by VIKING ADULT
Lord Kiyomori was enraged. “‘The dregs of the Taira house’?” he roared. “‘The rubbish and sweepings of those who bear arms’? What on earth does he mean by that? Arrest this Shingyū and put him to death!”
Kakumei, or Shingyū as he was then, therefore fled Nara and made for the north,
where he became Yoshinaka’s secretary and scribe.
This is the formal prayer that he wrote:
Prostrate obeisance to the Refuge.
Great Bodhisattva Hachiman laid the foundations of the Japanese imperium; from him issue the generations of our enlightened sovereigns. To guard their priceless throne and to benefit the multitude, he makes manifest three golden forms and throws open for each the portals of provisional presence. For many years now a certain Taira chancellor has lorded it over the four seas and visited suffering upon the people. He is an enemy equally of the Buddha’s and of the Sovereign’s Ways.
With respect to myself, Yoshinaka, undeserved good fortune gained me birth into a warrior house, and within the limits of my poor capacity I succeeded to my father’s calling. The wickedness of the Taira chancellor defies reasoned thought. To heaven, therefore, I entrust my fate and offer my life to the nation. Having assembled a force of righteous warriors, I wish to repulse the vessels of evil. However, even as the opposing sides now face each other, my men still show no true unity of resolve, and some, I fear, may not see things as I do. I raised my banners on the field of battle and suddenly beheld the threefold sanctuary through which you temper your light for the good of all sentient beings.
That you will answer your servant’s prayer is plain to see. That the evildoers will perish, one and all, there is no doubt. Tears of joy pour from my eyes; ardent faith fires my entrails. Note especially my great-grandfather, Lord Yoshiie, former governor of Michinokuni, who dedicated his life to serving your lineage and took the name Hachimantar. Every member of the Minamoto line has always revered him. I myself, his descendant, have long bowed before his example. In aspiring now to so great a deed, I resemble a child hoping to measure the ocean with a shell or a praying mantis waving its forelegs to challenge a mighty chariot. If I nonetheless do so, it is for the sake of realm and sovereign, not for myself or for my house.
The celestial gods know the strength of my resolve. My faith is firm, my joy assured. Prostrate I implore divine aid, seen and unseen. Lend me your subtle might and vouchsafe swift victory! Scatter the enemy to the four winds! And if my heartfelt prayer has your approval, if divine favor is to be mine, I beg you, show me a sign!
Kakumei (left) and Yoshinaka at the Hachiman shrine.
Juei 2, fifth month, eleventh day
Respectfully submitted: Minamoto no Yoshinaka
So read Yoshinaka’s prayer. Then he and twelve of his men each took a humming arrow from his quiver and offered it, with the prayer, at the Great Bodhisattva’s sanctuary.
Hachiman keeps faith with his faithful.
Surely the Great Bodhisattva descried
from afar his supplicant’s keen resolve,
for three doves then flew from the clouds,
to flutter over the white Genji banners.
Long ago, while Empress Jingū
strove to press the attack in Silla,
her army, of the two, seemed the weaker
and her enemy’s very strong.
When the outcome seemed all too clear,
she prayed to heaven. There and then
three spirit doves flew from the sky
and appeared before her army’s shields.
The foreign army suffered defeat.
When Yoshinaka’s great ancestor
Lord Yoriyoshi waged his campaign
to suppress Sadat and Munet,
his force likewise fell short of theirs.
Standing before their camp, he declared,
“This flame is from the gods, not me.”
Then he loosed fire. Abruptly the wind
veered straight toward the evil horde.
Sadat’s Kuriyagawa fort,
his personal residence, burned.
The rebels went down to defeat,
and that was, after all, the end
of Sadat and Munet.
These examples Yoshinaka
kept in mind as he dismounted,
doffed his helmet, rinsed hands and mouth,
and bowed to the spirit doves,
certain of the deity’s blessing.
6. The Rout Down Kurikara Ravine
Meanwhile the Genji and Heike took up opposing positions
a mere three hundred yards apart. No one on either side moved.
Then, from the Genji, fifteen sturdy warriors rode out beyond the line of shields
and shot fifteen humming arrows into the Heike camp.
The Heike, who did not grasp the maneuver behind this, answered in kind:
fifteen riders, fifteen arrows.
The Genji sent out thirty more men, who shot thirty more arrows.
Thirty more men of the Heike shot back their thirty.
Then came fifty, then a hundred, first from the Genji, then from the Heike,
until a hundred men on each side stood forward from their camp,
impatient to engage. The Genji, though, kept theirs under control,
killing time the whole day long; and the Heike,
suspecting no scheme to drive them down toward Kurikara Ravine,
played along with them, poor men, until the light began to fail.
As night descended, from north and south
the pair of flanking forces converged—
ten thousand mounted men in all—
to meet near the Kurikara chapel,
and there they raised a great battle cry.
The Heike saw flying behind them
what seemed a cloud of white banners.
