transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 5:
[00:59] The Gion Shoja Bells ring the passing of all things. Twin sile trees white in full flower declare the great man's certain fall. The arrogant do not long endure. They are like a dream one night in spring. The bold and brave perish in the end. They are as dust before the wind. So those are perhaps the most celebrated lines in all of Japanese literature. They will strike a chord surely with all of our listeners. They are the classic evocation of the Buddhist teaching that all things will and must pass. And today on The Rest Is History, many things will be as dust before the wind. The lives of formidable and brave warriors, the power of mighty dynasties and the peace and prosperity and security that for many years had reigned in Kyoto, the great imperial capital of Japan. And Tom, these events, we know about them because they're described in the book of the Heike, which is the great war epic, the Iliad of medieval Japan, isn't it?

Speaker 6:
[02:08] Yes. And those lines you quoted are from its opening and it's in the translation by Royal Tyler for Penguin Classics. And it's a tremendous read. So, Dominic, we met the Heike or the Taira, as they are better known in the first episode of this, our epic series on the rise of the samurai. And just to remind listeners about who the Heike or the Taira, as we'll be calling them, who they are. They are an aristocratic dynasty that had first emerged in Japan in the early ninth century and they descended from a kind of whole crowd of princes who had become surplus to imperial requirements. They'd also much too expensive to maintain, and so they'd been deprived of their princely status. They'd been given this surname of Taira. And so they had effectively been banished from the silken court of Kyoto with its love of calligraphy and perfumes and cherry blossom. And they'd gone off to the much rougher and wilder northeastern reaches of Honshu, the kind of the main island of Japan. And they'd made great names for themselves there. And these northeastern reaches of Japan in the early Middle Ages, this is where people lived who were viewed by the Japanese as barbarians. And they'd only just been subdued, brought under the rule of the emperor in Kyoto. And so it's still very much a kind of feel of a frontier zone. And as a result of this, the Taira, even though they are descended from emperors, they're not as into writing poetry, I think it's fair to say. As the courtiers and the great lords who are back in Kyoto, although they do still love a poem, as we will see. And we said how back in the court in Kyoto, warriors are despised. To be a fighter is to be seen as someone who is thuggish and uncultured. But of course, this is not the case beyond the mountains that lie east of Kyoto.

Speaker 5:
[04:10] That attitude is a luxury, isn't it? It's a luxury that comes with comfort and security. Completely.

Speaker 6:
[04:16] And there, for centuries now, it has been the custom for an entire order of men, so they might be low-ranking nobles, they might be upwardly mobile peasants, to be raised from childhood in the saddle, shooting arrows, this kind of demanding skill, which marks them out as kind of an elite warrior. And it's not just boys who are being raised to do this, girls are as well, to follow this path of the warrior, to ride spirited horses and to love great arrows and strong bows. Because if the men are riding off to war, then the women have to be able to fight and hold their strongholds. This is the thinking. And so the culture of these Eastern provinces is really strikingly different to that of the Great Imperial Court. And to serve as a governor there, as the Tyra lords often do, you need to have retainers, samurai in Japanese, steeped in the East's martial values. These people who've been raised in the saddle. And the question is, what do noblemen like the Tyra have to offer the samurai, to offer these hardened warriors?

Speaker 5:
[05:21] Presumably, patronage and various kinds of reward, I guess.

Speaker 6:
[05:26] So spoils of war, land, of course, land in the pre-industrial world is always the key to wealth and power. But maybe help in obtaining a post from the government. If you're not habituated to the ways of the court, the Tyra Lord may be able to pull strings for you. And if he can't do that, then he can give you maybe a position of authority on his own lands, as an official or whatever. And the degree to which you get these prizes, these rewards, depends on how well you have done. And there are very finely graded appraisals that govern the performance of a samurai. And the classic example of this is what in Japanese is called Bantori, which is the taking and counting of heads. And this is done as a way of assessing your performance in combat. So there's a very unsettling detail about Bantori in Jonathan Clements' History of the Samurai. And he writes, the verb for beheading in this context is not the stark slashing kiru of a ritual execution, but the unpleasant gritty kubinaijikuru, literally head twisting off and cutting. So there's a sense that when you're taking a head, it's not a kind of neat slice. You're pinning your enemy down and butchering him, hacking his head off in a kind of really brutal, savage manner. And any heads that are not hacked off in the heat of battle, they will be collected once the fighting is over, and they'll be brought to a kind of central point piled up, identified and tagged with labels. And the point of these labels is that the higher the rank of the beheaded warrior, the higher the reward. And so there is a lot of beheading in Japanese art. And anyone who goes to the fantastic show on the samurai at the British Museum that's on at the moment, there are a lot of illustrations of severed bodies.

Speaker 5:
[07:29] In the first episode, you were talking about how samurai culture was sort of perverted as it were, and used as an inspiration for militaristic nationalism in the 1930s. There were loads of stories about beheading competitions by the Japanese soldiers in China, when they took places like Nanjing. And people would be fated for beheading dozens, hundreds of Chinese victims in an afternoon or something. Horrific to us. Do you think that's deliberate? That's a deliberate echo of the stories that are told about a samurai?

Speaker 6:
[08:00] Yeah, because there's a lot of beheading in the tale of the haiki. And every Japanese warrior would be familiar with that and with these stories, absolutely.

Speaker 5:
[08:12] And for all that we talk about the chivalry of the samurai and all this kind of thing, which as you said in the first episode, again, maybe a slight 19th century invention, there is a sort of real darkness and brutality to this story, isn't there? I mean, there are stories from the time of samurai atrocities, as it were. People are complaining to the court, aren't they? The samurai are going too far, that they're causing absolute suffering and devastation.

