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

18:39Tom Holland:And this is the upland region of Shinano. And this lay to the east of Kyoto and the absolute kind of interior of central Honshu. So it's basically in the middle of Japan. And it's very mountainous, difficult terrain, but not completely inaccessible because there is this river valley that cuts through it. And the river, the Kiso, helps to open up the Western approaches if you are in Shinano. And these lead to Kyoto. And this means that from the perspective of the Taira in Kyoto. Any concentration of Minamoto forces in Shinano is a real threat. And just such a concentration over the course of the early years of the war is what has been happening.

19:24Tom Holland:And it's been happening under yet another samurai chief whose name begins with Y and ends in a vowel. So listeners will be thrilled to know that there is another of these Minamoto popping up. And this is a guy called Minamoto no Yoshinaka.

19:41Dominic Sandbrook:Before you plunge into that, Tom, let's just pause a second and get these three people in clear who they are because they're so similar. Yoritomo. Which guy is Yoritomo again? Yoritomo is the brilliantly cold, ruthless, pragmatic head of the Minamoto clan. Right. So, OK, he's the mastermind. Yoshitsune. Who is he? He is the younger half-brother, dashing, brilliant, got the warrior monk at his back, King Arthur, Luke Skywalker, that kind of figure. Gotcha. And then the third man, Yoshinaka, you're about to tell us who he is. He is their cousin, right? Yes.

20:18Tom Holland:So his father had been killed, not by Kiyomori, but in a Minamoto blood feud. And so he'd grown up slightly off the Tyra radar. They hadn't really kind of worried about him as he was growing up. And he'd grown up in Shinano and made it his stronghold. And he had come to identify with it so strongly that he took the name of the river that ran through it, Kiso. And so I think because it's so confusing to have, you know, all these Ys with vowels on the end of their name bubbling around, we should call him Kiso. He was called Kiso as well as Yoshinaka. So we'll call him Kiso. Brilliant. This is a dream.

20:53Tom Holland:And by 1183, Kiso in his kind of great mountain fastness east of Kyoto has become a really pressing threat to the Taira. And they are starting to worry that he might launch a direct attack on them from Kyoto. But they're also worried that he's established his control over the lowland road that goes along the coast of northern Japan, which is also a kind of, you know, it's very accessible. So it goes round all these mountains that are in the middle of Honshu. And they don't want him to seize control of that either. And so in the spring of 1183, the Tyra send an enormous expeditionary force, supposedly 100 ,000 men.

21:34Tom Holland:I mean, maybe not that much, but a lot of men along this coastal road, along the northern coastal road. And their aim in sending such an enormous army is to absolutely guarantee victory. They're going to eliminate Kiso. And then once they've done that and they've secured their northeastern flank and cleared Shinano of Minamoto forces, they can then head southwards towards kanto turn all their forces against yoritomo who is based there and finish off the war so that is the strategy it's a strategy of the total annihilation

22:11Dominic Sandbrook:of all the minamoto forces beginning with kiso good plan or is it because they advance along this road don't they the coastal road for about 200 miles and they win a couple of skirmishes the Taira and then they reach a mountain pass always an ominous moment I think in an invasion yeah yes so it's the end of May and the pass is called Kurekara and they hear that Kiso is coming the opposite way so they kind of rush on and effectively they want to get through the pass before him don't they so they can meet him on the kind of on the ground on the other side but what happens well

22:45Tom Holland:they want to do that because they know that they vastly outnumber the forces that Kiso has so if they can meet on an open plain, then it will absolutely kind of be to their benefit. But when they reach the top of this pass, Kurakura, they see something that makes their blood run cold. And this is a great mass of Minamoto banners fluttering over the ridge on their left. Far more Minamoto banners than they had ever thought that Kisei would have been able to bring into the field. Obviously, they don't want to continue their march down the pass into the flatlands below, with their flank exposed to this vast Minamoto force.

