by VIKING ADULT
How to go about catching it, the chamberlain had no idea,
but His Majesty had spoken. The man started toward it.
The heron spread its wings, preparing for flight.
“I bring you His Majesty’s command,” the chamberlain announced,
at which the bird folded its wings and bowed low.
The chamberlain picked it up and took it to the emperor.
“It is wonderful, indeed,” His Majesty said to the heron,
“that you have actually come in answer to your sovereign’s call.”
Then he turned to the chamberlain.
“Have this heron awarded at once the fifth rank,” he ordered. And so it was done.
“Henceforth,” His Majesty proclaimed, “you are the Heron King,”
and, before releasing the bird, he hung a tablet with that title around its neck.
His Majesty had no need,
none at all, for the heron.
He had simply wanted known
the weight of an emperor’s word.
6. The Xianyang Palace
Examples of failed resistance to the sovereign occur in China as well.
Prince Dan, heir apparent to the state of Yan,
captured by the First Emperor of Qin,157 spent twelve years in captivity.
Weeping, he then uttered this appeal:
“In the land of my birth, I have an aged mother. I beg for leave to go and see her.”
The First Emperor laughed derisively.
“There will be no leave for you, my friend,” he answered,
“until horses sprout horns and crows have white heads.”
Prince Dan lifted his eyes to the heavens and prostrated himself in agony on the earth.
“Oh, please,” he prayed, “make horses grow horns and turn the crows’ heads white!
I so long to go home again and see my mother once more!”
The Bodhisattva Wondrous Sound,
in the Pure Land of Vulture Peak,
warned against unfilial conduct.
So, too, Confucius and Yan Hui,
once born into the world in China,
first taught filial piety there.
And because the Three Treasures158
in both realms, seen and unseen,
take pity on the burning wish
to show an aged parent love,
a horned horse did after all
turn up one day at the palace,
and a crow with a white head
perched there in a garden tree.
Witness to these prodigies,
the First Emperor kept faith
with that noble principle
that a sovereign, having spoken,
cannot go back on his word.
He issued Prince Dan a pardon
and granted him leave to go home.
Nonetheless the First Emperor rued his indulgence.
There lay between Qin and Yan a land known as Chu.
A great river ran there, spanned by a bridge called the Bridge of Chu.
The First Emperor sent troops to make sure that when Prince Dan
crossed it and reached the middle, he should fall.
Once they let him onto the bridge, he was therefore certain to do so,
and he did, right down into the river.
He did not drown, however. No indeed.
Instead he walked on to the opposite bank as though on solid ground.
He then looked back, wondering how he had done it.
Innumerable turtles had surfaced, their backs affording him passage dry-shod.
This they had done because once more
the sacred powers seen and unseen,
touched by his filial devotion,
had made sure that he came to no harm.
This incident embittered Prince Dan against the First Emperor, and he refused to give up.
When the First Emperor sent more troops to kill him, the terrified prince
enlisted the help of a warrior named Jing Ke, whom he appointed minister.
Jing Ke then turned to a second warrior known as Master Tian Guang.
Tian Guang said,
“Is your wish to rely on me
due to what you already know
of what I was when in my prime?
The finest steed may swiftly fly
a thousand leagues, but when at last
the passing years bring on old age,
he serves less well than any nag.
I myself cannot help you,
but I will find you fighting men.”
Jing Ke replied,
“All this is a deep, dark secret. Tell it to no one.”
Master Tian Guang answered, “To incur suspicion is to suffer the greatest shame. I know that you will suspect me if the secret ever gets out.” With these words he bashed his head into the plum tree at the gate and died.
There was yet another warrior named Fan Yuqi, from the land of Qin.
The First Emperor wiped out his father, uncles, and brothers,
and he fled for refuge to Yan.
The First Emperor then issued a proclamation, addressed to all within the four seas:
“Whoever takes the head of Fan Yuqi and brings it to me,
he will have from me five hundred catties of gold.”
Jing Ke heard about this and went to find the man.
“I gather,” he said, “that you have a bounty of five hundred catties of gold on your head.
Give me your head, then. I will take it to him. While he is gloating over it,
I will easily draw my sword and run him through.” So he spoke.
Fan Yuqi leaped to his feet, breathing hard.
“The First Emperor killed them all,”
he said. “Father, uncles, and brothers.
Night and day my thoughts go to them.
The pain burns in my very marrow.
Oh, yes, if you mean to kill him,
then giving you my head is easy,
easy as giving a grain of sand.”
He cut off his head himself and died.
Another warrior still was Qin Wuyang, also from Qin.
After slaying an enemy in his thirteenth year, he fled to Yan.
No man-at-arms could compare with him.