Speaker 6:
[08:35] Well, so the most famous modern film about the samurai, The Seven Samurai, revolves around samurai who are hired by peasants to see off the attack of bandits. But actually, certainly in this period, the border between samurai and bandit is very, very vague, very fluid. And so as you say, petitions are always being sent to the court in this period, pleading for justice. So here's a typical example from 988. For the sake of their own honor and reputations, these samurai willfully pluck out people's eyes. Arriving at people's homes, they do not dismount from their horses, but enter. Samurai on horseback tear down the wooden shade screens that hang outside homes and carry off tax goods. And what's interesting about that petition is that it's suggesting it's not just loot that the samurai are after, they are also hungry for honor. And this is something that a samurai lord has to offer as well as material reward, has to offer a samurai a chance to kind of burnish his reputation, to win glory for himself, which will then be passed down through the generations to his descendants. So if there is a choice between losing face for a samurai or kind of inflicting collateral damage on hapless peasants or whatever, then the average samurai is always going to opt for the former. He's always going to inflict savagery and violence. And there's a really horrible story that illustrates this, told of Saddam Ori, who was the cousin and bitter enemy of Tyrone and Masakado, who we talked about in our previous episode, the guy with the flying head, the first samurai. And Saddam Ori had brought Masakado, who was his cousin, down in ruin, finished him off. But in his old age, Saddam Ori, he feels humiliated by the fact that in that campaign against Masakado, he had been hit by an arrow in the thigh. And as he gets older, the wound starts to ache and he gets a limp. And for a Samurai Lord to have a limp is seen as a cause of shame and embarrassment. And so Saddam Ori sends to Kyoto for a physician who comes out to him. And this physician says, oh, well, if you've got a bad arrow wound in your leg and it's causing you pain, then obviously you need a medicine made from the kidney of a male fetus. And so Saddam Ori goes, okay. And so he summons his son and says, your wife is pregnant. I want you to slice open her stomach and remove the fetus. And the son kind of blanches at this and says, oh, are you really sure? And the physician then steps in and says, no, you can't do that. A blood relative cannot become medicine. And so Saddam Ori is annoyed about this. He sends a chamberlain down into the kitchens. And there they find out that a kitchen maid is pregnant. To quote the source for this, when they opened up the kitchen maid's belly and looked, it was a female fetus. And so they threw it away. However, another was found elsewhere. The governor, which is Saddam Ori, survived. So the medicine worked. And as Carl Friday, who kind of quotes this story, the casual disregard displayed for human life in this tale is striking. I mean, and to us, it obviously is. But the thing is that Saddam Ori absolutely didn't feel that he'd done anything wrong. I mean, this is completely taken for granted. So again, to quote Friday, on or off the battlefield, early medieval Japanese warriors appear to have held little concern for the lives of others. And I think this is absolutely one of the really obvious ways in which the ideals of Samurai culture as originally constituted, they did not map on to the chivalric culture of medieval Christendom.

Speaker 1:
[12:14] Right. Interesting.

Speaker 6:
[12:15] You wouldn't have had a knight behaving like that. The whole point of chivalry is to show respect to women. And I think that even if slicing open women to remove their babies had been viewed as a crime, you know, still, I mean, what could anyone on the scene have done? Because Saddam Ori is the governor, and so he's been entrusted by the imperial authorities with the policing of his province, and so in effect, he is the law. And the only way that this might change and the governor might find himself kind of a reign for a crime is if a rival warlord could persuade Kyoto that he was a rebel. And that, of course, is what Saddam Ori had done with Masakado. Because, you know, the rival lords of the Tyra are perfectly capable of turning on one another. And Saddam Ori ultimately had won because he's not as good a warrior as Masakado, but he had better contacts in the court. And so he'd been able to pull those strings. You know, he ends up being appointed the emperor's agent. And ultimately, this is what dooms Masakado.

Speaker 5:
[13:19] But we mentioned in the previous episode that there are actually two different clans on the two different dynasties that are descended from the imperial family. So there's the the Tyra, but there is also the Minamoto. And the Minamoto are also embedded in the northeast of Honshu, aren't they?

Speaker 6:
[13:37] Even more so, actually, in the long run.

Speaker 5:
[13:39] And this is the real kind of the lawless kind of badlands of Japan.

Speaker 6:
[13:44] The roughest, the most militaristic, the most samurai infested reaches of Honshu, the main island in Japan. And as a result of this, I would say by the end of the 11th century, the Minamoto are starting to out-muscle the Tyra. And so now, when there is violence in these northeastern provinces, it's the Minamoto who are getting to present themselves as the agents of law and order and to cast the Tyra as the outlaws. So in 1027, for instance, there's a Minamoto warlord who topples a Tyra rival by writing to the Imperial Palace and saying, this guy, this Tyra, he is a rat of wolf-like greed, who had turned the structure of the court upside down, collecting taxes and tax goods for himself, and ignoring Imperial orders. And this is symptomatic of a broader trend, so that by the 12th century, the Minamoto have clearly established themselves as the dominant power in these eastern provinces that lie to the east of the mountains that separate them from Kyoto. And there are two particular regions that are their strongholds. So one of them is an upland region called Shinano, absolutely in the interior of central Honshu. So if you look at the map of Japan, the main island of Honshu, Shinano is kind of basically bang in the middle. And it's almost impregnable because the terrain is so mountainous, except that it is scored by this river called Kiso, and this provides a kind of valley that scores the mountains, and it's easily defensible, but it's also strategically vital because it provides a way that armies from the mountainous heights of Shinano can go down this valley and spill out into the plain.

Speaker 5:
[15:37] This is the Kiso Valley. So this is now where you go if you want to see old-fashioned Japanese villages, and it's very picturesque and very touristy, kind of the Cotswolds of Japan.

Speaker 6:
[15:47] It wasn't remotely touristy back in the 11th century, it has to be said, and it will be featuring strongly in this story. But it is very mountainous, and what you really want if you're going to set up a rival power base to Kyoto is a plain, where you can grow rice and food and all kinds of things. The Minamoto established their power base in the largest plain in Honshu, and this is the plain of Kanto. So literally east of the barrier, so the barrier is the mountain separating it from Kyoto. It's broader, it's potentially much richer than Kansai, the plain west of the barrier on which Kyoto stands. And it is in the 12th century still very undeveloped compared to Kansai, but it is full of potential. And in this period, it sees the establishment of a small settlement called Edo, which in due course will become Tokyo, the eastern capital, so the capital of Japan today. So the eastern half of Honshu by the 12th century is essentially under the thumb of the Minamoto. They have Shinano, this great kind of mountainous region, and they have the plain of Kanto. Does this mean, therefore, that they are now the dominant power across the whole of Japan? Dominic, it does not mean that, because although the Taira have essentially abandoned the eastern half of Honshu to the Minamoto, they do have other fish to fry. Because much more than the Minamoto, they have kind of retained the perspective of the traditional Japanese aristocracy. The sense that the eastern reaches of Honshu are backward, are savage, not the place for a gentleman to be seen at all, and it's the western half of the island. And Kansai, particularly because that's where Kyoto is, the Great Plain, it's Kansai that really matters. And this is why over the course of the 11th and 12th centuries, they had opted to withdraw from the eastern reaches of Honshu and start to focus their energies on what have always been the kind of traditional heartlands of the Japanese Empire. And so by 1150, they have established themselves as clearly the dominant power in Western Japan and tellingly not just by land, because they also control what is called the inland sea. And for those not familiar with the geography of Japan, the southwestern island, the bottom tip of the Japanese archipelago, it's like a kind of Devon and Cornwall that is an island. And then there's another island called Shikoku, and that is like a massive Isle of Wight, which runs all the way along the kind of the southern coast.

