THE LORD OF SHIRAKAWA was once assaulted by a spirit while asleep. Informed that he needed to place an appropriate weapon above his pillow, he summoned Yoshiie. Yoshiie at once offered a bow made of spindletree and lacquered black. The Lord of Shirakawa stopped being tormented by the spirit after placing the bow above his pillow. Deeply moved, he asked Yoshiie if he had used the bow during the Twelve-Year War. Yoshiie replied he did not remember. That, we hear, increased the lord’s admiration.
This brief episode from Uji Sh
i Monogatari (Tales Gleaned from Uji, sec. 66) illustrates the great respect resembling awe that the imperial court headed by Emperor
Shirakawa (1053-1129), here called the Lord of Shirakawa, came to feel for the warrior Minamoto no Yoshiie (1041-1108). By
the time of this episode some nobles had called him “the commander of all samurai” and “the samurai of the greatest bravery
under heaven.” The second designation was used by Fujiwara no Munetada (dates uncertain) in his diary when Yoshiie was permitted
to enter Shirakawa’s court in 1098. Entering the imperial court was an honor seldom accorded to warriors.
Yoshiie distinguished himself in two civil wars traditionally known as the Former Nine-Year War (1051-1062) and the Latter Three-Year War (1083-1087)1 – in the first as one of the commanders under his father, Yoriyoshi, Governor of Mutsu, and in the second as himself Governor of Mutsu. Both wars were waged to break the power of the clans in the Mutsu region that were influential as leaders of the Ebisu.2
The Abe family whose heads were appointed county chiefs in the region, which was the territory of the previously dominant
Ebisu, are said to have been themselves Ebisu, and as their autonomy increased they became the real rulers of the region.
Furthermore, they were not only popular and powerful among those they ruled; they were cultured as well. The cultural sophistication
of the Abe is suggested by the renga exchange which, as narrated in an episode below, is said to have taken place in the heat
of a battle between Yoshiie and Abe Sadat
, the leader of the people the Minamoto were fighting. It is said that Munet, Sadat’s
brother who surrendered at the end of the Former Nine-Year War, shamed the Kyoto aristocrats who had assumed his boorish ignorance
and tried to make a laughingstock of him. When they pointed at plum blossoms, a routine topic of poetry, and asked if he knew
what they were, Munet promptly responded with a poem:
Waga kuni no mume no hana to wa mitaredomo
miya-bito wa nan to iuran
In my province I’d see them as plum blossoms;
what, I wonder, do Kyoto nobles call them?
Naturally, fighting the people led by such men, in alien territory with a harsh climate, was grueling for Yoriyoshi and his soldiers. Mutsu was Abe turf; logistics was a constant problem for Yoriyoshi, and many soldiers deserted. Changes of heart among local clan leaders were not infrequent and often crucial. Kiyohara no Tsunekiyo, who was at first on Yoriyoshi’s side, switched to the Abe forces and took with him 800 of his private soldiers. It was because of this turncoat act that Yoriyoshi, as told in the following narrative, put Tsunekiyo to slow death when he was captured alive. In the end Yoriyoshi won because Kiyohara no Noritake, a powerful leader of Ebisu in Dewa joined him with 10,000 soldiers. On his own Yoriyoshi had only 3,000 soldiers under his direct command.
It was in one of the many tough earlier battles that Yoshiie’s fame as a great archer was established. Mutsu Waki, an account of the Former Nine-Year War, tells the story succinctly.
In the eleventh month of the same year [1057] the commander in chief [Yoriyoshi] led an army of 1,800 soldiers, resolved to
destroy Sadat and his men. Sadat, leading an army of 4,000 crack troops, turned Kogane no Tameyuki’s stockade at Kawasaki
into his front-line outpost and put up a defense in Kimoni. The winds and the snow were extremely fierce, and the roads and
paths difficult to follow. The government forces ran out of food and both men and horses were exhausted. The rebels galloped
into their midst on fresh horses and shot at them as they tottered about on their weakened legs. Not only were the two sides
different in spirit, but because one had few soldiers and the other many, they also differed in strength. The government forces
were beaten in a great many engagements, with several hundred men killed.
