Lady Tsugiko returned from the watchers’ gate with branches of green maple in exchange for tsubaki mochi[1] in the basket.
“Look, madam. Lovely things,” she said to Akiko.
“Oh, nice green ones. Who gave them to you? Beautiful, but be careful. Don’t take any letters from men,” the lady of honor said.
Tsugiko was twenty years old and the youngest court lady attending the royal prisoners. Because of her short height and girl-like face, she looked a little younger than her actual age. Throughout the morning, the ladies made rice cakes covered with green camellia leaves, and Tsugiko sent the sweets to samurai and workers at the watchers’ gate as a present.
“No problem nor romances. An old peasant woman gave them to me.” The errand girl picked a fresh stick of wild kerria with bright yellow flowers from her sash. She stretched and approached Akiko’s head. Then she put it in the lady’s hair tie and whispered in a smaller voice to her.
“Most farmers have boycotted working in the Anou Court. Last month, Minister Kitabatake[2] cut off the heads of several locals and displayed them on the road to set an example. He thought they had helped the Southern empress to run away from the mountains.”
Tsugiko looked like an innocent teen maid, so people around her said everything carelessly to themselves. In actuality, she was the secretary of Okihito and a noble shrine keeper’s daughter belonging to Emperor Kazan’s[3] lineage. Her eyes and memory were clear as an intelligence officer.
“Thank you. It’s a nice golden headpin,” Akiko smiled and said a bit loudly so a watchboy standing by a white rose on the hedge in the courtyard would hear.
“Poor lady. She was caught soon by men and became a prisoner in a temple,” Tsugiko muttered. “Her betrayal was shameful for the minister, her father, and must have made him extremely angry. Besides, I felt the warriors’ tensions were higher than in this new year. The adults seemed to be preparing for the next travel and the battle, because they changed the watching men to younger ones.”
It was a hot day, like summer, and the sweat slightly melted her face powder on her forehead.
“Thank you for running an errand, Tsugiko-san. This is for you.” Kazuhito had heard their conversation, and he gave her a bamboo cup filled with cold water from the well. She accepted it, bowing, and drank full of the water immediately. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’m refreshed so much.” Tsugiko shook her head. “I can’t believe the noble minister did such a horrible thing like a villain.”
Akiko said in a small voice, “I pity the peasants rather than the lady. They were just subjected to their madam and not guilty. She attempted to escape and ignore her responsibility as a royal, even though her brother died in battle protecting the Southern Court.”
Kazuhito interrupted their talking. “Akiko-san.”
“Oh?” She looked back at him.
“She and you have the same name. Did you know?”
“No, I didn’t, but it’s a common name for women,” the lady of honor said with disinterest.
“…I also sympathize with young Akiko of Kitabatake. She wanted to live with her true lover rather than as the queen of the mountain guerilla group. Life is difficult. She was young and ran away from her boring husband while my old Akiko followed me from the city to the prisoner’s rural life.”
“Don’t you admire yourself too much, Your Majesty?” She stroked a strand of hair on her forehead, looking at him with narrow eyes. “I just came here for the crown prince sharing the blood of my Ōgimachi family,” she said.
The monk smiled and picked up a tsubaki mochi from his palm. He began to eat it after peeling the leaves.
“Oh, my priest. That will be an offering for Buddha. Why didn’t you wait for the night?” Akiko scolded him mildly.
“Tsugiko-san, gift this to the boy standing there. He’s gazing in longing at the sweet.” Kazuhito took a package of the cakes wrapped in bamboo sheaths out from his futokoro.[4]
“Sure.” Tsugiko nodded, passed the basket and the empty cup to Akiko, and received the cakes from Kazuhito.
Kazuhito was having the last bite of the tsubaki mochi, looking at the boy, who bowed to Tsugiko. He put it into his sleeve.[5] He probably planned to eat it later without anyone else. Sweets were valuables in the mountain life. The syrup that sweetened cakes was made by Hisanari from steamed rice and baked barley.
“Delicious. A good bribe.” Then Kazuhito received the maple branches in the basket from Akiko, and they went back to the kitchen together. “Fresh maple leaves look like shiny green stars. They will be fit for the moonlight party because they will support the starlight weakened by the moon,” he said.
