7. The ex-emperor talks about the goddess of music to Prince Naohito.
廉子の提案で、上皇一行は野遊びに連れ出されます。
案内するのは楠木正儀の室、若き伊賀局。しかし、後村上天皇の中宮顕子の出奔に伴う村民への粛正事件の後、賀名生村民は南朝への出仕ボイコットを続けている様子。
法皇、妙音天の奇瑞を東宮へ語り給ふ事
After a long wait, Lady Iga came to the courtyard of the Southern palace with her little son. She approached the guests, pushing through horses at the gate. She wore a kimono with sleeves that were narrow enough to move easily, and wrapped her legs with black footwear like a farmer’s woman. She had pulled her long hair into a bun.
She had the samurai boy carry the picnic sheet made of grass.
“Sorry, our babysitter is boycotting her work now, but let’s go. I’ll guide Your Majesties and Your Highness around the spring fields of this small village. Why don’t you take lunch outdoors on such a sunny day?”
…
“It’s the finest day! Look down at the shining river!” Yutahito wore a grass hat and hummed under it.
It was a strange picnic. A toddler boy with a stalk of grass walked first, and his mother followed. She was carrying a flower basket on her head. Yutahito was walking, blowing the flute, and Kazuhito wore the same grass hat and walked with new poetry scrolls from Kadoko in tubes. The watching boy and Naohito were at the tail of the line. The crown prince carried the lunch bag and water bottles prepared by Akiko.
Kazuhito was enjoying the rural landscape in the mountain village. He had mainly lived in Kyoto since he was born. Peasants plowing the fields didn’t notice them very much, and someone noticed the noble’s headwear on Naohito, and he just bowed for a moment.
Countless violas and dandelions were flowering on the side of the path. The young kudzu vines were sprouting in a ruin of a farmhouse. If Hanazono had seen the sights, he would have drawn them with enjoyment. He loved painting and drawing.
“Mum, pee! Pee!” the kid shouted.
“Excuse me.” Iga passed the basket to Yutahito and took her son behind an oak tree on the roadside.
“…The court lady takes care of her baby on her own. I realized the shortage of staffing in the Southern Court,” Yutahito whispered to his brother. “Anyway, the princesses played the harps not so badly. Of course, we could not see the younger one’s face, and she might have a pretty appearance according to the features of her parents. Hey, Prince!” The younger monk waved his hand to call his nephew over.
“Yes?” Naohito ran up to his uncle. Yutahito put his flute in his futokoro.
“Thanks for carrying the heavy bag while I was playing. Trade your baggage with mine.” He gave the flower basket and took the water bottles from the prince and whispered in broken Chinese.
“What do you think of the younger princess?”
“Uh... I’m not good at Chinese... She seemed to be practicing the harp intensely...”
“What a square boy! Your father let you meet her to make future peace between the two families…”
The samurai boy noticed their talk and shouted to stop their conversation. “Please speak only in Japanese! Secret talking isn’t allowed.”
“Sorry, we were talking about a famous poem by Dù Fǔ.[1] He illustrated a beautiful spring in the ancient Tang Dynasty. Do you like his works?” Yutahito said to him with a smile.
“I, I’m sorry, but I don’t know the poet. My family has no books written in Chinese...” The boy’s face blushed with embarrassment.
“No problem. That’s normal,” Naohito said to him gently.
Iga and the little boy returned, and she guided the royal guests to a place where clear water was streaming through the trees. Stone bricks were piled to pool the water. Working women chatted and washed vegetables and dishes on the side.
“Look. Here is Madam Kusunoki!”[2] A woman poked the next one with her elbow. Many eyes caught the picnickers.
“Okata-sama!”[3]
Several women approached Iga and began to talk about some petitions they wanted to tell her in turn.
The child got upset because his mother’s attention had left him, and he began to cry because he wanted to bathe in the pool. Iga asked the watchboy to care for her son while she talked with the people. The toddler tried to touch the armed boy’s arrow tips. The boy stopped the child. “Sir, don’t touch them, or the sharp edge of the arrowhead will hurt you!” Then the lady’s son ran away and began to climb the bricks, so the boy had to follow him so he would not fall. People looked and laughed at that.
The royal family set the picnic sheet under a cherry tree near the water. The green shade protected them from the noon sun. They unpacked the lunch bags and ate rice balls with baked miso paste.
