SEI SH
NAGON, AUTHOR OF THE PILLOW BOOKWITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE SAME MAN AS VIEWED BY
SEI SHNAGON, AUTHOR OF THE PILLOW BOOK
THE FOLLOWING VIGNETTE in Konjaku Monogatari Shu (vol. 23, sec. 15) details physical movements in sword fights in such a convincing way that the narrator seems to have anticipated such Japanese movie directors as Kurosawa Akira and Okamoto Kihachi.
The man who is said to have felled three sword-brandishing assailants in quick succession is Tachibana no Norimitsu (b. 965?).
Norimitsu is also known to have captured a burglar. That was when he was working as household administrator at a major counselor’s
mansion. At one time or another he was also Assistant Master of Palace Repairs, Lieutenant of the Outer Palace Guards, Left
Division, Chief of Imperial Police, Acting Governor of T
tmi, and Governor of Noto, Tosa, and Mutsu.
Ichij (980-1011) was emperor from 986 to 1011.
Former Governor of Mutsu Tachibana no Norimitsu was not from a warrior’s house, but he had a stout mind and was wise in plotting and planning. He was also extremely strong, quite good-looking, and well thought of, so people treated him with respect.
When he was young – it was during the reign of Emperor Ichij – and was a chamberlain also in the employ of the Palace Guards,
he once went quietly out of his night duty room in the Inner Palace to meet a woman. It was late at night. Carrying only a
sword, on foot, and accompanied by a page boy, he went out of the gate and was walking down miya Street. As he passed by
a tall hedge, he sensed quite a number of people standing around and became deeply apprehensive. The ninth-day moon of the eighth month hung close to the ridge of Mt. Nishi, so the west side of the tall hedge
was quite dark and he could barely make out the men standing around.
He then heard one of the men near the hedge say, “You there! Stop! We have noblemen here. You can’t pass this place.”
Here they come, Norimitsu thought, but he couldn’t think of turning back. So he quickened his pace.
“Look, he’s ignoring us,” somebody cried and sprang toward him. Norimitsu hunkered down and took a good look. He didn’t see a bow, but he did see the gleam of a sword. Relieved that it wasn’t a bow, he ran forward in a crouched position. When the chaser ran up to him, he thought his head might be split, and quickly stepped aside. The chaser couldn’t stop himself immediately but ran past him. That instant Norimitsu stepped behind him, drew his sword, and struck him. His head split in the middle, the chaser fell forward.
A good hit, Norimitsu thought. Then another man cried, “What happened to him?” and ran toward Norimitsu. Norimitsu didn’t have the time to put his sword into the sheath. He held it against his side and ran.
“He’s a good one,” the new chaser said. This was a much faster runner than the first one. Norimitsu decided he couldn’t handle this one the way he did the first and, with a sudden change of plan, squatted down. The chaser, running fast, stumbled on him and fell. Norimitsu stood up that instant and, before the man managed to rise to his feet, split his head.
This is it, Norimitsu thought. But there was another. This one cried out, “He’s a really good one! I won’t let him get away!” He, too, sprang toward him.
“This time I’ll be done in! May God and Buddha help me!”
With these prayers, Norimitsu held forward his sword with both hands like a spear and faced the chaser so abruptly that their bodies almost smashed into each other. This chaser also held a sword, and he tried to slash Norimitsu. But they were so close, so suddenly, that he didn’t even manage to slash Norimitsu’s clothes. On the other hand, Norimitsu’s sword, held like a spear, pierced through the chaser’s body, and as he twisted out his sword, the man fell backward. That instant Norimitsu struck and lopped off the man’s sword-holding arm at the shoulder.
