never again to bend the bow.
This living death excited favorable comment, since it was not bloody. Both the imperial house and the Fujiwara regents had been taken aback by all this post-battle carnage. For centuries, punishment had been by custom restricted to flogging and banishment. Now, however, the law having been changed, something as permanent as beheading was becoming so common that people no longer even turned to look at the staring eyes of former acquaintances.
Thus, while we were perched up on our hill over a hundred had their heads chopped off. It was said that the executions halted only because no more necks were available. As for my commander, Yoshitomo, he became infamous as the man who had executed his own father. The Fujiwara minister Michinori, due to marry, had refused the proffered hand of Yoshitomo's daughter and accepted that of Kiyomori's.
Our forgotten band on the hill was also disappointed, because we had attached ourselves to a now disgraced leader.
When Lord Yoshitomo finally remembered us and came to review our resisting ranks, we were a sullen lot. I no longer gazed at him with shining eyes. He had lost all attraction since he could no longer assist me—could not even get me into Heiankyō. I was ready to seek my fortune elsewhere. This resolve proved fortunate, for it was not four years before the man lost his own head as well.
* * *
Here, now, as I write in these newly spartan times, the Minamoto—the reigning family I later had the good fortune to join for a second time, otherwise I would not now be sitting here—have simplified history by smoothing the complications of what actually occurred.
Earlier political machinations are not now mentioned, since it was, you see, the will of Hachiman, great god of war, that occasioned the Minamoto rise. With the imperial family now so tractable here in ruined Heiankyō, where foxes walk the boulevards and badgers roam the palaces, the rise of the Minamoto is seen as something preordained, the defeat of the Taira certain from the beginning.
The Minamoto may have saved the country as they claim, but they also ruined it. Much that was natural, innocent, and simple, vanished when the Taira were finally run to ground. A new suspicion, complicated by political considerations, by distrust, entered when the Minamoto acquired more power than had even the once powerful Fujiwara.
This I know I should not ponder, much less write. It is careless of me. After all, it was the Minamoto clan that won this war. For me to feel this fondness for another time, an era beyond recall, can obtain me no gain. But then I am sometimes like that: practical, looking properly to my own interests and then, in a moment of weakness, feeling for the lost, the gone—the vanished world of the Taira, even the head of little Atsumori bobbing in the surf. It is doubtless a grave defect.
* * *
The Hōgen Incident over, our Emperor Go-Shirakawa properly enthroned, we were dispersed and I spent a despondent time in the wandering entourage of the humiliated Yoshitomo.
I languished—it was as though my life had not yet begun; I was a farmer who could not return to his land, a soldier who had never fought. Though I did not despair, such emotion being thankfully foreign to my character, I was certainly not pleased with what I had so far been allotted in this existence.
It was then that I heard a rumor which interested me. The Taira, victorious, were in need of further troops in the capital in order that the person of his imperial majesty, Emperor Go-Shirakawa, should be safe from harm. Such numbers were necessary, since the Minamoto were again moving their soldiery into Heiankyō on the pretext of guarding the same emperor.
This being so, Taira warriors were being called to service and one of them was my uncle Naomitsu back in Musashi. Being no warrior and, further, as will transpire, no man of honor, he much preferred to sit by the manor hearth. It was a simple matter to have me made his substitute. It was also easy for me to mention my grandfather, innocently dead because of the discredited Fujiwara and the now diminished Minamoto.
Thus, eighteen years old, I was finally descending into Heiankyō—even, thanks to the influence of my martyred grandfather, in charge of a small group of men. Impersonating a seasoned soldier, I fittingly disciplined my marching troops, convincingly lost my temper when necessary, and at the same time attempted to hide the wonder I felt when I finally entered the gates of the capital.
Yet, truly, I was astonished. The people—never had I seen so many in one place at one time. Everywhere I gazed were men, women, children. Wherever I looked were warriors on horseback, foot soldiers with halberds, merchants with servants carrying bundles, women strolling, ladies riding in oxcarts or palanquins, little boys running errands, girls playing games with each other, and beggars of all descriptions. I remember the first simple question I asked myself upon viewing this unexampled spectacle: What could all of these people find to do?
We stared at them more than they at us. Already they were becoming used to the sight of daily arriving raw recruits led by gangling boy sergeants. Even the beggars, having learned that nothing was to be gained, did not approach. We, however, gaped at everything and found a stout merchant's wife as much of a marvel as a fully mounted officer.
We were dazzled by the new colors—vermilion armor, indigo cloaks, jet-black lacquered bonnets—sights never seen on our dun farms. And we were intoxicated by the odors—the tang of cut cedar, the scent of fine incenses, and spices we had never before smelled: cinnamon, nutmeg, aloe.
And so, on that first day we wandered the long, wide avenues of the capital and it was already late afternoon before I found where it was we were supposed to go. This was in the eastern part of the city, across from the new Gojō Bridge, and out into what had until recently been open country.
Here our commander, Taira no Kiyomori, had built his residence—at Rokuhara. More a separate city than a house, building after building, courtyard after courtyard, it covered what had been groves and meadows and now extended up the hills leading to the Kiyomizu Temple. Everything was still quite new and the smell of raw lumber hung in the afternoon air.
Approaching the main gate of this vast Rokuhara residence, we met a group of smartly marching troops and then glimpsed through the dust several men on horseback. I ordered my men off the road—we had no idea whose soldiers these were and our heads were still full of stories of Hōgen happenings. And at that moment the man on the lead horse passed us.
Thus, on our very first day, we saw Commander Kiyomori. I remember that moment well for this sight was the main marvel in a day filled with wonders. He was in black armor and rode a black horse, while his black helmet was carried by a page who paced beside the man and his mount. Of his person I remember mainly the nose. It was large and strong. And his ears. They also were large and stood out in a manner which might have been comical had his appearance been otherwise less impressive. He must have been around forty at the time and he was a fine figure of a warrior.
There he was, the mighty leader of whom we had so much heard, the head of our clan, the man responsible for the new ascendancy of the Taira. I gazed and my eyes shone.
* * *
In those early days in Heiankyō, during that year before the Heiji War, I recall that soldiers were everywhere: Minamoto troops—all traitorously working for the disliked Fujiwara, we said; or our own—staunchly protecting his majesty. Every grand building in the capital seemed to have a guard post; troops were forever trotting from one section of the city to another, officers on horseback cantered by and members of the high court military were jogged to and fro in palanquins. Everything was surprisingly disciplined.
Where we had come from, soldiers had the reputation of being unruly. Back in Musashi, farmers hid when troops went through. Shutters
