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“Do not get out,” he warned her. “The guards will see you.”
Instead he went in to her under the front blind.
They took each other’s hands, pressed their foreheads together,
and for a moment said nothing. They only wept.
Then at last Shigehira spoke.
“When we went down to the west,” he said,
“I wanted to see you one last time,
but, caught up in such vast confusion,
I could never get word to you
before we all fled the capital.
After that I still longed to write
and to have the pleasure of your reply,
but this endlessly painful travel
meant clashes and battles day and night,
and I let time slip by in silence.
No doubt I suffered this shocking fate so that we two might meet again.”
He pressed his sleeves to his eyes and lowered his head.
The state of his feelings and hers is easily imagined.
The night was far advanced when he sent her home.
“The streets are very dangerous lately,” he said. “You must go now.”
They brought her carriage forward.
Fighting back tears of parting, he tugged at her sleeve.
Your presence with me
and this dewdrop life of mine
have this in common:
that tonight, for all I know,
the end is to come for both.
Striving likewise not to cry, she replied,
If this is the end
and the two of us must part,
then this dewdrop, too,
is certain to melt away,
my love, even before you.
She then returned to the palace.
That was the last meeting his guards allowed,
although letters still passed between them.
She was Taira no Chikanori’s daughter,
a dazzling beauty, warm and kind.
When she learned that Nara had claimed him
and he had been executed there,
she at once entered religion,
put on robes of the darkest black,
and prayed for him in the afterlife.
Theirs is a very touching story.
3. Go-Shirakawa’s Decree to Yashima
Meanwhile the two envoys, Shigekuni and Hanakata, reached Yashima,
and there they presented His Cloistered Eminence’s decree.
Lord Munemori and every one of the Heike nobles gathered to examine it:
Years have passed since our hallowed monarch went forth from the imperial precincts on a progress to the provinces, and now, to the consternation of the court and the ruin of the realm, the three regalia molder on Shikoku in the southern ocean.
With respect to Lord Shigehira, the rebellious subject who burned Tdaiji: While he fully deserves the death penalty demanded by Lord Yoritomo, he is currently a prisoner and severed from the company of his fellows. As a caged bird longs for the clouds, he must long to soar a thousand leagues across the southern sea; surely he is as desperately lonely as a goose lost from the flock on its homeward journey in spring. Pardon shall be his, on the condition that you reverently return the three regalia.
His Cloistered Eminence has spoken. These are his words.224
Juei 3, second month, the fourteenth day [1184]
Submitted on His Cloistered Eminence’s behalf by Naritada, the master of the imperial table, to the grand counselor Taira no Tokitada
So the document read.
4. The Heike Reply
Shigehira conveyed privately to Munemori and Tokitada the tenor of the decree,
and to his mother, Lady Nii, he addressed a long letter.
“If you hope for reunion with me,” he wrote,
“you must persuade Lord Munemori to give up the regalia.
Otherwise I doubt that I will ever see you again in this life.”
Speechless, Lady Nii slipped the letter into the fold at her breast and lay facedown.
Her thoughts are painful indeed to imagine.
Meanwhile Lord Tokitada and the Heike senior nobles and privy gentlemen
gathered in council to discuss their reply.
Lady Nii pressed her son’s letter to her face,
slid open the door into where the gentlemen were assembled,
prostrated herself before Munemori, and cried, in tears,
“It is too terrible, what Shigehira has written from the city! And how dreadful he must be feeling! Please, please, if only for my sake, return the regalia to the capital!”
Munemori answered, “Your wish is my own, yet I shudder to imagine how the world at large would take our doing so. Such would be our humiliation, before Yoritomo, that that step is out of the question. In any case, only the regalia confer sovereignty on the emperor.
Whether or not to honor a mother’s love depends on circumstance.
Are we to neglect, for Shigehira alone, his brothers and the rest of his family?”
So Munemori spoke, and Lady Nii resumed her entreaty.
“After I lost my husband and lord,
I never thought to survive him long,
yet soon our emperor had to embark
on a voyage that tore at my heart,
and I so hoped to assure his reign
that I remained, after all, alive.
The news that at Ichi-no-tani
Shigehira was taken captive
almost destroyed me. My only wish
in this life is to see him again,
but even dreams bring him no nearer,
and in the grip of mounting anguish
my throat closes against even water.
Now there has come this letter from him,
to confuse the last of my wits.
Were I to hear that Shigehira is gone,
I would wish only to follow him.
Lest I suffer that second blow,
please, I beg you, let me die now!”
So she pleaded with piteous cries,
and every man present was moved.
All wept and listened with downcast gaze.
Tomomori expressed his view.
“Even if we did return the regalia to the capital,” he said,
“they would never, ever, really send Shigehira back.
