People say I danced the Atsumori resigned to death. That it was a hero's resolve, to be handed down to later ages.
But let me tell you the truth.
I didn't dance it ready to die. I just hated the idea of dying so much I couldn't stand it.
The night before the decisive battle,
I didn't sleep a wink.
Lying down, all I could see was the ceiling. By tomorrow, this body might be torn open by blades and going cold. The thought made it hard to breathe.
Every time I rolled over, I jumped at the slightest sound outside the bedchamber. Even when the wind just rattled a door, my heart shrank. Was it an assassin? Had the night attack already come? Each time, cold sweat crept down my back.
There's no saving me now. This is where it ends.
Twenty-six years. A short life. I hadn't gotten to do a single thing I wanted. Not even that dream of tilling a field in the country with Kicho.
Under the covers, I was half in tears.
Before dawn,
I couldn't stay still, so I got up.
A wild, senseless desperation welled up from deep in my chest. If I'm going to die anyway, then whatever.
What had I been training for all this time? Terrified of assassins, wanting to survive even a little longer, I had tortured my body like a madman. In front of an army this size, it was no comfort at all. Two thousand fists couldn't knock down twenty-five thousand.
My well-trained body did nothing but tremble uselessly, same as always.
Before I knew it, I was dancing. The passage from the Atsumori I'd learned as a child.
Fifty years of human life, set beside the realms below heaven, are but a dream and an illusion.
As I danced, I was cursing inside.
Fifty years of life? Don't make me laugh. I'm only twenty-six. I've lived barely half that. And it's already over? Give me a break. It's not fair. I don't want this. I don't want to die.
That was the kind of dance it was: half in tears, out of sheer desperation.
And yet.
At some point, my retainers had gathered on the other side of the sliding doors. And watching me dance—they were weeping.
"Our lord is resolved to die."
"He pours the fleeting nature of this world into his dance... Ah, what resolve."
"We shall go with him. We are dead men now. No one can defeat soldiers who are ready to die."
A fire lit in my retainers' eyes. The men who a moment ago had been sinking into talk of dying in battle and holding the castle now had flushed cheeks and clenched fists.
I wanted to say No. I wasn't resolved to anything. If anything, I was as far from resolve as a man could be, flailing pathetically for some way to get out of dying.
I was just setting my whining I-don't-want-to-die voice to a tune. Who on earth could call that a "dance of resolve"?
When I finished dancing, I wolfed down some rice in hot water, standing up. Apparently later ages tell this, too, as "the boldness of one who set out at once."
Really, I just meant it as my last meal. Before I went cold, I wanted at least to eat my fill.
I put on my armor. The cold weight of iron bore down on my shoulders. It felt like being dressed in my coffin ahead of time.
My fingers shook, and I couldn't tie the cords properly. Even so, in front of my retainers, I tied them slowly, calmly, for show. I couldn't let them see the shaking. If they found out I was frightened, even these men with the fire lit in them would run off in no time.
And then it really would be over.
I didn't dance it ready to die. I just hated the idea of dying so much I couldn't stand it. But there was nothing left to do but go.