On Kiso Yoshinaka

1. The Taira Government

The sound of the bells of the Gion Monastery echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sal flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure for long; they are like a dream on a spring night.

Even the glory of the Taira clan, whose splendor had made the springtime of more than sixty provinces swell against the vermilion gates of Rokuhara under the world-shaking favorite, the Lay Monk Chancellor, could not step outside the bounds of mortal fate. Their estates covered half the realm, and more than sixty of their sons and younger kinsmen rose to the court; this was the unprecedented success of the Taira, the success that led Taira no Dainagon Tokitada to boast that anyone who did not belong to the Taira was not truly a human being at all. And yet the Taira themselves, by that very success, took upon themselves the destiny of ruin.

Peace throughout the realm cannot coexist with a system organized for military readiness. Productive development cannot exist side by side with an age of war. Now the Taira's success had brought about a peace throughout the land that could no longer coexist with the institutions by which they had armed themselves. Peace brought progress in material civilization, and progress in material civilization brought the pleasures of wealth. Nor did it bring only the pleasures of wealth: it brought a thirst for wealth. Nor only a thirst for wealth: it brought, in truth, the worship of wealth. How could a society organized around the sturdy sons of the Ise Taira, men who laughed and stood between life and death in rough cloaks with long swords at their sides, avoid sinking once it had come to this? The Taira had driven out the long-sleeved Fujiwara courtiers and filled the corridors of government with their own clan only because they had once been strong. Only because they had once been rough. Only because they had once been able to chew roots and endure hardship. More precisely, only because they had preserved the old martial spirit of eastern and western frontier peoples. They did not know that wealth was something to be revered; they did not understand that rank and title were objects of worship. They knew only that once their horses' heads had been turned toward the enemy, they must not retreat even in death. Yet when the Taira of old suddenly leaped upward and wore the seals and cords of the Grand Minister of State, they saw in the society around them the power of gold, the power of purple rank-cords, the power of the royal scepter. They saw noble youths playing music, princely descendants amusing themselves with poetry, moon-bright courtiers trailing long sashes, cloudlike nobles crowned with great headgear. In short, they encountered for the first time the pleasures of wealth. The pleasures of wealth became a craving for wealth, and that craving swiftly became the worship of wealth.

For the sons of the Ise Taira, who had once counted pirates and waves as their enemies, who could help but grow intoxicated when matters reached this point? Indeed, they were drunk as if sodden with mud. Just as the warriors of the Northern Wei, after conquering the Chinese of the south, cast away the hearts of northern barbarians and grew drunk on the gentle spring light of the Central Plain, so too did the Taira sink into the pleasures of wealth. Thus they put on long sashes, set great caps upon their heads, played music, toyed with poetry, and while acting out the ridiculous spectacle of monkeys dressed in court caps, they themselves sang proudly of the springtime of the world.

Even a wild boar, once fed in a sty, turns into a foolish pig. The bearded warriors who in years past had laid their halberds across the field and broken the white-bannered armies of the Minamoto at the capital became, in a single morning, pretty-faced men with blackened teeth, mere dolls of the third month, aping the appearance of women.

In a word, they cast away the substance of being warriors and clung to the empty name of warriors. They abandoned the training of warriors and preserved only the appearance of warriors. The Taira's success brought peace to the realm, and that peace brought the Taira's destruction.

While they thus gave themselves over to the indolent sleep of a long night, the temper of the times moved steadily, like a black current, toward a revolutionary moment. Indeed, the spiritual revolution had already been accomplished in silence.

The Taira's good fortune was the Fujiwara's decline. The old splendor of the Fujiwara house, which had once enabled the regent of Hosshoji to declare, "This world, indeed, is my world," had long since passed away, and now many high nobles, with the rise of the Taira, could not help but feel that they themselves were gradually approaching the tragic fate of an evening sun in the western sky. Was it not the case that the Taira, whom they had once treated as barbarians, now meant to treat them like puppets in the palm of the hand? Was it not the case that the Taira, whom they had once despised as inferiors, now meant to make them content with their cold scraps and leftovers? And was it not the case that Takahira, that plain-clothed man once mocked by the town boys of the capital, now meant to force them to creep on their knees at his feet? In short, they could not help but feel that the whole relation between themselves and the Taira had been overturned from its foundations. Those court nobles, who had clung blindly to precedent and ceremonial and slumbered at ease in a peach-blossom paradise, could not possibly avoid deep resentment when such a violent blow had been struck at the very life of their politics. Yes, in their hearts they came at last to cherish an irrepressible hatred toward the Taira, and indeed toward the Lay Monk Chancellor himself. They did not know Kiyomori as a great statesman with a gift for ordering the realm. They saw only the Lay Monk Chancellor as the reckless and headstrong child of pride who would later make the wandering lute priests of the Kamakura age exclaim in amazement that his words and mind surpassed all telling. They saw him as the central figure of a Taira clan that trampled over the houses of regents and ministers and placed all its members in ranks of blue and purple. They saw him as a bolder Caesar, violent and lawless, so intent on advancing his own house that he stripped them of their estates without the slightest hesitation. How could they possibly endure such a man?

That they should burn with resentment against the Taira, and let a dangerous spirit of resistance fill the court like mist, a spirit that would cut the Taira government to pieces, was only natural. Thus the hot blood of revolution boiled up, surging through the veins of many a long-sleeved Cassius. Was this not the point at which the Taira, having passed the watershed of fate, began step by step to descend toward ruin?

And yet the Taira did not merely invite the hostility of the court nobles. Ever since the scholarly statesman Shinzei Nyudo, who resembled Wang Anshi, had schemed again and again behind the curtain as a black-robed chancellor hidden beneath the dragon robes, the close attendants of the retired emperor, men who were proud to have risen from humble beginnings to courtly glory, had also become terrible enemies of the Taira. True, they were no more than the so-called low-ranking attendants of the Hokumen, yet they lived always near the imperial countenance, bathed in the light of sovereign favor, and once chosen might rise from the lower Hokumen to the upper Hokumen, from the upper Hokumen to the court itself, and at last come personally to influence the great powers of state. It was only natural that such a position among the Hokumen should gather bold and ambitious men of talent. And it was hardly surprising that among those Liangshan Marsh heroes, those ten wise stars and hundred thunderbolts, many hated the Taira's arrogance, raged against the Lay Monk Chancellor's tyranny, and with spit on their palms sought in a single stroke to bring down the red-bannered thieves. Near at hand they had seen, in the Heiji Disturbance, that even the crafty Minamoto no Yoshitomo could not avoid the shame of defeat before them. If even the head of the Minamoto house, inheritor of seven generations of military skill, had fared thus, then the killing of some young Taira courtier seemed to them a thing right before their eyes. In nominal power they were not inferior to the Taira, who were connected to the throne by marriage; in actual power they were not greatly behind the Taira, whose estates stretched across more than thirty provinces. With such confidence, how could they fail, at least in some lucky chance, to lay a hand on the sword and try to send the winds and clouds of revolution flying? Think only of the spirit of that age when the monk Saiko, hearing rumors of a campaign against the Taira, glared and cried indignantly, "Heaven has no mouth; it makes men speak for it." Insolent and overbearing, he scarcely saw the Taira before his eyes at all. Was he not the man who most nakedly exposed the feelings of the retired emperor's close attendants? And the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, whom they served so closely, was precisely the kind of sovereign whom Shinzei described as one who did not even perceive traitors at his side, and who, even when told of them, paid no heed whatever. He was rich in daring spirit and at the same time exceedingly fond of intrigue. It is no wonder, then, that under such a retired emperor, in the company of such attendants, the swelling anti-Taira atmosphere at last gave birth to terrible conspiracies. At this time the patient, rash, envious plotter, the New Dainagon Fujiwara no Narichika, took advantage of the disorder at Mount Hiei in the first year of Jisho and, borrowing the name of an order from the Retired Emperor, attempted with the emperor's favorites to destroy the Taira rebels. This must be counted a glimpse into the state of affairs. That Komatsu the Inner Minister admonished the Lay Monk Chancellor by saying, "Our house already possesses wealth and office in abundance. A tree that bears fruit twice wounds its roots. I can only feel unease," was entirely proper. For if only opportunity should present itself, would those who meant to draw the bow against the Taira government stop with the retired emperor's attendants alone? A single falling leaf tells the coming of autumn. Eighteen years had passed since the Heiji Disturbance, and in this conspiracy the Taira encountered for the first time men who would question the very right of their existence. Was this not a sign that the revolution of Juei and Genryaku was beginning to show its first faint light?

Thus the Taira government, like a floating island, had begun to shake from its very foundations. Yet we must not forget that there remained another power, still more formidable, which had never once altered its defiant attitude toward the Taira.

What was this still more formidable power? The warrior-monks of Nanto and Hiei.

Do not laugh carelessly just because they were monks. Many splendid men, too free and too hard to fit their age, men of extraordinary gifts, could not bear to wither uselessly under a mere three feet of mugwort. In the end they threw themselves into the black-robed armies of Nanto and Hiei, seeking there at least some outlet for their pent-up rage. How could one fail to pity their feelings? Let us once more look closely at the social conditions that gave birth to these discontented men.

In an age of peace, the only healthy method is to allow free competition to all. But once hegemony had left the Fujiwara house, the unprecedented success of the Taira not only made dozens of Taira youths sink into the pleasures of wealth, it also led them to inherit the evils of hereditary privilege produced by six hundred years of Fujiwara peace. Thus, in the very age of peace that most required the stirring of new activity and stimulus, the Taira government came to stand at the opposite pole from free competition, with which it could not fully coexist. In this way the soundest part of society gradually gathered outside the Taira government; men of intelligence, courage, eloquence, and ability had already become its enemies; and within the Taira government itself arose the absurdity that rank and title were coming to stand in inverse proportion to actual capacity. In such an age, a man of great talent and remarkable gifts might perhaps meet a wise ruler who knew his worth; or perhaps he might receive the appreciation of a worthy minister. But if he did not, then with the speed of a thousand-mile horse he must weep over his own frustrations, lament his own ill fortune, twist helplessly within the dead laws and dead forms of the age, and rot to death at an empty manger. A giant fish does not swim in a narrow stream. Men bearing the high ambition that "a man's aspiration is glory won through achievement" cannot endure having the free space of their lives bound under meaningless rules and measures.

And so it was hardly strange that some of them, scorning the pose of being the only sober man among the drunk, became drunken madmen in pretense; that some of them, chanting sad songs over fallen grain, became poet-monks lost in wind and moon; or that others, carrying in their breasts a full measure of heroic ambition and bitter grievance, departed and threw themselves among the shaven-headed rebels of Nanto and Hiei. Among those ranks of warrior-monks there were also many street ruffians, many cunning brigands of the mountains, and many fierce pirates of the Japanese coast, men who would later make Ming poets sing of wild swords flashing sideways, arrows loosed in chaos, and grass by the city walls soaked in human blood. These bold and crafty fellows, under the name of the so-called hall-monks, strode about the land in broad daylight with swords laid crosswise, and their power was something to be feared indeed. Imagine thousands of mountain monks escorting the sacred palanquin of Hiyoshi Gongen, beating great temple drums, blowing giant conches, tossing great temple banners, and advancing noisily upon the imperial palace; time and again the hearts and livers of the grand ministers trembled with cold at the sight. Violent and lawless, they had almost no regard for royal law. Before their outrages, even the wise Emperor Shirakawa could only lament that in all the realm there were but three things that did not bend to his will: the mountain monks, the dice at backgammon, and the waters of the Kamo River.

