The Tales of the Heike

by Burton Watson

  I shaved my head, but what was there to hate?

  There was no blunting your keen resolve, firm as a catalpa bow.

  Yokobue lived at the Hokke-ji nunnery in Nara. But perhaps because of the burden her memories imposed on her, she died not long afterward. When Priest Takiguchi received word of this, he devoted himself with even greater zeal to his religious duties. His father forgave him for his act of disobedience; all those who knew him greatly trusted and respected him; and he came to be known as the saint of Kōya.

  This was the man on whom Koremori now called at Mount Kōya. When Koremori had known him in the past in the capital, he had been dressed in an unfigured hunting robe and tall black hat, his clothing neatly arrayed, his sidelocks smoothed: a young man in the prime of life. But now that he had renounced the world, though not yet thirty, he had the lean, wizened look of a monk of advanced years and was attired in a deep-dyed black robe and surplice of the same color. Koremori could only envy someone whose heart was so fervently dedicated to the path of religion. Had he been in the bamboo grove where the Seven Sages of the Jin dynasty resided or on Mount Shang, the retreat of the four white-haired recluses of the Han, he could not have been more impressed.

  Yokobue (right) seeks out Tokiyori at the Ōjō-in retreat in Saga but is turned away. Tokiyori (left) goes to Mount Kōya, where he practices the Buddhist way.

  Koremori Becomes a Monk (10:10)

  “I am like the bird in the Himalayas who shivers at night, swearing it will build a nest the next day, but forgets its resolve when morning comes!” declared Koremori sadly, his tears falling. “I keep putting off from day to day what I have in mind to do.” His face tanned by the salt sea winds, his body worn with care and anxiety, he hardly seemed the same person he had been in former days, yet even so he stood out above others.

  That night when he returned to the retreat where Priest Takiguchi lived, he spent the whole night talking with the priest of old times. Observing the holy man’s activities and way of life, he could see that he was deeply immersed in the search for enlightenment, seeking through his devotions to polish the jewel of true understanding; at intervals in the night and dawn sounding the bell that accompanied his invocations, he labored to wake himself from this dream realm of birth and death. If I too should become a monk, thought Koremori, this is how I would want to be! When dawn came, he made his way to the Venerable Chikaku, a holy man residing in the Tōzen-in, and expressed a desire to become a monk.

  He summoned Yosōbyōe Shigekage and Ishidōmaru, two of the men who had accompanied him from Yashima. “Unknown to others, I long to see my loved ones to a degree that others can hardly be aware of,” he said, “but the world is small and I am not free to move about as I might wish. My own case is hopeless. But there are many others these days who are prospering. Whatever the circumstances you face, you will surely be able to get along somehow. Once you have seen the end of me, you must hurry back to the capital and look after your own livelihood. Take good care of your wives and children, and on occasion sometimes pray for my well-being in the life hereafter!”

  The two men listened in tearful silence and for a time were unable to reply. Finally Shigekage, wiping back his tears, spoke up. “At the time of the Heiji insurrections my father, Kageyasu, was in the service of his lordship, your deceased father Shigemori. In the fighting around the Nijō Horikawa intersection, he clashed with the forces of Kamadabyōe and was struck a mortal blow by Akugenda. I, too, am capable of such service!

  “At the time of my father’s death I was only two, so I have no memory of the event. I lost my mother when I was seven, and after that there was no one to pity or look after me. But your late father said, ‘This is the son of the man who gave his life for me!’ and he took me under his care. When I was nine and you had your coming-of-age ceremony, I also was allowed to bind up my hair in similar fashion. At that time your father said, ‘The name Mori is traditional in our family, and so I will give it to this son of mine and call him Koremori. And the name Shige I will give to this boy Matsuō.’ That was how I came to be given the name Shigekage. And the reason I had been called Matsuō before that was because on the fiftieth day after I was born, my father took me in his arms and showed me to his lordship. Your father said, ‘Since this house we live in is known as the Komatsu mansion, we will take his name from that.’ And that is how I came to be called Matsuō. Thanks to my father’s noble death, I was able to enjoy all these marks of favor. And I was also treated with unusual kindness by your father’s retainers.

