[In the following essay, Tadashi provides an overview of the Heike Monogatari, examines the significance of the blind lute players who recited it, and traces the development of its written text.]

The culture of the Heian period was the product of a small aristocracy which flourished in the metropolis of Heian or Kyoto, capital of a highly centralized political system. It bloomed in the soil of luxury consumption maintained by the produce of lands which the aristocracy held in every province of the country. But the power structure of this society was severely shaken by three disturbances which came in succession after the middle of the twelfth century. These were the Hōgen and Heiji wars of 1156 and 1159, the war between the Taira and Minamoto from 1177 to 1185, and the Shōkyū war of 1221. Centered on the second of these disturbances, the war between the Taira and Minamoto, the Heike monogatari tells of the eminence of the warrior clan known as Heike or Taira and its ultimate downfall. It is in many ways a description of the age itself.

The warrior class had undergone a considerable period of development before it was ready to play its leading role as a political force in the Hōgen and Heiji wars of the mid twelfth century. The rise of the warrior class and the expansion of its power were intimately related to political and economic changes which took place in the agricultural villages of the provinces. The Hōgen and Heiji wars were waged by military clans matured in the provinces which competed for power in Kyoto by allying themselves with rival houses of the civil aristocracy. But no sooner had the Taira clan gained the victory than it began an amazingly rapid transformation into a metropolitan aristocracy itself. The reasons for this changing character of the Taira need to be examined here, because it was precisely their transformation into a civil aristocracy which contributed most to their downfall.

In their moment of supremacy, when they controlled half the territory of Japan, the Taira were ruled by their chieftain, Kiyomori, from his palace of Rokuhara in Kyoto, whom the author of the Heike monogatari compared with historic Chinese and Japanese rebels in the following words: “Proud in thought and vigorous in deed though all of them certainly were in the histories of our two countries, yet it is the story of this man, who so recently moved in the world and bore the unprecedented titles of Elder of Rokuhara and Former Chancellor of the Empire, His Excellency Lord Kiyomori of the Taira, which does indeed surpass the imagination and defy description.” But it was only in the time of Kiyomori's father, Tadamori, that the Taira chief had been granted admittance to the imperial court, and Scroll One of the Heike monogatari relates how the exclusive aristocracy tried to ostracize Tadamori when he attended court. The reason for the remarkably swift advance of the Taira into the center of political power lay in the wealth of the clan. Under the leadership of Tadamori and Kiyomori the Taira gained control of the Inland Sea and were acquiring enormous wealth from trade with China. In contrast to the Minamoto clan, which drew its support from the agricultural villages of the eastern provinces, the Taira, established in the more advanced western provinces, conducted trade with China and had a bourgeois side to their character. And so from the outset the Taira were urban warriors, and the Minamoto were rural warriors.

After the Taira emerged victorious from their competition with the Minamoto in the Hōgen Heiji wars, they became participants in the central authority and went on step by step seizing political power at the expense of the Cloistered Emperor. So that now they could rely on the power of the state machinery to secure their rule, whether in the requisition of fighting men in case of civil war or in the levying of taxes for military supplies. However, in order to reach this position, they could not avoid sacrificing vested interests, including the interests of the central aristocracy and prominent religious institutions. Therefore the Taira found themselves in the unfavorable situation of being isolated in the capital from the traditional powers represented by the aristocracy and religious bodies, and being confronted in the provinces by insurrection from the military class. In contrast to the Taira, who appeared as pacifiers of rebellion, as the commanders of the government forces, the Minamoto found themselves playing the rebel. They were obliged to organize insurrection and to that extent had to respect the interests of the provincials, and in particular the interests of the warrior class, which was composed of local proprietors.

Considered in its broad significance, then, the war between the Taira and Minamoto from 1177 to 1185 was not simply a struggle for leadership between these two clans, it was essentially a civil war marking the end of the old order. The author of the Heike monogatari, however, sees it as a conflict between these two mightiest of the warrior houses, and tells his story as one depicting the downfall of the Taira.

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE HEIKE MONOGATARI

It is still impossible to establish with certainty either the author of the Heike monogatari or the date, place, and circumstances of its composition. However, for the most convincing source relating to these problems we may turn to section two hundred twenty six of the Tsurezuregusa (Harvest of Leisure) by the monk Yoshida Kenkō¹ (1281-1350). Kenkō gives his version of the authorship of the Heike monogatari in the following words:

In the reign of the Cloistered Emperor Go-Toba, Yukinaga, a former governor of the province of Shinano, who was reputed to be a scholar of antiquities, was summoned to take part in a discussion of Po Chü-i's poetry before His Majesty.² He forgot two of the virtues which figure in the poem “The Dance of the Seven Virtues,” and as a result was nicknamed “Young Master Five Virtues.” He felt so unhappy over this that he gave up scholarship and abandoned the secular world. But the Abbot Jichin used to take anyone into his service, including persons of low condition, so long as they had at least one accomplishment to their credit; and he took pity on this monk who had once been the governor of Shinano, so that he extended his patronage to him.

