English
When ~ the drum was beaten, and a hand-to-hand contest was already engaged, iron balls, like footballs, were let fly _ from things called ‘cannon’ [with a sound] like cart- © wheels rolling down a steep declivity, and accompanied © by flashes like lightning. Two or three thousand of these © were let go at once. Most of the Japanese troops were burnt to death, and their gates and turrets set fire to. There was no opportunity of putting out the flames. “When the men of Upper Matsura and Lower Matsura TAIHEIKI 181 saw this, they felt that ordinary measures would be use- _ less, so they made a circuit by way of another bay, and, with only 1000 men, ventured on a night attack. But however brave they might be, they were no more than one hair upon a bull or one grain of rice in a granary. Attacking with so small a force, they slew several tens of thousands of the enemy, but in the end were all made prisoners. They were bound with cruel cords, and their hands nailed to the bulwarks of the line of vessels. “No further resistance was possible. All the men of Kiushiu fled to Shikoku and the provinces north of the Inland Sea. The whole Japanese nation was struck with panic, and knew not what to do. Visits to the shrines of the Shinto gods, and public and secret services in the Buddhist temples, bowed down the Imperial mind and crushed the Imperial liver and gall-bladder. Imperial messengers were despatched with offerings to all the gods of heaven and earth, and all the Buddhist temples of virtue to answer prayer, great and small alike, through- out the sixty provinces. On the seventh day, when the Imperial devotions were completed, from Lake Suwa there arose a cloud of many colours, in shape like a great serpent, which spread away towards the west. The doors of the Temple-treasury of Hachiman flew open, and the skies were filled with a sound of galloping horses and of tinging bits. In the twenty-one shrines of Yoshino the brocade-curtained mirrors moved, the swords in the Temple-treasury put on a sharp edge, and all the shoes offered to the god turned towards the west. At Sumi- yoshi sweat poured from below the saddles of the four horses sacred to the deities, and the iron shields turned of themselves and faced the enemy in a line.” (Many more similar wonders follow.) 13 182 JAPANESE LITERATURE “Now General Wan of Great Yuan, having cast off the moorings of his 70,000 ships, at the hour of the dragon on the seventeenth day of the eighth month started for Nagato and Suw6o by way of Moji and Akamagaseki [Shimonoseki]. His fleet were midway on their course when the weather, which had been windless, with the clouds at rest, changed abruptly. A mass of black clouds arising from the north-east covered the sky, the wind blew fiercely, the tumultuous billows surged up to heaven, the thunder rolled and the lightning dashed against the ground so abundantly that it seemed as if great mountains were crumbling down and high heaven falling to the earth. The 70,000 warships of the foreign pirates either struck upon cragged reefs and were broken to atoms, or whirling round in the surging eddies, went down with all hands. “ Nevertheless, General Wan alone was neither driven off by the storm nor buried beneath the waves, but flew aloft and stood in the calm seclusion of the middle heaven. Here he was met by a sage named Ryo To-bin, who. came soaring from the west. He addressed General Wan as follows: ‘The gods of heaven and the gods of earth of the entire country of Japan, 3700 shrines or more, have raised this evil wind and made the angry billows surge aloft. Human power cannot cope with them. I advise you to embark at once in your one shattered ship and return to your own country.’ General Wan was per- suaded. He embarked in the one shattered ship which remained, braved all alone the waves of 10,000 ri of ocean, and presently arrived at the port of Mingchu [in China].” The word rendered “cannon” is ¢epfd, lit. “iron tube.” It properly means a matchlock. But according to the encyclopaedia called the Sansaidzuye, neither cannon nor TAIHEIKI 183 matchlocks were known to the Chinese before the six- teenth century. Matchlocks were first introduced into Japan by Mendez Pinto and his companions in 1543, and were not known to the Chinese until later. The inference is that this passage, and probably the whole chapter, is a later interpolation. It is perhaps necessary to remind the reader that there is a nucleus of fact hidden among all this fictitious em- broidery. Kublai Khan did send a large fleet against Japan about the time stated, which met with a fate similar to that of the Spanish Armada prepared for the conquest of England. CHAPTER. II KENKO AND THE “TSURE-DZURE-GUSA”} Ir there are many arid wastes in Japanese literature, there are also some pleasant oases, and of these the Tsure-dzure-gusa is