23:20Tom Holland:And so they halt their advance and make camp and basically kind of just wondering, what do we do now? And this is exactly what Kiso wants them to do because the flags are a decoy. It's a kind of classic samurai stratagem. Most of them are phantom banners. And so the sight of these banners, it tricks the Tyra into thinking that Kiso has far more men on the peak of the pass than he actually does the actual number of men on this pass is only 3 000 and these men dominic are commanded by a guy called yoda so again but kind of star wars echoes are are throughout this

24:01Dominic Sandbrook:story yeah he's come from the dagobus system so um kiso arrives the next day doesn't he to join you to join yoda yeah um but he has 20 000 men he has he has a substantial force although remind us the But Tyra had 100 ,000, that was the claim? 100 ,000. So still outnumbered five to one, pretty much. But his plan is basically, he's like a Hannibal. I mean, every battle comes back to Hannibal's battles. He wants to surround them, doesn't he? And basically use their own ridiculous weight of numbers, make them unmanoeuvrable, they will get in each other's way, and he will be able to outflank them and make darting attacks that will destroy them, correct?

24:41Tom Holland:Well, he has a very complicated and very clever stratagem. So he's divided his forces into three. He and Yoda, I love saying that, he and Yoda are now on the ridge above the pass, directly opposite the Tyra. Meanwhile, unknown to the Tyra, a second contingent of Kiso's men have taken up hidden positions far below at the foot of a precipice directly behind the Tyra positions, which is known locally as Hell Valley. So there's nothing good about being on the edge of a precipice that leads down to somewhere called Hell Valley. There is also a third contingent, again, unobserved by the Tyra. They have no idea that it exists, who are climbing a very wide and narrow mountain path beyond the site of the Tyra.

25:31Tom Holland:And their aim is to go in the rear of the Tyra and cut off their retreat so that they can't kind of march back down the way that they came. And it's going to take this third contingent a whole extra day to reach their positions because they're having to go kind of a long way around. And so as the second of June dawns, Kiso is doing all that he can to kill time, to keep the Tyra distracted, to give that third contingent the opportunity to get into their positions. So all day long, Kiso and his men are kind of engaging in classic displays of samurai peacocking. So this involves shouting out their lineage, boasting about how distinguished they are, issuing challenges, engaging in ritualized displays of archery, all this kind of thing.

26:20Tom Holland:And in the tale of the Heike, our great source for this war, these displays are often described as happening in the context of actual battles themselves, which I think clearly didn't happen. It's too Homeric to imagine that people are stopping in the middle of the battle and shouting out their lineage and all this sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. But I think that, you know, when you have the opportunity to kind of shout at an enemy, it's absolutely what they're up to. And we're told in the tale of the Heike and the Tyra, suspecting no scheme to drive them towards the ravine, played along with them poor men until the light began to fail.

26:58Tom Holland:And as the sun sets, so the Tyra notice for the first time that in their rear, a Minamoto force is starting to assemble and drawing up ranks and is now blocking off their retreat. And even as they notice this, the sun sets, darkness descends, it's night, and then all at once, storming down the slope towards them, the Tyra see a great rolling surge of torches, and they feel the earth starting to shake. And of course, they're terrified that a massive army that seems to have sprung from nowhere is attacking them and they falter and they start to break and they turn. But it's not a massive army. It's an enormous herd of oxen with burning torches tied to their horns.

27:57Tom Holland:And so again, very Hannibal. People who, you know, who listened to our series on Hannibal, that was the kind of trick he'd love to pull. And the oxen stampede smashing into the Tyra, many of whom are sent stumbling, falling into the vast ravine that yawns behind them. Others are trampled underfoot. Others are cut down by the Minamoto forces who've now begun to attack them, both from the ridge where Kiso and Yoda are stationed, and also that third contingent who are marching down in their rear. and there isn't any escape for the Minamoto not even for those who make it alive to the bottom of Hell Valley because that is where the third contingent of men is waiting the people who've been lying in ambush for exactly this moment and we're told um that you know all these vast numbers these thousands upon thousands of men had marched up to the summit of the Kurokara Pass and of these huge numbers only two thousand survive so to quote the tale of the heki down hurtled the father down the son down the brothers elder than younger down the lord his retainer behind him men piling on horses horses on men over and over till mounts and riders 70 ,000 of the tyra edge to edge choked the yawning ravine springs ran blood the dead lay in mounds to this day so it is told arrows strike nicks and sword cuts mark the rocks up and down kurikara the result of this is the most crushing

29:26Dominic Sandbrook:and decisive victory ever won by a samurai commander right because the tyra invasion has been driven back the tyra forces are in headlong chaotic retreat and kiso pursues them with extreme

29:40Tom Holland:prejudice doesn't he he does because he wants to complete the route um and so huge question now hanging over the prospects for the war. You know, are the Tyra going to be able to make a comeback? Will they be able to continue the war at all? If they can't, what does this mean for the Minamoto? And also, of course, what does Kiso's stunning victory mean for Yoritomo, the head of the Minamoto, who's had nothing to do with this? Is there potential perhaps for the cousins to fall out because Yoritomo is not the kind of man who likes being unexpectedly upstaged. So unbelievable tension, Dominic.

