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“This fate has overtaken me
because the late grand counselor,
your father, raised futile rebellion!
You cannot disown me now!
If there is no pardon for me,
oh, take me aboard your ship—
if not to the capital itself,
then at least as far as Kyushu!
While you two were here, yes, news from home still came as naturally as swallows in spring or as geese to the fields in autumn. But now how will I ever have news again?” Shunkan was contorted with anguish.
“I understand your feelings,” Naritsune replied. “Our joy at being recalled is one thing, but seeing you like this makes it painful to leave. I would like nothing better than to take you with us, but the envoy from the capital says that that is impossible. It would only mean disaster if all three of us were to leave the island without authorization and came to be found out. No, I will go on ahead, talk things over with people, gauge Lord Kiyomori’s mood, and then send someone back for you. In the meantime please go on waiting as patiently as you have done so far. What matters above all is to stay alive. You have missed your pardon this time, but I see no reason you should not have it in the end.” He did his best to sound encouraging, but Shunkan, oblivious to watching eyes, only wept in misery.
The ship’s crew clattered about in preparation for sailing.
Shunkan clambered up the side and fell, fell and clambered back up again,
all too plainly desperate not to be abandoned.
The two left him, as parting gifts,
Naritsune a sleeping quilt,
Yasuyori a Lotus Sutra.
They loosed the moorings and cast off.
Frantically clutching the rope,
Shunkan followed into the water,
waist-deep, then to his armpits,
till he could only barely stand,
hands clenched on the gunwale,
crying, “Is this really it, then?
You really mean to leave me here?
I never believed you would do this!
Why, I always thought we were friends!
Oh, please, please, let me aboard!
At least take me as far as Kyushu!”
But his pleading was in vain.
“No, we may not,” the envoy said.
They broke his grip. The boat rowed off.
Stripped of hope, Shunkan waded back,
there to collapse at the water’s edge,
stamping his feet like a little boy
bellowing for nurse or mother.
“Take me aboard! Take me with you!”
he howled, but the receding boat
left, as they say, only white waves.
Even now it was not far away,
but blinding tears veiled it from him.
Up onto a high place he ran,
waving, waving toward the sea.
Not even storied Sayo-hime,
Shunkan watches the ship leave. Despite the sail shown, the text mentions only rowing.
bidding farewell at Matsura
to that ship bound for Cathay,
waved her scarf more passionately.96
The boat rowed on; then it was gone.
The sun went down, and yet Shunkan
never returned to his rough bed.
Feet still washed by the breaking waves,
drenched with all the dews of night,
he lay there through to the new day.
“He’s a kind man, though, Naritsune”—
so Shunkan reassured himself;
“he’ll speak eloquently for me.”
Poor fellow! Even in his plight,
he could not bring himself to drown.
Now he knew how they despaired,
the brothers Sri and Sokuri,
when abandoned on their rocky isle.97
3. The Imperial Birth
So the party left Kikai-ga-shima to reach Hizen province and Lord Norimori’s Kase estate.
From the city, Norimori sent a messenger to tell them:
“Wind and sea will be rough the rest of this year and the journey dangerous.
Stay there, take good care of yourselves, and come up to the capital in spring.”
Naritsune therefore saw the year out at Kase.
Meanwhile, in the eleventh month,
the twelfth day, in the small hours,
Her Majesty’s labor began:
news that aroused great excitement
citywide and at Rokuhara,
where, in the Ikedono pavilion,
the empress was to give birth.
The cloistered emperor was soon there,
and the regent, and the chancellor,
and every one of the senior nobles
and privy gentlemen.
Everyone who was anyone,
figures of rank and property,
eager to rise in grade or office,
turned up to the last man.
Precedent permitted a general amnesty to honor such an occasion.
One had been declared in Daiji 2, the ninth month and eleventh day, [1127]
when Taikenmon-in gave birth.
On that authority many guilty of grievous crimes were pardoned:
all except the prelate Shunkan, whom alone the amnesty excluded.
Her Majesty vowed solemnly to pay homage in person, if only the birth went well,
at Yawata, Hirano, harano, and so on. The great monk Sengen announced her resolve.
The shrines mentioned included Ise and many others—over twenty in all.
There were sixteen temples, too, Tdaiji and Kfukuji among them.
At all there were to be sutra readings, ordered by men from her household.
Wearing swords and hunting cloaks patterned in three colors,
they proceeded from the east wing, through the southern garden,
and out the middle gate to the west, bearing for the sutra readings
offerings of many hues, and swords and robes, too, as sacred gifts.
They made a brilliant spectacle.
Never one to get excited about anything, good or bad, Lord Shigemori started out a good while later, leading a train of carriages. His eldest son, Koremori, followed, with the others behind him. He brought with him on presentation trays forty robes of various colors and seven silver-fitted swords, while grooms led twelve horses. Apparently all this followed the precedent set by Lord Michinaga in the Kank era, [1004–13] when Jtmon-in gave birth.
