The Heike had lost the battle. “Those Taira lords will be heading for the shore in hopes of making their getaway by boat!” thought Kumagae Naozane to himself. “Fine! I’ll go look for one of their generals to grapple with!” and he turned his horse in the direction of the beach.
As he did so, he spotted a lone warrior riding into the sea, making for the boats in the offing. He was wearing a battle robe of finely woven silk embroidered in a crane design, armor of light green lacing, and a horned helmet. He carried a sword with gilt fittings and a quiver whose arrows were fledged with black and white eagle feathers and held a rattan-wound bow in his hand. He was seated in a gold-rimmed saddle, astride a gray horse with white markings.
The lone warrior’s horse had swum out about two hundred feet from the shore when Kumagae, waving with his fan, called out, “Ho there, General! I see you. Don’t shame yourself by showing your back to an enemy. Come back!”
The rider, acknowledging the call, turned toward the beach. As he was about to ride up out of the waves, Kumagae drew alongside and grappled with him, dragging him from his horse. Pinning him down so as to cut off his head, Kumagae pushed aside his helmet. The face he saw was that of a young man of sixteen or seventeen, lightly powdered and with blackened teeth.
Gazing at the boy’s handsome face, Kumagae realized that he was just the age of his own son Kojirō, and he could not bring himself to use his sword. “Who are you? Tell me your name and I’ll let you go!” he said.
“Who are you?” asked the young man.
“No one of great importance—Kumagae Naozane of the province of Musashi.”
“Then there’s no need for me to tell you my name,” the young man replied. “I’m worthy enough to be your opponent. When you take my head, ask someone who I am—they will know all right!”
“Spoken like a true general!” thought Kumagae. “But simply killing this one man can’t change defeat into victory or victory into defeat. When my son Kojirō has even a slight injury, how much I worry about him! Just think how this boy’s father will grieve when he hears that he’s been killed! If only I could spare him.”
But as he glanced quickly behind him, he saw some fifty Genji horsemen under Toi and Kajiwara coming toward him. Fighting back the tears, he said, “I’d like to let you go, but our forces are everywhere in sight—you could never get away. Rather than fall into someone else’s hands, it’s better that I kill you. I’ll see that prayers are said for your salvation in the life to come.”
“Just take my head and be quick about it!” the boy said.
Kumagae was so overcome with pity that he did not know where to strike. His eyes seemed to dim, his wits to desert him, and for a moment he hardly knew where he was. But then he realized that, for all his tears, no choice was left him, and he struck off the boy’s head.
“We men who bear arms—how wretched is our lot!” he said. “If I had not been born of a warrior family, would I ever have faced a task like this? What a terrible thing I have done!” Again and again, he repeated the words as he raised his sleeve to brush the tears from his face.
After some time, aware that he must get on with the business, he removed the boy’s armor and battle robe and wrapped the head in them. As he was doing so, he noticed a brocade bag with a flute in it that had been fastened to the boy’s waist. “Ah, how pitiful!” he said. “Those people I heard at dawn this morning playing music in the enemy stronghold—he must have been one of them! Among all the ten thousand troops from the eastern provinces fighting on our side, is there anyone who carries a flute with him into battle? These highborn people—how gentle and refined they are!”
Later, when Kumagae’s battle trophies were presented to Yoshitsune for inspection, there were none among the company who did not weep at the sight.
It was subsequently learned that the young man slain by Kumagae was Atsumori, the seventeen-year-old son of the master of the Palace Repair Office, Taira no Tsunemori. From that time onward, Kumagae’s desire to become a Buddhist monk grew even stronger. The flute in question had been presented by Retired Emperor Toba to Atsumori’s grandfather, Tadamori, who was a skilled player. From him it had been passed down to the son, Tsunemori, and in turn had been given to Atsumori because of his marked aptitude for the instrument. It was known by the name Saeda, Little Branch.
It is moving to think that for all their exaggerated phrases and flowery embellishments, even music and the arts can in the end lead a man to praise the Buddha’s way.
After a resounding defeat, the Taira forces scatter in their attempt to flee by sea.