Akiko removed the kerria stick from her head and put it into the bamboo cup. After pouring water into it, she placed it on the kitchen shelf so it would not dry up.
“Do you remember? Once, I gave you a green maple branch,” Kazuhito asked her.
“No, you didn’t. That was the gift for my elder sister,” she answered.
“Oh, is that so?”
“I was just a little girl to you. You asked me to bring a ladder to cut a good branch in the garden. I refused that because it was dangerous if you fell from a high place. Then you climbed the maple tree yourself! I was crying for you to descend from the tree right then. The elder ladies would scold me if the prince was hurt from falling.”
“I wonder why women have good memory retention.”
“Yes, we do. I remember the beautiful green leaves with a poem written on pale blue paper. The branch was placed in a gold-lacquered flat box, though I was just an errand girl between you and Saneko.”
“Sorry, I just remembered. After that, the next morning, Father told me to correct the spelling of the poem with a smile.”
Akiko pouted her lips. “She is your Princess Fujitsubo...[6] Anyway, I love green maples as well as you do. Could you give me the golden kerria and the branches of jade after the night party? I’ll press and dry these treasures in paper to make bookmarks as my memory of the late spring days in green.”
“How many bookmarks have you been making?” He laughed. “We don’t have many books for them in this mountain villa.”
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The private concert began in half-darkness after sunset.
Since ancient times, people have held night parties, sung songs, and played music under the moon. Both noble and poor loved such entertainment.
“Somewhere, wisteria is blooming. Did you notice that?” Lady Sadako[7] of Shin-Saishō asked Takako, lighting lamps in the courtyard. The breezes from River Nyū were blowing mildly up along the hillside.
On the fifteenth night of the month of the lunar calendar, they held the full moon party with a small concert starting in the evening. The Northern royal family sat on a sheet in the courtyard’s center. They dedicated the maple branches, seasonal flowers, sake,[8] and the tsubaki mochi on an altar set on the southern corner of the sheet. This evening, the ladies had long, straight hair without ties running on their backs of shiny silken gowns, as in the golden age of aristocracy in the 11th century. The two lads wore nobles’ headwear. The younger son, Naohito, wore a blue-gray coat and had a flute. The elder Okihito, in a dark gray coat over brown trousers, did not have his instrument because he was mourning his mother’s death in the previous year.
The younger women chatted and relaxed in the twilight gloom just before the concert. They were having the rice cakes on the lacquered tray.
“Although that would be a Buddhist sin, humans should have meat or fish to keep their health, especially youth, even though His Majesty is in mourning,” Hisanari told Takako.
“Yesterday, a samurai told me he would bring amago,[9] which his sons would fish in the river tomorrow. Could you cook them for the young emperor and prince?” Hisanari asked Takako. She smiled and pulled a ladle from the sake pot. “Sure. I’ll bake that for tomorrow’s dinner. How about more cups of sake, Doc?”
He bowed his head to the sheet for the lady. “No more, thank you so much for delicious sake. I’m afraid I would do something wrong with such high-class people in the same place. Too much drinking would lead me to sleep. I’d like to listen to the music.” Homemade sake made him get a little tipsy. “I’m excited that Yángguìfēi[10] might have used to play the same number in the ancient Chinese court.”
After chanting to the war dead and Buddha, the family head began playing biwa.[11] The strings reverberated with a low beat, and Yutahito began to follow him with a flute. Naohito drummed the base of a metal pot. Akiko’s six-string harp joined them to harmonize. Okihito closed his eyes and tapped his lap with his fingers to the rhythm.
A wind fluttered the lamps and the maple leaves on the altar. Kazuhito remembered the ghost’s embroidered gown for a moment, but the image was washed out by the moonlight. He concentrated on plucking the strings.
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Kazuhito didn’t believe in the existence of ghosts or their powers so much. They were shadows of human regrets and had no power in the real world. Thousands of years ago, his ancestors conquered these islands, spilling the blood of the indigenous and sometimes killing each other in the family. If ghosts of the victims had true magical powers for vengeance, the royal family would have already perished because of their curses.
