transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:11] With her lovely white skin and long hair, Tomoe had enchanting looks. An archer of rare strength, a powerful warrior. And on foot or on horseback, a swordsman to face any demon or god. She was a fighter to stand alone against a thousand. She could ride the wildest horse down the steepest slope. In battle, Kiso clad her in the finest armor, equipped her with a great sword and a mighty bow, and charged her with the attack on the opposing commander. She won such repeated glory that none could stand beside her. So that's one of the most celebrated descriptions of a samurai ever written. It comes from the Tale of the Heike, which introduces the character of Tomoe Gozen, Lady Tomoe, the archetype of a female warrior. So, Tom Holland, who is Tomoe? And what is she doing in battle with Lord Kiso, who is the mighty warlord whose exploits dominated the last episode of this tremendous epic series about the great civil war of the samurai?

Speaker 2:
[01:24] I think before we come to Tomoe, we should just remind listeners of where we are in the sweeping epic that is the samurai civil war. So, Lord Kiso, mentioned in the passage that you read, he belongs to the Minamoto, who are one of the two great clans in 12th century Japan. And in the previous episode, we heard how he annihilated two armies that had been sent against him by the Tyra, who are the great dynastic rivals of the Minamoto. Kiso advanced on Kyoto, the imperial capital. He expelled the Tyra, and he took it over himself. But in doing this, he provoked the jealousy of his cousin, the scheming and ruthless and politically visionary head of the Minamoto clan, Yoritomo, the warlord of a port very near what today is Tokyo called Kamakura. And Yoritomo, very cross that Kiso, his cousin, is threatening to upstage him, had sent his two younger half brothers to lead a two-pronged attack on Kyoto. And their mission was effectively to destroy Kiso and to bring Kyoto under the control of Yoritomo. And the elder of these two half brothers, a guy called Noriyori, had advanced on Kyoto from the east. And the younger half brother, the very dashing Yoshitsune, had advanced from the south. And it was Yoshitsune, even more dashing, even more daring, even more charismatic than the great Lord Kiso, who had reached Kyoto first in the late winter of 1184. And we ended our last episode by hearing how his priority when he arrived in Kyoto was to seize control of a key figure in the war. And this was the cloistered emperor, Go Shirakawa, which means he had been emperor. He had abdicated, he was now officially a monk, but effectively he is the head of the imperial family and he's a great schemer. He doesn't command armies himself and so he's always trying to kind of play the various samurai warlords against one another. And he'd been able to do this because although the state is now clearly under the thumb of the samurai dynasties, the first the Tyre and then the Minamoto, the notion of a samurai ruling the empire is still a massive novelty. And so all these various warlords who are marching into Kyoto, trying to seize control of it, trying to proclaim their supremacy over the rule of Japan, they still need the legitimacy that the backing of Go Shirakawa, this cloistered emperor, can provide. And so this was why Kiso, while he had been in command of Kyoto, had been keeping Go Shirakawa effectively under house arrest. And it's why Yoshitsune, by capturing him alive, by seizing him from Kiso's control, can feel that a key objective has been obtained. This was his great mission. He had to seize Kyoto, but he also had to seize Go Shirakawa.

Speaker 1:
[04:38] So that's Yoshitsune. But what about Yoshitsune's older brother, Yoritomo, who is effectively the kind of the head, isn't he, of the Minamoto clan?

Speaker 2:
[04:49] Yeah, and who is still in his capital of Kamakura, which is adjacent to what today is the Great Bay on which Tokyo is built.

Speaker 1:
[04:59] Right. So he's been there all this time just waiting for the results, basically, waiting for news.

Speaker 2:
[05:04] He has no official constitutional position within the state. He is the head of the Minamoto, but that effectively just means that he's a Samurai warlord. But what he can now do, now that Go Shirakawa is in his younger brother's hands, is that he can lean on Go Shirakawa to kind of dress him in the robes of constitutional propriety, to give him an official status within the fabric of the empire. And Yoritomo's growing dominance of Japan can then be presented to the court, to the Japanese people more generally, as something that is much less unsettling than it might otherwise appear. Effectively, his supremacy can be presented as something that has both the blessing and the approval of the imperial palace. And so that was why it was so important for Yoshitsune to get control of the cloistered emperor.

Speaker 1:
[05:56] Now there's another contender of course for supremacy and that is this guy Kiso, who dominates so much of the last episode. So he's now lost control of the cloistered emperor, Goh Shirokawa. And his plan had been that he would seize him and then he'd go off and he'd... He's effectively some sort of war at the Kingmaker figure, where he was going to end up allied to his old enemies, the Tyre. Now what does he do? Because he doesn't have control of the cloistered emperor anymore. So what's his plan?

Speaker 2:
[06:24] Yeah, so the cloistered emperor was going to be his kind of bargaining chip.

Speaker 1:
[06:27] Yes, of course.

Speaker 2:
[06:28] But that's gone. So instead of fighting his way out of Kyoto and heading westwards to where the Tyre are, he heads eastwards. And the reason that he's doing that is that in the east, he has sent his beloved foster brother, a guy called Ime Kanahira, to hold back the advance of the Minamoto forces under Noriyori, who is the elder brother of Yoshitsune. Kiso's forces are outnumbered, the situation is desperate. And as Kiso rides from Kyoto, heading towards this bridge that Ime Kanahira had been defending, he finds that enemy forces are everywhere. And so the warband that is riding with him sustain more and more casualties as they head east. And in the tale of the Heike, the writer reflects on the scale of Kiso's downfall. Only last year he had left Shinano, his great stronghold, leading an army of 50,000. Now passing the brook at Shinomiya, he had only six riders with him.

Speaker 1:
[07:31] But one of those riders is the person with whom we began the episode, Tomoe, the female samurai.

Speaker 2:
[07:36] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[07:37] So that's a tremendous boon for Kiso.

