by VIKING ADULT
She then dreamed one night that a palm-leaf carriage drew up to her house.
Someone to whom she told the dream remarked,
“Why, you will be a senior noble’s wife!”
“But I am already old!” she objected. “I cannot imagine that happening!”
Nonetheless her Kunitsuna became not merely head chamberlain
but, far more splendidly than that, grand counselor at senior second rank.
On the twenty-second, Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa returned to his Hjūji residence,
completed originally on the fifteenth day of the fourth month of h 3. [1163]
He had enshrined there at the time, close at hand,
the gods of Mount Hiei and Kumano,
and he had had the knolls, waters, and groves laid out precisely to his taste,
but for two or three years now the evil deeds of the Heike had kept him away.
Then Lord Munemori let him know that once the needed repairs were done,
the place was open to him again.
“Never mind that,” His Cloistered Eminence answered, and moved in at once.
He first went to see where Kenshunmon-in, his empress, had lived.
The pines beside the lake and the willows at the water’s edge
betrayed by their greater height the passage of years,
and he could not fail to recall how another emperor, once, had shed helpless tears
before the lotuses of Taiyi Lake and the willows of Weiyang Hall.
He then understood all too well that emperor’s feelings long ago.
On the first of the third month, the order went out
that the ranking monks of Nara should resume their official functions
and administer branch temples and estates as before.
On the third, reconstruction began on the Great Buddha Hall at Tdaiji.
The chamberlain and left minor controller Yukitaka was named to direct the project.
A year earlier this Yukitaka had been on a pilgrimage to Yawata,
and there, during a night on retreat, he dreamed that a celestial youth
with his hair in side loops emerged from the sanctuary.
“I am a messenger from Hachiman,” the youth said.
“Keep this with you when you direct the rebuilding of the Great Buddha Hall.”
He gave Yukitaka an official’s ceremonial baton.
Yukitaka found the baton by his pillow when he awoke.
“How strange!” he thought. “What could possibly require such an appointment?”
He then put the baton in the front fold of his robe and made his way home,
where he left it out of sight and out of mind.
But the evil wreaked by the Heike caused the burning of Nara,
and Yukitaka was chosen after all, from among his peers,
to direct the work of rebuilding. What a marvelous instance of divine favor!
On the tenth day of the third month,
the acting governor of Mino
sent a courier bearing this message:
“The Genji of the eastern provinces
have already pushed into Owari.
They have barricaded the roads
and are allowing no one to pass.”
A punitive force was dispatched at once,
commanded by Taira no Tomomori,
the intendant of the Left Watch;
by the left commander Kiyotsune;
and by the lieutenant Arimori.
Thirty thousand riders set forth.
Considering that Lord Kiyomori
was not yet quite two months gone,
out of joint though the times were indeed,
this was a shocking thing to do.
The Genji side, under Jūr Yukiie
and Yoritomo’s half brother, Gien,
was made up of six thousand mounted men.
They camped across from the Heike force,
on the other side of the Owari River.
Very late on the night of the sixteenth,
the Genji six thousand crossed the river
and charged with fierce whoops and cries
into the Heike thirty thousand.
At daybreak on the seventeenth,
at the hour of the tiger, the two sides [ca. 4 A.M.]
exchanged arrows to open the battle
and fought on until full daylight came.
The Heike men remained unfazed.
“The enemy has just crossed the river.
His horses, arms, and armor are wet.
You can’t miss him! Cut him down!”
A horde surrounded the Genji men,
shouting, “Get them, every last one!”
Nearly all the Genji were slaughtered.
Their commander, Yukiie,
barely saved himself and fled eastward,
but Gien, who had ventured too far
into the Heike camp, was killed.
The Heike next drove across the river
and chased the Genji like fleeing deer,
sending after them volleys of arrows.
Now and again the Genji shot back,
doing their best to defend themselves,
but they were few and the Heike many.
To all appearances they were doomed.
“As they say,” observers remarked,
“‘Never leave water at your back.’
The Genji strategy was just foolish.”
Yukiie, the Genji commander, got over the border into the province of Mikawa,
where he removed the bridge across the Yahagi River,
put up a defensive wall of shields, and awaited the Heike.
They soon arrived, charged, and broke through. Once more he had to flee,
and the Heike followed in hot pursuit, to press their attack as before.
The Mikawa and Ttmi warriors would likely enough have joined them,
but Tomomori, the Heike commander, fell ill, and from Mikawa they had to turn back.
They had successfully destroyed the advance guard, yes,
but having failed to engage the rest of the Genji forces,
they had actually accomplished nothing at all.
The Heike had lost, the year before last,
palace minister Shigemori,
and this year Kiyomori had died.
Clearly their good fortune was over;
therefore none but their oldest allies
still remained at their disposal.
