The Tales of the Heike

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-thatched 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.

Despairing of this fickle world, Kenreimon’in had entered the true path of religion, but this had by no means brought an end to her sighs. While she could still recall how those she loved had sunk beneath the waves, the figure of her son, the late emperor, and her mother, the Nun of the Second Rank, remained to haunt her memory. She wondered why her own dewdrop existence had continued for so long, why she had lived on only to see such painful sights, and her tears flowed without end. Short as the Fifth Month nights were, she found them almost too long to endure, and since sleep was, by the nature of things, denied her, she could not hope to recapture the past even in her dreams. The lamp, its back to the wall, gave only a flicker of dying light, yet all night she lay awake listening to the mournful pelting of rain at the dark window. The Shangyang lady, imprisoned in Shangyang Palace, had endured similarly mournful nights, but her grief could hardly have been greater than Kenreimon’in’s.¹

Perhaps to remind himself of the past, the previous owner of the retreat had planted an orange tree by the eaves, and its blossoms now wafted their poignant fragrance on the breeze, while a cuckoo from the hills, lighting there, sang out two or three notes. Kenreimon’in, remembering an old poem, wrote the words on the lid of her inkstone box:

The ladies-in-waiting who had once attended her, but lacked the strength of character needed to drown themselves on the sea bottom as had the Nun of the Second Rank or the Third-Rank Lady of Echizen, had been taken prisoner by the rough hands of the Genji warriors. Returned now to the capital where they had once lived, young and old alike had become nuns, their aspect wholly changed, their purpose in life utterly vanished. In remote valleys, among rocky cliffs, sites they had never even dreamed of in the past, they passed their days. The houses where they had dwelled before all had disappeared with the smoke of battle; mere traces of them remained, little by little overgrown with grasses of the field. No familiar figures came there anymore. They must have felt as desolate as those men in the Chinese tale who, having spent what they thought was a mere half day in the realm of the immortals, returned to their old home to confront their seventh-generation descendants.

And then, on the ninth day of the Seventh Month, a severe earthquake toppled the tile-capped mud wall and rendered Kenreimon’in’s dwelling, already dilapidated, even more ruinous and unsound, so that it was hardly fit for habitation. Worse off than the lady of Shangyang Palace, Kenreimon’in had no green-robed guard to stand at her gate. The hedges, now left untended, were laden with more dew than the lush meadow grasses, and insects, making themselves at home there, had already begun crying out their doleful chorus of complaints. As the fall nights grew longer, Kenreimon’in found herself more wakeful than ever, the hours passing with intolerable slowness. To the endless memories that haunted her were now added the sorrows of the autumn season, until it was almost more than she could bear. Since her whole world had undergone such drastic change, no one was left who might offer her so much as a passing word of consolation, no one to whom she might look for support.

Although such was the case, the wives of the Reizei senior counselor, Takafusa, and of Lord Nobutaka, Kenreimon’in’s younger sisters, while shunning public notice, managed to call on her in private. “In the old days I would never have dreamed that I might sometime be beholden to them for support!” exclaimed the imperial lady, moved to tears by their visit, and all the ladies in attendance shed tears as well.

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:

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 jewelladen 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.

Things went along like this until the spring of the second year of the Bunji era [1186], when the retired emperor, GoShirakawa, decided that he would like to visit Kenreimon’in in her secluded retreat in Ōhara. During the Second and Third Months, the last of the winter cold lingered, and the winds continued to bluster. The snow on the mountain peaks had not yet melted, and the icicles remained frozen in the valleys. The spring months had given way to summer and the festival of the Kamo Shrine was already over when the retired emperor, setting out before dawn, began the journey to the mountain recesses of Ōhara.

Although the progress was unofficial, the retired emperor was accompanied by six ministers of state, among them Fujiwara no Sanesada, Fujiwara no Kanemasa, and Minamoto no Michichika, as well as eight high-ranking courtiers and a small number of armed men from the imperial guard. The party proceeded by way of the village of Kurama, stopping along the route so that the retired emperor might see Fudaraku-ji, the temple founded by Kiyohara no Fukayabu,² and the site where Empress Dowager Ono³ had resided after she retired from court life and became a nun. From there he continued the journey by palanquin.

