Dawn of the Samurai: Japan’s Greatest Warrior (Part 3)

And so they fought, now closing, now breaking. What shall Ben-Key do for when he thinks that he has conquered, with his little sword the boy thrusts the blow aside? Again and again, Ben-Key strikes. And then again, his blows are parried, to that last even he mighty Ben-Key can do battle no longer. So that's a scene from the Japanese no play, if you like, no theatre. It's called Ben-Key on the bridge and it was written in the 15th century, and it describes perhaps the most celebrated fight in the entire history of the Samurai. So the British Museum right now, there are three different illustrations of this tremendous encounter. Tom, you love the story of Ben-Key on the bridge, don't you? I do, who doesn't love the most famous fight in Samurai history? Surely it's your favourite too. It's a sentence of five, Samurai fights. Yeah. And it's famous because it's endlessly retold and it's endlessly illustrated. And the backdrop to it is, is that Ben-Key is a lawless warrior monk, always the most dangerous kind of warrior monk. He is built like a rugby player, he's got bloodshot eyes, he's wears black armor, and he holds seven weapons. So he has a sword, he has a staff, he has an axe, he has a sickle, he has a mallet, he has a nagatana, and he has a sword and a rake. He's not holding them all at the same time, presumably. No, he's not holding them all at the time, and I like the fact he has a sword and a rake so he can do a spot of gardening or something if he's. Yeah, yeah. Those sort of zen gardens of a little gravel, he'll be raking his zen garden. He's ready and prepared for anything. He said he's a lawless warrior monk, and as lawless warrior monks often do, he fows to rob a thousand men of their swords, and so he stands on a bridge in Kyoto, the story goes, and every samurai who tries to cross it, Ben-Key fights him, and he is so invincible that he ends up with 999 swords, so he's got one sword to go to make the thousand, and the scene which you narrated, this is him trying to get his thousandth sword, and his opponent is a very slight, elegant youth wearing a woman's cloak who'd been playing the flute as he approached the bridge, so you know, we kind of faint hint of the girly about it, I guess. Yeah, but maybe lulling him into a full sense of security, is he? Well, maybe because he turns out to be so formidable and opponent, that Ben-Key ends up defeated. Oh, what? And we're told in the no play he can do battle no longer, and he submits to his opponent, and from this point on, he is the victor's loyal follower, so he becomes his samurai, that's what samurai means, retainer, and who is this person who's defeated him? Well, he is a guy called Minamoto No Yoshitsune, and we actually met him in our previous episode in which listeners may remember we were describing the outbreak of the great war between the Tyra clan and the Minamoto clan. So in 12th century Japan, so medieval Japan, the emperors have become slightly sort of cyphers almost. Yeah, cyphers almost like puppet figures, and these two clans loosely related to the Imperial family, sort of semi-detached from the Imperial family, what are they called? The Tyra and the Minamoto, they are fighting for supremacy, and remind me which is the one that is strongest in the West in the Kansai area. So the Tyra have control over Kyoto, the great Imperial capital, they have the Imperial family under their thumb, and they had expelled the Minamoto pretty much from the kind of civilized center of Japan, and they are all, they've all been dispersed to the barbarous, northeastern stretches of Japan. Yes. Yoshitsune is a member of this clan, so hence Minamoto no Yoshitsune. So this is the background for the fleeting appearance, as we said, of Yoshitsune in our previous episode, because he was the baby who had been folded in the cloak of his mother, the concubine, Tokiwa, as she attempted to escape Kyoto in a snowstorm. And Tokiwa had become the concubine of Kei Mori, who was the most powerful man in Japan, the leader of the Tyra clan, and so therefore the infetterate enemy of the rival Minamoto clan. And Yoshitsune's father, Yoshitomo, had been the head of the Minamoto. And Yoshitomo had been killed in his bath, he'd been trying to get away, ended up murdered by a supposed friend. Kei Mori had only spared Yoshitsune out of affection for his mother, because Tokiwa ends up as Kei Mori's concubine. And so Yoshitsune had been brought up in complete ignorance of his father's identity. He did not know that he was the son of this great Minamoto lord. He had no idea about that. And then at the age of six, he gets packed off by Kei Mori to a monastery north of Kyoto on the slopes of Mount Karama, great mountain north of Kyoto. And Kei Mori's plan is that Yoshitsune will grow up in harmless and ignorant seclusion as a monk. He doesn't know who his father is, doesn't know that he's a Minamoto, and he's a monk, so therefore hopefully he's not going to grow up to become a samurai. But clearly he's now out and about fighting warrior monks on a bridge. You know, that plan hasn't worked out. So, you know, basically the big question is, what's been going on in his life? How has he ended up this great warrior? Well, this is a great samurai tale, isn't it? So the story of his youth and how he basically grows up to become himself. And this is a story that evolved over the course of medieval Japanese history. People told it and retold it and elaborated on it, right? Yeah. And it becomes the best beloved of all the samurai tales, almost the kind of the archetypal samurai tale. And it tells how he's this young boy in his monastery, and then a servant who is loyal to his father's memory reveals to him his true identity. And Shitsune then goes up onto the side of the mountain of Macarama, and he meets the great Tengu, who is the spirit lord of the mountain. And very fortunately for Shitsune, the greatest teacher of martial arts anywhere in the cosmos, and the great Tengu instructs your Shitsune in swordsmanship. So in a sense he is Yoda to Shitsune's Luke. Or Merlin to his Arthur, surely. Yes. Yes. There is something archetypal about this story. There's no question about it. And the great Tengu then leads your Shitsune to a palace that is deep within the mountains, so embedded within the rock. And here he meets with his father, his dead father, the guy who'd been killed in the bath. Yoshitomo, and Yoshitomo who's been reborn as a Buddha. And Yoshitomo, I mean, he's not kind of peace and love. He's very much the go out and kill all my enemies, kill all the tyra, have vengeance for my