“This mountain, though, on all sides
is nothing but boulders and escarpments!”
they protested among themselves.
“Who could possibly have imagined
a flanking force getting behind us?
How on earth can this have happened?”
Then, at Yoshinaka’s command,
a battle cry rose from his main corps,
from the ten thousand riders hidden
at Matsunaga-no-yanagibara
and at Guminoki-bayashi,
and from Imai Kanehira’s six thousand
lurking at Hinomiya-bayashi.
Behind the Heike and before them,
forty thousand full-throated shouts
all but shattered mountains and rivers.
As Yoshinaka had foreseen,
the Heike, with night now coming on
and the enemy threatening them
front and rear, faltered and broke.
“Shame! For shame! Turn back, turn back!”
many Heike cried, but most fled,
deaf to any reproach or appeal,
headlong down Kurikara Ravine.
No one could see his fellows ahead;
all simply clung to desperate faith
that the bottom would offer a road.
Down hurtled the father, down the son,
down the brothers, elder then younger,
down the lord, his retainer behind him:
men piling on horses, horses on men,
over and over, till, mounts and riders,
seventy thousand of the Heike
edge to edge choked the yawning ravine.
Springs ran blood; the dead lay in mounds.
To this day, so it is told,
arrow-strike nicks and sword cuts mark
the rocks up and down Kurikara.
Tadatsuna, Kagetaka, and Hidekuni, all trusted leaders of the Heike,
lay in the ravine beneath the dead.
Seno-o no Tar Kaneyasu, of Bitchū, famed as a powerful fighter,
had fallen foul of Kuramitsu no Jir Narizumi, of Kaga, who took him prisoner.
Captu
red, too, was Heisenji abbot Saimei, the traitor at Hiuchi.
“I really hate that monk,” Yoshinaka declared. “Behead him first.”
So Saimei’s head fell. The Heike commanders Koremori and Michimori
barely escaped with their lives and made their way to Kaga.
Of their seventy thousand men, only two thousand survived.
The next day, the twentieth, Yoshinaka received two magnificent horses
from Hidehira in the north, one a roan, one a dappled gray.
At once he placed a gold-fitted saddle on each
and offered the pair as sacred steeds to the Hakusan Shrine.
Yoshinaka declared himself satisfied. “Yukiie still worries me, though,” he said, “fighting at Shiho. I will go and see how he is getting on.” From among his forty thousand men and horses, he picked the best twenty thousand and galloped off.
He reached the Himi river-mouth crossing at high tide.
Not knowing how deep the water might be, he drove in ten saddled horses.
They crossed safely, the tops of their pommels and cantles still dry.
“The water is not deep!” he cried.
“Cross now!” In plunged his army,
twenty thousand strong, and got through.
Sure enough, under fierce attack
Yukiie had quit the fray.
Yoshinaka, far from surprised
to find him resting his horses,
sent his twenty thousand fresh troops,
yelling, straight into the Heike
thirty thousand. In the melee
sword sparks flew, and for a while
the Heike managed to hold their own,
but the assault undid them at last,
and there, too, they met defeat.
Their senior commander Tomonori,
the governor of Mikawa, was killed;
he was Kiyomori’s youngest son.
Many Heike men died as well.
Yoshinaka crossed Mount Shiho
to camp at Kodanaka in Noto,
before the Prince’s Barrow.189
7. The Battle at Shinohara
Yoshinaka immediately donated estates to several shrines:
to the Hakusan Shrine, Yokoe and Miyamaru;
to the Sug Shrine, the Nomi estate;
to the Tada Yawata Shrine, the estate of Chya;
to the Kehi Shrine, that of Hanbara.
To Heisenji he donated the seven districts of Fujishima.
Those who aimed their arrows at Yoritomo
a few years before, at the battle of Ishibashiyama,
had fled to the capital and now served the Heike.
Chief among them were Matano no Gor Kagehisa,
Nagai no Sait Bett Sanemori, It no Kur Sukeuji,
Ukisu no Sabur Shigechika, and Mashimo no Shir Shigenao.
While they bided their time until called again into battle,
these met daily to enjoy passing around cups of wine.
On his day to host the gathering, Sanemori declared,
“Reflection on the state of our world
suggests that strength lies with the Genji,
while the Heike seem destined to fail.
Come then: Let us join Yoshinaka.”
“True enough,” the company murmured.
When they met the next day at Shigechika’s, Sanemori said,
“Well? How do all of you feel about what I said yesterday?”
Kagehisa stepped forward to reply:
“But we are famous in the east.
Everyone there knows who we are.
Shifting allegiance to suit ourselves
would only make us all look bad.
How the rest of you feel, I do not know, but I myself will remain on the Heike side to the end, whatever that may be.”
Sanemori answered, with a bitter laugh, “Actually, I spoke as I did only to test you. Personally, I mean to die in our next battle. I have informed those who matter, including Lord Munemori, that I will not return to the capital.”
