by VIKING ADULT
Left panel: Tomotoki brings Shigehira the inkstone, to present to Hnen. At far right: Shigehira.
Shigehira’s father, Lord Kiyomori, had received this inkstone
after presenting the emperor of Song China with a great weight of gold dust.
It was a return gift, inscribed,
“To the Great Taira Chancellor,
of Wada in the land of Japan.”229
Kiyomori called it Matsukage.
6. Down the Tkaid
In Kamakura, meanwhile, Yoritomo was demanding Shigehira,
so his journey there was arranged.
Doi Sanehira first transferred him to Yoshitsune’s residence.
On the tenth of the third month, Kajiwara Kagetoki started with him for Kamakura.
Taken alive in the west and distressed merely to be back in the capital,
he was now on his way down to the east through saka Pass.
His feelings are easily imagined.
First came Shinomiya:230
There beside the babbling brook,
his thoughts wandered back in time
to Semimaru,
Emperor Daigo’s fourth prince,
who hearkened to rushing gales
while plucking his biwa.
Blow or not the wind that day,
shine or not that night the moon,
Hakuga no Sanmi
stood listening and learning,
for himself, the Three Pieces.
That hut of straw had stood there
in days now long past,
but the memories lived on.
He rode across saka,
and his horse’s hooves
thundered over Seta Bridge.
Larks sang in the sky
down the Noji village road
to the Shiga coast,
lapped by little springtime waves.
Ahead, through the mist,
rose clouded Mirror Mountain
and off to the north
the towering mass of Hira.
Mount Ibuki now drew near.
Not all that striking,
yet eloquent in ruin,
the Fuwa barrier-guard hut
spread its board eaves,
receded, to tidal flats
and worries (what awaits me?)
on the way past Narumi,
sleeves wet with tears;
then Yatsuhashi
in the land of Mikawa,
where once Narihira
voiced teeming sorrows
in that poem he left us,
“Robe from far Cathay
long and comfortably worn…231
—ah, who could but sigh?—
and across Hamana Bridge:
chill wind in the pines,
inlet shore noisy with waves
adding little more
to the gloom of traveling
through failing light
and the dark thoughts of nightfall
he came at long last
to the inn at Ikeda.
Yuya, the woman who kept the post-station inn, had a daughter named Jijū,
and Shigehira lodged at Jijū’s house that night.
She said when she first saw him,
“I could never have given you a poem in the past, not even through someone else.
How extraordinary, then, to see you here today!”
And she presented him with this:
Beneath unknown skies,
this earthen-floor house of mine,
doubtful as it is,
must make you miss all the more
the city so long your home.
Shigehira replied,
My home, the city,
no, I do not miss at all
beneath unknown skies:
Not even the capital
can shelter me to the last.
“Her poem is so nicely done!”
he exclaimed. “Who on earth is she?”
Kajiwara politely replied,
“My lord, do you not yet know her? When Lord Munemori, now at Yashima, governed this province, he called her into his personal service and loved her beyond all others. Having left her old mother here, she often asked for permission to go home, but he would never grant it. One year, early in the third month, she gave him:
What am I to do?
Springtime in the capital
I would sorely miss,
yet in the east the blossom
I love may now be falling.
That did the trick: He let her go.
There is no other poet like her
anywhere along the Tkaid.”
They had left the city days earlier.
More than half the third month was gone,
and spring would very soon be over.
Blossoms high on the distant mountains
resembled patches of lingering snow.
“What cruel karma brought me to this?”
he murmured, and his tears flowed on.
To the chagrin of Lady Nii,
his mother, and of his wife,
Lady Dainagon-no-suke,
he had no children. All their prayers
to gods and buddhas had gone unheard.
“And just as well!” he reflected.
“Imagine how miserable my son would be, if I had one!”
That thought, at least, yielded a grain of consolation.
Starting up Saya-no-nakayama,
he knew he would not return this way,
and such fresh sorrow burdened him
that floods of tears soaked his sleeves.
Mount Utsu loomed, its path dark with vines;
lost in gloom, he crossed those slopes, too.
Far to the north, after Tegoshi, he saw
a high mountain range white with snow:
Shirane, they said it was, in Kai,
and he left off weeping to reflect,
For this life of mine
I really do not care that much,
and yet I am glad
to have lived to see this sight:
the Shirane peaks in Kai.
After Kiyomi-ga-seki
came the plain below Mount Fuji.
To the north rose green mountains;
gentle breezes sighed through pines.
Southward stretched the sea’s vast blue;
waves crashed on the rocky shore.
