by VIKING ADULT
and an embarrassment to our realm.
How, then, could I, who am nothing,
bring to the seat of our sovereign
a physician from a foreign land?
Would this not shame our realm?
Han Gaozu, the dynasty founder, conquered his realm with a three-foot sword,
but when he attacked Qing Bu of Huainan, a stray arrow wounded him.
Empress Lu had a fine physician examine him. The man said,
‘Yes, I can heal this wound, but not for less than fifty catties of gold.’
Gaozu replied, ‘While my protection was strong, I suffered no harm
from wounds in many battles. Now my good fortune is over.
My life is at heaven’s disposal.
Not even Pian Que could help me. But I do not wish to seem miserly.’
He gave the physician his fifty catties but rejected all treatment.
His words linger in my ears. They mean a great deal to me.
Yes, I joined the senior nobles awhile
and rose in office to minister.
Reflecting more on this destiny,
I understand it was heaven’s will.
How could I disregard that will
and irresponsibly trouble others
to provide a physician’s care?
If this is what my karma requires,
such care would do me little good,
and if my time has not yet come,
then I will recover on my own.
No, Jivaka’s110 art was not enough:
The World-Honored Shakyamuni
crossed into final extinction
there by the Niranjana River.
He did so to teach us a lesson:
No one can heal a fated sickness.
If it were possible to do so,
how could he have passed beyond?
Such an illness defies healing:
That much is transparently clear.
And that sick man was Shakyamuni,
that physician Jivaka himself.
I am no Buddha, and that man,
learned in medicine, from Song,
is certainly no Jivaka either.
Say he has learned the four treatises
and mastered the hundred modes of healing:
Even so, he could hardly save
polluted flesh so mired in this world.
He may know the five medical classics by heart and a remedy for every disease,
but what power could he possibly have over a karmic ill from lives gone by?
If thanks to his skill I were to survive after all,
that would effectively set at naught the medicine of our own land,
and if he could do nothing for me, then seeing him would have been pointless.
And more than anything else, for a minister of the realm
casually to consult a visitor by chance present here from abroad—
that would, first, bring shame on our country and, second, degrade our ways.
Not even at the cost of my life would I wish to embarrass our land.
Tell my father that.”
Moritoshi returned to Fukuhara and, in tears, conveyed Shigemori’s words.
Kiyomori said, “I have never heard of a minister, even in ancient times, so concerned with the honor of our land. In fact, it is hard to believe that such a man exists in this latter age. This minister is too good for Japan. I know that he is going to die.”
Weeping, he hurried up to the capital. On the twenty-eighth of the seventh month of that year, Lord Shigemori took Buddhist vows. His name in religion was Jren. On the first of the eighth month, he passed away, in a state of right thoughts at the last. He was in his forty-third year and plainly at the height of his powers. His death was a great loss.
Violent as Lord Kiyomori was in his ways,
only Shigemori’s calming influence and good judgment had maintained peace.
Every denizen of the capital, high or low,
lamented that there was no telling now what might befall the realm.
Partisans of the former right commander, Lord Munemori,
rejoiced that all the world would now look to their own lord.
A father, for love of his child,
grieves even when one little favored
departs early from this life.
And imagine, then, Lord Shigemori:
He was a pillar of the Heike
and in all ways the sage of his time.
The agony of losing a son,
the imminent decline of his house—
these surpassed every notion of grief.
So it was that the world at large
mourned a great minister’s passing
while, for its part, the house of Taira
bewailed the waning of its armed might.
Ever distinguished in his person,
Shigemori was loyal at heart,
a model of every accomplishment,
and virtuous in every word.
12. The Sword of Mourning
Lord Shigemori had an unusual nature.
Perhaps he could even see into the future, because in the fourth month past,
on the seventh day, he dreamed an extraordinary dream.
He was walking along an endless beach; where it was, he could not tell.
Beside the path stood a great torii. “What torii is this?” he asked.
“This is the torii of the Kasuga Deity,” he was told.111
Many people were gathered there, and one held up a monk’s head.
“Whose head is that?” the dreamer inquired.
“This is the head of the chancellor and novice Kiyomori, of the Taira,” the answer came.
“The god of this shrine has taken it, so excessively evil are his deeds.”
Shigemori then woke up.
“Since the Hgen and Heiji years,
we Taira have repeatedly
quelled the enemies of the court,
gaining honor beyond our due:
our leader now—an awesome thought—
soon to become, through his daughter,
Shigemori’s dream. At right: The dreamer.
the grandfather of an emperor
and of our number over sixty
occupying exalted office.