  “When his lordship, your father, was on his deathbed, he had set aside all thought of worldly affairs and spoke of them no longer. But he called me to his side and said, ‘Ah, poor boy! You have always looked on me as a memento of your father, and I have looked on you as a memento of him, my loyal retainer Kageyasu. At the next round of promotions I had hoped to see you raised to the rank of captain of the imperial guard so that you could be called by the same title that your father was. All those hopes are vain now. But you must never be disloyal to my son Koremori!’

  “Did you think that if you found yourself in difficult circumstances, I would desert you and run away? If that was your thought, then it reflects deep dishonor on me! You speak of those many persons who prosper in the world today. But nowadays it is only the retainers of the Genji who do so. After you have become a god or a buddha or whatever you are destined to become, even though I might enjoy some degree of worldly happiness, could it go on for a thousand years? Although I might live for ten thousand years, would it not come to an end eventually? The circumstances all point to it—what better time than now to enter the religious life!” Then with his own hands he cut off his topknot and, weeping as he did so, asked Priest Takiguchi to shave his head.

  Seeing this, Ishidōmaru cut off his hair at the clasp, and he too had his head shaved by Priest Takiguchi. He had been in Koremori’s service from the age of eight and had enjoyed a degree of favor equal to that of Shigekage.

  Seeing how these others had taken the lead in entering religious life, Koremori grew more downcast than ever. Aware that he could postpone the step no longer, however, he recited the passage that reads: “While you transmigrate within the Threefold World,4 the bonds of familial affection can never be broken. Cast aside affection, enter the Absolute, and there gain the true fruits of affection.” Chanting it over three times, he at last allowed his head to be shaved.

  “How sad!” he said. “Before I shaved my head, if only I could have seen my loved ones once more as I did in the past, I would have nothing to regret!” To have said such a thing shows how immersed he still was in blameworthy thoughts! At the time these events took place, both Koremori and Shigekage were twenty-seven years old. Ishidōmaru was eighteen.

  Koremori then summoned his retainer Takesato. “You must return at once to Yashima,” he told him. “Do not try to go to the capital, for this reason. My wife will eventually find out about the step I have taken. But if she hears an account of it from you, whom she knows to be reliable, I am afraid she will rush to enter religious life herself.

  “When you return to Yashima, give the people there this message from me. ‘As you have no doubt observed already, the situation in the world today has become in every respect irksome and hateful, and I can only believe that further tribulations lie ahead. Therefore, without informing you beforehand, I have entered religious life. I realize that, following the loss of my brother Kiyotsune in the west and the death of my brother Moromori at Ichi-no-tani, the news that I have taken such an action as this will cause you considerable dismay, and that thought weighs heavily on my mind. The suit of armor known as Karakawa, Chinese Leather, and the sword called Kogarasu, Little Crow, have been handed down in our family from the time of the Taira military commander Sadamori. I am ninth in the line of those who have inherited them. If by some miracle the fortunes of our family should revive, these heirlooms should be handed over to my son Rokudai.’”

  “I would like to postpone my
trip to Yashima until I have seen how things go with you, my lord,” said Takesato.

  “If that is the case …” replied Koremori, and he retained Takesato as a member of his party. He also kept Priest Takiguchi with him so that the latter could counsel him in religious matters. Thus the group, dressed as mountain worshipers on a pilgrimage, left Mount Kōya and made their way to Sandō in the same province.

  They stopped first at Fujishiro, one of the shrines on the road to Kumano, and then at the succeeding shrines, pausing to offer prayers at each. When they reached the Iwashiro Shrine just north of the beach known as Senri-no-hama, they encountered a party of seven or eight men on horseback dressed in hunting costume.

  Koremori and the others of the group, fearful that they were about to be taken captive, gripped the daggers at their waist, prepared to slit open their stomachs if that should be necessary. But although the riders passed close by, they gave no indication of any hostile intent but instead hurriedly dismounted from their horses and bowed in a deeply respectful manner before riding on.

