and dilapidated, its garden was overgrown with weeds, and hare’s-foot fern clustered thickly on the roof. The curtains were gone and the bedchamber exposed, and there was nothing to keep out the wind and rain. There were many kinds of flowers, but none to care for them, and no one was there to gaze at the moon streaming in every night. She who had formerly spent her days in the jeweled palace, within the brocade curtains, now suffered the unspeakable hardships of dwelling in this moldering cell, bereft of all her old companions, like a fish on the dry land or a bird torn from its nest, and she yearned for the times she had spent tossing on the sea.
On the first day of the fifth month of 1185 the former Empress cut short her hair and was instructed in the Way by the abbot of the Chōraku Temple. For the customary offering she presented him with the robe of the Emperor Antoku, one he had worn up to the time of his death, so that the perfume still clung to it. She had brought it with her to the capital from the far off Western Provinces, intending to keep it as a memento of him never to leave her person, but now, as she had nothing else to offer, and thinking moreover that it might be an aid to the Emperor’s salvation, she handed it to the priest, weeping bitterly. The priest was so affected that he could utter no word, but pressing the sleeve of his black robe to his face retired weeping from her presence. This robe was afterward woven into a banner and suspended in front of the Buddha of the Chōraku Temple.
The Empress was appointed Imperial Consort at the age of fourteen, and at fifteen was raised to the rank of Empress. She was ever by the Emperor’s side, helping him in the government by day and the only sharer of his love by night. At the age of twenty-one she bore a prince who was named Heir to the Throne, and when he assumed the Imperial dignity she became Retired Empress and took the name of Kenreimon’in.[1] She was the daughter of the Chancellor Kiyomori and as mother of the Emperor she was held in great reverence by the people. She was twenty-eight this year, and the beauty of her fair face was not yet dimmed; neither was the elegance of her
- ↑ Kenreimon’in was born in 1155.