He ran some distance and listened to see if there was yet another one. But there was no sound. So he ran, went inside the
middle gate, and, standing close to a column, waited for his page boy. The boy came up miya Street, weeping. When Norimitsu called out
the boy ran up to him. He sent him off to the night duty room for fresh clothes. He then had the boy hide the bloodied jacket
and trouser-skirt he was wearing. He also told the boy never to tell anyone anything. Then he carefully washed the blood off
the grip of his sword, put on a fresh jacket and trouser-skirt, and, looking as if nothing had happened, returned to the night
duty room and went to sleep.
All night he was terribly anxious that it might be found out he did the killings. When morning came, there was a good deal of hubbub:
“Three large men were found dead on miya Street, near the gate to the imperial kitchen. They were evidently cut down, not
far from one another.”
“What splendid swordsmanship!”
“Someone thought these men had fought among themselves, but when he looked closely, he found out that they were cut dead with a single stroke.”
“Maybe their enemy did it.”
“These men looked like robbers, though.”
Even some of the ranking courtiers invited each other out to see the murdered men. Norimitsu himself was urged a number of times to go out to see the spectacle. At first he didn’t want to, but if he didn’t go, people might begin to get suspicious of him, he decided. So, reluctantly, he went out with some of his friends.
There were too many people for the oxcart, so he had to walk alongside it. When the cart was drawn up to the scene, the three men were still as they had been. There was, however, a heavily bearded man about thirty years old. He wore a patternless trouser-skirt, an indigo jacket worn-out from washing, and an equally worn-out yellow shirt. He also had a sword with boar bristles on its sheath. He was in deer-skin shoes. Scratching his side, pointing his finger, looking this way and that, he was talking.
Norimitsu was wondering who in the world he could be, when one of the servants attending the oxcart reported, “He’s saying he killed these men, sir, because they were his enemies.”
Norimitsu was delighted to hear this. Some of the courtiers on the cart said, “Tell the man to come here. We’d like to find out the details.” So the man was summoned.
When he came closer, you could see he had high cheekbones, a jutting jaw, a flat nose, and red hair. His eyes were bloodshot as if rubbed too hard. He knelt on one knee, as he held his sword by the grip.
“What happened?” someone asked.
“Sir, about midnight last night I passed by this place on my way to some place, when three men ran up to me, crying, ‘How dare you pass by us!’ I thought they were robbers, and cut them down. But when I looked at them this morning, they were the very men I had been looking for all these years. So I thought, I ended up killing my enemies, and was meaning to cut their heads off for proof.”
While saying this, he kept pointing his finger, nervously looking up and down. And because the noblemen exclaimed, “My! My!” and kept asking questions, the man became quite worked up and babbled on and on.
Norimitsu found this very amusing. Well, if he wants credit for it, I’m delighted to give it to him, he thought, and kept a straight face.
This is said to be what he told his children when he became quite old.
The Norimitsu described in this story (and in another, in which he catches a burglar) is a man as viewed in a men’s world. From a woman’s viewpoint, he comes out somewhat differently.
It happens that he was a close friend of Sei Shnagon (dates uncertain), the author of the famous collection of essays, Makura no S
shi (The Pillow Book). They were such close friends indeed that the ladies and gentlemen of the court teased them by calling
him her big brother and her his little sister. Some scholars suspect that they may even have been husband and wife for a while.
Perhaps because of their close association, Lady Sei has left a telling description of the man in her book.1
The account doesn’t concern itself with warriorship, but I have translated it here for contrast.
When I take my days off in a village, people seem to gossip about how senior courtiers come to see me, and so on. Since I have no profound reason for my withdrawal, such gossip shouldn’t bother anyone. Also, if someone comes to see me day and night, how can I say I’m not home and turn him away embarrassed? Even those who aren’t too close to me come to visit.
But all this became so annoying that the last time I left court I didn’t tell anyone where I was going to be. The only people who knew were Lord Tsunefusa, Middle Captain of the Inner Palace Guards,2 and Lord Narimasa.3
One day Lieutenant of the Outer Palace Guards, Left Division, Norimitsu came by and was gossiping, when he said, “Yesterday, the Lord Counselor, the Middle Captain,4 came to me and repeatedly said, ‘It’s most unlikely that you don’t know the whereabouts of your own sister. Just tell me.’ I kept telling him I didn’t know, but, oh, he was so persistent!