Yet what made them truly terrible did not end there. Beyond military force they possessed an even more fervent faith, hot as fire. They knew no kings and nobles above them, feared no provincial governors beside them; they understood only the Buddha's grace, like a rain of mercy. Yes, they were still braver Saracen warriors. Whoever opposed the Buddhist Law, whether he were regent, warrior lord, or even the exalted ruler of ten thousand chariots, was nothing but their mortal enemy. Once a man became their mortal enemy, they would never hesitate, whenever the time came, to drive ten thousand sharpened swords against him. Look only at how Saijo-bo Shinkyu reviled the Lay Monk Chancellor Jokae, saying, "That Grand Minister Monk is the dregs of the Taira, the dust and refuse of the warrior houses," without the least fear. In his eyes, even the Lay Monk Chancellor who held the fate of the whole realm in his grasp was no more than a stubborn old ox. And remember too that ever since Taira no Tadamori had drawn his bow in the shrine precincts of Gion, they had cherished an irreconcilable hatred toward the Taira, a hatred on which the Taira's constant use of high-handed methods had poured ten thousand measures of oil. Men who did not care whether they struck thunder from a clear sky or raised waves from a level plain, who possessed dangerous grievances and fearful military strength, and who burned with religious heat enough to blister the hand that touched them, were certain, at the first stir of disorder in the realm, to rise like a violent wind against the Taira. No wise man needed to be told this.

Thus the resentment of the high nobles and the conspiracies of the retired emperor's attendants joined with the blazing discontent of the warrior-monks, whose fierce unrest had driven the broad-minded and ambitious Lay Monk Chancellor at last to the desperate measure of moving the capital to Fukuhara, thereby only barely escaping them. And the Taira had not merely invited these rebellions. Now the success of the Lay Monk Chancellor's policy swelled into his boundless pride; his boundless pride became his unprecedented splendor; and his unprecedented splendor became that rebellious madness which made people of the time exclaim that he had power enough to call back even the setting sun. The realm could not help but feel no small amount of resentment and anxiety toward the Taira. His unrestricted pleasures among flowers and willows; his attack on the carriage of Regent Motofusa over a private grudge involving a mere boy; his sending out three hundred red-trousered children to hunt down rumors in the streets and alleys: it is no wonder that through such things the Taira lost the sympathy of the realm. Thus the Taira government tilted more and more, like the Tower of Pisa.

And yet the Taira did not immediately collapse, largely because of the political skill of Komatsu the Inner Minister. I would not call him a great statesman. Even so, while supporting in the summer heat his fearsome father Kiyomori, he adopted in winter a policy men could draw near to. However much he may have fallen short of the Lay Monk Chancellor in sharp intuitive vision, however far he may have trailed Shinzei Nyudo in an orderly and systematic mind, however much he may have deserved criticism for seeking obscurely the comfort of his own person and doing too little for public justice, however much he may have seemed the kind of man whose intelligence exceeded his will, whose will exceeded his execution, leaving one with the frustration of scratching an itch through a boot, still one cannot deny that he at least possessed the qualifications of a minister. By his own person he softened the clash between the jealousy-filled atmosphere of the capital and the blazing fury of the Lay Monk Chancellor, while striving also to strengthen the political life of his house, dealing above with court and cloister, below with ambitious nobles, and trying through diligence to bring about harmony and unity. For this reason he argued that great officers of state must not be left to the punishment of a private household, and so he commuted the death sentence of the plotter Narichika. For this reason he proclaimed the great principle binding ruler and subject, and warned against the violent act of confining the retired emperor. So long as he lived, the realm did not turn away from the Taira. Even the Lay Monk Chancellor, though at times he dared acts of violence and injustice, could still lead his clan and bear the expectations of the world. Had Komatsu not died, who can say whether the Taira's fall in the western sea might not have been delayed for several years more? But alas, on the third day of the eighth month of Jisho 3, he suddenly passed away and became a man of the White Jade Tower. Once he died, the Lay Monk Chancellor was like a tiger set loose. In proportion as his lawlessness increased day by day, the realm turned ever more sharply against the Taira; one wave moved first, ten thousand followed, and at last they sank into a crisis beyond rescue. Moreover the capital suffered fire, wind, earthquake, and plague in rapid succession. The common people found no peace at home. A great drought parched the land, and beyond the near fields there stretched only bare red earth, while the green shoots were about to perish. "Among the Taira, Lord Komatsu alone had a strong heart and superior strategy, and now even he has vanished. What is there left to fear? If you would rise once and wave the standard, the realm would bend like grass before the wind." It was at this very time that the fierce monk Mongaku danced for joy and persuaded the exile on Hiruga Island. The life of the Taira government had already come right up to the edge of the eyebrow. The crisis hung by a single hair.

While the great drift of the realm was thus moving toward revolution, what condition were the Minamoto of the provinces in? Let me speak of that.

The Minamoto, who had once contended with the Taira for mastery across the Tosan, Tokai, and Hokuriku circuits, lacked the luck of the hour and since the Heiji Disturbance had lain hidden in the eastern wilds, bearing the stigma of traitors in vain. Yet how could the spirit of Hachimanta Yoshiie, who had once ridden onto the vast northern plain, looked up at the wild geese, driven his horse long across the wastes, and annihilated the rebels, have wholly disappeared? Once the torrent of revolution began to move, who, before all others, would wish to send triple-barbed arrows flying at the Taira government if not the Minamoto? Was this not precisely what the Taira government itself had always feared?

Yes, the Minamoto were truly worthy rivals of the Taira. They were the strongest of all the Taira's enemies. Ever since Yoriyoshi and Yoshiie had pacified the disturbances of the Earlier Nine Years and the Later Three Years, the East had become their half-independent political world, and the title of leaders of the warrior houses had become their hereditary distinction. And because the Taira knew that their own base of power lay in the western provinces, they did not dare extend their favorite policy of destruction into the East. This was probably their wisest and most timely policy. The vast mountains and rivers of the East, rich in brave men and fierce horses, still remained in the hands of the Minamoto. In short, the Minamoto before Hogen and Heiji and the Minamoto after Hogen and Heiji differed hardly at all in the power they possessed in the East.

Even so, their strength was not yet enough to shake the center of the realm. In the mountains and plains of the dozen and more provinces east of Suruga there were many powerful families: the two heroes of Oyama and Ashikaga, called the twin tigers of Yashu; the Jo clan of Echigo, honored as the Lords of Shirakawa; the Kai Genji, renowned for fierce daring and predatory strength; the Chiba, coiled like dragons in Shimosa; and many others besides. Yet among them there were only two powers that could claim hegemony under heaven: the lord of Kazusa, the king of the eastern provinces, who gathered the warriors of Shuto, Shusei, Inan, Ihoku, Chonan, and Chohoku and lorded it over the Eight Provinces; and Fujiwara no Hidehira, the blue dragon of the far north, master of one hundred and seventy thousand horsemen, whose great name swept the seas of the realm. But even the power of these twin giants could not, without fear for what lay behind them, raise the western campaign banner. Why? Because they were still each only a local force, and because they checked one another. They were, so to speak, a supersaturated solution. Once shaken, the liquid would instantly precipitate into solid. Once the revolutionary mood began to stir, they would never hesitate to lay hand to sword and rise. Were they not indeed to be feared? And yet until now they had maintained a comparatively obedient attitude toward the Taira. Do not therefore dismiss them as men who stole a coward's life between dogs and rats. They were mild toward the Taira only because the Taira had been mild toward them. As I have already said, the Taira's base was in the western provinces. If the Taira wished to wear the seal of office and rule the realm, the management of the West was among their most important means. That is why the Lay Monk Chancellor, with his keen eye, understood the urgent necessity of securing command of the Inland Sea and concentrating the forces of Shikoku and Kyushu at Fukuhara. Was it not for this very reason that the twenty-one southwestern provinces were entrusted to Taira governors? Since the Taira devoted themselves to the management of the West, it is not surprising that they sought merely to preserve the status quo in the East. And the warriors of the East, who loved freedom, rejoiced in this generous policy. If not rejoiced, they were pleased by it. If not pleased, they accepted it. In truth they lived at ease under this favorable treatment for twenty years.

But now the Taira were completely drunk on their own success. And the drunken behavior of the Taira, just as it made them the object of hatred throughout the realm, also filled the warriors of the East with no small amount of displeasure. When the young Taira men who had once ridden beside them, silver helmets and scarlet armor defending the royal city, now boasted of the glory of their house and treated them with the contempt of fools, how could their hearts remain calm? In plain words, they felt that the noble meaning of their warrior lineage was gradually being stripped away. Alas, these were men who had cried out, "For one who bears the bow and arrow, even a name is precious." How could they possibly endure such scorn? Moreover many powerful families who had gone back and forth to the capital for guard duty carried deep within their breasts the dangerous anti-Taira atmosphere that overflowed there. And when the Taira dared the violent act of confining the retired emperor, the dissatisfaction that had long been pent up in them suddenly turned into boiling anger.

Moreover, the gathering storm over the realm grew sharper by the day, and the revolutionary mood was on the verge of welling up like a dark undercurrent. At this, their ambition gradually began to stir. In any circumstance, ambition drives a man to attempt deeds beyond his actual strength and will not rest until it has done so. Ambition is what would make a man clasp Mount Tai beneath his arm and cross the Northern Sea. Ambition is what would make the bird Jingwei try to fill the vast ocean. It was only natural that these gifted men of heaven, endowed with intelligence, courage, eloquence, and force, seeing the tide of events about to change, should feel an irrepressible ambition rising within them. Once they had embraced ambition, their greatest source of energy, it was only to be expected that the day was near when they would break new ground and bring forth the bright light of revolution.

And it was not ambition alone. The tyranny and lawlessness of the Taira also made them recall the flourishing age of the Minamoto, an age almost forgotten after the long passage of two full cycles of years. They remembered their proud era, when their banners and standards numbered in the hundreds of thousands and they strode boldly across the land in triumph.

Then, looking around and seeing the Taira rampant while the Minamoto lay uselessly hidden beneath weeds and brush, tears of nostalgia fell drop by drop and spurred on their heroic spirit. In this way they felt that the Dragon Gate of their ascent had now opened before their very eyes. They knew that the time had come to brandish the green-sheened family spear, eight shaku long, handed down in their houses. Was not the fact that in the fourth year of Jisho Nagata Nyudo, in alarm, sent a letter in haste to Taira no Tadakiyo warning that some great event was about to break out in the eastern provinces itself proof that the dawn of revolution had already reddened the eastern sky? Now the burning indignation of the eastern warriors, the swelling ambition filling their breasts, and the tears of remembrance that could inflame both reactionary and revolutionary thought, all joined naturally into one. If a single man was thus moved, then one man would rise and act. If the whole realm was thus moved, then the whole realm would rise and act. As the mood of upheaval gradually shook the country, the soundest elements of society, the many dozens of court nobles troublesome to the Taira government, the many hundreds of retired sovereign’s attendants, the many thousands of warrior-monks, and indeed the many tens of thousands of eastern warriors, had already ceased, in their own eyes, to recognize the very existence of the Taira regime. In their minds, the Lay Monk Chancellor was no more than a skeleton. The painted brows and blackened teeth of the Taira gate were nothing but clay cocks and straw dogs. The blue tiles and vermilion eaves of Nishihachijo were likewise no more than hills, ponds, and marshes. In short, society’s instinctive intuition had already accepted the destruction of the Taira government. Put differently, the spiritual revolution had already been accomplished in silence and darkness. A lamp, once it has no oil, goes out at once; a fish, once it has no water, dies at once. Was it not only natural that the Taira government, having lost the hearts of the people, should draw day by day nearer to its tragic fall? Yes: Xuande sighing before the mulberry trees, Kongming silently measuring the blue mountains, Sun Jian crying out as he clasped the imperial seal, Mengde gazing at the dark sky with a bitter smile, Yide pressing on his spear and leaping with excitement, their age was gradually arriving. To put it another way, the state of society at that time was like an old tree eaten through by decay. Its collapse was only a matter of counting the days. The moment for turmoil throughout the land was already ripe.

