六の宮の姫君 English

I

The father of the Princess of the Sixth Ward was born of an old imperial lineage.

Yet, being a man of old-fashioned ways who tended to fall behind the times, he never rose in office beyond Vice-Minister of Military Affairs.

The princess lived together with such parents in a tall-treed manor near the Sixth Ward.

She was called the Princess of the Sixth Ward after the name of that place.

Her parents doted on the princess.

Yet, true to the old custom, they never took the initiative in seeking a match for her.

They did nothing but wait with hopeful hearts for someone to come forward.

The princess, too, following her parents' teachings, passed her days in quiet modesty.

It was a life that knew no sorrow, and equally knew no joy.

But the princess, sheltered from the world, felt no particular discontent.

"I need only that my parents remain in good health."

That was what the princess thought.

The weeping cherry that drooped over the ancient pond bloomed its meager blossoms year after year.

In the meantime, the princess had before she knew it come to possess a beauty ripened to womanhood.

But the father on whom she had relied, having drunk too heavily over the years, suddenly joined the ranks of the dead.

Moreover, within about half a year, the mother, having sunk deeper and deeper into inconsolable grief, at last followed in her father's footsteps.

The princess was less grief-stricken than utterly at a loss.

Indeed, the princess, who had been so sheltered, had nothing to rely on save her one wet nurse.

The wet nurse, devotedly and for the princess's sake, went on working without sparing herself.

But the mother-of-pearl box and the silver censer that had been handed down in the house vanished one by one before long.

At the same time, the male and female servants began taking their leave, one after another.

The princess too came gradually to understand clearly how harsh their circumstances had become.

Yet there was nothing within the princess's power to do about it.

In the secluded wing of the manor, the princess continued repeating her monotonous pastimes—playing the koto, composing verses—unchanged from the old days.

Then one autumn evening, the wet nurse appeared before the princess and, choosing her words carefully, said the following.

"My nephew the monk tells me that the former governor of Tamba, a certain lord, says he would like to be allowed to meet you. The former governor is said to be handsome in appearance and fine in character, and though his father is merely a provincial governor, he is also the son of a nobleman who is a near kinsman of the upper court nobility—so might you not consider meeting him? I think it would be somewhat better than living in such lonesome straits as these."

The princess began to weep quietly.

To entrust her body to that man, in order to relieve her straitened circumstances, was no different from selling herself.

Of course she was aware that such things were common enough in the world.

But now that she faced it herself, the sorrow was of another order entirely.

The princess sat facing the wet nurse, hiding her face in her sleeves for a long time in the wind that turned back the kudzu leaves.

II

Yet before she knew it, the princess had come to meet the man every night.

The man was, as the wet nurse had said, a person of gentle heart.

His features too were refinedly handsome, as one might expect.

Moreover, it was plain to almost anyone's eye that he had forgotten everything else in his captivation with the princess's beauty.

The princess for her part harbored no ill feeling toward this man.

At times she even found him reassuring.

Yet not once—not on a single night—when she lay with the man behind the standing curtain embroidered with butterflies and birds, her eyes dazzled by the lamp stand's light, did she feel what she would call happy.

In the meantime, the manor gradually began to take on a more lively air.

The black shelves and reed blinds were renewed, and the number of servants increased.

The wet nurse of course managed the household with greater animation than before.

But the princess could only watch such changes with a look of quiet melancholy.

One night when a cold shower had passed through, the man and the princess sat drinking together, and he told her a strange tale from the province of Tamba.

A traveler making his way to Izumo lodged at an inn at the foot of Mount Oe.

The innkeeper's wife gave birth that very night, safely delivering a baby girl.

Then the traveler saw a great man of unknown identity emerge in great haste from the birthing room.

The great man said only: "Her years: eight. Her fate: self-inflicted death."

And with that, he vanished instantly, no one knew where.

Nine years later, the traveler, passing through again on his way back to the capital, lodged at the same house.

It turned out that the girl had indeed died unnaturally in her eighth year.

Moreover, she had fallen from a tree and driven a sickle into her own throat.

That was the substance of the tale.

When the princess heard it, she was struck by the futility of fate.

Compared with that girl, living under the shelter of this man was surely better fortune by far.

"There is nothing for it but to leave oneself to what comes."

Even as the princess thought this, she kept her face turned toward him with a graceful smile.

The pine tree standing at the eaves of the manor had its branches broken by snow again and again.

During the days, the princess played the koto and backgammon as she always had.

At night, she shared her bedding with the man and listened to the sound of waterfowl descending on the pond.

It was a life of few sorrows, and equally few joys.

Yet the princess, as ever, found a fleeting contentment in this languid peace.

But even that peace came to an end more suddenly than she had thought.

One night when spring had only just returned, the man found himself alone with the princess and began, finding it difficult to speak: "Tonight is the last night I will see you."

