“I don’t feel well after last night,” I blurted out, only to realize with dismay that they thought it was because I had shared my pillow with a man for the first time.
In great excitement someone entered with the letter I had no intention of reading. The royal messenger was waiting uneasily for a reply, and my attendants were wringing their hands not knowing what to do, until finally someone suggested, “Go tell her father.” This, I knew, would be the most unbearable ordeal of all.
“Aren’t you feeling well?” Father asked when he arrived. When they brought up the matter of the letter he said, “What childishness is this? Surely you intend to answer it?” I heard him opening the letter. It was a poem written on thin purple paper:
Friends for many years, yet now your perfume haunts
my last night’s sleeves that never lay on yours.
When my attendants read this they gossiped among themselves about how different I was from most young people these days. Still tense and uneasy I refused to get up. After much fretting they agreed that it would not be appropriate to have someone else reply for me, whereupon they gave the messenger a gift and entrusted him with this message: “She’s such a child that she’s still in bed and hasn’t even looked at His Majesty’s letter yet.”
Around noon a letter came from an unexpected source. I read these lines:
I might well die of grief if now
the smoke trails off entirely in that direction.155
To this the writer added, “Thus far I have survived this meaningless life, but now what is there?” This was written on thin, light blue paper, which had as a background design the old poem:
If I could cease to be, no longer would these clouds
cling to the secret mountains of my heart.156
I tore off a piece of the paper where the words “secret mountains” appeared, and wrote: Can you not understand?
My thoughts scattered and confused,
my heart has not gone drifting off, a wisp of evening smoke.
After I sent this I began to wonder what I had done.
My refusal that day to take any kind of medicine gave rise to idle gossip about my “strange illness.” Shortly after dusk fell, I was informed that His Majesty had arrived. Before I had time to wonder what might happen at this meeting, he pushed open the door and entered my room with an air of intimacy. “I understand you’re ill. What’s the trouble?” he inquired. Feeling not the least inclination to reply, I lay motionless where I was. He lay down beside me and began to talk of what was uppermost in his heart, but I was so dazed that I could only worry about what would happen next. I was tempted to acquiesce quoting the line, “If this were a world without lies,”157 except for my fear that the person who had claimed he might die of grief would consider my behavior vulgar when he learned that the evening smoke had so quickly trailed off in a certain direction. Tonight, when GoFukakusa could not elicit a single word of reply from me, he treated me so mercilessly that my thin gowns were badly ripped. By the time that I had nothing more to lose, I despised my own existence. I faced the dawn with dread.
My undersash untied against my will,
At what point will my name be soiled?
What surprised me, as I continued to brood, was that I still had wits enough to think of my reputation.
GoFukakusa was expressing his fidelity with numerous vows. “Though from life to life our shapes will change,” he said, “there will be no change in the bond between us; though the nights we meet might be far apart, our hearts will never acknowledge separation.” As I listened, the short night, barely affording time to dream, gave way to dawn and the tolling of bells. It was past daybreak. “It will be embarrassing if I stay,” GoFukakusa said, getting up to leave. “Even if you are not sorry we must part, at least see me off.”
Unable to refuse his insistent urgings, I slipped a thin, unlined gown over the clothes I had on, which were damp from a night of weeping, and stepped outside. The moon of the seventeenth night was sinking in the west, and a narrow bank of clouds stretched along the eastern horizon. GoFukakusa wore a green robe, scarlet-lined, over a pale gown. He had on heavily figured trousers. I felt more attracted to him than I ever had before, and I wondered uneasily where these new feelings had come from.
The imperial carriage was ordered by Lord Takaaki, a senior counselor, who was dressed in a light blue robe. The only courtier in attendance was Lord Tamekata, an assistant chief investigator. While several guards and servants were bringing the carriage up, some birds sang out noisily as though to warn me of the new day, and the tolling bell of Kannon Temple seemed meant for me alone. Touched by two kinds of sadness, I remembered the line, “Tears wet my sleeves both left and right.”158
GoFukakusa still did not leave. “It will be lonely,” he said. “See me home.” Knowing who he was, I could hardly claim to be “unaware of the shape of the mountain peak,”159 so I stood there in confusion as the brightening dawn spread through the sky. “Why do you look so pained?” he asked as he helped me into his carriage and ordered it driven away. Leaving this way, without a word to anybody, seemed like an episode from an old tale. What was to become of me?
Dawn’s bell did not awaken me for I never went to sleep.
Yet the painful dream I had streaks the morning sky with grief.
I suppose our ride might be considered amusing, for all the way to the palace GoFukakusa pledged his affection to me as if he were a storied lover making off with his mistress, but for me the road we traveled seemed so dreary I could do nothing but weep.
After the carriage had been drawn through the middle gate to the Corner Mansion,160 GoFukakusa alighted and turned to Takaaki: “I brought her along because she was too unreasonable and childish to leave behind. I think it would be better if no one learned of this for a while.” Then, leaving orders that I was to be taken care of, he retired to his living quarters.
