by VIKING ADULT
Kajiwara said to Yoshitsune, “Let me go first into battle today.”
“If I were somewhere else, fine,” Yoshitsune replied, “but I am here.”
Kajiwara retorted, “That is not right. You are our commander, sir, after all.”
“Absolutely not,” Yoshitsune retorted. “Our commander is Lord Yoritomo in Kamakura. I am his agent and follow his orders, just like the rest of you.”
His hope of going first dashed, Kajiwara muttered,
“This lord lacks what it takes to be a leader of men!”
Yoshitsune heard him. “You are the biggest fool in Japan!”
he snapped, and put his hand to his sword.
Kajiwara replied, “I take orders from Lord Yoritomo himself, no one else!”
He, too, reached for his sword.
Kajiwara’s three sons moved to him:
Kagesue, Kagetaka, and Kageie.
Seeing the threat to Yoshitsune,
Sat Tadanobu, Ise Yoshimori,
Genpachi Hirotsuna, Eda no Genz,
Kumai Tar, and Musashib Benkei—
each man ready to face a thousand—
came at Kajiwara from all sides,
each eager to kill his lord’s enemy.
Miura no Suke, however,
rushed to Yoshitsune’s side,
while Doi no Jir clung to Kajiwara.
Both, rubbing their hands in supplication,
begged the two men to desist.
“With such a crucial battle before us,” they protested,
“a fight between our commanders would only strengthen the Heike!
It would be a disaster for the news to reach Lord Yoritomo!”
Yoshitsune calmed down, and Kajiwara could not pursue the matter.
Thereafter Kajiwara so hated Yoshitsune that his slander destroyed him.
Meanwhile some two miles of sea separated Genji and Heike.
The tide was ebbing fast past Moji, Akama, and Dan-no-ura,
against the course of the Genji fleet, which it swept steadily backward.
The Heike fleet came down on the Genji with the tide.
Out in the strait, the flow was so strong
that Kajiwara hugged the shore,
thus crossing paths with a Heike boat,
which his men caught with a grappling hook.
Old and young, they all boarded it
and with their blades, bow and stern,
laid about them mercilessly,
so that they gathered many trophies.
In the list of exploits that day,
theirs figured first of all.
At last the contending sides clashed, with thunderous battle cries
that must have reached the Brahma Heaven above
and alarmed, below, the Dragon King of the sea.
Lord Tomomori stood on the cabin of his boat and announced in a great voice,
“Today’s battle will be our last!
Men, banish all thought of retreat!
Never have India or China,
never has our land of Japan
seen the like of our warriors,
yet our days of glory are over,
and nothing can remedy that.
But you still have honor to uphold. Show the men from the east no weakness. Saving your skins will gain you nothing. That is all you need remember.”
“Heed your commander, gentlemen!” Hida no Saburzaemon Kagetsune, from beside him, confirmed his order.
Akushichibye of Kazusa came forward. “Warriors from the Kanto talk fast on horseback,” he declared, “but when did they ever learn naval combat? They might as well be fish and climb trees! So catch them now, every one, and throw them back in the sea!”
Etchū no Jirbye Moritsugi remarked, “In fact, you might as well go after Kur Yoshitsune himself. He’s a pale, scrawny fellow with buckteeth. He may be hard to make out, though, because he keeps changing his hitatare and armor.”
“He’s a fighter,” Akushichibye added, “but he’s too small to bother anyone. I’ll just clap him under my arm and throw him in.”
After issuing his command, Tomomori came before Lord Munemori.
He said, “The men seem to be in fine fettle today,
but that Shigeyoshi from Awa looks as though he may have betrayed us.
I would gladly cut off his head.”
“How could you?” Munemori objected. “I see no reason to suspect him.
He has always given us loyal service.”
He summoned Shigeyoshi, who appeared before him
in a tan hitatare under armor laced with white leather.
“Tell me, Shigeyoshi,” Munemori asked, “have you turned against us?
You do not look that lively today.
Order the Shikoku men to fight well. Are you afraid?”
“Certainly not, my lord,” Shigeyoshi replied, and withdrew.
“Oh, yes,” Tomomori said to himself, “how I want that man’s head!”
Gripping his sword hilt hard enough almost to crush it,
he glanced time after time at Lord Munemori,
but Munemori never allowed him to act. He had to give up.
The Heike split their thousand vessels
into three: The first group, under
Yamaga no Hydji Hidet,
rowed forward with five hundred boats;
the second followed, a good three hundred
manned by those of the Matsura League;
and the third, behind with two hundred,
carried the scions of the Heike.
No warrior in all of Kyushu
could match Hydji Hidet,
who had picked to accompany him
five hundred less elite warriors.
These he stationed from prow to stern
shoulder to shoulder, all in a line,
to loose five hundred arrows at once.
The Genji, with their three thousand boats,
had the clear advantage of numbers,
but with such a barrage of arrows
coming at them from all directions,
they could not see where the best archers were.
Their commander, Kur Yoshitsune,
fought at the head of all his men,
but it was too much: No shield or armor
could withstand so fierce an onslaught,
which took its toll—the Genji buckled.
The Heike, now sure of victory,
beat their war drums, shouting with joy.
8. Long-Distance Arrows
One of the Genji, Wada no Kotar Yoshimori, never boarded a boat at all
but lurked instead on the beach. A groom carried his helmet.
Feet thrust hard into the stirrups, he loosed from his mightily drawn bow
arrows that missed no target in a range of some three hundred yards.
One flew especially far, and he waved to the enemy out there,
as much as to say, “I’ll have that arrow back!”
Tomomori called for it and looked it over.
The plain shaft, fletched with goose and black-tipped crane feathers,
was thirteen handbreadths and two fingers long.
A handbreadth from the tip, it bore Yoshimori’s name, written in lacquer.
Few among the many fine Heike archers seem to have been expert at a great distance,
and it took some time to find Nii no Kishir Chikakiyo, from Iyo.
Tomomori summoned him and gave him the arrow to shoot back.
It flew the three hundred yards to the shore and hit Miura no Ishizakon no Tar,
well beyond Yoshimori, squarely in the upper left arm.
“And Yoshimori thought nobody could shoot as far as he!” The Miura men laughed.
“He’ll have to think again. Just look at him—he’s so embarrassed!”
Yoshimori heard this and did not like it one bit.
He got into a boat, had it rowed out to sea,
and sent the Heike a volley of arrows that kille
d or wounded many.
Another arrow with a plain shaft hit Yoshitsune’s boat from out at sea, accompanied, like Wada’s, with gestures signifying “Please return.” Yoshitsune pulled it out for a look. Fletched with pheasant tail feathers, it was fourteen handbreadths and three fingers long and inscribed with the name “Nii no Kishir Chikakiyo, of Iyo.”
Yoshitsune summoned Gotbye Sanemoto. “Do we have a man able to shoot this arrow back?” he asked.
“Asari no Yoichi of the Kai Genji, sir: He is your man.”
“Call him here, then,” Yoshitsune replied.
Asari no Yoichi arrived.
“This arrow came from out at sea,” Yoshitsune explained,
“and the archer is defying us to return it. Can you do that?”
“Allow me a look at it, sir.”
He took one end in each hand and flexed the shaft to test strength and straightness.
“The arrow is a little weak and, I would say, a little short.
I might as well use one of my own.”
The lacquered bow he carried, closely rattan-wound, was nine feet long.263
He took a black-fletched arrow fifteen of his huge handbreadths long,
fitted it to the string, drew far back, and sent it whizzing over four hundred yards.
It hit Chikakiyo where he stood in the bow of his ship, square in the torso,
and sent him crashing headlong to the ship’s bottom,
whether dead or alive one could not tell.
Asari no Yoichi was a remarkable archer.
They say he could hit a running deer every time from two hundred yards away.
Thereafter the Genji and Heike,
with a fierce roar from either side,
joined furious, merciless battle.
Neither seemed stronger or weaker,
but it was true: The Heike had with them
the emperor and his regalia.
The Genji were doubting their success
when what seemed at first a white cloud
floating above them in the sky
turned out to be no cloud at all
but a white banner, fluttering down
free, from nowhere, until the cord
meant to fasten it to a pole
brushed the bow of a Genji boat.
“Great Bodhisattva Hachiman has appeared to us!” the delighted Yoshitsune cried.
He rinsed his mouth and bowed reverently. All with him did the same.
Also, thousands of dolphins surfaced and swam from the Genji toward the Heike.
Lord Munemori summoned the yin-yang diviner Harenobu.
“Dolphins are common enough,” he said, “but I have never seen this.
Find out for me what it portends.”
“My lord,” the diviner replied,
“if these dolphins turn back, still taking in air at the surface, the Genji are lost.
If they dive under us, then we face grave danger.”
He had hardly spoken when the dolphins dove straight under the Heike ships.
“This is it, then,” said the diviner.
Shigeyoshi had served the Heike loyally these past three years
and had often risked his life in battle to defend them,
but now that his son Noriyoshi had been taken alive,
he no doubt saw that further devotion to them was pointless:
He abruptly shifted his allegiance to the Genji.
The Heike plan had been to put their nobles in war boats and foot soldiers in the Chinese ships,
so that when the Genji went for those ships, the boats could surround and kill them,
but the Genji ignored the Chinese ships once they had Shigeyoshi.
Instead they attacked the boats bearing the Heike commanders in disguise.
“What a disaster!” Tomomori exclaimed. “That Shigeyoshi! I should have beheaded him!”
A thousand vain regrets assailed him.
Now the men of Shikoku and Kyushu,
as one, dropped the Heike for the Genji.
