.
From the lady this news drew many tears.
“That autumn of Kyūju, when I lost him—[1154–56]
if only I, too,” she lamented, “had vanished
like dew from the moors or left the world!
Then I would hear no such hateful talk!”
Her father, the minister, sought to reconcile her to her plight.
He began, “I have read that those who refuse to bend to the world are mad.
The edict has been issued. There is no room for representations.
You must go at once to the palace. You have no other choice.
Perhaps this is a happy sign that you will be called the mother of the realm,
if only you bear him a prince,
and that I, old and foolish as I am, may still be revered as an emperor’s grandfather.
You could render your father no more filial service.”
So he addressed her, but she never replied.
In those days, during casual writing practice, her brush formed these words:
That gulf of sorrow
failed to swallow me, and now
must the stream of life
sweep me on to spread abroad
a name never heard before?
People got wind of her poem somehow,
and all agreed that her touching fate
cried out for sympathy.
The day came: She was to enter the palace and serve the emperor.
Her father attended with care to her escort of senior nobles
and to all the display carriages26 in her train.
She had too little heart for the journey to board hers promptly.
Midnight had passed when at last they helped her into her carriage.
Thereafter she resided in the Reikeiden.
She regularly urged His Majesty not to neglect the morning council.27
Sliding panels in the Shishinden
or in other such palace pavilions
pictured the great sages of China:
Yi Tin, Diwu Lun, Yu Shinan, Li Ji,
Taigong Wang, Sima, the learned Luli.
Other paintings, elsewhere, depicted
long-armed, long-legged men and horses.
In the Demon Room, a painted hero
slew a demon, and the guards’ office
displayed a likeness of General Li.
Ono no Michikaze, who governed Owari,
wrote that he redid seven times,
and no wonder, the sages’ inscriptions.28
On one door of the Seiryden,
long ago, Kanaoka apparently painted
far-off hills and the moon at dawn,
but Emperor Konoe, as a child,
had for his mischievous amusement
daubed ink all over the moon;
and there it was, just as it had been.
The sight must have recalled to her
a flood of fond memories.
Little did I think,
caught up in my misfortune
ever to return
and in the cloud dwelling see
the same moon as long ago.
The love that those two had shared
was touching beyond all words.
8. The Clash over the Name Plaques
Then came the spring of Eiman 1, [1165]
when the news went out that His Majesty was unwell.
By early summer his condition was grave
and there was talk that his eldest son, now in his second year
and born to the daughter of Iki no Kanemori, of the Treasury Bureau,
was to be named heir apparent.
Suddenly, in the sixth month, on the twenty-fifth day,
his father appointed him a prince29 and abdicated that night in his favor.
The realm felt thoroughly ill at ease.
Those versed in the ways of the past offered this advice on the matter:
“In Japan there have been child emperors.
They include Seiwa, in his ninth year [858]
when Emperor Montoku abdicated.
As the Duke of Zhou ruled for King Cheng,
facing south and daily making countless decisions,
this young emperor’s commoner grandfather,
Fujiwara no Yoshifusa,
assisted him. He was the first regent.
Toba’s accession came in his fifth year, [1107]
Konoe’s in his third, but of them both, [1141]
people complained that they were too young.
The child now at issue is in his second.
No precedent supports his accession,
which would be rash to say the least.”
But it came to pass on the twenty-seventh,
in the seventh month, that Emperor Nij
breathed his last in his twenty-third year,
as though a bud had dropped from the bough.
Behind jeweled blinds and brocade curtains,
all his ladies shed tears of grief.
His remains were carried that night
through Rendaino to Mount Funaoka
some way northeast of Kryūji,
and it was there that a quarrel broke out
between the massed Enryakuji monks
and the counterpart host from Kfukuji.
The issue was when and where each temple
would place the plaque bearing its name.
The custom, after an emperor’s passing,
is that the monks from both capitals,
northern and southern, escort the body
to its last resting place and around it
fix commemorative name plaques.
Tdaiji, founded by Emperor Shmu, [745]
goes first, by inviolable privilege.
Kfukuji, founded by Lord Tankai,30 [early 8th c.]
follows. Next, opposite Kfukuji,
Enryakuji, of the northern capital,
claims its turn to put up its plaque.
