Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/58

Rh self as a pilgrim friar and escaped northward to Hidehira, chieftain of Ōshu, his uncle, who had sheltered him in his early days. There he ultimately died by his own hand, when the last of his comrades had fallen under the swords of Yoritomo's emissaries. The drama here translated is based on a celebrated episode of the flight to Ōshu. Yoritomo established barrier-guards on all the roads leading northward, giving them orders to forbid the passage of any pilgrim band that answered to the description of the fugitives, and, if possible, to apprehend them. One of these guard-houses, at Ataka, is the scene of the drama. The giant halberdier, Benkei, almost as celebrated in Japanese history as Yoshitsune himself, devises a plan to pass the barrier. He disguises Yoshitsune as the baggage-bearer of the party, and, at a critical moment, disarms suspicion by beating him as though he were a common coolie. To the barrier-guards it seems incredible that the brilliant young nobleman, with whose exploits the whole empire is ringing, should be submitted to such a terrible indignity, and they allow the pilgrims to pass. The profound pathos of the notion that Benkei, who had again and again risked his life in Yoshitsune's cause, should have been obliged to raise his hand against the man he loved, and the shockingly sacrilegious nature of such conduct on the part of a vassal towards his lord, appeal with intense force to the mind of every Japanese; force not to be estimated unless it is remembered that to have thrown himself upon the barrier-guards and fallen fighting, would have been an incomparably less painful and more orthodox alternative to the loyal halberdier than the course he adopted. It was necessary, however, to furnish to the captain of the guard some pretext for granting passage to the party, and Benkei chose a method for which he afterwards offered to apologise by suicide. A particularly dramatic incident of the scene at the barrier is Benkei's pretence of reading from a sacred record, which, had the party been veritable pilgrim- priests, they must have possessed. The captain of the barrier calls for the record, and the big soldier, producing an itinerary scroll, reads some extemporised passages from it in a thunderous voice, his coolness and presence of mind carrying him through an ordeal where the smallest hesitation or confusion would have involved death.