Arrived at f.u.kuhara, they devoted a night to praying, making sacred music, and reading Sutras at Kiyomori's tomb, whereafter they set fire to all the Taira palaces, mansions, and official buildings, and embarked for the Dazai-fu in Chikuzen. They reckoned on the allegiance of the whole of Kyushu and of at least one-half of Shikoku.

EIGHTY-SECOND SOVEREIGN, THE EMPEROR GO-TOBA (A.D. 1184-1198)

The Taira leaders having carried off the Emperor Antoku, there was no actually reigning sovereign in Kyoto, whither the cloistered Emperor now returned, an imposing guard of honour being furnished by Yoshinaka. Go-Shirakawa therefore resumed the administration of State affairs, Yoshinaka being given the privilege of access to the Presence and entrusted with the duty of guarding the capital. The distribution of rewards occupied attention in the first place. Out of the five hundred manors of the Taira, one hundred and fifty were given to Yoshinaka and Yukiiye, and over two hundred prominent Taira officials were stripped of their posts and their Court ranks.

Yoritomo received more gracious treatment than Yoshinaka, although the Kamakura chief could not yet venture to absent himself from the Kwanto for the purpose of paying his respects at Court. For the rest, in spite of Yoshinaka's brilliant success, he was granted only the fifth official rank and the governorship of the province of Iyo.

These things could not fail to engender some discontent, and presently a much graver cause for dissatisfaction presented itself.

Fujiwara Kanezane, minister of the Right, memorialized the Court in the sense that, as Antoku had left the capital, another occupant to the throne should be appointed, in spite of the absence of the regalia. He pointed out that a precedent for dispensing with these tokens of Imperialism had been furnished in the case of the Emperor Keitai (507-531). No valid reason existed for such a precipitate step. Antoku had not abdicated. His will had not been consulted at all by the Taira when they carried him off; nor would the will of a child of six have possessed any validity in such a matter. It is plain that the proposal made by the minister of the Right had for motive the convenience of the Minamoto, whose cause lacked legitimacy so long as the sovereign and the regalia were in the camp of the Taira.

But the minister's advice had a disastrous sequel. Yoshinaka was resolutely bent on securing the succession for the son of Prince Mochihito, who had been killed in the Yorimasa emeute. It was practically to Mochihito that the Court owed its rescue from the Taira tyranny, and his son--now a youth of seventeen, known as Prince Hokuriku, because he had founded an asylum at a monastery in Hokuriku-do after his father's death--had been conducted to Kyoto by Yoshinaka, under a promise to secure the succession for him. But Go-Shirakawa would not pay any attention to these representations. He held that Prince Hokuriku was ineligible, since his father had been born out of wedlock, and since the prince himself had taken the tonsure; the truth being that the ex-Emperor had determined to obtain the crown for one of his own grandsons, younger brothers of Antoku.

It is said that his Majesty's manner of choosing between the two lads was most capricious. He had them brought into his presence, whereupon the elder began to cry, the younger to laugh, and Go-Shirakawa at once selected the latter, who thenceforth became the Emperor Go-Toba.

FALL OF YOSHINAKA

Yoshinaka's fortunes began to ebb from the time of his failure to obtain the nomination of Prince Hokuriku. A force despatched to b.i.t.c.hu with the object of arresting the abduction of Antoku and recovering possession of the regalia, had the misfortune to be confronted by Taira no Noritsune, one of the stoutest warriors on the side of the Heike. Ashikaga Yoshikiyo, who commanded the pursuers, was killed, and his men were driven back pele-mele. This event impaired the prestige of Yoshinaka's troops, while he himself and his officers found that their rustic ways and illiterate education exposed them constantly to the thinly veiled sneers of the dilettanti and pundits who gave the tone to metropolitan society. The soldiers resented these insults with increasing roughness and recourse to violence, so that the coming of Yoritomo began to be much desired.

Go-Shirakawa sent two messages at a brief interval to invite the Kamakura chief's presence in the capital. Yoritomo replied with a memorial which won for him golden opinions, but he showed no sign of visiting Kyoto. His absorbing purpose was to consolidate his base in the east, and he had already begun to appreciate that the military and the Imperial capitals should be distinct.