30:19Dominic Sandbrook:Incredible tension. We should probably take a break here because it's so tense. But what a cliffhanger. Return after the break to find out what happens next.

30:27Tom Holland:It's crunch time at work and you need to bring wings to your workday. Visit redbull.com slash getting it done and answer a couple questions about your work style to get a Spotify customized playlist tuned to your productivity. Plus, score a can of Red Bull on us while you go from to-do to done. And remember, Red Bull gives you wings. Supplies are limited. Terms apply. Visit the website for more information.

30:53Dominic Sandbrook:K-pop Demon Hunters Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

31:07Tom Holland:It is an honor to share.

31:09Dominic Sandbrook:No, it's our honour.

31:11Tom Holland:It is our larger honour. No, really. Stop.

31:15Dominic Sandbrook:You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side.

31:21Tom Holland:A participant in McDonald's while supplies last.

31:24Dominic Sandbrook:Hi there, Alastair Campbell here from The Rest Is Politics and I'm here to tell you about a really important interview that's out now on our podcast channel, The Rest Is Politics Leading. This week I spoke to one of the defining political figures of our time, President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine. It is a fascinating interview, reflects on his upbringing, reflects on his political rise, reflects on how he stayed in Kiev during Russia's invasion, redefining leadership in wartime. And he warns us very much against anyone, not least Donald Trump, falling for Vladimir Putin's lies. Warns that ceasefires may serve as a strategic pause rather than a sign of genuine peace.

32:02Dominic Sandbrook:He offers a very blunt assessment to Putin, looks at his enemy's strengths, strategy, and crucially, his weaknesses in a war he is convinced Russia cannot win. And he doesn't hold back on the international response at times, particularly from the US. If you'd like to hear more, and I hope you do, search The Rest is Politics Leading wherever you get your podcasts. And now, back to your show.

32:31Dominic Sandbrook:Welcome back, everybody, to The Rest is History. What's tension and what's a cliffhanger? We are now in early August 1183, so seven weeks after Kiso won that tremendous victory, unexpected victory with his blazing oxen and whatnot at the pass of Kurikara. And Kyoto, the imperial capital, is a city on the edge, a city in panic because Kiso is closing in. So he'd won a second victory, which we won't massively go into, 100 miles east of Kyoto at a place called Shinohara. and the survivors, the refugees, have been drifting into the capital and the sound of approaching drums from the east of the Minamoto forces has been growing louder and louder and louder.

33:16Tom Holland:Yeah, and again, Kiso has split his forces into three. So he is leading a contingent that's coming directly from the east. There's another Minamoto expeditionary force, which is closing in on Kyoto from the south. And there is a third one that has gone right the way around and is now coming from the west. So the trap, in other words, is close to snapping shut. And on the 13th of August, the leader of the Taira clan, who is the eldest surviving son of Kiyomori, a man called Munamori, and he, it has to be said, is not a very impressive figure. He is a shadow of his father. And Munamori gives orders for the evacuation of the capital.

33:58Tom Holland:So to quote the tale of the Heike. Men saddled horses tightened girths and galloped north, south, east and west, carrying things to hide. And Monomori orders the headquarters of the Taira in Kyoto to be put to the torch so that there will be nothing for Kiso to seize. And I think the atmosphere is very Saigon 1975. There's a sense of, you know, people fleeing. You need to kind burn the evidence of your occupation. And you have this pall of black smoke starting to drift across the capital.

34:32Dominic Sandbrook:Well, you say people fleeing, but there are some people in particular whose fate is crucial and chief among them. We haven't really talked about the imperial family specifically. So what's going on with them? Well, we said how they're kind of ciphers.

34:45Tom Holland:That's not entirely true. They are players. Their key role is to provide legitimacy to whoever controls them. And so it's really important for the Tyra that they keep the emperor in their hands, because if they lose the emperor to Kiso, then it's Kiso and the Minamoto who will become the defenders of legitimacy. And the Tyra will immediately kind of be transformed into outlaws. And so that evening, as the Tyra headquarters is burning, and all the various Tyra lords are preparing to evacuate Kyoto. Monomori comes to the imperial palace and he comes into the presence of his sister, Ken Raimon-in, who is the mother of the emperor, so the daughter of Kiyomori.