Speaker 2:
[07:39] So who is she? She's quite a mysterious figure. She's very famous, but she's also very enigmatic and perhaps the two are connected. So according to the tale of the Heike, she was one of two beauties, quote unquote, brought by Kiso from Shinano, his mountainous stronghold to Kyoto. And one of these women was called Yama Buki, and she was unwell at the point when Kiso had to abandon Kyoto, and so she had stayed in the capital. But Tomoe is fighting fit, literally so, and she rides with Kiso, and she proves herself on this kind of terrible journey that they're all taking. A much more proficient, a much tougher samurai than most of her male companions. So again, to quote the tale of the Heiki, this is why when so many had already been cut down in their flight, Tomoe remained among the last seven. So that's Kiso and his six companions. So eastwards they ride, and they're riding towards Lake Biwa, which is this enormous lake east of Kyoto, and there's a kind of river at the bottom of it, and that's where the bridge that Imae Kenohira had been defending against the advance of Noriori and his Minamoto army. But five hours after leaving Kyoto, they're approaching the shores of Lake Biwa, and Kiso sees a band of 50 horsemen riding towards him, and this band is led by Imae, his foster brother, who has retreated from the bridge, kind of overwhelmed by the sheer weight of enemy numbers, and has been hoping to rendezvous with Kiso. And Kiso orders Imae to unfurl his banner, the great fluttering banner of Lord Kiso, and the sight of it raised up rallies his scattered supporters, and some 300 samurai, all of them loyal to Kiso, end up gathered beneath it. But the problem is, is that the sight of this banner, as well as attracting Kiso's samurai, also attracts the enemy, and they are coming in their thousands. Now Kiso leads a doomed charge against them, and he and some 50 men manage to break through, but then they find that there's another enemy warband waiting ahead of them. And again, to quote the tale of the Heike, they broke through that too, and further on through 500, through 150, then 100, each time at a cost, until Kiso had only four left. And one of these four companions was Ime, and another was Tomoe. So she is still going strong. And Kiso, I'm afraid very ungallantly, orders her to go. He says, it must not be said that at the end, I had a woman with me.

Speaker 1:
[10:13] So he doesn't order her to go for her own safety, it's for his for his reputation, his honor.

Speaker 2:
[10:19] He doesn't want to be said that he died in the presence of a woman. But she refuses to go. She says, no, I'm standing by you. And then abruptly they run into an enemy warband now of some 30 men. And this is led by a samurai who is famed for his strength, we're told. And Tomoe recognizes that this is the end game. And so she charges this samurai captain, the guy who's famed for his strength. And we're told she caught him in an iron grip, forced his head down to her pommel, kept it pinned there, twisted it round, cut it off and tossed it away. And then she abandoned her arms and armor and fled toward the east. And we talked, I think, in our second episode about how this headhunting, that it's a kind of process of butchery. It's not a neat slicing, it's a hacking and a carving. And you really get the sense of that.

Speaker 1:
[11:08] And what of Kiso? So surely this is the end game for him, isn't it? And Ime, his brother, knows it.

Speaker 2:
[11:16] Yeah, so Ime points to a nearby clump of trees. And these are the pine wood of Awazu. And Ime says to his foster brother, go in among those pines and take your life. So in other words, commit seppuku. And Kiso is reluctant because he wants to die by his foster brother's side. He says, I fled all the way here to die with you. I want us to die together, not apart. And saying this, he rides up beside Ime on his horse and he says, come on, let's have a charge, let's die in glory. But Ime is absolutely insistent. Says, you know, I don't want you dying like this. I want you to have the dignity of your suicide. And so finally, Kiso kind of says, okay, fine. And he sets off at full gallop for this pine wood in the distance. But the light was failing and thin ice spread across the surrounding paddies. And Kiso's horse plunges up to its waist in mud. And it's immovable. No stirrup, no whip could move it. And Kiso looks back. He's very worried for Ime. And as he does so, his helmet tilts back. It kind of rocks back off his forehead. And at once, an enemy archer's arrow embeds itself there, splats straight into his forehead. The wound was mortal. Kiso slumped forward onto his horse's neck. And two servants of the samurai who had shot him, this is a samurai called Ishida Nojiru Tamahisa, they cut off Kiso's head and they present it to their master. And Ishida is triumphant. And he draws out his sword from his belt, sticks it on the tip, lifts it up high, and he cries out in triumph, Lord Kiso famed throughout Japan has fallen to Ishida Nojiru Tamahisa. So again, this boasting about ancestry, which is such a feature of of Samurai Braggadaccio anime. He sees what's happened and he gives up the fight. And we're told he took the point of his sword in his mouth, hurled himself headlong from his horse and died transfixed. So not exactly a seppuko, but I mean a spectacular suicide nevertheless. And so it came to pass, we're told that no battle took place at Awazu.

Speaker 1:
[13:31] And this story, I mean, this is attested, there's no reason to doubt that this happened.

Speaker 2:
[13:35] I think the outline of it.

Speaker 1:
[13:37] Yeah, because this feels like the stuff of poetry, doesn't it? It feels like the stuff that might have been embroidered over time.

Speaker 2:
[13:44] For sure. I mean, I think the clearly the implosion of Kiso's power base, that's accurate. And I think the pathos of his kind of, you know, this lonely end by the pine trees. I think the place of his death was commemorated. That's it's kind of very famous. I mean, are all the details accurate, as you say? Almost certainly not, because by this point, poets are celebrating samurai in quite a traditional way. And they love to amplify the glamour, but they also love to amplify the jeopardy. And so you get this incredibly cinematic account of Kiso's death. You know, the ice on the paddy fields, the mud, the way he dies, the pine trees. You get this incredible battle cry of triumph from the guy who's killed him, the insistence on yelling out his name. You get Imei's melodramatic suicide. Maybe this happened or maybe it should have happened. But either way, it means that this episode again is one of those kind of paradigmatic moments that will reverberate through the centuries. Every samurai knows this story. And I think that this reflects the way in which the samurai themselves, as we said it right in the first episode, they are always actively and deliberately encouraging myth-making. And the rise and fall of someone like Lord Kiso, it did dramatize for them how precarious life was. The famous lines with which the tale of the Heike opening, we had that at the beginning of episode two, the bold and brave perish in the end, they are as dust before the wind. This is the great Buddhist teaching, all things must pass. And also the calling out of names on the battlefields. Maybe it didn't happen during the course of fighting, as it did in this account, but afterwards, I think that's absolutely plausible. I mean, the delight that Ishida feels at killing someone as famous as Kiso is entirely understandable. Because right the way through Samurai history, the more glorious, the better born, the nobler, the more famous the person you kill, the greater the glory that it brings to you. And it's very clear in all the accounts that kind of rank and file warriors, Samurai with no great lineage or reputation, if they kill someone who's famous, it immediately elevates them, it immediately amplifies their fame. And again, the kind of the death of Ime, this horrible kind of detail of him putting the sword in the back of his throat and then kind of driving himself forward. Did it happen? It should have done if it didn't, because a dramatic suicide is a good suicide and a good suicide is a memorable suicide.