Naturally, when the fact of these pressing invitations to Yoritomo reached Yoshinaka's ears, he felt some resentment, and this was reflected in the demeanour of his soldiers, outrages against the lives and properties of the citizens becoming more and more frequent.

Even the private domains of the cloistered Emperor himself, to say nothing of the manors of the courtiers, were freely entered and plundered, so that public indignation reached a high pitch. The umbrage thus engendered was accentuated by treachery. Driven from Kyushu, the Taira chiefs had obtained a footing in Shikoku and had built fortifications at Yashima in Sanuki, which became thenceforth their headquarters. They had also collected on the opposite coast of the Inland Sea a following which seemed likely to grow in dimensions, and, with the idea of checking that result, it was proposed to send troops to the Sanyo-do under Minamoto Yukiiye, who had been named governor of Bizen. Taught, however, by experience that disaster was likely to be the outcome of Yukiiye's generalship, Yoshinaka interfered to prevent his appointment, and Yukiiye, resenting this slight, became thenceforth a secret foe of Yoshinaka.

In a.n.a.lyzing the factors that go to the making of this complicated chapter of j.a.panese history, a place must be given to Yukiiye. He seems to have been an unscrupulous schemer. Serving originally under Yoritomo, who quickly took his measure, he concluded that nothing substantial was to be gained in that quarter. Therefore, he pa.s.sed over to Yoshinaka, who welcomed him, not as an enemy of Yoritomo, but as a Minamoto. Thenceforth Yukiiye's aim was to cause a collision between the two cousins and to raise his own house on the ruins of both. He contributed materially to the former result, but as to the latter, the sixth year of his appearance upon the stage as Prince Mochihito's mandate-bearer saw his own head pilloried in Kyoto.

Yoshinaka, however, had too frank a disposition to be suspicious. He believed until the end that Yukiiye's heart was in the Minamoto cause. Then, when it became necessary to choose, between taking stupendous risks in the west or making a timely withdrawal to the east, he took Yukiiye into his confidence. That was the traitor's opportunity. He secretly informed the ex-Emperor that Yoshinaka had planned a retreat to the east, carrying his Majesty with him, and this information, at a time when the excesses committed by Yoshinaka's troops had provoked much indignation, induced Go-Shirakawa to obtain from Hiei-zan and Miidera armed monks to form a palace-guard under the command of the kebiishi, Taira Tomoyasu, a declared enemy of Yoshinaka. At once Yoshinaka took a decisive step.

He despatched a force to the palace; seized the persons of Go-Shirakawa and Go-Toba; removed Motomichi from the regency, appointing Moroie, a boy of twelve, in his place, and dismissed a number of Court officials.

In this strait, Go-Shirakawa, whose record is one long series of undignified manoeuvres to keep his own head above water, applied himself to placate Yoshinaka while privately relying on Yoritomo. His Majesty granted to the former the control of all the domains previously held by the Taira; appointed him to the high office of sei-i tai-shogun (barbarian-subduing generalissimo), and commissioned him to attack Yoritomo while, at the same time, the latter was secretly encouraged to destroy his cousin. At that moment (February, 1184), Yoritomo's two younger brothers, Yos.h.i.tsune and Noriyori, were en route for Kyoto, where they had been ordered to convey the Kwanto taxes. They had a force of five hundred men only, but these were quickly transformed into the van of an army of fifty or sixty thousand, which Yoritomo, with extraordinary expedition, sent from Kamakura to attack Yoshinaka.

The "Morning Sun shogun" (Asahi-shogun), as Yoshinaka was commonly called with reference to his brilliant career, now at last saw himself confronted by the peril which had long disturbed his thoughts. At a distance of three hundred miles from his own base, with powerful foes on either flank and in a city whose population was hostile to him, his situation seemed almost desperate. He took a step dictated by dire necessity--made overtures to the Taira, asking that a daughter of the house of Kiyomori be given him for wife. Munemori refused. The fortunes of the Taira at that moment appeared to be again in the ascendant. They were once more supreme in Kyushu; the west of the main island from coast to coast was in their hands; they had re-established themselves in f.u.kuhara, and at any moment they might move against Kyoto. They could afford, therefore, to await the issue of the conflict pending between the Minamoto cousins, sure that it must end in disaster for one side and temporary weakness for the other.