The white clouds hovering over the distant mountains seemed like mementos of the cherry blossoms that had earlier bloomed there and scattered, and the green leaves that had replaced them in the treetops spoke regretfully of the spring now gone. Since it was already past the twentieth day of the Fourth Month by the lunar calendar, the party found themselves pushing through lush summer grasses. And since this was the first time that the retired emperor had made the journey, he was not familiar with any of the places they passed. Encountering not a soul along the way, how bleak it all must have seemed to him.

At the foot of the western hills stood a little hall, the Jakkō-in, or Cloister of Tranquil Light. The ornamental pond in front of it and the groves of trees told of the long history surrounding it. It perhaps was the sort of place the poet had in mind when he wrote

The garden overflowed with new foliage; green strands from the willows hung down in a tangle; and the duckweed on the surface of the pond, undulating with the ripples, could have been mistaken for brocade stretched out to dry. Wisteria clinging to the pine on the island in the pond descended in cascades of purple; the last late cherry flowers remaining among the newly opened green leaves appeared more to be prized than the first blossoms of the season. Kerria roses flowered in profusion on the banks of the pond, and from a rift in the many-layered clouds sounded the note of a cuckoo, as if to herald the ruler’s arrival.

Surveying the scene, the retired emperor recited this poem:

Even the sound of the water as it dripped from a cleft in the age-old rocks seemed to mark this as a setting of rare charm. The fence of green vines and creepers, the blue hills beyond, darkened as though with an eyebrow pencil, surpassed anything that could be captured in a painting.

When the retired emperor examined Kenreimon’in’s little dwelling, he noted the ivy and morning glories twined around the eaves and the daylilies mixed in among the ferns, and they reminded him of Yan Yuan, the impoverished disciple of Confucius who lived in a grass-grown alley and whose dipper and rice bowl were so often empty, and Yuan Xian, another disciple, his pathway clogged with pigweed and his door soaked with rain. In Kenreimon’in’s retreat the autumn showers, the frost, and the falling dew seeped in through cracks in the cedar shingles, vying with rays of moonlight, since there was little to keep any of them out. With hills behind, barren fields in front, the wind rustling through the scant bamboo grass that grew there, its knotted posts of bamboo suggested the knotty trials and grief constantly borne by one living away from the world; and its gaping fence of stalks hinted at how far removed the spot was from all news of the capital. Few sounds reached there other than the cries of monkeys springing from limb to limb in hilltop trees or the echo of a lowly woodcutter’s ax; aside from the prying tendrils of creepers clinging to the spindle tree or the strands of green ivy, few sought entrance there.

“Is anyone in? Is anyone in?” called the retired emperor, but no one responded. Finally, after some time, an elderly nun, bent with age, appeared.

“Where is the imperial lady?” asked the retired emperor.

“She has gone to the hilltop to pick flowers,” was the answer.

“Doesn’t she have someone who can do such things for her?” he asked. “This is too pitiable, even for someone who has renounced the world!”

“The good karmic effects resulting from her observance of the Five Precepts and the Ten Virtuous Acts in a previous existence have ended,” the old nun explained, “and so she has been reduced to the state in which you see her. But when one has renounced the world to pursue religious practice, why recoil from such hardships? As the Sutra on Cause and Effect tells us, ‘If you would know past causes, look to present effects; if you would know future effects, observe present causes.’ When Your Majesty understands the relationship between cause and effect in the past and future, you will see that there is no occasion for lamentation. At the age of nineteen the crown prince Siddhartha left the city of Gaya and went to the foot of Mount Dadaloka. There, fashioning a garment of tree leaves to cover his nakedness, he climbed the peaks to gather firewood, descended into the valleys to draw water, and through the merit accruing from these difficult and painful practices he was able in the end to gain complete and perfect enlightenment.”

