by VIKING ADULT
“Then you might just have asked me, instead of arresting me like this! He’s supposed to be at Tennji.”
“So take us there!”
A force of thirty mounted men under Tokisada’s son-in-law Kasahara no Jūr Kunihisa, as well as Uehara no Kur, Kuwabara no Jir, and Hattori no Heiroku, set out for Tennji. Yukiie was staying in two places: the home of the senior musician Kaneharu, in Tani, and that of two other musicians, named Shinroku and Shinshichi. The force split up and attacked both at once. Yukiie was at Kaneharu’s house. He fled out the back when armed warriors burst in.
Kaneharu had two daughters, both Yukiie’s mistresses. The men seized them and demanded to know where Yukiie was. “Ask my younger sister,” the elder said, and the younger, “Ask my elder.” Actually, Yukiie had left in such haste that he was unlikely to have told anyone where he was going, but they took the sisters up to the city anyway.
Yukiie fled toward Kumano. When the only man with him came down with a bad leg, he broke his journey at the village of Yagi, in Izumi. His host there recognized him and raced all night up to the city, where he reported Yukiie’s arrival to Tokisada. Tokisada hardly knew whom to send, since his men were not back yet from Tennji. He called in a retainer of his named Daigenji Muneharu.
“Is that Hiei monk of yours still around?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, he is.”
“Then have him come here.”
The monk arrived in response to the summons.
“Yukiie has been found,” Tokisada informed him. “Kill him and claim your reward from Kamakura.”
“Very well, sir,” the monk replied, “but I will need some men.”
“Then go with him, Daigenji,” said Tokisada. “I have no one else.” He sent just fourteen or fifteen underlings with him.
The monk in question, one Hitachib Shmei, went down to the province of Izumi and raced into the house mentioned. It was empty. He took up the floorboards and inspected the inner room, but no one was there. He then went out to the street, looked around, and spotted a woman of mature years—a farmer’s wife, apparently—passing by. He seized her. “Have any suspicious-looking travelers been staying nearby lately? Tell me or you die.”
“Yes,” she said, “right there in that house you have been searching. Two splendid gentlemen were there till last night, but they seem to have left this morning. I believe they are now in that big house over there.”
Hitachib charged straight in, wearing black leather-laced armor with sleeves attached and girded with a long sword. A man of fifty or so in a dark blue hitatare and folded eboshi hat, seated beside a Chinese wine jug and a dish of refreshments, was just then offering another man a cup of wine. He fled on all fours when the armed monk barged in, but the monk caught up with him.
“Hey, you monk, you have the wrong man!” Yukiie cried. “Yukiie is me!”
Hitachib rushed back. The speaker had on only a white, short-sleeved robe and widemouthed trousers. His left hand gripped a gold-fitted short sword and his right an impressively long one.
“Drop your swords,” Hitachib commanded. Yukiie laughed loudly. Hitachib fell on him, and their swords clashed. He drew back and attacked Yukiie again. Another clash, another break. Clash and break, the fight went on and on until Yukiie moved to retreat into the walled inner room.
“Shame on you!” Hitachib cried. “Don’t you dare!”
“My very thought!” Yukiie retorted, and charged him.
Hitachib dropped his sword and grappled with him hand to hand. They fell and were rolling over and over each other when Daigenji turned up. He was so flustered that instead of drawing his sword he picked up a rock and bashed it into Yukiie’s forehead. Yukiie laughed again. “You crawling lackey!” he exclaimed. “A man strikes his enemy with a sword or halberd, not a rock!”
“Tie his legs!” Hitachib ordered, but in the confusion Daigenji tied both men’s legs together.
Next they tied a rope around Yukiie’s neck and forced him to sit up.
“Give me some water,” he said. They poured water over some dried rice and gave it to him, but he drank only the water and left the rice. Hitachib took it and ate it himself.
“Are you a monk of the Mountain?” Yukiie asked.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“And your name?”
“Hitachib Shmei, from the North Ravine.”
“So you’re the monk who once wanted to serve me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did Yoritomo send you? Or was it Tokisada?”
“I serve Lord Yoritomo in Kamakura. Have you really been planning to attack him?”