35:34Tom Holland:And he speaks to her in strictest confidence. And he says to her, I believe that the world would somehow always be as we knew it, but now you see everything has changed and he says to uh ken raimon in you have to go and you have to take your son the five-year-old antoku the the emperor you have to take him with you um and so mother and son leave the next morning at six o 'clock in the imperial palanquin um and they take with them crucially the imperial regalia and this is a mirror a jewel and a sword that had been brought to earth two millennia before by the grandson of the sun goddess. And this matters because you cannot become an emperor without that regalia.

36:20Tom Holland:It's just not possible. So they set off the emperor, his mother, all the Tyra lords, the imperial regalia. And as they abandoned Kyoto, so we're told, clouds trailed about the eastern hills and a bright moon lit the dawn. Everywhere cocks were crowing. No one had dreamed it would come to this. And the emperor is going with his uncles and the other Tyra lords, and they are bound for the inner sea and the fleet, which remains their great strength. Because as we said, the Tyra are the lords of the ocean, the lords of the inner sea and the waters beyond it. And because the Minamoto have no ships, this offers them a prospect of continuing the war.

37:06Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, but one person doesn't go with them. And this is somebody called Go Shurikawa. And Go Shurikawa is the most cunning and slippery, isn't he, of all what they call the cloistered emperors. So explain to us the role of Go Shurikawa.

37:23Tom Holland:So we've mentioned before, a cloistered emperor is an emperor who has reigned and then abdicated. And this was absolutely standard practice. It was a way in which the kind of the various lords who effectively controlled the empire were always able to ensure that no emperor was in a position to kind of establish the supremacy over them. So Goshiokawa was slightly unusual because normally the emperors would rule as children, as boys, and then have to abdicate as they were approaching adolescence. Go Shirakawa had come to the throne in his late 20s. And he, of course, had been obliged to abdicate, as all emperors were, after he'd ruled only for three years.

38:02Tom Holland:But because he was that much older, and because he was naturally very shrewd and cunning, he'd remained a very active player in court politics. And he had very reluctantly accepted the supremacy of the Taira. You know, he'd found it a humiliation to be subordinated to a samurai lord. And Prince Mochihito, who led that rebellion that we finished with in the previous episode, the guy who fought by the bridge and ended up being killed there, Prince Mochihito had been Go Shirakawa's son. And somehow Go Shirakawa had avoided suspicion of complicity in that plot. I mean, he must have been embroiled.

38:39Tom Holland:But Kiyomori kind of left him alone. and he's still very much on the scene. And now, with the Taira leaving and Kiso fast approaching the capital, his chance has come. So on the 13th of August, as the Taira are evacuating Kyoto, Goshirokawa slips away unnoticed from Kyoto. And we're told the cloistered emperor stole away to seek refuge on Mount Hia. And Mount Hia is east of Kyoto, and it's where one of Japan's most famous monastery stood still stands to this day but it was also more saliently where kiso and his army had just arrived and so the big question is can the cloistered emperor go shirikawa and the great samurai warlord kiso do business and dominic indeed they can well that's exciting

39:35Dominic Sandbrook:so they clearly strike a deal because Goshiurakawa returns to Kyoto a few days later so 17th of August and he's got an escort at this point of 50 ,000 mounted warriors and above them are flying the banners of the Minamoto the white banners of the Minamoto so this is a massive twist

39:57Tom Holland:it is so again the tale of the Heike no such banner had been seen to enter the capital for a good 20 years and more these were astonishing events and go shirokawa with this um you know this escort of minamoto warriors is able now back in kyoto to set himself up in a splendid palace and this is called the hojuji and it includes a temple with a kind of incredibly vulgar sounding Golden Hall. It's got an ornamental lake. It's absolutely wonderful. And Go Shirakawa settles himself in there with great enthusiasm. And from the Hojuji, he issues decrees which confirm to the world that everything has indeed been turned upside down and that the Taira are now the outlaws and it's the Minamoto who are the defenders of the throne.