"A chestnut burr, hard to touch from the outside, is broken open from within." And yet the Taira, in their arrogance, punished and deposed forty-three high court nobles, confined the Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa in the palace at Toba, and pressured the retired emperor into enthroning his own three-year-old grandson. This violence only hastened the day of their destruction. Then the ten Marats and hundred Robespierres, who had danced for joy at Komatsu, the Inner Minister’s, death as though their work were now accomplished, saw that the span of the Taira government’s life had already shrunk to the space before their eyes. Stroking their swords and spitting into their hands, they rose in revolt.

For the realm was not the realm of the Taira. The realm was the realm itself. How much longer were the dogs and sheep of the Taira gate to go on in their reckless violence?

Ah, who would light the heavenly fire upon the sacred altar of revolution and break the darkness of the long night? Who would blow the trumpet of revolution and shatter the easy sleep of that black, dreamlike land? And indeed, the old tree fell. Do you not see the white banners fluttering over Byodo-in?

Yes, the storm-clouds of revolution were first set loose by the careful, incorruptible, and fierce old general, Minamoto no Yorimasa, Third Rank.

He was a great-grandson of Minamoto no Yorimitsu, Governor of Settsu, and belonged to the main line of the Minamoto house. Yet after the Heiji Disturbance, because he had often supported the Taira, because his relations with them were exceptionally smooth, and because the Taira treated him with comparative favor, he obtained the high rank of Third Rank, a dignity no other warrior minister had attained in those days apart from the Taira themselves. Had he truly loved peace, he might perhaps have shared the Taira’s splendor and sunk into the warm dream of an age of tranquil prosperity. But an old thoroughbred may lie in the stable while still longing to run a thousand miles. He possessed too wild and unbroken a spirit to join the whole world in singing over the leftovers of peace. He was like a wild goose that had strayed from the flock, yet still cherished the bold ambition of beating both wings against the blue heavens once the wind of ten thousand miles should rise. While the pampered sons of the Taira house were drunk on the pleasures of wealth, proudly displaying their perfumed carriages and parrot cups and vaunting the one-day splendor of fragrant blossoms, Yorimasa had already turned his piercing gaze to the great drift of events. He had already heard the sound of the dawn bell that would shatter the Taira’s slumber. He thought: "The Taira’s glory has overflowed its proper bounds; their evil has piled up for many years; their fate has reached its end." He thought: "Above, this accords with Heaven’s will; below, it has the advantage of the land. Let us raise a righteous army, destroy the rebel minister, and bring comfort to the sacred heart of the Cloistered Emperor." He thought: "If we gather the descendants of the Sixth Prince and the household men and retainers of the Minamoto, what in all the land is there to fear?" The bamboo in his breast was already fixed into shape. So he sought a noble house beneath whose sleeves he might hide while proclaiming righteousness to the realm. The man he chose to set up was in fact Prince Mochihito, the second son of Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa, a prince of exceptional wisdom who had not yet even been formally declared a prince. Look: does not Yorimasa’s sharp eye prove itself unerring here as well? He had seen, in the recent Heiji Disturbance, how the allegiance of sovereign and retired sovereign could determine the fortunes of the Minamoto and Taira alike. He understood that to issue commands to the realm in the name of the imperial house was the very thing that would make the realm unable to refuse.

And in a time when both imperial edicts and cloistered decrees lay in the Taira’s hands, when the clouds hung thick above the Ninefold Palace and one could not even look up to sun and moon, he saw that the only thing capable of inspiring a grand revolutionary design was a command from the imperial prince alone. Yes, only a princely order from the Bamboo Garden, one enjoying the deepest sympathy of the realm. That was precisely why he supported Prince Mochihito. Thus his conspiracy came, step by step, ever nearer to action. And in the fifth month of the fourth year of Jisho, the banner of revolution was at last raised by the white-haired old man and the long-sleeved prince. How could all under heaven fail to feel as though the clouds had broken and blue sky appeared?

Yet when he tried and failed to raise the standard in Nanto, the Taira army blocked him at Uji Bridge, and a great battle was fought across the Uji River. Sword and blade clashed all day. The Taira forces at last thrust their whips into the Uji and cut through the current as they pressed toward the Minamoto. Then the banners of the revolutionary army fell into confusion, and the number of Minamoto slain could not be counted. Even the Watanabe band, famed throughout the land for fierce valor, broke ranks and fell, and red banners encircled Byodo-in like a ring of bamboo. Bows were already broken, arrows already spent, and Minamoto no Yorimasa, whose heroic spirit had overshadowed an age, at last perished by his own hand together with his family. Prince Takakura no Miya, too, trying to flee to Nanto, was struck on the road by a stray arrow and died. Thus the vanguard of the revolutionary army suffered the shame of destruction in vain.

Be that as it may, this was a temporary defeat and an eternal victory. The revolution of Juei and Genryaku had its fuse lit by him. Like the wild cock that announces dawn before dawn has come, like the mournful cicada that announces autumn before autumn has arrived, he announced the revolution before the revolution itself. No, before the revolution he stirred the very storm-clouds of revolution. He was not Luther, but he was Jan Hus. He was not Xiang Yu, but he was Chen Sheng and Wu Guang. The seed he sowed was small, yet the giant tree that would tower to the sky grew from it. By sacrificing himself, he roused the Minamoto throughout the land. By becoming a living example, he made them rise up. Yes, he taught the sons and younger men of his house to do as he had done, and then he himself did it. At such a time even a coward would have stood up. How much more so the countless Minamoto of the land, who shared the same clan god and the same legends. How could they have remained idle?

"If only I could show those who wait only for flowers the spring of mountain villages, in the grass sprouting through the snow." The green of tender shoots pushing up between the last patches of snow had already announced the coming of spring. Kashiwagi Yoshikane rose in Omi; Bettou Tanzo rose in Kii; Minamoto no Hyoe no Suke rose in Izu; Kiso no Kanja rose in Shinano. Now the time had gradually come when the Taira’s ten-year dream of glory must awaken.

2. The Revolutionary Army

The revolutionary army, stung into action by Yorimasa and given formal grounds for rising by Prince Mochihito’s command, came pressing toward the Taira government moment by moment, just as a hundred rivers run toward the place where the sun rises. This alarming turn of events finally drove the Taira government to move the capital to Fukuhara. Allow me to speak of the transfer to Fukuhara, for in this single act the Lay Monk Chancellor displayed both his greatest strengths and his greatest weaknesses as a statesman.

He possessed the intuitive, piercing eye that can see the spring of the world in the opening of a single flower. And indeed, his strength as a statesman lay almost wholly in this clarity of vision for the broad sweep of things. We cannot help seeing the breadth of his outlook in his making the western sea the base of his political power, in placing his followers as stewards throughout the provinces, in encouraging overseas trade, in opening the channel at Ondo, and in building the harbor at Kyogashima. Even one who admires Minamoto no Yoritomo’s great insight must admit that, as founder of warrior rule, Yoritomo did no more than follow in his tracks. Of course, in many respects Yoritomo later surpassed him by far. But look: he paid attention to naval control of the Inland Sea and understood that it was wise to make Fukuhara, its strategic throat, the center of political power. He recognized the terrifying strength of Nanto and the northern mountain monasteries, and knew that if they should ever answer one another’s call and rise together, Kyoto would inevitably fall under siege. When the revolt of Yorimasa made him realize that the anti-Taira tide was irresistible once it had begun to surge, this plan in his breast led him at once to the bold decision to move the capital to Fukuhara. That only a few days after the battle at Uji Bridge, on the third day of the sixth month of Jisho 4, he dared such a step, does this not show how brilliant, how swift, and how expansive his eye truly was? Thus the transfer to Fukuhara was carried out according to his radical political vision. Yet in carrying out this great design he was too abrupt and too forceful. In short, the move to Fukuhara was made possible by his strengths and undone by his weaknesses.

He was Wang Anshi, only less learned and more unrestrained. He was always rushing from one extreme to another. He settled a plan today and believed he would see its effects tomorrow. More precisely, he did not understand that between theory and reality there lies much friction to be weighed, calculated, and adjusted for. And in pursuing what he believed, he had the stubbornness to drive straight ahead in a single line. In his eyes there were no difficulties of circumstance, no questions of feasibility, no weight to public opinion; there existed only the objective that had to be pursued and the one direct road by which it must be pursued. Wang Anshi said, "A man serving as minister and subject must not expect to avoid the resentment of the four seas and nine provinces." If made to answer, he would surely have said, "A man seeking the glory of his house cannot expect to avoid the resentment of the realm." Yet what he reaped was no more than half of what he had sown. In carrying out his aim he was too careless in choosing means. He valued public opinion too little. He was far too blunt and direct. He tried to lash a weary horse and force it across a hundred-foot cliff, believing it could be done. But was this not bound instead to kill the weary horse?

When he dared his grand exploit of transferring the capital, he did not look back over the four hundred years of history since Emperor Kanmu. He did not listen to the lament that sang, "Will Otagi village too be left desolate?" So utterly indifferent to the opinion of his age, he still wished to carry through the broad outlines of the move. How could such a thing possibly succeed? And indeed, young and old alike in the new capital cried out with one voice to return to the old one. At this point even his immovable self-confidence could not help but waver somewhat. For the first time he saw that to build a new Fukuhara on the scale of the old capital would require enormous wealth. And he saw that if he wished to obtain that wealth, he would incur grievances even greater than those already provoked by the transfer itself. Worse still, when he turned his eyes eastward, the cunning child of Hirugakojima, Hyoe no Suke Yoritomo, was already leading an army of two hundred thousand Minamoto men; he had crossed the steep barrier of Ashigara, and the day seemed near when banners and blades would cover the plains below Mount Fuji and sweep west in a long march. It is only to be expected that within his own breast he could find no peace. Added to this came the shameful defeat of his eldest grandson Koremori’s forces in the tenth month of Jisho 4, reporting that the storm-clouds in the east had only grown fiercer and that the revolutionary mood was already ripe. Then he saw that if the Taira remained cowering at Fukuhara they would become the object of the whole realm’s hatred, while by stepping back they would give the eastern Minamoto the chance to drive their distant campaign in a long, unbroken course. At last he resolved on a new policy and returned to the old capital. Alas, even the bold judgment that moved the capital ended in empty failure.

Now the Taira crisis pressed close before their eyes. Since Koremori’s expedition to the east had not exchanged even a single arrow before panicking at the waterfowl of the Fuji River and fleeing in vain, the Omi Genji had answered like an echo and risen; Bettou Tanzo had risen in Kii; armed bands with short weapons raced everywhere, burning and plundering estates beyond counting. The black-robed forces of Onjoji and the shaven-headed brigands of Nanto moved one after another like clouds and seemed ready to fall upon the Taira government with banners and war drums in full array. Could the Lay Monk Chancellor, fiery as a blaze, endure to sit and watch? No. The moment he returned to the old capital, he at once took the whole realm as his opponent and, with bare hands, attempted a grand challenge. His comet-like movement outside every proper orbit reached its extreme at this point. How destructive, sharp, and ruthless his policy was may be seen more than clearly in the cold calendar of events set down below.

October 23, Jisho 4: The Lay Monk Chancellor leaves the new capital at Fukuhara. October 26: He enters Kyoto.

December 2: Taira no Tomomori and others are dispatched eastward as commanders to subdue the Kanto.

December 10: Awaji no Kami Kiyofusa is ordered to attack Onjoji. Warrior-monks from Mount Hiei aid Onjoji, and the Taira army fights them at Yamashina. On the same day: Kiyofusa burns Onjoji and slaughters the monks.

December 25: Kurando no To Shigehira is sent against Nanto.