overthrow. And Yoshitomo tells his son you are going to grow up and you are going to become the greatest of all the samurai. So you mention King Arthur. I mean, there's definitely a kind of King Arthur dimension there. The young boy who doesn't know his father who gets adopted by a kind of great wizard and is kind of given swords and all this kind of thing. But if you throw in the battle with Benke on the bridge, which follow, he leaves some honestly and he goes out to find his fortune in the world and he runs into Benke, there is also a very strong element there of Robin Hood, because I'm sure that people will be reminded of Robin Hood meeting with Friar Tuck. And I know that Friar Tuck is a Friar, not a monk, but basically pretty much the same thing. It is kind of mad that islands at the opposite end of Eurasia should both have that these 12th century folk heroes who fight a kind of monk like figure on a bridge. But Yoshit Sune is a genuine historical figure. And Robin Hood and King Arthur and a dead Luke Skywalker are arguably not. Arguably. There must be some kernel of historical truth behind the stories of Yoshit Sunei, no? I mean more than a kernel. He is a very, very significant historical figure. And in fact he comes to rank as one of the greatest generals in the whole of Japanese history. And although lots of the stories that are told about him and particularly about his youth are obviously fantastical, they are hinting at aspects of his story that I think are genuinely mysterious and they have evolved to try and explain things that at Mairas of Yoshitsune once he'd become this great general, they wanted to know where exactly he'd come from and there were clearly all kinds of puzzles around it. So he clearly was spared as a baby despite being Yoshitomo son. And presumably then the story of him being sent to the monastery is true. I mean that does kind of make sense. But if he sent to the monastery then at some point he must have learned swordsmanship. And if not with the great Tengu then from someone else. And as a youth we know that he definitely did attract a band of formidable samurai. And maybe Benke, this warrior monk was one of them. No, don't Benke definitely existed. There are early sources by which we mean kind of 60, 70 years after the events are supposed have happened that do describe a warrior monk called Benke in Yoshitsune's train the only issue being that he is described as being very thin and ascetic and not built like a rugby player. But you could see perhaps, you know, it's a better story if he becomes this kind of great Hoking. monster in Black Armor. I mean essentially we don't really know anything about his youth. He's a good swordsman. He has this band of samurai. He has discovered who his father is. And it's only when your shits and a is 20. So this is in the year 1180 that at last we get real historical certainty because this is the year when he emerges from this kind of obscurity that he's been veiled throughout his youth to join his half brother, Yoretomo, who is now the head of the Minamoto clan. And this is a very dramatic moment because the two half brothers have never met before. And it happens, you know, in the most iconic place possibly in the whole of Japan in the shadow of Mount Fuji, where Yoretomo is standing guard. And the reason that he is standing guard is because by this point, the tyra led by Kiyomori and the Minamoto led by Yoretomo are now at war. All right, well let's pull the camera back and let's have a look at the island of Japan and see what the state of the players. So let's start with the tyra. They appear to be in the ascendant down there. You already said that they control Kyoto, which is the imperial capital. They control the emperor who is their puppet or a cipher who is two years old and he is called Antoku. And he is the grandson of Kiyomori. Right. And they also control the the plane, the Kansai on which Kyoto stands. So if you think of Japan, archipelago, the single biggest island in the middle is Honshu and they control the west of Honshu, right? Yes. And also the inland sea, which kind of lies between western Honshu and the two islands south of it, Shikaku and Kushu. So the tyra basically rule the waves. Right. They're effectively the only naval power in Japan. And then what about their rivals, the Minamoto? So as I recall from last time, their heartland was around, was the other the other great plane of Honshu, which is what's it called? The Kanto and that surrounds what's now Tokyo, which doesn't exist at this point. Yes, the Minamoto capital is a place called Kamakura, which is a port just west of what will come to be called to Tokyo Bay. Right. And from Kamakura, Yorotomo is able to command the great plane of Kanto and all the kind of the mountainous reaches of eastern Honshu, which is the traditional home of the samurai. Yorotomo himself, so the head of the Minamoto, the elder half brother of Yoshitsune, is not a natural warrior, but he is a brilliant war leader. He's very ruthlessly pragmatic, very cold-hearted in his hunger for power. He's prepared to elbow anyone aside. But he's also very, very charismatic and commanding. And he has spent 20 years in exile. So Kiyomori had spared his life when he was just a boy, had sent him off into exile. And he's spent 20 years biding his time. He completely has the virtues of patience and he understands the importance of waiting for the perfect moment to strike. And in that, he's very different to Yoshitsune, whose great qualities are decisiveness and speed and aggression. And Yorotomo, when he meets this kind of young half-brother who he'd never met before, he very quickly comes to appreciate these qualities, to appreciate that his younger half-brother is potentially the great warrior, the great general that Yorotomo is, you know, is self-aware enough to realize that he will never be. And so he starts to trust him with all kinds of military responsibilities, even though he's still very, very young. Right. But at first, they don't actually launch a great war of aggression, do they? Because Yorotomo, his priority is to consolidate his base because he knows that the Tyra won't attack him. Why won't they attack him, the Tyra, when they control the waves and stuff? Well, they've made an attempt and we describe it in the previous episode. They embarrass themselves by running away from a flock of geese that kind of ran into them. And so Yorotomo has been able to kind of control the road that links Kyoto with Kanto. And he knows that the Tyra are not strong enough to kind of force that. So there's a bit of a kind of deadlock. And the other key event that has