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Authors: Yukio Mishima

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The League of the Divine Wind
by Tsunanori Yamao
PART THE FIRST
The Rite of Ukei
O
NE DAY
in the summer of 1873—the Sixth Year of the Meiji era—four stalwart men of high ideals gathered at the Imperial Shrine in Shingai Village five miles south of Kumamoto Castle to offer worship under the direction of Tomo Otaguro, adopted son and heir of the former chief priest. The Shingai Shrine was a branch of the Grand Shrine at Isé, and was known locally as Isé Shingai. Sheltered by a grove of tall trees and surrounded by paddies, this simple thatched-roof shrine was the most sacred place within the prefecture.
Their worship done at last, the four left Otaguro alone in the shrine and retired to the parlor of the priest’s dwelling. Now Otaguro was to perform the secret rite of Ukei.
As for these four: Harukata Kaya was at the height of his powers, a man of stern visage. Kengo Ueno was past sixty. Kyusaburo Saito and Masamoto Aikyo were men in their fifties. Kaya wore his hair long and tied at the back of his head. Each of them bore a sword at his side.
Taut with emotion as they awaited the issue of the Ukei, the four of them sat erect in silence, neither wiping away their sweat nor looking at one another.
Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth. A pine bent like a reclining dragon shaded the pond in the garden upon which the parlor opened. Though not the faintest breeze reached the veranda, the irises at the pond’s edge, some upright like sword blades, others gracefully bent, trembled slightly. The reflection of the water glimmered upon the white branches of the delicate-blossomed crape myrtle.
Greenness was heaped up abundantly, even the leaves of the bush clover giving way to green. Yellow butterflies fluttered about. At the edge of the garden, between the trunks of a row of half-grown firs, the blue sky shimmered.
Kaya, his emotion evident in the glitter of his eyes, turned in the direction of the shrine. What he hoped for from this Ukei ran counter to the wishes of the others.
The fore-hall of Isé Shingai was appointed thus: in its center, mounted within a frame, hung the sword of Lord Tadatoshi Hosokawa in its white sheath. To the left was a votive picture of a dragon, and to the right was another depicting the white cock and hen of Lord Nobunori Hosokawa. The inscription “The Third Year of the Manji Era” was in the calligraphy of Sekki Obaku. A raised platform stood ever in readiness for the clan lord, whether he chose to worship in person or through a retainer.
The white-robed figure of Tomo Otaguro lay prostrate in the Divine Presence. The priest’s neck was thin and his face as pale as an invalid’s. It was his practice, whenever he was to address a petition to the gods, to fast for a period of seven or ten days and to do without cooked food for fifty or a hundred days.
The Ukei, through which the will of the gods was consulted, was accorded the utmost reverence by Otaguro’s late master, Oen Hayashi, who had passed away three years before at this very shrine. Indeed, Oen had written
A Treatise on the Ukei
. His vision of Shinto went beyond Atsutané Hirata’s principle of continuity between the Revealed World and the Hidden World. Oen wrote, for example:
Divinity is the source. The visible world is its issue. He who has charge of affairs, he who governs men, must view Divinity as source and the visible world as issue. For the ruler who rightly integrates source and issue, the governing of the whole world will be of small concern.
And Oen taught that the Ukei, by means of which the divine will became manifest, was of prime importance within the arcane canon.
A Treatise on the Ukei
began with these words:
Of all the rites of Shinto, the Ukei is the most wondrous. As to its origin, the ineffably awesome goddess Amaterasu, together with Lord Susano, conducted the first Ukei in High Heaven, whence it was transmitted to our land of Yamato.
Among the offspring brought forth by Lord Susano in the course of the Ukei that he undertook in order to demonstrate his innocence was Lord Amenooshihomimi, who is none other than the Divine Parent of Lord Ninigi, first of the everlasting Imperial Line. Hence the Ukei was the central mystery of the Divine Ritual. Its practice, however, had fallen into abeyance for centuries, and thus it was that Oen had striven for its revival so that, in this confused world, men might once more attain the guidance of the gods and have the divine will manifested to them.