In fact, the situation was almost hopeless for Yoshinaka. There had not been time to recall the main body of his troops which were confronting the Taira. All that he could do was to arrest momentarily the tide of onset by planting handfuls of men to guard the chief avenues at Uji and Seta where, four years previously, Yorimasa had died for the Minamoto cause, and Seta, where a long bridge spans the waters of Lake Biwa as they narrow to form the Setagawa. To the Uji bridge, Nenoi Yukichika was sent with three hundred men; to the Seta bridge, Imai Kanehira with five hundred. The names of these men and of their brothers, Higuchi Kanemitsu and Tate Chikatada, are immortal in j.a.panese history. They were the four sons of Nakahara Kaneto, by whom Yoshinaka had been reared, and their constant attendance on his person, their splendid devotion to him, and their military prowess caused people to speak of them as Yoshinaka's Shi-tenno--the four guardian deities of Buddhist temples. Their sister, Tomoe, is even more famous. Strong and brave as she was beautiful, she became the consort of Yoshinaka, with whom she had been brought up, and she accompanied him in all his campaigns, fighting by his side and leading a body of troops in all his battles. She was with him when he made his final retreat and she killed a gigantic warrior, Uchida Ieyoshi, who attempted to seize her on that occasion. Yoshinaka compelled her to leave him at the supreme moment, being unwilling that she should fall into the enemy's hands; and after his death she became a nun, devoting the rest of her days to prayers for his spirit.

But it is not to be supposed that Yoshinaka repaid this n.o.ble devotion with equal sincerity. On the contrary, the closing scene of his career was disfigured by pa.s.sion for another woman, daughter of the kwampaku, Fujiwara Motofusa. Attracted by rumours of her beauty after his arrival in Kyoto, he compelled her to enter his household, and when news came that the armies of Yos.h.i.tsune and Noriyori were approaching the capital, this great captain, for such he certainly was, instead of marshalling his forces and making dispositions for defence, went to bid farewell to the beautiful girl who resided in his Gojo mansion. Hours of invaluable time pa.s.sed, and still Asahi shogun remained by the lady's side. Finally, two of his faithful comrades, Echigo Chuta and Tsuwata Saburo, seated themselves in front of the mansion and committed suicide to recall their leader to his senses. Yoshinaka emerged, but it was too late. He could not muster more than three hundred men, and in a short time Yos.h.i.tsune rode into the city at the head of a large body of cavalry.

Yos.h.i.tsune had approached by way of Uji. He was not at all deterred by the fact that the enemy had destroyed the bridge. His mounted bowmen dashed into the river* and crossed it with little loss. A few hours brought them to Kyoto, where they made small account of the feeble resistance that Yoshinaka was able to offer. Wounded and with little more than half a score of followers, Yoshinaka rode off, and reaching the plain Of Awazu, met Imai Kanehira with the remnant of his five hundred men who had gallantly resisted Noriyori's army of thirty thousand. Imai counselled instant flight eastward. In Shinano, Yoshinaka would find safety and a dominion, while to cover his retreat, Imai would sacrifice his own life. Such n.o.ble deeds were the normal duty of every true bushi. Yoshinaka galloped away, but, riding into a marsh, disabled his horse and was shot down. Meanwhile Imai, in whose quiver there remained only eight arrows, had killed as many of the pursuing hors.e.m.e.n, and then placing the point of his sword in his mouth, had thrown himself headlong from his horse. One incident, shocking but not inconsistent with the canons of the time, remains to be included in this chapter of j.a.panese history. It has been related that Yoshinaka's son, Yos.h.i.taka, was sent by his father to Kamakura as a hostage, and was married to Yoritomo's daughter. After the events above related Yos.h.i.taka was put to death at Kamakura, apparently without Yoritomo's orders, and his widow, when pressed by her brother to marry again, committed suicide.