Speaker 1:
[16:29] And just a quick question, how do you think this compares with the kind of nightly culture of Europe in the Middle Ages?

Speaker 2:
[16:34] I think quite similar.

Speaker 1:
[16:36] But more exaggerated version in some ways, an even greater interest in lineage and fame and in or just the equivalent.

Speaker 2:
[16:44] I mean, they're not exactly map onto one another, but I think there are kind of aspects of nightly culture as there are in samurai culture that are celebrated by poets and which then influence the way that nights behave and that behavior then in turn influences poets. So it's a kind of, you know, it's the nightly culture and the poetic culture are kind of fueling one another. And it's that which brings us to Lady Tomoway, who is a properly mysterious figure, who she just suddenly appears and then just suddenly vanishes. You know, she chops off the head of this guy and she's gone and we never hear about her again. It's not surprising that this starring role, you know, so unexpected, so unusual, so kind of fleeting, it absolutely encourages subsequent attempts to fill in the gaps. So, in the wake of the tale of the Heike people are fascinated by her. They do want to know more. They want to know, you know, who had she been to Qisoo? Had she been his servant, his concubine, his wife? How seasoned was she in combat? And so a tradition develops that she had actually commanded the division of Qisoo's army at the Kura-Kara Pass that had been stationed in Hell Valley. So all those Taira soldiers who had jumped off the precipice and fallen into the valley and been cut up by the Minamoto soldiers stationed there, that she had been in command of them.

Speaker 1:
[18:07] But there's no evidence at the time that she was. I mean, this is an elaboration after the event, no?

Speaker 2:
[18:12] I mean, I suppose it's not completely impossible, because if it was completely impossible, people wouldn't have said that it had been possible, but I think it's probably unlikely. And then of course, there's this great mystery about what did happen to her after she galloped off into the sunset. And again, various stories are kind of told to try and fill that gap. So some say that she continued her career as a warrior, that she had a kind of glorious record. Others say that she was captured by one of Yoritomo's right-hand men and made into effectively a sex slave, and others that she ended up as a nun. And so the range of stories that are told about her fate have led some scholars very disappointingly to, to suggest that she was completely fictional. But I'm happy to say, having on the basis of my fairly cursory research into this, that the consensus does seem a lot more positive than that. That most scholars of this period think that she was a real person who was kind of amplified into legend.

Speaker 1:
[19:11] Well, can we talk a bit about women more broadly? So women, girls from Samurai families are taught how to ride a horse, sit in the saddle, use a bow and so on. And there are female warriors, aren't there? Onomusha, they're called.

Speaker 2:
[19:25] Yeah, they're completely recognized figures in Japanese culture. And most of them probably didn't carry swords as Tomoe did. But they were habituated to the use of the naginata, which is that kind of halberd-like thing that was used in the battle on the Uji bridge, the guy kind of batting away the arrows of his enemy. But this was often described in Japanese literature as the kind of the weapon, par excellence, that was used by female warriors, I guess because it was kind of maybe lighter than a sword. And there is an intriguing detail from archaeology admittedly from centuries after Tomoe lived. So there was in 2022, there was excavation of a site of a battle that had been fought in 1580. And that covered the remains of 105 individual warriors who had perished in this fight. And of those 105, 35 had been women. So I think the evidence for there having been female samurai is much stronger than say, the evidence for the having been female Vikings, which is people very much want to believe in. I think the evidence for female samurai is much stronger. So I think that the fact that Tomoe undoubtedly does become a figure of myth, she becomes a star of kind of no theater and kabuki and all this kind of thing. I mean, she's kind of very well-known figure right into the present in Japan. But it doesn't mean that she was always and exclusively a figure of myth. And it's a point really, really well-made in the catalog of the British Museum Samurai Show by Rosina Buckland, the curator there. And she wrote, It is important to realize that myth-making was present from the very beginning, and that it cannot be separated from historical fact, image underpinned reality. Because the samurai, as we've said, are always conscious of themselves as someone who is potentially going to be the star of a myth. And it's true of all the great figures in the Samurai Civil War. So, Kiyomori, Kiso, Tomoe. But actually, the guy of whom it is most true is the samurai, who will come to rank simultaneously as the greatest general of the age. A figure who is clearly a man of history, a man who is shaping events, who is winning wars, who is altering the very course of Japanese history, but who also ends up as the kind of a cross between Robin Hood and King Arthur. And this is Minamoto, no, Yoshitsune. And we met him in the previous episode. He is the younger half-brother of Yoritomo. He's the guy who'd won the Battle of Uji, and he was the guy who had captured Kyoto, and more specifically, Goushi Rokawa, the cloistered emperor.

Speaker 1:
[22:07] That's right. But he's already in the series, occupied a place in between history and legend, hasn't he? Because he also was sent off to a monastery and he was raised not knowing who his father was. Listeners may recall that he was taught swordsmanship by a sort of a demon or something, who lived underneath a mountain. And then he fought that bloke, Benkei, the sort of warrior monk who was built like Joe Marla, the rugby player, on a bridge. And then recruited him. Remember Benkei wanted to defeat 100 people or something?

Speaker 2:
[22:36] A thousand.

Speaker 1:
[22:37] A thousand. And only got 999 because this bloke was his thousandth. And then Benkei became his samurai. So he is a really good example of how these characters occupy this strange kind of liminal world between verifiable historical fact and the stuff of kind of poetry and legend and folk tale and all of this kind of thing.

Speaker 2:
[22:57] Yeah. And so in the in the second half, his career will take two courses. So the first course, we will see how he is entrusted by his brother, Yoritomo, with the command of the Minamoto war effort and how he takes to the seas against the Tyra, who had the great naval power. But we will also be seeing how once he has brought the samurai civil war to a close, he ends up being banished from his brother's presence and he withdraws effectively into the dimension of legend. So he is going to become a great figure in Japanese history and he is going to become the Robin Hood of Japan.