However, Yoshiie, the first son of the commander in chief, far surpassed his fellow commanders in fury and bravery, and was like a god as he shot from his horse. Galloping again and again into the layers of encircling soldiers with glinting swords, he broke out to their left or to their right and, with his longbow and arrows, shot enemy commanders. None of his arrows left his bow in vain, and every target that was hit toppled over dead. He dashed about like lightning and flew like wind, his divine military prowess known to all. The Ebisu people ran about, none with the courage to challenge him….
[Still,] the soldiers guarding the commander in chief were either scattered, killed or wounded, and in the end only six of
his officers on horseback were left. These were Yoshiie, Junior Secretary of Palace Repairs Fujiwara no Kagemichi, yake no
Mitsut, Kiyohara no Sadahiro, Fujiwara no Norisue and Noriakira. The 200 horse-riding rebels half-circled and attacked them
from the solid left and right wings, shooting arrows like rain. The commander in chief’s horse was hit by a stray arrow and
dropped dead. Kagemichi obtained a horse and gave it to him. Yoshiie’s horse was also shot and killed. Noriakira robbed a
rebel of his horse and gave it to Yoshiie. While all this was going on, it was almost impossible to break away. But Yoshiie
kept shooting down enemy commanders. Also, Mitsut and the other men fought with abandon. Finally, the rebels, deciding that these
men were gods, retreated, so Yoriyoshi’s men were also able to retreat.
Yoshiie was eighteen years old at the time.
Mutsu Waki goes on to tell how during this war Yoshiie’s prowess as a bowman impressed so many men that Kiyohara no Noritake, the Ebisu leader who joined the government army, once asked to see the force of his shooting. Yoshiie gladly concurred. Noritake hung three sets of armor from a tree, and Yoshiie shot at them. The arrow easily pierced all three. Amazed, Noritake declared that Yoshiie must indeed be the reincarnation of Hachiman, the deity of the bow and arrow.3
In 1062, the last year of the Former Nine-Year War, there were a series of battles. On the fifth of the ninth month, 1062,
Sadat assaulted Yoriyoshi’s camp with an army of 8,000 men. Yoriyoshi had 6,500 under his command, but after a ferocious
battle lasting several hours forced Sadat to retreat, then gave chase. That night, while his main troops rested in the camp,
Yoriyoshi ordered Noritake to continue the chase. In the dark of the night Noritake led fifty commandos into the enemy camp.
Thrown into confusion, Sadat’s forces retreated farther, leaving a trail of bloody casualties, and by the time they reached
the castle by the Koromo River they had abandoned two more military outposts.
During the afternoon of the sixth, Yoriyoshi’s men attacked the castle in three groups. Noritake, leading one group, had about
thirty particularly agile men climb a giant tree whose branches extended almost to the other shore where the castle stood.
Using vines and ropes, these men successfully crawled along over large branches, jumped down to the other side, and stole
into the enemy quarters and set fires. Thrown into confusion, Sadat and his men fled out of the castle. It was at that time
that the famous exchange of renga between Sadat and Yoshiie is said to have taken place.
In an episode from Kokon Chomon J (sec. 336), whose emphasis on details differs from the account given in Mutsu Waki, the governorship of Iyo mentioned was awarded Yoriyoshi for his military achievements in this war.
Minamoto no Yoriyoshi, Governor of Iyo, spent twelve springs and autumns in Mutsu warring against Sadat and Munet.
On one occasion he left the Defense Headquarters to move his men to Akita Castle. It snowed abundantly and all the men in
his army turned cloth-white. Sadat’s castle by the Koromo River rose on a high bank. Yoriyoshi’s soldiers built rafts and
attacked and fought with their shields raised above their helmets. Finally, Sadat and his men gave up resistance and escaped
from the rear of the castle. Yoriyoshi’s first son, Hachiman Tar, gave hot pursuit along the Koromo River and called out,
“Sir, you show your back to your enemy! Aren’t you ashamed? Turn around a minute, I have something to tell you.”