“Father,” the prince said, sitting next to Kazuhito. “Why did you make up a story that you are my blood father?”
Kazuhito choked on a mouthful of water. “Oh, you doubt that still now?”
Yutahito moved to sit apart from them in silence and began to play the flute as if he were covering their conversation.
“As you know, my shyness may be derived from Hanazono, and I’m not good at talking to anyone in a friendly manner when I first meet them.”
“You will get good at talking with practice, just like playing the biwa. The family should survive such difficult days. First, eat more of your meal, lad.”
Naohito was staring at a rice ball in his hands. “Our royal family needed to make relationships by marriage to the Ashikaga family, and it was good that my mother’s Ōgimachi family is affiliated with the present shogun, Takauji. However, my father, Retired Emperor Hanazono, had relinquished the right to the throne long ago. The crown prince should be the son of the present royal family’s head. So, you solved this problem by making me your son in exchange for hurting my mother’s honor...”
“You are my son, in truth. I swore that to the god of Kasuga.”
“Hanazono and my mother loved each other deeply until his death. I cannot believe she had betrayed him.”
“Oh, recent youths are much more ethical than elders,” Kazuhito said, narrowing his eyes and smiling bitterly.
“Nobody was betrayed or did any betraying. When you came up in her, Saneko-san was still our court lady, not an official consort or empress. As you know, the court workers must follow the emperor’s orders. She cannot refuse her duty when the emperor asks her to comfort him. OK? It was her loyalty, not betrayal. And...”
“And...?”
“I believe she is one of the avatars of Myo-on-ten. I had wanted to recruit her bloodlines of the goddess for my lineage as her faithful devotee.”
The prince opened his eyes wider when he heard such an occult profession. He seemed to doubt Kazuhito’s sanity.
“Eat your rice ball quickly before the watching boy comes back.”
“Ah, yes, I will...” Naohito said, but he didn’t take a bite.
The peasants were having lunch around the water and listening to the flute sounds by Yutahito. Someone began dancing in the distance.
“Look.” The ex-emperor rolled his left sleeve up. The old wound from an arrow was revealed.
“Samurai can sacrifice their own lives for the protection of their masters. At the same time, they can easily kill their masters to protect their honor. They would kill their own masters and themselves when they realized defeat. Remember Emperor Antoku.[4] He was just eight years old, but his mother’s family, the Taira, drowned him and all of themselves in the western sea.”
“I heard the story in The Tale of the Heike[5] told by a monk playing the biwa with my servants in the kitchen after a New Year’s party. The storytelling excited my siblings and me, but my parents left there soon…”
“Twenty years ago, in Bamba, the warriors of Rokuhara planned to kill us before their suicides. I had my left elbow wounded by an arrow, and Saneko-san followed Hanazono as the only court lady. He and the commissioners had asked her to return to her family, but she had denied it. I think she tried to be a messenger between us and the warriors because she knew directly some members of Kamakura through her family’s relationship.”
“My parents have not told me anything about what occurred there,” the lad said.
“Me neither. It was too traumatic to say to their loving children. Even the boys as old as him were dead with their father and brothers.” The watchboy was still following the child around the water. The toddler had already been soaked, and he was laughing with enjoyment.
“Fortunately for us, Commissioner General Nakatoki liked music and poems; he knew both art and violence. He stopped his men from killing us, but he asked us to play the forbidden biwa numbers in return.”
In those days, sometimes music scores were the secrets of musicians. It was necessary to build authority; the players’ cults weren’t allowed to play the secret scores aside from limited members. The master gave only his apprentices the scores, so ordinary people found it hard to listen to the forbidden numbers. The royal family and limited nobles played a role in the masters of the music, especially on the biwa.
“Only two men in the family had been allowed to play the forbidden numbers: Go-Fushimi and I. Hanazono mainly played the flute and was not very good at playing the biwa. However, my blood father had been in shock from the defeat of the previous battle, and I wasn’t able to move my left hand because of the pain of the wound. Even my healthy right fingers had been shivering from the fear. We all men in the royal family were completely useless.”
Kazuhito hid his elbow under his sleeve again and looked up at the sunshine through the green cherry leaves.