Speaker 1:
[23:34] Exciting. So come back after the break and we'll find out how Minamoto Noh Yocchi Sunne becomes Robin Hood. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. So we have been talking about Yoshitsune, who is the youngest brother of Yoritomo, the head of the Minamoto Clan. He's had a tremendous episode so far. His great rival, Kiso, has been eliminated from the Samurai Game of Thrones. And now Yoshitsune is off to fight their sworn enemies in the west of Japan, the Taira. Now the difference here is the Taira are very formidable on sea as well as on land. So Tom, how is he going to cope with that?

Speaker 2:
[24:19] It's going to be difficult because the Minamoto are not a naval power. They don't really have ships. And that means that the Taira are going to be very, very difficult to bring to a decisive defeat because they control the inland sea. And these are the waters which border western Honshu and immediately to its south, these two other islands. So Shikoku, which lies directly parallel to western Honshu. So if you think of it as maybe mapping on to England, it's like an enormous isle of white kind of running parallel to the south coast. And then Kushu, which is like we said, it's like kind of Cornwall and Devon, if it was an island kind of stuck on the southwest and the straits that separate Kushu and Honshu are so narrow that today they are spanned by a bridge. So this essentially, you know, these are the shipping lanes, the ports, the islands that the Taira have fled to. And because they know that the Minamoto have no naval capacity, if they base themselves on these islands, they're effectively inaccessible. So they are in Shikoku, they are on Kushu, but also on a place called the Yashima, which is a volcanic island immediately off the coast of northeastern Shikoku and they assume Minamoto have no ships. We are safe if we stay here. Now, having said that, they do also have a base on the coast of Mainland Honshu, about three days ride from Kyoto. This is a place called Ichinotani, and they don't want to abandon Honshu completely. I mean, that's why. They have based themselves in Ichinotani, because they think it is impregnable. It's kind of nestled between beneath very, very steep cliffs, which everyone assumes are impossible to descend. The beaches that lie to the east and west of their base, are guarded by very high walls. So they feel completely secure there.

Speaker 1:
[26:11] All right, Tom, I have the sense that you wouldn't tell me that about the high cliffs and the impregnable situation, unless in fact this place was not impregnable and somebody was about to take it. I mean, that's the nature. Whenever someone describes an impregnable citadel on a history podcast, you know that it's going to fall about two pages of notes later.

Speaker 2:
[26:28] Particularly if you've got an absolute legend like Yoshitsune on the scene, because being told that a cliff can't be descended is exactly the kind of challenge that he loves. And so, you know, he's informed, oh, there's no way that any horseman can ride down these cliffs. And he asks the local who's told him this, you know, well, can deer get down this cliff face? And he's told, yeah, the deer, they can get through. Why then, Yoshitsune exclaimed, it sounds like a veritable riding ground if deer can get through, so can horses. And so he sends two riderless horses down the side of the cliff, and he watches them go down and they manage to make their way. And once these two horses have got to the bottom, Yoshitsune turns around to the samurai, he says, let's go, and down they go. And it's very like the end of Two Towers, the Peter Jackson film, where Gandalf leads the riders of Rowan down an improbably steep hill.

Speaker 1:
[27:27] Yeah, it's a brilliant scene.

Speaker 2:
[27:28] And also, of course, it's very Tom away, because we're told in that passage that you read, and she could ride the wildest horse down the steepest slope. So it's obviously a kind of measure of samurai skill and bravado. And so the tale of the Heike says, down he went, that's Yoshitsune, everyone followed, stifling whoops and shouts to the horses. The drop was so steep, they shut their eyes, the feet seemed all but superhuman, something for gods or demons, not men.

Speaker 1:
[27:55] I mean, the Tyre, as soon as they took refuge in a stronghold that they were told was impregnable, they should have known this was coming. They should have read the tales of Japanese history and whatnot.

Speaker 2:
[28:03] But maybe they didn't realize they were in an epic poem. That was their mistake.

Speaker 1:
[28:06] No, maybe they didn't. Anyway, they're taken by surprise by this, aren't they? And huge numbers of them are cut down immediately.

Speaker 2:
[28:11] Ichinotani is put to the torch and the whole war would probably have been settled there and then had the Tyre not had their ship lined up, ready to go. So like the Greeks on the plains of Troy, then there's a great battle on the beach. But most of the Tyre are able to escape onto their boats and sail away. And among those who managed to get on to a boat is the five-year-old Emperor Antoco. And with him crucially this imperial regalia that you have to have if you're going to crown or institute a new emperor. And as long as Antoco keeps that with him, then the Minamoto can't put a new emperor on the throne.

Speaker 1:
[28:50] So that's kind of a result for the Tyre. Can we just focus in on a particular episode from this battle? Because obviously this battle greatly celebrates in kind of Japanese poetry and legend and stuff. And the Tale of the Heike talks about some of the rather like the Iliad or something. It focuses in on individuals, heroes who perform tremendous feats in this battle. And those feats then become an inspiration for generations of samurai in the decades and centuries afterwards. So the most famous one is this guy Kumagai Naozane. And what happens to Kumagai Naozane and what makes him so celebrated?

