Tomoe rides up to him, pulls his head down,
and freaking cuts off his head with her knife right there.
Today on History With Plenty of Misery,
I bring you burning ox battles, young love, and glorious deaths in the Genpei War.
One of the major players in the war was Lord Kiso, or Kiso Yoshinaka.
While his cousin Minamoto no Yoritomo was building a stronghold in the Kanto,
Lord Kiso was lighting it up in Shinano Province.
He was technically in the Minamoto house and Yoritomo was technically his boss,
since Yoritomo was the Minamoto leader.
But it was like how teenagers are technically under their parents’ authority.
It meant nothing.
Lord Kiso was like his own man, dammit. Stop hovering.
One of his top commanders was a woman, and what a woman.
Now when people talk about female samurai, they probably watched too much anime,
or they’re talking about Tomoe Gozen (巴御前).
She seemed to be a lover of Lord Kiso’s.
She could have been one of his concubines or one of his wives.
The Heike monogatari describes her as gorgeous and also a master--mat-tress?--no, a master
of the horse, the bow, and the sword.
She went into battle with this Sephiroth-like long sword.
Now Lord Kiso was just one of the countless rebel warlords all over the country taking
up their swords against the Taira, most of them flying the Minamoto banner.
Thing is, they weren’t exactly on the Minamoto side.
They were different groups with different goals.
It was a Heian Battle Royale, without high school students.
The rebel groups didn’t coordinate with the Minamoto clan, they didn’t ask permission
from the Minamoto, they just wanted to kick the central government out of their provinces,
and claiming that you’re part of this national movement against Taira tyranny
was good for recruitment.
They were co-opting a Twitter hashtag, basically.
In 1181, we enter the second chapter of the war: We can’t eat and we can’t fight.
Taira no Kiyomori was sick of it.
The rebels were everywhere.
Here are some major ones.
There was a revolt in Owari.
Omi and Mino revolts threatened his grain stockpile.
Kyushu rebels blocked his foreign trade empire with the Chinese.
Even the Buddhist monks rose up.
Okay, so he did torch some major, important temples because they were being obnoxious,
but c’mon.
Kiyomori was sick of it.
Literally. He got sick and he died.
Died you guys!
But Kiyomori’s first son was very capable of continuing his dad’s legacy.
I say “was” because he’s also dead.
And so the reins of the Taira clan was passed on to another of Kiyomori’s sons, Munemori.
Munemori was everything his dad was not.
He was a screwup.
How much of a screwup?
His mother will tell you.
There’s a story that his own mother admitted that he was not Kiyomori’s real son.
She bought him as a baby from an umbrella seller.
Miki: The umbrella seller also sold babies?
What? Yes, it was a business pivot.
No, the guy didn’t switch from selling umbrellas to selling babies,
the umbrella seller gave his own son away.
Miki: Then what do umbrellas have to do with it?
Nothing. It has nothing to do with umbrellas.
He just happened to be an umbrella seller.
Don’t you dare ask about umbrellas in the comments.
What happened was, Munemori’s mother explained, long ago Kiyomori only had one son.
He stressed out about it because that meant only one possible heir.
One day, she gave birth to a daughter, and being a loyal wife,
she switched her daughter with the umbrella seller’s son.
Kiyomori himself didn’t know.
Apparently she later revealed this to people to explain that
“of course the war’s going badly for us, this dummy Munemori is nothing like his father
because he’s not Kiyomori’s son, nor is he my son.”
Or so she claimed.
Imagine hearing your mom say that.
After Kiyomori’s death, the Taira scrambled to keep it together and continue the war.
After a few successes, they turned their sights to Lord Kiso.
But Kiso probably paid for Sun Tzu’s Art of War premium online course because he was
a genius on the battlefield.
He was outnumbered 10 to 1.
Lord Kiso had a death wish...for the other guy.
He disguised his warriors as Taira warriors and won somehow.
Tomoe Gozen was nothing to mess with either.
They said in one battle, she took the heads of 7 mounted warriors.
The bad luck kept piling on for the Taira.
When it rains, it pours.
Except in this case, it didn’t rain.
A famine hit western Japan.
What are the odds?
Very high actually, famines were a fact of life at the time.
But this one was especially big.
It was called the Yowa famine.
It started in 1180, the same year that the war started.
A drought slapped Japan in the face, and Japan couldn’t stand up for 2+ years.
Each year made it worse because people didn’t have food saved up from the last year.
The war stalled.
Everyone hunkered down for some surviving.
People wrote about the streets being filled with dead bodies.
People were desperate.
Some left their homes and families to go live in the mountains,
hoping that hunting, gathering, and fishing would save them.
Some tore down their homes to sell firewood.
Ironically, people in the capital, the richest bishes in normal times, suffered the most.
The city relied on the surrounding provinces to provide them food, but the roads were either
dangerous or blocked by armies.
Armies also had a habit of seizing the crops of farmers wherever they marched.
They were like my dad when walking past a neighbor’s orange tree.
What little food there was couldn’t get to the capital.
The nobles in the capital tried trading their trinkets and valuables for food,
but in a famine, those valuables weren’t so valuable.
Turns out you can’t eat gold.
Many fled the city.