Speaker 5:
[18:42] Yeah, much bigger than the Isle of Wight.

Speaker 6:
[18:43] Much, much bigger than the Isle of Wight. And so these two islands that are but Honshu, the main island, so Kushu and Shikoku, they kind of create this, what's called the inland sea. And the point of the inland sea is that it protects shipping from the violent storms that otherwise would kind of sweep down and be a constant danger. And so these are by far the securest shipping lanes anywhere, you know, the waters off Japan. And the Taira essentially established their control over these waters. And they are particularly secured for them in the 1140s and 1150s by a brilliantly able and ambitious young governor who goes by the name of Kiyomori. And Kiyomori founds new ports, both along the southern coast of Honshu and the northern coast of Shikoku. He dredges channels, he makes the shipping lanes more secure. And these shipping lanes in turn, once they've been secured, enable the Taira to control trade, which thereby generates enormous wealth for them, to move troops much more easily than they can by land. Because as we said, Japan is very, very mountainous. So taking troops by ships, it's much faster than going by road. And of course, it provides ready access to Kyoto, because the plane on which Kyoto stands is open to the inland sea. And if you control Kyoto, then of course you control the palace, and if you control the palace, then you control the emperor. And by now, the power of the Tyre and the Minamoto between them is becoming so preponderant that some of them, both Tyre and Minamoto, are starting to contemplate a tantalizing possibility, which Dominic, you've been saying, it was always something that was going to kick in in the long run. And this possibility is, what if they seize direct control of the emperor and use him as a puppet?

Speaker 5:
[20:46] Well, if there's a load of people armed with weapons, swords, and then there's a load of people armed with calligraphy kits, my money is always on the people with the swords. And I'm not surprised to discover that I was right.

Speaker 6:
[20:58] You are right. Because all this time, as we said in the previous episode, the nobility in Kyoto have been behaving as though history has come to an end, as though you don't need to arm yourself, as though living a life of poetry and courtship and beauty and so on, as though that's never going to come to an end. But as always happens, history never comes to an end. And if you don't arm yourself, you are always going to face problems. And for the court in Kyoto, the crisis point comes on a very specific day, and this is the 20th of July 1156. And it comes with the death of the man who, for more than 30 years, had served as the power behind the imperial throne in Kyoto. And this was his official title is his cloistered eminence, a man called Toba. And he's a cloistered eminence because he had been emperor. He'd become emperor as a boy. He had then abdicated at the age of 20 and gone to a monastery. And he had presided from this monastery as the kind of the undisputed patriarch of the imperial family. So young emperors have succeeded him, but his cloistered eminence Toba remains essentially the guy who has the reigns of power in his hands. And this may sound mad to listeners. I mean, why, if you're the emperor, are you kind of retiring and becoming a monk and all this kind of thing? But it's the way that the imperial succession had been operating for basically three centuries by this point, by the mid 12th century. And the whole practice had been the brainchild of the third of the three great political dynasties in Japan, which we haven't mentioned until now, although we did in our series on Lady Murasaki. And this is a dynasty called the Fujiwara. And the Fujiwara had not done what the Tyra and the Minamoto had done, go out into the provinces and build a power base for themselves there. The Fujiwara had remained in Kyoto and their field of operations had been the court itself. And to quote Ivan Morris, his brilliant book on the world of Lady Murasaki and Genji, the world of the Shining Prince. The Fujiwara had imposed on the emperor a type of life cycle that was almost bound to keep him under the family's thumb, so the Fujiwara's thumb. He came to the throne as a Kaloyuth and was promptly married to a Fujiwara girl. Their son would be appointed crown prince. And when his father was obliged to abdicate, usually at the age of about 30, he would succeed him and the cycle would start again. And obviously, this works for the Fujiwara, as long as you don't have violent warrior dynasties breathing down your neck. But the problem is that by the middle of the 12th century, the samurai are no longer confined to distant provinces. They've crossed the mountains, they've entered Kyoto, they are roaming the streets of the capital. And as a result, the age of Fujiwara dominance is starting to go into eclipse. Because from now on, it is going to be the Tyra and the Minamoto who between them decide the imperial succession. And with the death of his cloistered eminence Toba, rival factions of Tyra and Minamoto backing rival candidates for the throne. So at this point, it's not like the Tyra are backing one guy and the Minamoto are backing one guy. Tyra and Minamoto are kind of mixing up, but these different factions are backing rival candidates for the throne. And this spells danger.

Speaker 5:
[24:25] Can I ask a dim-witted question? Why if Toba has died and he wasn't emperor, why is there a succession crisis?

Speaker 6:
[24:34] Because Toba in his role as the patriarch of the family plays a crucial role in deciding who is going to succeed him. So he is not officially emperor, but he does have authentic power because his prestige, his age, his intelligence, his sophistication means that his opinions are respected, and even the Fujiwara have to kind of respect it. But now that he is gone, there isn't anyone to play that role. And so this is why these rival factions of Taira and Minamoto are able to step in and fill the vacuum. And it turns to violence and the fighting is all over in a single night. And the reason for that tells you a lot about how cloistered and naive the courtiers in Kyoto have become. So one of these kind of Taira Minamoto factions, they are swayed by a Fujiwara Grandee, who is a man very devoted to the teachings of Confucius. So still at this point in the imperial capital, Chinese culture is viewed with enormous respect. And so because Confucius says that it's very bad form to ambush people. You should play according to the rules. You know, don't rip up the rules of the game. He says it's against the law to launch a surprise attack. Actually the samurai are all about surprise attacks.