He opened the conversation with difficulty.

The man's father had been appointed Governor of Mutsu in the recent round of official appointments.

The man too was obliged to accompany him into the deep snow-covered north.

Of course, parting from the princess was, more than anything else, painful for the man.

But he had kept his marriage to the princess hidden even from his father, and it was therefore difficult to disclose it now.

The man sighed as he explained the situation at length.

"But the appointment will end in five years. Wait for that day with hope."

The princess had already prostrated herself weeping.

Even if she did not feel love for him, parting from the man she had depended upon was a sorrow beyond words.

The man stroked the princess's back and offered various words of comfort and encouragement.

But he too, at every other word, was clouding his voice with tears.

Just then the wet nurse, knowing nothing of what had passed, came in with the younger maidservants, carrying wine vessels and stands.

She was telling them how the weeping cherry by the ancient pond had begun to bud.

III

The sixth spring came.

But the man who had gone north never returned to the capital.

In the meantime, every last servant had scattered and withdrawn somewhere, and the eastern wing where the princess had lived was blown down in a great storm one year.

From that time on, the princess lived together with the wet nurse in the servants' corridor.

Though called a residence, it was cramped and run-down, barely enough to keep out the rain and dew.

When the wet nurse first moved into this corridor and saw the princess's pitiable condition, she could not keep herself from weeping.

But at other times, for no particular reason, she would fall into a state of simple irritation.

The hardship of their life was of course unremitting.

The cabinet on the shelf had long since been exchanged for rice and greens.

By now nothing remained of the princess's robes and trousers save what was on her body.

When the wet nurse was short of firewood, she would go out to the main hall, now standing in decay, to pry off planks.

But the princess, as in the old days, diverted herself with the koto and verse, and waited steadfastly for the man.

Then one autumn night of moonlight that year, the wet nurse appeared before the princess and, choosing her words carefully, said the following.

"My lord will surely not return now. Perhaps you might consider putting him from your mind. As it happens, a certain Assistant in the Bureau of Medicine has been pressing me to arrange a meeting with you."

As the princess listened to this, she recalled events of six years past.

Six years ago, she had wept until she felt she could never weep enough.

But now her body and heart were too exhausted for that.

"I want only to grow old quietly and be forgotten."

Beyond that, she thought of nothing.

When the princess had finished listening to the story, she gazed at the white moon and gave a languid shake of her gaunt face.

"I want nothing more. Whether I live or die is all one to me."

* * *

At that very same hour, the man was in a manor in the distant province of Hitachi, drinking with his new wife.

The wife was the daughter of the governor of that province, a match his father had approved.

"What was that sound?"

The man glanced upward, as if suddenly startled, toward the eaves bright with quiet moonlight.

At that moment, for no clear reason, the form of the princess floated distinctly in the man's mind.

"It must be a chestnut falling."

The wife of Hitachi answered this and poured more wine from the flask without ceremony.

IV

The man returned to the capital in late autumn of the ninth year.

The man and the kinspeople of his Hitachi wife—on their way into the capital, they stayed at Awazu for three or four days to avoid an inauspicious day for travel.

Even when they entered the capital, they deliberately chose the hour of dusk so as not to draw attention in the daylight.

While in the provinces, the man had sent two or three warm messages to his wife in the capital.

But sometimes the messengers did not return, and when one did return there was good fortune, the princess's manor could not be found—not once did a reply reach him.

All the more so, then, when he entered the capital, his longing for her was all the deeper.

The man had no sooner safely seen his wife to her father's manor than he set out for the Sixth Ward, his traveling clothes not yet put away.

When he arrived at the Sixth Ward, the four-legged gate that had once stood there, the cypress-bark-roofed main hall and the wings—all were entirely gone.

The only thing remaining was a partial remnant of the earthen wall.

The man stood still among the grasses and gazed around, dazed, at the ruins of the garden.

There, in the half-silted pond, a little water parsley had taken root.

The water parsley clustered its leaves in quiet stillness in the faint light of the new moon.

The man noticed, in what seemed to be the area of the estate office, a leaning wooden shack.

When he drew near to look inside, there appeared to be some human presence.

Peering through the darkness, the man quietly called out to that figure.

Then, tottering out into the moonlight, came an old nun whose face he vaguely recognized.

When the man gave his name, the nun wept on and on without a word.

Then at last, haltingly, she began to tell the story of the princess's fate.

"You may not remember me, but I am the mother of a servant girl who served in the household. Even after your lordship departed, my daughter served here another five years or so. But in time she and her husband came to go down to Tajima, and so at that point I too took my leave along with my daughter. But of late the princess's circumstances have been weighing on my mind, and so I came back to the capital alone to see for myself—only to find, as you can see, the manor and everything gone. And where the princess may have gone—to tell the truth, I myself have been at a complete loss. Your lordship may not be aware, but even during the time my daughter was in service here, the pitifulness of the princess's way of life was beyond description."

