Ise's warriors,
in armor laced with scarlet,
have to the last man
been caught and held fast within
the fish weirs of Uji stream
- Meaning
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The warriors of Ise, in armor laced with scarlet, have every one of them been caught in the fish weirs of the Uji.
- Commentary
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Volume Four: The Prince's Last Hour
Prince Mochihito left Mii-dera to escape toward Nara, and the planks of the Uji bridge were pulled up behind him as he took shelter in the Byōdō-in. In the capital the cry went up that the prince was fleeing to Nara and must be pursued and killed. With Tomomori, Shigehira, Yukimori, and Tadanori as commanders and Tadakiyo, Kageie, and others as captains of the guard, twenty-eight thousand horsemen crossed Kohata mountain and pressed up to the foot of the Uji bridge.
Seeing the enemy at the Byōdō-in, they raised the battle shout three times, and the prince's side answered it. Then the front ranks called out that the bridge had been pulled up and to take care; but the rear ranks did not hear, and pushing forward each ahead of the other they forced some two hundred horsemen off the edge, who drowned in the water.
Most of the drowned were hereditary Taira retainers from Ise. This lampoon was left in mockery of them.
Afterward Ashikaga Matatarō Tadatsuna forded the Uji with his men roped abreast, and the battle at the Byōdō-in followed. Yorimasa's kinsmen were cut down one after another and Yorimasa took his own life. The prince too was killed, before the torii of Kōmyōsan. Seven thousand monks from Nara had come out to meet him, and fell short by some fifty chō.
The whole poem is built out of puns. Hi-odoshi is armor laced with scarlet, and also hio, the young sweetfish that are the winter specialty of the Uji river. Ajiro is the weir set in that river to catch them.
Warriors in red armor going into the water and being swept along are seen as a run of hio caught in a weir; the scarlet of the lacing answers the color of the fish. The verse uses up the local specialty of Uji along with the name of a kind of armor—a decidedly worked piece for a scrap of graffiti.
Where it stands matters. Two hundred men have just drowned, and immediately after comes a poem laughing at their deaths as a catch of fish. The Tale of the Heike often sets mockery beside the misery of battle, and this is the clearest case; the laughter makes the deaths look colder still.
Ise musha……hereditary Taira warriors based in Ise.
hi-odoshi……armor laced with scarlet cord or leather; puns on hio, young sweetfish.
hio……the fry of the sweetfish, a winter specialty of the Uji.
ajiro……a weir set in a river to take such fish.
kakaru……to be caught in the weir.
Uji-bashi……the bridge over the Uji, its planks here pulled up.
Byōdō-in……the temple at Uji where the prince and Yorimasa made their stand.
toki……the shout raised by a whole army at the opening of battle.
rakusho……an anonymous lampoon.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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