“What difference does it make whether I say yes or no? Did you like how I fight?”
“I have fought many a time on the Mountain, sir, but never against a man as strong as you. It felt like fighting three worthy opponents at once. But if I may ask, sir, what did you think of me?”
“What can I say? You got me, didn’t you? Just give me a look at those swords.” His showed not a single nick. In Hitachib’s there were forty-two.
They mounted Yukiie on a post-station horse and spent the night in the house of the madam of Eguchi.288 From there they sent a messenger racing overnight up to the city. At midday the next day, at the Akai riverbank, they met Hj Tokisada coming toward them with one hundred riders, banners flying.
“His Cloistered Eminence has barred him from entering the capital,” Tokisada announced, “and Lord Yoritomo concurs. Behead him immediately, take the trophy to Kamakura, and receive your reward.” So there on the Akai riverbank they cut off Jūr Yukiie’s head.
Rumor had it that Shida no Sabur Yoshinori had gone into hiding in the Daigo hills. Tokisada swooped down on the area and hunted for him, but in vain. Then came news that Yoshinori had fled toward Iga. Tokisada sent Hattori Heiroku and others there. Further word placed him at the mountain temple at Sendo, and they rushed there to take him. They found him lying sprawled in only a lined short-sleeved robe and widemouthed trousers. He had slit his belly with a gold-trimmed dagger.
Heiroku took his head and had it carried straight to the city, where he presented it to Tokisada. “Take it at once to Lord Yoritomo in Kamakura,” Tokisada said, “and you will have your reward.” Hitachib and Heiroku each therefore took his trophy to Kamakura.
“Marvelous!” Yoritomo exclaimed, and forthwith banished Hitachib to Kasai.
“I was sure a reward awaited me,” Hitachib said to himself. “But no! It was exile instead! I can hardly believe it. I would never have risked my life like that if I’d known.” He bitterly regretted the whole thing, but it was too late now.
Two years later, though, Yoritomo called him back. “The gods withdraw their protection from the man who kills a senior commander,” he explained. “I had no choice but to punish you awhile.” Before Hitachib left, he received the Tada estate in Tajima and the Hamuro estate in Settsu. Hattori Heiroku got back the property of Hattori, which had been confiscated from him because of his service to the Heike.
9. The Execution of Rokudai
Meanwhile Rokudai reached his fourteenth or fifteenth year,
and his beauty shone a brightening light on all around him.
“Alas,” his mother said, perhaps more fondly than wisely,
“if the world were ours as it used to be,
he would be by now an officer in the Palace Guards!”
Lord Yoritomo found him a constant cause of concern.
In every letter to the holy man of Takao, he asked,
“And what news of Koremori’s son?
Once upon a time you divined my quality and my future.
Tell me, then: Is he a man to destroy an enemy of the court
and cleanse the shame incurred by his forebears?”
Mongaku replied, “There is no depth to him. He lacks courage.
You may set your mind at rest.”
Yoritomo remained anxious nevertheless.
“I know that monk will side with him,” he remarked, “if he ra
ises rebellion.”
It was a frightening thing to say.
Rokudai’s mother heard about it. “Oh, what terrible, terrible news!” she cried. “You must become a monk at once!” And so it was that in his sixteenth year, in the spring of Bunji 5, [1189] Rokudai cut off his lovely hair at the shoulders, donned a persimmon-dyed robe, slung onto his back the religious wanderer’s chest, took leave of Mongaku, and set out on holy pilgrimage. Saitgo and Saitroku accompanied him in the same guise.
He went first to Mount Kya and called there on his father’s spiritual guide,
the Takiguchi Novice, from whom he had the story
of how his father had renounced the world and how he had died.
There, before the Seashore Shrine,
he looked out to Yamanari Island,
where his father had gone that time,
and he longed to go there himself,
but wind and wave discouraged that.
All he could do was to gaze far off,
wanting to ask the white-crested waves
rolling in from the open sea
precisely where his father had drowned.
To him, the very sands of the shore
could have been his father’s bones,
and his streaming tears drenched sleeves
undoubtedly not a salt maker’s
but nonetheless constantly damp.