Speaker 2:
[29:26] He's a low-born samurai and therefore he's desperate to kind of boost his standing and his reputation. And so he does this classic samurai thing of wanting to be the first into battle. And so rather than join Ishitsune in this kind of descent on their horses down the cliff, he has gone in for some kind of father-son bonding by taking his son, a guy called Naoi, along for a completely lunatic full frontal assault on one of the flanking walls that is protecting the beach. And it's this kind of classic samurai thing. He wants to be the first into the battle. And he does get over the wall. His son is invalidated out. Kumagai is very upset about this. He's kind of brooding on it. And as the Taira are making their escape, he joins the Minamoto and he rides down to the beach to carry on the fight. And he sees a Taira warrior who is swimming out to one of the ships. And this warrior, we're told, wears delicately tinted green armor, a helmet with spreading horns, a sword with gold fittings. And on his back, arrows fletched with mottled feathers. And Kumagai calls out to him and says, Hey, stop running away. Don't be a coward. Come back and fight. And the Taira warrior hears this. He stopped swimming and he turns around and he wades back up through the shallows. And they start fighting and Kumagai is much too strong, much too powerful, much too experienced for this much slighter warrior and Kumagai wrestles the Taira down onto the ground and he tears off his adversary's helmet. And we're told he beheld a youth in his 16th or 17th year, his face lightly powdered, his teeth blackened about the same age as his own son. And to powder your face and to blacken your teeth is a marker of aristocratic status in the Imperial Court. And this is a kind of very, very handsome, almost pretty youth. And Kumagai demands to know the name of this young man and the young man refuses. I am a worthy opponent, he says. Take my head and ask around. But Kumagai stares down at him and he's thinking of his own son who is, you know, dangerously injured and he hesitates and he thinks I should spare this boy. He has all his life ahead of him. You know, I challenged him to battle and I shouldn't have done because he wasn't ready to compete with me. But as he's thinking this, he sees a great crowd of Samurai moving down towards them. And the boy, he sees this as well. And he's afraid that he's going to be dishonored before them if Kumagai doesn't take his head. And so he says to Kumagai, come on, get a move on, you know, decapitate me. Alas, Kumagai murmured in bitter grief. The warrior's calling is harder than any. Had I not been born to a warlike house, never would I have known such sorrow. And so he draws his sword and he beheads the youth. And then he finds that this young boy had a flute, which like blackened teeth and powdered skin is kind of emblematic of aristocratic grace and sophistication and learning. And he has this flute in a bag at his waist. So it's clear that this young man is a man of tremendous breeding. And subsequently, Kumagai learns that he was a young man called Atsumori, the son of an exceedingly high-ranking Tyre Lord. And that this flute had been a personal gift to him from the cloistered Emperor Toba, who died way back in episode two. And Kumagai is so distraught at what he's done and at the way that he's brought death to this brilliant young man, that he ends up becoming a monk. He chucks in the samurai business completely. And we're also told that when Kumagai, he's on the beach of Ichinotani, he's holding the head of this young man who he's decapitated. And he goes to present the head to Yoshitsune. The sight of it, we are told, drew tears from everyone. So all the samurai share in this feeling of grief.

Speaker 1:
[33:30] What are they grieving? The fact that he's aristocratic or the fact that he's young?

Speaker 2:
[33:34] I think both. I think they feel grief for the kind of the old aristocratic order that the samurai are starting to eclipse. But I think they are also starting to kind of fashion for themselves a new culture which derives from the courtly culture but is something novel and very rich, very vivid in emotion. And the reason that this episode reverberates so profoundly is that it's almost like a passing of the torch, a passing of the torch from the courtly culture to the samurai culture. And what you're seeing here are samurai who are starting to celebrate their own stories, their own notions of nobility, their own heroes. And of course, of all these heroes, the greatest was, as he remains to this day, Yoshitsune himself. This is the moment where we see samurai culture starting to emerge in the form that still exists to this day, that we're familiar with to this day.

Speaker 1:
[34:38] Right. Now, Yoshitsune has always, you know, because he's a Minamoto, he's been fighting on land, he's been fighting his way across Honshu. But of course, the issue now is that the Tyra have fled by sea, haven't they? So he's going to have to become a naval hero, as well as a land one, if he's going to carry the fight to them.

Speaker 2:
[34:57] Yes. So he's essentially, he's a Napoleon, very young and dashing, hering around all over the place, who transforms himself into a Nelson. One year after this great victory at Ichinotani, Yoshitsune launches his first amphibious expedition, and he does it by sea, in the teeth of an absolute gale, to Shikoku, this island to the south of Honshu. Then having landed, unobserved by the Tyra, he leads his cavalry over land by night, so as to maximize the surprise to the Tyra base on this volcanic island of Yashima, which we mentioned. Yoshitsune and his men are able to attack this base because, as they had been informed by a local, at low tide, you can ride out to the island and not even wet your horse's belly, so it's very affordable. The Tyra, again, the Minamoto pull this trick, which Kiso had also been keen on, of raising up phantom banners to make it seem like there's a much larger force than there actually is. The Minamoto see these banners and they panic and they all pile into their ships again, and the ships pull out to sea and they essentially abandon their base. And it's a victory for Yoshitsune. He's captured their base, he's forced them off Shikoku, but because the Tyra have been able to withdraw and because they, again, they take the Emperor Antoku with them and the Imperial Regalia, it's still indecisive, you know, they had the first battle indecisive, the second battle, third time lucky.

Speaker 1:
[36:27] I mean, in a poem, it's always the third battle as the winner, isn't it?

Speaker 2:
[36:31] But the thing is, I mean, it is, but this is also historical fact. We know that this isn't just kind of completely made up. These battles are authenticated in sources from the time. So and I think this is another reason why Yoshitsune is such a potent figure, is that he leads his life as though he's already a hero in a kind of epic poem and people clearly feel that at the time. So third time lucky, it's one month later, 25th of April, 1185, and Yoshitsune meets the entire Taira battle fleet in what is going to prove the climactic clash of the Samurai Civil War. And the setting now is the waters that border the very westernmost point of Honshu. So these are the narrow straits that today are crossed by a bridge that separate Honshu from the neighboring island of Kushu.

Speaker 1:
[37:26] So at Yashima, so a month before, Yoshitsune had been a little bit hesitant about facing the Taira Sea, hadn't he? Because they're the experts on sea, he's a relative novice, but now he's absolutely going to go for it. And what has changed? New ships, new tactics, what's the difference?

Speaker 2:
[37:45] Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's a bit like the Romans attacking the Carthaginians in the first Punic War. You know, they're not proficient sailors, but Yoshitsune is confident now that he has enough ships to to at least rival the number that the Taira have at the Minamoto shipyards have been working flat out, because of course, Yoshitsune has seized them from the Taira by conquering most of Western Honshu. It's evident, I think, by this point to most people that the Minamoto are going to win. And so there have been a lot of defections, you know, ships and sailors have gone over to Yoshitsune. And also by cornering the Taira in these very narrow straits, he senses a real opportunity. This is his chance finally to win a decisive battle, because beyond these straits, there is nothing but open sea, you know, all the way to Korea. So the Taira essentially have nowhere to go if they lose, they have to stand and fight. And all of these are factors that lead Yoshitsune to think this is the moment. But above all, of course, you know, we compared him to Nelson. He has those qualities, he has boldness, he has vision, he has drive, he has a kind of sense for the moment. And the battle begins kind of towards midday, it's the late morning. And by the late afternoon, Yoshitsune has effectively won. The Taira fleet have been caught by this massive rip tide, and they're starting to drift helplessly backwards towards a rocky beach on the shore of Honshu called Danura. And this time, there's no escape for the little boy Emperor Anteku.