40:53Tom Holland:And Go Shirakawa formally strips 160 160 Tyra lords of their court offices. And of course, there is a further problem, which is that they don't have the emperor, but Goshirokawa thinks that he has a solution. He eyes up Antaku, the emperor's, his little half-brother. He's only about two years old at this point. And he picks up this little boy, bounces him on his lap, and he sobs, to think I had never seen this little boy before. And he prophesies that the boy's descendants will rule for a hundred generations you know clearly lining him up to become a replacement emperor but there is this problem they don't have the imperial regalia because the taera have taken it with them it's with with antiku so that is an issue but it's not an insuperable one because uh gosherokawa has a great general who can go after the taera and hopefully get the imperial regalia back and this of course is kiso and goshe rakawa gives kiso an absolutely splendid uh title and this is the asahi shogun the general of the rising sun okay that is a good name unfortunately kiso

42:04Dominic Sandbrook:doesn't quite live up to that tremendous name does he because basically he's come from the sticks he's come from the kind of agricultural badlands of shinano the kind of mountains and he and his men do not behave with the elegance and courtesy that is expected of visitors to the imperial

42:21Tom Holland:capital no so it's like you know buckingham palace has been taken over by the wurzels or something so kiso samurai are roaming around kyoto kind of pillaging and drinking cider and driving tractors and all that kind of thing right and this is terrible for go shirikawa who's been raised in you know the sophistication and delicacy of the imperial court and doesn't want these bumpkins in the slightest. And so he looks around for another horse to back. And of course, there is really only the one option. And this is Moritomo no Yoritomo, the Lord of Kanto, the head of the Minamoto clan, Kiso's cousin.

42:59Dominic Sandbrook:But he and Kiso are in an alliance, right?

43:02Tom Holland:Well, Yoritomo has been watching with mixed emotions, I think it's fair to say. On the one hand, he's delighted that Kiso has destroyed the Taira's hold on Kyoto. On the other hand, he doesn't really want Kiso to have too much power because then he might rival himself for control of the Minamoto clan. And this is why Yoritomo is very interested to hear from Go Shirakawa. And Go Shirakawa is very, very interested in Yoritomo because Yoritomo is not a bumpkin. He has immense military reserves, so he has at least as many men as Kiso. And above all, basically, he's a completely ruthless bastard who is jealous of Kiso and resentful of his success.

43:46Tom Holland:And Go Shirakawa is shrewd enough to realize that there is great scope here for making mischief. And so he writes Yoritomo a secret letter, essentially inviting him to come to Kyoto and liberate the city from his cousin, who Go Shirakawa describes as the wild monkey of Kiso.

44:08Dominic Sandbrook:So meanwhile, Kiso is oblivious to this. And Kiso has been saying to Go Shirakawa, my plan is I'm going to march on the Kanto and I'm going to get rid of Yoritomo. He's completely oblivious to the fact that his patron is in touch with the one man that he's actually planning to go and eliminate.

44:24Tom Holland:Yes. And this isn't what Go Shirakawa wants at all, because Go Shirakawa actually wants the regalia back. That's his priority because he wants to enshrine the reigning emperor's little brother, Gotoba he's called, as the new emperor. And so he says, you know, don't bother attacking Yoritomo. Don't do that yet. Go and attack the Tyra. They're the priority. Go and eliminate them. And Kiso can see the force of this argument because he doesn't want to allow the Tyra to kind of recover from their meltdown. They've still got their fleet. The seas are theirs. there's still a kind of massive brooding threat you know and kiso wants to get the imperial regalia back as well he he wants a new emperor he wants to have this little boy directly under his thumb yeah and so that autumn when kiso leaves kyoto um at the head of his troops again he is targeting

45:11Dominic Sandbrook:not yoritomo but the tyra so just hold on on that go shirikawa suggesting that is that a ruse is that a part of a plot that's genuine well go shirikawa's priority is to eliminate the tyra

45:23Tom Holland:And also he wants an alliance with Yoritomo. So he doesn't want Kiso going off and attacking Yoritomo rather than the Taira. He doesn't want Kiso to be killed in this attack or anything like that. I think he'd quite like it if he was. I mean, that would be, you know, that would solve all kinds of problems. I mean, every time Kiso goes off and fights a war, there is always a prospect that he might end up dead. So Go Shirakawa is basically trying to get him out of the capital. And if he dies in battle, then, you know, that's brilliant. And if he defeats the Taira and gets the Imperial Regalia back, then again, you know, every which way, Go Shirakawa is a winner.

