Men forget, my mother warned me. Even so, how do you make a man remember you? I thought I knew. When I met him, he needed my family. When I became a woman, he needed me. I was younger and older men can't be young; they can only wish to have what they once were.
My mother warned me, that won't be enough. A woman's fate is to wet her sleeves with tears a thousand times, my mother told me. Yet he was ten years older than I and I knew him so well. Since I was three, I knew this boy who grew into a man. I knew how he became a man. I was his family.
That won't be enough, my mother warned me. A woman has no home in the three worlds. And in the world of desire, women who grow old are no longer desirable.
Yet it wasn't all I had. He needed me. Without my family, he had nothing. The whole country was against him. A woman saved his life once. He spoke of her with tears in his eyes as he wooed me. Much later, he had buildings and a sutra mound constructed at Meisekiji for her, Ike no Zenni. He understood that women could change the destiny of the world. After all, they say, the disagreements of women birth wars he would tell me. He knew his place then.
And he understood that to have anything he needed me and he needed my family.
Father was against my marriage. I remind him of this now but my father seems to have forgotten that but for me, he wouldn't have climbed so high. He would have remained a minor character in a minor province, but for I, his daughter, and my ambition and my foresight.
My father and the debt my husband owed my father and family would not be enough, my mother warned me. As the years passed into decades, and my mother left me alone. I was alone. And she was right. My father and my husband no longer remember her and her kindness except as a mere duty. My husband now barely remembers that a woman saved him. She was a woman whose wisdom ended at her nose, he says now. He wouldn't let the wailing of women save children. His own brother's baby was ordered slain.
I saw my father's affections cool quickly or perhaps because I was too young, I was too naïve to notice it before. And my mother didn't have power. She didn't know how to make a man remember. Yet I still thought I knew how because my father needed me. My husband, needed me. Through me, he had everything.
And yet, long after my mother has passed away, I heard her voice as I saw my husband's affections cool. His words were no longer sweet. Instead, he'd remind me that there is no drought of women. If he wanted one, there was one he could have. Pretty peasant women were easily charmed by a trinket. Women of lower status hoping for something better in life were more than willing to grovel in front and underneath a great man.
Men forget. They forget the debt they owe their wives and lovers. They mock women for looking into our mirrors, yet sometimes I wish to yell out, "Kagami ni sodan shite koi." Take a good, hard look in the mirror.
Just like I thought he needed his younger brother, I thought he needed me. In the end, he thought he didn't need either of us.
In the end, I wasn't young enough. Men don't see themselves in the mirror. They only see their desires. A flower paired with rotting wood. Who will save the flower? These women wouldn't have wanted you when you wooed me. Now atama hagete mo uwaki wa yamanu! Even though you are bald you do not stop. You think they find you handsome? You think they find you manly? They want your power and that power could belong to anyone. Such atsui koi wa sameyasui. You find them; you discard them. And if they could find a more powerful man, they would just as surely discard you.
When you wish to humor me because you need some small favor, you comfort me by saying, "They are nothing to me." In the morning after I have waited for you and you forgot to come to my rooms or when you need me to appear somewhere and meet someone your words become sweet and you say, "They are nothing to me." Yet I see them laugh at my face when they hold your fancy only to crawl before me when you are done.
My husband, you vowed to me, you would be faithful. That was when you needed me. But my mother warned me, eggs and vows are easily broken. My husband, you think my feelings are nothing more than a common egg to be broken and discarded?
I hear you and your men whispering and laughing, a woman without jealousy is like a ball without a bounce. Keep your wife worried and she will treat you well. She will give you what you want.
And that I gave you all of Japan was not enough?
So I asked a woman who should know, "How do you make a man remember you?"
She smiled. She was so graceful. Like your brother, she had the air of the courtly nobility that only made me feel clumsy and awkward. Yet, she spoke and somehow made me feel relaxed. She was still beautiful and so peaceful.
"How do you make a man remember you?"
"It depends upon what you want him to remember," she said softly. I could smell her scented robes with every move.
She carried with her the atmosphere of Kyoto and as I perspired, I thought of how I smelled of dirt and sweat and commonness. "Can you teach me?" I asked.
"If you wish," she said with a small nod.
My husband thinks he knows how to make his men remember him. Fear. I smell fear when they see him. Our sons, they fear him. They have grown up like the lowest of dogs, cowering when they see him. They have no backbones. How shall they rule in your place? Your brother didn't need fear, he asked for love instead.