The Taira forced provinces to send food to the starving capital,
because they wanted people to hate them even more.
Meanwhile in the east, Yoritomo wasn’t letting a famine go to waste.
He was offering food to people in exchange for land.
The famine mostly affected the west, you see.
Seeing the Taira weakened, Yoritomo sent them a letter saying,
“Yo, how about a truce?
I’ll rule the east, and y’all can have the west.
There will be peace.
Iono jus think bout it.”
The Taira replied with a middle finger.
The famine eventually subsided, and in 1183, the war resumed.
The Taira attacked Lord Kiso again at Kurikara Pass.
This time, Kiso lured them into a valley called Jigokudani, or Hell Valley.
It’s a good name because of what’s about to happen to the Taira.
Lord Kiso’s army met the Taira forces at Hell Valley.
The Taira men said, “It’s Lord Kiso! Oh crap!”
Lord Kiso stalled them at the valley
to let another unit sneak around the mountains to the enemy’s back
and surround them.
There’s a story about the battle that I really hope is true.
Kiso’s forces gathered oxen and tied burning torches to their heads and had them stampede
into the Taira army WHATT.
After the Oxening, Lord Kiso marched onward to the capital, the Taira home base.
The Taira tried to gather defenders.
They even asked the monks of surrounding temples.
The monks were like,
“Yeah, we could help you.
But first we need to take revenge on the ones who burned our temples and stuff.
Oh wait, that was YOU GUYS. Prepare to die.”
And the monks joined the invaders.
Look, don’t mess with battlemonks is what I’m saying.
The Taira saw the writing on the wall and the wetness on their pants
and got out of the capital.
They took their little boy emperor with them, Emperor Antoku, who was the current emperor
of Japan though no one noticed.
Poor Antoku, his life could’ve been better
if Taira no Kiyomori didn’t put him on the throne.
They also took the imperial regalia with them, the three treasures that represented the emperor.
Lord Kiso strolled into the capital like he owned the place.
There wasn’t room for 2 Minamoto leaders, he thought.
I’m the top Minamoto.
Yoritomo to the east was furious.
There wasn’t room for 2 Minamoto leaders, he thought.
I’m the top Minamoto.
He sent his brothers, Yoshitsune and Noriyori, with an army to the capital.
Lord Kiso was a good soldier, but good soldiers don’t necessarily make good leaders.
He didn’t know how to play the political games like Kiyomori or Yoritomo did.
And as a certain psychopath once said,
when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.
Plus his army looted and pillaged the countryside wherever they went.
Kiso didn’t have many allies in court.
Now in the capital, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa still held a lot of power.
Some Go-Shirakawa allies gathered a bunch of Kiso-haters into a resistance army.
Kiso was pissed.
Then he found out that Yoritomo was secretly communicating with the Retired Emperor,
and got more pissed.
Then he found out that Yoritomo was sending an assassin to the capital to kill him,
and got even more pissed.
All of that piss combined to form one angry stanky warlord and he pissed-offedly
destroyed the Anti-Kiso Resistance Army.
He also burned down Go-Shirakawa’s palace because he’s a maniac
and put Go-Shirakawa under house arrest.
Kiso got the court to give him the title of seii taishogun, or Barbarian Conquering Generalissimo.
This title the court used to give to people who led armies north to conquer the Emishi.
In this case, the barbarian in Kiso’s mind was his cousin Yoritomo.
And now we reach the third chapter of the war: Yes, we Kanto.
The army of the Minamoto brothers Yoshitsune and Noriyori was approaching the capital.
Lord Kiso was in trouble because his army had seen action for months.
They were now smaller and squishier.
But the Minamoto army was fresh.
They’d been on the sidelines for the entire war watching Kiso and the Taira duke it out.
But what could he do? He had to face them.
So Kiso faced them in the Battle of Awazu, and got clobbered.
Near the end, there were only 5 warriors left, including Lord Kiso and Tomoe Gozen.
The Heike monogatari talks about their badass last stand.
Lord Kiso tells Tomoe to run away.
You would think he meant run away and save yourself, but that’s not what he says.
He tells her to get away because he doesn’t want to die with a woman in his entourage.
It’d be embarrassing.
Alright, dick.
But before running away, she looks for a worthy enemy to fight in front of her lord.
She spots this tough looking guy on his horse who was a warrior known for being really strong.
Well he’s about to be known for getting beat by a woman.
Tomoe rides up to him, pulls his head down,
and freaking cuts off his head with her knife right there.
Then she eats his head, no she doesn’t, but you wouldn’t be surprised would you?
She then pulls off her armor and rides into the sunset.
To where? No one knows.
Thing is, sorry to disappoint you, but we don’t even know if she actually existed.
She only shows up in stories, so she could be totally made up.
Lord Kiso though, did exist, until he took an arrow to the face,
and got his head chopped off.
The Heike monogatari tells us about another cool death here.
When one of Kiso’s remaining followers sees that his lord has died,
he decides that he must kill himself in the awesomest way possible.
This total boss bites the point of his sword and nosedives from his horse to the ground,
gloriously driving the sword out the back of his head.
Yeahh, his family’s account received a million honor points that day.
In 1184, Yoshitsune marched into the capital and presented Lord Kiso’s head to the court
like he was bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party.
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