Lord Shigemori was quite right to offer the horses,
since he was not only the empress’s elder brother but also her acting father.98
The Goj grand counselor Kunitsuna likewise presented two.
People wondered, concerning this gift, whether it demonstrated pure devotion
or simply an excess of wealth.
From Ise to Itsukushima in Aki,
seventy shrines and more received
horses decked out to please the gods.
The imperial stables for their part
offered horses with sacred streamers
to the number of several dozen.
The abbot of Ninnaji performed
the rite of the Peacock Sutra;
the Tendai abbot Kakukai
that of the Seven Medicine Kings;
Cloistered Prince Enkei of Miidera
undertook the rite of Kong Dji;
in fact, every ritual one could imagine—
the Five Great Kokūz, the Six Kannon,
Ichiji Kinrin, the Five-Altar Rite,
the Six-Letter Purification,
the Eight-Letter Rite of Monju,
yes, and the Life-Giving Fugen—
every one of these was performed.
Smoke from the goma ritual fire filled the whole pavilion;
the ringing of liturgical bells echoed among the clouds aloft;
awesome scripture-chanting voices set the hair bristling on every head.
No spirit bent on evil c
ould possibly have faced them down.
The order went out to the resident sculptors of holy images
to prepare life-size ones of the Medicine King and the Five Mantra Kings.
Nonetheless Her Majesty’s labor went on and on, with no sign of imminent birth.
Lord Kiyomori and his wife, Lady Nii, hands pressed to their chests, sat aghast and confused. To anyone who sought his orders, Kiyomori replied, “Oh, anything, anything, whatever might conceivably work.” Later on he remarked, “I would have been less terrified in the thick of battle.”
Five great healers, ranking prelates,
Bkaku, Shun and Shungy,
Gzen and Jissen—each flung out
his own appeal to the deities,
demanding aid from his temple’s divinity,
forcefully requiring his own,99
after all his years of devotion
to help him in this extremity.
Surely, one felt, they would prevail.
Among them the cloistered emperor,
purified for a pilgrimage
he soon planned to Imagumano,
and seated very close indeed
to Her Majesty’s brocade curtains,
gave vigorous voice to reciting
the Sutra of Thousand-Armed Kannon,
at which came a sudden change.
The spirits driven into the mediums,
in whom they had raised a colossal uproar,
now for a little while fell silent.
His Cloistered Eminence addressed them. “Spirits, whoever you may be,
as long as this old monk is here, you will never get anywhere near her.
All of you raging phantoms especially, who have shown yourselves here today,
owe everything you were in life to the favor of your sovereign.
Gratitude may mean nothing to you,
but how dare you obstruct what must be!
Be gone now, this instant, be gone!”
And he went on in the words of the sutra:
“If a woman cannot give birth
and demon powers work against her,
however great her pain may be,
let her, in truly heartfelt faith,
chant the Spell of Great Compassion,
and those demons will melt away,
to be reborn at last in peace.”
While he sharply rubbed together
the crystal beads of his rosary,
the birth went forward quite easily,
and, what is more, the child was a boy.
Lord Shigehira (at the time still deputy master of the empress’s household) emerged from behind the curtains to announce in a loud voice, “The delivery went well, and the new arrival is a prince!” The cloistered emperor, the regent, the ministers, the senior nobles and privy gentlemen, the monks’ assistants, the healers, the head of the Yin-Yang Office, the chief physician, everyone present, of every degree, gave a great shout of joy heard even beyond the gate, and the jubilation took some time to abate.
Lord Kiyomori was so happy that he wept aloud.
This must be what people mean when they speak of “tears of joy.”
Lord Shigemori went to the empress and placed ninety-nine gold coins by the prince’s pillow.
“Understand,” he said, “that heaven is your father and earth your mother.
Live as long as the wizard Dongfang Shuo; make yours the heart of the Sun Goddess.”
Then, with a mulberry bow, he shot mugwort arrows in the four directions.
4. The Roster of Great Lords
Lord Munemori’s wife had been meant to nurse the new prince,
but she had died in childbirth that seventh month past,
so the child was given suck by the wife of Lord Tokitada, the Taira grand counselor;
she was known later on as Lady Sotsu-no-suke.
The cloistered emperor’s carriage appeared immediately at the gate.
Bursting with joy, Lord Kiyomori presented him with a thousand taels of gold dust
and two thousand of raw Fuji cotton. There were some whispers of disapproval.
Certain irregularities had occurred in connection with the birth.
First, the cloistered emperor had functioned as one of the healers.
Second, when an empress gives birth,
the custom is to roll a rice-cooking pot down the roof from the ridgepole:
toward the south for a boy, toward the north for a girl.
This time, though, they had rolled it northward, which caused a puzzled commotion.
The pot had to be retrieved and sent rolling down again.