December 28: Shigehira, leading several thousand men, burns Kofukuji and Todaiji; not a single monks’ lodging is spared, and more than thirty heads are taken.

December 29: Shigehira returns to the capital.

In the barely thirty days after bringing his carriage back to the old capital, his overbearing actions threw the whole realm into shock.

He did not shrink from burning temples, unafraid of the religious faith of the age. Yet he did not do so out of any wish to restrain the violence of the monks. It was only because he believed that, if he was to lead a government already beginning to fall apart from within and face the fierce revolutionary tide pressing in from without, his first urgent task must be to sweep away the troubles of the Kinai region. And he did not know that this single stroke had cut the last thread by which the fate of the Taira government still hung. His unprecedented blow did indeed force Nanto and the northern monasteries, long regarded by the Taira as tumors on their very heads, at last to fall completely silent. But in exchange the Taira aroused still greater resistance from the monks. Not only that: they also brought the common people of the realm, whose faith was deep and sincere, to call the Taira enemies of the Buddha. Such was now the situation. Even a man like the Lay Monk Chancellor, who had himself smashed the hive, could hardly help growing weary from desperate exertion. People of the time sang:

"Casting aside the capital where flowers bloom unending, how perilous the end at Wind-Blown Plain."

Yes, truly the end at Wind-Blown Plain was perilous. Taking the transfer to Fukuhara as the last flick of its tail, the Taira plunged from Jisho into Yowa, from Yowa into Juei, from Juei into Genryaku, from Tenryaku into Bunji, like a round stone rolling from the peak of a towering cliff, rushing moment by moment toward the abyss of destruction.

As it is said that Masakado produced great captains, so too our Kiso Yoshinaka came from the line of Masakado. He was the grandson of Minamoto no Tameyoshi, the Judge of Rokujō, and the second son of the sword-bearer and scholar Minamoto no Yoshikata. Because he grew to manhood in the mountain recesses of Kiso, the people of the time called him Kiso no Kanja. In the second month of Kyūju 2, when Yoshikata was slain by Akugenta Yoshihira, Yoshihira, fearing what trouble the boy might cause in the future, urgently ordered Hatakeyama no Shoji Shigenori to search for him. Shigenori pitied the child in his weakness and secretly entrusted him to Saito Bettou Sanemori. Sanemori too saw the danger of keeping him in the eastern provinces and therefore handed him over to Nakahara no Gonnokami Kaneto. This Kaneto was in fact one of the powerful local magnates who lorded over the valleys of Kiso. At the time the child was only two years old. Already the signs of his romantic life had begun to appear.

Before speaking of Yoshinaka’s achievements, we must first speak of Kiso. For there can be little doubt that the more than twenty years he spent there deeply shaped the whole course of his life. Let me quote the Genpei Seisuiki:

"The place called Kiso is a perfect natural fortress. Long mountain ranges stretch away; birds and beasts are few; the passes are steep and winding; in the ravines great rivers swell and run, and even human tracks are hidden and obscure. Valleys are deep and the plank paths perilous, so one walks with feet braced; peaks are high and cliffs crowded close, so one advances only with one’s eyes lifted upward. One crosses ridge after ridge with spirit worn down, leaves one valley only to enter another with renewed strain. To the east it opens wide toward Shinano, Kozuke, Musashi, and Sagami; to the south it borders Mino by a single narrow road. It is three days’ journey into deep mountains. Even tens of millions of horsemen could not storm it, and if the ladders and plankways were pulled down and the place defended, neither horse nor man could pass through at all."

Is this not the Shu Road of the eastern seas? Just as the mountains and rivers of Qin, protected by the narrow pass of Hangu, produced a people timid in private quarrels but brave in public war, so when the revolutionary moment had ripened and the whole realm longed for upheaval, Kiso possessed a geography worthy to be the native land of the rising-sun general who boldly proclaimed justice to the four seas, led many fierce sons of revolution, and drove in a long march toward Rokuhara; it was likewise worthy to be the foundation on which his enterprise stood. Yes, the overmastering spirit with which he shook an age and the hardy young warriors of Kiso who flocked beneath his banner were nurtured in this great gorge of twenty leagues, embraced by the long current of the Kiso River and the broken peaks of the Kiso range. Then what of his household? The mugwort that grows straight in a field of hemp is made straight by the hemp around it. What makes the child of a hero into the child of a hero is his household. Is that not why there was first Hamilcar and then Hannibal, first Xiang Liang and then Xiang Yu, first Nobuhide and then Nobunaga? Is that not why even the servants of the Zheng household, without learning, could recite poetry? Thinking thus, we cannot help calling up in our minds the figure of Nakahara no Gonnokami Kaneto, Yoshinaka’s foster father and guide. In Yoshinaka’s life he was like Hojo Tokimasa in Yoritomo’s. He was a simpler Zhang Liang; this one was a more seasoned Fan Zeng. Yet in backing a scion of the Minamoto house and using the force of events to contend for the stag of the central plain, the two finally did not differ in ultimate aim.

When Yoshinaka set out to raise the banner of revolution and send his proclamation through the realm, Kaneto leapt up and cried: "For this very day I have raised and cared for you these twenty years. When you speak thus, I see indeed that you are a true descendant of Lord Hachiman." In that brief cry one can see the ambition of "setting one’s horse upon the foremost peak of Wu Mountain" leap vividly to life. At first, when Sanemori had placed Yoshinaka in his care, he had secretly muttered to himself: "Though he is now an orphan, if fortune in war opens for him, he may yet become lord of the warriors of all Japan. Somehow or other I will raise him and make him Great General of the Hokuriku Road." One can only see that he was an old commander with a swelling heroic will, unable to contain himself, always waiting for the chance to stretch out his swift horse-legs when the moment came. And with our Yoshinaka, young, high-spirited, and with an inexhaustible fire burning in his breast, living at the knees of such an old man, how could his heart not leap? Whenever he drove a fierce horse at speed, whenever he slung a longbow and chased pheasants and rabbits, he would always say, "This is practice for attacking the Taira."

With such a family history behind him, raised in such ravines, and brought up in such a household, he thus caused his fierce yearning for high destiny to beat ever stronger. He was truly a son of Kiso. The ambition with which he stirred the storms of an age, his frank blood that could not contain itself, his fiery hunger for fame, all these, surely, were born from the influence of that household, poured out amid the high mountains and hidden valleys of Kiso, "where above drift horizontal clouds across rivers that cut the sea, and below crash waters that fold back against themselves." Having now seen his times and his circumstances, we need not wait for further explanation to know what sort of man he was, and toward what horizon his heroic will was directed.

By now, the orphan who had once crouched beneath the sky and crept upon the earth had at last become a young man whose longing for the blue clouds burned like fire. And with a breast full of ambition, a spirit too vigorous to be restrained, clad in coarse garments and carrying but a single sword, he drifted proudly through the land. Those years of wandering were in truth his living education. We know little in detail of those wanderings, yet it seems that he often came to the capital and even roamed about the vicinity of Rokuhara. It was probably through these travels that he felt most keenly how the great currents of the realm were pressing close at hand. Probably too, his desire for fame had more than one measure of oil poured upon it. One imagines him standing alone on the roads of Kyoto, watching young noblemen of the Taira house cradle their biwas before falling blossoms, gazing up at court nobles on the palace terraces playing jeweled flutes in harmony with spring, or looking on as the Lay Chancellor rode in his carriage, attended by armed retainers, his procession stately and magnificent. Surely, in his breast, he cried again and again that he would take their place.

Yes, his great ambition, which found the whole world too narrow, was fostered by these wanderings. The sacred fire within him burned more fiercely with every passing moment. More than once his hand went to his long sword. Yet still he waited, watching for the moment, not yet moving. He was like a dragon in a pond waiting for the wind and clouds on which it might rise. It had not yet taken flight, but if only the opportunity came, the day was near when, spreading the mighty wings of the roc and beating upward on the whirlwind for ninety thousand leagues, he would bear the blue sky on his back and set his course south.

It seems likely that through the conspiracy at Shishigatani, through the death of Komatsu no Naifu, and through the rebellious temper of Nanto and Hieizan, he saw that the fate of the Taira bandits was already approaching its morning and evening, its very end, and quietly smiled to himself in celebration of the coming hour. Yes, the opportunity had come; the opportunity to break the Bastille had finally come. With Prince Takakura’s imperial command, the whole realm stirred like the sea and answered the call to revolution. And the white banner handed down in his family was at last unfurled in the mountain winds of Kiso. He was then twenty-seven years old, wearing a red brocade hitatare, over it armor laced deep purple at the hems, with a helmet crested with antlers and a gold-mounted sword curved at his side. He shone indeed like a jeweled tree standing before the wind. Men flocked to his banner from every direction, more than fifty thousand of them. Nei no Oyata Yukichika came; Tate no Rokuro Chikatada came; the Ashikaga of Noshu, the Takeda of Koshu, the Nawa of Joshu, and others after them all gathered eagerly and followed him, and the power of the revolutionary army rose magnificently. The roc’s wings for its southern flight were already formed. Thereupon he beat the war drums, set the banners in line, and with grand and martial bearing marched out of southern Shinano. Wherever the spearhead of his army pointed, it crushed resistance like withered wood. On the fifth day of the ninth month of Jisho 4, on the plains of Zenkōji-daira, he struck and utterly defeated Kasahara Heigo Yorinao, a partisan of the Taira. Then he wheeled his forces into Kōzuke, and on the thirteenth day of the tenth month he subdued all of Tago District, making the powerful families of that province compete to gather beneath his great standard. This was in fact ten days before Yoritomo’s great victory at Fujikawa. Thus he came to hold nearly all Shinano in the palm of his hand.

Reports from the revolutionary army flew one after another like the teeth of a comb. Eastern barbarians and western tribes alike rose up, and the tricolor banner drew closer day by day to the capital of Heian. The day was not far off when songs of Chu would ring about the fairy isle. The Taira government, which had spent its long nights in revelry amid red lanterns and green wine, was finally unable not to tremble with alarm. How utterly panic-stricken they were! Since the Heiji era, their saddles, swords, and spears had been inlaid with mother-of-pearl, adorned with gold and silver, and elaborated with every luxury of the age; but now they were no more than ornaments of peace. The young men of the clan were all but girls of the court and inner palace. To set such men against the revolutionary army surging forward like waves was hardly different from trying to drive six horses with a rotten rein. The Taira government had now reached the very height of its confusion. Yet the iron guts of the Lay Chancellor still burned fiercely, and he sought to restore the Taira state even as it was about to collapse. Hearing that the eastern army intended to come upon the capital by way of the southern seas, he dispatched forces to guard the coast.

He tried to fight the eastern army using provisions and horses from the western sea road and the Hokuriku road. To see him taking that exhausted, declining government in hand and standing against the revolutionary army rushing upon him like a flood gave the impression of a giant tree standing upright in a hurricane. When we think of this, we cannot help but understand his bitter anguish. In Kantō there was Minamoto no Hyōe no Suke Yoritomo; in Kiso there was the Rising Sun General; and in the capital there was the Lay Chancellor. Three children of storm and cloud, each spitting in his hands and staking the realm.

Truly, it was a spectacle with few equals in history. And yet fate remained merciless to the Taira to the bitter end. On the eve of the departure from the capital of the powerful eastern punitive force under Taira no Munemori, after the summons to arms had been spread throughout the land, on the first day of the intercalary second month of Yōwa 1, whether by heaven or destiny, the Lay Chancellor suddenly fell ill. The punitive army lost its moment and did not depart; four days later his illness became critical, and at last the ancestor-dragon fell. The red banners lost their brightness and the light of day grew dim; yellow dust drifted wildly, the wind bleak and desolate; armored troops by the hundreds of thousands filled the roads, yet all who came and went wore grief upon their faces. Alas, thus passed away a hero without equal. Thus was the pillar-stone of the Taira house shattered. The timber fit to be the ridgepole was already gone; who then could hope for success a hundred leagues away? Look, look: the downfall of the western sea was pressing closer with every moment.