Speaker 1:
[39:29] He's had a tough time, that boy.

Speaker 2:
[39:31] He's just spent his whole life kind of jumping onto ships and being furrowed away. But this time, there is no where for him to go. And so, he's with his grandmother, who is the widow of Kiyomori, the great tyra lord who died of horrible temperature. And Anteku's grandmother folds the little boy in her arms, and then she speaks probably the most famous last words in the entire history of the samurai, incredibly celebrated in Japan. And she tells the boy, down there beneath the waves, another capital, so another Kyoto awaits us. And then she jumps with him into the sea, and they sink.

Speaker 1:
[40:10] Good line. It's a really good line. I mean, I respect it, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[40:13] A really good line. And the ceremonial sword, you know, which you need to inaugurate a new emperor, that also, it is said, banishes into the depths, although opinions differ. There are those in Japan who say that it was recovered, but I think the consensus generally is that that goes forever, it's lost, it's still down there in the straits. Fortunately, the mirror and the jewel do survive, and, you know, they're still in existence to this day. And there is a sword which some say, you know, I think probably fake, but don't come at me if you're Japanese. So they've gone and all across the Taira battle fleet, the samurai are thinking, this is it, we're all over, and they see the emperor and his grandmother jump into the waves. And so they start to follow. And most of them pick up anchors or they put on kind of extra layer of armor to ensure that they will sink. And never before in the history of the samurai had there been such a mass suicide.

Speaker 1:
[41:12] How many people?

Speaker 2:
[41:13] Thousands and thousands sinking down into the depths. There are survivors. So Ken Raimond In, who is the mother of Antaku, the daughter of Kiyomori, she weighed down her robes and she threw herself into the sea. But there was a Minamoto sailor saw her and reached down with a grappling hook, caught her by the hair, hauled her in. So she survived. And Munamori, who is her brother and the highest ranking of all the tyra, so the eldest surviving son of Kiyomori, he also was captured because he had hesitated to jump. So in a way, he's the kind of Bruce Ismay of the samurai, the guy.

Speaker 1:
[41:50] Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:
[41:50] He's the coward.

Speaker 1:
[41:52] Is he lambasted for the rest of his life like Bruce Ismay was?

Speaker 2:
[41:55] Yes, he is, as we will see. Oh no. And the survival of Munamori, it kind of only emphasizes the sheer annihilation of everyone else and the tyra clan. Again, there are these incredibly famous lines from The Tale of the Hei-Ki. Red flags and badges littered the sea like autumn leaves stripped by the wind and scattered on the Tatsuta River. Once white, the waves on the shore broke pink. Boats drifted, empty and abandoned, the will only of wind and tide, aimlessly rocking, a desolate scene. Almost the strangest story told is that the spirits of the dead tyra, all the ones who had killed themselves by jumping into the sea, migrated into the crabs that scuttle along the beach of Dananura and can still be seen there to this day. And Dominic, you're pulling a face.

Speaker 1:
[42:47] No, just a face of a crab, actually.

Speaker 2:
[42:49] Should you or anyone be sceptical, then have a look at the shells of these crabs, the Haikagani, they call the Tyna crabs. And on these shells, you will clearly see the faces of drowned samurai.

Speaker 1:
[43:02] No, I totally believe this. I don't, I'm not sceptical at all. So you were comparing this to the naval battle, I don't know, between like Roman Carthage. But I mean, Roman Carthage had nothing on this. The young emperor with his grandmother going down to their capital beneath the waves, the sword that's disappeared and never found, the samurai crabs. I mean, this is good stuff.

Speaker 2:
[43:25] Yeah, it's an incredibly haunting, eerie battle as well as being completely decisive in this great war, this great samurai civil war. And I think that this is also a crucial aspect of what makes Yoshitsune the most famous of all the samurai because the battle crowns what has been the greatest succession of victories in the history of the samurai, you know, these three great naval battles. And before that, he'd captured Kyoto and he'd forced the bridge at Uji, all of these great victories. But also Yoshitsune himself is folded into the aura of tragedy because it is for him a pinnacle of greatness. And from this moment on, the only way is down. The future is not good for this great victor in the war.

Speaker 1:
[44:12] So I'm wondering if part of this is to do with the dynamic that is always slightly fateful in history, which is he's the younger brother and his elder brother is the person really for whom he's fighting. And is his elder brother properly grateful and gracious in victory?

Speaker 2:
[44:27] He is so ungrateful because Yoritomo, I think, is not a man who is in any way swayed by emotion or sentiment. And he recognizes that Yoshitsune now is the only person who could conceivably rival him as the master of Japan. Yoshitsune has this reputation, he has the loyalty of all these men. Yoritomo hasn't fought a battle in this war. And so Yoritomo can recognize that if he is going to be completely secure, he has to get rid of his younger brother. And this perspective is solidified for him by the fact that in Kyoto, the Wailigo Shirakawa is already trying to foster divisions between them by absolutely lavishing Yoshitsune with honors, which is almost calculated to infuriate Yoritomo. And Yoritomo, he is not in a mood to show clemency to anyone, particularly not to the Tyra either. So Munamori, the Bruce Ismay of the Tyra, he is executed and his head is exhibited in Kyoto Marketplace. I mean, if you are a fan of seven heads, Kyoto Marketplace has definitely been the place to be for the past few years. All his children are either drowned or buried alive. And poor Ken Raimonin, so the mother of the drowned emperor, the boy emperor, she is spared, but she is sent to a particularly poverty-stricken nunnery, where she lives the rest of her life. So that's the Tyragon, but how is Yoritomo going to deal with Yoshitsune? Well, first of all, he refuses to see the victorious general, Yoritomo, he's not having him anywhere near Kamakura. Then he strips him of all his lands, and then he attempts to have him assassinated. And although the assassination attempt fails, it's very, very clear to Yoshitsune who it was had sponsored it. And so by the end of November, and this is the same year that he'd won his great victory over the Tyre at Dananura, Yoshitsune gets the message and he slips away from Kyoto, and he vanishes effectively into the dimensions of legend. Because from this point on, he is basically Robin Hood. He is an outlaw, he's always escaping villainous lawmen who are trying to hunt him down. And of course, he has a little John in the form of this colossal warrior monk, Benkei.