happened, which plays to the Minamoto's advantage, is the fact that in March 1181, Kiyomori had died supposedly, if the hottest temperature in world history. And he had been a brilliant strategist, a brilliant strategist, who in the Tyra basically find impossible to replace. Right. But then natural disaster, or you might see me natural disaster. So we have plague and famine, don't we? So the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or however many horsemen there are, are beginning to rear their heads. So what's the story here? The famine is first and then the plague or vice-versa? Yeah, it's the famine first. And of course, it's caused by war because it disrupts the food supplies. So the famine had begun in the very early months of the war. And it's grip titans and titans and titans. And the plague then follows in the wake of it. And in Kyoto, bodies start to pile up along the river banks in the streets, terrible scenes. And there is famine too in Kanto. But because the plain there is larger and more fertile than Kansai, the plain that surrounds Kyoto, there is more food. You know, this is a tremendous opportunity for your atomo because he's able very ostentatiously to muster reserves from his, his kind of granaries and his kind of rice depots and send it to help people in in the provinces around Kyoto. And the Tyra are desperate to keep Kyoto fed. And so they have been stripping these same provinces that surround Kyoto and giving it to the people in the capital. And so the consequence is is that the people around Kyoto are now starting to look to your atomo rather than the Tyra as the guy who is going to give them their food and keep them fed. Famine diplomacy. Yeah. And so your atomo's prestige, sores and Tyra prestige is very badly damaged. So we get to 1183. And now your atomo is really to effectively reignite the war. And he's going basically going to get his brother, you know, trained in a monastery or wherever trained by Yoda to do this for him, right? Because his brother is clearly the more competent commander. But then there's a twist. Dominic, there is indeed a twist because spring 1183, the war does resume, the Tyra and the Minamoto start to clash again directly. It does see the Tyra launch a full scale assault on the Minamoto heartlands. And it does indeed see a very charismatic, a very able, a very aggressive young general kind of blaze like a meteor across across the plains and mountains of Japan and establish himself as an absolute top samurai legend. But the amazing twist is that this general is not your shitsune or at least initially it isn't because canto is not the only Minamoto stronghold. And this and as may remember from our previous episode that there is also a second Minamoto stronghold. And this is the upland region of Shinano. And this later the east of Kyoto and the absolute kind of interior of central Haunchu. So it's basically in the middle of Japan. And it's very mountainous, difficult terrain, but not completely inaccessible because there is this river valley that cuts through it. And the river, the Kiso helps to open up the western approaches if you are in Shinano. And these lead to Kyoto. And this means that from the perspective of the Tyra in Kyoto any concentration of Minamoto forces in Shinano is a real threat. And just such a concentration over the course of the early years of the war is what has been happening. And it's been happening under yet another samurai chief whose name begins with why and ends in a vow. So listeners will be thrilled to know that there is another of these Minamoto popping up. And this is a guy called Minamoto no Yoshinaka. Before you plunge into that Tom, let's just pause a second and get these three people in there and clear who they are because they're so similar. Your Atomo, which guy is your Atomo again? Your Atomo is the brilliantly cold ruthless pragmatic head of the Minamoto clan. Right. So, okay, he's the mastermind. Yoshitsune, who is he? He is the younger half brother, dashing brilliant, got the warrior monk at his back, King Arthur, Luke Skywalker, that kind of figure. Gotcha. And then the third man, Yoshinaka, you're about to tell us who he is. He is their cousin, right? Yes. So his father had been killed, not by Kiemori, but in a Minamoto blood feud. And so he'd grown up slightly off the Tyra radar. They hadn't really kind of worried about him as he was growing up. And he'd grown up in Shinano, he made it his stronghold. And he had come to identify with it so strongly that he took the name of the river that ran through it, Kiso. And so I think because it's so confusing to have, you know, all these wise with vows on the end of their name bubbling around, we should call him Kiso. He was called Kiso as well as Yoshinaka. So we'll call him Kiso. Brilliant. This is a dream. And by 1183, Kiso in his kind of great mountain fastness, east of Kyoto, has become a really pressing threat to the Tyra and they are starting to worry that he might launch direct attack on them from Kyoto but they're also worried that he's established his control over the the lowland road that goes along the coast of northern Japan which is also a kind of you know it's very accessible so it goes round all these mountains that are in the middle of Honshu and they don't want him to seize control of that either and so in the spring of 1183 the Tyra sent an enormous expeditionary force supposedly a hundred thousand men I mean maybe not that much but you know a lot of men along this coastal road along the northern coastal road and their aim in sending such an enormous army is to absolutely guarantee victory they're going to eliminate Kiso and then once they've done that and they've secured their northeastern flank and clear Chinano of Minamoto forces they can then head southwards towards Kanto turn all their forces against Yoretomo who is based there and finish off the war so that is the strategy it's a strategy of the total annihilation of all the Minamoto forces beginning with Kiso good plan or is it because they advance along this road don't they they coast to road for about 200 miles and they win a couple of skirmishes the Tyra and then they breach a mountain pass always an ominous moment I think in an invasion yeah yes so it's the end of May and the past is called Kurikara and they hear that Kiso is coming the opposite way so they kind of rush on and effectively they want to get through the past before him don't they so they can meet him on the kind of on the ground on the other side but what happens they want to do that because they know that they vastly outnumber the forces at Kiso House so if they can