He knew a rumor had been spreading in the Southern Court in Anou via Tsugiko. The deceased Go-Daigo had returned from the underworld as a demonic god to get revenge on the Ashikaga shogunate. In those days, people truly believed in oni[12] and tengu.[13] However, when Kazuhito heard the rumor, he did not doubt that the final victory would be assigned to his Northern Court and the shogunate. The weak talk about miracles—vulnerable hearts dream of ghosts.
If his family could wait and survive for the next several years, it wouldn’t be long before the Southern Court decayed on its own.[14]
What was the origin of the Southern and Northern conflict between the sons of the sun goddess again? It was an old cliché story. During the 12th to 13th centuries, the actual decision-makers of the royal government were ex-emperors, the fathers or elder brothers of the emperors at that time. Kazuhito’s great-grandfather, Go-Fukakusa, once became the emperor, but his parents thought the younger brother, Kameyama, was worthy of inheriting because Go-Fukakusa had a physical weakness in his leg. They had retired him to replace him with the prettier son.
However, the Kamakura shogunate intervened in this family conflict. The shogunate made a son of Go-Fukakusa the crown prince and set emperors from each family in turns. The hatred between the brothers grew for a long time, and the emperor’s lineage was divided between the two families.
Go-Daigo, whose real name was Takaharu, was the grandson of Kameyama. He wanted to make the emperor great again in Japan and looked down on another royal lineage that lived dependent on the warrior government. He began a conflict with the Kamakura and spread the war to the countryside. After regaining the crown, Takaharu said to Kazuhito in private,
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“Please don’t hold a grudge against me. If you want the reign of a true monarch, you should regain the actual power of violence from the villains in Kamakura. The sun should rise again. Do not hesitate. I’ll give my princess to you, and your princes should be built up as generals to govern the warriors. As you know, I made up my prince, Moriyoshi[15], as a great commander…”
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How admirable a saying! Kazuhito did not like Takaharu’s beard so much because it looked like an imitation of portraits of the ancient Chinese emperors.
People who first met Takaharu were forced to be charmed by him. He looked like he had everything needed for the emperor: a strong body, handsomeness, majestic voice, and talents in poetry and music.
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Scum.
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Emperors don’t swing swords on their own. Takaharu was also a warmonger with his clean hands. He just outsourced that to armed groups other than the Kamakura shogunate, such as pirates, monks, and merchants. These pro-emperor supporters wanted their position of interest from the old authorities.
Political marriages between the two royal parties had been held to make the peace, but that could not stop Takaharu from causing the war. Takaharu’s first empress had gone, and Kazuhito’s elder sister, Tamako, married Go-Daigo. At last, she died of anxiety from her heavy task of mediating between two parties as soon as she gave birth to a princess.
Takaharu’s princess also married Kazuhito, but she could not give birth to a prince, either. Her father abandoned her without hesitation. After her father’s exodus to Yoshino, she cut her hair and entered a temple. They had to divorce. Kazuhito remembered her dainty fingers and how good she was at stitching. She liked to embroider clothes with fine golden thread.
At last, the ambitious emperor caused trouble with his son, Moriyoshi, Prince General, who had been trained by an armed monk group on Hiei Mountain from childhood. The young general had been sufficiently valiant and brutal to battle against the Kamakura and to save his father from imprisonment. After regaining the throne, Takaharu feared his power. The emperor had the Ashikaga brothers capture Moriyoshi and imprison him in Kamakura. When the brothers rebelled against the emperor, Tadayoshi killed Moriyoshi, who was no longer helpful for them. The father didn’t even try to help his son, who once saved him from exile in Oki.
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That scum should not become a ghost. He did what he wanted to do. He ran away from Kyoto of his own will and died under the roof of the palace in Yoshino. Such was the greatest and the happiest man!
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“Father, aren’t you well?” Naohito said to Kazuhito after a number was finished.
“Please relax, my priest.” Akiko plucked her strings gently. “You look aggressive rather than enjoying the harmony of music tonight.”
“Oh, is that so?” With a smile, he opened his eyes and stopped swinging his plectrum.
“I feel a bit of rough emotion, too. The beat was too quick and heavier than your usual playing style,” Okihito said.
“Maybe I didn’t sleep enough last night. That’s right! I’ll take a break.”