Speaker 5:
[26:00] This is idiocy from him.

Speaker 6:
[26:01] The bombing of Pearl Harbor didn't come from nowhere. This is a long samurai tradition. The other faction, they don't give a toss about Confucius. And so, of course, we're going to launch an attack. So they ambush their opponents in the middle of the night. They burn down their headquarters and they win a decisive victory. And the two leaders of the victorious faction, one is a Minamoto, one is a Tyra. They then, so the story goes, they seal their pact with the blood of their captured opponents. So it's a bit like with the second triumvirate, Antony and Octavian and Lepidus, kind of dipping their fingers in the blood of their own relatives. So one of these two leaders, a guy called Minamoto no Yoshitomo, he is said to have publicly beheaded his own father.

Speaker 5:
[26:49] Jesus, come on. I mean, that's a bit strong.

Speaker 6:
[26:52] You got to do what you got to do. And the other, Tyron no Kiyomori, so he is the guy who's been operating in the Inland Sea, building all those ports and dredging the shipping lanes and all that kind of thing. He puts his uncle to death.

Speaker 5:
[27:04] I think that's fair enough. I mean, an uncle is an uncle, but your father is a different matter.

Speaker 6:
[27:08] These are the first public executions in Kyoto for three and a half centuries. And they leave no one in any doubt that a new era has dawned because the heads of these executed grandees are put on spikes and put up in the Kyoto marketplace so everyone can see for themselves what's going on.

Speaker 5:
[27:28] So hold on, there's a bigger gap in Japan between the last public executions and these killings than there would be if we had public executions tomorrow in Britain with the previous public executions. So it must have been a huge culture shock.

Speaker 6:
[27:40] Yeah, massive culture shock. And just in case, you know, anyone in the capital hadn't twigged that a new era had dawned and that they need to brace themselves for a culture shock, more drama is to follow. Because three years after this, in 1159, Minamoto no Yoshitomo, so he's the guy who supposedly had chopped off the head of his father, he's very resentful that Kiyomori, his tyrant ally, has received greater rewards at court than he has done. He thinks, screw this, I'm going to launch a coup. He teams up with a very disgruntled and massively alcoholic Fujiwara minister. I think generally if you're plotting a coup, it's not a good idea to team up with an alcoholic. Kiyomori has left Kyoto on pilgrimage. Kiyomori is a very devout Buddhist and he's gone off on pilgrimage. While Kiyomori is absent, the Fujiwara minister and Yoshitomo sees the 13-year-old emperor. They execute Kiyomori's most prominent allies in the capital and once again stick their heads on spikes and put them in the marketplace of Kyoto.

Speaker 5:
[28:46] There's a lot of beheading in this series.

Speaker 6:
[28:48] Yeah, there suddenly is. Yoshitomo assumes that Kiyomori is going to be intimidated by this, that he won't come back to the capital, that he'll retreat, and then he'll be kind of easy meat for Yoshitomo. But Kiyomori does not do this at all. He's a very, very cool customer, very calculating, very shrewd. And rather than fleeing into the provinces, which effectively would kind of doom any attempt to control the levers of power, he returns to the capital. He very, very coolly takes up residence in his own mansion and essentially dares Yoshitomo to do his worst. And then a week later, a fire breaks out in the palace, very, you know, is it coincidence or has Kiyomori started it? But what this does is that it enables the young emperor, who has essentially been taken prisoner by Yoshitomo and is being held as a hostage. He dresses up as a woman, so cakes his face in heavy makeup, sways himself in a kimono, manages to slip his guards amid the chaos of the fire into an ox drawn cart. They managed to escape the limits of the palace and he makes his way to join Kiyomori. And simultaneously, as this is going on, as the flames are reaching into the sky above Kyoto, 3,000 samurai are seen approaching the capital. And people are kind of gazing out to try and distinguish what color their banners are. Because the color of the Minamoto are white and the color of the Tyra banners are red. And as the samurai come closer and closer, people see that they are red. They are Tyra samurai. And the Minamoto samurai, taken by surprise, completely outnumbered, put up a good fight, but are forced to flee. And Yoshitomo, who had attempted this coup, the Minamoto chief, he flees as well. He heads into the mountainous fastnesses east of Kyoto, takes refuge with an old ally. And this ally, knowing the way that the dice have fallen, promptly murders Yoshitomo while he's in his bath. And that is the end of him. So Yoshitomo, the Minamoto had played boldly, but they had lost. And instead, victory has gone to the Tyre, and specifically to the guy who's now indisputably stands at their head, Kiyomori. And so the court, Kyoto, and therefore the reigns of the Empire are now in Kiyomori's hands. And the big question is, what will he do? Because he is now the first samurai lord to be the de facto, if not the de jure, master of Japan. And there are further questions that we will be answering after the break. How come Kiyomori owed this success to a fox? And why would he end up commemorated by the Japanese as one of the three great villains of history?

Speaker 5:
[31:51] Craig, one of the three great villains of history up there with John Lennon and Virginia Woolf. So come back after the break and we'll be talking about this guy, Kiyomori, and there'll be some Fox chats. Not Fox tossing, sadly, but Fox chats. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. The year is 1159 and Kyoto is a city in shock. There is smoke drifting over the rooftops of the capital. The heads of some of the greatest men in Japan have been stuck onto spikes. And for the first time in Japan's history, a samurai bestrides the court like a colossus. And this is Taira no Kiyomori. Now he has been descended from an emperor, because the Taira are from the imperial family, albeit slightly obliquely. But to the people, the pen, I mean, the literal pen pushers at the imperial court, the calligraphers and poets, he is a jumped up, common vulgar parvenu.

Speaker 6:
[32:52] But he's a soldier.

Speaker 5:
[32:53] Because he's a soldier. Right. Exactly.

Speaker 6:
[32:56] I suppose they're not really pen pushers are they, they're using brushes.

Speaker 5:
[32:59] Brush pushers. That's actually worse than a pen pusher.