meet on an open plane then you know it will absolutely kind of be to their benefit but when they reach the top of this pass Kurikara they see something that makes their blood run cold and this is a great mass of Minamoto banners fluttering over the ridge on their left far more Minamoto banners than they had ever thought that Kiso would have been able to bring into the field obviously they don't want to continue their march down the pass into the flatlands below with their flank exposed to this vast Minamoto force and so they halt their advance and make camp and basically just wondering what do we do now and this is exactly what Kiso wants them to do because the flags are a decoy it's a kind of classic samurai stratagem most of them are phantom banners and so the sight of these banners it tricks the Tyra into thinking that Kiso has far more men on the peak of the pass than he actually does the actual number of men on this pass is only three thousand and these men Dominic are commanded by a guy called Yoda so again but kind of Star Wars echoes are throughout this story yeah he's come from the Dagobah system so Kiso arrives the next day doesn't he's joining you to join Yoda yeah and but he has 20,000 men he has substantial force although remind us the Tyra had a hundred thousand that was the claim a hundred thousand so still at number five to one pretty much but his plan is basically he's like a Hannibal I mean every battle comes back to Hannibal's battles he wants to surround them doesn't he and and basically use their own ridiculous weight of numbers make them unmaneuverable they will get in each other's way and he will be able to outflank them and you know make darting attacks that will destroy them correct well he has a very complicated and very clever uh stratagem so he's divided his forces into three he and Yoda I love saying that he and Yoda are now on this on the ridge above the pass directly opposite the Tyra meanwhile unknown to the Tyra a second contingent of uh Kiso's men have taken up hidden positions far below at the foot of a precipice directly behind the Tyra positions which is known locally as hell valley so there's nothing good about being on the edge of a precipice that leads down to some way called hell valley there is also a third contingent again unobserved by the Tyra they have no idea that it exists who are climbing a very wide and narrow mountain path beyond the sight of the Tyra and their aim is to go in the rear of the Tyra and cut off their retreat so that they can't kind of march back down the way that they came and it's going to take this third contingent a whole extra day to reach their positions because they're having to go kind of you know a long way round and so as the second of June dawns Kiso is doing all that he can to kill time to keep the Tyra distracted to give that third contingent the opportunity to get into their positions so all day long Kiso and his men are kind of engaging in classic displays of samurai peacocking so this involves shouting out their lineage boasting about you know how distinguished they are issuing challenges engaging in ritualized displays of archery all this kind of thing and in the tale of the of the hey K are great source for this war these displays are often described as happening in the context of actual battles themselves which I think is clearly didn't happen it's it's too Homeric to imagine that people are stopping in the middle of the battle and shouting out their lineage and all this thing yeah yeah of course but I think that you know when you have the opportunity to kind of shout at an enemy it's absolutely what they're up to and we're told in that the tale of the hey K and the Tyra suspecting no scheme to drive them towards the ravine played along with them poor men until the light began to fail and as the sun sets so the Tyra notice for the first time that in their rear a minomoto force is starting to assemble and drawing up ranks and is now blocking off their retreat and even as they notice this the sun sets darkness descends it's night and then all at once storming down the slope towards them the Tyra see a great rolling surge of torches and they feel the earth starting to shake and of course they're terrified that a massive army that seems to have sprung from nowhere is attacking them and they falter and they start to break and they turn but it's not a massive army it's an enormous herd of oxen with burning torches tied to their horns and so again very Hannibal people who who they who listen to our series on Hannibal that was the kind of trick he'd loved to pull and the oxen stampede smashing into the Tyra many of whom are sent stumbling falling into the vast ravine that yorns behind them others are trampled underfoot others are cut down by the minomoto forces who've now began to attack them both from the ridge where Kiso and Yoda are stationed and also that third contingent who are marching down in their rear and there isn't any escape for the minomoto not even for those who make it alive to the bottom of hell valley because that is where the third contingent of men is waiting the people who've been lying in ambush for exactly this moment and we're told that you know all these vast numbers of these thousands upon thousands of men had marched up to the summit of the Kura Kura pass and off these huge numbers only 2000 survive so to quote the tale of the heiki down hurt the father down the sun down the brothers elder than younger down the lord his retainer behind him men piling on horses horses on men over and over till mounts and riders 70,000 of the Tyra 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 Kura Kura the result of this is the most crushing and decisive victory ever won by a samurai commander right because the Tyra invasion has been driven back the Tyra forces are in headlong chaotic retreat and Kiso pursues them with extreme prejudice doesn't he he does because he wants to complete the route and so huge question now hanging over the prospects of the war you know are the Tyra gonna be able to make a comeback will they be able to continue the war at all if they can't what does this mean for the minimoto and also of course what does Kiso's stunning victory mean for your atomo the head of the minimoto who's had nothing to do with this is their potential perhaps for the for the cousins to fall out because your atomo is not the kind of man who likes being unexpectedly upstaged so unbelievable tension Dominic incredible tension we should probably take a break here because it's so tense but what a cliffhanger return after the break to find out what happens next hi there