The Heike Story

Episode 9

Although The Heike Story takes a somewhat melancholy view of its source material – which really does make a lot of sense, since from a modern perspective, war brings more death than happiness – there is one part of the book that I always found very sad. That is adapted this week as the anime covers chapters eight and nine of the original: the death of Atsumori in battle. It's a moment that stands out in the source because the soldier who kills him, Kumagai Naozane, is specifically reminded of his son when he sees how young Atsumori is and nearly stops, but ultimately kills the boy anyway. Later, he is unable to come to terms with what he has done and, bringing with him Atsumori's flute which has washed ashore, takes his vows to become a monk.

This moment is beautifully expanded in this episode, which factors in his cousin's suicide. While the death itself is tragic, the use of his flute and the gull he reaches for as he falls into the water are both used again when Atsumori is killed. In fact, the implication in the anime is that Atsumori died because he went back to the area the Heike had fled from in order to retrieve that flute, and so the flute Kumagai will later find is in fact the flute that originally bobbed to the surface after another death. It speaks to the closeness we saw between the cousins, but also of the way that everything, and everyone, is linked. Nothing in this story happens in a vacuum – it always comes back like an osprey returning to the same nest year after year after year. The flute itself can be read as being representative of the peace that has been lost as Kiyomori's war, continuing even after his death, destroys the young one after another. War and power struggles, this episode seems to say, are games played by the old with the lives of the young.

Certainly, our one remaining old bald man shows no signs of planning to stop playing his power games any time soon. Even though the Heike have the three sacred treasures and Emperor Antoku, Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa is determined to wrest power back for his own line, and to that end, he names a different, illegitimate son of Tokuko's late husband as the emperor. How legal this is definitely seems up for debate, because Antoku is the one with the regalia of the office, speaking of his divine right to rule. And if the Heike manage to salvage things, Go-Shirakawa has just thrown a child into the line of fire, because there's no way that he'd be allowed to live now that he's been declared emperor. But that's just what Kiyomori did when he made Antoku into the emperor – the only thing they care(d) about is their own benefit. Everyone else is just a tool to be used until they're taken, or take themselves, out of the story.

That Biwa's mother did in fact take herself out of the story is therefore an interesting element. She's the one thing Biwa has been yearning for this entire time, the last family she has and arguably her end goal. But when the three shirabiyoshi take her to her mother, Biwa realizes that maybe she's just been chasing a dream all along. Her mother doesn't know her; she abandoned her perhaps knowing (since Biwa inherited her Sight from her) that her father would die and leave the girl alone. Even the fact that she insists on calling Biwa by her given name, Asagi, feels like a mark of the distance between them, even though they're standing close enough to touch. In this respect, Biwa's decision to keep living as Biwa, rather than switching to an existence as Asagi, is symbolic of her taking a different path in life. Her mother chose to leave, running away from knowing what kind of life her family would live, beyond what she saw with her eye. But Biwa is choosing to follow her adopted family to the end. She knows it won't be a happy ending. She's well aware of what's coming for the Heike. But she wants to be there to record it, to make sure that their story is carried on.

Like the flute that Kumagai picks up, she will sing their story into the future.

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The Heike Story is currently streaming on Funimation.