by VIKING ADULT
Perhaps that is why the horse lived long
and why he saved his master’s life.
He had grown up in Shinano,
at a place there named Inoue,
and so his name was Inoue Black.
After Kawagoe got him
and presented him to the sovereign,
his name changed to Kawagoe Black.
Tomomori came before Lord Munemori and said,
“I have lost Tomoakira.
Kenmotsu Tar, too, is dead.
Nothing is left me but despair.
What kind of man would see his son
challenge the foe to save his father
and then…? What kind of man, I say,
seeing him stricken, would not save him
but rather, like me, run away?
Ah, what sharp words I would have had
for anyone who had done the same!
But now that that man is myself,
I have learned all too convincingly
how desperately one clings to life.
What other people must think of me now,
I can only shudder to imagine.”
He pressed his sleeves to his eyes and wept.
Munemori answered him in these words:
“It is a very fine thing indeed that your son should have died for you.
He was strong and he was brave—a thoroughly worthy commander.
He was just Kiyomune’s age, I believe—this year was his sixteenth.”
He glanced aside, toward his son,
the intendant of the Gate Watch,
and his eyes as he did so filled with tears.
All the Heike retainers present,
tender of feeling or hard of heart,
moistened their armor sleeves with tears.
18. Flight
Lord Shigemori’s youngest son, Moromori, governor of Bitchū,
was boarding a boat to flee with six of his men
when Seiemon Kinnaga, one of Tomomori’s, came galloping up.
“Aha, Lord Moromori’s boat, I see!” he cried. “Please, let me board!”
They rowed the boat to the water’s edge,
but there was bound to be trouble when so large a figure, in full armor,
tried to leap directly into the boat from his horse.
The boat was not big, and over it went.
There Moromori was, floundering in the sea,
when fourteen or fifteen of Hatakeyama’s men, under Honda no Jir,
raced up, hauled him out with a grappling hook, and cut off his head.
This year was his fourteenth.
Lord Michimori, who commanded the Heike force below the mountains, wore that day a hitatare of red brocade and over it Chinese damask-laced armor. His horse, a sorrel, bore a silver-trimmed saddle. He had fallen behind, wounded by an arrow that had penetrated his helmet, and the enemy had come between him and Noritsune, his brother. He was fleeing eastward, seeking a quiet place to end his life, when
Sasaki no Kimura no Sabur Naritsuna, from the province of mi,
and Tamanoi no Shir Sukekage, from Musashi,
surrounded him with a half dozen men and soon cut him down.
One follower had stayed with him, but then he, too, fled.
Hour after hour the battle raged
at the fortress’s east and west gates.
Countless Genji and Heike died.
There before each of the towers
and up against the abatis
rose heaps of dead men and horses.
Ichi-no-tani, once green, was red.
Apart from those slain by arrow or sword
in Ikuta Wood, below the mountains,
or on the shore, the Genji had taken
and put up on public display
the heads of over two thousand men.
The main Heike figures killed included Michimori;
Narimori, his younger brother; Tadanori; Tomoakira;
Moromori; Kiyosada; Kiyofusa; Tsunemori’s eldest son, Tsunemasa;
his younger brother Tsunetoshi;
and his younger brother, Atsumori—no fewer than ten.
And now that their army had suffered defeat,
the grieving Heike boarded their ships, carrying their emperor with them.
Wind and tide bore some ships toward Kii;
others rowed out, to drift off Ashiya.
Some coasted from Suma to Akashi.
No harbor called, only boundless waves.
They lay forlorn on tear-soaked sleeves
under a moon veiled by spring mists,
each prey to deep misery and despair.
Some rowed through the Awaji Strait
to drift down the rocky Eshima shore,
hearing the far-off crash of pounding surf,
and every plover strayed from its flock
recalled to them the plight that they shared.
Others, still at a loss where to go,
just rode, motionless, off Ichi-no-tani.
So at the whim of wind and wave they drifted,
island to island, stretch to stretch of shore,
each ignorant of the others’ fate.
Fourteen provinces they had conquered,
marshaled one hundred thousand horse,
and driven so close to the capital
that it lay only one day’s march away.
This time, they believed, success was sure,
but then their Ichi-no-tani fort fell,
dashing every last shred of their hopes.
19. Kozaish Drowns
There was a man of Michimori’s named Kunda Takiguchi Tokikazu.
Kunda came to the ship that bore his lord’s wife and told her,
“Seven men surrounded Lord Michimori near the mouth of the Minato River,
and in the end they killed him.