When Sadat turned around, Yoshiie said:
Koromo no tate wa hokorobinikeri
Koromo Castle has been destroyed
[The warps of your robe have come undone]4
Sadat relaxed his reins somewhat and, turning his helmeted head, followed that with:
toshi o heshi ito no midare no kurushisa ni
over the years its threads became tangled, and this pains me
Upon hearing this, Yoshiie put away the arrow he had readied to shoot, and returned to his camp. In the midst of such a savage battle, that was a gentlemanly thing to do.
One doesn’t have to be a historian to note that this could not have been a “historical fact”; commanders of battling armies of several thousand men wouldn’t have had the time or inclination to engage in “a battle of poems” like this. Then why was such a legend born? The cultural sophistication of the leaders of the Abe clan was either already known or came to be known later. As Yoshiie’s reputation as an outstanding warrior spread and even became legendary, it became necessary to make him more than a man of brawn and bravery-more of an all-around man.
Sadat continued his retreat, finally reaching his residential stronghold, a stockade rising next to the Kuriya River. By
then many of his able and trusted commanders had been killed. Yoriyoshi headed with his army for the stockade on the fourteenth.
The following passage from Mutsu Waki does not have Yoshiie as its principal player but vividly renders the savagery of war and its aftermath.
[Yoriyoshi’s army] arrived on the evening of the fifteenth and surrounded the two stockades–the one by the Kuriya River and the other in Ubato. They were separated from each other by seven or eight hundred yards. The camps, like a bird with its wings spread wide, were in firm defense throughout the night. There was a large marsh to the northwest of the Kuriya Stockade; the front end of the Ubato Stockade was some distance from the river. The riverbank rose about thirty feet from the water like a cliff, and was pathless. The Kuriya Stockade was built on the bank, itself an enforcement. A lookout tower was set up above the stockade, manned by alert soldiers. Between the river and the stockade was a trench, its bottom covered with swords erected upside down; the ground had iron blades planted all over it. The soldiers of the stockade shot at distant enemies with crossbows and threw stones at those nearer. As for those who managed to reach the stockade, they poured boiling water on them or swung sharp swords at them and killed them.
When the government forces arrived, the soldiers on the lookout tower challenged them, calling out, “Come and fight us!” Then fifty to sixty maids climbed the tower and sang songs. The commander in chief was outraged by this and in the early morning of the sixteenth began to attack and fight. All day and all night the crossbows he had gathered together were used in confusing numbers, and the arrows and stones flew like rain. But the defense inside the stockades was solid and could not be overcome. Several hundred men in the government forces were killed.
In the early afternoon of the seventeenth the commander in chief ordered his commanders and their men: “Go to the villages and destroy the houses. Bring the debris and fill the castle trenches. Cut dry reeds and pile them on the riverbank.”
So the houses were destroyed and their debris was brought; dry reeds were cut and piled up in no time like mountains. The commander in chief dismounted, turned toward the far-off Imperial Castle and prayed: “Once, when the virtues of the Han Dynasty had not yet deteriorated, a sudden downpour answered the wish of the commander of the Western Defense Headquarters. Now heaven’s will is apparent again. May a great wind help this old subject remain loyal. I here supplicate and pray: May the Three Shrines of Hachiman send forth winds and blow on the fire to burn down these stockades!”
Then he himself picked up a torch and, calling it a divine fire, tossed it. At that moment a dove flew over the camp. The commander in chief prayed again. Suddenly a violent wind rose, and the smoke and flames leapt about.6
The arrows the government forces had shot before this were stuck in the walls of the stockade and on the roof of the lookout tower like the straws on a straw raincoat. The flying flames followed the wind and reached the feathers of these arrows. The stockade and the tower were instantly engulfed in fire. The thousands of men and women within the castle were stricken with grief and cried in unison. Some rebels, crushed and confused, threw themselves into the blue waters or beheaded themselves with glinting white blades.
The government forces crossed the waters to attack and fight. Thereupon, some several hundred desperate rebels, armored and brandishing swords, broke out of the stockade into the encircling army. They were determined to die, with no wish to live. Many of the government troops were wounded or killed. When he saw this, Takenori ordered his men to open the way for the rebels and let them out. His men opened the way. The rebels suddenly changed their mind, decided to escape, and began to run without fighting. Thereupon the government soldiers struck at them at will and killed all of them.
