Читать книгу Memoirs of the Warrior Kumagai - Donald Richie - Страница 8

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.