Book Eleven
ANTOKU: emperor and son of Emperor Takakura and Kenreimon’in.
GOSHIRAKAWA: retired emperor and head of the imperial clan.
KAGETOKI (Kajiwara): deputy commander of Minamoto forces and rival of Yoshitsune.
KENREIMON’IN (Taira): daughter of Kiyomori and Nun of the Second Rank.
MUNEMORI (Taira): son of Kiyomori, Taira clan head, and leader of the Taira forces at Yashima.
NUN OF THE SECOND RANK (Taira): widow of Kiyomori and grandmother of Emperor Antoku.
YOSHITSUNE (Minamoto): younger half brother of Yoritomo and leader of the Genji forces at Yashima and Dan-no-ura.
After landing with a small force on the island of Shikoku, Yoshitsune leads his Genji troops to the rear of the Taira camp at Yashima, where the Taira have set up their headquarters. With a small force, he manages to bluff the Taira, led by Munemori, into retreating to their boats. The tide finally turns against the Taira at the sea battle at Dan-no-ura, on the western tip of the Inland Sea.
THE DROWNING OF THE FORMER EMPEROR (11:9)
By this time the Genji warriors had succeeded in boarding the Heike boats, shooting dead the sailors and helmsmen with their arrows or cutting them down with their swords. The bodies lay heaped in the bottom of the boats, and there was no longer anyone to keep the boats on course.
Taira no Tomomori boarded a small craft and made his way to the vessel in which the former emperor was riding. “This is what the world has come to!” he exclaimed. “Have all these unsightly things thrown into the sea!” Then he began racing from prow to stern, sweeping, mopping, dusting, and attempting with his own hands to put the boat into proper order.
“How goes the battle, Lord Tomomori?” asked the emperor’s ladies-in-waiting, pressing him with questions.
“You’ll have a chance to see some splendid gentlemen from the eastern region!” he replied with a cackling laugh.
“How can you joke at a time like this!” they protested, their voices joined in a chorus of shrieks and wails.
Observing the situation and evidently having been prepared for some time for such an eventuality, the Nun of the Second Rank, the emperor’s grandmother, slipped a two-layer nun’s robe over her head and tied her glossed silk trousers high at the waist. She placed the sacred jewel, one of the three imperial regalia, under her arm, thrust the sacred sword in her sash, and took the child emperor in her arms. “I may be a mere woman, but I have no intention of falling into the hands of the enemy! I will accompany my lord. All those of you who are resolved to fulfill your duty by doing likewise, quickly follow me!” So saying, she strode to the side of the boat.
The emperor had barely turned eight but had the bearing of someone much older than that. The beauty of his face and form seemed to radiate all around him. His shimmering black hair fell down the length of his back.
Startled and confused, he asked, “Grandma, where are you going to take me?”
Gazing at his innocent face and struggling to hold back her tears, the nun replied, “Don’t you understand? In your previous life you were careful to observe the ten good rules of conduct, and for that reason you were reborn in this life as a ruler of ten thousand chariots. But now evil entanglements have you in their power, and your days of good fortune have come to an end.
“First,” she told him tearfully, “you must face east and bid farewell to the goddess of the Grand
Shrine at Ise. Then you must turn west and trust in Amida Buddha to come with his hosts to greet you and lead you to his Pure Land. Come now, turn your face to the west and recite the invocation of the Buddha’s name. This far-off land of ours is no bigger than a millet seed, a realm of sorrow and adversity. Let us leave it now and go together to a place of rejoicing, the paradise of the Pure Land!”
Dressed in a dove gray robe, his hair now done in boyish loops on either side of his head, the child, his face bathed in tears, pressed his small hands together, knelt down, and bowed first toward the east, taking his leave of the deity of the Ise Shrine. Then he turned toward the west and began chanting the nenbutsu, the invocation of Amida’s name. The nun then took him in her arms. Comforting him, she said, “There’s another capital down there beneath the waves!” So they plunged to the bottom of the thousand-fathom sea.