45:52Tom Holland:So he's playing quite a shrewd and subtle game. Now, in the event, Kiso's campaign against the Tyra goes very badly wrong. Kiso has never fought at sea. He's rustled up a kind of makeshift fleet, but it gets very badly mauled. And on the same day that he's defeated at sea, a task force that he's sent by land to attack the Tyra is also defeated. So he returns in a slightly bedraggled state. And just to put Kiso in an even worse mood, When he gets back to Kyoto, he discovers what Goshiokawa has been up to with Yoritomo, essentially trying to kind of elbow him aside and kind of build bridges with Yoritomo.

46:36Tom Holland:And he is understandably furious. and what's more gosher akawa has formally condemned kiso's men for robbing all the local farmers for going out from from the city and kind of you know robbing their storehouses and nicking all their rice and all that kind of thing and kiso is furious there are paddy fields everywhere what business does he have this cloistered emperor censoring them for feeding their horses rice leaves from a few so kiso you can understand is pretty pissed off by this and so being the man that he is a man fond of kind of decisive dramatic action. He takes the obvious course. He launches a coup and he marches on the Hojoji Palace, you know, this great place with the lake and the Golden Hall and everything, you know, with his men.

47:24Tom Holland:It's not an easy nut to crack because the Hojoji Palace is guarded by a crack squad of warrior monks. So, you know, they're not sort of lightly challenged. And also, of course, there's the fact that this is the first time a cloistered emperor has been directly attacked by samurai. And so the shock to, you know, what is centuries worth of respect for the imperial office is off the scale. Go Shirakawa, you know, he may no longer be ruling emperor, but he had been emperor and he is descended from the sun goddess. And so at the palace gates, Kiso's men are met by an unarmed chamberlain who addresses them in the most outraged terms.

48:15Tom Holland:In days gone by, this chamberlain says, when a herald read out the sovereign's decree, dead plants and trees put forth flowers, fruit promptly ripened on the bow and demon powers bowed in a sense. and kiso's response to this is silence him and he orders a full-blown assault and a storm of flame-tipped arrows are sent flying into the palace its fittings its timbers blaze into fire the chamberlain flees so actually do most of the monks i mean they may be warrior monks but they're not prepared to stand up to kiso's battle-hardened samurai and those who do stay are slaughtered. Vast piles of heads are raised.

48:58Tom Holland:The heads of a hundred of the guards employed by Go Shirakawa in the palace are harvested, stuck on spikes along the river bank. And meanwhile, listeners may be wondering, what of Go Shirakawa himself, the kind of slippery, conniving, calculating, cloistered emperor? Well, those guards who had not been slaughtered and decapitated had tried to bundle him into a palanquin, and they had tried to bundle the infant, soon to be Emperor Gotoba, into a boat and row him out onto the lake. But the samurai had come after both of them. They'd been taken prisoner, and Go Shirakawa was put effectively under house arrest in a second palace.

49:45Tom Holland:And Gotoba, this little boy, he was escorted to not even a palace, just to a private mansion. And the tale of the Heike just kind of goes overboard with the horror and the pathos of this scene. The pathetic nature of this progress truly defies description. And it's such a historic moment because the golden age of Imperial Kyoto was clearly over by this point, an age that had been characterized by incredible respect for the emperor, kind of painstaking devotion to etiquette, a refusal essentially to have kind of dealings at all with samurai. But even so, the treatment that is being meted out by Kiso to both a former and reigning emperor is understandably greeted with complete shock across japan nothing like it has

50:45Dominic Sandbrook:ever been seen before more shocking than the what happens to the roman emperors at the end of the western roman empire surely because of the the the court rituals the the ethos of courtesy and elegance and respect and deference and all of that was so much more pronounced in japan than it was in rome am i right we compare koto to versailles if the mongols had sacked louis the 14th's France.

51:08Tom Holland:Yeah.

51:08Dominic Sandbrook:Or something. Yeah, it's something like that.

51:10Tom Holland:Yeah, it's seen. I mean, it's treating the emperor who should be treated or, you know, who's a descendant of a goddess, cosmically mandated, with this lack of respect. You know, it's like seeing Marie Antoinette in a, you know, in a wagon.