These are followed by Miidera,
built to honor the vow Emperor Tenmu made [r. 673–86]
in times long gone by, then founded [mid–9th c.]
b
y Abbot Kydai and Chish Daishi.31
For reasons best known to themselves, however, the Enryakuji monks
ignored precedent and put up their plaque right after Tdaiji, hence before Kfukuji.
The Kfukuji monks were considering what course to take when a pair of them,
Kannonb and Seishib from the temple’s West Golden Hall,
both famous monk-warriors, took the matter into their own hands.
Kannonb, in black-laced armor, gripped his plain wooden spear short;
Seishib, his armor green-laced, wielded a great sword with a black-lacquered scabbard.
They charged together and dashed the Enryakuji name plaque to the ground.
Then they rejoined the monks from the southern capital, singing,
“Ah, the lovely waters,
roaring: the great waterfall
scorns the burning sun,
flowing on and on and on,
tra-la, tra-la, tra-la!”32
9. The Burning of Kiyomizudera
Enryakuji, so violently challenged, would normally have responded,
but perhaps the monks had a deeper plan, for they said not a word.
A sovereign’s passing should move the very plants and trees,
insentient though they may be, to visible grief, but this fracas was too dismal.
High and low fled, terrified, in every direction.
Noon on the twenty-ninth of the month brought news
that a horde of monks was pouring down Mount Hiei toward the capital.
Warriors and the police raced to Nishi-Sakamoto33 to stop them,
but they broke through easily and surged on into the city.
Somehow a rumor went around that on the retired sovereign’s order
the Enryakuji monks from Mount Hiei meant to suppress the Heike.
An armed force went to the palace and secured all its guard posts,
while the Heike themselves rushed to gather at Rokuhara.
Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, too, made a hurried progress there.
Lord Kiyomori, at the time still a grand counselor, was greatly alarmed.
Lord Shigemori urged calm, objecting that the rumor was nonsense,
but the Heike of every rank remained in a state verging on panic.
The Enryakuji monks ignored Rokuhara.
They fell instead on an innocent temple,
Kiyomizudera, and burned every hall,
every last monks’ lodge to the ground.
Their aim, some said, was to cancel the shame
suffered that night of the funeral;
for Kiyomizudera, you see,
is a dependency of Kfukuji.
A sign stood, the morning after the fire,
before the main gate. On it was written
“Hey, you! Now what do you have to say
about that line from the Lotus Sutra:
‘Kannon will turn that pit of fire into a refreshing pool’?”
The following day brought this retort:
“His aeons of wonders confound understanding.”
The Hiei monks went back up their mountain;
His Eminence left Rokuhara for home.
Only Lord Shigemori escorted him.
His father, Lord Kiyomori, did not go.
Talk had it that he was being cautious.
When Lord Shigemori returned from escorting His Eminence,
his father remarked, “His visit was a great honor, I suppose,
but things he has thought and said in the past are what started that rumor.
Do not become too friendly with him.”
Lord Shigemori replied,
“Never betray these suspicions of yours
in look or word. You will rue the day
if anyone notes evidence of them.
Avoid crossing him, and be kind to all.
Do that and the gods and buddhas
will keep you and grant you protection,
so that you have nothing to fear.”
He moved to leave. “Shigemori,”
his father said, “you are bighearted to a fault.”
Once back among his close familiars, His Eminence observed,
“Well, he certainly said some strange things. That is not my thinking.”
A monk named Saikb, a key man of his, chanced to be present.
“As they say,” he remarked, “‘Heaven has no mouth and must speak through men.’
The Heike lord it beyond their station. Perhaps heaven has a plan.”
Everyone murmured, “You can’t say that!
The walls have ears! Frightening,
that’s what it is, just frightening!”
10. The Heir Apparent Named
The Purification and the Enthronement Festival were canceled that year because the new emperor[Rokuj] was mourning his father. On the twenty-fourth of the twelfth month,[1165] a decree appointed Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa’s son by Kenshunmon-in a prince. The next year the era name changed to Nin’an. [1166–69] On the eighth of the tenth month, the boy earlier appointed a prince was elevated to heir apparent at the Tsanj residence. He was in his sixth year and the emperor’s uncle, while the emperor, his nephew, was in his third. The order of seniority was backward. However, in Kanwa 2, [986] Ichij became emperor in his seventh year and his successor, Sanj, [r. 1011–16] then in his eleventh, was appointed heir apparent. The situation therefore was not unprecedented. His Majesty had acceded to the throne in his second year, when his predecessor abdicated, and he was only in his fifth when, on the nineteenth of the second month, [1168] he withdrew in favor of the heir apparent. He was then called the new retired emperor.