Mighty heroes fainted when he raged;
when he smiled, babies snuggled into his arms.
Jing Ke engaged Wuyang to guide him to the capital. On the way they were lodging below a remote mountain when they heard music from a village nearby. Divining by tone and modulation the outcome of their enterprise, they discovered that their foe was water and that they were fire. In time the sun rose. A white rainbow pierced it but did not go through. They gathered that their mission would fail.
But they could hardly turn around and just go back.
So they announced their arrival at the First Emperor’s Xianyang Palace,
bearing a map of Yan and the head of Fan Yuqi.
The First Emperor sent an official to receive these gifts, but Jing Ke answered,
“Your Majesty, I can present them to you only in person, not through a third.” The First Emperor gave his consent.
He ordered a banquet for the envoys from Yan.
The First Emperor’s Xianyang Palace,
itself his whole capital city,
measured eighteen thousand leagues,
then three hundred and eighty more,
around its walls. The palace proper
stood on an artificial hill
three leagues high. A Long-Life Hall,
a Gate of Immortality
towered there, beside a sun
wrought of gold and a silver moon.
Pearls, lapis lazuli, and gold
blanketed the ground like sand.
On all four sides, an iron screen
soared aloft four hundred feet,
while over the palace buildings
spread a net, also of iron.
Screen and net were to keep out
th
e agents of the underworld,
and since they blocked the airy paths
geese take to land on autumn fields
or to fly, when spring returns,
home to the northern marches,
an iron Goose Gate pierced the screen
to let the geese freely through.
The First Emperor went regularly to the Afang Palace, where he governed.
Three hundred and sixty feet high, it was a thousand yards long
east to west and, north to south, five hundred yards wide.
Fifty-foot spears topped with banners stood beneath the portico yet never touched it.
The roof was tiled with lapis lazuli; the floor shone with silver and gold.
Up jade steps Jing Ke carried the map, Qin Wuyang the head.
Such awe did the palace inspire that Wuyang trembled.
The courtiers noted this with suspicion.
“Wuyang plans some treacherous act,”
they said. “None who poses a threat
can be allowed near the sovereign,
nor does any true gentleman
countenance a clear threat nearby;
for to approach a present menace is to make light of death.”
Jing Ke turned back and faced them.
“Wuyang has no such thought in mind,
but he has led a rustic life,
and this palace is new to him;
he is just troubled and confused.”
His words silenced the courtiers.
They came at last before the sovereign.
But when they presented him with the map and the head,
the sword at the bottom of the map chest threw off an icy gleam.
Instantly the First Emperor moved to flee.
Jing Ke got a hard grip on his sleeve
and pressed the sword point to his chest.
Victory seemed already his.
Warriors by the tens of thousands,
side by side in the palace court,
were powerless to intervene.
They could only mourn that their lord
should now fall to an assassin.
The First Emperor spoke. “Allow me a moment more,” he said. “Let me hear my favorite consort play the kin159 for me one last time.” Jing Ke granted him this brief reprieve. None of the First Emperor’s three thousand consorts played the kin as beautifully as Lady Huayang. Her music soothed the fiercest warrior’s heart, brought birds down from the sky, and set trees and grasses swaying.
And now, as she knew, the First Emperor would never hear her again.
Her tearful touch on the strings must have been lovely beyond all words.
Jing Ke himself lowered his gaze to listen
and allowed his thoughts to wander from his treacherous plan.
Then Lady Huayang began a new piece. She sang,
“Tall a seven-foot screen may be,
but a leap will surely clear it.
Strong, thin silk certainly is,
but a sharp tug will tear it.”
Jing Ke had no idea what this was about, but the First Emperor did.
A mighty tug parted the sleeve that Jing Ke held,
and over the screen the First Emperor leaped,
to hide behind a copper pillar.
Jing Ke, enraged, hurled the sword at him.
A physician just then in attendance
blocked it with his medicine pouch,
but the blade still ran that pillar
halfway through. Having no other,
Jing Ke threw no more. The emperor returned,
called for his sword, and cut Jing Ke
into countless pieces; Wuyang, too.
Then the First Emperor sent an army
that put an end to the state of Yan.
“Ah, yes,” the Heike toadies muttered,
“Yoritomo has that coming, too.”
7. Mongaku’s Mighty Austerities
Now, to speak of Minamoto no Yoritomo:
In the twelfth month of Heiji 1, his father, Yoshitomo, then chief left equerry, rebelled, [1159]
so that in his fourteenth year, on the twentieth of the third month of Eiryaku 1, [1160]
Yoritomo found himself banished to Hiru-ga-shima in the province of Izu.
