The mountain monks' robes
of thin-drawn silk are so thin
that not even they
could manage to cover up
the shame that was underneath
- Meaning
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The mountain monks' robes of thin-drawn silk were too thin to cover up the shame beneath them.
- Commentary
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Volume Four: The Letter to Nara
Prince Mochihito had taken refuge at Mii-dera, and Mii-dera sent formal letters to Mount Hiei and to Nara asking for support. The monks of Mount Hiei read theirs and said: what is this—a branch temple of our own mountain, writing as though we were the two wings of one bird, the two wheels of one cart? They found it outrageous and sent no reply. Kiyomori then asked the abbot Meiun to quiet them, and he went up the mountain at once and did so. Meanwhile Mii-dera was told only that Hiei's position was undecided.
Kiyomori further sent twenty thousand koku of Ōmi rice and three thousand bolts of thin-drawn silk from the northern provinces, ostensibly for the mountain's use. These were distributed through the valleys and peaks; and because it was done suddenly, some monks took away armfuls while others got nothing at all. Someone—no one knew who—left a lampoon. This is it.
After the exchange of lampoons the chapter turns to Kōfuku-ji's reply to Mii-dera, a fierce piece of Chinese prose naming Kiyomori by his religious name Jōkai and charging him with usurping the authority of the state and throwing the government into disorder.
Orinobe is silk drawn out thin in the weaving, and it is genuinely thin. That thinness is transferred to the covering of shame. The poem moves in a single word from the property of a thing to the conduct of men.
Just when the mountain seemed about to throw its whole weight behind the prince, its monks were scrambling over Kiyomori's silk. The poem calls that shame, and says the silk was too thin to cover it. The gift itself becomes the instrument that exposes those who took it. From Kiyomori's side the scheme worked: three thousand bolts silenced the mountain. The lampoon mocks that success from the inside.
A lampoon strikes at authority anonymously. Volume Five's Fujigawa chapter is full of such verses at the Taira's expense; in the Tale of the Heike they begin here.
yamahōshi……the warrior monks of Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei.
orinobe-goromo……a robe of thin-drawn silk.
e koso...zarikere……could not manage to do it.
rakusho……an anonymous lampoon left where it will be found.
chōjō……a formal letter exchanged between religious houses.
matsuji……a branch temple subordinate to a head temple.
hiki……a unit for counting bolts of silk.
henchō……a reply to such a letter.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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