*j.a.panese tradition loves to tell of a contest between Sasaki Takatsuna and Kajiwara Kagesue as to which should cross the river first. Kagesue was the son of that Kajiwara who had saved. Yoritomo's life in the episode of the hollow tree.

BATTLE OF ICHI-NO-TANI

The victory of the armies led by Noriyori and Yos.h.i.tsune brought Kamakura and f.u.kuhara into direct conflict, and it was speedily decided that these armies should at once move westward to attack the Taira. A notable feature of the military operations of that era was celerity. Less than a month sufficed to mobilize an army of fifty thousand men and to march it from Kamakura to Kyoto, a distance of three hundred miles, and within ten days of the death of Yoshinaka this same army, augmented to seventy-six thousand, began to move westward from Kyoto (March 19, 1184). The explanation of this rapidity is furnished, in part, by simplicity of commisariat, and by the fact that neither artillery nor heavy munitions of war had to be transported. Every man carried with him a supply of cooked rice, specially prepared so as to occupy little s.p.a.ce while sufficing for several days' food, and this supply was constantly replenished by requisitions levied upon the districts traversed. Moreover, every man carried his own implements of war--bow and arrows, sword, spear, or halberd--and the footgear consisted of straw sandals which never hurt the feet, and in which a man could easily march twenty miles a day continuously.

These remarks apply to all the fighting men of whatever part of j.a.pan, but as to the Kwanto bushi, their special characteristics are thus described by a writer of the twelfth century: "Their ponderous bows require three men or five to bend them. Their quivers, which match these bows, hold fourteen or fifteen bundles of arrows. They are very quick in releasing their shafts, and each arrow kills or wounds two or three foemen, the impact being powerful enough to pierce two or three thicknesses of armour at a time, and they never fail to hit the mark. Every daimyo (owner of a great estate) has at least twenty or thirty of such mounted archers, and even the owner of a small barren estate has two or three. Their horses are very excellent, for they are carefully selected, while as yet in pasture, and then trained after their own peculiar fashion. With five or ten such excellent mounts each, they go out hunting deer or foxes and gallop up and down mountains and forests. Trained in these wild methods, they are all splendid hors.e.m.e.n who know how to ride but never how to fall. It is the habit of the Kwanto bushi that if in the field of battle a father be killed, the son will not retreat, or if a son be slain the father will not yield, but stepping over the dead, they will fight to the death."*

*Murdoch's History of j.a.pan.

The Taira, as noted above, had by this time largely recovered from the disasters suffered in their first encounters with Yoshinaka's forces. In the western provinces of the main island, in Shikoku, and in Kyushu, scions of the clan had served as governors in former times, so that ties of close intimacy had been established with the inhabitants. Since the first flight to Kyushu in August, 1183, their generals, Shigehira, Michimori, Noritsune, and others had defeated the forces of Yoshinaka at Mizushima and those of Yukiiye at Muroyama, so that no less than fourteen provinces of the Sanyo-do and the Nankai-do owned Taira sway, and by the beginning of 1184 they had re-occupied the f.u.kuhara district, establishing themselves at a position of great natural strength called Ichi-no-tani in the province of Harima. Their lines extended several miles, over which s.p.a.ce one hundred thousand men were distributed. They lay within a semi-circle of mountains supposed to be inaccessible from the north; their camp was washed on the south by the sea where a thousand war-vessels were a.s.sembled; the east flank rested on a forest, and the west was strongly fortified.

On March 21, 1184, the Kamakura armies delivered their a.s.sault on this position; Noriyori with fifty-six thousand men against the east flank at Ikuta; Yos.h.i.tsune's lieutenants with twenty thousand men against the west at Suma. Little progress was made. Defence and attack were equally obstinate, and the advantage of position as well as of numbers was with the former. But Yos.h.i.tsune himself had foreseen this and had determined that the best, if not the only, hope of victory lay in delivering an a.s.sault by descending the northern rampart of mountains at Hiyodori Pa.s.s. Access from that side being counted impracticable, no dispositions had been made by the Taira to guard the defile. Yos.h.i.tsune selected for the venture seventy-five men, among them being Benkei, Hatakeyama Shigetada, and others of his most trusted comrades. They succeeded in riding down the steep declivity, and they rushed at the Taira position, setting fire to everything inflammable.

