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Page 27

by VIKING ADULT


  This is what you should do. You should raise rebellion and destroy the Heike,

  save His Cloistered Eminence from the sorrow of endless confinement in the Toba Mansion,

  and yourself succeed to the dignity of the sovereign.

  You would uphold in doing so the highest filial piety.

  Should you decide to proceed, Your Highness, should you issue your august command,

  there are many Genji who would gladly hasten to your side.”

  And he continued:

  “First of all, in the Capital

  there are the sons of Mitsunobu,

  lately the governor of Dewa;

  Mitsumoto, the Iga governor;

  Mitsunaga, a magistrate;

  Mitsushige, a chamberlain;

  and the gallant Mitsuyoshi.

  In hiding in Kumano

  there is Jūr Yoshimori,

  the last son of the late Tameyoshi.

  In Settsu there is one man

  who might figure on the list,

  except that when Narichika

  plotted revolt, this Yukitsuna

  joined with him, all the while

  reporting back to the Heike.

  No, he cannot be trusted,

  but he does have younger brothers:

  first Jir Tomozane,

  then the gallant Takayori,

  and, last, Tar Yorimoto.

  Kawachi will offer you

  Yoshimoto, for the present

  Minamoto no Yorimasa (left) talking to Prince Mochihito.

  the acting governor of Musashi,

  and his son Yoshikane.

  The Yamato roster includes

  the sons of Uno Chikaharu:

  Ariharu, Kiyoharu,

  Nakaharu, and Yoshiharu.

  Then there is mi province

  and the men of Yamamoto,

  Kashiwagi, and Nishigori.

  Mino and Owari boast

  Yamada no Shigehiro;

  Kawabe no Shigenao;

  Kawabe no Shigemitsu;

  Izumi no Shigemitsu;

  Urano no Shiget;

  Ajiki no Shigeyori

  and his eldest, Shigesuke;

  Kida no Shigenaga;

  Kaiden no Shigekuni;

  Yashima no Shigetaka

  of the heir apparent’s guard

  and his eldest, Shigeyuki.

  In Kai you may wish to call

  on the great gallant Yoshikiyo

  and his eldest, Kiyomitsu;

  on Takeda no Nobuyoshi;

  Kagami no Tmitsu;

  Kagami no Nagakiyo;

  Ichij no Tadayori;

  Itagaki no Kanenobu;

  Henmi no Ariyoshi;

  Takeda no Nobumitsu;

  Yasuda no Yoshisada.

  And likewise in Shinano,

  on uchi no Koreyoshi;

  Okada no Chikayoshi;

  Hiraka no Moriyoshi

  and his fourth son, Yoshinobu;

  Kiso no Yoshinaka,

  son of the late Yoshikata,

  once head of the corps of guards

  assigned to the heir apparent.

  In Izu you will not neglect

  the great exile, Yoritomo,

  who once served in the Right Watch.

  Farther still, Hitachi offers

  Shida no Yoshinori,

  guardsman to the heir apparent;

  Satake no Masayoshi

  and, among his sons, the first,

  Tadayoshi, then the third,

  Yoshimune, and the fourth,

  Takayoshi, then at last

  his fifth-born, Yoshisue.

  Finally, Mutsu can boast

  the last son of Yoshitomo,

  lately chief left equerry,

  Kur Hgan Yoshitsune.

  All these descend in direct line

  from Minamoto no Tsunetomo,

  famous as Rokusonn,

  and from the novice Mitsunaka.

  Once, neither Heike nor Genji

  could lay claim to greater success

  at chastising an enemy

  bent on challenging the court

  or at rising to new glory.

  Now, though, we of the Genji

  languish more abjectly below them

  than mud under the clouds above,

  than servant under master.

  In a province we do the governor’s bidding;

  on an estate we are at the manager’s beck and call.

  Harried by office duties and constant errands, we have never a moment’s peace.

  Imagine, then, the low state of our spirits!

  Were you to decide to act, Your Highness, and to issue your call to these men,

  they would race day and night to join you,

  and they would destroy the Heike in no time at all.

  Yes, I am old, but I would place myself at your service with my sons.”

  So he spoke. The prince, who doubted the wisdom of such a venture,

  refused for some time to lend it his support.

  But there was an outstanding physiognomist, the minor counselor Korenaga,

  grandson of the Akomaru grand counselor Munemichi

  and son of Suemichi, a former governor of the province of Bingo.

  People called him in those days “Counselor Physiognomy.”

  This Korenaga came to call on Prince Mochihito.

  “You have the marks of one destined to be emperor,” he said.

  “You must not renounce your concern for the realm.”

  His words, added to Yorimasa’s, tipped the balance.

  “So be it, then,” the prince declared.

  “It appears that the Great Sun Goddess calls me to do my duty.”

  The resolve to proceed now burned within him.