The monk Yukinaga wrote the Heike monogatari and taught a blind man named Shōbutsu to chant it. The Heike monogatari treats the subject of Mt. Hiei with particular gravity. The author was well acquainted with the career of Minamoto no Yoshitsune and wrote it down in detail. The career of Minamoto no Noriyori, however, he has recorded with many omissions, perhaps because he was not well acquainted with his life. As for the doings of the military and the profession of the horse and bow, Shōbutsu, being a native of the eastern provinces, asked the warriors about them and gave the facts to Yukinaga to write down. The minstrels who recite the Heike monogatari to the accompaniment of the lute nowadays imitate the natural voice of the first reciter, Shōbutsu.

According to this source, the author of the Heike monogatari was Yukinaga, a minor official in the latter days of the old order, who could not get ahead in secular life although he was to some extent a learned man. He composed the Heike monogatari after he had taken the tonsure and while he was under the patronage of Abbot Jichin. He had the work chanted by the blind Shōbutsu, who hailed from the eastern provinces, and Shōbutsu helped him to write the parts that deal with the wars by canvassing the military men for the facts. As for Shōbutsu, he seems to have been one of those persons whom Jichin was willing to patronize “so long as they had at least one accomplishment,” in this case the accomplishment of minstrelsy.

This account in the Tsurezuregusa may be only what Kenkō wrote down as he heard it from others, and it is hardly likely that he did any historical research on it himself before committing it to writing. Nevertheless, it is true that “the Heike monogatari treats the subject of Mt. Hiei with particular gravity,” as Kenkō puts it, for it contains numerous references to the Enryaku monastery, the headquarters of the Tendai sect of Buddhism located on Mt. Hiei near Kyoto. In this connection I might add that the Shibukassenjō text of the Heike monogatari has a deeper religious tone than any of the other versions and is remarkable for its supplements dealing with religious matters. Considering, too, that the chant known as heikyoku, characteristic of Heike monogatari recitation, descends from a type of Buddhist singing called shōmyō, which was prevalent in that day, I am inclined to place a high value on the account given in the Tsurezuregusa. It is now thought that Jichin, who was the head of the Tendai sect, the monk Yukinaga, and the blind reciter Shōbutsu were all on Mt. Hiei when the Heike monogatari was written.³

The second source concerning the origin of the Heike monogatari is found in the fifth scroll of that work, in a section entitled Mokke no sata—(Rumors of Prodigies). It is an allusion to the installation of a Fujiwara shogun at Kamakura, which took place in 1219, after the extinction of the line of shoguns descended from Minamoto no Yoritomo. On the authority of this passage Kan Sazan, a Japanese Confucianist (1748-1827), wrote in his essay Fude no susabi (Playing with a Writing Brush) that the Heike monogatari was written after the Shōkyū war (1221). However, since the passage does not occur in the Yasaka text, Yamada Yoshio thought the original Heike monogatari was written before the Shōkyū war, that is, in the era of the Minamoto shoguns. But now we know that the old manuscripts which do not have the passage include not only the Yasaka text but also the Yashiro text and the Shibukassenjō text. In my opinion the passage was probably added to later texts, because the older manuscripts which stand near the original do not have it. Therefore this passage alone is not sufficient to ascertain the earliest date of the original Heike monogatari.⁴

The third source is an entry in the diary Gyokuzui (The Jade Stamen) written by Fujiwara no Michiie, an aristocrat and chief adviser to the Emperor Chūkyō. Dated the 20th day of the 4th month of 1220, it states that Michiie borrowed from Taira no Mitsumori “the many Heike which he owned.” If we suppose that the Heike mentioned in the Gyokuzui were copies of the Heike monogatari,⁵ it means that the Heike monogatari was written before 1220.

The assertion in the Tsurezuregusa that the Heike monogatari was written in the reign of the Cloistered Emperor Go-Toba, which covers the period from 1198 to 1221, will thus be reinforced. It is now generally accepted that the entry in the Gyokuzui does indeed refer to the Heike monogatari.

On the basis of the above three sources it is now provisionally recognized that the original Heike monogatari was composed not later than 1221.

THE HEIKE MONOGATARI AND THE BIWA HOSHI

The wars which in their aggregate effect put an end to the old order were, it will be remembered, the Hōgen and Heiji wars of 1156 and 1159, the civil war involving the Taira and Minamoto from 1177 to 1185, and the Shōkyū war of 1221. Each of these upheavals has its story enshrined in a monogatari (tale), the four of them being referred to collectively as “the four battle stories.” There are records showing that the Hōgen, Heiji, and Heike tales were recited by minstrels known as biwa hōshi, blind men who entertained audiences by intoning a text to the accompaniment of the biwa (lute). As for the Shōkyū ikusa monogatari (Tale of the Shōkyū War), however, this work does not have much literary value, and so it seems that no one took the trouble to make a note of it; in any case there is no record of its recitation by biwa hōshi. Nevertheless it was probably part of the minstrels' repertoire together with the other battle stories.

The existence of biwa hōshi is attested by documentary evidence going back early into the Heian period. They figure in the Genji monogatari, which dates from the beginning of the eleventh century, and there are numerous references to them in aristocratic diaries and other documents, the earliest being an entry in the diary Ouki dated 985, which says: “Summoned biwa hōshi and had them display their talent and skill. Granted them a small gratuity.”⁶

The greatest patrons of the biwa hōshi were the larger Buddhist monasteries, probably because the monasteries required performers and artists for religious services. Some scholars claim that the origin of the biwa hōshi is connected with a type of dance performance known as gigaku, which flourished in the eighth century.⁷ Although the music and dances accompanying public functions in the aristocratic society of the eight century were refined arts imported from China, the gigaku dances were something like pantomime with a touch of the comic in their mood, and they apparently served to relieve the solemnity of the other performances. It is said that gigaku probably originated on the continent too.