Kazuhito passed his biwa to Naohito. The younger prince showed some hesitation in touching the instrument.
“Will you receive Father’s biwa?” Okihito said to him, drinking sake in an unglazed cup.
“I... I’m afraid I am not worth being a player on this night...”
“No hesitation, Brother. You should play it as good as me when you are enthroned.” Okihito pointed to the farmhouse with his wooden folding fan. Tsugiko bowed to him and went to the door quickly.
Okihito was nineteen years old, and Naohito was eighteen. They had been good friends since childhood. Okihito was groomed to be the candidate for the next emperor, and Naohito was one of the children of many retired emperors. When Okihito became the emperor, Kazuhito told him that Naohito was his half brother. Then their father set Naohito as the next crown prince after the elder one and the true successor of the Northern family. These patriarchal decisions disappointed Okihito and his retainers, but the brothers still had a good relationship.
“But you can’t defeat me in playing biwa, so listen to mine.”
Tsugiko returned to Okihito with a broom. He took it and held it like he was playing a biwa. Naohito smiled in silence. Although he was a calm boy in this family, he had a sense of humor. He held the biwa on his lap and took the plectrum. Okihito also took the folded fan, which he used like a plectrum on the broom.
He began to speak. “I’m in mourning for my mother, but she liked to listen to my playing so much. I will dedicate that to her pleasure in heaven because we couldn’t meet her on her deathbed. In addition, for the safety and the health of our young Iyahito and my boy.”
His full brother, Iyahito, stayed in Kyoto without his parents and was enthroned by the Ashikaga shogunate as a puppet monarch. If the Southern army attacked the capital, the fifteen-year-old lad’s life would be threatened.
Okihito stood up slowly, holding the broom, and Naohito proffered the pot on his brother’s foot. Okihito stepped on it with his left foot and swung the folded fan. A string sounded at the same time from Naohito’s biwa. Then, Okihito shook his head, overreacting, and his air biwa began to tell the modern-style melodies. The brothers played the biwa with pop style together. The ladies laughed, slapping their palms.
Kazuhito began to use Akiko’s lap as a pillow. With an embarrassed smile, she said, “Oh, person of virtue, what are you doing on a woman’s lap?”
“No problem, Akiko-san. I’d love to get some short sleep, like the fluttering time of a butterfly.”
“It’s night now, so the butterflies are sleeping like you under the leaves. Only moths are fluttering around the lights.” Yutahito said that and began to blow the flute again.
“If so, I’m going to dream of a moth that loves the light of the Buddha.” Through his half-closed eyes, Kazuhito saw Yutahito blowing the flute and glancing at the lights on the watchers’ gate. On the night of the full moon, the watchmen decreased the number of lights. Outside the hedge, many figures sat on the grass in the darkness. After he had checked that, Kazuhito closed his eyes and spoke to the spectators in his heart.
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Welcome to the full moon concert!
Hearts starve blossoms of the art even in a difficult age.
Ladies, gentlemen, peasants, farmers, samurai, nobles, and royals can enjoy the gig under the moonlight!
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When Kazuhito got up again from Akiko’s lap, the moon had risen high. It was the intermission. The doctor was speaking to Takako about wild edible plants, and Akiko and Sadako were talking about novels. Yutahito had been blowing the flute with Naohito.
“Sorry you had to wait.” Kazuhito straightened himself up on the sheet.
“Father, here you are.” Naohito stopped blowing the flute and returned the biwa to him. Okihito ate up the last one of the cakes on the tray. The lads sat again formally.
Kazuhito sat in front of the altar, holding the biwa. He looked up at the moon and started to speak.
“We were forced to be isolated here, Anou Village, near Yoshino’s holy sanctuary. O moon, the mirror of the night, you guide people to the right way in the darkness. We thank you for allowing us to pray for you and Buddha every month. We have nothing to give you now, so we devote our music to you.”
He plucked the strings with the plectrum, and they vibrated around him in a low-pitched sound. Everything was calm beside him. Akiko closed her eyes and clasped her palms to pray for the moon. Crystal beads on a rosary hung from her hands and reflected the moonlight.