alas to Campbell here from the rest is politics and i'm here to tell you about a really important interview that's out now on our podcast channel the rest is politics leading this week i spoke to one of the defining political figures of our time president Rodimir Solinski of Ukraine is a fascinating interview reflects on his upbringing reflects on his political rise reflects on how he stayed in Kiev during russia's invasion redefining leadership in wartime and he warns us very much against anyone not least on all Trump falling for Vladimir Putin's lies, ones that cease fires, may serve as a strategic pause rather than a sign of genuine peace. He offers a very blunt assessment of Putin, looks at his enemy's strengths, strategy and crucially his weaknesses in a war he has convinced Russia cannot win. And he doesn't hold back on the international response at times, particularly from the US. If you'd like to hear more and hope you do search the RESTYS POLITICS LEADING wherever you get your podcasts. And now, back to your show. [Music] Welcome back everybody to the RESTYS History, what's tension and what's a cliffhanger? We are now in early August 1183. So seven weeks after Kiso won that tremendous victory, unexpected victory with his blazing ox and whatnot at the pass of Kurekara. And Kyoto, the Imperial capital, is a city on the edge, a city in panic because Kiso is closing in. So he'd won a second victory, which he won't massively go into, a hundred miles east of Kyoto, at a place called Shinohara. And the survivors, the refugees have been drifting into the capital and the sound of approaching drums from the east of the Minamoto forces has been growing louder and louder and louder. Yeah, and again, Kiso has split his forces into three. So he is leading a contingent that's coming directly from the east. There's another Minamoto Expeditionary Force, which is closing in on Kyoto from the south. And there is a third one that has gone right the way around and is now coming from the west. So the trap in other words is close to snapping shut. And on the 13th of August, the leader of the Taira clan, who is the elder surviving son of Kiyomori, a man called Munomori. And he has to be said, is not a very impressive bigger. He is a shadow of his father. And Munomori gives orders for the evacuation of the capital. So to quote the tale of the Hake, men saddled horses, tightened girthes, and galloped north, south east and west, carrying things to hide. And Munomori orders the headquarters of the Taira in Kyoto to be put to the torch so that there will be nothing for Kiso to seize. And I think the atmosphere is very Saigon 1975. If there's a sense of people fleeing, you need to kind of burn the evidence of your occupation. And you have this pool of black smoke starting to drift across the capital. Will you say people fleeing? But there are some people in particular whose fate is crucial. And chief among them, we haven't really talked about the Imperial family specifically. So what's going on with them? Well, we said how they're kind of ciphers. That's not entirely true. They are players. Their key role is to provide legitimacy to whoever controls them. And so it's really important for the Taira that they keep the Emperor in their hands. Because if they lose the Emperor to Kiso, then it's Kiso and the Minamoto who will become the defenders of legitimacy. And the Taira will immediately kind of be transformed into outlaws. And so that evening, as the Taira headquarters is burning and all the various Taira lords are preparing to evacuate Kyoto. Munomori comes to the Imperial Palace and he comes into the presence of his sister, Ken Rai Monin, who is the mother of the Emperor, so the daughter of Kiyomori. And he speaks to her in the strictest confidence. And he says to her, "I believe that the world would somehow always be as we knew it, but now you see everything has changed." And he says to Ken Rai Monin, "You have to go and you have to take your son the five-year-old Antaku, the emperor, you have to take him with you." And so mother and son leave the next morning at six o'clock in the Imperial Palantquin and they take with them crucially the Imperial Regalia. And this is a mirror, a jewel, and a sword that had been brought to earth two millennia before by the grandson of the sun goddess. And this matters because you cannot become an emperor without that regalia. It's just not possible. So they set off the emperor, his mother, all the Taira lords, the Imperial Regalia. And as they abandoned Kyoto, so we're told clouds trailed about the eastern hills and a bright moon lit the dawn. Everywhere cocks were crowing. No one had dreamed it would come to this. And the emperor is going with his uncles and the other Taira lords and they are bound for the inner sea. And the fleet which remains their great strength. Because as we said, the Taira are the lords of the ocean, the lords of the inner sea and the waters beyond it. And because the Minimo to have no ships, this offers them a prospect of continuing the war. Yeah, but one person doesn't go with them. And this is somebody called Gaushurekawa. And Gaushurekawa is the most cunning and slippery, isn't he, of all the, what they call the Crochistid emperors. So explain to us the role of Gaushurekawa. So we've mentioned before that a cloistered emperor is an emperor who has reigned and then abdicated. And this was absolutely standard practice. It was a way in which the kind of the various lords who effectively controlled the empire were always able to ensure that no emperor was in a position to kind of establish this supremacy over them. So Gaushurekawa was slightly unusual because normally the empires would rule as children, as boys. And then have to abdicate as they were approaching adolescence. Gaushurekawa had come to the throne in his late 20s. And he of course had been obliged to abdicate as all emperors were after he'd ruled only for three years. But because he was that much older and because he was naturally very shrewd and cunning, he'd remained a very active player in court politics. And he had very reluctantly accepted the supremacy of the tyra. He'd found it a humiliation to be subordinated to a samurai lord. And Prince Machihito who led that rebellion that we finished within the previous episode, the guy who fought by the bridge and ended up being killed there. Prince Machihito had been Gaushurekawa's son. And somehow Gaushurekawa had avoided suspicion of complicity in that plot. I mean he must have been embroiled. But Keemori left him alone and he's still very much on the scene. And now with the tyra leaving and Keiso fast