Speaker 1:
[46:56] He is basically Friar Tuck and little John combined into one character.

Speaker 2:
[47:00] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[47:01] And he ends up, so Robin Hood, lurking around in the north of England and he is lurking around in the north of Japan.

Speaker 2:
[47:06] He is. And as with Robin Hood, there are all these stories that are told about him. Very, again, incredibly famous in Japan. Almost none of which I think are true. But what is true is the fact that by 1189, Yoshitsune is cornered in the very far north of Honshu. So basically, as far north as it's possible to go. And he's tracked down by a vast force of local samurai to an abandoned fort, which stands behind a lonely river and there's clearly no escape from it. And so Yoshitsune himself retires into the fort where he commits seppuku, he slits open his stomach. And outside, while he's dying in this way, his tiny band of retainers are trying to hold off this kind of vast army that has gathered at its gates. But they inevitably are picked off one by one. And finally, the story goes only Benkei, this colossal warrior monk, his left. And he pauses the besieging force of samurai so intimidated by him that they withdraw. Benkei leans on his great naginata, his halberd. And none of the enemy samurai dare to approach him. He's such a figure of kind of brooding and terrifying menace. And all is still for several minutes. And then a gust of wind blows. And very, very slowly Benkei keels over. And the samurai come forward to inspect him. And they realize that he's been dead for a while. And only held up by the all the arrows that have struck him through and are feathering him.

Speaker 1:
[48:40] That's a good story.

Speaker 2:
[48:41] It's very Wild West, isn't it? It's exactly the kind of story thing that you could imagine, you know, a shootout in a saloon or someone.

Speaker 1:
[48:48] He's been shot and then very slowly he topples over and, and, you know, tumbleweed goes past his dead body or whatever. However, I have a terrible feeling you're going to debunk this story and say that it didn't happen.

Speaker 2:
[48:57] I like to think it happened. And we know for sure that Yushitsune, I mean, he is cornered, he is killed and he is decapitated. And his head is sent from this fort in the far north of Honshu to his loving, his loving elder brother in Kamakura, Yoritomo. And it's preserved in sweet sake, we're told.

Speaker 1:
[49:18] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[49:18] And Yoritomo inspects it and disposes of it. And that seems to be the end of Yushitsune. But as with Robin Hood, there are stories that he survived and lived to old age. Similar stories are told of Yushitsune. And one of the most extraordinary stories which develops much later is that he had escaped to China and then made his way to Mongolia, where he became Genghis Khan. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[49:47] I mean, there are accounts of Genghis Khan as a young man, so that would seem to conflict with them. But who knows? Stranger things have happened. Well, have they? I mean, they probably haven't, but probably not.

Speaker 2:
[49:58] You know, these stories don't have to be true to be influential. And the stories that are told of Yushitsune in particular over the course of the centuries, they have a massive influence on the figure of the samurai as myth. And by extension, I think, therefore, on the figure of the cowboy in Westerns and on Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. I mean, we've said that. And so I think you could imagine that if Yushitsune were to meet Luke Skywalker, let's say that happens.

Speaker 1:
[50:27] There's a great joke coming up, everybody. Don't miss this great joke from Tom. Tom is going to make a Star Wars joke. And this is very exciting. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[50:36] What would Yushitsune say if he met Luke? He would say, I am your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather Luke.

Speaker 1:
[50:46] What a great joke that is. Back of the net. George Luke is on the phone to you straight away. Why doesn't he feature that in one of his films? What a brilliant bit of sci-fi banter.

Speaker 2:
[50:57] Thank you. Thank you very much. And also I hope you know that I've been saying video game throughout this series as well.

Speaker 1:
[51:03] That stunned me. That absolutely stunned me at the beginning of episode one. I was looking forward to laughing at you about the phrase computer game and to my horror, you'd put video game. You had acknowledged that history had happened after the 1990 or something. And that astounded me.

Speaker 2:
[51:18] We've been doing this podcast for years and years now. And I like to think that I have learned from you. Yeah. A bit like your Shitsune at the feet of the of the great demon in the mountain.

Speaker 1:
[51:26] Here's my real question. How did you know about the game Ghost of Tsushima? Is that in the British Museum exhibition or something?

Speaker 2:
[51:32] Because I knew that samurai were a massive theme of video games. There's lots about that in the British Museum.

Speaker 1:
[51:39] I've got to be honest, of all the things we've done, we've done like 700 episodes, regular episodes. We've of course done episodes for our Rest Is History Club members. You can hear those episodes by signing up at therestishistory.com. But in all those hundreds and hundreds of episodes, nothing has blown my mind more than you starting with Ghost of Tsushima.

Speaker 2:
[51:56] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[51:56] I mean, that amazed me. My mission is done. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[52:00] I mean, this is part of what makes the samurai so fascinating, is that they are part of the fabric of video games, right? I mean, in Japan, they're colossal, but they're also part of Western video games. And that's what makes them so fascinating and exceptional.

Speaker 1:
[52:16] Okay. Let's get back to the history of the samurai, because the age of the samurai has now well and truly dawned. I mean, they are the masters of Japan now.

Speaker 2:
[52:24] Right, because they're not just figures of fantasy. They are now going to be the rulers of Japan basically for 700 years.

Speaker 1:
[52:31] Yeah, of course. So Yoritomo is the master of Japan right now. I mean, you describe him in your notes as restless, ruthless and deeply unappealing. I mean, is he that unappealing? He's just one. I mean, I don't find that unappealing.