Looking at the nun more closely, the retired emperor could see that she was dressed in a sort of patched robe in which bits of silk and plain cloth had been randomly sewn together. Wondering that such a speech should emanate from a person dressed like this, he asked, “Who are you?”

Breaking down in sobs, the nun was at first unable to reply. Finally, mastering her tears, she replied, “I cannot answer without feelings of great embarrassment! I am the daughter of the late lesser counselor and lay priest Fujiwara no Shinsei. I was known by the name Awa-no-naishi. My mother was the Kii Lady of the Second Rank. At one time you were kind enough to treat me with great favor. If now you no longer recognize me, then, old and decrepit as I am, what good would there be in trying to remind you …” She hid her face in her sleeve, helpless to control her emotions, a sight too pitiable to behold.

“Are you really Awa-no-naishi?” the retired emperor exclaimed, tears welling up in his eyes. “Indeed, I did not recognize you. This all seems like a dream!”

The lords and courtiers accompanying him remarked to one another, “We thought she was a very unusual nun, and now it appears we had good reason to do so.”

Turning his gaze this way and that, the retired emperor could see that the many different plants in the garden were heavy with dew, their stalks bending down toward the hedges. Water brimmed in the paddy fields beyond, leaving hardly enough space for a snipe to alight.

Entering the hut, the retired emperor slid open the paper panel and walked in. In one room were enshrined the three venerable ones who come to greet those who are on their deathbed, the Buddha Amida and his attendants and the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi. A five-color cord was attached to the hand of the Buddha, the central figure.⁴ To the left of the images hung a painting of the bodhisattva Fugen, while on the right were paintings of the Chinese priest Shandao and of Kenreimon’in’s son, the late emperor. The eight scrolls of the Lotus Sutra and the nine chapters of Shandao’s writings on the Pure Land also were nearby. The rich fragrance of orchid and musk that in earlier days had surrounded the imperial lady had vanished, giving way now to the scented smoke of altar incense. That ten-foot-square chamber of the lay believer Vimalakirti, which nevertheless, we are told, could accommodate thirty-two thousand seats set out for the buddhas of the ten directions when he invited them to call, must have been a room just like this. Here and there on the sliding panels were key passages from the Buddhist scriptures, written out on colored paper and pasted there. Among them were the lines by the Buddhist prelate Ōe no Sadamoto that he wrote shortly before his death at Mount Qingliang in China:

A little to one side was a poem that appeared to be by the imperial lady herself:

Looking in the other direction, the retired emperor saw what appeared to be a sleeping apartment, with a hempen robe, paper bedclothes, and other articles hanging from a bamboo pole. The adornments of silks, gauzes, brocades, and embroideries, the finest to be found in all Japan or China, that the imperial lady had once known in such abundance, were now no more than a dream. Having had glimpses of her in former times, the courtiers and high ministers seemed to see her still as she was then, and their tears rained down.

Soon two nuns dressed in robes of deep black were to be seen cautiously making their way down the steep rocky trail that led from the hilltop.

“Who is that?” the retired emperor inquired, whereupon the old nun, repressing her tears, replied, “The one with the flower basket on her arm, carrying branches of wild azalea, is the imperial lady. The one carrying brushwood and bunches of edible ferns is the daughter of Junior Counselor Korezane. She became the adopted daughter of Senior Counselor Lord Kunitsuna and afterward was the wet nurse to the late emperor, going by the name Dainagon no Suke.” Her voice trailed off in tears. The retired emperor, too, moved by the scene, could not keep from weeping.

Taking note of the situation, Kenreimon’in thought to herself, “I have abandoned all concern for worldly affairs, yet I would hate to have them see me dressed like this. If only there were someplace I could hide!” But such hopes were vain. Evening after evening she wet her sleeves as she dipped water for the Buddha’s altar, and each dawn when she rose the dew on the mountain path further dampened her sleeves, so that they were seldom wrung dry. Added to these now were her tears. She could not return to the hilltop, nor could she enter her own rooms unseen. She stood in blank indecision until the old nun, Awa-no-naishi, went to her and took the flower basket from her arm.