Our only choice is to refuse.”
Munemori responded, “You are undoubtedly right.”
He wrote the Heike reply.
Weeping, Lady Nii began her answering letter to her son.
Tears blinded her to the movement of her own brush, yet love guided it at length.
She gave the letter to Shigekuni, for him to deliver.
His wife, Dainagon-no-suke, only wept.
To answer him was far beyond her.
The agony that she must have felt
is all too easily imagined.
Shigekuni withdrew in tears,
wringing the moisture from his sleeves.
Taira no Tokikata summoned Go-Shirakawa’s representative, Hanakata. “You are Hanakata?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord, I am.”
“You have braved the ocean waves to bring us His Cloistered Eminence’s decree, and you shall have a lifelong memento of your journey.” He had the namikata brand, a wave pattern, burned into the man’s cheek.
The branding of Hanakata.
Hanakata returned to the city.
The sovereign remarked at the sight of him,
“Very well, I have no choice. I shall have to call you Namikata.”
He laughed.
Your Cloistered Eminence’s decree, dated the fourteenth of this month, reached us at Yashima in Sanuki province on the twenty-eighth. We have given its content full and respectful attention. Our considered opinion on the matter follows:
Lord Michimori and many other gentlemen of our house met death at Ichi-no-tani in Settsu. Could your pardoning Shigehira alone then restore us to good ch
eer? The situation is this: Our emperor succeeded to the imperial dignity upon the abdication of the late Emperor Takakura, and he is already in the fourth year of his reign. While he sought to emulate the ancient ways of Yao and Shun, the barbarian hordes of east and north banded together and swept en masse into the capital, so profoundly distressing him and his mother, and so enraging his commoner relatives, that he withdrew for a time to Kyushu. How could the three regalia possibly be parted from his august person, until he himself returns?
The sovereign is his subjects’ heart; his subjects are their sovereign’s body. When he is at peace, so, too, are his subjects, and when they are at peace, so is the realm. Should the sovereign grieve, his subjects have no joy. Should the heart within suffer, the body without knows no pleasure. Our ancestor Taira no Sadamori crushed the rebel Masakado, and ever since we have protected the imperial fortunes.
So it came to pass that during the Hgen and Heiji conflicts, the late chancellor, my father, repeatedly risked his life to honor an imperial command, and it was not for himself that he did so, no, but solely for His Majesty. Note especially that despite an imperial death sentence pronounced against Yoritomo, when his father, Yoshitomo, rebelled in the twelfth month of Heiji 1, [1159] the late chancellor in his compassion had the sentence reduced. Nonetheless, Yoritomo forgot old kindness and ignored goodwill to raise abruptly, as might a starving wolf, foul rebellion. Such indescribable folly begs divine chastisement and courts lasting destruction.
The sun and moon do not quench their light for one single creature; the enlightened sovereign does not bend his rule for just one man. Do not for one bad deed discard much good; do not for one slight flaw disregard broad merit. If Your Cloistered Eminence has not forgotten the services rendered by my house over many reigns, as well as my late father’s repeated acts of devotion, he might (if I may be forgiven an impertinent suggestion) consider undertaking the journey to Shikoku. Then we shall receive his favorable decree, return to the ancient capital, and cleanse ourselves of the shame of defeat. Should he not do so, we will continue on our way to Kikai-ga-shima, Korea, India, and China. Alas! In this, the reign of our eighty-first human sovereign, are we to waste the sacred treasures of our realm upon a foreign land?
Please convey these words, as appropriate, to His Cloistered Eminence.
I, Munemori, bow my head in reverence and awe.
Juei 3, the second month, the twenty-eighth day
Taira no Munemori, of the junior first rank
So the document read.
5. The Precepts
This news reached Shigehira. “I expected that,” he said.
“How little the men of my house must think of me!”
Bitter regret surged through him, but in vain.
No, he had never believed himself so valuable to them
that for his sake they would surrender the regalia, our realm’s priceless treasure.
He had steeled himself beforehand to hear the reply he expected.
As long as that reply had not yet actually been voiced,
his mood had remained one merely of gloomy apprehension,
but hope was lost now that it had come and he faced being sent down to Kamakura.
Comfortless, he could only miss desperately the capital that he would soon leave.
He therefore summoned Doi Sanehira.
“I wish to renounce the world,” he said. “Would that be possible?”
Sanehira reported his request to Yoshitsune, who communicated it to the sovereign.
Go-Shirakawa replied, “I can say nothing until Yoritomo has seen him.
I could not by any means authorize it now.”
“Very well then,” Shigehira said when informed of his answer,
“I wish to see a holy man to whom I have long been devoted and to discuss the afterlife with him.”