“Every living thing has its own music. Bugs in grasses, birds on trees, and winds from the sky all have their sounds. Why shouldn’t we play our music? At the concert’s end, I’ll play some numbers from the ancient Tang Dynasty. Beautiful Yángguìfēi and her emperor, retainers, and warriors died long ago, but their music hasn’t. The pieces of their music traveled to Japan via a few students and remain in Japanese musicians, such as our family.”
He plucked the strings again and gently tapped the body of the biwa. Somebody was weeping voicelessly in the shadow of shrubbery, he felt. Nobles of the Southern Court had left their comfortable residences in Kyoto and had to live in unfamiliar farmhouses for years. He didn’t doubt that someone who knew him once in the royal palace was in the darkness.
He told the moon and the secret spectators, “Even if we would end here and our bodies decay in moss, please don’t vanish your light and our music!” String sounds began to flow out from his biwa. Clear rays of the moon penetrated the sky and illuminated him in the center of the courtyard.
In those days, emperors had to be good poets and musicians, like charismatic stars. Playing skills demonstrated the emperor’s authority. The crowd outside and inside the courtyard didn’t move, and their sobbing gradually got louder.
When a slice of thin cloud covered the moon, he ended his playing and set the plectrum in the biwa again. “…a hazy moon is the best,”[16] he said like a song.
Then Kazuhito just clasped his palms.
People in the shadows left quickly, so as not to see each other’s faces under the hazy moonlight.
After the last prayer, the Northern family relaxed on the sheet. The ladies yawned under their sleeves and began to tidy the offerings on the altar and the curtains.
After a while, a distant flute started to be heard from the woods behind the hostage house. Someone in the garden of the Southern Court had begun to play.
“Oh, ‘which house’s flute sends the beautiful sound into the darkness?’”[17] Hisanari admired that with a famous Chinese poem.
“Noriyoshi[18] is playing,” Okihito whispered. He picked one of the maple branches from the waterpot and swung it over the sky like a sword. “While he and his samurai were battling, his wife let a man enter her bed. After he came back alive, she attempted to run away. I feel a bit of sympathy with him. The poor cuckold was sleeping alone like me, far apart from his love! He couldn’t keep silent after hearing our sounds and showed his pride.”
“When hearing the sound, no one does not remember their hometown…”
Kazuhito continued the ancient poem from Hisanari. Naohito touched his flute and closed his eyes to enjoy listening to the distant melody.
“He has some talent for the flute even though Takaharu didn’t have enough time to teach his son to play the music. The prince could become a better player if he had a better teacher,” Kazuhito said.
[1] Japanese confectionery, sweet rice cake wrapped with camellia leaves.
[2] Kitabatake Chikafusa (1270–1322), the loyal retainer of Go-Daigo. After the death of Go-Daigo, he was the actual leader of the Southern Court in Anou.
[3] (968–1008) The 65th emperor.
[4] A space inside the breast of his clothing. People wearing kimonos used the space as a pocket.
[5] As well as futokoro, the long sleeves of Japanese clothes have spaces for pockets.
[6] A character in The Tale of Genji, she was the fourth princess of the previous emperor. She became a consort of Genji’s father. Genji loved her like crazy and, at last, was secretly intrigued with her.
[7] Secretary of Kazuhito, daughter of Sesonji Sadakane, the Northern court lady, whose real name is actually unknown today.
[8] Rice wine.
[9] Amago salmon, landlocked form of satsuki-masu (Oncorhynchus masou ishikawae), living in freshwater in mountains.
[10] (719–756) The consort of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty in China
[11] Japanese lute.
[12] Ghosts or monsters having supernatural powers.
[13] Dark spirits that are reincarnated from degenerate monks.
[14] The Southern Court existed until 1392 because of the vulnerability of the early Ashikaga shogunate reign.
[15] (1308–1335) The son of Go-Daigo. First, he was raised as a monk in Mt. Hiei, and after he returned to secular life to battle against the Kamakura shogunate.
[16] A part of a poem by Ōe no Chisato, who lived in the early Heian Era.
[17] A part of a poem by Lǐ Bái (701–762) in the Tang Dynasty in China.
[18] (1328–1368) The Southern Court emperor, the son of Go-Daigo. His emperor’s name is Go-Murakami.
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