“In front of the window where I recite a single invocation of the Buddha’s name, I look for the rays of light that proclaim his advent. By my brushwood door with ten invocations I await the host of holy ones coming to escort me. But how strange and beyond all thought is this visit from Your Majesty!” She wept as she greeted him.

The retired emperor surveyed her form and attire. “Even those beings in the abode of No-Thought, though they live for eighty thousand kalpas,” he said, “must suffer the sadness of inevitable extinction. Even those in the Sixth Heaven⁵ of the realm of form cannot escape the pain of the Five Marks of Decay.⁶ The delights of longevity enjoyed by the god Indra in his Joyful Sight Citadel or the soaring pavilions of the god Brahma in the midst of the Meditation Heavens are no more than dreamlike boons, phantom pleasures of the moment.⁷ All are bound to the wheel of unending change and transmigration, like cartwheels turning. The sadness of the Five Marks of Decay suffered by these heavenly beings must be borne, it seems, by us humans as well!” And then he added, “Who comes to visit you here? You must brood much on the events of the past.”

“I do not receive visits from anyone,” Kenreimon’in responded, “although I have some tidings now and then from my sisters, the wives of Takafusa and Nobutaka. In the past I would never, for a moment, have supposed that I would one day look to them for support.” She wept as she said this, and the women attending her likewise wet their sleeves with tears.

Restraining her tears, Kenreimon’in spoke once more. “My current existence is no more than a passing tribulation, and when I think that it may lead to wisdom in the world to come, I look on it as joyful. I have made haste to join the latter-day disciples of Shakyamuni and reverently entrusted myself to Amida’s original vow of salvation so that I may escape the bitterness of the five obstacles and three submissions imposed on a woman.⁸ Three times daily and nightly I labor to purify the six senses, hopeful that I may immediately win rebirth in one of the nine grades of the Pure Land. My only prayer is that all we members of the Taira clan may gain enlightenment, always trusting that the three venerable ones will come to greet us. The face of my son, the late emperor, I will never forget, whatever world may come. I try to forget but I can never do so; I try to endure the pain but it is unendurable. There is no bond more compelling than that between parent and child. Day and night I make it my duty to pray for his salvation. And this endeavor has been like a good friend leading me into the path of the Buddha.”

The retired emperor offered an answer. “Although I have been born in these far-off islands no bigger than scattered millet seeds, because I reverently observed in a past existence the Ten Good Acts of Conduct, I have been privileged in this one to become a ruler of ten thousand chariots. Everything I could wish for has been granted to me; my heart has been denied nothing. And most particularly, because I was fortunate enough to be born in an age when the Buddhist teachings are propagated, I have set my heart on practicing the Buddha way and do not doubt that in the time to come I will be reborn in a far better place. We should have learned by now, I suppose, not to question the miseries of human existence. And yet, seeing you like this seems too pitiful a sight!”

The imperial lady began to speak once more. “I was the daughter of the Taira prime minister and the mother of the nation’s ruler—anything in the entire realm and the four seas surrounding it was mine for the asking. Beginning with the rites that mark the advent of spring, through the seasonal changes of clothing, to the recitation of Buddha names that brings the year to a close, I was waited on by all the high ministers and courtiers, from the regent on down. There were none of the hundred officials who did not look up to me with awe, as though I dwelled on the clouds of the Six Heavens of the realm of desire or the four Meditation Heavens, with the eighty thousand heavenly beings encircling me. I lived in the Seiryō or Shishinden palaces, curtained by jeweled hangings, in spring spending the days with my eyes fixed on the cherries of the Southern Pavilion; enduring the oppressive heat of summer’s three months through the comfort of fountain waters; never left without companions to watch the cloud-borne autumn moon; on winter nights when the snow lay cold, I was swathed in layers of bed clothing. I wanted to learn the arts of prolonging life and evading old age, even if it meant seeking the herbs of immortality from the island of Penglai, for my sole wish was to live on and on. Day and night I thought of nothing but pleasure, believing that the happy fortune enjoyed by the heavenly beings could not surpass this life of mine.

