Questions and Answers on the Object of Devotion Chapter11-3

Questions and Answers on the Object of Devotion Chapter11-3

———————————-（continued from Chapter11-2)———————————-

The forces of the shogunate banished the three retired emperors to three different provinces and summarily beheaded seven of the high court officials. And that was not all. They broke into the residence of the prelate of Ninna-ji and seized his most beloved disciple, the page Setaka,²⁵ and in the end beheaded him as well. The prelate, unable to bear the grief, died, and the mother of the page as well joined her son in death.

Those who relied on these prayers, how many thousands or ten thousands no one knows, all died, and the few who happened to be spared no longer found it worth living. And from the time the prelate began his prayers on the eighth day of the sixth month until the imperial defeat on the fourteenth day of the same month was, if we reckon it, an interval of barely seven full days!