The Lay Chancellor died, and Munemori took his place. Yet he was an unworthy son. In political skill and breadth of vision he could scarcely reach even to his father Jōkai’s feet. That he restored the estates of Kōfukuji and Tōdaiji and, by imperial decree, ordered thirty-five provinces to contribute to the rebuilding of Kōfukuji, fawning on Buddha and flattering the monks, there could be nothing greater than this in lowering the martial prestige of the Taira house. He was far inferior to his father in intuitive insight; as for quietly patching together the great machinery of the realm within the bounds of ordinary stability, and making men accept it without even realizing it, he did not equal Shigemori in supple capacity. And in generalship, in sending armies far afield, devising plans within the command tent, and deciding victory a thousand leagues away, he could not stand beside our Yoshinaka. Yet even so, with his ignorance and lack of skill, he meant to confront the revolutionary armies of the realm. This was harder than trying to dam up a great river with bare hands. Mount Tai had already fallen, and a mere boy had climbed to the heavy seat of power. The spirit of the revolutionary army rose ever higher. And at this time, what struck the Taira most fatally was in truth their financial distress. The splendor of the clan, which had made the author of The Tale of the Heike marvel that even the Imperial Palace and the retired emperor’s palace could scarcely surpass it, ended by shortening the number of years left to the Taira. When the water narrows, the fish leap all the more wildly. Thus the Taira, like a wounded boar, sought desperately to escape their hardship through crushing taxation. Was it not proof that their resources were already exhausted when they sent envoys to the three districts of Ise Shrine and levied rice for military provisions, or when Taira no Sadayoshi went down to Kyushu, increased corvée labor, multiplied taxes, and drew curses and resentment from every quarter?

Ah, when the great string is drawn too tight, the lesser strings break. The people of the realm, already tormented by famine and warfare, could no longer endure the suffering of hanging upside down in torment. Together they rose to curse the Taira, revile the Taira, turn against the Taira, and try with bare fists to shake off their yoke. Thus the common people, spread over the land like mist, suddenly turned all their discontent into a loud and swelling cry of support for the success of the revolutionary army. And in the face of such danger, that they still ordered the rebuilding of the two temples of Nanto, and that fools like Kasa-hari Hōkyō’s pig-and-dog brood pursued such stupid policies, only multiplied that support many times over. Less than three years after the death of the Lay Chancellor, barbarian horses neighed at Luoyang and the sun sank into the western sea. How could it be otherwise?

Let us return once more to our Kiso Yoshinaka. Having already led the realm and crossed his Rubicon, he faced in the sixth month of Yōwa 1 an army of sixty thousand Taira troops under Jō Shirō Nagashige of Echigo across the Yokotagawa. Yoshinaka, a genius like an awl in a bag that at once pierces through, immediately ordered his commander Inoue Kurō Mitsumori to advance bearing red banners. He himself crossed the river, beat the war drums, and challenged them. When the Taira army attacked his position, he had Mitsumori and the others cast down the red banners, raise white ones, and suddenly strike the enemy in a pincer attack, winning a great victory and finally driving Nagashige back into Echigo. This was truly a stratagem like that by which the Marquis of Huaiyin defeated Lord Cheng’an at the Jingxing pass; the awl had at last thrust its point entirely out. In the eighth month, Munemori, hearing that the revolutionary army was advancing like bamboo splitting, hurriedly obtained an imperial command for a punitive expedition along the Hokuriku road and organized a northern expedition under Taira no Michimori, Assistant Director of the Empress’s Household, and Taira no Tsunemasa, governor of Tajima, to block Yoshinaka’s rushing advance south. But in the ninth month Michimori’s army was badly defeated in battle with him. They withdrew and attempted to hold Tsuruga Castle, yet could not maintain themselves. Their lines collapsed, and the army was utterly routed, escaping complete annihilation only by the barest margin. Thereupon the martial prestige of the revolutionary army swept through Kōzuke, Shinano, Echigo, Etchū, Noto, Kaga, and Echizen. The heroes of the seven provinces gathered in bands beneath his banner. Spears and halberds glittered like frost, armored horses numbered in the tens of thousands, and their spirits were so high that they had already swallowed the Taira government whole. The triumph of Yoshinaka, the luckless orphan, the wild man of Kiso, the Rising Sun General, can well be imagined. Hokuriku was already settled, and his arms and armor were already sufficient. He desired at once to drive far and long, to burst into the capital with a force like a river breaking through its dikes. Yet before his great standards could turn south, a single letter sent by Minamoto no Hyōe no Suke Yoritomo, who was rolling up the eight provinces of Kantō like a mat and was about to advance westward along the Tōkaidō, halted his southern march. The letter said:

“Because the Taira have defied the authority of the court and destroyed the Buddhist law, an imperial order has already been issued commanding the clansmen of the Minamoto house to pursue and destroy them with all speed. It is only proper that, making night into day, we should strike the rebel ministers and set His Majesty’s mind at ease. Yet I hear that Jūrō Kurando has raised a private rebellion and plans an attack upon Yoritomo. And now, by your joining with that man and keeping him under your protection, there is, first, discord within the clan, and second, mockery from the Taira. But perhaps you do not understand my intention. If there is no particular reason to do otherwise, then send Kurando here at once; or if not, then send Shimizu-dono (Yoshinaka’s son, Shimizu no Kanja Yoshitaka) here, and let us establish the bond of father and son. If you do not comply with either of these two conditions, I shall send troops against you and punish you.”

For Yoshinaka, this was in truth an unexpected and unfounded accusation. For the reason Yoritomo was displeased with him was not merely that Jūrō Kurando Yukiiye, who had left Yoritomo on bad terms, had joined Yoshinaka’s camp. When Yoritomo first sought to make the eight provinces of Kantō into a single solid whole, the man of Hitachi, Shida Saburō Sensei Yoshihiro, alone refused to bow the knee and pay nine obeisances at Yoritomo’s feet, and instead ran off to join Yoshinaka’s army. Yoshinaka, “unable to bear the suffering of others,” could not endure to see Yoshihiro reduced and fallen like a dried fish, and gladly let him remain beneath his banner. This indeed was what angered Yoritomo. And yet Yoshinaka had already proclaimed his dominance in Hokuriku; horses of war and swords and spears were in his hands, iron cavalry and armored troops under his command. If he should once entertain ambition, then the day was not far off when, with a million armored men, he would beat the war drums and march on Kamakura. This was what Yoritomo feared.

And there was more: Takeda Nobumitsu, who was not on good terms with Yoshinaka, seized the opportunity and slandered him to Yoritomo. Thus Yoritomo, filled three parts with fear and seven parts with resentment, angrily sent the letter. He himself then tried to cross Usui at the head of a hundred thousand stout troops and point his horse eastward to decide victory or defeat with Yoshinaka. And so now the twin stars of the revolutionary army were about to cross halberds and compete in valor amid the vast mountains and rivers of Shinano. The fate of the realm hung on a single word from him. Yoshinaka at once summoned his generals and asked, “Shall we fight, or shall we not?” The generals leaped up and replied, “We beg to fight.” He remained silent. Again the generals, grinding their teeth, said, “Let our blue-hoofed horses trample the grasses of the eight provinces.” Yet still he did not answer. In the end, he was a man of feeling. He was too generous a man to turn his spear against his own kin and spill the blood of his clan. Even in the face of this lawless accusation, he still treated Yoritomo as flesh and blood. And so at last he sent Yoshitaka, thereby calming Yoritomo’s anger. Yes, in the end he was a man of feeling. He could not bear to hand over desperate birds like Yukiiye and Yoshihiro to the hunter. He did not wish to boil beans by burning the bean stalks. He possessed the tenderness of common human affection. He possessed the compassion that cannot bear the suffering of those one meets upon the road. Ah, men who “sacrifice themselves and yet remain carefree” are not to be found only in the Hegemon-King of Western Chu. Let us venture to imagine freely: if he had decisively answered Yoritomo’s challenge, then the battle between the sleeping lion of Kiso and the crouching dragon of Hirugakojima would have been many times more magnificent still; the realm might have been divided in three as at the end of the Han; and as for into whose hands the deer of the central plains would finally have fallen, that could not lightly have been decided. Thus the spring wind blew once more between the two heroes. Yoritomo wheeled his banners and returned to Kamakura. And Yoshinaka, just as he had long expected, finally turned south with fifty thousand fierce troops and a splendid array of drums and banners.

Even old, the lion is still king of beasts. Munemori, hearing that the spearpoint of the revolutionary army was irresistible, organized a powerful northern expedition under Taira no Koremori, Junior Captain of the Right Imperial Guard, a master of court dance and a general like a doll displayed for the Fifth Month festival, and sent it out against the revolutionary army, which was rolling down like angry breakers. One hundred thousand Taira troops, their red banners covering the sky, their fine armor flashing in the sun. Even our revolutionary army of Hokuriku, which had rushed forward with a force that seemed to fill the heavens, could not prevent disorder from breaking out in its own front ranks before this desperate counterattack by the Taira. The stronghold of Hiuchiyama Castle, which Yoshinaka had entrusted to Togashi Nyūdō Bussei, first fell into the hands of the Taira. Next, the firm position of Hayashi Rokurō Mitsuaki was suddenly broken by them. In the end, the whole province of Kaga, purchased by the revolutionary army with its blood, came once again into the hands of the Taira’s upstart boys, an event bitter indeed. Having already defeated the Minamoto forces and with their spirits surging to heaven, the Taira now split off thirty thousand picked troops and sent them toward Mount Shio. Koremori himself drove seventy thousand men to Mount Tonami and drew up in a formation like a long serpent lying across the earth, hoping at one stroke to sweep the revolutionary army out of Etchū. Yet Taira no Ukonoe no Chūjō by no means possessed generalship or courage enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Yoshinaka. Yoshinaka, hearing in Echigo of the revolutionary army’s defeat, immediately led all his forces into Etchū. As soon as he entered Etchū, he sent Kurando Yukiiye to attack the Taira troops at Mount Shio. And while attacking the army at Mount Shio, he himself hastened to Kurosaka, faced Koremori there, and unfurled the white banners in the cold hamlet of Hanyū. In numbers, he had scarcely half the Taira strength; in terrain, the Taira already held the vital heights of Tonami. Was it not exceedingly difficult for him to break the edge of their assault and turn back the collapsing torrent?

Yet he possessed quick-witted genius that welled up like a spring. That night he gathered several hundred fierce oxen, tied torches to their horns, lashed them, and drove them loose into the enemy camp; then the forty thousand Genji troops charged the Taira with thunderous drums. The torchfires on the horns stretched in linked lines like stars; the shouts and drumbeats mingled so that one might think all the waters of the southern sea had overturned at once. The Taira army collapsed and fled into the southern ravines. More than eighteen thousand threw themselves from the cliffs and died. Men and horses trampled one another, swords and halberds pierced one another, heaps of corpses rose like mounds, and the dust of battle covered the sky. Koremori barely cut himself a bloody path through, gathered the remnants of his army, and fled into Kaga, attempting to make another stand at the natural fortress of Mount Saradake against the revolutionary army. But nothing could be done against the course of events. The Taira army at Mount Shio had already been broken, and Yoshinaka and Yukiiye pressed hard upon the Taira as though moving through an empty land, crossed at Ataka, struck Shinohara, and at last completely smashed the northern expeditionary army. Bursting forward in brave fury, they advanced south like a tiger driving a flock of sheep, and were now on the point of making a long sweep into the capital. Thus, in the seventh month of Juei 2, the red banners pointed toward Luoyang; and as the defeated Taira troops all returned to the capital, Yoshinaka entered Ōmi from the Hokuriku road and Yukiiye entered Yamato from the eastern mountain road. The white banners of the revolutionary army, like snow, filled the mountains and rivers of the Kinai.