approaching the capital, his chance has come. So on the 13th of August, as the tyra are evacuating Keu-to, Gaushurekawa slips away unnoticed from Keu-to. And we're told the cloistered emperors stole away to seek refuge on Mount Hiyah. And Mount Hiyah is east of Keu-to and it's where one of Japan's most famous monasteries stood still stands to this day. But it was also more saliently where Keiso and his army had just arrived. And so the big question is, can the cloistered emperor Gaushurekawa and the great samurai lord Keiso do business? And Dominic, indeed they can. Well that's exciting. So they clearly strike a deal because Gaushurekawa returns to Keu-to a few days later. So 17th of August and he's got an escort at this point of 50,000 mounted warriors and above them are flying the banners of the Minamoto, the white banners of the Minamoto. Said this is a massive twist. It is. So again, the tale of the heiki, no such banner had been seen to enter the capital for a good 20 years and more. These were astonishing events. And Gaushurekawa with this escort of Minamoto warriors is able now back in Keu-to to set himself up in a splendid palace. And this is called the Houduji and it includes a temple with a kind of incredibly vulgar sounding golden hall. It's got an all-emental lake. It's absolutely wonderful. And Gaushurekawa settles himself in there with great enthusiasm. And from the Houduji, he issues decrees which confirm to the world that everything has indeed been turned upside down and that the tyra are now the outlaws and it's the Minamoto who are the defenders of the throne. And Gaushurekawa formally strips 160 tyra lords of their court offices. And of course there is a further problem which is that they don't have the emperor but Gaushurekawa thinks that he has a solution. He eyes up Antikoo, the emperor's his little half brother. He's only about two years old at this point and he picks up this little boy, bounces him on his lap and he sobs to think I had never seen this little boy before. And he prophesies that the boy's descendants will rule for a hundred generations, clearly lining him up to become a replacement emperor. But there is this problem. They don't have the imperial regalia because the tyra have taken it with them. It's with with Antikoo. So that is an issue but it's not an insuperable one because Gaushurekawa has a great general who can go after the tyra and hopefully get the imperial regalia back. And this of course is Kiso. And Gaushurekawa gives Kiso an absolutely splendid title. And this is the Asahi Shogun, the general of the rising sun. Okay, that is a good name. Unfortunately, he said it doesn't quite live up to that tremendous name, does he? Because basically he's come from the sticks. He's come from the agricultural badlands of Shinano, the kind of mountains. And he and his men do not behave with the elegance and courtesy that is expected of visitors to the Imperial capital. No, so it's like, you know, Buckingham Palace has been taken over by the Wershaw's or something. So Kiso Samurai, a roaming round Kyoto, kind of pillaging and drinking cider and driving tractors and all that kind of thing. Right. And this is terrible for Goshirakawa who's been raised in, you know, the sophistication and delicacy of the Imperial Court and doesn't want these bunkins in the slightest. And so he looks around for another horse to back. And of course, there is really only the one option. And this is Moritomo no Yoritomo, the Lord of Kanto, the head of the Minamoto clan, Kiso's cousin. But he and Kiso are in alliance, right? Well, Yoritomo has been watching with mixed emotions. I think it's fair to say. On the one hand, he's delighted that Kiso has destroyed the Tyra's hold on Kyoto. On the other hand, he doesn't really want Kiso to have too much power because then he might rival himself for control of the Minamoto clan. And this is why Yoritomo is very interested to hear from Goshirakawa and Goshirakawa is very, very interested in Yoritomo because Yoritomo is not a bunking. He has immense military reserves, so he has at least as many men as Kiso. And above all, you know, basically, he's a completely ruthless bastard who is jealous of Kiso and resentful of his success. And Goshirakawa is shrewd enough to realize that there is great scope here for making mischief. And so he writes Yoritomo a secret letter, essentially inviting him to come to Kyoto and liberate the city from his cousin, who Goshirakawa describes as the wild monkey of Kiso. So meanwhile, Kiso is oblivious to this. And Kiso has been saying to go, "Shirakawa, my plan is I'm going to march on the canto and I'm going to get rid of Yoritomo." He's completely oblivious to the fact that his patron is in touch with the one man that he's actually planning to go and eliminate. Yes. And this isn't what Goshirakawa wants at all because Goshirakawa actually wants the regalia back. That's his priority because he wants to to enshrine the reigning emperor's little brother. Gautoba, he's called, as the new emperor. And so he says, you know, don't bother attacking Yoritomo. Don't do that yet. Go and attack the Tyra. They're the priority. Go and eliminate them. And Kiso can see the force of this argument because he doesn't want to allow the Tyra to kind of recover from their meltdown. They've still got their fleet, the seas of theirs. They're still a kind of massive brooding threat. You know, and Kiso wants to get the imperial regalia back as well. He wants the new emperor. He wants to have this little boy directly under his thumb. Yeah. And so that autumn, when Kiso leaves Kyoto at the head of his troops again, he is targeting not Yoritomo, but the Tyra. So just hold on on that. Goshirakawa suggesting that. Is that a ruse? Is that a part of a plot? That's genuine. Well, Goshirakawa's priority is to eliminate the Tyra. Okay. And also, he wants an alliance with Yoritomo so he doesn't want Kiso going off and attacking Yoritomo rather than the Tyra. He doesn't want Kiso to be killed in this attack or anything like that. I think he'd quite like it if he was. I mean, that would solve all kinds of problems. I mean, every time Kiso goes off and fights a war, there is always a prospect that he might end up dead. So Goshirakawa is basically trying to get him out of the capital. And if he dies and battle, then that's brilliant. And if he defeats the Tyra and gets the imperial regalia back, then again, every which way Goshirakawa is a winner. So he's playing quite a shrewd and subtle game. Now, in the event, Kiso's campaign against the Tyra goes very badly wrong. Kiso has never fought at sea. He's rustled up, it kind of