Speaker 2:
[52:42] I like to think that I wouldn't, for instance, hound my own brother to his death. I feel that that's very poor. And I like to think that you wouldn't either. I think that it's very unfraternal. I don't think he's an attractive figure, but he's a deeply, deeply impressive figure. And he is now effectively the master of Japan. And if you want to become master of Japan, then he's obviously a tremendous role model. Yeah, there's absolutely that. And he makes clear his status as the new master of Japan on the 7th of November, 1190. So that's five years after his younger brother had won this great battle at Dananura. And he travels to Kyoto. And this is his first visit to the capital as an adult. And his stay there is very brief. And the fact that he doesn't stay in Kyoto reflects the fact that in the opinion of Yoritomo, Kamakura, this town, very close to what is now Tokyo, is effectively the new capital of Japan. Not officially, but effectively. And he doesn't want to be away from it for very long. Nevertheless, Kyoto is still, it's the ancestral capital. It's the place where the emperor lives. So it does matter. And so this is why he has gone there. His respect for the monarchy is authentic. He's not a Cromwell to that extent. He's not going to abolish it. He's not going to replace it. That would be a bridge too far. But having said that, even though he respects the institution that the emperor embodies, he doesn't respect the most significant player in the imperial family. And this remains very crafty, the very inconstant, the very shifty Go Shirakawa. And actually, Yoritomo sees Go Shirakawa, he calls him a Tengu, a demon, someone who is not quite human. And so he's going there basically to put Go Shirakawa in his box as well. You know, Kyoto, the whole of Japan, it needs the smack of firm government. And that being so, there can be no place for kind of scheming elderly cloistered emperors messing things up. You know, there can be no place for corrupt imperial favorites, cloistered emperors, any of these kind of people, they're all gone. They're not going to put up with them. The only class of person who could be trusted to provide good governance is Yoritomo's own class, the samurai class. And so this is where the notion of the samurai as the ruling elite in Japan is starting to bed down very firmly. And Yoritomo effectively delivers this message in Kyoto and then he heads back to Kamakura and he leaves the ancient capital behind. And it's a kind of a tremendous insult to Kyoto. But you know, everyone there has to suck it up.

Speaker 1:
[55:23] Remind me, who is the emperor at this point? Who is the actual emperor?

Speaker 2:
[55:26] Well, it's this little boy Gotoba, who finally, you know, they've got the regalia back. And so he's been crowned as emperor, but he's still kind of seven or something at this point. So not really a player. Yoritomo does not press to be given a kind of an official title at this point. He waits for Go Shirakawa to die. And Go Shirakawa finally dies in the spring of 1192. And so Gotoba, this little boy, is now, he no longer has his grandfather kind of operating behind the scenes. So he's much easier for Yoritomo to influence. And so Yoritomo leans on the little boy, Gotoba, the emperor, very heavily. And on the 21st of August 1192, Yoritomo is formally appointed shogun. And of course, this is a title that means general, general goes and fights barbarians, all that kind of thing. But it clearly now has a much deeper and richer resonance. You might compare it to Cromwell's title of Lord Protector. Or you might compare it to the title of Imperator, the name of Imperator that Augustus is given. And I think that there is a kind of parallel there, because just as Augustus establishes an autocracy disguised in the kind of the robes of the Republic, Yoritomo is establishing a military autocracy kind of failed in the robes of the old imperial state. The emperor is still on the throne, but he's now completely neutralized. And the regime that Yoritomo establishes is very clearly a new beginning for Japan. And it is called by people a bakufu, which is literally a government run from the headquarters of a general, the kind of the tent that a general has on maneuvers. This is what Japan has now become. And so Kyoto endures as the home of of ritual of tradition of the imperial family. But Kamakura is now the kind of indisputed center of government. And again, another parallel from Roman history, Kyoto is Rome, Kamakura is Constantinople.

Speaker 1:
[57:28] Yeah, because the Shogunate is where it's all at now. So the Shogunate dispenses influence, patronage, power, and so on. And that endures. So you mentioned Augustus. I mean, the thing about Augustus is that the structure he creates endures after his death, which people didn't necessarily expect. And but that's also the case with Yoritomo as well, isn't it? Because basically what he's built is resilient enough that it doesn't depend on his personal cunning and charisma and whatnot.

Speaker 2:
[57:55] Yeah. So he died in 1199. Fifteen years after the end of the Civil War, he fell from his horse. But everything that he constructed basically remains in place. So Kamakura stays as the center of government. The country is essentially united under the rule of the Shogunate, across Honshu, across Kushu, across Shikoku, across Tsushima. It is the samurai who are the local bigwigs. They hold the reins of power. And their rule really kind of beds down. And I think even more than Tokugawa Ieyasu, the guy who establishes the Shogunate, and it's kind of very stratified form in the early 17th century. Yoritomo is the greatest political figure in samurai history. I mean, he is the guy who really establishes samurai rule, and it will endure for century after century after century. And I think that this is becoming clear to the people in Japan in the decades following his death.

Speaker 1:
[58:55] Yes, because a great test lies ahead for Japan, doesn't it? And this takes us back to the very beginning of this series and to your own experience of video games. So, what are we, maybe seven decades after the death of Yoritomo. So the system he has built is pretty resilient. But a great test is coming because we get to the year 1274 and the scene with which we began. The island of Tsushima, the samurai who stand guard over the island looking out at the northern horizon and they see something absolutely mind-blowing. They see the arrival of this fleet more enormous and more terrifying than anything they could have believed possible. It is of course the fleet of the Mongols. So how will the samurai fare? Tom, are you going to do that story right now or are you going to make us wait? You're going to make us wait. Unbelievable.

Speaker 2:
[59:49] I'm going to do it probably later in the year. The story of the Mongol attack on Japan, the kamikaze. Did it really happen? Tremendous drama. One of the great narratives of Asian history.

Speaker 1:
[60:01] Great story and of course, members of our Rest Is History Club will be able to hear all that story in one go when it finally, when you finally get around to doing it. So that's something to look forward to. Now, what have we got coming up? We have coming up next week of complete and utter change of mood and pace as we return to 1970s Britain. So we'll be back with fan favourites, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan for the rise of Margaret Thatcher. So Britain's first ever referendum, the decision to remain in the European community. Let's see how that worked out. Britain going bankrupt and having to get a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and all kinds of amusingly seedy and shabby seventies antics. So members of the Rest Is History Club will be able to get all of that series on Monday. That's exciting. So you get the whole thing. And if you want to get the whole thing on Monday, all four episodes, you just have to sign up at therestishistory.com. You also get the fantastic new newsletter with all sorts of information about samurai and the seventies and all sorts. And you get a host of, I think the technical term is unbelievable benefits, isn't it Tom?

Speaker 2:
[61:10] Yeah, unbelievable additional benefits, I think.

Speaker 1:
[61:12] Additional benefits, additional benefits on top of the benefits you're already getting. That was an epic journey, Tom. So, Alegathek Ozymas to you, Tom and Alegathek Ozymas, everybody, and we will see you next week for the seventies.

Speaker 2:
[61:24] Bye bye. Bye bye.