It hardly seemed the same palace where I had lived for so many years as a child. Frightened and ill at ease now, I regretted having come and wondered blankly what I might expect. I was sobbing when I heard the comforting sound of my father’s voice expressing concern over me. When Takaaki explained GoFukakusa’s instructions, Father replied, “This kind of special treatment won’t do. Things should go on as usual. To be secretive now will only lead to trouble when word gets out.” Then I heard him leave. After his visit I brooded uneasily about the future. GoFukakusa interrupted my painful musings and poured out so many words of affection that I was gradually comforted. The thought that my fate was inescapable began to resign me to it.
I remained at the palace for about ten days, during which time His Majesty never failed to visit me at night; yet I was still foolish enough to think about the author of that poem, which had questioned the direction the smoke was taking. My father, meanwhile, kept insisting on the impropriety of my situation, and finally had me return home. I could not bear to see anyone, so I pretended to be ill and kept to my own quarters.
GoFukakusa wrote an affectionate letter saying, “I have grown so accustomed to you that I’m depressed now you are gone. Come back immediately.”
I doubt you yearn for me this much.
If only I could show you the many teardrops on my sleeves.
Although I usually thought his letters disagreeable, I found myself eagerly reading this one. My answer was perhaps too artificial:
Perhaps they were not for me, those drops upon your sleeves,
yet word of them makes my tears flow.
Several days later I returned to the palace—this time openly, in the usual fashion—yet I grew uncomfortable when people immediately began to talk. “The Senior Counselor certainly treasures her,” they would say. “He’s sent her with all the ceremony due an official consort.”
The gossip spread, and before long Empress Higashi-Nijō began to be unpleasant. As the days dragged by I became wretched. I cannot claim that His Majesty really neglected me, but I was depressed when days passed between his visits,
and although I didn’t feel I could complain—as his other ladies did—about who kept him company at night, every time it fell to my lot to conduct another woman to him I understood anew the painful ways of this world. Yet I was haunted by a line of poetry that kept coming to mind: “Will I live to cherish memories of these days?”161 The days passed, each dawn turned to dusk, and autumn arrived….
Was it because of the rains of the Fifth Month, which left nothing untouched, that my father’s spirits were damper than the wettest autumn day? Or was he so thin and worn because he had given up his custom of never spending a night alone and had even stopped going to drinking parties? On the night of the fourteenth, as he was coming home in his carriage from Buddhist services at Ōtani, the outriders accompanying him noticed that he looked sallow and they knew something was seriously wrong. The doctor they summoned made a diagnosis of jaundice caused by too much worry and began administering moxa treatments. I began to worry about him when I saw that his health was gradually deteriorating. Then in the Sixth Month, when I was already at my wits’ end, I discovered that my own condition was not normal. But how could I mention it at such a time?
Father did not order any prayers for his recovery. “Since my condition seems hopeless anyhow, I don’t want to waste a single day in joining His Majesty,” he explained. For a few weeks he remained at his house at the corner of Rokkaku and Kushige streets before returning on the fourteenth of the Seventh Month to his Kawasaki home. He left his younger children behind so that he could quietly prepare for the end. I alone accompanied him, proud of having such responsibility. Father noticed that I was not my usual self, but at first he supposed I was not eating because of my worry for him. He tried to console me until he recognized my real condition and suddenly began to hope that his life might be prolonged for a while. For the first time he had religious services performed: a seven-day service to the God of Mount Tai at the central hall of the Enryaku Temple, seven performances of outdoor dengaku dances at the seven shrines of Hie, and an all-day recitation of the Great Wisdom Sutra at the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine. He also had a stone monument constructed at the riverbed. All these acts of piety were inspired not by any love of his own life, but by concern for my future. I had become, alas, an impediment to his salvation.
Though still seriously ill, my father was out of immediate danger by the twentieth, at which time I returned to the palace. When GoFukakusa learned of my condition, he was especially kind, and yet I was well aware that nothing, not even the so-called “eternal ivy,” lasts forever, and I was afraid lest my fate be like that of the mistress of the wardrobe, who had died in childbirth last month. As the Seventh Month drew to a close my father was showing no improvement, and I was uncertain as to what my own fate would be. On the night of the twenty-seventh, when fewer people were in attendance than usual, GoFukakusa asked me to come to his room. I accompanied him there, and he took the opportunity of our privacy to talk quietly of things past and present. “The uncertainty of life is cruel,” he began. “Your father’s case seems hopeless, and if worse comes to worst, you will be left with no one to depend on. Who besides me will take pity on you?” He wept as he talked of this. How sad that even consolation brings pain.
It was a moonless night. We were talking alone in the darkened room lit only by a dim lantern when suddenly we heard a voice calling my name. It was very late, and I was puzzled until I learned that it was a messenger from Kawasaki. He announced, “The end is imminent.”
I left at once, without any preparations, and feared all the way that I would find Father already dead. Though I knew we were hurrying, the carriage seemed to crawl. When we finally arrived I learned to my great relief that he was still alive.
My father spoke to me, sobbing weakly. “The dew, not yet quite gone, awaits the wind. This life is painful, but knowing your condition I cannot face death without regrets.”
