His defection was followed quickly by the complete rout of the Heike. A resolute attempt was made to defend the ship containing the young Emperor, his mother, his grandmother, and several other Taira ladies; but the vessel finally passed into Minamoto possession. Not before she had been the scene of a terrible tragedy, however. Kiyomori's widow, the Ni-i-no-ama, grandmother of Antoku, took the six-year old child in her arms and jumped into the sea, followed by Antoku's mother, the Empress Dowager (Kenrei-mon-in), carrying the regalia, and by other court ladies. The Empress Dowager was rescued, as were also the sacred mirror and the gem, but the sword was irrevocably lost.
The Taira leader, Munemori, and his son, Kiyomune, were taken prisoner, but Tomomori, Noritsune, and seven other Taira generals were drowned. Noritsune distinguished himself conspicuously. He singled out Yoshitsune for the object of his attack, but being unable to reach him, he seized two Minamoto bushi and sprang into the sea with them. Tomomori, Munemori's brother, who had proved himself a most able general, leaped overboard carrying an anchor. Yoshitsune spoke in strongly laudatory terms of Noritsune and ascribed to him much of the power hitherto wielded by the Taira. Munemori and his son were executed finally at Omi. Shigehira, in response to a petition from the Nara priests whose fanes he had destroyed by Kiyomori's orders, was handed over to the monks and put to death by them at Narasaka. But Kiyomori's brother, who had interceded for the life of Yoritomo after the Heiji emeule, was pardoned, his rank and property being restored to him; and Taira no Munekiyo, who also had acted an important part in saving Yoritomo at that time, was invited to visit Kamakura where he would have been received with honour; but he declined the invitation, declaring that a change of allegiance at such a moment would be unworthy of a bushi.
It may here be noted that, although several of the Taira leaders who took the field against the Minamoto were killed in the campaign or executed or exiled after it, the punitory measures adopted by Yoritomo were not by any means wholesale. To be a Taira did not necessarily involve Kamakura's enmity. On the contrary, not only was clemency extended to several prominent members of Kiyomori's kith and kin, but also many local magnates of Taira origin whose estates lay in the Kwanto were from first to last staunch supporters and friends of the Minamoto. After Dan-no-ura, the Heike's sun permanently ceased to dominate the political firmament, but not a few Heike stars rose subsequently from time to time above the horizon.
MUNEMORI AND ANTOKU
The record of Munemori, whose leadership proved fatal to the Taira cause, stamps him as something very rare among Japanese bushi—a coward. He was the first to fly from every battle-field, and at Dan-no-ura he preferred surrender to death. Tradition alleges that in this final fight Munemori's reputed mother, Ni-i-no-ama, before throwing herself into the sea with the Emperor in her arms, confessed that Munemori was not her son. After she had borne Shigemori she became enceinte and her husband, Kiyomori, looked eagerly for the birth of another boy. But a girl was born. Just at that time the wife of a man who combined the occupations of bonze and umbrella-maker, bore a son, and the two children were surreptitiously exchanged. This story does not rest upon infallible testimony. Nor does another narrative, with regard to the motives which induced Kiyomori's widow to drown the young Emperor. Those motives are said to have been two. One was to fix upon the Minamoto the heinous crime of having done a sovereign to death, so that some avenger might rise in future years; the other was to hide the fact that Antoku was in reality a girl whose sex had been concealed in the interest of the child's maternal grandfather, Kiyomori.
YOSHITSUNE'S FATE
Yoshitsune's signal victories were at Ichi-no-tani and at Yashima. The fight at Dan-no-ura could not have made him famous, for its issue was determined by defection in the enemy's ranks, not by any strategical device or opportune coup on the side of the victors. Yet Japan accords to Yoshitsune the first place among her great captains. Undoubtedly this estimate is influenced by sympathy. Pursued by the relentless anger of his own brother, whose cause he had so splendidly championed, he was forced to fly for refuge to the north, and was ultimately done to death. This most cruel return for glorious deeds has invested his memory with a mist of tears tending to obscure the true outlines of events, so that while Yoritomo is execrated as an inhuman, selfish tyrant, Yoshitsune is worshipped as a faultless hero. Yet, when examined closely, the situation undergoes some modifications. Yoritomo's keen insight discerned in his half-brother's attitude something more than mere rivalry. He discovered the possible establishment of special relations between the Imperial Court and a section of the Minamoto.
Yoshitsune's failure to repair to Kamakura after the battle of Ichi-no-tani inspired Yoritomo's first doubts. Japanese annals offer no explanation of Yoshitsune's procedure on that occasion. It would have been in the reasonable sequence of events that the military genius which planned and carried out the great coup at Ichi-no-tani should have been available at the subsequent council of strategists in Kamakura, and it would have been natural that the younger brother should have repaired, as did his elder brother, Noriyori, to the headquarters of the clan's chief. Yet Yoshitsune remained at Kyoto, and that by so doing he should have suggested some suspicions to Yoritomo was unavoidable. The secret of the Court nobles' ability to exclude the military magnates from any share in State administration was no secret in Yoritomo's eyes. He saw clearly that this differentiation had been effected by playing off one military party against the other, or by dividing the same party against itself; and he saw clearly that opportunities for such measures had been furnished by subjecting the military leaders to constant contact with the Court nobility.
Therefore, he determined to keep two aims always in view. One was to establish a military and executive capital entirely apart from, and independent of, the Imperial and administrative metropolis; the other, to preserve the unity of the Minamoto clan in all circumstances. Both of these aims seemed to be threatened with failure when Yoshitsune preferred the Court in Kyoto to the camp in Kamakura; still more so when he accepted from Go-Shirakawa rank and office for which Yoritomo had not recommended him, and yet further when he obtained from the ex-Emperor a commission to lead the Minamoto armies westward without any reference to, and in despite of, the obvious intention of the Minamoto chief at Kamakura.
All these acts could scarcely fail to be interpreted by Yoritomo as preluding the very results which he particularly desired to avert, namely, a house of Minamoto divided against itself and the re-establishment of Court influence over a strong military party in Kyoto. His apprehensions received confirmation from reports furnished by Kajiwara Kagetoki. Yoritomo trusted this man implicitly. Never forgetting that Kajiwara had saved his life in the affair of the hollow tree, he appointed him to the post of military governor and to the command of the army destined to drive the Taira from Shikoku after the battle of Ichi-no-tani. In that command Kajiwara had been superseded by Yoshitsune, and had moreover been brought into ridicule in connexion not only with the shipbuilding incident but also, and in a far more flagrant manner, with the great fight at Yashima. He seems from the first to have entertained doubts of Yoshitsune's loyalty to Yoritomo, and his own bitter experiences may well have helped to convert those doubts into certainties. He warned Kamakura in very strong terms against the brilliant young general who was then the idol of Kyoto, and thus, when Yoshitsune, in June, 1185, repaired to Kamakura to hand over the prisoners taken in the battle of Dan-no-ura and to pay his respects to Yoritomo, he was met at Koshigoe, a village in the vicinity, by Hojo Tokimasa, who conveyed to him Yoritomo's veto against his entry to Kamakura. A letter addressed by Yoshitsune to his brother on that occasion ran, in part, as follows: