Page:Tales from old Japanese dramas (1915).djvu/308

 V

, though she had got clean away, was now much at a loss whither to turn her steps, but at last she determined to betake herself to the Tōkaidō.

The Tōkaidō was the route followed by the feudal lords of the western provinces on their way to make their visits of homage to the Kanryō or Vice-Shogun at Kamakura. This potentate had at that period more power than the Shogun himself, and the samurai of the western clans, in the train of their liege-lords, went and came along the same highway, year in and year out. It is probable that Miyuki chose this route in the supposition that, sooner or later, she would encounter her lover Asojirō, who, as she believed, had gone to Kamakura to expostulate with his lord.

Day after day she trudged along forlorn and footsore. It was only after hardships manifold that she made her way to Hamamatsu in the province of Tōtōmi. But there she was stricken with blindness, the result of her incessant weeping 238