Yoshitsune was overjoyed. “This is a sign from the Great Bodhisattva Hachiman!” he declared and, rinsing his hands and mouth with water, he bowed in obeisance. All his warriors followed his example.
In addition, some one or two thousand porpoises appeared, coming from the direction of the Genji boats and swimming toward those of the Heike. Munemori, the Heike commander, observing this, summoned Harenobu, a doctor of divination, and stated, “There are always porpoises hereabouts, but I’ve never seen so many of them. What meaning do you divine in this?”
“If these porpoises staying near the surface go back in the direction they came from, it means the Genji are doomed. But if they continue in their current direction, then I’m afraid our own forces will be in danger.”
He had hardly finished delivering these words when the porpoises dived directly under the Heike boats and disappeared. “This is the end of our world!” he said.
Shigeyoshi of Awa had faithfully served the Heike lords for three years, again and again going to battle in their defense without thought for his own life. But after his son Saemon had been taken prisoner by the Genji forces, perhaps concluding that his efforts were hopeless, he abruptly shifted his allegiance and went over to the Genji side.
The Heike had contrived a scheme whereby they would assign their high-ranking men to the ordinary boats and their men of inferior class and fighting capacity to the large, Chinese-style ships. They assumed that in the battle the Genji would concentrate on the Chinese vessels and that when they did so, the Heike, having made the necessary preparations, would close in for the kill.
Because Shigeyoshi of Awa had gone over to the other side, however, the Genji, now aware of the scheme, paid no heed to the Chinese vessels but instead directed their attack at the boats in which the Heike commanders, disguised as common soldiers, were riding.
“What a blunder!” exclaimed the Heike leader Tomomori. “I should have cut off and thrown away Shigeyoshi’s head!” Much as he might pour out his regrets, however, the situation was now past remedy.
So it was that all the fighting men of Shikoku and Kyushu turned against the Heike and threw in their lot with the Genji. Those who up to now had been models of obedience suddenly turned their bows on their own leaders or drew their swords to menace those who had been their commanders. When the Heike made for this or that shore, they found high waves impeding their approach; when they headed for this or that beach, they discovered the arrows of their enemies waiting for them. The long struggle between the Genji and the Heike for mastery of the realm was destined, it seemed, to end on this very day.
The Nun of the Second Rank (right), holding the child emperor (Antoku) in her arms, prepares to drown in the sea. Genji soldiers (left) board the boats carrying Heike women.
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 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.
1. Red was associated with the Heike and white with the Genji.
2. In names, the prefix “Aku-” often has the meaning of “fierce.”
3. A variant has “How could the Genji have withstood the attack?”
4. The Brahma Heaven is the first and lowest of the four heavens in the world of form, where beings have no desires or appetites. It is the abode of Brahma, the highest god in the Hindu pantheon and a protector of Buddhism.
MONGAKU: Buddhist practitioner; incites Yoritomo to move against the Heike.
ROKUDAI (Taira): son of Koremori and sole remaining heir to the main Taira line.
TOKIMASA (Hōjō): father-in-law of Yoritomo.
A large earthquake strikes the capital. Yoshitsune is forced to flee Kyoto when his brother Y
oritomo moves against him with an army under the command of Hōjō Tokimasa. While in the capital, Tokimasa seeks and executes all presumptive heirs to the Heike family. He discovers Koremori’s son Rokudai, the last surviving male heir of the Taira. Mongaku appeals to Yoritomo, who spares the boy’s life on condition that Rokudai agree to take the tonsure.
The Execution of Rokudai (12:9)
And so the years passed, and when Rokudai reached the age of fourteen or fifteen, he became even more handsome in face and form, seeming to cast a brilliance over everything around him. Watching him, his mother declared, “If only things were now as they were in the past, he would be a captain of the imperial guard!” She should not have put it in so many words.
Yoritomo, the lord of Kamakura, never ceased to feel uneasy about Rokudai. Whenever he had occasion to write to his keeper, Mongaku, the holy man of Takao, he would ask, “What is that son of Koremori up to? You once predicted that I would overthrow the enemies of the throne and remove the disgrace suffered by my father. Is he that sort of person?”