Chief among the assailants were two who announced their names
as Sasaki no Kimura no Sabur Naritsuna, from mi,
and Tamanoi no Shir Sukekage, from Musashi.
By rights I should have stayed and met with him the fate that awaited me,
but he had already given me this command:
‘Should anything happen to me, do not for that give up your life,
but strive to live on and go to my wife, wherever she may be.’”
The lady had not the strength to reply; she only lay with a robe over her head.
This clear report of his death did not yet quite convince her,
and in case he should come back alive after all, she waited two or three days,
as she might have done for him to return after a brief absence,
but a day or two later hope faded and she sank into melancholy.
Her nurse, her only gentlewoman,
shared her pillow, crushed by sorrow.
Between twilight on the seventh, when the news reached her,
and the night of the thirteenth, she never rose at all.
They were to reach Yashima on the fourteenth, the next day.
The lady lay motionless through that final evening,
until silence fell over the ship in the last hours of the night.
She then said to her nurse, “During the days just past,
I simply could not believe the news that he was gone,
but I do now, ever since this night began.
One report after another has it that he was killed near the mouth of the Minato River,
and no one has mentioned seeing him alive after that.
The night before he was to ride forth, we saw each other briefly, and he seemed very downcast. He said, ‘I know that I will not survive the battle tomorrow. What will you do when I am gone?’ He was always going off to fight, though, and I did not take him seriously. If only I had! If I had known that I would never see him again, I would have sworn to go with him into the next life. It hurts so, to think about it!
I had not yet told him that I was carrying his child,
but I did not
want him to think I was hiding it, you see, so I told him then.
He was very happy. ‘Here I am,’ he said, ‘already in my thirtieth year,
and childless still. I hope it is a boy!
At least, in this sad world of ours, he can preserve my memory.
How many months has it been? How are you feeling?
How can you hope for a peaceful birth, confined this way on a ship at sea?’
That is the sort of thing he said. Oh, the poor, foolish fancy!
They do say, and perhaps it is true,
that when at last the moment comes,
nine out of ten women will die.
I shrink from so shameful an end.
Yes, I would like an easy birth
and, afterward, to bring up the child
in memory of the husband I lost,
but every glance at the little one
would only make me miss him more,
and ever-growing melancholy
would leave me not a moment’s peace.
No, for me there is no escape.
If I should still, against the odds,
manage to linger on in life,
this world is always so contrary
that I would only fear, you know,
some new, unimagined trial,222
and the thought is unbearable.
Asleep, I see him in my dreams;
awake, I find his face before me.
Rather than let yearning consume me,
I have simply made up my mind
to sink to the floor of the sea.
You, I ask to remain behind,
despite what I know you will suffer,
to gather together all my clothes
and give them to any worthy monk,
to pray for my husband’s enlightenment,
and for my birth in the life to come.
And please, take to the capital with you this letter that I have written.”
Presented with these careful instructions, her nurse could only weep.
“I abandoned my own small child,
left my aged parents behind
to follow you all the way here,”
she said. “Can you doubt my devotion?
Besides, could any wife of a gentleman killed at Ichi-no-tani take her loss lightly? You must not imagine this misfortune to be yours alone. Once you have quietly given birth and brought up the child, then by all means find whatever remote retreat you please, become a nun, call the Name, and pray for the departed to reach enlightenment. You must long to share one lotus throne with him, but you cannot know where in the six realms and the Four Modes of Birth your own rebirth will take you. Drowning yourself would mean nothing, since you cannot count on reunion with him. And those left behind in the capital—who do you think will look after them, with this talk of yours? I refuse to hear any more!”
The lady no doubt understood, after this tearful entreaty, that her words had been taken ill, for she answered, “Well, try putting yourself in my place. Grief often drives people to speak of drowning. If I decide really to do it, be sure that I will let you know. Now, it is late. Let us sleep.” Such talk from a lady who for days had taken hardly a sip of water convinced her horrified nurse that she meant to go through with it.
“If your mind is really made up, my lady,” the nurse replied,
“then please allow me to accompany you to the bottom of the sea.
I cannot imagine remaining alive one instant after you.”
Lying there next to her mistress, she nonetheless dropped off for a moment.
Her mistress stole to the side of the ship.
The vast ocean spread before her.
Which way was west she did not know,
but she must have guessed that the moon
sank yonder behind the mountains,
for she quietly called the Name.