“If you really missed me,
you should be thinner:
So you didn’t miss me—
I can tell!”
So once sang the mountain god
to his wife, when he came home
to Ashigara—which dropped behind,
and so, too, Koyurugi Wood,
Mariko River, and the shore
at Koiso and iso,
Yatsumato,
Togami-ga-hara,
Mikoshi Point—
he passed them all, not in haste,
and yet day succeeded day
until he reached Kamakura.
7. Senju-no-mae
Yoritomo soon admitted him to his presence.
“My resolve to calm the sovereign’s wrath and cleanse my father’s shame,” he said,
“certainly included the goal of destroying the Heike,
but I never imagined actually meeting you.
At this rate I imagine that I will be seeing Munemori, now at Yashima, too.
Tell me, when you destroyed Nara, did you do so on your father’s orders,
or was it an on-the-spot decision of your own?
They call it a particularly awful atrocity.”
Shigehira replied, “Burning Nara was neither my father’s idea nor mine.
I went there to put down the monks’ lawlessness.
The destruction of the temples simply happened. I could do nothing about it.
I need hardly repeat that in the old days
the Genji and Heike vied with each other to support the imperial house
but that more recentl
y the Genji fortunes declined.
Meanwhile my own house time and again,
in Hgen and Heiji and ever since,
quelled all those who offended the court.
My father, honored beyond his station,
became the commoner grandfather
to the one lord who rules under heaven,
so lifting high sixty Taira and more.
The Heike for over twenty years
flourished more than words can describe,
but now those days are over for us,
and I myself have been captured alive,
at last to appear here before you.
He who strikes down his sovereign’s foe
enjoys imperial favor to seven generations, or so they say,
but really, all this goes to reveal the saying as false.
It is a matter of common knowledge that my late father, Lord Kiyomori,
risked his life again and again for His Majesty.
Is his glory nonetheless to last no longer than his life,
and must his descendants then suffer my fate?
So it was that when our fortunes failed and we left the capital,
I accepted that my corpse would lie in the wilds
and my name vanish among the waves of the western sea.
I never imagined ending up here.
How bitterly I regret the karma from past lives that caused all this!
The book reads, ‘King Tang of Yin
languished in the prison house of Xia;
King Wen was taken prisoner at Youli.’
So it was in the earliest times,
hence equally in this degenerate age.
To die at the hands of the enemy
may appear to shame a warrior,
yet truly it is no shame at all.
I ask of you only the courtesy
of beheading me without delay.”
He said no more. Kagetoki cried,
“Spoken like a great commander!” He wept with emotion.
Every man present likewise moistened his sleeves.
Yoritomo himself declared,
“The Heike are no personal enemies of mine,
but I give weight to our sovereign’s words.”
Senju arrives to bathe Shigehira.
Nonetheless Shigehira had destroyed the temples of Nara,
and the Nara monks would certainly want him at their disposal.
So Yoritomo entrusted him to Kano-no-suke Munemochi, of Izu province.
Such is the human sinner’s plight
when in the afterworld he passes
hand to hand every seven days
among the ten judges of the dead.
But Munemochi was kind. Far from treating Shigehira harshly, he made him comfortable, prepared the bathhouse, and had a bath drawn for him. Shigehira took it that he preferred to kill someone clean rather than rank with the sweat of a long journey, but no, because a very lovely, white-skinned young woman of twenty or so now opened the bathhouse door and entered, wearing a blue-patterned bath apron over an unlined, tie-dyed robe. Soon a girl of fourteen or so, in an unlined blue robe dappled with spots of darker blue and with her hair hanging the length of her jacket, brought in a basin and combs. With the young woman’s assistance, he enjoyed a leisurely soak and washed his hair.
She said when she left him,
“Lord Yoritomo had me come
because you might object to a man.
He thought you would not mind a woman.
‘If the gentleman wants anything,’
he said, ‘make sure that you let me know.’”
“As I am now,” Shigehira replied,
“what request could I possibly have?
All I want is to leave the world.”
The young woman reported his words.
“No,” Yoritomo replied, “not that.
I could not even consider it.
A personal enemy might be different,
but I am responsible for this man
as an enemy of the court.
His wish is out of the question.”
Shigehira said to his warrior guard,
“That young woman just now was very nice. What is her name?”
“Her mother runs the inn at Tegoshi,” the guard replied.
“She is so sweet and pretty that Lord Yoritomo took her to serve him two or three years ago.
Her name is Senju-no-mae.”