People muttered among themselves that this was a bad sign.
The funniest thing was Lord Kiyomori’s expression of blank amazement, and the most admirable the behavior of Lord Shigemori. The saddest was that after losing his beloved wife, Munemori had resigned as grand counselor and commander and had gone into seclusion at home. How wonderful it would have been if both brothers had been there! And then there were the seven yin-yang masters summoned to perform a thousandfold purification. One was an old man named Tokihare, the head of the palace Housekeeping Office. He had only a few attendants with him, and the press of people was like a dense growth of bamboo shoots, rice, hemp, or reeds. “I am an official!” he cried, struggling to make way through the crowd. “Let me through!” His right shoe came off in the process, and he got his headdress knocked off when he stopped for a moment. The sight of a formally dressed old gentleman solemnly moving along with his topknot exposed, on so grand an occasion, was too much for the younger courtiers. They burst into laughter.
Yin-yang masters apparently adopt a special gait to keep themselves safe, and yet this mishap occurred. No one at the time thought much about it,
yet in the light of later events it came to seem clearly portentous.
These gentlemen came to Rokuhara
on the occasion of the birth:
the regent, Lord Motofusa;
the chancellor, Moronaga;
the left minister, Tsunemune;
the right minister, Kanezane;
the palace minister, Shigemori;
the left commander, Sanesada;
Sadafusa, the Minamoto grand counselor;
Sanefusa, the Sanj grand counselor;
Kunitsuna, the Goj grand counselor;
Sanekuni, the Fujiwara grand counselor;
the inspector Sukekata;
the Naka-no-mikado counselor Muneie;
the Kasan-no-in counselor Kanemasa;
the Minamoto counselor Masayori;
the provisional counselor Sanetsuna;
the Fujiwara counselor Sukenaga;
the Ike counselor Yorimori;
the Left Gate Watch intendant Tokitada;
the police superintendent Tadachika;
Saneie, a left captain and consultant;
Sanemune, a right captain and consultant;
the consultant and captain Michichika;
the Taira consultant Norimori;
the Rokkaku consultant Iemichi;
the Horikawa consultant Yorisada;
the left grand controller Nagakata;
the right grand controller Toshitsune;
the Left Watch intendant Shigenori;
the Right Watch intendant Mitsuyoshi;
the master of the grand empress’s household Tomokata;
the Left City commissioner Naganori;
the Dazaifu deputy Chikanobu;
Sanekiyo, newly of the third rank.
All these thirty-three gentlemen,
apart from the right grand controller,
were arrayed in formal court dress.
Absent were Lord Tadamasa,
the Kasan-no-in former chancellor,
the miya grand counselor Takasue,
and eight more. All of them, they say,
went later to Nishi-Hachij
and called there on Lord Kiyomori,
dressed in plain hunting cloaks.
5. The Rebuilding of the Great Pagoda
On the last day of prayers for the empress came the distribution of rewards.
The decree provided that the prince-abbot of Ninnaji should see to repairing Tji,100
as well as to performing the Latter Seven-Day Rite, the Daigensui Rite,
and the esoteric initiations. His ranking disciple Kakusei received further promotion.
The prince-abbot of Mount Hiei petitioned for promotion to the second princely rank
and for the privilege of entering and leaving the palace grounds in an ox-drawn carriage.
The Ninnaji abbot declared himself opposed,
and for this reason the prelate Enry was promoted instead to higher rank.
There seem to have been too many other rewards to allow listing them all.
Her Majesty, having been long away, now returned to the palace from Rokuhara.
Lord Kiyomori and his wife had both prayed, once their daughter was empress:
“Oh, may she give birth to a prince!
And may that prince then ascend the throne, so that we stand above all others
as an emperor’s commoner grandfather and grandmother!”
They began monthly pilgrimages to Itsukushima in Aki,
the shrine that inspired their personal devotion, in order to make this prayer.
Their daughter conceived immediately, and the child was indeed a boy.
Theirs was the height of good fortune.
But how did this Taira faith in Itsukushima begin? When Lord Kiyomori governed Aki, under Retired Emperor Toba, his province was charged with rebuilding the great pagoda on Mount Kya. Kiyomori assigned End Rokur Yorikata of Watanabe to the project. It took six years. Kiyomori visited Mount Kya when it was finished. He first worshipped at the pagoda and then went on to the Oku-no-in.101
The old monk disappears (left). At lower right: Kiyomori and his party.
There an old monk appeared, as though from nowhere,
eyebrows frost-white and forehead wrinkled like waves on the sea,
leaning on a forked staff. He addressed Lord Kiyomori at length.
“Here the esoteric teachings live
undiminished since the days of old,”
he said, “as nowhere else in the land.
The Great Pagoda is at last rebuilt.
Now, Itsukushima in Aki and, in Echizen, the Kehi Shrine102
are the very presence of Dainichi, lord of the Twin Mandalas.