After hearing the whole account, the man removed one of his under-robes and gave it to the bent-backed nun.

Then, with head bowed, he walked away silently through the grasses.

V

From the next day, the man wandered throughout the capital searching for the princess.

But no matter where he went, her whereabouts could not readily be found.

Then one evening some days later, to take shelter from a passing shower, the man stepped under the eaves of the western arcade in front of the Suzaku Gate.

There, besides the man, a solitary monk who appeared to be begging was also waiting out the rain.

The rain continued its lonely sound against the sky of the vermilion-lacquered gate.

With a sidelong glance at the monk, the man paced back and forth on the stone pavement, trying to distract himself from his growing restlessness.

Presently the man's ear caught what seemed to be the presence of a person inside, beyond the dim latticework of the window.

Hardly thinking about it, the man glanced briefly through the window.

Inside the window, a nun wrapped in a torn mat was tending to a woman who appeared to be ill.

Even in the faint light of dusk, the woman appeared to be wasted away to an uncanny degree.

Yet a single glance was more than enough to be certain it was the princess.

The man tried to call out.

But at the sight of the princess so reduced, somehow the voice would not come.

Unaware that the man was there, the princess rolled over on the torn mat and, as if in pain, recited this poem:

"Cold too was the wind through the gap in my pillow of your arm— this body was never accustomed to such things."

When the man heard this voice, he involuntarily called out the princess's name.

The princess raised her head from the pillow.

But no sooner had she seen the man than she let out a faint cry and fell face-down on the mat again.

The nun—that faithful wet nurse—rushed in alongside the man and together they hastily raised the princess up.

But when they looked at her raised face, even the man, to say nothing of the wet nurse, could not help being all the more alarmed.

The wet nurse ran, as if out of her mind, to the begging monk.

And she asked him to please read whatever sutra he could for the dying princess.

The monk, as the wet nurse wished, took a seat at the princess's pillow.

But instead of reciting a sutra, he spoke these words to the princess.

"Salvation cannot be wrought by another's hand. Only you yourself must, without ceasing, call upon the name of Amitabha Buddha."

Cradled in the man's arms, the princess began to chant the Buddha's name in a thin, frail voice.

Then, as if overcome with dread, she stared fixedly at the ceiling of the gate.

"Look—there—a flaming cart burning up there."

"Do not be afraid of such things. You need only keep the Buddha in your thoughts."

The monk spoke with a measure of resolve in his voice.

Then, after a little while, the princess began to murmur again, as if between dream and waking.

"I can see a golden lotus—a lotus as large as a canopy."

The monk was about to say something, but before he could, the princess opened her lips again in broken fragments.

"The lotus is gone. In its place there is only darkness, and wind blowing through it."

"Chant the Buddha's name with your whole heart. Why do you not chant it with your whole heart?"

The monk spoke almost in a tone of reproach.

But the princess, as if about to expire, only repeated the same words.

"Nothing—I can see nothing. Only darkness, and wind blowing through it—nothing but cold wind coming toward me."

The man and the wet nurse, swallowing their tears, went on silently invoking Amitabha.

The monk too, his hands pressed together in prayer, was aiding the princess in her recitation.

Amid the sound of voices mingling with the rain, the princess lying on her torn mat slowly took on the face of death.

VI

Some nights later, when the moon was out, the monk who had urged the nenbutsu upon the princess was again in the western arcade before the Suzaku Gate, hugging his knees in his tattered robe.

Then a samurai came walking along the moonlit boulevard, singing something to himself with an air of ease.

When the samurai caught sight of the monk, he stopped in his straw sandals and addressed him in a casual tone.

"I have heard that of late, somewhere near this Suzaku Gate, the sound of a woman weeping can be heard—is that so?"

The monk, still crouched on the stone pavement, answered in a single word.

"Listen."

The samurai tilted his head and listened.

But aside from the faint sound of insects, there was nothing to be heard.

Around them, only the scent of pine drifted on the night air.

The samurai made as if to speak.

But before he had said anything, suddenly from somewhere a woman's voice came drifting in thin, slender laments.

The samurai put his hand to his sword.

But the voice trailed a long echo through the sky above the arcade and then gradually faded away into somewhere again.

"Pray for her to the Buddha."

The monk lifted his face to the moonlight.

"That is the soul of a feeble woman who knows neither paradise nor hell. Pray for her to the Buddha."

But the samurai, without answering, peered into the monk's face.

Then, as if startled, he suddenly pressed both hands to the ground before him.

"Are you not the Holy Man Naiki? However did you come to be in a place like this—"

His secular name was Yoshishige no Yasutane—the one known to the world as the Holy Man Naiki was among the disciples of the Holy Man Kuya, a monk of rare virtue and high standing.

(July, Taisho 11)