Bells were tolling a late hour when GoFukakusa’s arrival was announced. This was so completely unexpected that even my father, desperately ill though he was, became excited. I hurried out when I heard his carriage being drawn up, and saw that he had come in secret, accompanied by a single courtier and two junior guards. The late moon had just appeared over the rim of the mountains when I saw His Majesty standing in the brilliant moonlight dressed in a light violet robe with a woven flower design. What a splendid honor it was to receive such a sudden visit from the retired emperor.
Father sent this word: “Lacking even the strength to slip on a robe, I am unable to receive you, but the fact that you have honored me with this visit will be one of my fondest memories of this life.”
At this GoFukakusa unceremoniously slid open the doors and entered the room. Father attempted to sit up but could not. “Stay as you are,” GoFukakusa said as he laid a cushion beside Father’s pillow and sat down. Before long, tears were streaming down GoFukakusa’s cheeks. “You have served me intimately since I was a child. News that the end is near grieved me so much I wanted to see you once more.”
“The joy your visit has brought me is more than I deserve, yet I am so concerned for this child I don’t know what to do. Her mother left her behind when she was only two, and knowing that I was all she had, I raised her carefully. Nothing grieves me more than the thought of leaving her in this condition.” Father wept as he spoke.
“I am not sure how much I can do, but at least I am willing to help. Don’t let these worries block your path to paradise.” His Majesty spoke kindly. “You should rest,” he said and got up to leave.
It was now past daybreak and the retired emperor, anxious to leave before he was observed in his informal attire, was on the point of departing when a messenger came out to his carriage with a biwa that had belonged to my grandfather, Prime Minister Michimitsu, and a sword that once belonged to Emperor GoToba and had been presented to my grandfather about the time of GoToba’s exile.162 A note on light blue paper was attached to the thong of the sword:
Master and man, our ties span three worlds they say;
departing, I commit the future to your hands.
GoFukakusa was deeply moved by this. Several times over he assured me that I had no reason to worry. Shortly afterward a letter arrived written in His Majesty’s own hand:
The next time we shall meet beyond this world of sorrow,
under the brightening sky of that long-awaited dawn.163
His Majesty’s concern was our only pleasure in this sad and painful time.
GoFukakusa sent me a maternity sash earlier than was customary so my father could witness the ceremony.164 It was formally presented to me by his emissary, the senior counselor Takaaki, on the second day of the Eighth Month. Takaaki wore a court robe, having been instructed by GoFukakusa not to wear mourning on this occasion, and was accompanied by outriders and attendants. My father, who was immensely pleased by this, ordered saké to be prepared. I wondered sadly if this would be the last such occasion. Father made Takaaki a present of Shiogama, the highly prized ox he had received from the prince who headed the Ninna Temple.
Because Father had felt better on this day, I had a glimmer of hope that he might improve. When it grew late I lay down beside him to rest and promptly fell asleep. He awakened me abruptly: “It’s useless. I am able to forget the grief of setting out, perhaps even today or tomorrow, on an unknown path, but my thoughts keep dwelling on the one thing that grieves me. Just to watch you innocently sleeping there makes me wretched. Ever since your mother died when you were only two, I alone have worried about you. Although I have many other children, I feel that I have lavished on you alone the ‘love due three thousand.’ When I see you smile, I find ‘a hundred charms’; when you are sad, I too grieve.165 I have watched the passing of fifteen springs and autumns with you, but now I must depart. If you would serve His Majesty and not incur his displeasure, always be respectful; never be negligent. The ways of this world are often unexpected. If you should incur the ill will of your Lord and of the world and find you are unable to manage, you a
re immediately to enter holy orders where you can work toward your own salvation, repay your debts to your parents, and pray that we might all be together in paradise. But if, finding yourself forsaken and alone, you decide to serve another master or try to make your way by entering any other household whatsoever, consider yourself disowned even though I am already dead. For the truth is that relationships between men and women are not to be tampered with, inasmuch as they are not limited to this world alone. It would be shameful indeed if you remained in society only to blacken the name of our great family. It is only after retiring from society that you can do as you will without causing suffering.” Father spoke at such length that I took these as his final instructions to me.
The bells were tolling daybreak when Nakamitsu166 came in with the steamed plantain leaves that were regularly spread under the patient’s mat.
“Allow me to change the plantain,” he said to my father.
“It doesn’t matter now. The end is near,” my father said. “Anything will do. First see to it that Nijō eats. I want to watch her. Hurry!” I did not see how I could eat, but my father insisted. I wondered sadly what would happen later when he was no longer around to watch me. Nakamitsu returned bringing a yam dish called imomaki in an unglazed pottery bowl. Everyone knows that imomaki is said to be an unhealthy food for a pregnant woman, and when the dish was set before me it looked so unappetizing that I merely pretended to eat it.
At daybreak we decided to send for a priest. In the previous month the chief priest of the Yasaka Temple had come to shave Father’s head and administer his vows. He had also given Father the religious name Renshō. Therefore, that priest seemed the logical one to summon for the last rites, but for some reason my grandmother, the Koga nun, insisted instead on calling Shōkōbō, the chief priest of the Kawara Temple. Even though he had been informed that Father was rapidly failing, he did not hurry.
Traditional Japanese Literature Page 56