Kumagai Naosada he was called. The name must have had a new and raw sound to it. If so, it fitted us well, living out there on the plains in a clump of huts dignified by the title of manor, surrounded by peasants and by soldiers no longer allowed to fight.
Perhaps that is the reason my father killed the bear. He desired to distinguish himself, to rise in the world. Killing bears was, to be sure, no especial feat in Bear Valley, but some notice was given this deed, perhaps because he was only sixteen at the time. Thus my parent received the right to the lands that became known as the family estate, and upon his death two years later much was made of the bear story and he was mourned as a great hunter.
Though I was only two at the time, I remember something of the ceremony—the long speeches, the great funeral pyre, and the invocation to the spirit of my disgraced grandparent. Later, when appropriately older, I was more fully informed about this person. He, a true Taira, had been loyal to the imperial cause and his enforced suicide was the result of slander. The emperor had been misled by the Fujiwara family, always meddling in government, and by the Minamoto clan, always maneuvering for power.
One result was that my father, who otherwise should have achieved fame as a great warrior, became known only as a local hunter. Another was that, after my elder brother had died— soon after our father's funeral, some childhood ailment—I was left with few prospects. Upon my mother's death, when I was six or so, I was given as a deserving orphan to one of the sons of old Nariki, a man named Hisashita Naomitsu.
My father had lived his short life lying always in the shadow of his family's history, and so initially did I. Though I swam in the river, climbed the old quince tree, trapped rabbits, caught fish, and snared pheasant like any country boy, in the evenings I would sit around the hearth with my adoptive relatives and listen to stories of the old days in the capital when my family had prospects and when my grandfather was still a great man.
It was during these long summer evenings, far from the capital, that I made my resolve to better myself. Having now no father, no elder brother, no one at all to assist me, I realized early that my future lay entirely in my own hands and that I must make my own success.
To this end, I, alone among these rustic children, attempted to educate myself. Old Nariki Tayu also believed that this would assist me in prospering and discovered a priest in a distant temple who would cheaply enough teach me my letters.
So I eagerly trudged through the winter cold and the summer heat to where the yawning priest attempted to inculcate sodoku, my reading of Chinese characters. In this he was not successful—to this day I cannot properly read, or write, a page. Fortunately, katakana was also taught as a help to reading the kanji, and this I successfully made mine. This simplified script still remains my main means of written communication. Nonetheless, despite my lack of aptitude, I remain grateful to old Nariki for thus beginning an education. Not, however, to his son.
Already I had learned that I could not look to this adoptive uncle of mine, Hisashita Naomitsu, for assistance. He had taught me to ride and to use the spear and the short sword but would take no further responsibility for my future. A cold man—avaricious too, as I was later to learn—he told me one evening that he would feed me until I was eighteen, the age at which my father had died, and that I must then look after myself.
* * *
And so I did, and here I sit, nearly forty years later, brush in hand, contemplating my past. I left Musashi, journeyed to distant Heiankyō [Kyoto] to become a warrior, and now sit here in that capital, at Seiryōji in Kurodani, a lay priest preparing for a somewhat longer journey.
A pleasant place, this temple. The paneling is seasoned, the lintels are worn, and the carved grill over the door is nicely fashioned. It reminds me of that country temple where I first learned to read and to write while the priest fell asleep and the fat summer flies buzzed.
The resemblance is all the stronger in that I am still learning. Occasionally an acolyte comes and helps me with my Chinese characters: late learning, necessary if I am to make my successful way in what is left of this world. I am fond of my temple. It has, like myself, seen much life.
It continues to—it is even lively. Now that Hōnen is in exile and no one is any longer in charge of church affairs, a number of young people have been moved in. Really they are laymen who have taken to wearing the robes and are given leave to stay. I do not know why—perhaps because they draw a congregation.
They are really no better than itinerant entertainers. Mostly they improvise ballads, accompanying themselves on their lutes. They have few duties, none of them devotional, and how they expect to rise in the church I do not know.
I can hear them now, strumming away, testing this verse or that—so typical of our youth these days: callow, feckless. They are so confident too. Listen to them singing away:
While yet governor of Aki, on a pilgrimage from Ise to Kumano, he was much surprised when a great sea bass jumped into his boat. Remembering that just such a fish had jumped in ancient days into the vessel of King Wu, he declared an auspicious event, and though it was a time of abstinence and observance of the ten prohibitions, they all partook of this felicitous fish. Perhaps that is why he was blessed with luck and why he and his sons and grandsons rose in office faster than a dragon mounts the clouds.
Commander Kiyomori—that is their subject this morning. As usual, they have it wrong. That large sea bass jumped into his boat, if it did, much later. Also, though it was eaten on a day when such was prohibited, this did not result—as the young know-nothings have it—in one stroke of luck after the other. Rather, as I know, having served under Kiyomori, it would have seemed rather to presage the end of all good fortune.
But, no. Glory is what the young want. Just listen to them. Sons and grandsons rose to office more swiftly than dragons to the clouds. This is what they sing—maybe because now the ambitious young have difficulty rising in the world. Perhaps that is why they come to out-of-the-way temples and sing about it. In my day, so unlike now, there was a need for ambitious youths, particularly those of us who had no parents, no money, and no prospects. We felt this, even in far Musashi. The times were unsettled, a change was upon us.
Long before I was born, the rapacity of Heiankyō was infamous. Local administrators appeared, always with soldiers, and carted off whatever they could find in lieu of taxes. Punishments and fines were much dispensed and many landowners were ruined. We daily heard of more and more land seized upon one pretext or another.
Manors were taken, along with livestock and the peasants themselves—whole families turned from the fields they had once tilled. Then the newly confiscated lands were deemed imperial, hence tax free. Whether the royal coffers received much of the money is doubtful. Our oppressors were the administrative officials who had gained independence from the court itself. And as more fields were freed from tax, those left were taxed the higher. Such greed seemed to fill the entire country.
We saw this happening. A neighboring farmer was ruined and his children were sold, a manor house was seized along with the owner and his wife, both still hanging from its eaves. Things could not continue as they were. Something must change. Something did—provincial families turned to the military for protection, and this meant work for local warriors from local clans, either Taira, from my part of the country, or from Minamoto soldiery. It was wiser to hire this protection than to lose everything to administrative agents.
Consequently, this patronage eventually turned straggling groups of soldiers into standing armies. I can only tell what I saw in Musashi among the Taira, but I presume the same thing occurred in Minamoto lands as well. Though units of both families had traditionally served as guards in the capital—my grandfather was one of them—and though troops were kept both in and around the city to ensure order, there had been until then no actual armies, nothing like the one we have now, as I write.
When I was fifteen or so, however, I saw them forming, these armies. I would run