What ensued is soon told. Taken completely by surprise, the Taira weakened, and the Minamoto, pouring in at either flank, completed the rout which had already commenced. Munemori was among the first of the fugitives. He embarked with the Emperor Antoku and the regalia, and steered for Yashima, whither he was quickly followed by the remnants of his force. Shigehira, Kiyomori's fifth son, was taken prisoner.

Michimori, Tadanori, and Atsumori were killed. Several ill.u.s.trative incidents marked this great fight. Michimori's wife threw herself into the sea when she heard of her husband's death. Tomoakira, the seventeen-year-old son of Tomomori, deliberately sacrificed himself to save his father, and the latter, describing the incident subsequently to his brother, Munemori, said with tears: "A son died to save his father; a father fled, leaving his son to die. Were it done by another man, I should spit in his face. But I have done it myself. What will the world call me?" This same Tomomori afterwards proved himself the greatest general on the Taira side. Okabe Tadazumi, a Minamoto captain, took the head of Tadanori but could not identify it. In the lining of the helmet, however, was found a roll of poems and among them one signed "Tadanori:"

Twilight upon my path, And for mine inn to-night The shadow of a tree, And for mine host, a flower.

This little gem of thought has gleamed on Tadanori's memory through all the centuries and has brought vicarious fame even to his slayer, Tadazumi. Still more profoundly is j.a.panese sympathy moved by the episode of Taira no Atsumori and k.u.magaye Naozane. Atsumori, a stripling of fifteen, was seized by Naozane, a stalwart warrior on the Minamoto side. When Naozane tore off the boy's helmet, preparatory to beheading him, and saw a young face vividly recalling his own son who had perished early in the fight, he was moved with compa.s.sion and would fain have stayed his hand. To have done so, however, would merely have been to reserve Atsumori for a crueller death. He explained his scruples and his sorrows to the boy, who submitted to his fate with calm courage. But Naozane vowed never to wield weapon again. He sent Atsumori's head and a flute found on his person to the youth's father, Tsunemori, and he himself entered the priesthood, devoting the remaining years of his life to prayers for the soul of the ill-fated lad. Such incidents do not find a usual place in the pages of history, but they contribute to the interpretation of a nation's character.

BATTLE OF YASHIMA

The battle of Ichi-no-tani was not by any means conclusive. It drove the Taira out of Harima and the four provinces on the immediate west of the latter, but it did not disturb them in Shikoku or Kyushu, nor did it in any way cripple the great fleet which gave them a signal advantage. In these newly won provinces Yoritomo placed military governors and nominated to these posts Doi Sanehira and Kajiwara Kagetoki, heroes, respectively, of the cryptomeria forest and the hollow tree. But this contributed little to the solution of the vital problem, how to get at the Taira in Shikoku and in Kyushu. Noriyori returned to Kamakura to consult Yoritomo, but the latter and his military advisers could not plan anything except the obvious course of marching an army from Harima westward to the Strait of Shimonoseki, and thereafter collecting boats to carry it across to Kyushu. That, however, was plainly defective strategy. It left the flank of the westward-marching troops constantly exposed to attack from the coast where the Taira fleet had full command of the sea; it invited enterprises against the rear of the troops from the enemy's position at Yashima in Shikoku, and it a.s.sumed the possibility of crossing the Strait of Shimonoseki in the presence of a greatly superior naval force.

Yet no other plan of operations suggested itself to the Kamakura strategists. Yos.h.i.tsune was not consulted. He remained in Kyoto instead of repairing to Kamakura, and he thereby roused the suspicion of Yoritomo, who began to see in him a second Yoshinaka. Hence, in presenting a list of names for reward in connexion with the campaign against the "Morning Sun shogun," Yoritomo made no mention of Yos.h.i.tsune, and the brilliant soldier would have remained entirely without recognition had not the cloistered Emperor specially appointed him to the post of kebiishi. Thus, when the largely augmented Minamoto force began to move westward from Harima in October, 1184, under the command of Noriyori, no part was a.s.signed to Yos.h.i.tsune. He remained unemployed in Kyoto.