  “They appear to have recognized me,” thought Koremori uneasily. “Who could they be?” He quickened his pace, eager to be gone from the place.

  The leader of the party of horsemen was Yuasa Munemitsu, the son of a native of the province named Yuasa Muneshige.

  “Who was that?” asked Munemitsu’s retainers.

  Munemitsu wept as he replied, “Ah, I hesitate even to speak of it! That was none other than Middle Captain Koremori, the eldest son of the Komatsu minister of state, Shigemori! I wonder how he managed to escape from Yashima and make his way here. He has shaved his head and become a monk, and Yosōbyōe and Ishidōmaru have done likewise and are accompanying him. I would like to have gone closer to pay my respects. But I was afraid it might embarrass him, so I went on my way. What a pitiful sight he is!”

  Munemitsu pressed his sleeve to his face as he spoke, shedding tears, and his retainers all did the same.

  Koremori Drowns Himself (10:12)

  Having completed his pilgrimage to the three sacred mountain sites of Kumano without incident, Koremori went to the seaside shrine known as Hama-no-miya, where he boarded a boat and set out on the boundless reaches of the sea. Far away in the offing was an island called Yamanari-no-shima, and he had the rowers row him there. Landing on the shore, he stripped off a piece of bark from a large pine tree and wrote his name on the trunk in the following manner: “Grandfather: Prime Minister Taira no Ason Kiyomori, religious name Jōkai. Father: Palace Minister and Major Captain of the Left Shigemori, religious name Jōren. Middle Captain of the Third Court Rank Koremori, religious name Jōen, age twenty-seven. Juei third year, Third Month, twenty-eighth day, entered the sea off the shore of Nachi.” Having left this inscription, he had the boat rowed once more toward the offing.

  He had made up his mind what he intended to do. But now that the time to do it had arrived, he found himself feeling downhearted and forlorn. Since it was the twenty-eighth day of the Third Month, a haze lay over the water as far as the eye could see, lending a melancholy tone to the scene. Even in the most ordinary times, the late spring sky has an air of sadness, and how much sadder it seemed to one who knew that this would be his last day to see it. As he watched a fishing boat far off bobbing and all but sinking among the waves, he could not help dwelling on the ups and downs of his own fortunes. Observing a wild goose leading a line of its companions as they flew, crying to their home in the north, he recalled how the Chinese statesman Su Wu, held captive in a barbarian land to the north, had tied a letter to the foot of a wild goose and so sent news to his loved ones back home. Su Wu’s longings could hardly have been greater than his own, he thought.

  “What am I doing?” he asked himself. “Will I never be free of these deluded ties and attachments?” He faced west, pressed his palms together, and invoked the name of Amida Buddha. But his mind ran on as before: “My end is at hand, but how can my loved ones in the capital be aware of that? Even now, moment by moment they are waiting for some chance word of me. In the end, of course, they will learn the truth, but what will they think then, how will they lament when they know I am no longer of this world?”

  He ceased his invocations, lowered his hands, and turned to the holy man, Priest Takiguchi. “What pathetic things we are—better if we had no wives or children!” he said. “They not only fill us with longings for this world but also make it hard for us to gain enlightenment in the world beyond. Even now, much as I regret it, I keep thinking of them. And they say that it is a great sin to have such thoughts at a time like this! I confess my guilt—I am much to blame.”

  The priest was deeply moved, but he felt that it would not do if he, too, gave way to weakness at such a moment. And so, holding back his tears, he assumed an air of composure. “It is just as you say,” he replied. “When it comes to powerlessness before the ties of love and affection, we all are alike, whether highborn or low. Even though husband and wife may share a pillow for no more than a single night, the bonds of karma that link them reach back five hundred lifetimes in the past, and vows from a former existence are not easily undone. But all who are born must perish, and all who come together must surely part—such is the law of this fleeting life of ours. The dewdrop on the leaf tip and the dew on the stalk of the plant—one may go quickly, one linger a little longer, yet in the end both alike must fade.