Tsunekiyo was captured alive. The commander in chief summoned him and accused him harshly: “Your ancestors were all servants of my family. But in recent years you have trampled upon the emperor’s wishes and despised your former masters. This is all traitorous and goes against the Way. Do you think you can or cannot use a white sign today?”6
Tsunekiyo hung his head, unable to say anything. The commander in chief hated him so much that he had his head cut off slowly with a blunt sword. This was because he wanted to prolong his pain and suffering.
With sword drawn, Sadat slashed some government soldiers. Government soldiers stabbed him with halberds. Six of them put
him on a large shield and brought him to the commander in chief. He was more than six feet tall, the circumference of his
waist seven feet and four inches. He had an extraordinary face, his skin was white, and he was fat. The commander in chief
accused him of various crimes. Sadat once tried to face him down before dying. His brother Shiget was cut to death. But
Munet threw himself into deep mud and managed to get away. Sadat’s son, aged thirteen and called Boy Chiyo, had a beautiful
face. Donning his armor, he came out of the stockade and fought well. In fury and bravery he recalled his grand-father. The
commander in chief pitied him and wanted to forgive him. But Noritake stepped forward and said, “General, you shouldn’t forget
that you may bring harm unto yourself later by entertaining a bit of justice now.” The commander in chief nodded in assent
and in the end had Chiyo cut to death.
Inside the castle fifty or sixty beautiful women, all dressed splendidly and every one wearing a necklace made of gold and
jade, wailed in grief in the smoke. They were brought out and given to the soldiers. However, Norit’s wife alone behaved
differently; when the stockade was destroyed, holding her three-year-old son, she had said to her husband, “You are about
to be killed. I won’t be able to live alone. I hope to die before you do.” Indeed, holding her infant, she threw herself into
a deep abyss and died. We must say she was a woman of admirable courage.
The following two episodes took place after the war. The first one, from Kokon Chomon J (sec. 338), describes Yoshiie’s great fame as a warrior and his exemplary attitude toward Munet, one of Abe Sadat’s brothers
who had survived.
In the Twelve-Year War Sadat was killed. Munet was treated with gentlemanly courtesy, however, because he had surrendered.
He attended Yoriyoshi’s first son, Yoshiie, mornings and evenings.
One day Yoshiie went to a certain place with Munet as his companion. Both the master and his attendant friend were dressed
in hunting clothes and carried quivers. While passing through a large field, they saw a fox run. Yoshiie drew a fork-tipped
arrow and chased the fox. He thought it would be cruel to kill him, so he shot the arrow in a way it would glance between
the fox’s ears. Indeed, the arrow struck the ground right in front of the fox. His way blocked, the fox dropped to the ground,
seemingly dead.
Munet dismounted and lifted the fox. “The arrow didn’t even touch him,” he said, “but he died.”
Yoshiie looked at the fox and said, “He was scared and fainted. I didn’t want to kill him and deliberately missed him. He’ll revive soon. Release him when he does.”
When Munet picked up the arrow and came to him, Yoshiie let him put it in his quiver.
Yoshiie’s soldier-servants who saw this happen were critical of Yoshiie, saying, “Heavens, that was dangerous. Munet surely
surrendered, but he’s got to have some resentment left in him. How could our master have exposed his flank and let Munet
put back the arrow? That was too dangerous. Suppose Munet was desperate and wanted to harm him?”
But Yoshiie was a man who was almost like a god. Munet, on his part, never dreamed of doing anything wrong. That’s why, we
think, the two men trusted each other so.
Again, one night, Yoshiie went to see a woman with Munet as his sole companion. The woman’s house was old, with the mud fence
crumbling, the gate leaning to one side. Yoshiie went in through the door at the end of the oxcart shed and met the woman
there. Munet waited outside, at the middle gate partitioning one corridor.
The fifth-month sky was as dark as if ink had been splashed all over it. It began to rain, and thunder started to roll; it
was damnably scary. Munet knew something would happen that night. Sure enough, a large number of robbers walked in rambunctiously.