Noriyori pushed westward steadily, but not without difficulty. He halted for a time in the province of Suwo, and finally, in March, 1185, five months after moving out of Harima, he contrived to transfer the main part of his force across Shimonoseki Strait and to marshall them in Bungo in the north of Kyushu. The position then was this: first, a Taira army strongly posted at Yashima in Sanuki (Shikoku), due east of Noriyori's van in Bungo, and threatening his line of communications throughout its entire length from Harima to the Strait of Shimonoseki; secondly, another Taira army strongly posted on Hikoshima, an island west of Shimonoseki Strait, which army menaced the communications between Noriyori's van across the water in Bungo and his advanced base in Suwo, and thirdly, the command of the whole Inland Sea in the hands of the Taira.

Evidently, in such conditions, no advance into Kyushu could be made by Noriyori without inviting capital risks. The key of the situation for the Minamoto was to wrest the command of the sea from the Taira and to drive them from Shikoku preparatory to the final a.s.sault upon Kyushu. This was recognized after a time, and Kajiwara Kagetoki received orders to collect or construct a fleet with all possible expedition, which orders he applied himself to carry out at Watanabe, in Settsu, near the eastern entrance to the Inland Sea. In justice to Yoritomo's strategy it must be noted that these orders were given almost simultaneously with the departure of the Minamoto army westward from Harima, so that by the time of Noriyori's arrival in Bungo, the military governor, Kagetoki, had got together some four hundred vessels at Watanabe.

Meanwhile, Yos.h.i.tsune had been chafing in Kyoto. To a man of his temperament enforced pa.s.sivity on the eve of such epoch-making events must have been intolerable. He saw plainly that to drive the Taira from Shikoku was an essential preliminary to their ultimate defeat, and he saw, too, that for such an enterprise a larger measure of resolution and daring was needed than Kajiwara Kagetoki seemed disposed to employ. He therefore obtained from the cloistered Emperor the commission of tai-shogun (great general) and hastened to Settsu to take command. Complications ensued at once. Kagetoki objected to be relegated to a secondary place, and Go-Shirakawa was induced to recall Yos.h.i.tsune. But the latter refused to return to Kyoto, and, of course, his relations with Kagetoki were not cordial. The situation was complicated by an unpleasant incident. Kagetoki wished to equip the war-junks with sakaro. Yos.h.i.tsune asked what that meant, and being informed that sakaro signified oars at the bow of a boat for use in the event of going astern, he said that such a provision could tend only to suggest a movement fatal to success.

"Do you contemplate retiring?" he asked Kagetoki. "So far as I am concerned, I desire only to be equipped for advancing." Kagetoki indignantly replied: "A skilful general advances at the right moment and retires at the right moment. You know only the tactics of a wild boar." Yos.h.i.tsune angrily retorted, "I know not whether I am a boar or whether I am a deer, but I do know that I take pleasure in crushing a foe by attacking him." From that moment the relations between the two generals were distinctly strained, and it will presently be seen that the consequences of their estrangement became historical.

The 21st of March, 1185, was a day of tempest. Yos.h.i.tsune saw his opportunity. He proposed to run over to the opposite coast and attack Yashima under cover of the storm. Kagetoki objected that no vessel could live in such weather. Yos.h.i.tsune then called for volunteers.

About one hundred and fifty daring spirits responded. They embarked in five war-junks, some of the sailors being ordered to choose between manning the vessels or dying by the sword. Sweeping over the Harima Nada with the storm astern, Yos.h.i.tsune and his little band of heroic men landed safely on the Awa coast, and dashed at once to the a.s.sault of the Taira, who were taken wholly by surprise, never imagining that any forces could have essayed such an enterprise in such a tempest. Some fought resolutely, but ultimately all that had not perished under the swords of the Minamoto obeyed Munemori's orders to embark, and the evening of the 23rd of March saw the Taira fleet congregated in Shido Bay and crowded with fugitives. There they were attacked at dawn on the 24th by Yos.h.i.tsune, to whom there had arrived on the previous evening a re-enforcement of thirty war-junks, sent, not by Kagetoki, but by a Minamoto supporter who had been driven from the province of Iyo some time previously by the Taira.