Our wealth, for twenty years and more,
has simply defied description,
but now my father’s past abuses
threaten all of us with ruin.”
Thoughts like these, of what had been
and what might be, rolled through his head
until he could do nothing but weep.
Someone knocked at the double doors.
“Who is that?” Shigemori asked. “Go and find out.”
“Seno-o Tar Kaneyasu is here, my lord,” came the reply.
“What is it? What is the matter?”
“A strange occurrence, my lord. Something happened just now.
I have come to tell you because I felt that I could not wait for dawn.
Please ask your people to withdraw.” Shigemori did so and received Seno-o.
Seno-o related to him in full what he had just dreamed.
The dream was exactly the same as his lord’s.
Why then, Seno-o Kaneyasu, too,
is in direct touch with the gods!
Lord Shigemori was impressed.
Koremori, his eldest son and heir, was preparing that morning to set off for the palace when his father called him in. “This is hardly the way for a father to speak, but you are to my mind the best of my sons. I do not like at all, though, how our world is going. Sadayoshi? Serve the lieutenant wine.”
Sadayoshi brought wine and prepared to pour.
“I should prefer the lieutenant to take the cup first,” Shigemori went on, “but I know that he would never drink before his father. So I will take it and then give it to him.” He accepted the cup three times, then offered it to Koremori.
Once Koremori, too, had
accepted the cup three times, Shigemori spoke again: “Now, Sadayoshi, the gift!”
Sadayoshi obediently brought out a sword in a brocade bag.
“Oh!” said Koremori to himself as he watched. “This must be Kogarasu, the heirloom sword of our house!” But no, it was plain and unadorned, the kind worn for a minister’s funeral.
Koremori paled and considered it with evident distaste. His father shed bitter tears.
“Listen to me, Koremori,” he said. “Sadayoshi has made no mistake.
You may wonder how this can be.
The sword before you is a plain one, for the funeral of a minister.
I have kept it with me in case anything should happen to Lord Kiyomori,
but I will soon precede him, so it is yours.”
His words struck Koremori dumb;
the least answer was beyond him.
Choked with tears, he collapsed, facedown,
and that day never went to court;
instead he lay still beneath a robe.
Later on, returning from Kumano,
Shigemori sickened and died.
All these things then at last made sense.
13. The Lanterns
In all things Lord Shigemori aspired to abolish sin and cultivate good karma.
Lamenting the heights and depths of rebirth in lives to come,
he therefore built at the foot of the Eastern Hills a temple forty-eight bays long,
inspired by the six-times-eight great vows of the Buddha Amida,
and in each bay he hung a lantern: forty-eight, for forty-eight bays.
The ninefold lotus throne glittered before the viewer’s eyes;
the phoenix mirror shone as though one gazed on paradise itself.
Each month, on the fourteenth and fifteenth days, the Heike and other houses
sent pretty gentlewomen in the flower of their youth to gather there, six to a bay: for the forty-eight, two hundred eighty-eight gentlewomen in all.
They were assigned by turns to call the Name through the six hours of day and night,
and during those two days their devout invocations never ceased.
Amida’s compassionate vow,
to greet all who call his Name
and welcome them to paradise,
here was truly plain to see,
and the radiance of his promise
to gather all who call on him
to himself and abandon none
shone down, it seemed, on Shigemori.
When at noon on the fifteenth day
the great invocation ended,
he himself joined the procession,
turned toward the west, and chanted,
“Hail, O Well-Gone, Lord Amida,
you who reign over paradise,
save, I pray, all sentient beings
in the three worlds and the six realms.”
Thus he turned his every merit
to vow rebirth in the Pure Land,
moving to mercy all who saw him,
all who heard him to heartfelt tears.
So it came to pass that people
called him the “Lantern Minister.”
14. Gold to China
Lord Shigemori also reflected that whatever root of good karma
he might strike in our own land, his descendants could hardly pray for him forever.
Wishing also to put down good karmic roots somehow in the Other Realm,
so that such prayers might be offered on his behalf throughout all future time,
in the Angen years [1175–77] he summoned from Kyushu a ship captain named Miao Dian.
He had his entourage withdraw far off and met the man in private.
Calling for three thousand five hundred taels of gold, he said,
“You are by reputation a thoroughly honest man.
Five hundred taels of this gold are therefore yours.
Three thousand are to go to Song: one thousand for the monks of Mount Yuwang
and two thousand for the emperor, to buy paddy fields for the monastery,
so that the monks may offer prayers for me in my lives to come.”
Miao Dian received the gold,
braved ten thousand leagues of waves,
and crossed over to the land of Song.