Whatever their origin, the biwa hōshi were wandering singers of low social status, and they evidently used texts of one kind or another in their performances.⁸ Nevertheless these purveyors of a minor plebeian art, who were treated as on a par with puppeteers, acrobats, and magicians, are not thought to have possessed texts of a quality which might have entitled them to the same high place in the literature of antiquity as the biwa hōshi texts were later to attain in the literature of the middle ages.

When exactly did the biwa hōshi take custody of the battle stories and especially the Heike monogatari? This question, which is of prime importance for the history of Japanese medieval literature, is still far from being elucidated despite the existence of numerous scholarly studies; and what we know about it so far is accurately summed up in the following words: “The very fact that is is obscured in a fog of legend is highly suggestive of the position of Heike recitation at the time of its origin; it indicates that for some time after the appearance of minstrels reciting the Heike monogatari, the people who had a literature, in other words the aristocrats of the capital, were not yet aware of this art as something worthy of notice.”⁹ The earliest source we know of which mentions a Heike recital before an audience is a collection of Buddhist stories entitled Futsū shōdō shū (Popular Sermons) with a preface dated 1297. Another important reference to Heike recitals is an entry dated 1321 in the diary of the Cloistered Emperor Hanazono (Hanazono shinki):

I made an unexpected visit to the Nakazono Palace this evening. We went on foot. We summoned the blind man Yuishin to play the biwa. He took the biwa and strummed it like a zithern (koto). The excellence of his performance was truly indescribable. He sang of the Heiji and Heike wars and other events of those days. There were many ladies of the Court in the audience. We left at dawn.

This is the first record that an emperor listened to a recitation of the Heiji and Heike tales. It reveals that recitals of the war tales such as the Heiji and Heike were now much in vogue in aristocratic society.

The Heike monogatari gained a decisive popularity because it was recited by the blind lute players called biwa hōshi, because, in short, the biwa hōshi took charge of the recited versions—the heikyoku, as they came to be known, which were intoned to the accompaniment of the biwa in a melody reminiscent of the shōmyō chant of Buddhism. This fact marks a new development in the history of Japanese literature. As is evident in the case of the Genji monogatari, in the literary world of the Heian period authors and readers could hardly be distinguished as separate groups, confined as they were to the narrow social circles of aristocratic gentlemen and ladies, where each member was expected to be an artist as well as a connoisseur. The amateurism of Heian literature is further revealed in the circumstances surrounding the authorship of the Ōsaka koenu gonchūnagon (The Counsellor Who Failed in Love), which is found in an eleventh-century collection of short stories. It was written by a court lady named Koshikibu, who entered it in a prose writing contest held at the residence of Princess Baishi in 1055. Here it is evident that the ladies of Princess Baishi's circle wrote for each other's enjoyment. But the world of the Heike monogatari was a professional one, in which there existed both a clear-cut division of functions and a unity of purpose between author, reciter, and audience.

Nevertheless, whether or not the Heike monogatari was from the first recited to musical accompaniment, in short, whether or not it was composed originally to serve as a minstrel's script, is a point on which opinions are still divided. Both sides of this controversy originate from two different interpretations of the passage in the Tsurezuregusa which I quoted earlier. Dr. Atsumi Kaoru believes that the original Heike monogatari was written as a reciter's text and that Heike recitation is coeval with the authorship of the work.¹⁰ In support of this opinion she cites the fact that Jichin, the head of the Tendai sect, who patronized Yukinaga, was an ardent promoter of popular education; and she supposes that Yukinaga, with his knowledge of Chinese poetry, had a part to play in the furtherance of popular education under Jichin's auspices, so that he observed how stories about the Taira were being used to illustrate Buddhist teachings in the monasteries and were being sung before audiences by blind monks playing the biwa, and from this practice he got the idea to compose the Heike monogatari for biwa recitation.¹¹

On the other hand, Dr. Sasaki Hachirō maintains that the Tsurezuregusa does not give enough information to support a conclusion that Yukinaga intended from the outset to have the Heike monogatari recited by biwa hōshi and so composed it in a form suitable to recitation. No one can give a conclusive answer to this question, now that there is no chance of discovering the original Heike monogatari that is supposed to have been written by Yukinaga. Nevertheless Dr. Sasaki goes on to say, “I assume that the Heike monogatari supposed to have been written by Yukinaga was essentially in a form designed for reading.”¹² But in considering Dr. Sasaki's assumption we must take into account that even in the oldest manuscript of the group classed as ‘reading texts’—the Gempei tōjō roku (Record of the Conflict Between the Minamoto and the Taira)—there are unmistakable traces of the reciter;¹³ therefore one cannot dismiss the possibility that the original Heike monogatari was used for recitation, even though one may not accept the Tsurezuregusa's version of its composition.