makes you a fleet, but it gets very badly mauled. And on the same day that he's defeated at sea, a task force that he's sent by land to attack the Tyra is also defeated. So he returns in a slightly bedragiled state. And just to put Kiso in an even worse mood, when he gets back to Kyoto, he discovers what Goshirakawa has been up to with your Atomo, essentially trying to kind of elbow him aside and kind of build bridges with your Atomo. And he is understandably furious. And what's more, Goshirakawa has formally condemned Kiso's men for robbing all the local farmers, for going out from the city and kind of, you know, robbing their storehouses and nicking all their rice and all that kind of thing. And Kiso is furious. There are paddy fields everywhere. What business does he have this cloistered emperor censoring them for feeding their horses' rice leaves from a few? So Kiso, you can understand, is pretty pissed off by this. And so being the man that he is a man, fond of kind of decisive dramatic action, he takes the obvious course. He launches a coup and he marches on the Hajiogi Palace, you know, this great place with the lake and the golden hall and everything, you know, with his men. It's not an easy nut to crack because the Hajiogi Palace is guarded by a crack squad of warrior monks. So, you know, they're not sort of likely challenged. And also, of course, there's the fact that this is the first time a cloistered emperor has been directly attacked by samurai. And so the shock to, you know, what his centuries worth of respect for the imperial office is off the scale. Goshirakawa, you know, he may no longer be ruling emperor, but he had been emperor and he is descended from the sun goddess. And so, at the palace gates, Kiso's men are met by an unarmed chamberlain who addresses them in the most outraged terms. "In days gone by," this chamberlain says. "When a herald read out the sovereigns decree dead plants and trees put forth flowers, fruit promptly ripened on the bow and demon powers bowed in a sense." And Kiso's response to this is "Soulence him!" And he orders a full blown assault and a storm of flame-tipped arrows are sent flying into the palace. It's fittings, it's timbers blaze into fire. The chamberlain flees so actually do most of the monks. I mean, they may be warrior monks, but they're not prepared to stand up to Kiso's battle heart and samurai. And those who do stay are slaughtered, vast piles of heads are raised. The heads of a hundred of the guards employed by Goshirakawa in the palace are harvested, stuck on spikes along the river bank. And meanwhile, listeners may be wondering, what if Goshirakawa himself, the kind of slippery conniving, calculating, cloistered emperor? Well, those guards who had not been slaughtered and decapitated have tried to bundle him into a palanquin and they had tried to bundle the infant soon to be emperor Gotoba into a boat and row him out onto the lake. But the samurai had come after both of them, they'd been taken prisoner and Goshirakawa was put effectively under house arrest in a second palace and Gotoba, this little boy. He was escorted to not even a palace just through a private mansion. And the tale of the the Hake cannot, you know, I'm just kind of goes overboard with the horror and the pathos of this scene. The pathetic nature of this progress truly defies description. And it's such a historic moment because, you know, the golden age of imperial Qto was clearly over by this point, an age that had been characterized by incredible respect for the emperor kind of painstaking devotion to etiquette, a refusal, essentially to have kind of dealings of tall with samurai. But even so, the treatment that is being meted out by Kiso to both a former and reigning emperor is understandably greeted with complete shock across Japan. Nothing like it has ever been seen before. More shocking than the what happens to the Roman emperors at the end of the Western Roman Empire, surely because of the the the court rituals, the the ethos of courtesy and elegance and respect and deference. And all of that was so much more pronounced in Japan than it was in Rome. Am I right? We compare Kyoto to Versailles. If the Mongols had sacked Louis XIV's France. Yeah. Or something. Yeah. It's something like that. Yeah. It's it's seen, I mean, it's treating the emperor who should be treated all what, you know, who's the descendant of a goddess, cosmically mandated, with this lack of respect. You know, it's like seeing Mary Antoinette in a, you know, in a wagon. That's shocking. But there's one more contender who's still around. And that is this guy, Yoratomo. He's the cousin of Kiso. This must be a gift to him because they are now implacable enemies. And for Yoratomo, his cause now has legitimacy because he can say I'm defending the Empire against this country, Bumkin, can't he? It's brilliant for Yoratomo. And we said how he always waits for the perfect moment before striking. Always waits for opportunity to be everything that he needs it to be and I think the opportunities for him now are too far away. So as you say, he can launch an attack on Kaiso and if he defeats Kaiso, he sees control of Kyoto. And present it as his defence of imperial legitimacy and also the fact that he is bringing peace to a suffering land. Remember that he had been supplying grain to the starving who lived around Kyoto. And now again, he can say, "Well, I am bringing you peace where neither the tyra nor my cousin had been able to bring peace." But there's also another factor which Yorotomo very much wants to keep quiet. And this is the fact that anything which damages the prestige of Kyoto and it's standing as the undisputed capital of Japan is only playing into his hands because Yorotomo, exceptionally, he's the first samurai lord to feel this. He has no loyalty to Kyoto. You know, he hadn't lived there since he was 12 and his base is Kamakura. His fiefdom is Kanto. His recruiting grounds are the eastern half of Honshu. He recognizes that if he is going to rule Japan, it is pointless for him to do it from Kyoto. He has to do it from the east which had always been the traditional stronghold of the Minamoto. And this I think is the measure of how clear sighted he is, how unsentimental, how innovative, because this again is a completely revolutionary development. The idea that Japan might not be ruled from Kyoto, that it might be ruled from from Kanto instead. It's impossible for most people even to contemplate it. Yorotomo is this kind of plan that he has fully formed in his mind. So he is fully on for sending an armed expedition against Kiso and hopefully season control