As usual, the impetuosity of Yos.h.i.tsune's onset carried everything before it. Soon the Taira fleet was flying down the Inland Sea, and when Kajiwara Kagetoki, having at length completed his preparations, arrived off Yashima on the 25th of March with some four hundred war-vessels, he found only the ashes of the Taira palaces and palisades. Munemori, with the boy Emperor and all the survivors of the Taira, had fled by sea to join Tomomori at Hikoshima. This enterprise was even more brilliant and much more conclusive than that of Ichi-no-tani. During three consecutive days, with a mere handful of one hundred and fifty followers, Yos.h.i.tsune had engaged a powerful Taira army on sh.o.r.e, and on the fourth day he had attacked and routed them at sea, where the disparity of force must have been evident and where no advent.i.tious natural aids were available.

When every allowance is made for the incompetence of the Taira commander, Munemori, and for the crippling necessity of securing the safety of the child-sovereign, Antoku, the battle of Yashima still remains one of the most extraordinary military feats on record. Among the incidents of the battle, it is recorded that Yos.h.i.tsune himself was in imminent peril at one time, and the details ill.u.s.trate the manner of fighting in that era. He dropped his bow into the sea during the naval engagement, and when he essayed to pick it up, some Taira soldiers hooked his armour with a grapnel. Yos.h.i.tsune severed the haft of the grapnel with his sword and deliberately picked up the bow. Asked why he had imperilled his person for a mere bow, he replied, "Had it been a bow such as my uncle Tametomo bent, its falling into the enemy's possession would not matter; but a weak bow like mine would give them something to laugh at." Observing this incident, Noritsune, one of the best fighters and most skilled archers among the Taira, made Yos.h.i.tsune the target of his shafts.

But Sato Tsugin.o.bu, member of the band of trusted comrades who had accompanied the Minamoto hero from Mutsu, interposed his body and received the arrow destined for Yos.h.i.tsune. Kikuo, Noritsune's squire, leaped from his boat to decapitate the wounded Tsugin.o.bu, but was shot down by the latter's younger brother. Yos.h.i.tsune pillowed Tsugin.o.bu's head on his knees and asked the dying man whether he had any last message. The answer was: "To die for my lord is not death. I have longed for such an end ever since we took the field. My only regret is that I cannot live to see the annihilation of the Taira."

Yos.h.i.tsune, weeping, said, "To annihilate the Taira is a mere matter of days, but all time would not suffice to repay your devotion."

BATTLE OF DAN-NO-URA

The fight at Yashima was followed by a month's interval of comparatively minor operations, undertaken for the purpose of bringing Shikoku completely under Minamoto sway. During that time the two clans prepared for final action. The Taira would have withdrawn altogether into Kyushu, but such a course must have been preceded by the dislodging of Noriyori, with his army of thirty thousand men, from Bungo province, which they had occupied since the beginning of March. It is true that Noriyori himself was unable to make any further incursion into Kyushu so long as his maritime communications with his advanced base in Suwo remained at the mercy of the Taira fleet. But it is equally true that the Taira generals dared not enter Kyushu so long as a strong Minamoto force was planted on the left flank of their route.

Thus, a peculiar situation existed at the beginning of April, 1185.

Of the two provinces at the extreme south of the main island, one, the eastern (Suwo), was in Minamoto occupation; the other, the western (Nagato), was mainly held by the Taira; and of the three provinces forming the northern littoral of Kyushu, two, the western (Chikuzen and Buzen), were in Taira hands, and the third, the eastern (Bungo), was the camp of Noriyori with his thirty thousand men.

Finally, the Strait of Shimonoseki between Chikuzen and Buzen was in Taira possession. Evidently the aim of the Taira must be to eliminate Noriyori from the battle now pending, and to that end they selected for arena Dan-no-ura, that is to say, the littoral of Nagato province immediately east of the Shimonoseki Strait.