Just this side of the front gate they made a fire, and, from the reflections, Munet could tell there were about thirty of them. He was wondering what to do, when a dog ran from under the floor beneath
him, barking. So he took out a hikime arrow and shot it. The dog scampered about, yapping and yelping. Moments later, in like
fashion, Munet quickly shot the dog several times more.
“Who’s there?” Yoshiie called out.
“Munet, sir!”
“You are shooting at the dog too fast. Are you trying to impress someone?”
When they heard these words, the robbers said to themselves, “That’s Lord Hachiman, dammit!” and ran away, we hear, in utter confusion.
Munet was later moved to Iyo, a province on the Island of Shikoku-the governorship of which was given to Yoriyoshi as a reward
for his work in the Former Nine-Year War-and afterward to Dazaifu, in Ky
sh, the southernmost military and diplomatic headquarters
in those days. The court took these actions probably because it felt that Munet, as a “barbarous” Ebisu, should not be allowed
to live near the Capital.
The following episode is from Kokon Chomon J (sec. 337). As noted earlier, Yoshiie, as Governor of Mutsu, was the commander in chief.
After the Twelve-Year War, when Yoshiie went to visit the Lord of Uji7 and told him of various battles, Lord Masafusa,8 who was there and listened carefully, muttered to himself, “He certainly is a talented and wise warrior. But he doesn’t know what the art of war is all about.”
One of Yoshiie’s soliders happened to overhear this and was indignant that Masafusa should have made such an impertinent observation.
So, when General e came out, followed not long afterward by Yoshiie, the soldier told Yoshiie that the general had said such
and such about him.
Yoshiie said, “I think he’s quite right.” He then walked up to the place where Masafusa was preparing to get on his oxcart, and greeted him. Soon he became one of his disciples and diligently pursued his studies, attending Masafusa’s sessions every time.
Later, during the War of Eih,9 while attacking Kanazawa Castle,10 he saw a file of geese fly away, then dip toward some harvested paddies. But they were suddenly startled in midflight and
flew back, their formation disturbed. Suspicious, the commander in chief held his horse’s bridle and said: “Some years ago,
General e taught me this: ‘When soldiers lie in ambush, flying geese break their formation.’11 There have to be some enemies lying in ambush.”
He then ordered detachments to be sent behind the enemy’s rear. His remaining army itself was divided, and the spot in question was encircled from three sides. Sure enough, about 300 men on horses were hiding. The battle that ensued between the two armies was confusing and prolonged. Yet, because the ambush had been discerned beforehand, the commander in chief kept the upper hand and in the end defeated the soldiers of Takehira and others.
“Without this one particular teaching of General e,” Yoshiie said, “I might have lost this battle.”
Takehira was the first son of Kiyohara no Takenori, an Ebisu leader who, it may be recalled, in the earlier war joined the government forces commanded by Yoshiie’s father, Yoriyoshi. In reward for his exploits, Takenori had been appointed commanding general of the Defense Headquarters set up to keep the Ebisu people under control. In other words, an Ebisu leader who did not work for the central government in Kyoto was put in a position directly responsible for controling the Ebisu people. This seemingly curious measure may have been taken in part because, unlike the Abe, the Kiyohara were not Ebisu themselves but descendants of a government officer.
The Latter Three-Year War began as a squabble among the members of the Kiyohara family. Yoshiie was a bystander who was forced
to take sides. As it turned out, this war proved as grueling as the previous one, and Yoshiie won it only by laying siege
to Kanazawa Castle, completely cutting off their food supplies. Still, the court regarded Yoshiie’s war as a private, not
government, affair, and did not give him any reward after the war. When this happened, Yoshiie rewarded his men out of his
own holdings. That was not something customarily done, and Yoshiie’s generosity is said to have helped generate unprecedented
loyalty to the Minamoto clan in the Kant region.
When the Latter Three-Year War was over, Yoshiie was in his late forties. The last episode to be cited, from Kokon Chomon J (sec. 339), describes the warrior when he was much younger-perhaps not long after returning to Kyoto from the previous war.
When he was in his youthful prime, Yoshiie used to meet secretly with a certain monk’s wife. The woman’s house was near where
Nij Boulevard and Ikuma Street crossed. It had a viewing tower built above the mud fence and a moat dug in front of it, with
thorny thickets planted at its end. The monk himself was known as exceptionally capable in the way of arms, and was careful
in laying out such things.