“I held my biwa in silence. If I couldn’t play, the warriors would kill us. However, I couldn’t move...”
Peasant girls were laughing with the dancers; they began to clap their palms to the music. Yutahito seemed to enjoy playing the flute for them.
“My father sat there, supported by a monk from the temple of Bamba. Saneko whispered something to him, and he nodded without power. It was unlike what he had been before. She approached me, bowed deeply, and took my biwa carefully. Then, the lady of honor stood and nodded to Nakatoki. She walked out of the blind. She showed her face and figure directly to many men in the garden. I felt absolute shame, but my fingers kept shaking...
‘Sorry to you all, a woman came out, but the evil enemy’s arrow has hurt the emperor’s elbow. So, I’ll play as His Majesty’s deputy. Although I don’t have an official license to play the forbidden music, Genjō, the sacred instrument from the Tang Dynasty, once allowed me to play it. I’m sure I am worthy of playing as an expression of our gratitude for your great fidelity to the royal family.’
“It was raining in the garden. Samurai of Rokuhara were sitting calmly under the tents. The battle exhausted them, and they looked despairing under the dark sky. I was staring back at her through the blind in the room. Then, a swallow came from nowhere and flew around her immediately. The clouds opened when she swung the plectrum, and the sunshine beamed on her figure. The people there might have thought it was a miracle by the goddess of the sun. The mists rose upwards from the ground to the sky, resembling the five-colored clouds accompanying gods.”
Kazuhito closed his eyes to immerse himself in the old memory.
“I saw the true goddess of the art. She moves the sky and the earth without physical power, affects the emotions of the gods and spirits, mediates between lovers, and comforts the wrath of warriors. When she started to play, the second miracle occurred to me. I had forgotten my pain, and my fingers could move quickly again. I felt she and the people were awaiting me. The goddess was calling me over to her. I wanted to add something to her perfect playing. More powerful, stronger, and manlier than that. I realized I was hungry to play. I asked the monks to make up my clothes correctly. I stood up there. My father and uncle nodded to me, and I stepped forward to the audience.”
…
The samurai boy and the toddler had returned. The child was soaked with water and smiling.
He held the child, took his tenugui[6] from his sleeve, and wiped the toddler’s body.
“Oh no. Will somebody bring dry clothes for him?” Iga said to the people, and a woman answered yes.
“No, Young Lord. The sheet is for the royal people, and you cannot put your feet on it.” The boy held the toddler wriggling in his arms.
“That’s OK. Come here. You shouldn’t catch a cold.” Kazuhito beckoned the toddler to the sheet. A sunbeam warmed it through the leaves. “You can rest here and change your kimono.”
Iga brought the dry clothes for her son and bowed again and again to the guests. She made him stand on a corner of the sheet and change his clothes.
“Omusubi.” The toddler pointed to Naohito’s remaining rice ball with his finger. He didn’t say he wanted it, and was gazing with his big eyes.
“You can have it.” Naohito tried to give the rice ball to him, but the child shook his head to deny it. He hid behind his mother.
“You are right. Your mother may tell you you must not be given anything by strangers.” The prince smiled and wrapped the uneaten rice ball with the sheath of bamboo sprout again. He passed it to the samurai boy and said, “Take it if you want. I’ve had enough.”
“Your mother has true bravery and is as strong as a valiant samurai,” Kazuhito said to Naohito. “So, you have the strength to survive. You should return to her. She is waiting for you.”
Naohito just nodded. He picked up his flute after he had some water.
He began to play with Yutahito’s melody. The people watched them from afar and began to dance again. Someone started singing a song.
-----
1. (712–770) The famous poet of the Tang Dynasty in China. The younger friend of Lǐ Bái.
2. Lady Iga had married Kusunoki Masanori, who was a warlord of the Southern Court.
3. Madam.
4. (1178–1185) The 81st emperor. The son of Takakura, the 80th emperor, and Taira Tokuko.
5. The war tale of the Kamakura Era. It tells of the rise and defeat of the Taira family.
6. Japanese handkerchiefs.
Continued in Chapter8, "Lady Iga remembers the last mistress of Go-Daigo."
第八章 先帝の御息所御消息の事 に続く
「君は杜甫の詩を知っているかね？」穏やかな人格ながら実はスノッブでイケズなところもある新院。
国破山河在
城春草木深