Speaker 6:
[33:02] I think so. And the tale of the high key, who gives us this story, is very conscious of what has been lost with this. Gives us a very wistful sense of, you know, it's kind of like someone in 1916 looking back at the Edwardian period. Ah, how lovely it was then on mornings beneath the blossoms, on nights bright with a perfect moon to make music and poetry, to sport at football archery, to vie for the prettiest fan, for the most attractive painting, the most amusing bug or plant. I like the fact that both football and botany and bug collecting is part of what is lost with the coming of the samurai. And the role that Kiyomori plays in the destruction of this idyll, which of course, as we've been saying, is one in which warriors never had any place at all. This is sufficient to see him ranked by Japanese tradition, as we said before the break, as one of the three great villains of history. And that is because he has been a traitor to the Imperial throne. He has turned on the Emperor. And this is the most shocking thing that anyone in Japan can do. And he's a domineering figure in the history of Japan. And posterity is appalled by him, but also, I think, impressed. He is a very impressive man. There's something perhaps of people's attitude to Cromwell about him, I think.

Speaker 5:
[34:28] Yeah, or Warwick the Kingmaker or somebody, I suppose. Why does he owe it all to a fox? That's the question that I think would be perplexing a lot of people.

Speaker 6:
[34:38] Because, as a young man, he had gone hunting and he had shot a fox. And then to quote the source for this story, the fox changed into a beautiful woman and said that if he would only spare her, then she would grant him all his desires. And so, Kiyomori let the fox go. And, you know, sure enough, the fox kept her word. And all Kiyomori's wishes did come true, except that they were always shadowed by an ominous warning that the fox lady had also delivered. Namely, that when the moment of Kiyomori's death approached, everything that he had achieved in his life would crumble away to dust. So, he's given both opportunity but told that ultimately it will all fade and go. And I think it's the measure of Kiyomori's greatness and the way that he's commemorated as a very, very serious player in Japanese history, that he clearly attracted stories like this. And I think also there is kind of something vulpine about him. He does have a quality of the fox himself, because he's very cunning, he's very artful, he's very scheming. But also, and as we said, he's a very devout Buddhist, he's very, very proficient at strategically well-timed displays of salitory violence. He knows how to commit an atrocity in a way that will have a real impact.

Speaker 5:
[36:07] Yeah, because he has defeated the great Minamoto kind of warlord, his guy called Yoshitomo. And he executed his son. And then he had the second son's head put on a spike in Kyoto. So it's all about spectacular displays of violence that will intimidate his adversaries.

Speaker 6:
[36:24] Yeah, and the spike action in Kyoto is still very much going on. So he's clearly very brutal where he feels he has to be. At the same time, he is, you know, this is part of the complexity of his character. He is also capable of really striking displays of clemency at the same time. And the most striking of these is the mercy that he shows the younger sons of Yoshitomo, the surviving sons. So Yoshitomo's heir, you know, his eldest and his second eldest son have been killed. But his third son, so he's now, you know, the older surviving son, is a 13-year-old boy, and this is a boy called Yoritomo. And Yoritomo is spared by Kiyomori. And the question therefore must be, why? I mean, why would you spare the son of your bitterest enemy? The reason for this, and it's an absolutely classic example of how complex Japanese dynastic policies can be, is that Yoritomo's mother, so the mother of this 13-year-old boy, this Minamoto boy, is also Kiyomori's stepmother.

Speaker 5:
[37:28] The two clans are actually linked. Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[37:30] Yeah. There is intermarriage. And so Kiyomori's stepmother, Yoritomo's mother, pleads for Yoritomo's life. And Kiyomori thinks, well, he's 13 years old, what damage can he do? Particularly if I banish him from Kyoto, so that he kind of grows up in provincial obscurity. And so he's sent into exile, first on a small island, and then to a mountainous peninsula called Izu, which is a kind of a coastal backwater just west of Kanto. It's a kind of a peninsula sticking out into the sea. And anyone who's seen Shogun, this is the region where John Blackthorne's ship in the first episode washes up. And it is Kiyomori's expectation that Yoritomo will rot there until he dies. Yoritomo has three younger brothers, so even younger than him. And these are also banished. And these are the sons of Yoshitomo by a low ranking, but incredibly beautiful lady in waiting called Tokiwa. And Tokiwa, when Kiyomori had seized control of Kyoto, had fled the capital. And it's a very, very famous scene in Japanese culture. She is shown fleeing through a snowstorm, holding her two elder boys by their hands and holding the youngest, who is a little baby called Yoshitsune, wrapped up in her robes. And the snow kind of sweeps down. And if you go to the British Museum show about the samurai, the scene is beautifully illustrated there. So Tokiwa, snow blustering everywhere, little baby Yoshitsune, just a kind of small arc of blue at Tokiwa's breast. But she can't make it through the snowstorm. She's captured. She's brought to Kiyomori. And Kiyomori is so enraptured by her beauty and by her charm that he says that he will spare her son's lives if she will come to his bed and become his concubine. And so she agrees. And in due course, her three sons are sent off to be novices in a monastery outside Kyoto. And again, Kiyomori is expecting that this is to neutralize them, that they will grow up to be monks and effectively they will not become samurai. So that's his expectation. Whether that expectation is fulfilled or not, we will see in due course. Meanwhile, he thinks, well, I've dealt with the Minamoto, I've killed the dangerous ones, I've banished the kind of the children. They're all dealt with. Don't need to worry about the Minamoto anymore. Now, what's he going to do? Well, his aim essentially is to kind of maneuver himself into the very heart of the imperial state. So in the words of the tale of the Heike, tales of his deeds and ways surpass the imagination. Because to reiterate, no samurai lord has ever been in this position before. And over the years that follow, this coup that has brought Kiyomori to power, he tramples down on every tradition that's been held precious by the imperial court. So in 1160, he becomes the first samurai to be awarded an official court position. Seven years later, he becomes the chief minister. I mean, stupefying. Then in 1171, he does a Fujiwara and marries his daughter to the emperor. So this samurai, he's now the father-in-law of the emperor, stupefying. And then in 1178, he pulls off the big one because his daughter gives the emperor a son, which means that Kiyomori now has every chance of seeing a tyra, his own grandson, ascend the imperial throne of Japan. It is the most amazing moment of triumph.