Yoshiie would come late at night when he knew the monk was away. He would park his oxcart at the outer end of the moat, the woman would pull up the window on the viewing tower and lift the blind, and he would jump right in from the thills of the oxcart. The moat itself was quite wide, and to be able to leap up like that was something no ordinary man could hope to do.
Their meetings were repeated so many times that the monk finally learned about them and tormented his wife for information. When she told him exactly how it was, he said, “Well, then, next time pretend I’m not here, and let the fellow in.” She had no way of getting out of this, and agreed to do what she was told.
The monk planned to cut the man down as he jumped in. So he stood a thick go board like a shield at the spot where the man would come in, the idea being to make him stumble. And he waited, sword drawn.
As expected, the oxcart was parked, and the woman did what she had done at other times. From the thills the man jumped in, like a flying bird, but as he did so he drew his short sword held close to his side, cut in midflight several inches off the top of the go board, and landed safely.
Dumbfounded by the thought that this was no human being, the monk couldn’t think of any move to make. Then, seized with terror, he fell off of the tower in confusion and ran away.
Later, when he made further inquiries, he learned that the man was no less than Hachiman Tar Yoshiie. His fear simply increased.
Some readers may be puzzled to hear about a monk who had a wife and was “exceptionally capable in the way of arms.” The secularization-or degradation and corruption, if you will–of Buddhist monks began early in Japan. The direct cause is traced to the relaxation of government rules on certification and ordination of monks in the ninth century that became necessary as a great many temples were built and thousands of monks had to be created and maintained. Because a Buddhist monk was exempted from certain taxes and labor, everyone wanted to become one. In 914 the Confucian scholar Miyoshi no Kiyotsura (847-918) reported to the emperor some of the social ills of the time and said:
So many people these days shave their heads by themselves and put on priestly robes that two thirds of the people under heaven have tonsured heads. The monks all keep wives and children in their homes and eat meat. In appearance they may look like Buddhist monks; in reality they are the same as butchers.
As celibacy and the rule against the eating of sentient beings were violated, carrying weapons and fighting became prevalent
among monks. In 970 Rygen (912-985), the chief abbot of the Enryaku Temple, on Mt. Hiei, issued strictures on the conduct
within the mountain compounds and said that the monks who carried swords, bows, and arrows and “indulged in harming others
were no different from butchers.”
To return to Minamoto no Yoshiie, what is historically notable about him is that despite the high regard in which the aristocracy held him as a warrior, he remained, in the eye of the ruling class, a samurai in the original sense of the word: an armed servant with few privileges of a court noble. This was vividly illustrated in 1081 when Yoshiie was still in Kyoto, before heading for Mutsu as governor and becoming embroiled in what would be called the Latter Three-Year War.
That year the armed monks of Enryaku and Onj Temples clashed, so the court dispatched Yoshiie and the chief of the Imperial
Police to the Onj Temple to arrest the leaders of the armed monks (called akus
, “evil or tough monks”). In the following month, when the emperor went to visit the Hachiman Shrine at Iwashimizu, Yoshiie
and his brother Yoshitsuna were ordered to accompany his majesty as guards in case of the monks’ reprisal. But because they
did not have proper court titles that would have allowed them to guard the emperor, they were appointed “forerunners” (sengu or maegake) of the regent, who accompanied his majesty, and their armed soldiers were made to follow the procession.
When the procession returned to Kyoto that night, Yoshiie was asked to stay next to the imperial carriage as a guard, in an informal hunting outfit and carrying a bow and arrow. A mere warrior allowed to be so close to the emperor, a noble who observed this noted in his diary, was an “unheard of” arrangement.
In the twelfth month of the same year, the emperor went to visit the Kasuga Shrine, in Nara. At that time, too, Yoshiie was ordered to guard the procession. That he did, fully armed, but again as the regent’s guard, not the emperor’s, and he and his men, numbering more than a hundred, were made to stay far behind the imperial procession.
The relationship between the samurai and the imperial court would greatly change a century later.