He spent more than twenty years there and no doubt lay safely low all that time,
but in the year we have reached, he, too, raised rebellion. Why?
Because, they say, the holy man Mongaku of Takao urged him to do so.
This Mongaku’s father was End Mochit,
a Watanabe man and a junior officer in the Left Palace Guards.
As a warrior named End Morit, Mongaku had served Shseimon-in.160
Then, in his nineteenth year, he aspired to enlightenment, left the world,
and set out to follow the path of stern practice.
“Let’s just see how hard ascetic practice really is,” he said to himself.
Under the blazing sixth-month sun, without a breath of air stirring,
he entered a hillside thicket and lay down on his back.
Noxious insects—horseflies, mosquitoes, wasps, ants, and so on—bit and stung him,
but he never moved, nor rose again for seven days.
On the eighth day, he got up. “So,” he said, “is that about what ascetic practice amounts to?”
Came the answer, “If that’s what it took, no one would even survive it!”
“Fine,” Mongaku concluded, “no problem, then.” And off he went to practice in earnest.
He headed for Kumano, meaning to undertake a retreat at the Nachi waterfall.
First, though, he decided to see what standing under the famous waterfall was like.
He went straight there.
The tenth of the twelfth month was past.
Snow lay deep on the ground, and ice
silenced every valley stream.
Wind off the peaks blew freezing cold,
and the waterfall’s silvery threads
hung in a fringe of white icicles.
All that the eye could see was white;
the very trees had disappeared.
Nonetheless down Mongaku went
into the pool beneath the falls,
where, immersed up to his neck,
he chanted toward the promised count
the darani of Lord Fud.161
He kept this up two or three days,
but by the fourth or fifth no more:
Overwhelmed, he lost his footing
and drifted about there, on the water.
From several thousand feet above162
Mongaku under the Nachi waterfall. On cloud at top right: Kongara and Seitaka.
the cataract poured down on him.
Who could have withstood its force?
The rushing flood swept him on
through rocks as sharp as dagger blades,
now surfacing, now submerged,
a full five or six hundred yards.
It was then that a beautiful youth came to him, took both his hands,
and lifted him up. Those who saw this were amazed and lit a fire to warm him.
No, it was not yet his time to die. He soon began breathing again.
When he somewhat regained his senses, his eyes glittered with wrath.
“I have made a most solemn vow,”
he said, “to stand thrice seven days
beneath the Nachi waterfall,
chanting three hundred thousand times
the darani of Lord Fud.
This is only the fifth day. Who, I want to know, has had the gall to carry me here before the first seven days are over?”
The hair rose on the heads of all present, and they said not a word. Mongaku went back under the waterfall. The next day eight divine youths came and tried to lift him up again, but he fought them off tooth and nail. The day after that, his breath finally failed.
Perhaps wishing not to sully the waterfall pool with death,
&nbs
p; two celestial youths with their hair in side loops came down from the lip of the fall
and with warm, fragrant hands caressed his whole body,
from his head to the nails on his hands and feet, and even to the palms of his hands.
Mongaku then began breathing again, feeling as though he were dreaming.
“Who are you,” he asked, “that you should show me such compassion?”
“Kongara and Seitaka are our names,”
they answered. “We are the minions
dispatched by Mantra King Fud.
So mighty was the vow you made
and so bravely have you followed through
that by the Mantra King’s decree
we have come to assist your practice.”
“And where is he, then, this Mantra King?” Mongaku loudly inquired.
“In the Tosotsu Heaven,” they said,
and soared away into the clouds.
Mongaku pressed his palms together
in farewell homage. “So!” he thought.
“Even the Holy Mantra King,
Fud himself, knows of my practice!”
Bursting once more with confidence,
he stood again under the waterfall.
Thereafter wonders never ceased.
The icy winds left him untouched;
the waters thundering down felt warm.
So in the end he did endure
thrice seven days, as he had vowed.
Then he undertook at Nachi
a mighty thousand-day retreat,
after which his pilgrimages
took him three times to mine;
to Kazuraki twice; and to Kya,
Kokawa, Kinpusen, Hakusan,
Tateyama; the summit of Fuji;
the sacred shrines of Izu, Hakone,
Togakushi in Shinano;
and Mount Haguro in Dewa:
in short, every sacred mountain
in the whole land of Japan.
Perhaps longing after all for home,
he then went up to the capital,
famed as an ascetic so fierce
that he could pray birds down from the sky.
8. The Subscription List
Thereafter Mongaku pursued his practice in peace,
in the inner fastnesses of the mountain called Takao.
And there, on Takao, is to be found the temple known as Jingoji.
Wake no Kiyomaru founded it long ago, in the reign of Empress Shtoku. [r. 764–70]