Speaker 5:
[41:16] An incredible coup. And actually, it pays off, doesn't it? And two years later, at the age of two, this boy, his grandson is the emperor Antoku. Kiyomori has achieved the summit of all his desires. And yet there must be loads of people in the court, the brush pushers and co, who must regard this as the most tremendous assault on the traditions and the propriety of Japanese court culture.

Speaker 6:
[41:43] Of course, they're all appalled. And, Dominic, I'll tell you, the class of person who is most appalled is members of the imperial family because, you know, they don't want the grandson of a tyrant samurai to sit on the throne that rightfully should be occupied by them. And the guy who's particularly offended is a prince called Machihito. And he's the son of a former emperor and, you know, the brush pusher. His vibe is very much not that of a samurai. I'll quote the tale of the haika. So beautiful did he write and such scholarly talent did he display that by rights he should have assumed the throne because it's the ability to write and to be a scholar. This is what marks you out as a good emperor. But, you know, his ambitions now effectively are blocked by Kiyomori and his dynastic manipulations. And so at the ripe old age of 29, Mochihito increasingly feels he has nothing to lose. He cannot put up with this. He decides, well, I'm going to launch a coup. And for support, he turns to pretty much the only significant Minamoto who is still there in Kyoto. And this is a former samurai who's become a monk called Yorimasa. And Yorimasa has been tolerated by Kiyomori because in the attempted coup of 1160, he had sided with Kiyomori against the Minamoto. And Yorimasa has come to feel increasingly guilty about this. He is also very offended as a Buddhist monk by what he sees as Kiyomori's contempt for Buddhist teachings. He feels that the Tyra regime is kind of corrupting the teachings of the Buddha. And that despite the fact that Kiyomori is a very devout Buddhist, I mean, he may say he is, but he isn't in practice.

Speaker 5:
[43:38] Is that because there's too much heads on spikes for this guy's liking?

Speaker 6:
[43:41] All that kind of thing. But I think also Yorimasa associates Buddhist teaching with the proprieties of the court and feels that these are being trampled on. And it's not what the Buddha would have wanted at all. So Yorimasa and Prince Moshi Hoto, they team up and they write this communique, which they send out in secret to key players across Honshu. And this communique condemns Kiyomori for his crimes against the teachings of the Buddha. And it specifically appeals to the Minamoto lords for military backing. So it goes out to all the key Minamoto lords out in the eastern provinces. And the obvious focus of their hopes is Yoritomo. And Yoritomo, he was the 13-year-old son of Yoshitomo, the guy who had been spared by Kiyomori when he was 13. And by this point, he is in his early thirties. He's still in Izu, this kind of backwater where Dutch ships get shipwrecked in the 16th century, all that kind of thing. He's lying low. But by now, he's grown up and he's very, very keen to have his vengeance. And he is a hard, ruthless, brilliantly calculating man. Dominic, I think he's a man after your own heart.

Speaker 5:
[45:04] Oh, thanks. That's kind.

Speaker 6:
[45:05] Slight smack of the Captain Bentin about him, I think.

Speaker 5:
[45:08] Does he have the surface cordiality of a Bentin, that's the question.

Speaker 6:
[45:11] Well, he does because this is what has enabled him to avoid attracting the attention of Kiyomori spies. He's very good at suggesting a certain degree of amiability. But beneath that, there is a kind of hard calculating core. And he has spent his time establishing very close links with the kind of the Samurai in Izu, and also on the Great Plain of Kanto, which lies just to the east of Izu. He has also married a female Samurai, an Onomusha as they're called. He was a woman trained in the practice of arms. And she is as impressive a woman really as Yoritomo is impressive a man. And she is called Hojo Masako. And they are very well matched. And in the long run, they're going to prove themselves the Augustus and Livia of medieval Japan because both of them are going to demonstrate an absolute genius for the arts of politics. And they are going to change the course of Japanese history. However, that's all in the future. For now, Yoritomo is very important to Yorimasa and the prince in their plotting. But the prince and Yorimasa do also have another focus of their hopes. And these are the Buddhist monks whose monasteries up on the mountains that surround Kyoto are also key players in this story. The communique that goes to the Minamoto also goes to these monasteries. And in part, they are asking the monasteries for spiritual backing, but they are also asking for military backing. And this is because the monasteries are teeming with warrior monks. The monasteries basically run their own security, their own police force. And actually, when Kiyomori spies bring him news of what these two conspirators are up to, he's much more worried about the monks than he is about what the Minamoto in their distant exile might be getting up to. He's relatively unfazed by it. He thinks it's not a big deal. He sends his police to go and arrest Prince Mochihito. But Prince Mochihito, he pulls off what by now is becoming a very familiar stunt for members of the royal family who are threatened by arrest. He dresses himself up as a woman and slips out of the palace escorted by his guards. And there's a tremendous account of this in the tale of the Heike. Fleeing north up Takakura Street, they came to a wide ditch. The prince leaped it lightly. What a fine way for a lady to hop over a ditch. A passerby stopped to exclaim, staring suspiciously.

Speaker 5:
[47:55] To be fair, I've never seen a woman hop over a ditch.

Speaker 6:
[47:58] Well, especially you wouldn't in Kyoto. I don't think that's the kind of thing you wouldn't imagine Lady Murasaki hopping over a ditch. That would never happen. So anyway, so Prince Majihito, he escapes, gets out of the city, and he rides up to this monastery on a hill called Miedera, and there a thousand monks rally to his cause. He's also joined by Yorimasa who has bought a squad of perhaps 50 samurai, and the hope is that all the other monasteries neighboring Miedera will rally to Prince Majihito's cause as well. Unfortunately, however, they do not. And so Prince Majihito decides that he is going to head southwards to another great center of Buddhist monasteries. And this is a very ancient Japanese city called Nara, famous today still for its monasteries and also for its deer. And this was the city that before Kyoto had served the emperor as his capital. And as I said, it's surrounded again by monasteries. And so therefore again, teaming with a ready supply of warrior monks. And so this is the plan. Yorimasa, Prince Majihito.

Speaker 5:
[49:06] So Yorimasa was the monk, Prince Majihito was the guy, ex-calligrapher now in the doldrums.