How pitiful that the spring winds of impermanence should so abruptly scatter the beauty of the blossoms; how heartless that the rough waves of reincarnation should engulf this tender body! Long Life is the name they give to the imperial palace, signaling that one should reside there for years unending; its gates are dubbed Ageless, a term that speaks of a reign forever young. Yet before he had reached the age of ten, this ruler ended as refuse on the ocean floor.
Ten past virtues rewarded with a throne, yet how fleeting was that prize! He who once was a dragon among the clouds now had become a fish in the depths of the sea. Dwelling once on terraces lofty as those of the god Brahma, in palaces like the Joyful Sight Citadel of the god Indra, surrounded by great lords and ministers of state, a throng of kin and clansmen in his following, now in an instant he ended his life beneath this boat, under these billows—sad, sad indeed!
Yoshitsune returns to the capital with the imperial regalia and the Heike prisoners. The praise and awards showered on him arouse the suspicions of Yoritomo, and the situation is exacerbated when Kajiwara Kagetoki slanders Yoshitsune. Meanwhile, Munemori and his son, as well as Shigehira and other leading members of the Taira family, are executed.
The Initiates’ Book
GOSHIRAKAWA: retired emperor, head of the imperial clan, and paternal grandfather of Emperor Antoku.
KENREIMON’IN (Taira): daughter of Kiyomori, consort of Emperor Takakura, and mother of the deceased emperor Antoku; taken prisoner at Dan-no-ura.
THE MOVE TO ŌHARA
… The place where Kenreimon’in was living was not far from the capital, and the bustling road leading past it was full of prying eyes. She could not help feeling that fragile as her existence might be, mere dew before the wind, she might better live it out in some more remote mountain setting where distressing news of worldly affairs was less likely to reach her. She had been unable to find a suitable location, however, when a certain lady who had called on her mentioned that the Buddhist retreat known as Jakkō-in in the mountains of Ōhara was a very quiet spot.
A mountain village may be lonely, she thought to herself, recalling an old poem on the subject, but it is a better place to dwell than among the world’s troubles and sorrows. Having thus determined to move, she found that her sister, the wife of Lord Takafusa, could probably arrange for a palanquin and other necessities. Accordingly, in the first year of the Bunji era, as the Ninth Month was drawing to a close, she set off for the Jakkō-in in Ōhara.
As Kenreimon’in passed along the road, observing the hues of the autumn leaves on the trees all around her, she soon found the day coming to a close, perhaps all the sooner because she was entering the shade of the mountains. The tolling of the evening bell from a temple in the fields sounded its somber note, and dew from the grasses along the way made her sleeves, already damp with tears, wetter than ever. A stormy wind began to blow, tumbling the leaves from the trees; the sky clouded over; and autumn showers began to fall. She could just catch the faint sad belling of a deer, and the half-audible lamentations of the insects. Everything contrived to fill her with a sense of desolation difficult to describe in words. Even in those earlier days, when her life had been a precarious journey from one cove or one island to another, she reflected sadly, she had never had such a feeling of hopelessness.
The retreat was in a lonely spot of moss-covered crags, the sort of place, she felt, where she could live out her days. As she looked about her, she noted that the bush clover in the dew-filled garden had been stripped of its leaves by frost, that the chrysanthemums by the hedge, past their prime, were faded and dry—all reflecting, it seemed, her own condition. Making her way to where the statue of the Buddha was enshrined, she said a prayer: “May the spirit of the late emperor attain perfect enlightenment; may he quickly gain the wisdom of the buddhas!” But even as she did so, the image of her dead son seemed to appear before her, and she wondered in what future existence she might be able to forget him.
Next to the Jakkō-in she had a small building erected, ten feet square in size, with one room to sleep in and the other to house the image of the Buddha. Morning and evening, day and night, she performed her devotions in front of the image, ceaselessly intoning the Buddha’s name over the long hours. In this way, always diligent, she passed the months and days.
On the fifteenth day of the Tenth Month, as evening was approaching, Kenreimon’in heard the sound of footsteps on the dried oak leaves that littered the garden. “Who could be coming to call at a place so far removed from the world as this?” she said, addressing her woman companion. “Go see who it is. If it is someone I should not see, I must hurry to take cover!” But when the woman went to look, she found that it was only a stag that had happened to pass by.