surely one of the most delightful. It is a collection of short sketches, anecdotes, and essays on all imaginable subjects, something in the manner of Selden’s Zable Talk. The author is known to us as KENKO-BOSHI, ddshz being an honorific epithet something like our Reverend. He was a man of good family, and traced his descent through various dis-: tinguished personages from the Shinto deity Kogane no Mikoto. For many years in the service of the Mikado Go Uda no In, his writings show an intimate acquaintance with the ways and customs of the Im- perial palace. On the death of his master in 1324, Kenko became a Buddhist monk, and retired from public life, spending the remainder of his days in various secluded spots in the neighbourhood of Kidto, The date of his death is not positively known, but there is nothing improbable in the statement that he died in 1350, in his sixty-eighth year. Very contradictory views of his character have been taken by native writers. Some call him a profligate, unscrupulous, common priest, and quote an old scandal 1 Translated by Rev, C. S, Eby, in the Chrysanthemum, vol. iii. 184 TSURE-DZURE-GUSA 185 told in the Zazhetkz, of his writing for Ko no Moronao the letters which he addressed to the wife of Yenya Hangwan urging his adulterous suit. But the Tazhezk¢ is a very dubious authority, and there are other reasons for questioning the truth of this story. Kenko’s ad- mirers maintain that he was a truly pious man. Judging from his writings, there would appear to have been two personalities in Kenko, the shrewd, polished, and somewhat cynical man of the world, and the Buddhist devotee, the former element of his character having a decided preponderance. His religion was to all appearance sincere, but was certainly not profound: Like Horace, whom he much resembles in character, he had his pious moods, but was very far indeed from being a saint. A professor of the Tendai sect of Buddhism, he has much to say, and says it well, of the uncertainty of life, the folly of ambition and money-getting, and the necessity for putting away the lusts of this wicked world and preparing betimes for eternity. But the old Adam is never far off. His unregenerate nature is not to be suppressed, and gives evidence of its existence ever and anon in passages which his devout admirers would willingly forget. His religion was not of that robust kind which thrives amid the cares and distractions of the world, and by which ordinary life may be made “a perfumed altar- flame.” He has left on record his opinion (which is indeed a commonplace of the sect to which he be- longed) that true piety is impossible except in seclu- sion from the world. The quiet of his own hermitage having once been disturbed by the visit of a hunting party, he composed a poem complaining that the world pursued him even there, and changed his abode to a - 186 JAPANESE LITERATURE still more remote locality. But with all his precau- tions he never attained to Nirvana, if by that term we are to understand the holy calm of mind which is the result of long-continued meditation on divine things. The name Kenko, which he selected when he became a monk, is characteristic of his spiritual condition. He retained the two Chinese characters with which ‘his lay name Kaneyoshi is written, simply altering the pronunciation to something which with a little good- will might be allowed to stand for a Buddhist priestly designation. This is much as if a man named Oliver were to enter religion as “ Brother Oliverus,” instead of adopting a saint’s name from the calendar. There is much self-revelation in Kenko’s writings. The personality which they portray is not a. wholly lovable one. There is something wrong about the man who abhorred matrimony (not that celibacy and chastity were with him convertible terms), thought children a mistake, and declared that after forty life was not worth living. The following anecdote, which he him- self relates, throws some light on his curiously mixed character :— “Even men from whom we should not expect much feeling sometimes say a good thing. A certain wild savage of terrible appearance, mecting a neighbour, asked him, had he any children. ‘Not one,’ was the reply. ‘Then you cannot know the Ah-ness of things, and your doings must be with a heart devoid of feel- ing. This is a very fearful saying. It is no doubt true that by children men become conscious of the Ah-ness of all things. Without the path of the natural affections how should there be any sentiment in the hearts of such persons ?” TSURE-DZURE-GUSA 187 To know the Ah-ness of things (ono no aware wo shiru) is a phrase which is constantly recurring in Japanese literature, especially during the classical period. The learned critic Motoori discusses it at great length in his treatise on the nature of poetry entitled /so no Kami Shi-shuku-gen.