All present shared his sentiments.
So it came to pass that each man
gathered together on that day—
loyal to their pact to the last—
died a cruel death in the north.
Meanwhile, to rest men and horses, the Heike camped at Shinohara in Kaga.
On the twenty-first of the fifth month of that year,
at the early-morning hour of the dragon, [ca. 8 A.M.]
Yoshinaka’s army attacked them there with mighty battle cries.
Now, ever since Jish, the Heike had retained in the capital two brothers,
Hatakeyama no Shji Shigeyoshi and Oyamada no Bett Arishige,
whom they had now sent out with their army to the north.
“You’re seasoned warriors, you two,” the brothers were told. “Direct the fighting.”
They now stood forward from the Heike camp, leading three hundred men.
On the Genji side, Imai Kanehira faced them, likewise with three hundred.
Each first sent out five, then ten men to try the other’s mettle.
Then the two full contingents joined battle.
Noon, that day: Not a leaf stirred
while the men, under a blazing sun,
strove each to outshine all others,
bodies pouring rivers of sweat.
On Kanehira’s side many died,
and of his housemen and retainers
Hatakeyama had so few left
that he was obliged to retreat.
Then there rode out from the Heike
five hundred men led by Nagatsuna.
From the Genji force, three hundred
under Kanemitsu and Kaneyuki
galloped forward to meet the challenge.
For a time both sides seemed to hold,
but Nagatsuna’s men were recruits
picked up from this province and that,
and not one of them really fought;
rather they fled as fast as they could.
Nagatsuna himself was brave enough,
but, lacking anyone at his back,
he had no choice except to withdraw.
And while he was fleeing, all alone,
Nyūzen no Kotar Yukishige, from Etchū, spotted a worthy opponent.
Whip and stirrup, he galloped up beside Nagatsuna and gripped him hard.
Nagatsuna seized him in turn and crushed him onto his pommel.
“Who are you?” he demanded to know. “I want to hear your name.”
“I am Nyūzen no Kotar Yukishige, from Etchū,” came the reply.
“This is my eighteenth year.”
“Oh, no! The son I lost last year,
if this year he were still alive,
would now be in his eighteenth, too.
I should properly take your head
and let it lie here in the dust,
but no, I spare your life.” He let him go.
Nagatsuna dismounted and sat down to rest, until his allies should arrive.
“He did let me live,” Yukishige reflected. “But what an opponent!
I simply must kill him, somehow.”
Meanwhile Nagatsuna chatted on with him, quite relaxed.
The lightning-fast Yukishige drew his dagger, dove at him,
and twice plunged it in under his helmet.
Three of his men then galloped up to support his attack.
Nagatsuna by no means lacked courage, but his time must have come,
for the enemy were many and he had sustained grave wounds.
He fell at last on the spot.
Charged forth then from the Heike side
Musashi no Saburzaemon Arikuni
with three hundred, howling for war;
and, from the Genji, Nishina, Takanashi,
Yamada no Jir with five hundred,
eager for battle. The Heike men
held out awhile, but many were killed.
Far in among the enemy ranks
,
Arikuni shot the last of his arrows,
lost his mount to a lethal shaft,
yet still, now on foot, drew his sword
to fight on, and slew many men
until, bristling with arrows,
he died at last, still on his feet.
Seeing their commander’s fate,
his men fled, every one.
8. Sanemori
The Heike were all gone now, but a single rider,
Sait Bett Sanemori, from Nagai in Musashi,
turned back from the rout to carry on the fight.
For a special reason, he wore a red brocade hitatare robe, green-laced armor,
a helmet with spreading horns, and a gold-fitted sword.
On his back he bore arrows fletched with black-banded eagle feathers;
his hand gripped a lacquered, rattan-wrapped bow;
and he rode a dappled roan with a gold-trimmed saddle.
Tezuka no Tar Mitsumori, one of Yoshinaka’s men, noted a worthy opponent.
“Bravo!” he cried. “And who are you, then, when your whole side has fled,
to ride alone against us? I would gladly know you. Tell me your name!”
“And you—who are you?” Sanemori replied.
“Tezuka no Tar Mitsumori,
a warrior from Shinano province.”
“Why, then,” Sanemori answered,
“you and I are worthy opponents.
Believe me, I mean no disrespect,
but for certain particular reasons
I cannot now reveal my name.
Come, Tezuka, let us close and fight!”
He was moving up next to the foe
when one of Tezuka’s trusted men
galloped up from behind the two,
to ensure that his lord was not killed,
got between them, and seized Sanemori.
“So you have a mind, do you, to fight
the greatest warrior in Japan?”
Sanemori shouted, got his own grip,
crushed the man onto his pommel,
cut off his head, and tossed it away.
At the sight Tezuka circled left,
lifted the skirt of his enemy’s armor,
stabbed him twice, and as he weakened,
seized him and fell with him to the ground.
Sanemori had courage aplenty,