Mongaku would reply, “He’s nothing, an utter coward! You needn’t have the slightest worry on that score!” But Yoritomo was not satisfied with such answers. “If someone were to raise a revolt, Mongaku is the sort who would immediately become his ally. As long as I’m alive, I know of no one who could overthrow our family. But who is to know how my sons and grandsons may fare?”
These were words of sinister import,1 and when Rokudai’s mother heard about them, she exclaimed, “No other course is open—Rokudai must enter the priesthood as soon as possible!”
Accordingly, sometime in the spring of the fifth year of the Bunji era [1189], Rokudai, who was sixteen at the time, took scissors and cut off the beautiful long hair that had hung around his shoulders. Equipping himself with a robe and a pair of trousers dyed in persimmon juice and a traveler’s knapsack, he took leave of Mongaku and set out to devote himself to religious practice. His two retainers, Saitōgo and Saitōroku, dressed in similar fashion, accompanied him.
Rokudai went first to Mount Kōya, where he sought out Koremori’s mentor in religion, Priest Takiguchi. From him he heard a detailed account of how Koremori had taken the tonsure and of his final moments. Then, as part of his religious practice and in order to view for himself the places where his father had been, he went to the Kumano Shrine. When he reached the small shrine of Hama-no-miya on the seashore, he could gaze across the waters at the island, Yamanari-no-shima, to which his father had gone. Rokudai would have liked to make the trip there himself, but adverse winds and waves prevented him from doing so.
His plans thwarted, he could only look out over the water, wondering just where his father had gone down, wishing that he could ask the white waves rolling in to give him an answer. And as he looked with these feelings around him at the sand on the beach, thinking that his father’s bones might be mingled in with it, he found tears wetting his sleeves. Like the sleeves of the women diving for shellfish, they never seemed to be dry for a moment.
Rokudai spent the night on the beach, repeating the nenbutsu, reciting sutras, and drawing images of the Buddha in the sand with his finger. The following day, he summoned an eminent Buddhist priest and asked him to perform memorial services for his father and to see that whatever religious merit might accrue from the activities he himself had performed was directed to his father’s well-being in the other world. Then, begging leave of the departed spirit, he made his way back to the capital in tears….
Emperor GoToba, who was reigning at this time, spent much time thinking about his amusements and none at all about affairs of state. All was left to the whim of Lady Kyō-no-tsubone, the mother of his consort, which occasioned endless foreboding and discontent.
In ancient China, because the king of Wu delighted in sword fighting, numerous men in the empire suffered wounds, and because the king of Chu doted on women with slender waists, many of the palace ladies starved themselves to death. The tastes of those in power are inevitably copied by those under them.
People who saw the dangers inherent in the situation and were genuinely concerned could only despair. And then the holy man Mongaku, most troublesome in nature, interfered where he had no business to interfere. Because Emperor Takakura’s second son was diligent in his studies and dedicated to correct principles, Mongaku began scheming to somehow have this son made heir to the throne. While Yoritomo remained alive, his efforts came to naught. But when Yoritomo died on the thirteenth day of the first month of Kenkyū 10[1199], Mongaku immediately made plans for a revolt. These were speedily discovered; the government officials descended on his quarters at Nijō Inokuma in the capital; and he was handed over for questioning. Even though he was over eighty by this time, he was exiled to the island province of Oki.
As Mongaku was leaving the capital, he announced, “An old man like me, who doesn’t know whether he’ll live from one day to the next—even though it’s an imperial command, to banish me to the far-off island of Oki instead of somewhere close to the capital! How I hate that ballplaying young man! Some day he’ll end up on that very same Oki Island where I’m being sent!”
It was a fearful thing to have said. Emperor GoToba loved to play mallet ball, which is why Mongaku referred to him in this derogatory manner. Strangely enough, at the time of the Jōkyū rebellion [1221], when the imperial forces attempted to overthrow the Kamakura government, Emperor GoToba, who by this time had retired from the throne, was in fact exiled, and of all the provinces to which he might have been sent, he was banished to this very same island of Oki. It is said that Mongaku’s departed spirit caused much mischief there and repeatedly appeared and spoke to the retired emperor.
Meanwhile, Rokudai, known now by the title of third-rank meditation master, continued to live at Takao and devote his time to religious practice. But Yoritomo was forever saying of him, “Considering whose son he is and whose disciple he is, even though he may have a monk’s head, who knows what’s in his heart!” So he gave orders to the police commissioner Sukekane to arrest Rokudai and have him sent to the Kantō region. On the banks of the Tagoe River, he was beheaded by a certain Yasutsuna, a native of the province of Suruga who had been ordered to do so. People said that the fact that he had been able to remain alive from the age of twelve to over thirty was due entirely to the divine protection of Bodhisattva Kannon of Hase.
Thus, with Rokudai, the Heike line came to an end for all time.
1. This has been understood either to hint at Rokudai’s later fate or to foreshadow Mongaku’s revolt.
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 Imperial Lady Becomes a Nun (1)
Kenreimon’in took up residence in the Yoshida area, at the foot of the eastern hills, in a small hermitage belonging to a Buddhist monk of Nara named Kyōe. No one had lived there for many years, and the hut had fallen into disrepair. The garden was buried in weeds, and wild ferns sprouted by the eaves. The blinds had rotted away, leaving the sleeping room exposed to view and offering little shelter from the wind or rain. Although blossoms of one kind and another opened in season, no occupant was present to admire them; and although the moonlight streamed in night after night, no one sat up until dawn delighting in it.
In earlier times, Kenreimon’in had rested on a jeweled dais, brocade hangings surrounding her, but now, parted from all those who had meant anything to her, she resided in this shabby, half-decayed retreat. One can only surmise how forlorn her thoughts must have been. She was like a fish stranded on land, a bird that has been torn from its nest. Such was her present life that she recalled with longing those earlier days when her home had been no more than a boat tossing on the waves. Her thoughts, journeying far away over blue-billowed waters, rested once again on the distant clouds of the western sea. In her reed-t
hatched hut deep in moss, she wept to see the moonlight fill her garden by the eastern hills. Truly, no words can convey her sadness.
On the first day of the Fifth Month in the first year of the Bunji era [1185], Imperial Lady Kenreimon’in took the tonsure and became a nun. The priest who administered the precepts to her was the Reverend Insei of Chōraku-ji. In return she made an offering to him of an informal robe that had belonged to her son, the late emperor Antoku. He had worn the robe until his final days, and it still retained the fragrance of his body. She had brought it all the way with her when she returned to the capital from the western region, regarding it as a last memento of her child, and had supposed that whatever might come, she would never part with it. But since she had nothing else to serve as a gift, she offered it with a profusion of tears, hopeful that at the same time it might help her son attain buddhahood.
The Reverend Insei could find no words with which to acknowledge the offering but, wetting the black sleeves of his clerical robe, made his way from the room in tears. It is said that he had the robe remade into a holy banner to hang in front of the Buddha of Chōraku-ji.
By imperial order when she was fifteen, Kenreimon’in had been appointed to serve in the palace, and when she was sixteen, she advanced to the position of imperial consort, attending at the emperor’s side. At dawn she urged him to look to the official business of the court; when evening came she was his sole companion for the night. At the age of twenty-two she bore him a son, who was designated as the heir apparent, and when he ascended the throne she was honored with the palace appellation of Kenreimon’in.
Because she was not only the daughter of the lay priest and prime minister Kiyomori but the mother of the nation’s ruler as well, she was held in the highest respect by everyone in the realm. At the time of which we are speaking, she had reached the age of twenty-nine. Her complexion retained the freshness of peach or damson petals; her face had not lost its lotuslike beauty. But hair ornaments of kingfisher feathers were no longer of any use to her, for her hair had been shorn; her whole figure had suffered a change.
The Tales of the Heike Page 16