The follower loyal until this day
drew his bow now against his lord,
wielded against him his naked blade.
While the far shore seemed to beckon,
high waves put it beyond Heike reach;
the near shore, appealing at first glance,
bristled with waiting Genji arrows.
The struggle these two had waged so long,
to achieve dominion over the realm,
visibly ended on this day.
9. The Drowning of Emperor Antoku
Now came the Genji warriors,
pouring onto the Heike vessels,
slaughtering with arrow and sword
every crewman, every helmsman,
leaving not one to row or steer.
Their bodies lay littered underfoot.
Tomomori rowed a small boat to the imperial barge. “As far as I can see,” he said, “we are finished. Please throw anything unsightly into the sea.” Racing about from prow to stern, he swept, wiped, collected rubbish, and with his own hands cleaned all he could reach.
“How is the battle going, Lord Tomomori?” the gentlewomen asked.
“Ladies,” he answered, roaring with laughter, “you will soon meet some rare gallants from the east!”
They wailed, “How can you joke at a time like this?”
For some time Lady Nii had expected what she now saw.
She threw her two gray nun’s robes over her head,
lifted high her beaten silk trouser-skirts,
clasped the sacred jewel to her side,
thrust the treasure sword into her sash,
and lifted the emperor in her arms.
“I may be a woman,” she said, “but I will not let the enemy take me.
No, Your Majesty, I shall accompany you.
All those loyal to our sovereign, follow me!”
She stepped to the side of the boat.
His Majesty, in his eighth year,
was thoroughly grown up for his age,
and his beauty shone around him.
His rich black hair hung below his waist.
“Where are you taking me, Grandmother?”
he asked with wonder in his eyes.
“You still do not know, Your Majesty?
Your virtuous karma from past lives
made you sovereign over the realm,
but now the influence of some evil
has brought your grandeur to an end.
First, Your Majesty, if you please,
face east and say good-bye to the Grand Shrine of Ise;
then, trusting Amida to welcome you into his Western Paradise,
face west and call his Name.
This land of ours, a few millet grains scattered in remote seas, is not a nice place.
I am taking you now to a much happier one, the Pure Land of Bliss.”
So she addressed him, weeping.
Robed in dove gray, his hair in side loops
like any boy’s, cheeks streaming with tears,
he pressed his dear little hands together,
prostrated himself toward the east,
and bade farewell to the Ise Shrine,
then turned to the west, calling the Name.
Lady Nii said, her arms around him,
“Down there, far beneath the waves,
another capital awaits us”—
and plunged into the fathomless deep.
Alas! The spring winds of transience
in one brief instant swept away
the beauty of this lovely blossom;
the billows of a heartless fate
swallowed His Sovereign Majesty.
Everlasting Life, it was called,
the dwelling given him forever;
Eternal Youth, announced the name
upon its gate, locked against old age,264
and yet before even his tenth year
he lay at the bottom of the sea.
&
nbsp; The happy destiny of the monarch
no longer meant anything at all.
The dragon, fallen from the clouds
to the ocean depths, was now a fish.
A Brahma in his lofty palace,
an Indra in his stern citadel,
he whose word had once been law
to ministers and senior nobles
first sought refuge aboard a ship,
then met his end beneath the waves:
as sad a tale as any ever told.
10. The Death of Noritsune
Before this spectacle the emperor’s mother, Kenreimon-in,
slipped a warming stone265 and an inkstone into the left and right folds of her robe,
and threw herself into the sea, but without knowing who she was,
a man of the Watanabe League, Gengo Uma-no-j Mutsuru,
caught her hair with a grappling hook and retrieved her.
“How awful!” the gentlewomen cried. “Why, that is her ladyship!”
Yoshitsune, once informed, returned her at once to the imperial barge.
Lady Dainagon-no-suke tried to throw herself into the sea,
clutching the chest containing the sacred mirror,
but an arrow pinned her skirts to the vessel’s side so that she tripped and fell,
and the warriors saw to it that she got no farther.
A composite scene: Antoku and Lady Nii (upper left) are poised to leap into the waves. Below them: Munemori, in court dress, is retrieved alive. At far right: Noritsune prepares to leap into the sea with two enemy men; another has already fallen in. Above them: Warriors save Kenreimon-in from drowning.
Then they broke the chain that secured the chest and were starting to lift the lid
when suddenly their vision failed. Blood poured from their noses.
Taira no Tokitada, by then a prisoner, declared,
“That chest holds the sacred mirror. No common man may look upon it!”
At this the warriors drew back.
Thereafter Yoshitsune, in consultation with Tokitada,
saw to it that the chest was bound securely shut as before.
Meanwhile the brothers Norimori and Tsunemori, arm in arm,
leaped in their armor, bearing an anchor, into the sea.
So, too, the young lords Sukemori,
Arimori, and Yukimori,