1.
“The mere prospect of years to come spent in quiet retirement, for an emperor who, on his own, cedes the throne to his heir apparent, surely stirs melancholy thoughts. Then imagine his growing despair when in truth he has been deposed! No words can convey such feelings.”
-On the abdication/deposition of Emperor Takakura (pg. 192)
2.
“On the twenty-ninth, the retired emperor [Takakura] boarded his waiting ship and set out for home, but the wind was too strong. The ship had to row back and put in once more to the Itsukushima harbor of Ari-no-ura. His Eminence said, ‘The deity does no wish us to leave. Present a poem.’ Lieutenant Takafus therefore:
Nor is our own wish
to go away: We would stay on
at Ari-no-ura,
to receive from the white waves
the blessings of the divine.
In the middle of the night, the sea calmed and the wind dropped.”
-On the storm leaving Itsukushima harbor (pg. 196)
3.
“The third-rank novice Minamoto no Yorimasa...turned up clandestinely one night at the prince’s with a frightening proposal. ‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘you stand in the forty-eighth generation from the Great Sun Goddess and in the seventy-eighth reign from Emperor Jinmu. You should have been elevated to heir apparent and then reigned in turn, but here you are, in your thirtieth year and still only a prince...This is what you should do. You should raise rebellion and destroy the Heike, save His Cloistered Eminence from the sorrow of endless confinement in the Toba Mansion, and yourself succeed to the dignity of the sovereign.”
-On Yorimasa trying to incite Prince Mochihito to rebel (pg 202)
4.
“On the twelfth of the fifth month, weasels ran riot there in his [Shirakawa’s] quarters. Astonished, he personally recorded the divination pattern…’Joy and sorrow within three days,’ it read. ‘The joy is well and good,’ he remarked, ‘but considering my situation, I wonder what the sorrow will be.’”
-On the omen of the weasels (pg. 206-7)
5.
“We have discussed this too long already,” he said. “The night is passing. Hurry! Let us be on our way!” -Genkaku of Enman-in (pg.223 )
6.
“Miidera cannot do it alone, Mount Hiei has turned its back, and Kofukuji is still not here. The next few days bode ill.” -Prince Mochihito (pg. 225)
7.
“He faced the west, called the Name ten times, and spoke his last, moving words:
This forgotten tree
Never through the fleeting years
Burst into flower,
And now that the end has come,
No thought but turns to sorrow” -Yorimasa has he recites his last poem before commiting suicide (pg. 235)
8.
“Black the fifth-month night when, before our very eyes, you made your name blaze!”
-On Yorimasa’s slaining the Nue (pg. 245)
9.
“Wondrous music would fill no more the celestial realm of the devas, and the three grievous afflictions would torment still more the Dragon Gods.”
On Burning of Miidera (pg. 246)