Still, it is self-evident that the Heike monogatari can not have been created by simply fitting together around a central plot stories about the Taira which the biwa hōshi may have been circulating at the time. Therefore Dr. Sasaki is correct when he emphasizes the form characteristic of chronicles which is present in the extant versions of the Heike monogatari and makes use of this fact to support his assertion that the original Heike monogatari must have been quite different from any of the earlier minstrel texts.

Nevertheless, inasmuch as there is not a single source existing today which refutes the Tsurezuregusa's version of how the Heike monogatari was written, I am inclined to give the Tsurezuregusa the benefit of the doubt.

It is not hard to imagine that various stories about the Taira should have sprung up immediately after their destruction at the Battle of Dannoura in 1185. The original Heike monogatari did not appear on the scene until some thirty years after the collapse of the Taira, and the nature of this type of literature—the battle stories—resists the notion that nothing about this collapse was made into story form during those thirty years. There must have been many stories current at the time that the Heike monogatari was written, and so it is with good reason that later historical sources name a variety of persons as putative authors of the Heike monogatari. The Tsurezuregusa, as we have seen, offers us a former governor of Shinano Province, named Yukinaga, but there is no other evidence that such a person existed. On the other hand, we do have historical evidence that Fujiwara no Yukinaga, formerly a governor of Shimotsuke Province, lived during the period when the Heike monogatari was written, and he had also been the steward of Abbot Jichin's brother, Fujiwara no Kujō Kanezane who was the chief adviser to the Emperor. This historical Yukinaga may well have been the author of the Heike monogatari.¹⁴ But no matter whether Yukinaga wrote the Heike monogatari or not, the extant versions leave little doubt that the author was a ruined aristocrat with education and a monk closely associated with the Enryaku monastery.

The monastery in this period was not only the last citadel of representatives of the old aristocratic culture, it was also an epitome of the chaotic social conditions which prevailed in Japan. For it housed a medley of all classes of people, who were forced to leave secular life from the most backward areas of the country as well as from the most advanced. The blind Shōbutsu mentioned in the Tsurezuregusa was one of these. If we suppose that in this gigantic retreat on Mt. Hiei with its complex population Yukinaga, or anyone else in the same circumstances, were to describe those amazing times from his personal experience, we would expect him to identify his own fate with the fall of the Taira and respond sympathetically to the tragedy which overtook that once prosperous clan.

The Heike monogatari itself relates how Prince Shukaku, abbot of the Ninna monastery, secretly invited Minamoto no Yoshitsune to come and tell him about the battles, and then made a record of what he heard. The prince was deeply affected by “the rule that man should prosper only to decline and rise only to fall, and the pathos of earthly vicissitude and heartlessness”;¹⁵ and even as he remembered sadly those among the sinking Taira who had accepted aristocratic culture, he could not help but be attracted to the valiant warriors like Yoshitsune who were sinking them. But it was not only Prince Shukaku who experienced this ambivalence to the wars; contemporary records show that aristocrats like Jichin and Fujiwara no Kanezane vied with each other to hear stories about the warriors great and small, and particularly about the heroic Yoshitsune. These accounts reveal how interested people were to find out what happened in the civil war. And for someone like Yukinaga, living under the patronage of Jichin, would not the best way of satisfying the curiosity of the aristocrats and others in the capital have been to compile a Heike monogatari from the records and narratives concerning the Taira? Would not his most effective procedure have been to narrate the fall of the Taira in the melodic measures used for the intonation of stories about paradise and hell prevalent at that time in the Buddhist monasteries? In this he would have had ample precedent, for the practice of reciting battle stories of biwa accompaniment is documented from times prior to the age of the Taira.

Though its origin is obscure, we can at least say that the Heike monogatari which we have today is the product of extensive revision undergone during the centuries when it was recited by the biwa hōshi. The text was altered to enhance its effect as a piece of musical recitation and to adjust the melodic quality of its phrases, it was rearranged to sharpen the dramatic impact of the narrative, and it was supplemented with romantic episodes and half-legendary tales recast in a form suitable to intonation.¹⁶

THE PROTOTYPES AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEIKE MONOGATARI

The original Heike monogatari, written at the beginning of the thirteenth century, did not consist of twelve scrolls as its successors do today. According to one account from the fifteenth century (Heike kammon roku), there were six different versions of the Heike monogatari, in addition to the reciter's text, one of them had grown from three scrolls to six scrolls, and the Heike monogatari which Shōbutsu recited was composed of six scrolls. However, such statements should not be accepted at face value, since they appear in documents of a later time and seem merely to reflect oral traditions.

A document which helps to clarify this problem was discovered by Dr. Yamada Yoshio in the Higashiyama Library of the old imperial palace in Kyoto. It bears the date 1240 and states that the Heike monogatari used to be called Jishō monogatari (The Tale of the Jishō Era) (1177-81) and consisted of six scrolls; that while the six-scroll version circulated widely, there also existed a version in twelve scrolls. The discovery of this document suggests that the text of the Jishō monogatari underwent a gradual revision. The original six scrolls must have remained substantially unchanged, having reached the stage of an established recitation text; so that the twelve-scroll version was doubtless formed by the addition of a further six scrolls consisting mainly of stories about the battles which took place after Kiyomori's death in 1181.

