Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

desire. When he heard this, Kiyomori, bewildered by the beauty of
Tokiwa, spared the lives of her children, but banished them from the
capital.
So Yoritomo was sent to Hirugakojima, in the province of Idzu; and
when he grew up and became a man, he married the daughter of a peasant.
After a while Yoritomo left the province, and went to the wars, leaving
his wife pregnant; and in due time she was delivered of a male child,
to the delight of her parents, who rejoiced that their daughter should
bear seed to a nobleman; but she soon fell sick and died, and the old
people took charge of the babe. And when they also died, the care of the
child fell to his mother's kinsmen, and he grew up to be a peasant.
Now Kiyomori, the enemy of Yoritomo, had been gathered to his fathers;
and Yoritomo had avenged the death of his father by slaying Munémori,
the son of Kiyomori; and there was peace throughout the land.
And Yoritomo became the chief of all the noble houses in Japan, and first
established the government of the country. When Yoritomo had thus
raised himself to power, if the son that his peasant wife had born to him
had proclaimed himself the son of the mighty prince, he would have
been made lord over a province; but he took no thought of this, and remained
a tiller of the earth, forfeiting a glorious inheritance; and his descendants
after him lived as peasants in the same village, increasing in
prosperity and in good repute among their neighbours.
But the princely line of Yoritomo came to an end in three generations,
and the house of Hôjô was all-powerful in the land.
Now it happened that the head of the house of Hôjô heard that a descendant
of Yoritomo was living as a peasant in the land, so he
summoned him and said:—
"It is a hard thing to see the son of an illustrious house live and die a
peasant. I will promote you to the rank of Samurai."
Then the peasant answered, "My lord, if I become a Samurai, and the
retainer of some noble, I shall not be so happy as when I was my own
master. If I may not remain a husbandman, let me be a chief over men,
however humble they may be."
But my lord Hôjô was angry at this, and, thinking to punish the peasant
for his insolence, said:—
"Since you wish to become a chief over men, no matter how humble,
there is no means of gratifying your strange wish but by making you
chief over the Etas of the whole country. So now see that you rule them
well."
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