At this point, the decision of victory or defeat between the Taira and Yoshinaka depended entirely on which side Enryakuji would support. If those thousands of warrior monks had joined with the Taira and set their shields against the Minamoto army, it is possible that the revolutionary banners might never have flown over Luoyang. Yet Enryakuji was by no means the Taira’s loyal ally. It had many reasons why it could not remain on good terms with them. Was not one of them the Taira’s levying of military rice on the temple’s estates, and their thoughtless solicitation of the retired Emperor Takakura’s visit out of reverence for Itsukushima, without regard for precedent? Anti-Taira feeling filled the three thousand warriors of the mountain, those round-headed men in black robes. They were like porcupines: the more one stroked them, the more their quills stood on end. That Kiyomori’s policy of conciliation only made their spirit flare higher was no accident. Now the mountain temple had become like a single hare pursued by two hunters, like a single bride courted by two bridegrooms. The Taira, fearing that it might join forces with the Genji, sent a written oath bearing the joint signatures of ten Taira nobles, swearing to make Enryakuji their clan temple and Hiyoshi Shrine their tutelary shrine, hoping by clever words to win its favor. But the mountain remained cool and gave no answer. At the same time, Kakumei, a monk who served as Yoshinaka’s secretary and was also the strategist of the revolutionary army, sent Enryakuji a message urging alliance, and the mountain temple responded by openly raising the flag of resistance against the Taira. This was in truth the final grievous blow the Taira suffered. Once the mountain temple had turned against them, was it any wonder that the defensive army led by Tomomori and Shigehira was of almost no use against the revolutionary host pressing in like the tide? Thus the torrent of revolution rushed on for a thousand leagues and finally destroyed the Taira government. At this point the Taira adopted a last desperate plan: they would seize the sovereign and the imperial regalia and flee to the western provinces. If the imperial carriage were under the red banner, they could once again use edicts and commands of the court to direct the four seas; and if once they could direct the four seas, it would by no means be impossible to halt the sinking of their fortunes and make the realm once more a Taira realm.

Such indeed was the settled plan in the Taira’s breast. Yet when the crisis came, the Cloistered Emperor secretly left them, climbed to the mountain temple, and placed himself in the midst of the Genji. Everything went wrong. The Taira finally fled to the ends of the earth with the Emperor in their keeping. The imperial palanquin swayed westward; rainbow banners fluttered in the mournful wind. Ah:

“Yesterday, beneath the eastern barrier, more than a hundred thousand horsemen stood bridle to bridle; today, upon the waves of the western sea, a mere seven thousand loose their cables. In the days of Hōgen they flourished like spring flowers, but now, in Juei, they fall away like autumn leaves.”

Yes, the Taira at last encountered the tragic fate of the downfall long foreseen for them.

Looking back upon the home place turned into a burnt field, with even the smoke in the distance fading, we go upon our road of waves.

III. The End

On the twenty-sixth day of the seventh month of Juei 2, while the charred remains of Nishi-Hachijō were still warm and only the foundation stones of the phoenix palace remained in emptiness, our Kiso no Kanja Yoshinaka entered Luoyang at last, riding a white horse with a golden saddle, splendid and triumphant, into the capital he had long beheld in dreams throughout the years. Then on the tenth day of the eighth month he was appointed Samanokami and governor of Iyo, wore the tiger tally at his waist, sat upon the commander’s seat, and was styled the Rising Sun General. Now his triumph had reached its highest point. At last, as he had ardently desired, he wore the laurel crown. Thus the revolution of Juei was brought to its conclusion beneath his song of victory. Yet between him and Yoritomo, who had answered one another’s call and hunted down the deer of the central plains together, into whose hands would that deer finally fall? If Yoshinaka should win it, how could the ambitious brat of the Minamoto house stand by with folded hands and merely watch? If Yoritomo should win it, then Yoshinaka, hot-blooded by nature, was certainly not one to remain silent. Two tigers contending over one sheep: the day was surely near when they would face one another across the battle line with swords drawn. Moreover, just as Carthage, though defeated in Sicily and forced for a time to bow before the gates of mighty Rome, returned again in strength until the fields of southern Italy bristled with banners and spears and it sought to wipe away the shame of old disaster at a second Cannae, so too the Taira, afloat upon the western sea with the imperial carriage headed west, would not rest until they had rallied the sturdy fighters of Kyushu and Shikoku, raised the imperial banners and the sails of war, led their armies once more, and pressed back upon the capital. As wind and snow gather and icy heaven sends down sleet, with Yoshinaka’s success the atmosphere of upheaval swelled once more like a flood tide.

Yes, together with success he had won failure. His defeat and death at Awazu had already been foreshadowed on the very day he entered Luoyang in a long march with isolated troops and white banners flying. At the same time that he satisfied his surging ambition, he could not help but feel how perilous his position was. He had entered Luoyang leading the mighty revolutionary army of the north; but Luoyang was not a place where such men could dwell. The hardy warriors of the northern provinces, lovers of sword and drink, felt the want of provisions and at once began plundering towns, villages, and hamlets. All they did was blunt and violent to the last. They did not hesitate to turn their horses loose into green rice fields to graze. They did not shrink from tearing down temple buildings for firewood.

With their wildness they shocked the people of Kyoto, who prized precedent and ceremonial form. And the world pointed at them and laughed: “These Genji are worse even than the Taira.” This was in truth the first blow he suffered upon entering the capital. And it was not only their violence. These men, who knew nothing beyond straddling fierce horses, leveling long spears, breaking enemy encirclements, and cutting down opposing generals, understood neither the elegance of plucking refined melodies before the spring rain nor the poetic charm of playing the flute beneath the autumn moon. By the absurdities and uncouth manners they displayed wherever they went, they bought for themselves the resentment and mockery of the people of Kyoto.

In addition, at this very time the Taira forces that had fled to the Western Sea, commanding the stout warriors of Shikoku and relying on the natural moat of the Inland Sea, while sheltering the imperial palanquin, numbered in truth more than a hundred thousand men. Their red banners seemed on the point of setting the skies over Yashima aflame. The Taira were indeed warriors of the sea. “The eastern warriors may know how to speak while seated on horseback, but what training could they possibly have in naval war? It would be like fish climbing a tree.” Such was their unfeigned confidence. And Tomomori, the new Middle Counselor, the Zhou Yu of the Taira house, constantly supporting Munemori, sought to carry out broad plans for turning the tide of events. Could he fail to be one of Yoshinaka’s formidable enemies? Within, he incurred the hostility of the capital; without, he faced the high tide of Taira power. Thus the star of the revolutionary army’s general was drawing near to its fall, like a leaf about to drop with the autumn wind. When he had once led the men of the seven provinces of Hokuriku, driving forward with short weapons at speed, entering the capital with the force of a gale, the movements of the revolutionary army had been truly swift as a darting hare. Yet once the imperial carriage turned westward and the banners of the revolutionary army fluttered over the capital, its attitude toward the Taira came to present, rather, the aspect of a maiden.

He did not wish to lead the whole army himself against the Taira. For the secret design of the court, which had come to distrust him, was to restrain him by means of Minamoto no Yoritomo. That was why he feared being attacked from the rear. And ever since he had attempted to place Prince Hokuriku upon the throne of the sun, the Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa, who had been displeased with him, had desired to extol Yoritomo and use him to remove Yoshinaka. It needs no saying why Yoshinaka could not point his horse westward and go far afield to fight the Taira rebels. Nevertheless, an imperial order at last caused him to raise an army for the western campaign and attack the Taira at Mizushima. The warriors of Hokuriku had long excelled in mounted battle; with iron helmets, lashing their sweating blood-horses, they broke the enemy as one sweeps away autumn leaves in the wind. That was the field in which they were supreme. They were the Roman soldiers of Japan. They were the overlords of mountain and plain. Yet in battle upon the water they were no match, in the end, for the Taira, those Carthaginians, masters of a special art. Just as the warriors of Wu, bred upon the Yangtze, slaughtered Cao Cao’s eight hundred thousand at Red Cliff and moved a poet to sing that “the Han dynasty’s fire-virtue at last burned up the foe,” so the wave-born warriors reared upon the Inland Sea at last shattered the spearhead of Yoshinaka’s army, which had ridden the prestige of repeated victories. More than three thousand heads were taken from the Minamoto army; white pennons were cast upon the ground, while the spirit of the Taira army rose greatly. The honor of his name as an ever-victorious general was stained by this single defeat. He wished to lead an elite force again and decide the issue with the Taira once and for all. Yet hearing that Yoritomo was advancing in force to strike at his back, and knowing the crisis would admit not even a hair’s breadth of delay, he had no time to wipe out the shame of Mizushima, but hurried back to the capital in confusion. This was on the fifteenth day of the eleventh month of Juei 2, a mere three days before the Hojuji Incident. No sooner had he returned to the capital than he attempted at once to make war against Yoritomo.

At this time, what stopped him from carrying out that plan was in truth the disloyalty of Gyōie, the Kurōdo Captain. Gyōie had originally been at odds with Yoritomo and had thrown himself into Yoshinaka’s camp. Yoshinaka, a man of feeling, always treated him generously as an elder of the clan. When Yoshinaka led the revolutionary army of Hokuriku southward, Gyōie too advanced beside him. When Yoshinaka, in scarlet armor on a white horse, proudly entered the capital, Gyōie likewise stood shoulder to shoulder with him and basked in imperial favor.

Such had been Gyōie’s friendship with Yoshinaka. And Yoshinaka, full of resentments and tears, the kind of man who felt another’s distress as his own, always trusted Gyōie. He not only trusted him, but revealed to him even the secret plans of his command tent. Yet Gyōie was an old fox, not a man to be bound with a single cord. He had far too vast an ambition and foxlike cunning to be content with the subordinate rank of a lieutenant in the revolutionary army. When he learned that Yoshinaka meant to take the Cloistered Emperor and flee to Hokuriku, he secretly reported it to the emperor. And when the emperor had men rebuke Yoshinaka, Gyōie, under the pretext of pursuing the Taira, went down to Harima Province and there clicked his tongue in delight that Yoshinaka’s fate was drawing to its extremity. Thus Gyōie, who had once advanced hand in hand with Yoshinaka, departed from his camp. And if Yoshinaka looked eastward, there was Kyūrō Yoshitsune, Yoritomo’s leopard-cub, bearing Minamoto no Yoritomo’s command, armored hosts said to number a million, drums shaking the earth, on the verge of setting out toward the capital. Was not his tragic destiny worthy of pity?

Thus, step by step, he drew nearer to a place of death. Yet he still maintained a defensive posture. He was still a loyal great tree. Yes, he was still not the instigator of conspiracy, but its defender. And yet what made him draw his bow against the Cloistered Emperor lay in the aggressive posture the emperor had adopted toward him. And what induced the emperor to undertake a move against Yoshinaka was Taira no Noriyasu, the Judge of the Bureau, a frivolous, shallow, reckless fool, a mere brat of the dipper, who still bore a grudge from having once been mocked by Yoshinaka. The emperor, who liked having affairs set in motion, approved Noriyasu’s rash act and secretly caused the warrior monks of Nanto and Mount Hiei, together with beggar priests and street toughs, to join in the violent move against Yoshinaka. Then, on the eighteenth day of the eleventh month, the Imperial Prince of Ninna-ji and Myōun, abbot of Enryaku-ji, also came to Hoju-ji with armed men, and at last the coup against Yoshinaka was carried out. In substance, the Cloistered Emperor had challenged Yoshinaka to war. Before him there remained only two roads: rebellion or destruction. How could a man of such burning blood fold his hands in his sleeves and wait to be executed? He resolved in fury, or rather was driven to a point where he had no choice but to resolve. Resting his hand on his sword, he cried out: “This can only be that rascal Noriyasu’s trickery. Fight well, men!” Then the white banners moved straight on Hoju-ji; swords and halberds flashed like frost; seven thousand iron horsemen swarmed like summer grass around the palace, loosing volleys of arrows. They killed Myōun, abbot of Tendai, and beheaded more than a hundred and ten traitors on the imperial side, while the beloved northern warriors, the young fighters of the revolution, raised songs of triumph no less than three times. Such was the defiant, and yet so searingly intense, conduct of this wild man of Kiso.