We have seen that ever since the Ichi-no-tani fight, the Minamoto generals, especially Kajiwara Kagetoki, had been actively engaged in building, or otherwise acquiring, war-junks. By April, 1185, they had brought together a squadron of seven to eight hundred; whereas, in the sequel of Yashima and minor engagements, the Taira fleet had been reduced to some five hundred. The war-junk of those days was not a complicated machine. Propelled by oars, it had no fighting capacities of its own, its main purpose being to carry its occupants within bow-range or sword-reach of their adversaries. Naval tactics consisted solely in getting the wind-gage for archery purposes.

By the 22nd of April, 1185, the whole of the Minamoto fleet had a.s.sembled at Oshima, an island lying off the southeast of Suwo, the Taira vessels, with the exception of the Hikoshima contingent, being anch.o.r.ed at Dan-no-ura. On that day, a strong squadron, sent out by Yos.h.i.tsune for reconnoitring purposes, marshalled itself at a distance of about two miles from the Taira array, and this fact having been signalled to the Taira general, Tomomori, at Hikoshima, he at once pa.s.sed the strait and joined forces with the main fleet at Dan-no-ura. Yos.h.i.tsune's design had been to deliver a general attack immediately after the despatch of the reconnoitring squadron, but this was prevented by a deluge of blinding rain which lasted until the night of the 24th.

Thus, it was not until the 25th that the battle took place. It commenced with an inconclusive archery duel at long range, whereafter the two fleets closed up and a desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Neither side could claim any decisive advantage until Taguchi Shigeyoshi deserted from the Taira and pa.s.sed over with all his ships to the Minamoto. This Taguchi had been originally an influential magnate of Iyo in Shikoku, whence he had accompanied the Taira retreat to Nagato, leaving his son with three thousand men to defend the family manors in Iyo. The son was so generously treated by the Minamoto that he threw in his lot with them and sent letters urging his father to adopt the same cause. Taguchi not only followed his son's advice but also chose the moment most disastrous for the Taira.

His defection was followed quickly by the complete rout of the Heike.

A resolute attempt was made to defend the ship containing the young Emperor, his mother, his grandmother, and several other Taira ladies; but the vessel finally pa.s.sed into Minamoto possession. Not before she had been the scene of a terrible tragedy, however. Kiyomori's widow, the Ni-i-no-ama, grandmother of Antoku, took the six-year old child in her arms and jumped into the sea, followed by Antoku's mother, the Empress Dowager (Kenrei-mon-in), carrying the regalia, and by other court ladies. The Empress Dowager was rescued, as were also the sacred mirror and the gem, but the sword was irrevocably lost.

The Taira leader, Munemori, and his son, Kiyomune, were taken prisoner, but Tomomori, Noritsune, and seven other Taira generals were drowned. Noritsune distinguished himself conspicuously. He singled out Yos.h.i.tsune for the object of his attack, but being unable to reach him, he seized two Minamoto bushi and sprang into the sea with them. Tomomori, Munemori's brother, who had proved himself a most able general, leaped overboard carrying an anchor. Yos.h.i.tsune spoke in strongly laudatory terms of Noritsune and ascribed to him much of the power hitherto wielded by the Taira. Munemori and his son were executed finally at Omi. Shigehira, in response to a pet.i.tion from the Nara priests whose fanes he had destroyed by Kiyomori's orders, was handed over to the monks and put to death by them at Narasaka. But Kiyomori's brother, who had interceded for the life of Yoritomo after the Heiji emeule, was pardoned, his rank and property being restored to him; and Taira no Munekiyo, who also had acted an important part in saving Yoritomo at that time, was invited to visit Kamakura where he would have been received with honour; but he declined the invitation, declaring that a change of allegiance at such a moment would be unworthy of a bushi.

It may here be noted that, although several of the Taira leaders who took the field against the Minamoto were killed in the campaign or executed or exiled after it, the punitory measures adopted by Yoritomo were not by any means wholesale. To be a Taira did not necessarily involve Kamakura's enmity. On the contrary, not only was clemency extended to several prominent members of Kiyomori's kith and kin, but also many local magnates of Taira origin whose estates lay in the Kwanto were from first to last staunch supporters and friends of the Minamoto. After Dan-no-ura, the Heike's sun permanently ceased to dominate the political firmament, but not a few Heike stars rose subsequently from time to time above the horizon.