Before even coming of age,
he became an august retired emperor.
China can never have known the like,
nor our land either. In Nin’an 3, [1168]
on the twentieth of the third month,
the new sovereign assumed his dignity
in the Great Hall of State. For the Heike
this meant a brighter blaze of glory.
His mother, Kenshunmon-in, was a Taira,
a younger sister of Lady Nii,
the senior wife of Lord Kiyomori.
Indeed the Taira grand counselor, Lord Tokitada,
was Kenshunmon-in’s elder brother, hence His Majesty’s commoner relative.
Within and without the palace, he wielded great power.
Every appointment to rank or office conformed to his will.
So it was, too, in the time of Yang Guifei:34
Her brother, Yang Guozhong, flourished greatly,
enjoying widespread esteem and influence.
On every matter, however great or small,
Kiyomori sought Tokitada’s advice.
People dubbed him the “Heike Regent.”
11. The Collision with the Regent
Then came the sixteenth of the seventh month in the first year of Ka. [1169]
Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa renounced the world, but even then
he still governed so actively that he and the emperor were effectively one.
The senior nobles and privy gentlemen in his intimate entourage
and even the men, high or low, who belonged to his corps of guards
all enjoyed office, rank, and emoluments beyond their station.
And yet, as is the way with the hearts of men, they were not content.
“Ah, if the old fellow would just croak, that province of his would open up,”
they would whisper to each other, among friends.
“His office would be mine, if only he’d have the good grace to die.”
The now-cloistered emperor, too, made some remarks strictly in private. “Many men down the generations have suppressed the enemies of the court,” he said, “but there has never been a case like this. Sadamori and Hidesato struck down Masakado, Yoriyoshi destroyed Sadat and Munet, Yoshiie crushed Takehira and Iehira; but the reward for their efforts never went beyond a posting as provinc
ial governor. It is not right that Kiyomori should behave exactly as he pleases. He gets away with it because the latter days are upon us and the Sovereign’s Way35 is at an end.” So he spoke, but he never found an occasion to issue a reprimand. The Heike, meanwhile, had no particular feeling against the court.
The disorder that was to engulf the world sprang from a root
struck in the tenth month of Ka 2, on the sixteenth day. [1170]
Lord Shigemori’s second son, Captain Sukemori,
then in his thirteenth year, was still the governor of Echizen at the time.
The wintry fields were so pretty
after a light fall of snow
that he led thirty young housemen
on a ride around Rendaino,
Murasakino, Ukon-no-baba,
and had them bring many hawks,
to start and take quail and lark.
All day long they hunted,
until, as the light began to fail,
they headed home to Rokuhara.
Fujiwara no Motofusa, the current regent, was then on his way to the palace
from his residence at the Naka-no-mikado and Higashi-no-tin crossing.
Intending to enter through the Yūh Gate,36
he traveled south down Higashi-no-tin and west along i-no-mikado.
Where i-no-mikado and Inokuma cross, Sukemori ran straight into his train.
“Identify yourself!” the regent’s escort cried. “You are out of order!
You are in the presence of the regent! Dismount! Dismount!”
Alas, the fiercely arrogant Sukemori
cared nothing for what people thought;
nor had a single one of his housemen
reached even the age of twenty.
None of them had learned etiquette
or had any idea how to behave.
The regent? He meant nothing to them.
Dismount? Most certainly not!
Break through, rather, at a gallop.
By now it was dark. The regent’s escort
did not know Kiyomori’s grandson,
or perhaps they pretended not to.
They pulled Sukemori and the others
down from their mounts, covered with shame.
Sukemori dragged himself back to Rokuhara and told his grandfather,
Lord Kiyomori, the story of what had happened.
Kiyomori was furious. “It’s all very well for this man to be regent,” he declared,