“What holy man do you mean?” Doi Sanehira asked.
“His name is Hnen, and he lives in Kurodani.”225
“I see no objection.” Sanehira allowed the meeting.
Greatly relieved, Shigehira summoned Hnen and said, in tears,
“Being taken prisoner has allowed me to see you again.
What can I do to achieve salvation in the life to come?
When I was the man I used to be,
official duty blotted out all else;
the business of government kept me tied.
An abyss of conceit and arrogance
yawned in me. I gave never a thought
to future salvation or to perdition.
Then the fortunes of my house sank low
and the world lapsed into chaos.
After that there was nothing for me
but a battle here, a skirmish there.
All I ever thought of was killing
or evading death—preoccupations
so evil as to stifle everything good.
Then came the great fire in Nara. One does not question an order from the sovereign or from the highest military authority. The monks were behaving outrageously, and I went down there to quell them. The next thing I knew, the temples had burned, but certainly not because I ever meant them to. The truth is that I could do nothing to stop it. I was in command, though, and, as they say, the man at the top shoulders the blame. No doubt the crime will be laid solely at my door. Presumably the inconceivable shame heaped upon me is already retribution for it. All I want by now is to shave my head, uphold the precepts, and practice the Buddha’s Way, but unfortunately I am no longer in a position to please myself. The end could come for me at any moment, today or tomorrow, and I bitterly regret that no practice I might undertake could possibly lighten a particle of my karma.
Looking back over my whole life
and all my deeds, I see bad karma
soaring higher than Mount Sumeru
and not a scrap of stored-up good.
If my life is to end so wasted,
there is no doubt: Fire, blood, and sword226
loom before me in the hereafter.
Please, Your Reverence, I beg you,
show this sinner, in your compassion,
some way still toward salvation!”
The saintly Hnen dissolved in tears and remained for a moment speechless.
“No sorrow,” he said, “could adequately mourn so sad a return
from possession of a human body, always exceedingly rare, to those three dire realms.
But if only you will now shun this polluted world and aspire to the Pure Land,
if only you will renounce evil and arouse longing for the good,
then the buddhas of past, present, and future will surely rejoice.
Now, there are many paths to release,
but in these latter days of the Law,
when minds are polluted and confused,
the best of all is calling the Name.
Only aspire to the nine levels of birth in paradise
and confine practice to the six sacred syllables,227
and absolutely anyone, however foolish and benighted,
can find a way to call the Name.
Let your sins be ever so grave,
never, never condemn yourself.
The ten crimes, the five perverse deeds—
those who commit them, even they,
should they turn their thoughts to good,
are born at last into paradise.
Having amassed so little merit
makes no reason for you to despair.
Call the Name once, call it ten times
in the fullness of heartfelt faith,
and he will come to welcome you.
Accept the words a great saint left us:228
‘By single-mindedly calling his Name,
you will reach his Western Paradise.
In each and every instant of thought,
call the holy Name and repent.’
So he taught. You need only believe.
The salvific sword is the holy Name,
and no de
mon will dare approach you.
Call once the Name, and sin is gone.
Keep that in mind, and it will be true—
that is what he wrote in his book.
The heart of the Pure Land teaching
has been described in many ways,
but all come down to this quintessence.
Yet whether at death you are really reborn
straight into the Western Paradise
depends on one thing: your depth of faith.
Believe, only believe and never doubt.
Take this teaching into your heart
and it will be all the same to you where you are and what the hour,
whether you go or whether you stay, whether you are sitting or lying—
no gesture of yours, no word, no thought will neglect invoking the Name,
and when your time comes, you will leave the world,
this world of pain, for birth into the land of eternity.
That is impossible to doubt.”
Shigehira, thus instructed, felt a surge of joy.
“I would gladly now keep the precepts,” he said,
“but I assume that I cannot do so unless I become a monk.”
“No, no,” Hnen replied, “many a layman keeps them.”
He touched a razor to Shigehira’s forehead,
went through the motions of shaving his head,
and bestowed the ten precepts upon him.
Shigehira received them with tears of joy.
In his compassion for all beings,
Hnen found his eyes misting over
and wept as he explained the precepts.
By way of an offering, Shigehira sent Tomotoki to fetch an inkstone that he had left with a man of his household, one whom for years he had visited often. He then presented the inkstone to Hnen. “Please,” he said, “never give this to anyone else, but place it instead where your gaze often falls upon it, and each time you remember that it came from me, consider me to be present in person and call the Name for me. I will be very grateful, too, if whenever you have a moment, you will read a scroll of the sutras and dedicate the merit to me.” He wept as he spoke.
Hnen accepted the offering in silence, put it in the fold of his robe,
and returned to Kurodani, wringing tears from his ink-black sleeves.