A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

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

What ensued is soon told. Taken completely by surprise, the Taira weakened, and the Minamoto, pouring in at either flank, completed the rout which had already commenced. Munemori was among the first of the fugitives. He embarked with the Emperor Antoku and the regalia, and steered for Yashima, whither he was quickly followed by the remnants of his force. Shigehira, Kiyomori's fifth son, was taken prisoner. Michimori, Tadanori, and Atsumori were killed. Several illustrative incidents marked this great fight. Michimori's wife threw herself into the sea when she heard of her husband's death. Tomoakira, the seventeen-year-old son of Tomomori, deliberately sacrificed himself to save his father, and the latter, describing the incident subsequently to his brother, Munemori, said with tears: "A son died to save his father; a father fled, leaving his son to die. Were it done by another man, I should spit in his face. But I have done it myself. What will the world call me?" This same Tomomori afterwards proved himself the greatest general on the Taira side. Okabe Tadazumi, a Minamoto captain, took the head of Tadanori but could not identify it. In the lining of the helmet, however, was found a roll of poems and among them one signed "Tadanori:"

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

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

BATTLE OF YASHIMA

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

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

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

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

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