War is hell, and so is Yoritomo.
Yeah, he got rid of Lord Kiso on the battlefield, but even before that he had already gotten
rid of him on the field of politics.
Lord Kiso had a problem that most warriors had:
they were great fighters, but terrible diplomats.
When Kiso was occupying the capital and making everyone hate him, Minamoto no Yoritomo was
secretly becoming pen pals with the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa.
So how does a rebel become a king?
He wins.
That Yoritomo clout was no joke.
He got Go-Shirakawa and the Heian court to issue an edict legitimizing his military government
in the Kanto.
Yeah the Minamoto already controlled the east, but Yoritomo did something that past Kanto
rebels couldn’t do:
he got the court to recognize their independence.
Not only that, the edict gave his government in Kamakura the power to police Japan.
All of it.
Why did the court do this?
They were backed into a corner.
Revolts were peppering Japan like smallpox boils.
The court realized that only Yoritomo’s warriors could teach them to show some respect
and bring back peace.
When Yoshitsune gift-wrapped Lord Kiso’s head and brought it to the capital, Go-Shirakawa
welcomed him in, and made a mental note to re-gift the head
because he knew he wouldn’t use it much.
Even though the court was anti-Minamoto up until recently, they wasted no time in issuing
an order to destroy the rest of the Taira, who had all fled the capital.
Yoritomo was social distancing in his home base of Kamakura and told his brothers Yoshitsune
and Noriyori to go collect some Taira heads.
This campaign against the Taira made up the rest of the Genpei War.
We’ll be mostly talking about the two Minamoto generals Yoshitsune and Noriyori,
brothers of Yoritomo.
The legend of Yoshitsune was forged right here in this campaign.
He was called a military genius and they wrote stories and songs about him.
Noriyori was also legendary in how much people ignored him.
He was always skipped over when the adults were doing headcounts for family outings.
He was the forgotten brother, forever in the shadow of the other two.
So the Taira’s power lay in their ships, not their horses.
It was going to be a hard campaign because the Taira had fled west to their home turf,
where their ships could dominate.
You can see why if you look at a map.
There, it’s my friend Wai, hello!
The Taira controlled the Inland Sea.
Yoritomo pulled the student move of quickly building ships right before the war was due.
They spent the entire campaign avoiding fighting on the high seas.
They went after Taira bases instead, which still had to be on land.
There were a lot of battles.
Luckily you have me to gloss over some of them with very little detail.
The Minamoto brothers attacked a fort at Ichinotani.
The Taira thought they were safe because the fort had a ton of upgrades.
Except for the back of it, which was barely guarded.
No one could attack the back, though, because it had an impassable cliff protecting it.
Well Yoshitsune said, “Hold my sake.”
How do you make an impassable cliff passable?
You pass it.
Yoshitsune took his men and rode down the cliff like he thought they were riding goats.
It was tough for sure, but it was tougher for the Taira men in the fort who caught a
million arrows in the back.
The Taira lost some really good generals, but the inept head of the Taira clan, Munemori,
escaped by ship.
See how good ships were around these parts?
They took the baby Emperor Antoku with them.
They were also still carrying the three pieces of the Imperial Regalia remember,
the symbols of the Emperor.
The Taira retreated to a base in Yashima.
Afterwards Noriyori split from Yoshitsune and pushed southwest along the coast.
He wanted to cross over into Kyushu, kill the Taira there,
and hold ground there in the rear.
As his army marched, they were treated to beautiful scenic views of Taira ships shooting
arrows and occasionally sending troops to attack them.
They reached a Taira fortress on the island of Kojima.
They couldn’t get to it because of the water, and they really wanted to because the sounds
of “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah” coming from inside it was super annoying.
The Heike monogatari says one of Noriyori’s commanders found out from a local fisherman
that they could get to the island using a path that only appeared during low tide.
He was so happy he thanked the fisherman profusely,
then killed him.
Can’t let him reveal that critical info to someone else, you know,
the fisherman had already shown that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
Supposedly, the fisherman bled on a large rock,
and that rock was moved to Sanbo-in temple in Kyoto.
You can see it displayed today.
Weird flex, temple, but okay.
Noriyori waited for low tide to come.
“The patient lion, gets food,” he thought.
Noriyori crossed the shallow waters and destroyed the outpost,
then continued his RPG adventure to Kyushu.
Meanwhile, Yoritomo sent Yoshitsune some ships, not as many as the enemy
but not as few as um zero.
Instead of fighting head-on in the waters like some amateur, he landed elsewhere,
then marched to Yashima.
The inept Taira head Munemori remained inept and got smashed by Yoshitsune’s army.
Again he escaped by sea.
The Taira retreated all the way to Hikoshima, right at the tip of Honshu.
When Noriyori’s army got there, they saw all these enemy ships.
Noriyori readied his bow.
“The brave lion, gets shot in the head,” he thought, and tiptoed the hell out of there.
The army hunkered down elsewhere and looked for a way to cross into Kyushu.
This was when things got hard for Noriyori.
Food was scarce and his men weren’t so happy.
The smell of mutiny hung in the air.
It smelled like blood.
He somehow scrounged boats from the locals and carried his entire army into another part
of Kyushu further away.
Problem was this place also didn’t have any food
and now his men really wanted to leave.
He had a choice:
stay and risk death at the hands of his own samurai,
or leave and possibly lose the war.
In the end he stood strong and stayed.
That decision might have been critical in the coming battle.
The Taira wanted to go over to Kyushu where it was easier to defend, but they scrapped
that plan when they saw Noriyori’s army there.
In reality, Noriyori probably wasn’t that big of a threat, but they didn’t want to
risk dealing with him.
Back in Yoshitsune land, a funny thing happened.
The Minamoto avoided naval battles before, and that worked because they just tore through
the Taira on land.
All of a sudden, people in the provinces along their warpath said,
“We want in” and joined them… with ships.
Yoshitsune’s navy matured into a grown-up and he took it to the Taira base to fight
a sea battle called the Battle of Dan-no-ura, the last battle of the Genpei War.
That’s in the next episode.
Alright we have a bunch of new patrons this week.
Hayda Jinmaku,
Renee Tookate I’m sorry is that Japanese I don’t know what nationality you are,
Casimir Abatangelo this is not going well,
Wireless Wizard the master of Wi-Fi,
Jordana Segreti,
Baki,
Ananda Kang,
and DefectiveCandy but why are you defective tho?
Alright, much love guys, and spread the knowledge.