“Who was it?” asked Kenreimon’in, to which her companion, Lady Dainagon no Suke, struggling to hold back her tears, replied with this poem:
Who would tread a path to this rocky lair?
It was a deer whose passing rustled the leaves of the oak.
Struck by the pathos of the situation, Kenreimon’in carefully inscribed the poem on the small sliding panel by her window.
During her drab and uneventful life, bitter as it was, she found many things that provided food for thought. The trees ranged before the eaves of her retreat suggested to her the seven rows of jewel-laden trees that are said to grow in the Western Paradise, and the water pooled in a crevice in the rocks brought to mind the wonderful water of eight blessings to be found there. Spring blossoms, so easily scattered with the breeze, taught her a lesson in impermanence; the autumn moon, so quickly hidden by its companion clouds, spoke of the transience of life. Those court ladies in the Zhaoyang Hall in China who admired the blossoms at dawn soon saw their petals blown away by the wind; those in the Changqiu Palace who gazed at the evening moon had its brightness stolen from them by clouds. Once in the past, this lady too had lived in similar splendor, reclining on brocade bedclothes in chambers of gold and jade, and now in a hut of mere brushwood and woven vines—even strangers must weep for her.
The retired emperor GoShirakawa visits Kenreimon’in.
THE DEATH OF THE IMPERIAL LADY
While they were speaking, the bell of the Jakkō-in sounded, signaling the close of the day, and the sun sank beyond the western hills. The retired emperor, reluctant though he was to leave, wiped away his tears and prepared to begin the journey back.
All her memories of the past brought back to her once more, Kenreimon’in could scarcely stem the flood of tears with her sleeve. She stood watching as the imperial entourage set out for the capital, watching until it was far in the distance. Then she turned to the image of the Buddha and, speaking through her tears, uttered this prayer: “May the spirit of the late emperor and the souls of all my clanspeople who perished attain complete and perfect enlightenment; may they quickly gain the wisdom of the Buddhas!”
In the past she had faced eastward with this petition: “Great Deity of the Grand Shrine of Ise and Great Bodhisattva Hachiman, may the Son of Heaven be blessed with most wonderful longevity, may he live a thousand autumns, ten thousand years!” But now she changed dire
ction and, facing west with palms pressed together, in sorrow spoke these words: “May the souls of all those who have perished find their way to Amida’s Pure Land!”
On the sliding panel of her sleeping room she had inscribed the following poems:
When did my heart learn such ways?
Of late I think so longingly of palace companions I once knew!
The past, too, has vanished like a dream—
my days by this brushwood door cannot be long in number!
The following poem is reported to have been inscribed on a pillar of Kenreimon’in’s retreat by Minister of the Left Sanesada, one of the officials who accompanied the retired emperor on his visit:
You who in past times were likened to the moon—
dwelling now deep in these faraway mountains, a light no longer shining—.
Once, when Kenreimon’in was bathed in tears, overwhelmed by memories of the past and thoughts of the future, she heard the cry of a mountain cuckoo and wrote this poem:
Come then, cuckoo, let us compare tears—
I, too, do nothing but cry out in a world of pain.
The Taira warriors who survived the Dan-no-ura hostilities and were taken prisoner were paraded through the main streets of the capital and then either beheaded or sent into exile far from their wives and children. With the exception of Taira no Yorimori, not one escaped execution or was permitted to remain in the capital.
With regard to the forty or more Taira wives, no special punitive measures were taken—they were left to join their relatives or to seek aid from persons they had known in the past. But even those fortunate enough to find themselves seated within sumptuous hangings were not spared the winds of uncertainty, and those who ended in humble brushwood dwellings could not live free of dust and turmoil. Husbands and wives who had slept pillow to pillow now found themselves at the far ends of the sky. Parents and children who had nourished each other no longer even knew each other’s whereabouts. Although their loving thoughts never for a moment ceased, lament as they might, they had somehow to endure these things.
Traditional Japanese Literature Page 54