He said what he wished to say and did what he wished to do, with not the least trace of affectation or pose. Yes, he was a rebel subject; yet he did not even know what rebellion truly was.

Now, amid the clash of sword fittings, he stripped more than forty nobles who had joined the coup of their offices, made his brother-in-law Fujiwara no Moroiye regent, obtained an imperial command to chastise Yoritomo along with the glorious rank of Seii Tai-shōgun, and in high ambition sought to fight Yoritomo. Yet this stroke was like twisting rope only after seeing the thief; like weaving a net only when the fish was already before one’s eyes. For Gyōie, harboring treason, had already turned against him in Kawachi, and Yoshitsune’s western expedition had already reached Atsuta in Owari; once the lord of Kamakura gave the order, his army would show the force of “Qin soldiers descending from heaven in broad daylight.”

At this Yoshinaka was seized with fear. Should he march out and fight Yoritomo? Since the battle of Mizushima, the Taira, relying on the prestige of their repeated victories, would surely launch their dragon-prowed ships and brocaded sails from Yashima, escort the imperial carriage, and enter the capital; this was clearer than fire. Should he fall back and defend the capital? It needed no saying that the tough boy of Kurama and the gray-bearded old villain would come beating drums and pressing near. His fate was spent. Thus the Rising Sun General, whose valor had once shaken an age, moved day by day nearer to death. And when the alliance he proposed to the Taira was rejected by the broad-minded and valiant good general Tomomori, his ruin drew at last within the space of a snap of the fingers.

In the first month of Juei 3, when he sent his right-hand man Higuchi Jirō Kanemitsu to attack Gyōie in Kawachi, Yoshitsune, the flying general of the eastern army, swift and nimble in warfare, like the hungry hawk of the Mongol founder’s saying snatching prey, suddenly unfurled his white pennons at Uji by means of his accustomed method, a long dash with an isolated force. At the same time, the great army of Noriyori came surging up the Tōkaidō like a rising tide, its vanguard already pressing at Seta, trying to block Yoshinaka’s flight northward. Nei no Ōyata Yukichika and Imai no Shirō Kanehira, bearing Yoshinaka’s orders, confronted the eastern army. Their force was truly no more than eight hundred horsemen. Once the two armies crossed weapons at Uji and Seta, the eastern elite proved irresistible. Before the north wind, unable to contend, Yoshinaka’s forces were badly broken; hundreds of soldiers threw down their spears and fled, while the military might of the eastern army surged on like splitting bamboo.

At this point, while he guarded the Cloistered Emperor at the Nishinotōin residence with twenty brave men, Yoshinaka saw that at last no strategy remained but to take the emperor and flee to the northern provinces, there to devise a plan for recovering lost ground. He petitioned the emperor, saying, “The eastern rebels are already pressing near. I beg leave to escort Your Majesty’s carriage to take refuge at Daigo-ji.” The emperor would not comply. Yoshinaka, furious, stepped below the stairs, rested his hand on his sword, his eyes blazing, and urgently begged him to depart. The emperor, having no alternative, was just about to leave the temporary palace with six horses, when Yoshinaka’s riders came and reported, “The eastern army has already reached Kohata and Fushimi.”

Knowing the danger now to be more acute than ever, he at last left the Nishinotōin residence resolutely with a hundred men of the revolutionary army. Clad in a red brocade hitatare and armor laced with Chinese twill, tightening the cords of a helmet crested with stag-horn ornaments, grasping the center of a heavy rattan bow, and astride a powerful dapple-gray horse with a saddle ringed in gilt metal, he swept the four quarters with his heroic bearing. Hoofbeats clattered as he rode east, only to find the eastern banners already spread like clouds and haze, covering the sky over Shichijō, Hachijō, Hōshō-ji, and Yanagihara, while war drums sounded and battle cries rose, shaking the earth like thunder. Yoshinaka’s men met them in a fight to the death, fighting and falling back, and when at last they returned again to the retired emperor’s palace, the gates were shut and they were not admitted. More than a hundred of Yukichika’s picked horsemen fought desperately and all died. Yoshinaka at last broke through the encirclement and fled to Seta, with only seven riders following him. Soon Imai no Shirō Kanehira joined him at Awazu with more than three hundred defeated survivors, and together they turned their horses toward Hokuriku. It was in truth the twentieth day of the first month of Juei 3. On the plain of Awazu the yellow reeds were desolate and the daylight faint as a dream; the sparse woods lay far off and dead leaves whirled in confusion; exhausted horses neighed again and again, the sad wind blew against their faces, and the great banner fluttered vainly, wetting sleeves with bitter tears. Where now was the heroic figure who had once, supported by three thousand warriors of Kiso, swept through the seven provinces of Hokuriku as easily as rolling up a mat and brandished great plans to command the realm? Where now was the triumph with which he had once flown his three-colored banners at the front, shattered the Taira west of Kaga and Noto as a gale scatters dry leaves, and in scarlet armor and star-crested helmet entered the capital in high confidence? And ah, where now was the former glory when, under warm spring curtains, on nights of spring, when sweet rain fell and peach and plum blossoms dropped, he drank with the favored lady of the Matsudono house and moved in tune with spring? At this, in sorrow, he said to Kanehira, “To have one’s head taken by the enemy is a disgrace for a famous general. I have heard that when battle is lost, a fierce commander should take his own life.” Kanehira answered, “A brave man does not hunger though unfed, nor submit though wounded. A commander avoids disaster to seek victory, turns away from death to settle shame. Kanehira will hold back the enemy here. First, make your escape as far as the provincial headquarters of Echizen.” Yet Yoshinaka, so full of tears, could not bear to part from Kanehira. He loved his retainers even more deeply than the fame he so desired.

But he had not gone far before seven thousand of the eastern army, raising shouts like waves, letting fly a storm of arrows and beating their drums, pressed after him ever more fiercely. He looked back at Kanehira and resolutely wheeled his horse with him; with three hundred northern men drawn up in fish-scale formation and long swords brandished, they charged the eastern army. Wherever they struck, iron hoofs crashed in every direction; again and again they circled and broke the encirclement, and the eastern army, crushed and scattered, dared not stand against them. But all his followers had already died, and only the fierce and fearless Shirō Kanehira remained. Seeing this, Kanehira said sadly, “Calm your heart and die by your own hand. I will hold back the enemy arrows and soon follow you.” Thereupon Yoshinaka, alone on horseback, with the sound of the whip solemn in the air, turned his horse’s head toward the pine grove of Awazu and, composed, sought a place to die. Yet his mount stumbled into a rice field and could not rise again. At that moment a flying arrow came, swift as a meteor, and struck through his helmet, the arrowhead sinking deep into his face. Then the soldiers of the eastern army stabbed him where he sat in the saddle and took his head. Seeing Yoshinaka slain, Kanehira’s hair bristled upward in rage; furiously he shot down eight enemy riders with eight arrows, and at last bit the edge of his sword in his mouth and fell backward from his horse to his death. Ah, death makes a man quiet; death strips a man of powder and paint; death makes a man solemnly straighten his collar. Suddenly turning his back on life and abruptly confronting death, a man’s original moral heart stirs there, and his true nature appears there, pouring forth like spring rain splashing fallen flowers, circling unhurriedly like autumn clouds round blue mountains.

When a bird is about to die, its cry is sad; when a man is about to die, his words are good. If one would see a man and know him, it is enough to look at how he meets death. Our Kiso no Kanja Yoshinaka, bearing that blazing blood and those intense aspirations toward the blue clouds, without any deceit, without any affectation, loving men and submitting to heaven, serenely offering his head to the young warriors of the Minamoto house: despite his many faults and weaknesses, we cannot help imagining that he was truly a hero-child worthy only to be loved, respected, admired, and looked up to. When Yue Fei was imprisoned, the great characters “Exhaust loyalty, repay the country” were tattooed on his back, and smiling, he awaited death morning and evening. When Xiang Yu was slain at the Wu River, he gave his beloved horse to the pavilion chief, gave his own severed head to an old acquaintance, and calmly cut his own throat. When Wang Shuying was attacked by the rebel prince of Yan, he bathed, straightened his robes and cap, bowed southward, wrote his words of farewell, and calmly hanged himself. Why should Yoshinaka be ashamed beside them? His sincerity was his life. Even as he faced death, he still held that fiery sincerity, and that fiery sincerity at last enabled him, together with the northern warriors he loved, to die with composure. Thus he was one who, though dead, still lives; only in this way did his thirty-one years of life first attain glory, meaning, grandeur, and life itself.

Thus the peerless spirit of this immense child of storm and cloud suddenly returned to heaven. Ah, for whom do the green mountains stretch in leisure, for whom does the river water spread so vast? He came like a rushing wind; he departed like morning dew. It is over, it is over: once the young fighter of the revolution has passed away, mere boys are left to make a name as heroes. Now, seven hundred years gone like a dream, by the side of Gichū-ji his lonely grave stands desolate, facing the solitary light of the setting sun. Who knows where the child of storm and cloud beneath that moss-green tomb now stirs as if about to awaken?

He was, in the end, a child of his age. He was the great incarnation of an age when a surging revolutionary spirit had reached its highest tide. Destructive policy was the lifelong thread of his political thought, and direct, impulsive action the habit of his whole career. At the same time, he possessed the destructive power of a man who would fight a tiger with bare hands, ford a river on foot, die, and never repent. In the keenness to hear what is subtle and the foresight to see what has not yet appeared, he yielded to the Lay Priest Chancellor Kiyomori; in that calculating statecraft by which one governs the country and pacifies the realm, making the people labor by the proper way so that, though wearied, they do not resent it, and killing them by the proper way so that, though they die, they do not resent it, he yielded to Minamoto no Yoritomo. And yet the reason he stands out above the rest in the history of the Juei Revolution is, in the final analysis, that he trampled to the end upon meaningless rules and habits in a purely destructive spirit, without once looking back.

He was truly a young fighter of revolution. He was extremely bold, and yet extremely impatient. He could not keep his hands in his sleeves and calmly face spring winds and falling blossoms. He could not be serene enough to stand before blue mountains and count the great situation on his fingers. His blazing ambition and seething will to power always scorched his breast like fire. In many cases he did not hesitate to take up other people’s quarrels. In no circumstances did he kneel, bow his head, and beg for mercy. And though the road of the world is crooked, he never ceased hurrying straight ahead in a direct line. Not only did he not avoid collision, he regarded collision as his great mission. That he humiliated Nakanoin no Chūnagon, mocked Taira no Noriyasu, and drew his bow at Hoju-ji all arose from this direct mode of action. When the historians of Mito placed him among the rebels in their biographies of traitor-subjects, one cannot help laughing at the shortsightedness of men who understood nothing of the feelings at work here. He did not cherish his own life; he was like a prairie fire. He would not stop until he had burned everything that stood in his way. Not only would he not stop until he had burned everything; he would not stop until he had burned himself as well. When he heard of the Cloistered Emperor’s coup, he cried out: “Since I brushed away the snows of the northern provinces and came up to the capital, never once have I shown my back to an enemy. Even if he be a sovereign of perfect virtue, I will not cast off my armor, unstring my bow, and submit as a surrendered man.” If Yoritomo had been made to face such a moment, would he have acted the same? No matter what deadly position he fell into, Yoritomo would not have brought about the Hojuji Incident. Yoritomo desired to do only what could in fact be carried through. Yoshinaka, regardless of whether it could be accomplished, wished only to do what he believed ought to be done. Is this not why he cared nothing for his own person, why he was a youth bearing the mission of revolution, and why Yoritomo was content never to be entered among the biographies of rebel-subjects?