That evening a light rain was falling,
and all the world looked very bleak
when the young woman of before
brought in a biwa and a koto,
and Munemochi himself appeared,
accompanied by a dozen housemen,
with a gift of wine. Senju poured.
Shigehira accepted a little,
but with a very doleful air.
Munemochi assured him,
“As you may have gathered already,
Lord Yoritomo wishes me to make you perfectly comfortable.
‘Take good care of him,’ he said,
‘and do not complain if I find reason to reproach you.’
Being from Izu, I myself am only visiting Kamakura,
but I mean to do for you everything that I can.”
And to Senju he added, “Sing him something—whatever you like.”
Senju put the wine dipper down
and sang once or twice this rei:
“So heavy the robe’s crepe and damask,
I hate the cruelty of the weaver.”232
Shigehira had this to say:
“The Kitano Tenjin deity
has promised to fly three times a day
to protect the singer of this song,
but he has in this life forsaken me.
There is no point in my joining in.
I will, though, if you sing something to lighten my sin.”
Senju-no-mae at once sang the rei
“Though your crimes span the ten evils,
Amida will yet draw you to him,”
then, four or five times the imay
“He who aspires to paradise,
let him call Amida’s Name.”
Shigehira now tipped the cup
and drank. Senju took it, passed it on
to Munemochi, who drank in turn
while she beautifully played the koto.
“This piece,” Shigehira remarked,
“is known to all as Gojraku,
but tonight it will be, for me,
Goshraku, Song of Paradise.233
Allow me to play the final movement,
the one entitled ‘Rebirth in Bliss.’”
He tuned the biwa and played the piece.
The night grew late. Feeling at peace,
he said, “It never occurred to me
that I might find here in the east
anyone as lovely as you!
Sing me another—anything!”
Senju sang with exquisite feeling
a shirabyshi dancer’s song:
“Seeking shelter beneath the same tree,
drawing water from the same stream—
these things prove a bond from past lives.”
Shigehira then added the rei
“The lamp burns low;
down the cheeks of Lady Yu
trickle streams of tears.”
This song comes from a Chinese story.
Long ago, in the land of Tang,
Han Gaozu and Xiang Yu of Chu,
in rivalry to win the throne,
fought seventy-two battles,
and every time Xiang Yu won.
But in the end there came a loss
that destroyed Xiang Yu forever.
With his consort, Lady Yu,
he moved to flee, riding Zhui,
a steed that in a single day
could race a full thousand leagues,
but Zhui, unaccountably,
stood fast and refused to move.
Xiang Yu wept. “Yes,
my power is gone,”
he said. “Now there is no escape.
Never mind the coming attack.
The only thing I cannot bear
is that my consort and I must part.”
So he lamented through the hours,
and when at last the lamps burned low,
Lady Yu shed tears of sorrow.
The night advanced, and battle cries
closed in on them from all four sides….
Tachibana no Hiromi
turned this story into the song
that sprang to Shigehira’s mind
with such superlative elegance.
Dawn broke at last, and the attendant warriors took their leave. Senju-no-mae withdrew as well. That morning Yoritomo was chanting the Lotus Sutra in his personal chapel when Senju presented herself before him. He smiled. “I enjoyed playing go-between for you, Senju,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” asked Chikayoshi, who happened to be there in his capacity as his lord’s scribe.
“I always assumed that those Heike knew nothing but arms,” Yoritomo replied,
“but I stood there all night listening to Shigehira play the biwa and sing,
and, I must say, he is an extremely accomplished gentleman.”
“I wish I had been there, too,” said Chikayoshi. “I stayed away because I felt unwell.
After this I must not miss any such occasion.
Over the generations the Heike have boasted many poets and men of talent.
In years past, people have compared them to flowers
and Lord Shigehira in particular to the peony.”
“Well,” said Yoritomo, “he certainly is cultivated.
We may never again hear such a touch on the biwa and such rei singing.”
As for Senju-no-mae, that night seems to have started her on the path toward melancholy.
So it came to pass that when she heard
that they had turned him over to Nara
and he had been executed there,
she put off all her finery,
clothed herself in the deepest black,
gave her life to pious practice
at Zenkji, in Shinano,
and prayed only that the next life
bring him rebirth in paradise;
and in the end she, too, they say,
achieved birth in the Pure Land.
8. Yokobue
Although in the flesh at Yashima,
in spirit Lord Koremori wandered off time and again to the capital.
The wife and children he had left there were ever present to him.
Not for a single moment did he forget them.
“My life means nothing without them,” he said to himself.