MS.

      Seiryōji, Kyoto

      Untitled MS.

      On the fifteenth day of the fifth month in the first year of the Genkyū era [1204], I, the monk Rensei, formerly the Minamoto officer Kumagai no Jirō Naozane, take up my brush.

      I am sixty-five years of age and, having written my deposition and thus prepared for my death, I now wish to turn to my life. It has been full and I now wish to transcribe what I have experienced.

      In this I am different from other men only in that I have the leisure and disposition to do so. A priest with few tasks, I am free to sit here and contemplate the past in my chamber at Seiryōji.

      It is old, this temple—built long before I was born. Just outside my porch lies a small garden of which I have grown fond. It does not consist of much—a few rocks, a tree, some moss—but it is pleasing. The winter sun reaches it in the afternoon.

      Here I sit and remember and write. I have a library here and an archive, including some of the military lists of my time. Nonetheless, my account will be as badly written as my deposition probably is, and in my usual execrable hand. Like so many of my station and generation I never properly learned calligraphy.

      I cast an eye upon this deposition, a copy lying here before me. An official statement, it seems certain, dignified— particularly the part about leading in the dying.

      That part about my refusing any paradise except for the highest is, however, quite true. Having aspired to a position in this life, I see no reason for relinquishing it in the next.

      TO BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING, NOW SIXTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, I WAS born in the sixth year of the Hōen era [1140] on the plains of Musashi, a flat land of marshes and meadows two weeks' march east of the capital. Back then many of the forests were still standing and none of the fens had been drained. There were consequently many animals— rabbits, badgers, bears. It was one of these last that my father killed, an act through which I came to carry the name that I do.

      It happened in the following manner. One of these bears was ravaging Ōsata on the Musashi plain. After my father had killed the animal he was given an amount of land. Since the place was fittingly called Kumagaya— Bear Valley—he took its name for his own.

      A name was needed. Though we were a Taira family and though my grandfather had held high office, exile to Musashi left us unknown. This was interpreted as punishment, since my grandfather had received an imperial