In the provinces of the east,
each blade of grass bowed to the Genji.
11. A Roar from the Sky
Meanwhile J no Tar Sukenaga, of Echigo, was appointed to govern that province.
On the fifteenth of the sixth month, fired with gratitude toward the court,
he rode forth with some thirty thousand men to destroy Kiso no Yoshinaka.
He was preparing to move into position the next day, the sixteenth,
meaning to attack at the hour of the hare, when in the middle of the night
The voice from the storm.
a mighty wind blew up, rain poured down, and deafening thunder crashed.
When the sky cleared, an enormous, rasping voice resounded in the heavens:
“Behold here an ally of those Heike
who wantonly burned the Roshana Buddha,
gilt bronze, one hundred and sixty feet tall,
on the southern continent of Jambudvīpa.”
The voice roared these words three times.
The hair rose on Sukenaga and all who heard it.
“Heaven’s speech is too terrifying!” his men cried.
“Please, please see your way somehow to calling off this attack!”
But Sukenaga replied, “No such thing can sway a warrior.”
At the hour of the hare on the sixteenth, he had marched a mere half mile
when a dense black cloud sailed in and dropped over him.
He cowered, fainted, and fell from his horse.
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They put him in a palanquin and took him back to his residence,
where he lay for six hours. Then he died.
A courier brought the news to the capital, provoking Heike consternation.
On the fourteenth of that same seventh month, the era name was changed to Ywa. [1181] On that day Sadayoshi, the governor of Chikugo, was appointed to govern Chikuzen and Higo as well. He then marched on the western provinces to put down the Kyushu rebellion. On that day, too, a special amnesty recalled the exiles of Jish 3 [1179] to the city. The former regent Motofusa, now a novice monk, came back up to the capital from Bizen, and the former chancellor, Moronaga, did so from Owari. The grand counselor Sukekata returned from Shinano.
On the eighteenth, Lord Moronaga called on Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa.
Upon his return all those years ago
in the Chkan era, he had played, [1163–65]
there on the emperor’s veranda,
“Praise the King’s Grace” and “Return to the Palace”;
now, to mark his return in Ywa,
he played for His Cloistered Eminence
“Autumn Wind.” Each of these pieces
so acknowledged mood and season
that his art was a wonder to hear.
“Surely I am dreaming,” the sovereign said.
“You must have forgotten your whole repertoire,
living out there among the peasants,
but I hope that you still have one imay for me.”
Sukekata struck up the rhythm and sang,
“The Kiso River they tell of in Shinano,”
but, having seen it with his own eyes,
he changed it a little to sing instead,
“The Kiso River I saw in Shinano”—
an outstanding feat of ready wit!
12. The Battle Beside the Yokota River
On the seventh of the eighth month was held, in the hall of the Council of State,
the greater rite devoted to the Sutra of the Benevolent King,183
according to the precedent devised to destroy the rebel Masakado.
On the first of the ninth month, following one meant to quell the rebel Sumitomo,
a steel armor and helmet set was presented to the Grand Shrine of Ise.
The imperial envoy for the occasion was nakatomi Sadataka,
the Bureau of Shrines priest responsible for oversight of the Ise rites.
He managed to start out from the city, but at the Kga post station in mi
he fell ill, and at the residence of the Ise Priestess he died.
The esoteric adept charged with the Gsanze altar,
during a Five-Altar Rite held to suppress those involved in the uprising,
died in his sleep at the Daigyji Shrine.
Obviously neither gods nor buddhas were disposed to accept such prayers.
And when the adept Jitsugen of Anjji, who conducted a Daigensui Rite,
reported the number of scrolls he had recited, it turned out, terrifyingly,
that he had prayed for suppression of the Heike.
“What on earth do you think you are doing?” the authorities demanded to know,
to which he answered, “You asked me to quell the enemies of the court,
and in our time, as far as I can see, that expression describes the Heike.
So I acted accordingly. Is something wrong?”
“This monk is insane,” the Heike muttered. “Execution, then, or exile?”
But, caught up as they were in so many troubles great and small,
in the end they did nothing at all. After the Genji victory,
Lord Yoritomo in Kamakura marveled at what Jitsugen had done
and promoted him to the highest ecclesiastical rank.
On the twenty-fourth of the twelfth month,
the empress received the exalted title of Kenreimon-in.
Never before, it seems, had the mother of an infant emperor been so honored.
So that year ended, and Ywa 2 came. [1182]
On the twenty-first of the second month, Venus encroached on the Pleiades. The Chinese Astrological Digest states, “When Venus encroaches on the Pleiades, the barbarians in the four directions rise up.” It goes on, “By imperial order a commander of armies crosses the frontier of the realm.”