  From Kumano he summoned Jūr Yoshimori and appointed him chamberlain. Yoshimori changed his name to Yukiie and started down to the east as the prince’s designated envoy. He left the capital on the twenty-eighth of the fourth month. After mi he went on to Mino and Owari, announcing His Highness’s call to the Genji along the way. On the tenth of the fifth month, he reached Hj in Izu, where he conveyed the call to the exiled Yoritomo. He continued on to Shida no Ukishima in Hitachi, to bring the message to his elder brother, Shida no Sabur Yoshinori. Then he trod mountain trails to do the same for another: his nephew, Kiso no Yoshinaka.

  Tanz, then the superintendent of Kumano and deeply loyal to the Heike,

  somehow received a report that Jūr Yoshimori of Shingū, on Prince Mochihito’s order,

  was rousing the Genji of Mino and Owari and fomenting rebellion.

  “The men of Nachi and Shingū,” he said, “are certain to side with the Genji.

  I myself, though, owe the Heike everything, and I could never turn against them.

  No, I shall treat them to an arrow or two and inform the Heike.”

  In this spirit he marched on the port of Shingū with a thousand armed men.

  Shingū had its fighting clerics,

  the Torii and Takab monks,

  and, in the way of warriors,

  Ui, Suzuki, Mizuya, Kamenok,

  while Nachi boasted a cleric

  high in rank and high in valor

  at the head of two thousand men.

  Both sides raised their battle cry

  and exchanged initial arrows.

  Then came the shouts—“That’s how we shoot,

  we Genji!” and, in the same spirit,

  “Take that from a Heike bow!”—

  constant cries from successful archers,

  ceaseless whine of humming arrows.

  The battle lasted all of three days.

  Tanz, the Kumano superintendent,

  his relatives and housemen struck down

  in large numbers and himself wounded,

  fled as fast as he could to Hongū.

  4. The Weasels

  Once the cloistered emperor had said,

  “I imagine they mean to pack me off in ex
ile to some distant island.”

  But no, this was now his second year in the Toba Mansion.

  On the twelfth of the fifth month, weasels ran riot there in his quarters.

  Astonished, he personally recorded the divination pattern,

  summoned the mi governor Nakakane, and gave him this order:

  “Take this pattern to Yasuchika, have him consider it carefully,

  and report to me what he has to say.”

  Nakakane took it straight to Abe no Yasuchika, the head of the Yin-Yang Office,

  but the man was out. “He’s off in Shirakawa,” they told him.

  He went there, found him, and conveyed the cloistered sovereign’s message.

  Yasuchika issued his judgment on the spot.

  Nakakane returned to the Toba Mansion and was headed in through the gate

  when the guards stopped him. Never mind, he knew his way.

  He climbed over the compound wall, crawled under the veranda,

  and thrust Yasuchika’s judgment up between two boards.

  His Cloistered Eminence opened the document and examined it.

  “Joy and sorrow within three days,” it read.

  “The joy is all well and good,” he remarked,

  “but considering my situation, I wonder what the sorrow will be.”

  Meanwhile, Lord Munemori had been pleading on the cloistered emperor’s behalf,

  and Lord Kiyomori had had a change of heart.

  On the thirteenth he released Go-Shirakawa from the Toba Mansion

  and allowed him to move to the residence of Bifukumon-in,

  at the Hachij-Karasumaru crossing.

  Yasuchika was quite right about good news within three days.

  All the while this was happening,

  Kumano superintendent Tanz

  sent to the capital, by runner,

  word of the prince’s rebellion.

  Munemori, in great agitation,

  forwarded it to Lord Kiyomori,

  just then away at Fukuhara.

  The very instant he heard the news,

  Kiyomori raced to the city.

  “This is no time for scruples,”

  he said. “Arrest Prince Mochihito

  and banish him to Hata in Tosa.”

  The grand counselor Sanefusa,

  representing the senior nobles,

  oversaw enforcing the sentence;

  the secretary controller Mitsumasa

  undertook, they say, to carry it out.

  He had Gendayū Kanetsuna

  and Mitsunaga of Dewa

  proceed straight to the prince’s house.

  Actually, Gendayū Kanetsuna

  was Yorimasa’s second son.

  He got this duty nevertheless

  because the Heike did not yet know

  that in fact it was Yorimasa

  who had moved the prince to rebel.

  5. Nobutsura

  That same fifth month, on the fifteenth night,

  Prince Mochihito was contemplating the full moon in a carefree mood,

  when a hurried messenger came, so he said, from Lord Yorimasa,

  bearing a letter. His Highness’s foster brother Munenobu, of the Left Gate Watch, took it,

  presented himself before His Highness, and opened it. It read:

  “Your Highness’s rebellion has been discovered;

  the police are on their way now to your house, to banish you to Hata in Tosa.

  Leave immediately and proceed to Miidera. I shall join you there.”

  “But how am I to do that?” the prince cried in great agitation.

  Now, among his housemen there was one Nagatsura, an officer of the Watch.

  “There is only one way, Your Highness,” Nagatsura said.

  “You will have to go dressed as a woman.”

  “Very well.” The prince let down his hair, and, over layered robes,

  donned the broad, conical hat of a woman walking abroad.

  Munenobu accompanied him, holding a long-handled parasol,

  while a page, Tsurumaru, carried a few things in a bag on his head.