Speaker 6:
[49:12] Yeah, the guy who dressed up as a woman and leapt over the canal, all of that. They've got samurai with them. They've got warrior monks with them. They're heading down to Nara to try and recruit more warrior monks, and then they will return and attack Kyoto. This is the plan. Now, bear in mind, the prince has spent his entire life doing calligraphy and kind of making various perfume forms of incense. He's not a practice horseman. And so as they ride southwards towards Nara, he keeps falling off his horse. So he's not cutting an impressive dash. Nevertheless, by sunset, the prince and Yorimasa have reached a key crossing point, and this is a bridge over the deep and very churning rapids of a river called the Uji. They cross the bridge, and as they're doing this, Yorimasa is informed by his scouts that a huge squad of Taira cavalry are hot in pursuit. And so Yorimasa orders that the planks of the bridge over the Uji be ripped up, and the prince is sent to pass the night in a great Buddhist shrine called the Biyoudoin, which is still there in Uji to this day. It's stupefyingly impressive and beautiful, very rare survival from this period. So he goes off and camps out there. Meanwhile, Yorimasa and a crack squad of elite handpicked men stand guard over the skeleton of the bridge and wait for the dawn. And their hope is that if they can only hold the bridge long enough, then monks from Nara will come to reinforce them and balance out the odds, because as it stands, they are heavily outnumbered. So, you know, the night passes, the sun starts to rise, and with dawn, the defenders are able to see that the Tyre Task Force, many, many thousands strong, are descending on the river. And the vanguard of this Tyre Force, they approached the bridge, they don't observe, I mean, this is what we're told, I must be blind, but supposedly they don't see that the bridge is missing its planks, they gallop out onto the bridge and fall into the river and are swept away on the boiling torrents.

Speaker 5:
[51:29] Would you not notice? I mean, you would notice.

Speaker 6:
[51:31] Poetic license. So the Tyre commanders, they are alerted to the fact that large chunk of the bridge is missing. They raise their hands and say, they call a halt. They summon up their archers and to quote the tale of the Heike, their finest archers lined up their bows, fitted arrow to string and let fly. Yorimasa's men, who are standing on the far side of the bank, opposite the Tyre archers, they are ready to deal with this with all kinds of mad martial arts action, which is brilliantly described in the tale of the Heike. We're told that a particularly brave samurai called Tajima strides out alone onto the bridge and he knocks down the arrows with his Naginata. Using it a bit like a cricket bat or a baseball bat, kind of knock them out of the sky. Naginata is a kind of a sword crossed with a spear, it has a curved blade. I guess the kind of the European equivalent would be a halberd. And he's kind of doing that playing arrow cricket with his Naginata. And then as he's doing that, a monk, a warrior monk called Jomyo Meshu, he walks out onto another beam. Remember all the planks have been thrown into the river. And he has a tremendous innings. So he kills 25 Tyra with his arrows, we're told. He then mows down another five with his Naginata. And then when his Naginata snaps in two, he pulls out his sword and he kills eight more Tyra. Then his sword breaks. Now he only has his dagger, so he draws that. And at this point, another warrior monk called Ichire comes running up behind him. Leaning his hand on Jomyo's helmet, we're told, with, pardon me, Ichire leapt over him and lit into the foe. In that battle, he died. Meanwhile, Jomyo has crawled back to the bank, and on the grass at the Biodo ingate, he took off his armor and counted 63 arrow hits.

Speaker 5:
[53:32] 63? Wow. Good armor.

Speaker 6:
[53:34] You know, he's still going strong. And all day, the Tyra attempt to force the bridge, and all day, they're held at bay by this incredibly outnumbered band of defenders. And they're waiting, of course, for reinforcements to arrive from Nara. And the sun rises high in the sky, and then it starts to set, and still no reinforcements. The road from Nara stands empty.

Speaker 5:
[54:00] It's only a matter of time.

Speaker 6:
[54:01] And finally, towards evening, a squad of 300 Tyra horsemen decide that they have no choice but to ride into the boiling rapids, even though they're likely to be swept away, because they are threatened with disgrace if they cannot get across and attack their enemy. They ride into the rapids, and a few of them are able to make the crossing. And this demonstrates to their fellow Samurai that it is possible to forward the Uji. And so the entire Tyra army, thousands and thousands of horsemen, then follow across. And many, of course, are swept away on the currents. But actually, the mass of men, they're able to work out the surest path, and they make it across, and they are now on the same side as the defenders. And because they hugely outnumber the defenders, they're able to envelop them, and there's tremendous slaughter, and all of Prince Michihito's men are pretty much wiped out, and among them is the prince himself. There is, however, one man whom the Tyra do not kill, and this is the old warrior, the warrior monk Minamoto no Yorimasa. And he's effectively been the general. He's been the guy in command of this fighting force. He recognizes that it's all over. He recognizes the doom of his hopes, and so he summons his servant and says, you know, behead me, cut off my head. But the servant refuses, take your own life first, my lord, then I will oblige. And so Yorimasa turns to face the west where the sun is setting, and he intones the name of the Buddha ten times in a row. And then he composes poetry, and as he composes these lines, he speaks them. This forgotten tree never through the fleeting years burst into flower. And now that the end has come, no thought but turns to sorrow. And then wishing to avoid any accusation of cowardice, he takes his sword and he drives it into his belly, and he slices open his abdomen, cutting left and right. And this is the most painful suicide imaginable. And now at last, the servant is willing to behead him. So the servant draws out his sword, cuts off Yorimasa's head. And then that done, he ties it to a heavy stone, carries it to the banks of the Uji and drops it into the river. And this will serve subsequent generations of samurai as the absolute paradigm of what is called seppuku, belly-slitting. It's not the first, but it is the model that everyone from this point on will emulate.

Speaker 5:
[56:51] This is the moment that establishes the template.