“It’s really difficult,” he continued, “not to tell what you actually know. I almost broke into a smile. Worse, the Middle Captain of the Left happened to be there, looking so cruelly innocent that I would have burst out laughing if our eyes had met. I was at my wits’ end, grabbed the seaweed that happened to be lying on the table, and stuffed and stuffed my face. People must have thought that was an odd thing to eat between meals. But, thank goodness, it saved me from telling him where you are. All that would have been useless if I had smiled. It amuses me that he decided I truly didn’t know.”
“Please,” I said, “never tell him.”
Then some days passed.
Very late one night someone knocked on the gate in such a terribly exaggerated fashion that I thought for whatever business it was witless to knock on the gate so loudly, especially because the gate wasn’t far from the house. Anyway I sent out a servant. It turned out to be someone from Takiguchi.5 He had brought a letter, as he put it, “From a lieutenant of the Outer Palace Guards, Left Division.” Though everyone was asleep, I had a lamp brought up to me and took a look.
“Tomorrow is the last day of the Sacred Recitations,” the letter said. “The Lord Counselor, the Middle Captain, will confine himself for abstinence. If he keeps nagging me, Tell me, tell me where your sister is,’ I won’t be able to pull another trick. I’ll never be able to hide it. Shall I tell him what the truth is? What do you think? I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”
I didn’t write a reply. I merely wrapped a small piece of seaweed in paper and sent it back.
Sometime afterward he came by and said, “Because he kept nagging me I spent that whole night taking him to various places which I knew were wrong, of course. He kept asking me so earnestly, and that was a pain.
“My question is, why didn’t you send me some kind of reply instead of wrapping a silly piece of seaweed to give to me? That was a wrapped mystery! How could you wrap something like that and send it to someone? Did you make some kind of mistake?”
Seeing that he didn’t get the point of it at all, I was a bit upset. Without saying a word, I wrote on the edge of a sheet of paper that was on the inkstone:
Kazuki suru ama no sumika wa soko nari to
yume iuna to ya me o kuwasekemu
Lest you point to where the diver lives, lest you do,
I made you eat that seaweed6
And I gave it to him. But he exclaimed, “So you wrote a poem! I’ll never read it,” pushed it back, and ran away.
So, though we used to talk to each other and take care of each other, for some reason our relationship began to cool a little. Then he wrote to me: “Even if something untoward happens, please do not forget what we vowed to each other. I would hope that people will continue to regard me as your brother.”
He used to say, “Anyone who loves me shouldn’t write a poem to me. I will regard everyone who does as an enemy. Only when you decide it’s all finished between us, do that to me.”
So, in reply to his letter, I sent him the following:
Kuzureyoru Imo Se no yama no naka nareba
sara ni Yoshino no kawa to dani miji
Because our friendship has crumbled like Mounts Imo and Se,
you no longer see Yoshino as a stream7
Perhaps he no longer did. He didn’t even reply to it.
Then he was promoted to the fifth grade and became the Acting Governor of Ttmi. And so we parted company while still on
unfriendly terms.
Despite his avowed dislike of someone composing a poem to express love or a witty thought, Norimitsu himself is listed as
a poet in official records, for a poem of his is included in the fifth imperial anthology, Kin’y Shu (no. 371). The headnote to the poem says he composed it at the Osaka Barrier on his way to Mutsu to assume its governorship
and that he sent it back to Kyoto. He was appointed Governor of Mutsu in 1006, four years after he was Acting Governor of
Ttmi, so we must assume the recipient of the poem was not Lady Sei:
Ware hitori isogu to omoishi Azuma-ji ni
kakine no mume wa sakidachinikeri
I thought I was the only one hurrying toward the East,
but the plum flowers above the fence were ahead of me