He spent one whole night on the shore,
calling the Name, reading sutras,
while his finger drew in the sand
likenesses of Amida Buddha.
At daybreak he called in a holy monk
to perform litanies for his father
and dedicated the merit of that
to the benefit of the departed.
Then he bade farewell to the dead
and set off in tears to the capital.
[As before, the manuscript that supplied performance information lacks the text below.]
Taira no Tadafusa, a son of Lord Shigemori, vanished after fleeing the battle at Yashima. News that he had sought help from Yuasa Muneshige, in Kii, and gone to ground in Muneshige’s fort moved such Heike loyalists as Etchū no Jirbye, Kazusa no Gorbye, Akushichibye, and Hida no Shirbye to join him, and the men of Iga and Ise rushed there in turn when the word reached them.
Lord Yoritomo sent the Kumano superintendent Tanz to attack this concentration of hardened Heike sympathizers when he heard the news. Tanz did so eight times over a period of two or three months, only to be repulsed each time by defenders to whom life meant nothing. The armed monks from Kumano were killed.
By courier, Tanz reported to Kamakura, “I have attacked the Yuasa fort eight times in the past two or three months and have been repulsed each time by defenders prepared to fight to the death. I have therefore failed to reduce the enemy. Success will require additional resources from two or three neighboring provinces.”
Yoritomo replied, “That would only achieve further loss of men and matériel. The outlaws in the fort are presumably bandits and pirates. Restrict them severely and keep them bottled up.” Tanz obeyed. Sure enough, soon not a man remained in the fort.
“One or two sons of Lord Shigemori must have survived,” Yoritomo announced with an ulterior motive in mind. “Their lives are theirs to keep. After all, it is Shigemori who, through Lady Ike, had my own sentence reduced from death to exile.” Tadafusa responded by going to identify himself at Rokuhara. He was sent straight to Kamakura, where Yoritomo received him.
“Go back up to the capital,” Yoritomo said. “I have a discreet home for you in mind.” But he sent men after Tadafusa, and they killed him at the Seta Bridge.
Apart from his six fully acknowledged sons, Lord Shigemori had another, Munezane. The left minister Fujiwara no Tsunemune had adopted Munezane in his third year and given him his own surname. Now in his eighteenth year, the young man had neglected the arts of war in favor of literary pursuits, and Lord Yoritomo made no attempt to hunt him down. In deference to the times, however, his adoptive father drove him out nonetheless.
Deprived of a future, Munezane went to Shunjb Chgen of Tdaiji, the holy man who had raised funds for recasting the Great Buddha. “I am Lord Shigemori’s last son, Munezane,” he said. “The left minister Tsunemune adopted me in my third year and gave me his surname. Now I am in my eighteenth year. I never cared for the arts of war and chose instead to cultivate letters. Lord Yoritomo has not come looking for me, but in deference to the times my adoptive father has nonetheless driven me away. Please, Your Reverence, accept me as a disciple.” He cut off his topknot himself. “If the risk seems too great,” he added, “then by all means inform Kamakura, and if my sins really weigh too heavily, then send me elsewhere.”
Shunjb took pity on him and allowed him to renounce the world. For the time being, he lodged Munezane in the temple’s lamp-oil storeroom and did indeed report his presence. “I shall decide what to do after seeing him,” Yoritomo replied. “Send him down here at once.”
Shunjb could not refuse. He sent Munezane to Kamakura. From the very day he left Nara, Munezane refused anything resembling food or drink. He would not swallow even water, warm or cold. He died at last at Sekimoto, just over Mount Ashigara. “There is no hope for me, you see,” he explained, showing a terrifying strength of will.
On the seventh of the eleventh month of Kenkyū 1, [1190] Lord Yoritomo went up to the capital. On the ninth he received the senior second rank and the post of grand counselor, to which was added, on the eleventh, a concurrent appointment to command the Right Palace Guards. He resigned both posts at once and returned to the Kanto on the fourth of the twelfth month.
On the thirteenth of the third month of Kenkyū 3, [1192] Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa passed away in his sixty-sixth year. The bell for the esoteric litanies ceased to ring that night, and the voice chanting the Lotus from memory fell silent with the coming of dawn.