On Mount Yuwang he met Deguang
in the abbot’s temple residence
and explained the matter to him.
Abbot Deguang wept tears of joy.
His monks received a thousand taels,
and he sent the emperor two thousand,
with Shigemori’s humble request.
The emperor, profoundly moved,
made over in gift to Mount Yuwang
five hundred ch of paddy fields.112
Thus for a Japanese minister,
Lord Taira no Shigemori,
prayers to assure a good rebirth
even now go up there, they say.
15. The Confrontation with Jken
This loss of his beloved son
surely plunged Lord Kiyomori
far into the depths of despair,
for he hurried to Fukuhara
and there shut himself away.
In the eleventh month of that year,
on the night of the seventh and at the hour of the dog, [1179, ca. 8 P.M.]
a powerful earthquake struck. It lasted a good while.
Abe no Yasuchika, the head of the Yin-Yang Office, rushed to the palace.
“This earthquake, as divination shows, urges the most scrupulous conduct.
Konkiky, one of our three divination classics, puts it this way:
‘In terms of years, within the year; of months, within the month; of days, within the day.’
This is a desperate emergency.” Tears were pouring down his cheeks.
The official charged with transmitting his words paled, and His Majesty was alarmed.
The young nobles present laughed.
“He’s quite a sight, Yasuchika,” they said, “bawling away like that!
Nothing is going to happen.”
Nevertheless Yasuchika,
only five generations removed
from Abe no Seimei himself,113
knew all the secrets of the stars
and divined the truth of things
as though it lay there in his palm.
He who never made a mistake
was rated a divine master.
A bolt of lightning struck him once
and burned the sleeve of his hunting cloak,
but he himself remained unscathed.
Neither ancient times nor latter days
can have known another like him.
On the fourteenth, word went out that Kiyomori, hitherto at Fukuhara,
was now, for reasons best known to himself, on his way into the capital,
at the head of several thousand mounted men.
No one in the city knew exactly what to expect, but all, high or low, shook with fear.
Parties unknown spread it about that Kiyomori had it in for the imperial house
and meant now to settle old scores. The regent, Lord Motofusa,
who may have had his own sources of information, rushed to the palace.
“The senior minister’s present arrival in the capital,” he told His Majesty,
“surely involves a plan to do away with me! Oh, what is to become of me?”
The sovereign was shocked. Weeping in gracious sympathy, he replied,
“Whatever may happen to you will be as though it had happened to me.”
Governance of the realm, in truth,
lies with emperor and regent.
What to make, then, of these events?
What the Sun Goddess can have thought,
what the great god of Kasuga—
that was a cause for grave concern.
On the fifteenth, speculation became certainty: Lord Kiyomori was out to settle scores with the imperial house. In dismay the cloistered emperor appo
inted the great monk Jken, a son of the late minor counselor Shinzei, to speak for him to Kiyomori. This was his message: “In recent years the court has been troubled, anxiety has disturbed the hearts of the people, and the world at large has become less and less secure. These things are a source of deep concern, but your presence has always been reassuring. However, rather than bring peace to the land, you have now, I gather, disposed yourself assertively to act on resentment against the imperial house. What does this mean?”
Jken loyally set off for Nishi-Hachij and waited there from morning to night.
In all that time, no one said a word to him.
He therefore decided that it was pointless to stay.
Entrusting Gendayū Suesada with the gist of his message,
he excused himself and was on his way out when—with “Get Jken in here!”—Kiyomori finally appeared. They called Jken back.
“Now, reverend sir, pray tell:
Do you take my words for nonsense?
First, considering merely the future of my house,
the palace minister’s death has been a bitter blow.
I daresay that is not beyond your comprehension.
Ever since the Hgen era, one treachery has followed another,
leaving the emperor not one moment of peace.
I myself have provided only general oversight in these matters.
It is the palace minister who did all the work, at the cost of great effort,
and who on repeated occasions soothed the imperial wrath.
His expert handling of other exceptional events, too, made him a rare treasure.
This brings an old example to mind.
When Taizong of Tang lost Wei Zheng,
excessive grief moved him to write,
in his own hand, on the stele
he had erected at the tomb:
‘Long ago Yinzong, in a dream,
learned of a perfect adviser;
now I, as I am, wide awake,
have lost a prudent minister.’
This was, they say, his gesture of sorrow.
And another such example,
recent, comes from our own land.
When Akiyori passed away, [1148]
after heading Civil Affairs,
Retired Emperor Toba mourned him.
He put off his progress to Yawata
and gave up the pleasures of music.
A ranking subject’s death has always affected the emperor, reign after reign.