of Kyoto and effectively kind of bringing it into the empire of the east. But he's not planning to lead this campaign himself. He wants to fight fire with fire and so he entrusts the war against Kiso to a second young Minamoto general who like Kiso is very dashing bold charismatic and this of course is Yoshitsune. Yoshitsune has an elder brother Minamoto no Noriyori. So Noriyori is sent to pacify Kiso's old stronghold Shinano, like kind of mountainous stronghold and then to advance on Kyoto from the east. And Yoshitsune is instructed to take the coastal road that leads along the south coast of Japan and then upwards towards Kyoto from the south. And so Kiso effectively is facing a two-pronged invasion. Noriyori from the east, Yoshitsune from the south. And so he has no option but to divide his forces. And one army is sent to block the advance of Noriyori from the east and they reach the Seta bridge it's called which crosses the southernmost tip of this huge lake, Lake Bihua. In fact, it's Japan's largest lake and when they get there they pull the bridge down so that the Minamoto forces hopefully won't be able to cross. And the second army is sent southwards to a place that we have already visited in this series and this is Uji which was the scene of the dramatic battle for the bridge that we described in our previous episode. And Uji bridge, like Seta bridge, is pulled down as had happened in the first battle the planks have pulled up and tossed into the sea. And also because they know that it's possible to forward the river, everyone knows this because the events of that previous battle had been so celebrated. They drive steaks into the river bed at the 14 points to try and stop cavalry from crossing. Meanwhile Kiso himself waits in Kyoto where he will receive news from the two fronts and wherever the threat seems most pressing he will then advance from Kyoto and go and bring reinforcements and try and hold the Minamoto attack wherever it's most pressing. So it's Uji that becomes the epicenter of the action isn't it? It's Uji that Yotsuit Sune reaches that first and there's been a battle there for years before. So everyone knows you know there could be a repeat of it and everyone knows that you can get across this river, you can forward the river because that's what happened last time. And so there's this story isn't there? The two samurai who are rushing they're competing to be the first to cross this river. So these are two men in Yotsuit Sune's army. Is that right? Yeah. Well tell us the story about the two samurai. It's a good story. So your shitsunade army is approaching the river Uji. The bridges down. There are these steaks in the crossing places. It's clearly going to be very very dangerous to try and make a crossing but it's a classic samurai thing in a situation like that. You prove your courage by being the first into the fray. And there are these two samurai who are determined to be the first across. And one of these is guy called Kajewara and he finds his prometory that sticks out into the kind of boiling currents of the river Uji and so he makes for that. And there is a second samurai Sasaki who sees him do it and follows him and he's galloping behind Kajewara and he calls out to him of all the rivers here in the west. This is the biggest. Your girth looks loose, better tight in it. And so Kajewara leans down from his saddle to cinch the girth tighter. And as he does so, Sasaki speeds past him shouting loser plunges into the river and begins making for the far bank. And Kajewara is furious of course. He's been tricked, follows him in and tries to pay Sasaki back in the same coin. So he calls out look out Sasaki. Don't play the fool out of a desperate thirst for fame. There must be ropes stretched underwater. But Sasaki draws his sword, he slashes at the ropes, he cuts them through, he gallops up the far banks, he rises in his stirrups and he cries out in a stentorian voice descended from Emperor Uda nine generations in the past. Fourth son of Sasaki, hid at Yoshi, I am Sasaki Shiro Takatsuna, the first man across the Uji river. So it is so classic samurai, it's yelling out your forebears announcing who you are, beating your chest, saying that you are the first into battle. Kajewara, I mean he's very cross but he is the second he manages to make it to the far bank as well. And their example inspires first of all hundreds of horsemen then thousands to follow across the river. Lots of them are swept away but lots of them make it across. They overwhelm the defenders, Uji is taken at the road to Kyoto lies open. It's exciting and Yoshitsune takes this road doesn't he? Because he is in a hurry, he wants to get there quickly because he wants to find Goshirakawa and he wants to get the legitimacy that the cloistered Emperor can give him because Kiso if he was smart, is going to kill this bloke. And Yoshitsune wants to get there first. Yes, so he goes hairing up the road from Uji to Kyoto and he arrives at the palace where Goshirakawa was under house arrest and Yoshitsune dismounts he knocks, he announces himself in a ringing voice. I'm sure there's lots of stuff about his great ancestry and all that kind of thing. And he finds that he has arrived in time. Goshirakawa is still alive and understandably he greets the arrival of Yoshitsune with enormous relief and gratitude. He's safe, he's got rid of this awful kind of bumpkin. He is under the protection of Yorotomo and his dashing younger brother Yoshitsune. But we don't know what's happened to Kiso, do we? So what's happened to him and what is he planning? Well, we will be finding out in the final episode of this epic series in which the great civil war of the samurai will reach its blood soaked and terrifying climax. Not only that Tom, but we'll be meeting history's most famous female samurai. It'll be nice to get a woman onto the show. That'll be exciting. There will be a spectacular mass suicide. We shall finally be encountering something that again sadly lacking from this series, which has been samurai crabs. And we will be continuing the swashbuckling story of the hero of this story, who is of course Yoshitsune. So if there are only members of our own samurai brotherhood out there, the rest members of the Restisted History Club, you can hear that episode right away. And of course you'll also be getting all the fantastic content in the special extended newsletter. If you would like to join the Restisted History Club and get the host of unbelievable benefits that come with it, then you merely need to go to theresthishistory.com and on that note Tom, alagato gizamas and sayonara everybody. Bye bye.