the world. Just before he left his prison to enter the carriage, he wrote on the paper-door beside which he always used to sit:
isa shirazu |
I do not know— |
He was accompanied by several court dames and by just two men, Yukifusa and Tadaaki. No words could express the sorrow that each one felt as the moment of departure approached. The officers who were selected to escort him from Rokuhara, or who were engaged in other duties commensurate with their great fame, included ten of the most distinguished men of the realm. They were attired in magnificent brocade cloaks and robes of various hues, woven and dyed in contrasting patterns, and presented a rare and splendid sight even in these unhappy circumstances. From Rokuhara they proceeded westward along the Seventh Ward, and then turned southward at Omiya. The Imperial carriage halted in front of the Eastern Temple, apparently to permit the Emperor a brief moment of prayer. The carriages of spectators jammed the streets. Even ladies of quality, in wide-brimmed hats and turned-up robes, mingled with the pedestrians. Young and old, nuns, priests, and even wretched wood-cutters and hunters from the mountains thronged the place, as thick as bamboos in a forest. Just to see them all wiping their eyes and sniffling made one feel that no worse calamity could occur in this sorrowful world. It must have been thus when the Emperor Gotoba was exiled to Oki, but of that event I know only by report, not having witnessed it myself. It seemed to me then that so appalling a moment had never before been known. Even the insignificant or base people who normally could never have approached the Imperial presence were bewildered and dumbfounded by the pathos of today’s leave-taking. The Emperor lifted the blinds of his carriage a little and gazed around him as though not to let a blade of grass or a tree escape his eyes. The soldiers of the escort, not being made of stone or wood, could be seen to wet the sleeves of their armor
