Mythical Warriors Battle For Eastland 44l ##TOP##

One of the factors which has been conducive to the adoption of such an approach is that it is possible to find in certain of the historical records of the Gempei period many entries which seem to corroborate the Kakuichi Heike narrative. In the past, the historical chronicle of the Kamakura feudal government, the Azuma kagami, has often been cited in asserting the historical accuracy of the Heike monogatari. We know that the Azuma kagami was not compiled before about the year 1270, or almost one hundred years after the Gempei battles. But the general consensus has been that the Azuma kagami entries are based on earlier records kept by the Kamakura warriors and that therefore they should be reasonably accurate. In the early portion of the Azuma kagami there are many entries concerning the major Gempei battles which accord quite closely with similar passages in the Heike. This correspondence tends to reinforce the impression that the major part of the Heike narrative should be accepted as presenting a valid picture of the battles.5 But on the basis of a preliminary comparison of the Azuma kagami with the earliest of the preserved Heike monogatari variants, which date from before 1270, the indications are that much of the early part of the Azuma kagami, particularly such sections as the ones describing Mochihito's flight from Kyoto, the Fuji River battle, Ichinotani, and Yashima, is in fact based directly on the accounts as they appear in the early Heike variants rather than on separate historical records. It is therefore rather risky to cite the Azuma kagami to substantiate the validity of the Heike monogatari narrative.

In Book 7 of the standard Kakuichi text of 1371 a detailed account is given of the battles in 1183 north of Kyoto between the attacking Genji force of Kiso Yoshinaka, and the defending forces of the Heike.9 This section opens with the statement that Yoshinaka was poised in the north with 50,000 warriors, ready to attack the Heike in Kyoto. We are told that the Heike, led by Kiyomori's grandson Koremori, raised a force of 100,000 and advanced to meet Yoshinaka. The validity of these figures need not concern us, since they are probably inflated, but at any rate, in the present account, after a passage describing how the two opposing warrior groups are divided, we find Yoshinaka, with a force of 40,000, confronting the main Heike force of 70,000 in the Tonami mountains. Yoshinaka decides that since his force is so much smaller, he must rely on superior strategy to defeat the Heike. Accordingly he devises a plan of boxing up the Heike warriors in Kurikara Canyon, at the foot of the mountains. After the initial encounter, the Heike force is deceived into thinking that Yoshinaka's force is much stronger than their own, and at the time of the major charge by Yoshinaka, the entire Heike force turns and flees in confused retreat without joining battle. The Heike force flees into Kurikara Canyon, and Yoshinaka, as planned, boxes them in. Of the 70,000 Heike only 2,000 manage to escape with their lives. After this encounter, Yoshinaka takes his troops to help defeat the smaller Heike force of 30,000 at Mt. Shiho, and this Heike force also flees. With this defeat, the section describing the major encounter between the Genji and the Heike ends.

In the narrative up to this point the battle has been presented only in general terms, and there is no mention of fighting between individual warriors, or of any details which would provide a direct insight into the actual code of the warrior as it was expressed in action. On the contrary, by placing the emphasis in the narrative on the fact that the entire Heike force of 100,000 retreats without fighting at the first sign of the Genji battle flags, the Heike monogatari at this point seems to be advocating cowardice as the better part of valor, and this of course is the exact opposite of the warrior code as it is known in later ages.

But the narrative of the Kakuichi Heike text of 1371 does not stop here. After the description of the major battles at Kurikara Canyon and Mt. Shiho, there is a series of accounts of battles between individual warriors. It is in these later sections that the narrative elements commonly accepted as reflecting the warrior code of the Gempei wars emerge.10 First there is a section which bridges the gap between the general battle and the individual acts of heroic sacrifice which are to come. In this section we are told that before the Heike warriors set out from the capital, a certain Saitō Bettō Sanemori had tested twenty of the leading Heike warriors, who had their origins in the East, by suggesting that since the Genji were obviously going to win, they should desert the Heike and align themselves with the Genji forces of Kiso Yoshinaka. The men are about to decide to do this, when one among them remonstrates with Sanemori saying that it is most disgraceful for a warrior to change from one side to the other according to the will of fortune, and he urges them all to die in fighting for the Heike. Saitō Bettō Sanemori replies that he had only been testing the loyalty of the warriors, and that they should all make a vow to die for the Heike. In an aside, the Heike text tells us that tragic as it may be, all twenty of the men kept their vow and died at the time of the battles in the north with Yoshinaka.