The Great Buddha of Tdaiji was to be dedicated on the thirteenth of the third month of Kenkyū 6. [1195] During the second month, Lord Yoritomo therefore went again up to the city. On the twelfth of the third month, he went to the Great Buddha Hall, where he summoned Kajiwara Kagetoki. “Over the heads of a crowd of monks,” he said, “I spotted a suspicious individual south of the Tengai Gate. Seize him and bring him to me.” Kagetoki did so forthwith. The man was clean-shaven, with a full head of hair.
“Who are you?” Yoritomo demanded to know.
“I might as well tell you,” the man replied, “since I am so thoroughly out of luck. I am Satsuma no Nakazukasa Iesuke, a Heike retainer.”
“And what are you doing here, looking like this?”
“Keeping an eye out for a chance to assassinate you.”
“Good man!”
Yoritomo returned to the capital after the dedication ceremony. They beheaded the fellow on the riverbed at Rokuj.
During the winter of Bunji 1, [1185] the Genji had hunted down every infant Heike son or grandson, almost to the point of opening the mothers’ bellies in search of more, and they had killed them all. It seemed impossible that a single one should have survived. Nonetheless Tomotada, Taira no Tomomori’s last son, remained alive. He was in his third year when the Heike fled the capital and abandoned him to the care of his guardian, Ki no Jirbye Tamenori. Tamenori moved about with him in order to remain in hiding, until he settled discreetly in the province of Bingo, at the locality of ta.
As Tomotada grew older, he began to arouse the suspicions of the local steward and warden. He therefore moved to the city and went into hiding at Ichi-no-hashi, within the grounds of Hosshji. Kiyomori, his grandfather, had dug there a double moat surrounded by a stand of bamboo, so as to turn the place into an emergency fort. Now a ring of abatis further defended it. During the day silence reigned, but at night distinguished gentlemen gathered there to enjoy music and the pleasures of poetry in Chinese or Japanese. Word of Tomotada’s presence there somehow leaked out.
The figure most widely feared then in the ci
ty was the novice monk Fujiwara no Yoshiyasu,289 and it came to the ears of Shinbye Mototsuna, a son of Yoshiyasu’s retainer Gotbye Motokiyo, that Ichi-no-hashi harbored an enemy of the court. On the seventh of the tenth month of Kenkyū 7, [1196] early in the hour of the dragon, [ca. 8 A.M.] some one hundred and fifty mounted warriors attacked Ichi-no-hashi, uttering battle cries. The thirty or so defenders bared both shoulders and from the shelter of the bamboo loosed a furious barrage of arrows that killed so many men and horses that the attackers had to desist.
However, the news of a court enemy at Ichi-no-hashi drew warriors there from all over the city. Soon there were one or two thousand of them. They tore down nearby houses to fill the moat and charged in, howling for war. The defenders raced out with drawn swords, only to be killed or suffer wounds so grievous that they killed themselves. Tomotada, then in his sixteenth year, suffered that fate. Tamenori cradled the body on his lap, sobbing and loudly calling the Name, before slitting his own belly. His sons Hye Tar and Hye Jir both died by the attackers’ swords.
Nearly all the thirty-odd men from the fort were now dead, killed either by their own hand or in battle. The attackers set fire to the mansion, charged in, seized the heads of the slain, impaled them on swords and halberds, and rushed to Yoshiyasu’s residence. Yoshiyasu rode his carriage to Ichij to inspect the heads. Some people recognized Tamenori, but no one could have known what Tomotada looked like. To identify him they brought in his mother, Jibuky-no-tsubone, then in the service of the Hachij Princess. “He was in his third year when my late husband took me down to the west,” she said, “and I have had no news of him since, but the look of this head reminds me of my late husband.” She wept as she spoke. Yes, the head was Tomotada’s.
The Heike retainer Etchū no Jirbye Moritsugi had fled to the province of Tajima, where he now lived as the son-in-law of Kehi no Shir Dk. Dk did not know who he was, but in the end the truth will out. By night Moritsugi would gallop about on one of his father-in-law’s horses, shooting arrows, and then swim it a mile or two through the sea. This aroused the steward’s and the warden’s suspicions, and somehow they found out who he was.