“And then, in early autumn of the Juei era [1183], because of threats from Kiso no Yoshinaka or some such person, all the members of our Taira clan saw the capital that had been our home grow as distant as the clouds themselves, and looked back as our former dwellings in Fukuhara were reduced to fire-blackened fields. We made our way by water from Suma to Akashi, places that in the past were mere names to us, grieving over our lot. By day we plied the boundless waves, moistening our sleeves with spray; at night we cried until dawn with the plovers on sandy points along the shore. Moving from bay to bay, island to island, we saw scenery pleasant enough but could never forget our old home. With no place to take refuge, we knew the misery of the Five Marks of Decay and the prospect of certain extinction.

“Separation from loved ones, meeting with suffering, encounter with all that is hateful—in my life as a human being, I have experienced all of these. The Four Sufferings,⁹ the Eight Sufferings¹⁰—not one of them have I been spared! And then, in a place called Dazaifu in the province of Chikuzen, we were driven away by some Koreyoshi person who refused us lodging in Kyushu—a broad land of mountains and plains but with nowhere that we could take shelter. Once more, autumn drew to a close, but the moon, which we used to watch from the heights of the nine-tier palace, this year we watched from salt-sea paths eightfold in their remoteness.

“So the days and nights passed until in the Tenth Month, the Godless Month, the middle captain, Kiyotsune, declared, ‘The capital has fallen to the Genji; we have been hounded out of Chinzei by Koreyoshi—we’re like fish caught in a net! Where can we find safety? What hope have I of living out my life?’ And with these words he drowned himself in the sea, the beginning of our first sorrows.

“We passed our days on the waves, our nights in the boats. No articles of tribute came in as they had in the past, no one gave us any supplies or provisions. Even on the rare occasion when we had food, we had no water with which to eat it. We were afloat on the vast ocean, but its waters, being salty, were undrinkable. Thus I came to know the sufferings of those who inhabit the realm of hungry spirits.

“After that, we won victory in certain encounters such as those at Muroyama and Mizushima, and our people’s countenances began to be somewhat more cheerful. But then came Ichi-no-tani, when we lost so many of our clansmen. Thereafter, instead of informal robes and court dress, our men put on helmets, buckled on armor, and from morning until night we heard only the din and cry of battle. Then I knew that the assaults of the asura demons, their clashes with the god Indra, must present just such a spectacle as this.

“After the defeat at Ichi-no-tani, young men perished before their fathers, wives were torn from husbands. When we spied a boat in the sea, we trembled lest it be an enemy craft; when we glimpsed herons roosting in distant pine trees, our hearts stopped, for we mistook them for the white banners of the Genji. Then came the naval battle in the straits between the Moji and Akama barriers, and it seemed as though that day must be our last.

“My mother, the Nun of the Second Rank, said to me, ‘At such a time as this a man has little more than one chance in ten thousand of surviving. And even though some distant relative might survive the day alive, he would not be the kind who could offer prayers for our well-being in the life hereafter. But it has been the custom from times past to spare the women in such a conflict. If you should manage to live out the day, you must pray that your son, the emperor, may find salvation in the life to come, and help the rest of us with your prayers as well!’ Over and over she urged this on me, and I listened as though in a dream.

“But then the wind began to blow and thick clouds blanketed the sky. Our warriors’ hearts failed them, for it seemed that whatever fortune we had enjoyed with Heaven had now run out and that human efforts were no longer of any help.

“When the Nun of the Second Rank saw how things stood, she lifted the emperor in her arms and hastened to the side of the boat. Startled and confused, the child said, ‘Grandma, where are you going to take me?’

“‘Don’t you understand?’ she said, gazing at his innocent face and struggling to hold back her tears. ‘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, 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. Turn your face to the west now, 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!’