After describing the preliminary encounter at Shinohara, an account of the fortunes of one Takahashi no Hōgan Nagatsuna is given. He joins battle with 300 of the Genji with a mixed force of 500 warriors from various provinces who have straggled into the Heike camp. Although Takahashi fights valiantly, his men are a motley lot and most of them flee. Takahashi himself is finally forced to retreat, but his intention is to try to find some of his own loyal personal retainers and once again to join battle with the Genji. As he is searching for his men, he encounters a young Genji warrior named Yukishige. Takahashi starts to kill him, but then remembers that his own son who had been killed in battle the previous year was about the same age as Yukishige, and he decides to spare the young Genji warrior. But Yukishige, for his part, is filled with warrior spirit. Even though Takahashi has just spared his life, Yukishige waits for a chance to take Takahashi by surprise and kill him. This he does, with the aid of three of his retainers who happen along, and thus ends the great warrior Takahashi.

In the Shibu kassenjō text there is a general description of the battles at Kurikara Canyon and at Mt. Shiho which is more or less identical to that of the Kakuichi text. The numbers of warriors involved are stated as being slightly less, but for the most part the account is the same. But following this general account of the major battles, in which the Heike are described as fleeing without attempting to fight, we get a very different sort of narrative. First, the sections of the Kakuichi text devoted to Sanemori and his twenty warriors, the adventures of Takahashi and Yukishige, and the death in battle of Arikuni are completely missing. We do get the final section describing the death of Sanemori in battle, but even here the emphasis is entirely different. In the Shibu kassenjō version Sanemori is not presented as having remained behind to protect the rear. Instead, he is fleeing like all the rest, and it is only because he is old that he is overtaken by a younger Genji, who dispatches him with ease and takes his head to Yoshinaka. In short, at no point in the Shibu kassenjō account, which is the version of the Heike mongatari written at a time closest to the events it relates, is there any developed presentation of individual warriors acting in a way we have come to believe they did on the basis of the narrative of the standard Kakuichi text of 1371.13

It is only when we get to the Kamakura text, which was not written until about 1300, more than one hundred years after the Gempei battles, that we find the narrative developed to a point approaching that of the Kakuichi version of 1371. In the Kamakura text, in addition to the story of Sanemori, there are also the stories of both Arikuni and Takahashi. The only major difference with the Kakuichi text is that the final brief general battle at Shinohara is not described at length.15 But even more importantly, in the Kamakura text we find a major shift in emphasis. No longer is Sanemori presented as an old warrior who has fallen behind. Instead we find him possessing all the attributes of a great hero in the best tradition of the warrior ethic. Sanemori stays behind by choice, to defend his lord who must live to fight another day. The other warriors, Takahashi and Arikuni, have also taken on heroic attributes. In the earlier Yashiro text Arikuni is presented not as having charged into the enemy ranks, but rather as having fallen behind along with Sanemori in attempting to flee and as having been finally overtaken by the enemy who shoot his horse from under him and then kill him. In the Kamakura text Arikuni appears as a stout-hearted warrior, one of the leading generals in the battle, who charges into the enemy ranks in much the same manner as he does in the account quoted from the Kakuichi text.

There should be little doubt that the details of the heroic actions of the warriors as they are presented in the Kamakura and Kakuichi texts are entirely fictional. There are no acceptable historical records which corroborate any of the Kakuichi text narration of the specific incidents of the Gempei battles. Since little or none of this detail appears in the original Shibu kassenjō Heike text and very little of it in the Yashiro, it is difficult to imagine that suddenly about the year 1300 someone would discover complete historical accounts of these battles and insert them into their appropriate places in the Heike narrative. But the fact remains that these accounts in the standard Heike text have, with only minor reservations, been accepted over the centuries as being more or less historically accurate. There is an inherent, built-in feature of the standard Kakuichi Heike monogatari narrative which to a large extent explains this rather unusual phenomenon. The remainder of the present article is devoted to outlining how this came about. 2b1af7f3a8