  They might have been an imperial noble’s junior housemen taking a lady somewhere.

  Fleeing north up Takakura Street, they came to a wide ditch.

  The prince leaped it lightly.

  “What a way for a lady to hop over a ditch!”

  a passerby stopped to exclaim, staring suspiciously.

  The prince hurried on as fast as he could.

  Nobutsura remained behind,

  to mind the prince’s residence.

  The few gentlewomen were sent off

  wherever they could go to hide.

  Searching for anything unsightly

  that might need tidying, Nobutsura

  discovered the prince’s treasure,

  a flute given the name Koeda,

  lying forgotten by his pillow.

  The prince, too, had noticed the loss

  and that instant was sorely tempted

  to risk going back to retrieve it.

  “Oh, no!” Nobutsura exclaimed when he found it.

  “This flute is His Highness’s most treasured possession!”

  Within five hundred yards, he had caught up with the prince and restored it to him.

  His Highness was overjoyed. “If I die,” he said,

  “I want you to put this flute with me in my coffin.

  And now,” he continued, “come with me.” Nobutsura, however, replied,

  “The police are on their way to your house to arrest you,

  and it will look very bad if no one at all is there.

  Everyone, of every degree, knows I belong to your household.

  They will all say that I, too, fled if I am not there tonight.

  Any breath of such a suspicion would taint a warrior’s name.

  I will go back now, take them on, get rid of them, and rejoin you.”

  He raced off toward His Highness’s residence.

  Nobutsura had on that day,

  under a pale green hunting cloak,

  green-laced armor, and the sword

  proper to his post hung at his side.

  He opened the gates on both sides—

  the great one onto the avenue, Sanj,

  the small onto Takakura—

  and waited for them to arrive.

  Kanetsuna and Nagamitsu,

  leading three hundred mounted men

  that night, at the hour of the rat, [midnight]

  pressed forward toward the mansion.

  Gendayū Kanetsuna seemed to have something in mind. He stopped well short of the gate, while Mitsunaga rode straight in through it, stopped, and announced in a loud voice, “It has come to the attention of the authorities, Your Highness, that you are plotting rebellion. By official order the police are therefore here to detain you. Come out immediately!”

  Nobutsura stood just inside the veranda. “His Highness is not at home at present,” he answered. “He is away on a pilgrimage. What is going on? What is this all about?”

  “Not at home?” came the reply. “Where’s he supposed to be, then, if not here? No more of your nonsense! Men, get in there and look around!”

  Nobutsura retorted, “You understand nothing, do you, you men from the police!

  You even barge straight in through a gate on horseback! What a way to behave!

  And then you send your underlings to search the premises? How can you?

  Here I am: Hasebe Nobutsura of the Left Watch.

  Get anywhere near me and you’ll be sorry!”

  Among those underlings there was one,

  Kanetake by name, a mighty man,

  who fixed his gaze on Nobutsura,

  then leaped onto the veranda.

  Fourteen or fifteen of his fellows,

  at the sight, came right after him.

  Nobutsura cut the sash and cord

  of his hunting cloak, tossed it away,

  drew his sword
—ceremonial,

  true enough, but carefully forged

  under his personal supervision—

  and laid fiercely about him.

  With long blades and halberds the foe

  came at him, but, cutting and slashing,

  this sword of an officer of the Watch

  dashed them back down to the ground

  as gales strip leaves from the trees.

  The full moon of the fifth month burst brilliant from the clouds,

  but the attackers, unlike Nobutsura, were strangers to the house.

  He harried one down a long gallery and scored a deep thrust,

  cornered another in a tight spot and fetched him a lethal whack.

  “What do you mean,” a voice demanded to know,

  “by resisting men bearing an official command?”

  “Command? What command?” Nobutsura retorted. His sword bent,

  he jumped back to right it and straighten it under his foot,

  then in a flash laid low fourteen or fifteen good men.

  Three inches snapped off the tip;

  his hands went to his waist to slit his belly, but the dagger was gone.

  He could only spread his arms wide and lunge for the small gate onto Takakura,

  but a fellow with a great halberd came after him.

  Nobutsura moved to leap it but missed, and the point pierced his thigh like a needle.

  Despite his bravery, they now had him surrounded, a horde of them,

  and they took him captive, alive.

  Then they searched the house, but there was no prince.

  Nobutsura was all they got. They took him to Rokuhara,

  where Lord Kiyomori awaited him, seated behind his blinds.

  Standing on the veranda, Lord Munemori had them sit Nobutsura down on the ground.

  “‘What command?’ You really said that, then attacked?” Munemori asked.

  “Next you apparently wounded and killed rank-and-file members of the police.

  Very well: Interrogate him, get the truth out of him,

  then drag him out to the riverbank and cut off his head!”

  Nobutsura, quite unfazed, burst into laughter.

  “People have been prowling around His Highness’s residence lately,” he replied,

  “but we had no idea what might be wrong, and we took no precautions.

  Then, just like that, in they come, in full armor. ‘Who are you?’ I say.

 

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