Thus the Ukei ritual was “worship of the awesome and exalted gods,” and the Emperor’s Land was a land whose good fortune sprang from the wondrous power of words. For it was evident that when the priest intoned the ritual, his words, fraught with sacred power, invariably called down the protection of all the gods of heaven and earth. Thus the Ukei was “worship by words fraught with sacred power.”
At the clan school at Kumamoto, when someone drew upon a treatise of Neo-Confucian learning called
Eight Steps of Self-Discipline
to express contempt for the mystery of the Ukei, Oen replied in the following manner:
In this world both he who rules and he who is ruled are but men. If a mere man as a mere man attempts to rule another, he is like one who, having no boat, plunges into the sea to rescue one who is drowning. But the Ukei is what can bear up both of them. It is the boat without which the drowning man cannot be saved.
In Shinto learning Oen favored the works of Mabuchi and Norinaga. As for Chinese learning, he was versed in sutras as well as Confucius and other philosophers. His knowledge of Buddhism embraced both the Greater and Lesser Vehicles. Indeed, he even engaged in Dutch studies to some extent. Cherishing as he did the ideal of glorifying the Imperial Tradition within the land and upholding the national honor in the face of foreign incursion, he was appalled by the vacillation of the Shogunate officials at the time of Perry’s arrival and also by the tactics of those who turned away from the policy of “Expel the Barbarians” but tried to use it to overthrow the Shogunate. He became a recluse and gave himself over to the contemplation of occult wisdom.
Oen hoped for the restoration of the rule of the gods in this world. Not content with the exegeses of Mabuchi and Norinaga, he resolved to make known to all the ancient Shinto ritual as preserved in the classics and, by so doing, to set right the hearts of men and restore the pure land of the gods, a land blessed with the divine favor. The practice of the ancient worship, then, the achievement of restoration, had been his goal. He went so far as to bring Socrates of Greece into his writings, approving the view that, though Socrates did well to preach morals in a country lacking them, the superior state of the Emperor’s Land precluded the need for moral teaching.
The Way of the Gods meant that worship and government were one. To serve the Emperor, the shining vicar of the gods in the world of men, was to serve the distant gods of the world hidden to men. To govern was to act always in accordance with the divine will, and to ascertain that will was a most sacred task, a task that could only be accomplished by the rite of Ukei.
The example of this man whose zeal for the gods was so notable inspired a host of pure-minded disciples, foremost of whom was Tomo Otaguro. The attitude of Oen’s followers mourning his passing could be likened to that of Buddha’s disciples seeing him entering Nirvana.
Now, three years after his master’s death, it had come to pass that Tomo Otaguro, purified in body and in spirit, felt compelled to perform the rite of Ukei.
At the time of the Decree of Imperial Restoration, the indications had been altogether favorable that the august wish of His Late Majesty Komei to expel the barbarians would be fulfilled. But clouds soon cut off the light of Heaven, and month by month, year by year, the policy of opening the land to foreign influence had grown stronger. In Meiji 3, permission was granted to an imperial prince to study in Germany, and at the end of the same year, swords were forbidden to the common people. In Meiji 4 it was decreed that samurai could cut off their topknot and that they might go without swords. Treaties were concluded with various foreign countries, and just the previous year, Meiji 5, the Western calendar was adopted. At the beginning of the current year, six army garrisons were established with an eye toward curbing popular unrest, and, indeed, a disturbance did break out in Oita Prefecture. The world was moving further and further away from the late Master Oen’s central doctrine of government and worship as one. Far from being progress, this was a heedless rush to destruction. Thus were the Master’s hopes betrayed. Men delighted in defilement rather than purity. Base ambition gained the victory over lofty idealism.
What would be the late Master’s thoughts if he were still in this world? And what would be the thoughts of His Late Imperial Majesty?