Speaker 6:
[56:53] Yeah, it's the absolute archetype. And I think the luster of this death, combined with the heroism of the Uji bridge, makes the battle of the Uji bridge a kind of Japanese equivalent of the battle of Thermopylae in Greek history. So it's a defeat that isn't just a defeat. The kind of the glamour and the glory of the defeat gives it the sheen of something approaching almost a victory. And in Izu, when news of this is brought to Yoritomo, the head of the Minotomo clan, he is emboldened to raise the white banner of his clan in an open defiance of Kiomori. And by late autumn, he has successfully rallied all the lords of Kanto, so the great plane behind him, he's got their backing. And he has also established a capital in a place called Kamakura, which is a natural fortress on the coast of Kanto, where his father had always had his main base. And then the following month, after he's done this, a tyrant advance on Kanto is beaten off in a completely farcical fashion. I mean, it's kind of as ludicrous as the defense of the Uji bridge had been heroic. So what happens is that the tyrant advancing along the road that winds around the mountains that will take them to Kanto. And they meet with a Minamoto force that has been sent to block its path. Night falls and in the darkness, a squad of Minamoto samurai kind of head out from their positions to make a night attack on the tyrant. And as they're heading towards the tyrant positions, they disturb a flock of geese, which rise up very, very clamorously, kind of honking and beating their wings. And they fly directly into the lines of the tyrant. And the tyrant are thrown into a massive panic, turn on their heels and flee. And this is humiliating as the death of Yorimasa had been glorious. And it's very, very bad publicity for the tyrant. And particularly for Kiyomori, who is appalled because he realizes that it's actually not going to be possible for him to snuff out this rebellion as he'd been expecting to. That he now faces a full blown war with Yoritomo, the Minamoto captain, who was the very man whose life he had once spared, you know, back when he'd been a 13 year old boy.

Speaker 5:
[59:17] Should never have done it. He was too soft. He's too soft and he's going to pay the price.

Speaker 6:
[59:21] I think he does feel that he'd been too soft and so he is in a way because of that he reacts with incredible brutality. When he needs to be brutal, he's perfectly willing to be brutal and so he is brutal now. And he stamps out any hint of rebellion in the lands around Kyoto. And the people who are treated with a particular savagery are the monks of Nara. These were the guys that Prince Michihito had been hoping to get. And they had actually kind of raised the banner of revolt against Kiyomori. And so Kiyomori sends his son at head of a great squad of samurai and they slaughter thousands of monks in Nara.

Speaker 5:
[60:09] Cutting the heads off again.

Speaker 6:
[60:10] Yeah, there's more head-cutting. They're tossed into gutters and ditches. Smoke filled the heavens, we're told. The sky was flame and many of the holiest and most ancient shrines in the whole of Japan are utterly incinerated. And we're told no disaster approaching this one can ever before have struck the teaching. So that's the teaching of the Buddha.

Speaker 5:
[60:31] Thank you. So Kiyomori, if you remember, he had had that interaction with the fox and the fox had said basically all your wishes will come true, but as your death approaches, so all your everything you have achieved will begin to crumble into dust. And do you think he's got that sort of at the back of his mind as the war intensifies?

Speaker 6:
[60:54] Indisputably, because all kinds of presentiments of impending ruin had been visiting him. And these are described in the Tale of the Heike. So there's a time we're told when Kiyomori saw, and I quote, an enormous face a full baywide peering into the room where he lay.

Speaker 5:
[61:14] That would really unsettle you.

Speaker 6:
[61:16] It really would. It's so weird and sinister. And then another morning, he opens the doors onto his garden, and he finds it piled high with skulls. And we're told a mountain of skulls now suddenly crammed with living eyes, all of them training on Lord Kiyomori and a blinking glare. It's very Studio Ghibli, I think, kind of very particular quality of horror. And on both occasions, Kiyomori responds with his customary sang-froid. He's not a man to panic at a kind of giant face, leering it in through a window or a garden full of skulls. And the visions do fade away. But then in the wake of the burning of Nara, it's evident that his doom is now coming upon him because he begins to burn with the hottest temperature in world history.

Speaker 5:
[62:03] That's a big claim in all world history.

Speaker 6:
[62:05] In all of world history, nothing compares with the temperature that Lord Kiyomori suffers. So we are told his only words once his temperature gets him were hot, hot. And he tries to calm it down by stepping into icy springs and the water in these icy springs just steams, boils and turns to steam.

Speaker 5:
[62:24] He must have been properly hot.

Speaker 6:
[62:26] Yeah, well, no one can approach him and he's kind of lying on his bed, kind of writhing in agony for a month. And then finally, his wife kind of braves the heat, you know, because kind of risking being incinerated by it.

Speaker 5:
[62:38] Yeah, he's like the human torch from The Fantastic Four.

Speaker 6:
[62:41] And she says, you know, what's your dying wish? My Lord, now that you're on your deathbed. His dying wish has to be said, it doesn't seem to me particularly Buddhist. He says, never mind building me temples and pagodas, never mind pious prayers for me once I'm gone. No, I want Yoritomo's head off and hung before my grave. That is the only commemoration I wish.

Speaker 5:
[63:06] I respect that. He's sticking to his guns.

Speaker 6:
[63:08] He certainly is. And so he dies pledging his family, the Tyra, to undying war with the Minamoto and war. Sure enough, is what both the Tyra and the Minamoto are going to get. And this war is the most epic, the most famous war in the entire history of the Samurai. It is the Great Samurai War.

Speaker 5:
[63:33] Speaking just for myself, I cannot wait to find out what happens next. And actually members of the Rest Is History Club, our own Samurai War Band, can find out what happens next right away. And if you want to join them, and in fact, if you want to hear the next two episodes after that in the series, if you'd like to hear those right now, ad free, and you'd love a load of other Japanese style benefits, then I would suggest going to therestishistory.com and signing up and you too can follow the way of the Samurai.

Speaker 6:
[64:03] And Dominic, am I not right that there is an excellent new newsletter?

Speaker 5:
[64:06] I can't believe I didn't mention it. So people, a lot of people have been saying that the new newsletter is comparable probably only to The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book in terms of elegance of composition, in terms of the wealth of information, the information about Medieval Japan, and just the sort of general sense of beauty and poise and sort of beautiful balance to it.

Speaker 6:
[64:30] Yes.

Speaker 5:
[64:31] That's certainly the feedback that I've had about the newsletter.

Speaker 6:
[64:34] Well, there is actually an extract from The Tale of the Heike, if you're interested to know what it sounds like. There's an interview with the curator of the British Museum show. There's all kinds of tremendous benefits, isn't there?

Speaker 5:
[64:43] Right. On that bombshell, Tom, Arigatou gozaimasu and goodbye everybody.

Speaker 6:
[64:47] Goodbye.