Before the discovery of the above document, Dr. Yamada proposed a theory that the original Heike monogatari consisted of three scrolls.¹⁷ He adduced in support of his theory the fact that the opening lines of scrolls one, six, and nine agree in all versions of the work, and the fact that the other three battle stories—the Heiji, Hōgen, and Shōkyū tales—are each composed of three scrolls. But this theory has not gained general acceptance because no reliable source has yet been uncovered to corroborate it. In any case, we still have no definite clue to tell us what the form of the six-scroll version might have been, not to mention Dr. Yamada's hypothetical three-scroll version. And of course it is not clear either whether the six-scroll text we are dealing with here is really the Heike monogatari presumed to have been written by Yukinaga.

Professor Ishimoda Tadashi attaches importance to the fact that the opening lines of scrolls one, six, and nine not only agree in all texts of the twelve-scroll Heike monogatari, but are also in a style characteristic of chronicles. “This fact,” he writes, “raises the question that if we could trace back the successive stages in the development of the present texts, we might well find that they took on more and more distinctly the form of a chronicle the farther back in time we went. Or else it permits the hypothesis that the Heike monogatari was originally in chronicle form, and even though it passed from a three-scroll stage to a six-scroll stage and was finally divided into twelve scrolls, there was still an attempt to preserve its original form at least at the beginning of each scroll.”¹⁸ The originality of Professor Ishimoda's view is well appreciated in his conjecture that there may be a relationship between the chronicle form of scrolls one, six, and nine and the original form of the Heike monogatari.

All extant versions of the Heike monogatari combine two modes of presentation. One is the chronological mode, and the other is the biographical mode, which is a method of narrating events by centering them around the personalities concerned, without necessarily following a chronological order. Both modes of presentation belong properly to the writing of history; but the Heike monogatari, while following the example of such antecedent historical narratives as the Ōkagami (Great Mirror), has achieved a brilliant success in the use of these modes for a literary purpose. That is, the parts consisting of story and legend organized by the biographical method have been squeezed into the middle of the chronological organization, yet every effort has been made to maintain an over-all harmony.

The following passage illustrates the chronological method employed in the Heike monogatari:

Twenty-second day of the second month of the second year of Juei:

His Majesty pays a visit to the imperial parents at the Hōjūji palace. His Majesty's visit to his parents in the sixth year of the Cloistered Toba has been taken as the precedent for this.

Twenty-third day: Munemori receives the Junior First Rank.

Twenty-seventh day: He resigns his ministership.

This passage introduces the seventh scroll of the Tashiro text, which is the oldest reciter's text we have. But in the other texts of this category, which are further advanced in their development as minstrels' scripts, the seventh scroll begins as follows:

The New Year's banquet and other court functions from the first day of the first month of the second year of Juei take place as usual. The duties of the Master of Ceremonies are performed by the Minister, Munemori of the Taira.

The passage is further adjusted by shifting the events of the second month in the earlier text backward to the sixth day of the first month. This comparison shows that by the end of the thirteenth century reciters had begun to concern themselves that there should be a mention of the New Year to start off each scroll.

The above examples have been adduced to illustrate the fact that the chronological mode of presentation, by which events are recorded day by day, is fundamentally consistent throughout all versions of the Heike monogatari from those texts which were clearly organized for biwa recitation to others like the Gempei seisui ki (Record of the Fortunes of the Minamoto and the Taira), whose Chinese vocabulary has rendered them unintelligible except to the eye. Furthermore, the judgment applies generally to the category of reciters' texts that the earlier ones like the Tashiro text appear simple in form, even documentary, in comparison with the later ones like the Kakuichi text, which are more fully developed to suit the needs of the reciter's art.

Little though we know of the origin of the Heike monogatari, it is clear that it depends for its material to a large extent on aristocratic diaries and temple records of the period. Passages introduced by a date, such as the foregoing examples, are found everywhere in all the extant versions. They are almost like entries in a record and demonstrate conclusively that the style of aristocratic diaries was taken over directly as a mode of presentation in the Heike monogatari. This fact suggests something of the nature of the Heike monogatari as a literary work in the time of its formation, when it went by the name of Jishō monogatari (The Tale of the Jishō Era).

The next question I wish to consider is how the two modes of presentation, the chronological and the biographical, are intertwined in the Heike monogatari. For an example I shall use scroll six in the centre of which the death of Kiyomori is related. In the standard edition this scroll is divided into thirteen chapters, which fall into four groups.

The first group (chapters one to four) concerns the Cloistered Emperor Takakura, who died at the early age of twenty-one. Chapter one “The Death of the Cloistered Emperor” is a chronological record of events having to do with the Emperor Takakura. Chapters two to four are not organized chronologically. Chapter two, “Autumn Leaves” and three, “Lady Aoi” contain traditional stories illustrating the cloistered emperor's gentleness; and chapter four, “Kogō” is an independent romance which was developed from a simpler tradition concerning the emperor.

The second group (chapters five and six) tells of the national insurrection against the Taira. Chapter five, “The Summons to Arms” contains traditional stories about the birth of Kiso Yoshinaka, a member of the Minamoto clan who raised troops in the south of Shinano close to the capital, and it tells the motives of his uprising. Chapter six, “The Coming of the Couriers” is entirely a record organized like a chronicle, which reports on the progress of the insurrection in the home provinces, Kyushu and Shikoku.