And so his mistress told me her secret. "Make them love you, " she told me. A man would prefer to have a flower in both hands. She was, after all, one of the flowers your brother Yoshitsune had.
Yoshitsune was loved. How it must have tortured you to know that with every passing year, with every passing month, with every passing day, your brother was being immortalized in song, in poetry and in the hearts of your own people.
He was young, he was full of life and he will never, never grow old. Shizuka, now hidden away, will also never grow old. She will always be the woman who was left behind, told by Benkei to stay, becoming a vixen for a moment in time, dancing her heart out so that the men pursuing her lover would be delayed. Your brother left her in the Yoshino Hills and escaped to Hiraizumi, gaining protection from an Oshu Fujiwara. When Hidehira died, the Oshu Fujiwara would not protect Yoshitsune. Your brother killed his wife, his daughter and then himself.
Shizuka and Yoshitsune, their love would be remembered, not my sister-in-law who was with him at the end. Their love, this woman, Shizuka, now a nun, would always be remembered because of their great love. Even you desired her. I heard you whisper her name in your sleep. Your brother's mistress was too risky an adventure for you though. Yet her love and her lover haunt you.
And who will remember our love? You have forgotten it.
Shizuka taught me how to make you remember. She gave me the secrets of haunting a man's mind. In your pores was the scent, an underlying tone that rose when you perspired. I put them in your bath that I faithfully prepared even when you went to visit your mistresses or one-night distractions.
In your clothes was another. The undergarment and then the overgarment were both separately steeped with different scents. When your body heat released the scents and they mingled with the scent from your pores, they made you remember.
You would turn around, looking for someone who wasn't there. You looked perplexed and you remembered. Your men said sometimes you suddenly turned around, looking over your shoulder, and then you would grow pale. I've heard from the maids that sometimes you suddenly wake up with a start, calling out a name and frightening your bedmate. Sometimes, you catch yourself and were unable to finish off your intentions, because you think someone was there, someone was watching you.
And on that fatal day, how did you die? From your own impatience, they say. The great warrior was defeated by a horse because a wasp stung your horse, they say. Yet on that day when you were thrown from your horse, 10 years after your brother died of treachery, you were looking. Your face was contorted in fear. From your sweat arose the specter of your brother. Your horse smelled fear. You were engulfed in his aroma, as if embraced by a man long dead.
Shizuka would be proud because I made you remember her own great love. And while the men became silent when you entered a room and the poets pretended not to write the praises of your brother, all the time you were forced to think of him.
He brought you victory. Your fates were intertwined like Takasago. You let the emperor play you against your brother. Yoshitsune journeyed from Kyoto to speak with you. You sulked, half-afraid of this man and knowing that refusing to see him would mean war. You won your war of spears and swords, but lost the battle of hearts and souls. You gained the north by rewarding your brother's betrayer with death. In his last moments, I am sure he asked Yoshitsune for forgiveness and cursed you. Your life was always a dying limb of half a tree. Your bad karma was living ten years to witness how much your brother was loved, even in death, even as a failure.
There is a time for celebrating victory, a time for love and a time for death. Yoshitsune and Shizuka had their time. You had yours. Now is my time and I shall play the widow as the monks chant and the incense rises. I pray, not for you, but for my own success. Your generals and lieutenants carefully eye each other. They nod and speak quietly of their greed. They are, of course, clever men, but with your death their avarice seduces their fears into a foolish calm. Now the tentacles of betrayal begin to spread. Your men speak freely in front of their servants, their concubines and the maids they use for sexual relief. For what can these lowly men and women do? So we are too low to figure in their plans. Yet as surely as the sword united you with these men, the contempt you and your men aimed at so many unites us into a swordless army. My husband, knowledge is power and the unloved and underappreciated must find comfort and protection somewhere.
And was it really a wasp? Some wonder if it wasn't someone you once knew, on a long journey from wasp to man to nirvana. Perhaps bad karma kills.
How can I make men remember me? Not as you did. Your sons were berated into submission by you. They will not be remembered. I will be remembered by men even if you forgot me. I will be remembered by my father and by my husband's vassals. No more men shall rule me. I will rule what I began with a marriage to one man who forgot.
There is no place for women in three worlds unless we make one for ourselves. Now that you are gone, now as the monks burn incense and your men and my father whisper between themselves, thinking the housemaids are nothing more than specks of dust, I gather my information, I gather the noises of small men and women and I will find a place for myself. Perhaps some day, I will return to a second world and a third, but for now, I will make sure that I am remembered by men in this world of desire.
Weddings and funerals are fine times for families and friends and planning the future.
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