Though Otaguro and his companions were, of course, unaware of it, at the time of Prince Iwakura’s mission to Europe and America in Meiji 4, there had been intense discussion on shipboard among such subordinate ministers as Koin Kido, Toshimichi Okubo, and Hirobumi I to with regard to changing the national polity, and many voices were raised to argue that Japan should become a republic in order better to confront the power of America and the nations of Europe.
In the meantime, hopelessly contrary to the late Master’s teaching about restoration and the oneness of government and worship, the Ministry of Shrines was reorganized in Meiji 5 as the Ministry of Religion, and soon after was abolished entirely, its functions delegated to the Department of Shrines and Temples. Thus were the places of worship revered and the most ancient traditions put on the same level with the temples of a religion brought from abroad.
Now Otaguro was about to offer two Ukei formulations to the divine scrutiny. The first of these was in accordance with the wishes of Harukata Kaya and read as follows: “To bring an end to misgovernment by admonishing authority even to the forfeiture of life.”
Kaya was bent upon the use of argument, of subduing their enemy without shedding any blood but his own. He wished to insure that his admonition achieved its goal by emulating Yasutaké Yokoyama, the samurai of the Satsuma Clan who, in Meiji 3, set the seal upon his heroic remonstrance by slaying himself with his sword as soon as he had delivered his petition. Kaya’s comrades, however, had misgivings about the efficacy of such a course.
The second formulation, to be proposed in the event of the first’s not gaining the divine sanction, read as follows: “To cut down the unworthy ministers by striking in darkness with the sword.”
Otaguro, too, if this resolution was favored by the divine will, would see it through to the last.
Although Oen’s
Treatise on the Ukei
recommended the use of a saké flask and rice honey in the manner of the Emperor Jimmu, Otaguro preferred to follow the Ukei procedure preserved in the arcane tradition of the Grand Shrine of Isé, into which he had become initiated at the Sumiyoshi Shrine in Udo. He therefore selected a peach branch, and, after paring it to a straight stick, cut heavy Mino paper into strips and fastened these to the branch as sacred pendants, save for four, upon each of which he inscribed the first Ukei formulation, allowing space for a positive or negative response. Then he took up one of these, and after the words “To bring an end to misgovernment by admonishing authority even to the forfeiture of life,” he wrote: “is propitious.” He crumbled these into small wads and placed them upon a three-legged stand. Carrying this with him, he went down from the fore-hall and climbed the stairs leading to the sanctuary. Reverently he opened the sanctuary doors and made his way upon his knees into the midday darkness within.
It was high noon, and the heat of the sanctuary was intense. The drone of mosquitoes filled the darkness. The rays of the sun touched the skirt of Otaguro’s white robe as he knelt, head bowed, just inside the threshold. Bathed in sunlight, the folds of his white raw silk
hakama
shone like bunched hibiscus flowers. Otaguro began by reciting the Great Prayer of Purification.
In the midst of the darkness, the Sacred Mirror glinted faintly. That the gods were present therein, that their eyes were upon him, Otaguro felt with the same certainty that he felt the very sweat that trickled down over his forehead and temples and past his ears. The beating of his heart became the divine life pulsing within him, and enclosed as he was by the four walls of the sanctuary, this seemed to grow to a rumble. Then with his whole body withering in the heat and his heart bursting with an intensity of yearning, he sensed that from somewhere in the darkness before him, an unseen force, as pure and fresh as spring water, was pouring out upon him.
When Otaguro picked up the branch, the sacred pendants rustled like the wings of doves. At first he waved it slowly from side to side above the stand in the manner of purification, and then, quieting his heart, lowered it till the pendants gently brushed the surface. Two of the four crumpled papers were caught by the pendants and swept from the stand. He spread out each of these and held it to the light. On the wrinkled paper of the first, he clearly saw the words “is not propitious.” And on the second, too, was written: “is not propitious.”
After reciting the prescribed prayer once more, he began the second Ukei rite, this time to put to the divine scrutiny the formulation “To cut down the unworthy ministers by striking in darkness with the sword.” His procedure was as before, this time but a single paper being swept from the stand. When he had uncrumpled this, Otaguro read thereupon the words “is not propitious.”

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