The third group (chapters seven to ten) deals with Taira no Kiyomori. Chapter seven, “The Monk's Demise” records the death of Kiyomori, and while organized chronologically, has a few legendary stories mingled in the chronicle. The remaining three chapters in this group—“The Artificial Island,” “The Monk Jishin,” and “The Lady of Gion”—follow the biographical mode of presentation and consist of stories handed down about the deceased Kiyomori.

Group four comprises chapters eleven, twelve, and thirteen, entitled respectively: “The Battle of Sumata,” “The Hoarse Cry,” and “The Battle of Yokotagawara,” which resume the progress of the fighting from the point to which it was carried in chapter six, “The Coming of the Couriers.” Although organized like a chronicle, these chapters include descriptions of fighting and amount to something more than a plain record.

Thus the sixth scroll is composed of a variety of ingredients consisting of chronicles, traditional stories, a romance, and battle descriptions. This sort of motleyness is not found in the Hōgen and Heiji tales, let alone the prose literature of the Heian court, epitomized in the Genji monogatari. For it is in the nature of the court novels and stories that they should be devoid of chronological records and descriptions of battles, while on the other hand it is most difficult to find in the Hōgen and Heiji tales any sort of subjective treatment of events or delineation of character and feelings. The Heike monogatari, while belonging to the succession of battle tales which began with the Shōmonki, an account of the rebellion of Taira no Masakado in the tenth century, has been heavily influenced by traditional, half-legendary stories such as are found in the eleventh-century collection entitled Konjaku monogatari (Once-Upon-A-Time Tales), and has imitated extensively chronological records like the Ōkagami (Great Mirror), which is a history of the imperial court in the ninth and tenth centuries. At the same time it differs markedly from its immediate predecessors in the line of battle stories, the Hōgen and Heiji tales, in that it betrays considerable influence from such products of the court literature as the Genji monogatari. Its tendency to portray emotion is realized in its successful depiction of the life and sentiments of the declining aristocracy by adopting on a large scale the classical diction and style developed in the literature of the imperial court. For example, in contrast to the Hōgen monogatari, which shows little sympathy with the Cloistered Emperor Sutoku, the central character of the Hōgen war, by cutting short his lament on defeat after only two lyric poems and two lines of prose, the Heike monogatari devotes two long chapters to the Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa when he is reduced to a similar plight and describes his grief with a minuteness born of sympathetic understanding.

However, this concern with personal feelings, which is so evident in the reciters' versions and the standard text, both alike derived from the Kakuichi manuscript, is not characteristic of all the texts. Which means that not all of the sentimental passages in the reciters' texts date from the origin of the Heike monogatari. To illustrate this point we may take the famous chapter in scroll five entitled “Moon Viewing,” which has a direct bearing on the Genji monogatari.

With the Minamoto pressing upon them, the Taira have abandoned the capital and moved the court to Fukuhara. One autumn night the aristocrats hold moon viewing parties at Fukuhara, but Tokudaiji Jittei returns to the capital to enjoy the moon in the deserted haunts of better days. He stops at his sister's house and is received by her as she sits playing the biwa. The sight reminds him of another lady, described in the Genji monogatari, who long ago spent an autumn night in contemplation as she strummed the biwa, and on perceiving the pale moon still riding the sky at daybreak, beckoned to it with her plectrum. One of his sister's maids is called Matsuyoi (Waiting at Nightfall), because she was once asked what was more pathetic, waiting for one's lover at nightfall or watching him depart in the morning, and she replied with the poem:

How cheap is the early song of the birds
When they greet his departure at sunrise
Compared with the boom of the temple bell
As it tolls the hours of waiting at nightfall.

These passages evoke the heyday of a dying culture—the days when it could produce a masterpiece like the Genji monogatari, when a courtier might spend his youth in nothing more serious than nighttime love affairs, and when impromptu poems were essential components of courtly converse—and by this evocation could touch the heart of a listener whose sympathies lay with the past. They are, however, not to be found in the Shibukassenjō manuscript, which is a reading text, nor in the early reciter's text, the Yashiro manuscript. It is evident, then, that the original form of the Heike monogatari is best inferred from the plain narration characteristic of the Shibukassenjō and Yashiro versions, and that the sentimental passages, which differentiate the Heike monogatari from its predecessors in the genre, were added gradually at a later date.

Returning now to scroll six, we may remember that chapters two, three, and four—“Autumn Leaves,” “Lady Aoi,” and “Kogō”—present stories illustrating the gentleness of the Cloistered Emperor Takakura. “Autumn Leaves” contains two stories, which are summarized as follows:

I

When the emperor was ten years old, he kept maple trees in his garden because he loved the autumn colours. The leaves were scattered one night by the wind and a gardener raked them up for a fire to heat his sake. Instead of punishing the culprit as his courtiers expected, however, the emperor accepted the situation philosophically and did nothing.

II

The emperor, on the way to one of his residences, encountered a poor girl who had just been robbed of her master's garment. He presented her with a new set of clothing and sent her home under the protection of one of his guards.

Originally these two episodes were separated by the independent story entitled “Lady Aoi,” and subsequently they were put together to form a single chapter because they complement each other as examples of the emperor's gentle nature.

