Tale of the Heike

The story of the Heike nobles whom Yoshitsune defeated has long been told by biwa poets as “The Tale of the Heike. At the beginning of the story, he says, “The sound of the bell of the Gion Shrine echoes the impermanence of all things. The color of the flowers of the sarasouju tree shows the inevitability of the decline of the prosperous. The next verse goes on to say, “The proud are not long in coming, but it is like a dream on a spring night. Even the fiercest of men will finally perish, just like the dust before the wind.
Japanese people cannot let go of the fact that this “the proud do not prosper for a long time” and that everything is as impermanent as a dream on a spring night, in other words, the details that all things are like dust in the wind. Some people say that such a thing is “loser’s spirit” or “defeatism,” but it is not so. Rather, I feel that what happened to the Heike and Yoshitsune may happen to me tomorrow. We feel that all things are impermanent.