Plovers crying on the sandbars,
oars creaking off across the strait
lent the night a piercing sadness
while, very low, one hundred times,
she called the Name of Amida
and, weeping, begged him from afar,
“Hail, in your Western Paradise,
World Savior, O Buddha Amida,
O honor your Original Vow,
lead me hence to your Pure Land,
restore to me the love I lost,
seat us both on one lotus throne!”
Then with a last cry of “Hail!”
she sank beneath the ocean waves.
It was the middle of the night, and the ship was on its way over
from Ichi-no-tani to Yashima. No one realized what had happened
except one helmsman, still awake, who saw.
“Oh, no!” he cried. “A lovely lady just threw herself from that ship into the sea!”
The nurse awoke and felt around beside her
but found no sign of her mistress. She cried out in horror.
Many plunged in to bring her up,
but spring nights are always hazy,
and, alas, to make matters worse,
clouds were drifting in from all sides.
Time and again they dove for her,
but dim moonlight revealed nothing.
When at last they did bring her up,
she was no longer of this world.
She was wearing two layers of silk
under a white divided skirt
that streamed water, like her hair.
They had found her too late to save her.
The nurse took her poor lady’s hands
and pressed her tearful cheek to hers.
“Oh, why, if you had to do it,
did you refuse to take me with you,
down to the bottom of the sea?
Instead you just abandoned me!
But even now, oh, please, one word,
please let me hear one word from you!”
For all the agony of her longing,
no answer came, nor ever would.
Her mistress’s faint breath had ceased.
Meanwhile the moon sank down the spring night
and dawn restored light to the misty sky.
Boundless grief had still to yield before the task at hand.
Lest the lady rise again, they wrapped her in full armor—
a set that her husband had left behind with her—
and lowered her once more into the sea.
Her nurse’s only thought was now to follow,
but the others managed to restrain her.
Despair left her nothing else to do
but with her own hands to cut off her hair,
become a shaven nun under Michimori’s younger brother,
the ranking monk Chūkai, to uphold the precepts
and, ever in tears, pray for her lady’s rebirth in the life to come.
Many wives have lost their husbands,
since time out of mind, and nearly all
have donned a nun’s modest habit;
rare are those who preferred drowning.
“The loyal subject serves not two lords;
the chaste woman knows no second man,”
they say, no doubt with such things in mind.
Michimori had married the daughter of Lord Norikata,
a gentlewoman in the service of Princess Shseimon-in.
She was the beauty of the palace, and her name was Kozaish.
One spring in the Angen era, in her sixteenth year, [1175–77]
Shseimon-in went to Hosshji to view the blossoms.
Michimori, still an official of the empress’s household, went with the party.
He fell in love with Kozaish at first sight.
After that he felt her always beside him and thought of nothing but her.
He sent her constant poems and endless tender, sorrowful letters
in mounting numbers, but she accepted none.
Three years passed, and Michimori sent her what he meant as the last.
The gentlewoman who usually took them in happened to be away.
The messenger was returning, his mission a failure,
when he came across Kozaish herself, on her way from home to the palace.
It was too bad not to deliver his master’s letter at all,
so he managed to run up to her carriage and toss it in through the blind.
She asked those with her who it was from.
“No idea!” was the best they could say.
So she opened the letter and read it—
yes, it was from Lord Michimori.
The carriage offered nowhere to hide it,
and she could not quite bring herself
merely to toss it into the street,
so she thrust it into her waistband
and went on her way to the palace.
She was busy with her usual duties when, as luck would have it,
the letter slipped out right in front of Her Highness,
who spotted it, picked it up, and hid it in her sleeve.
“I have found something curious,” she announced. “I wonder whose it is.”
The gentlewomen swore by the buddhas and gods that they knew nothing about it,
but there among them was Kozaish, blushing and silent.
Her Highness already knew that Michimori had been courting her.
She opened the letter and read it.
The fragrance it gave off was delicious;
the brush moved with unusual skill.
“That your heart remains hardened against me
by now to me is a source of joy…”
and so on. He had written at length
and added, at the end, this poem:
All my devotion
turns just as a simple log
laid across a brook
turns and re-turns underfoot,
yielding nothing but wet sleeves.
“He resents your ignoring him,”
Her Highness said. “My dear, take care!
Those excessively hard of heart
only bring suffering on themselves.”
And indeed, not that far in the past
there lived one Ono no Komachi,
a dazzling and passionate beauty
whose every look and every word
ensnared and tormented men.
Alas, her heart—so everyone said—
remained forever unyielding,
and perhaps that is why, in old age,
the bitterness gathered against her
stripped her of shelter from the wind,