“The child was dressed in a dove gray robe, his hair done in boyish loops on either side of his head. His face bathed in tears, he 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 invocation of Amida’s name. And when I saw the nun, with the boy in her arms, at last sink beneath the sea, my eyes grew dim and my wits seemed to leave me. I try to forget that moment, but I can never do so. I try to endure the pain, but it is more than I can endure. The wails of the wrongdoers who suffer in the depths of the Hell of Shrieks and the Hell of Great Shrieks could not be more heartrending, I believe, than the screams and cries of those of us who lived to witness these events!

“After that, I was taken prisoner by the Genji warriors and set out on the journey back to the capital. When we had put in at the bay of Akashi in the province of Harima, I happened to doze off, and in my dream found myself in a place far surpassing in beauty the imperial palace I had known in earlier times. My son, the late emperor, was there, and all the high ministers and courtiers of the Taira clan were waiting on him with the most solemn ceremony. Never since leaving the capital had I beheld such magnificent surroundings, and I said to the people, ‘What place is this?’

“Someone who appeared to be my mother, the Nun of the Second Rank, replied, ‘This is the palace of the dragon king.’

“‘What a wonderful place!’ I exclaimed. ‘And do those who live here not suffer?’

“‘Our lot is described in the sutras on dragons and beasts. You must pray in all earnestness for our salvation in the world to come!’

“As soon as she had spoken these words, I awoke from my dream. Since then I have been more diligent than ever in reciting sutras and invoking the Buddha’s name, hopeful that thereby I may help them attain salvation. And so you see, in this manner I have experienced all six paths of existence.”

When she had finished speaking, the retired emperor said, “The Tripitaka master, Xuanzang, in China is reported to have seen the six paths of existence before he attained enlightenment, and in our own country the Venerable Nichizō, we are told, was able to see them through the power of the deity Zaō Gongen. But that you have seen them before your very eyes is miraculous indeed!”

He wept as he spoke these words, and the lords and courtiers attending him all wet their sleeves with tears. Kenreimon’in, too, broke down in tears, as did her women companions.

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 direction 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:

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:

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:

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.

And all of this came about because the lay priest and prime minister Taira no Kiyomori, holding the entire realm within the four seas in the palm of his hand, showed no respect for the ruler above or the slightest concern for the masses of common people below. He dealt out sentences of death or exile in any fashion that suited him, took no heed of how the world or those in it might view his actions—and this is what happened! There can be no room for doubt—it was the evil deeds of the father, the patriarch, that caused the heirs and offspring to suffer this retribution!

After some time had gone by, Kenreimon’in fell ill. Grasping the five-color cord attached to the hand of Amida Buddha, the central figure in the sacred triad, she repeatedly invoked his name: “Hail to the Thus Come One Amida, lord of teachings of the Western Paradise—may you guide me there without fail!” The nuns Dainagon-no-suke and Awa-no-naishi attended her on her left and right, their voices raised in unrestrained weeping, for they sensed in their grief that her end was now at hand. As the sound of the dying woman’s recitations grew fainter and fainter, a purple cloud appeared from the west, the room became filled with a strange fragrance, and the strains of music could be heard in the sky. Human life has its limits, and that of the imperial lady ended in the middle days of the Second Month in the second year of the Kenkyū era [1191].

Her two female attendants, who from the time she became imperial consort had never once been parted from her, were beside themselves with grief at her passing, helpless though they were to avert it. The support on which they had depended from times past had now been snatched from them, and they were left destitute, yet even in that pitiable state they managed to hold memorial services each year on the anniversary of her death. And in due time they, too, we are told, imitating the example of the dragon king’s daughter in her attainment of enlightenment and following in the footsteps of Queen Vaidehi, fulfilled their long-cherished hopes for rebirth in the Pure Land.

10. The Eight Sufferings are the suffering of birth, the suffering of old age, the suffering of sickness, the suffering of death, the suffering of separation from loved ones, the suffering of being with those one hates, the suffering of frustrated desires, and the suffering of attachment to self.