  “At the Mount Li Palace in China, Emperor Xuanzong and his consort Yang Guifei swore by the stars of the autumn evening to be true forever, but their vows brought them only pain and heartache. At the Palace of Sweet Springs, Emperor Wu went on yearning for his beloved, the deceased Lady Li, but his yearnings could not endure forever. Even the immortals Red Pine and Plum Fortune had to face the hateful truth of eventual demise. Even bodhisattvas who have fulfilled the ten stages of practice and are on the verge of attaining buddhahood must still bow to the law of life and death. Though you may taste the joys of longevity, you can never escape this sorrow. Though you live to be a hundred, in the end this same grief will await you.

  “The Devil of the Sixth Heaven, that enemy of the Buddhist faith who rules over all the six heavens of the world of desire, hates to see any living being in his domain escape from the law of birth and death. So he assumes the guise of a wife or a husband in order to hinder such beings from gaining release. But the Buddhas of the three existences of past, present, and future regard all living beings as their own children, and so they urge them to seek the Pure Land of Perfect Bliss, from which there is no regressing. Therefore, from endless ages in the past to the present they have given stern warning that wives and children can hinder salvation by binding someone to repeated transmigration in the realm of birth and death. So you must not weaken in your resolve at this point.

  “An ancestor of the Genji clan, Yoriyoshi of Iyo, having received the imperial command, proceeded to the region of Ōshū in the north to put down the rebellion headed by Sadatō and Munetō. Over a period of twelve years he cut off the heads of some sixteen thousand persons, and how many thousands or tens of thousands of beasts of the mountains and fish of the streams he killed is beyond calculation. Yet it is reported that when he lay on his deathbed, because he devoted all his thoughts to the quest for enlightenment, he was able to fulfill his hopes for rebirth in the Pure Land.

  “The merit that accrues from the act of becoming a monk is so vast that it cancels out all the sins from your previous existences. This is the point to remember. We are told that even though you may build a tower made of the Seven Treasures5 so high that it reaches to the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods,6 the merit you win cannot equal that gained by becoming a monk for one day only. We are told that even though you give alms to a hundred arhats7 for a hundred or a thousand years, again the merit cannot equal that gained by becoming a monk for a single day. Deeply immersed in sin as Yoriyoshi was, because his mind was firm in faith, he was able to be reborn in the Pure Land. And your own sins are surely nothing compared with his, so why should
you not be able to do likewise?

  “Furthermore, the deity of this Kumano Shrine is an avatar of the Thus Come One Amida Buddha. He has taken forty-eight vows, beginning with the vow that ‘there shall no longer be Three Evil Paths of Existence’8 and ending with the vow that ‘they shall gain the three types of clear cognition.’ Each of these forty-eight vows is intended to bring salvation to living beings. The eighteenth vow in particular states: ‘After I attain Buddhahood, if living beings in the lands in the ten directions, most sincere in heart, trusting in my vows, should wish to be reborn in my country and should call on my name ten times, then if they cannot do so, may I not gain true enlightenment!’ So we have only to call on his name once or ten times. We must have complete faith and never for a moment entertain the least doubt!

  “If now, summoning up a truly earnest desire for salvation, you recite the nenbutsu ten times or even once, then Amida will reduce his body, indescribably huge in its dimensions, to sixteen feet in height and, with the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi and a numberless host of saintly beings and bodhisattvas in temporary manifestations surrounding him a hundredfold or a thousandfold, all playing music and singing songs, will issue forth from the eastern gate of the Land of Bliss and will come to greet you. Then, even though it may seem that your bodily form has sunk to the depths of the blue sea, in fact you will rise up on purple clouds. And once you have attained the emancipation of Buddhahood and won enlightenment, you may return to your old home in this transient world of ours and lead your wife and children to salvation. For, like Amida himself, you can ‘return to the world of defilement to save human and heavenly beings.’9 You must have no doubts!”

  With these words of encouragement, he sounded his bell. Realizing now what a good friend and guide he had in the priest, Koremori immediately cast off all his doubts and delusions. Facing west and pressing his palms together, he performed a hundred recitations of the nenbutsu in a loud voice, and as he pronounced the last “Hail!” he cast himself into the sea.