The very moving chapter entitled “Kogō,” which follows “Lady Aoi” in most texts, does not occur in the Shibukassenjō manuscript. It is summarized below according to the version found in the Kakuichi and the standard texts.

When the emperor lost his mistress, Lady Aoi, he was so grief-stricken that his consort hoped to console him by presenting him with a lovely girl named Kogō. But Kiyomori took offense because Kogō was the mistress of his son-in-law, Reizei Takafusa, and his anger vented itself on the girl. Therefore, Kogō, heedless of the emperor's pleas, went into hiding. One autumn evening the emperor was informed that Kogō had gone to Saga, and he sent his attendant Nakakuni there to find out where she was hidden. Nakakuni made his way to Kogō's house, guided by the music of her zithern. He returned her to the palace, where eventually she bore the emperor a daughter. But Kogō's presence in the palace came to the attention of Kiyomori, and at length she was compelled to go into a convent. This incident was one of several which contributed to the emperor's early death.

The “Kogō” chapter, which is not found in the Shibukassenjō text, was introduced into the Heike monogatari through the Nagato text. In its tone it resembles closely many of the “once-upon-a-time” tales in the Konjaku monogatari, and it depicts Kiyomori as both a rough and a licentious character. However, in the Enkyō manuscript, which follows the Nagato manuscript in the lineage of reading texts, the realistic description of the give and take between Kiyomori and Kogō disappears; the Kogō who in the Nagato text boldly stood up to Kiyomori has now become a pliant female; and the scene where she bears the emperor a daughter appears for the first time. Moreover Kiyomori has been transfigured from a strong personality into a stereotyped authoritarian, the father of the emperor's consort. This change is carried further in the Kakuichi manuscript, a reciter's text, where the centre of attention recedes from the character of Kiyomori and shifts over to the first half of the story, that is, the love between the emperor and Kogō. Thus the “Kogō” chapter, as one of the legends concerning the Emperor Takakura, has attained its completed form, and the process illustrates the fact that the Heike monogatari developed a deepening sensitivity to the portrayal of sentiment during the period when it was in the hands of the biwa hōshi.

The basic rhythm of the Heike monogatari resolves itself into alternating lines of seven and five syllables, which is the characteristic metre of Japanese poetry. The smoothness of this rhythm may be appreciated in the opening lines of the scene where Lady Hotoke pays a visit to the retreat of Giō, Kiyomori's cast-off mistress, who now, with her mother and sister, devotes herself to religion.

Kakute haru sugi
          natsu takenu.
Aki no hatsukaze
                    fukinureba
          hoshiai no sora o
          nagametsutsu
          amanoto wataru
          kaji no ha ni
          omou koto kaku
          koro nare ya.
And so the spring is gone
and summer has passed the zenith.
With the first breath
of autumn in the wind,
now is the season when youngsters look up
to the star lovers united in the sky,
the Weaving Maid and Herdboy,
who come together but once a year,
and between their upward glances
write words of love
on leaves of the paper mulberry,
leaf-boats to bear their thoughts
as the Herdboy is borne across
the river of the milky way.

.....

          Tasokaredoki mo
                    suginureba
          take no amido o
                              tojifusagi
tomoshibi kasuka ni
                                        kakitatete
                              oyako sannin
                    nembutsu shite
                    itaru tokoro ni
                    take no amido o
                                        hotohoto to
          uchitataku mono
                                        idekitari.
The hour of dusk is past:
with the bamboo door secured
and the lamplight burning low
a mother and her daughters
are telling their beads
when suddenly on the door without
beats a sharp rap rap
of one who has come.

The “Giō” chapter does not occur in the Gempei tōjō roku, the Shibukassenjō text, and the Nagato text, all of which are meant to be read and not sung. This story of the rival dancers, Giō and Lady Hotoke, had originally been an independent piece, but was incorporated into the Heiki monogatari as another demonstration of Kiyomori's “extraordinary” behaviour. In the Enkyō text the same scene is rendered concisely thus:

It is now about the third day of the month, when about midnight there comes a rapping on the door of their retreat.

In this objective description of what happened, devoid of lyricism, we get an idea of the form in which this story was cast in the early period of the Heike monogatari's development.

Let us go back again to scroll six. On the basis of this scroll as it appears in the Kakuichi text I shall discuss the relationship between chronological form and literary quality, for nearly half of the scroll is organized chronologically. The opening paragraph of chapter six, “The Coming of the Couriers,” describes, as a sort of prologue to the national insurrection, the reaction of Kiyomori and the Taira clan to the report of Kiso Yoshinaka's rebellion. This part is not in chronicle form, and it stands in relation to the rest of the chapter as a kind of preface. The remainder of the chapter is taken up by chronological entries each preceded by a date: the first day of the second month, the seventh day of the same month, the ninth day of the same month, and so forth. These entries are written in a Japanese burdened with Chinese vocabulary, a style called wakan konkōbun which is characteristic of aristocratic diaries and historical records like the Azuma kagami (Mirror of the East). The entries from the first to the sixteenth day of the second month are selected to focus attention on the repercussions and countermeasures evoked in the capital by the anti-Taira movement which was gathering force throughout the country. Accordingly, any passage in this section from an earlier text was deleted from the Heike monogatari as represented by the Kakuichi text if it did not conform to the principle of selection adopted in the Kakuichi text to unify this part of the chapter.