On the tenth of the third month, the new appointments list was announced. Most Heike officials received a promotion. On the tenth of the fourth month, at the Hiyoshi Shrine, the ranking monk, Kenshin, undertook to chant, in due form, the essential passages of ten thousand copies of the Lotus Sutra. The cloistered emperor repaired to the shrine to receive the blessing of the event. When someone or other claimed that he was urging the monks of the Mountain to crush the Heike, warriors marched to the palace and secured the guard posts on all four sides. The Heike rushed to Fukuhara. Lord Shigehira led three thousand mounted men to the shrine to take the cloistered emperor in hand.
On the Mountain, word spread that the Heike, several hundred riders strong,
were on their way up to attack.
The monks gathered in council down at Higashi-Sakamoto, to talk things over.
Mountain and city echoed with loud confusion.
The senior nobles and privy gentlemen in the sovereign’s entourage paled,
and in fright many of his personal guards spat yellow gall.
Lord Shigehira met His Cloistered Eminence near An and escorted him home.
“If this is how things are to be now,
then no more pilgrimages for me;
no, I am no longer my own master,”
His Cloistered Eminence complained.
Actually, the monks of the Mountain had never meant to attack the Heike,
nor had the Heike ever intended to attack the Mountain.
Baseless rumor had fueled what occurred.
“It must have been demons getting up to their mischief,” people said.
On the twentieth of that same fourth month,
the government made special offerings to the twenty-two great shrines,
considering that famine and pestilence were abroad in the land.
On the twenty-fourth of the fifth month, a new era name, Juei, was proclaimed.
And on that day J no Shir Sukemochi, of Echigo, was named to govern this province.
He repeatedly declined the appointment as ill-omened,
his elder brother Sukenaga having so recently died,
but an imperial command cannot be refused.
He changed his name, Sukemochi, to Nagamochi.
On the second of the ninth month,
at the head of forty thousand men from Echigo, Dewa, and the four counties of Aizu,
he rode toward Shinano to destroy Kiso no Yoshinaka.
On the ninth he camped on the bank of the Yokota River.
Yoshinaka, ensconced at the time
in the fortress of Yoda, heard the news.
He galloped forth to meet Nagamochi
leading three thousand mounted men.
Now, one of the Shinano Genji,
Inoue no Kur Mitsumori,
had devised an ingenious plan.
The Genji made up seven red banners,
then split their force of three thousand
into seven separate columns.
These approached Nagamochi
by ways high and low, red banners aloft.
“Why, even here in this province,”
Nagamochi cried when he saw them,
“there are some who support the Heike!
Look! We have reinforcements!”
And on they came, until at a signal
the seven columns merged into one
and roared out a single battle cry.
Up went the white banners they held ready.
The Echigo men paled at the sight.
“There must be tens of thousands of them!
What on earth can we possibly do?”
Some, in the panic and confusion,
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sp; were driven at last into the river;
others were chased over sheer drops.
Few survived; far more were slain.
Nagamochi’s most trusted lieutenants—
Yama no Tar from Echigo, Jtanb from Aizu, far-famed warriors both—
were killed, while he, wounded, barely escaped with his life,
to fall back along the river to Echigo.
On the sixteenth, in the capital, the Heike ignored such tidings.
Munemori, formerly left commander, was reappointed grand counselor
and then, on the third of the tenth month, elevated to palace minister.
On the seventh he presented his formal expression of thanks,
attended by twelve Heike senior nobles
and preceded by sixteen privy gentlemen, including the head chamberlains.
In the provinces of east and north, Genji forces swarmed like wasps,
preparing to fall on the capital. But no, to the Heike
these rising waves, these mighty storms brewing meant nothing.
Lavish as ever in their ways, they seemed rather to favor vanity.
Meanwhile the new year came: Juei 2. [1183]
Lord Munemori oversaw the banquet, which followed established practice.
On the sixth of the month, His Majesty, for his morning salutation,
went to call on the cloistered emperor at his Hjūji residence.
Protocol followed Emperor Toba’s counterpart call in his sixth year.
On the twentieth of the second month, Munemori rose to the junior first rank.
He resigned his palace-minister post that very day,
apparently to acknowledge responsibility for the uprisings.
The monks of Nara and Mount Hiei,
of Kumano and Kinpusen,
the priests, high and low, of the Ise Shrines,
every one, rejected the Heike,
to share the fortunes of the Genji.
Down came the imperial edicts,
in all directions, and every province
got its retired emperor’s decree,
but everyone as a matter of course
assumed that these decrees and edicts
came in reality from the Heike.
They ignored every single one.
171. As a gesture of homage, men from the Yoshino village of Kuzu came to the palace to play and sing on the first day of the year.
172. A Buddhist rite held from the eighth to the fourteenth day of the new year. It involved expounding the Sutra of Golden Light (Konkmy-ky).