“Recite the story of the battle at Dan-no-ura,—for the pity of it is
the most deep.”[5]
Then Hōïchi lifted up his voice, and chanted the chant of the fight on
the bitter sea,—wonderfully making his biwa to sound like the straining
of oars and the rushing of ships, the whirr and the hissing of arrows,
the shouting and trampling of men, the crashing of steel upon helmets,
the plunging of slain in the flood. And to left and right of him, in
the pauses of his playing, he could hear voices murmuring praise: “How
marvelous an artist!”—“Never in our own province was playing heard like
this!”—“Not in all the empire is there another singer like Hōïchi!”
Then fresh courage came to him, and he played and sang yet better than
before; and a hush of wonder deepened about him. But when at last he
came to tell the fate of the fair and helpless,—the piteous perishing
of the women and children,—and the death-leap of Nii-no-Ama, with the
imperial infant in her arms,—then all the listeners uttered together
one long, long shuddering cry of anguish; and thereafter they wept and
wailed so loudly and so wildly that the blind man was frightened by the
violence and grief that he had made. For much time the sobbing and the
wailing continued. But gradually the sounds of lamentation died away;
and again, in the great stillness that followed, Hōïchi heard the voice
of the woman whom he supposed to be the Rōjo.