When we consider the Heike monogatari as represented in the reciters' texts, there is nothing in particular to hold our interest in the choice of vocabulary; for, to state the matter in an extreme form, the reciters did not care whether their audiences could understand every word of the Chinese vocabulary they frequently employed. The essence of Heike artistry lies rather in the beauty resulting from the union of written style with the style of recitation, therefore what is required is a mode of recitation suitable to the passage at hand. Nevertheless, even when we consider the Heike monogatari simply as a piece of written literature, ignoring the tonal beauties that go into its recitation, its literary qualities are quite obvious. For example, the chronological and non-chronological parts of the “Coming of the Couriers” are not merely juxtaposed but have an organic relation. Kiyomori's contempt when he received the report of Kiso Yoshinaka's rising was shared by the men of the Taira. But others, who knew that the Taira had been losing the regard of the nation, thought differently. This is the situation set forth in plain narrative at the beginning of the chapter. Now begins the chronicle, which proceeds step by step to verify the misgivings of those in the capital who had not shared the Taira's disregard of the first report. Here it is necessary to note that the method in the reciters' texts of ending these reports of rebellion with the formula “so it is reported” serves the purpose of presenting the facts as objectively as possible. The recitation progresses, piling one fact upon the other without the slightest qualification. The Taira, who have discounted the report of Yoshinaka's rebellion, are shocked to hear the news from Kyushu, when hard upon it comes the news from Shikoku to complete their dismay. In this way the uneasy murmuring of observers at the beginning of the chapter culminates by chronological stages into a despairing cry at the end that “the world is on the brink of disaster”; and we find before us a graphic description of an age trembling at the portents of an unprecedented civil war. In such a manner, then, the literary quality of the Heike monogatari transforms its value in the process of shifting, or being absorbed into the reciting texts from the reading texts, losing the chronological character of the reading texts, and at the same time its function as a piece of recitation is realized in the literary value of the minstrels' texts.

Notes

1. “Monk” translates nyūdō “one who has entered the way.” A nyūdō had his head shaved and wore the habit of a monk, but he did not live in a monastery and was not necessarily aloof from worldly affairs.

2. This was a discussion of shingafu (hsin-yüeh-fu) in the Hakushi monjū (Po-shih-wen-chi), which is thought to have been held on the 15th of March, 1210 (fourth year of Shōgen) at the Kōyōinden palace where the Cloistered Emperor Goshirakawa resided.

3. Heike monogatari in Nihon koten bungaku taikei xxxii, Iwanami shoten, Tokyo, 1952, p. 12.

4. Matsui Takeshi, “Heike monogatari to Shōkyūki to no kankei,” Bungaku, July 1934, ii, No. 7, pp. 64-65.

5. But Takahashi Sadaichi thinks the reference might be to the records of the Heike family rather than the Heike monogatari (Heike monogatari shohon no kenkyū, Fuzambō, Tokyo, 1943, p. 449); and Atsumi Kaoru believes that it concerns some tales about the Heike which existed in written form before the Heike monogatari itself (Heike monogatari no kisoteki kenkyū, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1962, p. 49).

6. This is the diary of Fujiwara no Sanesuke, the Minister of the Right.

7. Ishimoda Tadashi, Heike monogatari, Iwanami shoten, Tokyo, 1957, p. 183.

8. Fujiwara no Akihira, “Shin sarugakuki” (1058 ad) in Gunshorui jū, vi, 1046.

9. Kazamaki Keijirō, Nihon bungakushi no shūhen, Hanawa shobō, Tokyo, 1954, p. 169.

10. Heike monogatari in Nihon koten bungaku taikei, xxxii, 44.

11. Heike monogatari no kisoteki kenkyū, pp. 14-15.

12. Heike monogatari hyōkō, Meiji shoin, Tokyo, 1963, 1, 17.

13. Yamashita Hiroaki, “Gempei tōjō roku to kenkyū” in Mikan kokubun shiryō, Toyohashi, 1963, p. 221; “Heike monogatari no katari to yomi ni kansuru shiron” in Kinjōgakuin daigaku ronshū, No. 25, July, 1964, pp. 46-49.

14. On the other hand, the Daigo zasshō “Records of the Daigo Monastery,” which was written by the monk Ryūgen (1343-1426), says that the Heike monogatari was written by Fujiwara no Tokinaga, a cousin of the historical Yukinaga, at the suggestion of the blind biwa hōshi Jōichi. Jōichi was an eminent reciter, and his name appears in a record of 1328.

15. Prince Shukaku's diary Saki, Gunshoruijū xvi, 764. Cf. Nagazumi Yasuaki, Chūsei bungaku no tembō, Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1956, p. 111.

16. The manuscripts of the Heike monogatari fall into two lines of descent: the katari-kei “recitation texts” and the zōho-kei “supplemented texts” or yomihon “reading texts.” In 1371 Kakuichi, a gifted reciter, stabilized the recitation text of his school to forestall disputes among his followers after his death. The Kakuichi bon, as this version is called, is one of the best known recitation texts.

17. Heike monogatari, Hōbunkan, Tokyo, 1933, pp. 42-45.

18. Heike monogatari, pp. 140-141.