Death Poems from Samurais

I played the game Seppuku Jisei. Slashing enemies was meditative. I aimed for the zen of one slash, one death, to lose myself in the flow of the kill. I stood in the middle of a mound of blood and limbs.

After the game, I saw some death poems here, and decided to investigate them. Thanks to my passable Japanese skills, I found their originals, and their contexts.

Death kept her distance.

But I reached for her hoof 

Just one touch...

I shivered from her love.

Hōjō Ujimasa (北条 氏政, 1538 – August 10, 1590).

The siege of Odawara (小田原征伐) was the primary action in Toyotomi Hideyoshi campaign to eliminate the Hōjō clan as a threat to his power. After three months, the Hōjō surrendered. Hōjō Ujimasa et al committed seppuku.

Autumn wind of eve

Blow away the clouds that mass

O'er the moon's pure light.

And the mists that cloud our mind

Do thou sweep away as well.

雨雲の おほへる月も 

胸の霧も はらひにけりな 

秋の夕風

Now I'm about to disappear,

Wondering how I should grasp it.

From the emptiness I came,

Hence I will return there.

我が身今 消ゆとやいかに 

思ふべき 

空より来たり

空へ帰れば

Minamoto no Yorimasa (源 頼政) (1106–1180)

He was a prominent Japanese poet, also a warrior, leading the Minamoto armies at the beginning of the Genpei War.  

The Genpei War began with the Battle of Uji (宇治) in 1180. Yorimasa led Minamoto forces, along with warrior monks from Mii-dera, in defending Byōdō-in (橋合戦, 平等院). Suffering defeat at Uji, he committed suicide at Byōdō-in. Minamoto no Yorimasa's ritual suicide by seppuku may be the earliest recorded instance of a samurai's suicide in the face of defeat.

Place of Yorimasa's death.

Like a rotten log 

half buried in the ground - 

my life, which 

has not flowered, comes 

to this sad end. 

埋もれ木の

花咲くことも 

なかりしに

身のなる果てぞ

悲しかりける 

Ōta Dōkan (太田 道灌, 1432 - August 25, 1486).
Samurai warrior-poet, military tactician and Buddhist monk. Assassinated from political intrigue.

When he was dying, his assassin started the first half of a waka (和歌, "Japanese poem"):

Finally it's time 

To cherish your life.

かかる時さこそ命の

惜しからめ

Dōkan immediately replied:

If I hadn't already known that 

The body and the mind are both nonexistent.

かねてなき身と思い

知らずば

and died.

The whole poem could also be translated as

Had I not known that I was dead already.

I would have mourned my loss of life.

Ōuchi Yoshitaka (大内 義隆, December 18, 1507 – September 30, 1551)

He was the daimyō of Suō Province (周防国) and the 30th head of the Ōuchi clan. He was perceived a weak leader, and displaced in the Tainei-ji incident (大寧寺の変 Taineiji no Hen), a coup in September 1551. After a brief siege, he committed seppuku at the Tainei-ji Temple.

Both the victor 

and the vanquished are 

but drops of dew, 

but bolts of lightning - 

thus should we view the world. 

討つ人も

討たるる人も

諸共に 

如露亦如電

応作如是観

This is an interesting analogy for the impermanence of life, from the Diamond Sutra, Chapter 32:

"So I say to you –
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:

Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
So is all conditioned existence to be seen."

Thus spoke Buddha.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣 秀吉, March 17, 1537 – September 18, 1598)
This is a big name, for sure. He's the "second unifier of Japan", and ended the Warring States Period (sengoku jidai, 戦国時代).

He had failed to leave an adult heir behind to succeed him and carry on his line. Instead, there was only his infant son Hideyori and the dubious promises of his generals to serve as regents only until Hideyori was old enough to take charge himself.

Appearing like dew,

vanishing like dew—

such is my life.

Even Naniwa's splendor

is a dream within a dream.

露と落ち露と消えにし

我が身かな

浪速のことも

夢のまた夢

Within two years of Hideyoshi's death, one of his generals, Tokugawa Ieyasu, would depose young Hideyori and seize power in his own name.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康, January 31, 1543 – June 1, 1616)

The founder and first shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which effectively ruled Japan from the Battle of Sekigahara (関ヶ原の戦い) in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

Whether one passes on or remains 

is all the same. 

That you can take no one with you 

is the only difference. 

先に行く あとに残るも 

同じこと 

連れて行けぬを 

わかれぞと思う

I don't get it. Shrug.

Shiaku Sho'on (塩飽聖遠, ? – June 4, 1333)
There is a single Japanese sources on him, in Taiheiki. Basically, he committed seppuku after suffering defeat in the Siege of Kamakura. Many others committed seppuku in the same battle.

Forces loyal to Emperor Go-Daigo entered the city from multiple directions and destroyed it; in the end, the Hōjō leaders retreated to Tōshō-ji, the Hōjō family (北条氏) temple, where they committed seppuku with the rest of the clan.

Holding forth this sword 

I cut vacuity in twain; 

In the midst of the great fire, 

a stream of refreshing breeze! 

提持吹毛

截断虚空

大火聚裡

一道清風

According to Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death, (Yoel Hoffmann, 1998), the story goes:

Shiaku Sho'on was a monk at the time of his death though he was, by origin, a samurai. After the defeat of his lord's army, he preferred to die as a warrior rather than retire, as a monk would have done, from "the vanity of this world." His eldest son having already committed suicide, the younger son, Shiro, requests to do likewise. 

Shiaku stops him and says: "Wait a while. It is not proper that a son should die before his father. When I am dead, you, too, may die." Shiro sheathed his dagger and knelt before his father, who looked down on him and laughed approvingly. Then Shiaku ordered that a monk's stool be put near the middle gate and sat upon it cross-legged. He took out his inkstone and wrote his death poem.

He then folded his arms, bent his head forward, and ordered: "Strike!" Shiro, stripped to the waist, struck off his father's head; then setting his sword upright, he thrust it to the hilt into his own stomach and fell forward on his face, dead. 

Three retainers who had been watching ran forward and threw themselves on the same blade falling with their heads together like fish on a skewer.