Yoshinaka himself trusted Yoshinaka deeply. Before what he believed, even if the whole world spoke against him with one voice, he remained calm and unafraid. The spirit of “if upon self-examination I am in the right, then though I face ten thousand men, I shall go on” surged within his breast. That is why he ignored even the remonstrance of Shirō Kanehira and dared the violence of setting fire to Hoju-ji. When he was angered with the Cloistered Emperor, he burst out: “If a man is to guard the capital, should he not keep horses to ride? And if there are plenty of fields, why should he not cut the grasses for fodder? Why should the Cloistered Emperor take offense at that?” He believed that the outrages committed in the capital by the many northern warriors under his banner were rather natural enough.

And in the face of that conviction, he did not hesitate to let his resentment reach even the Cloistered Emperor. Listen, I beg you, to the bitter complaint he uttered again: “If these young men of the Kanja go now and then to the foothills of West Mountain and East Mountain to seize what they need, what harm is there in that? It would be a fault only if they entered the residences of the ministers and high officials.” Such was the point of view from which he judged the reasons for the coup against him. And he believed himself guiltless in a single point. Since he believed, clear as blue sky and bright sun, that there was nothing disloyal in him, how could it have been mere accident that he surrounded Hoju-ji with sword, halberd, and armored horse, and threw the Cloistered Emperor into alarm?

With such a disposition, he was truly a revolutionary by nature. A light, rash man like Yoshitsune, or an old, crafty schemer like Gyōie, might at times serve as shield and spear to the young fighters of revolution. Yet as for the star general who must wield those shield and spear in the revolutionary army, there must surely be in his breast a vast abundance of simple, martyr-like sincerity. Yes, even violent and arrogant Robespierre still possessed a fragment of intense martyr-like sincerity.

Yoshinaka possessed that single sincerity alone. It became the overmastering ambition that empties an age, and the passion that cannot bear the sufferings of travelers on the road; its root is one, though its branches are ten thousand. When a great river first issues from its source, that source is only a little stream among the ravines. Is not the reason he was what he was simply that he held his whole soul fast by this one spiritual flame? He was a man of sincerity; he was a man of passion. Let us hear, when Yoritomo meant to cross swords with him, the words Yoshinaka sent in reply: “You, my lord, are the legitimate heir of the Minamoto house. I am but one connected to a minor branch of the clan, wishing only to follow behind your noble horse and together bring low the Taira. If you now mean to stir up arms, so that one branch of the family attacks another, this is the misfortune of the Minamoto house, and what is more, it will give the Taira all the more opportunity to profit from the breach. I cannot but grieve deeply over it.” How nakedly those words lay bare his inmost heart, and how limpidly clean they are. Thus he lowered his language and loyally planned for the sake of the clan. Nor did he stop at lowering his language: his sharp and unbending spirit still would not rest, as seen in the way he entrusted his beloved child to Yoritomo’s hands. Such sincerity shakes the heart; it has truly the grandeur of the Milky Way falling from the nine heavens.

Again I say: he was truly a man of passion. When Sanemori died in Hokuriku, Yoshinaka held his severed head in his arms and wept. When Seo and his men fought valiantly and fell in the battle of Mizushima, he lamented, “Splendid warriors! I wish I could have gone to their aid.” If he could feel thus even for enemies crossing swords at the front, one can well imagine how generously he treated his own soldiers. Those under his banner were stirred, for his sake, by a devotion that would “not shrink even from death.” It was not that he possessed a capacious spirit, like a bright wind, that naturally embraced all men. Nor was it that he had the majestic moral authority of a qilin standing over the beasts and making them submit. It was simply that, toward those about him, he poured out his whole spirit, and tears of feeling flowed in answer to tears of feeling; his blazing passion gave men directly the sense that they had truly been understood and recognized. Though there were only a few worthy men beneath his standard, still such men as Shirō Kanehira, Jirō Kanemitsu, and Ōyamata Yukichika repaid him with their lives. Compared with Minamoto no Yoritomo, who exterminated Minamoto no Kurō, put Gamu no Kanja to death, and hounded Kurando Yukiie to destruction, making them feel like good bows put away once the high-flying birds were gone, how vast was the difference between the two? It was not merely the distance between heaven and earth. A third time I say it: he was truly a man of passion. That he succeeded as a general and failed as a statesman was due, too, to this very trait. To push through a hundred hardships and pacify an age, to clear away a thousand entanglements and settle a great design, requires above all a man with great hands. To look at a scrap of cloud and know the coming wind and snow, to hear gossip in the streets and calculate the drift of events, requires above all a man with great eyes. One who wears the seal of office and faces the realm may well be permitted not a single tear. Is not this what is suggested by the tale that Li Linfu, brooding silently in his hall at midnight, always had someone to kill the next day? And yet, when one leads the armies and makes the chase for supremacy one’s business, it may be permissible not to be a man of eyes; it may also be permissible not to be a man of hands. But if one is not a man of tears, then he must absolutely be denied the measure of a commander; he cannot be entrusted with the burden of a great leader. On this point Yoshinaka need not blush: he was every inch a fine general. The hardy warriors of the seven provinces who submitted to him were roused and heartened by his tears, and thus they were able to smash armies of tens of thousands beneath the red banners. Yet once he entered the capital, he was forced to take off his armor and stand in a place where one must trail long robes. He found himself in a place that demanded a cool eye and a deft hand. In a single turn he moved from the position of rallying men against evil and injustice to the position of restoring order after chaos. In short, he passed from the field where he excelled into the field where he did not. But to manage the realm he had too warm a heart for tears. To overshadow an entire age, he was rather too hot-blooded. In the end, he was not made to move about the corridors of government clad in court robes and great caps; was it not only natural that he should fail as a politician? In the history of the Juei Revolution, the model of a constructive revolutionary endowed with practical statecraft is seen, for us, only in Minamoto no Hyōe no Suke Yoritomo. Watching how he dealt with the court, with the Taira, with the provincial magnates, with Nanto and Hiei, with the establishment of military governors and estate stewards, and with the founding of the Kamakura shogunate, one sees him deciding the affairs of the realm with calculation to the last and with organization to the last, like a sharp sword cutting through a tangle of hemp. In Yoritomo, foresight and execution were almost one. Unless the tide was with him, he would not launch even a light skiff. Yoshinaka, by contrast, cared nothing for success or failure, gain or loss. He never stopped to weigh profit against harm. He would not hesitate to ride his horse even at a mud wall. Thus he failed as a statesman. And if on the one hand he lacked the vessel required of a minister, on the other hand he fully possessed the stuff of a general. Is this not precisely what made Yoshinaka Yoshinaka, what made him the revolutionary hero among revolutionary heroes?

He was a child of the wild. When he put on court dress and formal robes, the whole realm laughed at him. When he wore bow and arrows and guarded the palace gates, people of the time mocked him: “He was a fair-skinned, handsome fellow enough, but his movements and bearing were unbearably clumsy, and the way he spoke was all rough provincial accent.” From the eyes of cavaliers who trampled green grass while brandishing coral whips, with grape wine in luminous cups at night, this Roundhead from the mountains of Kiso could only appear ridiculous; it was hardly surprising that they reviled him, saying that “everything about him, down to the hang of his sleeves and the lining of his hakama, was hopelessly boorish.” And yet he truly possessed a wild heart. He was never ashamed when he looked within himself. If there was something he wanted for his own satisfaction, he was not the sort to shrink from any deed necessary to obtain it. He dared commit the violence of a rebel subject. Yet whenever, following the outpouring of his own self, he sought what he desired and did what he wished, he did so openly and grandly, allowing not the slightest trace of powder or rouge in it. He was a grown man with the heart of a child. When angry he shouted; when sad he wept. He truly knew nothing of good, but neither did he really know evil. Yes, to the very end he was a wild man of the mountains of Kiso. And at the same time he was the one giant of his age who transcended its morality.

When the Yellow Gate of Nekoma came to visit him, he looked to those at his side and asked, “Do cats grant audiences to people?” When Tsuzumi no Hangan Tomoyasu came bearing an imperial decree, Yoshinaka asked, “This man they call Tsuzumi no Hangan, does that mean he has been beaten by ten thousand men, or stretched over a drumskin?” When he rode in an ox carriage, he said, “If it is a carriage, why should it pass straight through wherever it likes?” and climbed down from the rear of it. How innocent he was, how like a child at play. He served the Yellow Gate of Nekoma “a country wooden bowl, very large and deep, heaped high with rice, with three side dishes and a soup of hiratake mushrooms.” And when he saw that the Yellow Gate did not eat, he cried, “Lord Cat, you are a small eater indeed. I hear you can vomit like a cat too. Go on, scratch it up, scratch it up!” How like the yells of a naughty boy.

Thus every word and every action of his was uncouth. Because of this, he was showered with the mockery of the world. And yet he was merely a man of direct feeling and straight action, moving as he pleased like drifting clouds or running water. In all this there was a passion worthy of admiration, and a sincerity that could not be concealed. In other words, all he did was trample underfoot, in every direction, the meaningless three thousand rules of etiquette that the cavaliers of his age prized along with their jeweled cups and green wine. He was a rough man, yet an innocent and gentle rough man. He was, after all, a child of the wild. What could petty rules and measuring lines mean to him? He was freedom’s favorite child. He was passion’s beloved child. And he was a hero of revolution. He was not a high-browed lord who could control rival powers, wield long-range strategy, and govern the realm. He was rather a double-pupiled general who roared at enemy armies, brandished a single sword, and broke through solid battle lines. He was not a statesman of broad design, capable of lifting up the great framework of national administration and making the people gather to him as stars gather around the Northern Dipper. What he possessed instead was the chivalrous backbone of a Mazzini, like a flash of fire: fierce, swift, bold, unhesitating to offer even the soldier’s remonstrance of Yuquan. He was born from the great current of the Juei Revolution and fanned that current onward. Or rather, he rode upon that current. He was not the mere drummer of revolution; he was its first mover. When he was defeated and died at Awazu, he was only thirty-one years old. And the span in which he galloped across the realm, from his uprising in Kiso to his destruction at Awazu, was in truth no more than four short years. His social life was thus exceedingly brief. Yet with his blazing revolutionary spirit and his untamed, unbroken wild vigor, he sought freedom for the individual, sought the light of a new age, and bestowed upon human life a new meaning and a new glory. His life was a life of failure. His history was a history of stumbling. His generation was a generation of ill fortune. And yet his life was the life of a man.

His life was short, but the lesson of it was long. The sacred flame on the altar of revolution that he kindled will surely blaze on without ever being extinguished. The sound of the revolutionary bugle he blew will surely ring on without ever ceasing. He is gone, yet he is not gone. The true essence of him as a hero of revolution remains even after a thousand years. Thus, what is there to regret in his desperate death on the fields of Awazu? Seven hundred years of spring winds and autumn rains have passed, and now the beneficent grace of the sacred reign shines over the whole age; the rising spirit of a new era swells like a rainbow, and the signs of peace are about to fill heaven and earth. The common people beat their bellies in contentment and delight in good government. That there is now no occasion to have another Yoshinaka sound the dawn-bell of revolution is the good fortune of this enlightened age.

(February 1910)