51:25Dominic Sandbrook:That's shocking. But there's one more contender who's still around. And that is this guy, Yoritomo. He's the cousin of Kiso. this must be a gift to him because they are now implacable enemies and for Yoritomo his cause now has legitimacy because he can say I'm defending the empire against this country bumpkin can't he

51:44Tom Holland:it's brilliant for Yoritomo and we said how he always waits for the perfect moment before striking always waits for opportunity to be everything that he needs it to be and I think the opportunities for him now are twofold so as you say he can launch an attack on Kaizo and if he defeats Kaizo seize control of Kyoto, and present it as his defense of imperial legitimacy, and also the fact that he is bringing peace to a suffering land. Remember that he had been supplying grain to the starving who lived around Kyoto. And now again, he can say, well, I am bringing you peace, where neither the Taira nor my cousin had been able to bring peace.

52:25Tom Holland:But there's also another factor which Yoritomo very much wants to keep quiet. And this is the fact that anything which damages the prestige of Kyoto and its standing as the undisputed capital of Japan is only playing into his hands. Because Yoritomo, exceptionally, he's the first samurai lord to feel this. He has no loyalty to Kyoto. You know, he hadn't lived there since he was 12. And his base is Kamakura. His fiefdom is Kanto. His recruiting grounds are the eastern half of Honshu. He recognizes that if he is going to rule Japan, it is pointless for him to do it from Kyoto. He has to do it from the east, which had always been the traditional stronghold of the Minamoto.

53:11Tom Holland:And this, I think, is the measure of how clear-sighted he is, how unsentimental, how innovative, because this, again, is a completely revolutionary development. The idea that Japan might not be ruled from Kyoto, that it might be ruled from Kanto instead. It's impossible for most people even to contemplate it. Yet Yoritomo, it's this kind of plan that he has fully formed in his mind. So he is fully on for sending an armed expedition against Kiso and hopefully seizing control of Kyoto and effectively kind of bringing it into the Empire of the East. But he's not planning to lead this campaign himself.

53:54Tom Holland:He wants to fight fire with fire. And so he entrusts the war against Kiso to a second young Minamoto general who, like Kiso, is very dashing, bold, charismatic. and this of course is Yoshitsune. Yoshitsune has an elder brother Minamoto no Noriori. Brilliant name, Noriori. So Noriori is sent to pacify Kiso's old stronghold Shinano, you know that kind of mountainous stronghold and then to advance on Kyoto from the east and Yoshitsune is instructed to take the coastal road that leads along the south coast of Japan and then upwards towards Kyoto from the south. And so Kiso effectively is facing a two-pronged invasion.

54:37Tom Holland:Noriori from the east, Yoshitsune from the south. And so he has no option but to divide his forces. And one army is sent to block the advance of Noriori from the east. And they reach the Seto Bridge, it's called, which crosses the southernmost tip of this huge lake, Lake Biwa. In fact, it's Japan's largest lake. And when they get there, they pull the bridge down so that the Minamoto forces hopefully won't be able to cross. And the second army is sent southwards to a place that we have already visited in this series. And this is Uji, which was the scene of the dramatic battle for the bridge that we described in our previous episode.

55:16Tom Holland:And Uji Bridge, like Setter Bridge, is pulled down. As had happened in the first battle, the planks are pulled up and tossed into the sea. And also because they know that it's possible to ford the river, everyone knows this because the events of that previous battle had been so celebrated. They drive stakes into the riverbed at the fording points to try and stop cavalry from crossing. Meanwhile, Kiso himself waits in Kyoto where he will receive news from the two fronts and wherever the threat seems most pressing he will then advance from kyoto and go and bring reinforcements and try and um hold the

55:58Dominic Sandbrook:minamoto attack wherever it's most pressing so it's it's uji that becomes the epicenter of the action isn't it it's uji that um yotshitsune reaches that first and there's been a battle there four years before so everyone knows you know there could be a repeat of it and everyone knows that you can get across this river you can forward the river because that's what happened last time and so there's this story isn't there the two samurai who are rushing they're competing to be the first to cross this river so these are two men in Yoshitsune's army is that right yeah well

56:36Tom Holland:tell us the story about the two samurai it's a good story so Yoshitsune's army is approaching um the the river Uji the the bridge is down there are these stakes in the crossing places it's clearly going to be very, very dangerous to try and make a crossing. But it's a classic samurai thing. In a situation like that, you prove your courage by being the first into the fray. And there are these two samurai who are determined to be the first across. And one of these is a guy called Kajiwara. And he finds this promontory that sticks out into the kind of the boiling currents of the river Uji. And so he makes for that.

57:10Tom Holland:And there is a second samurai, Sasaki, who sees him do it and follows him and he's galloping behind Kajiwara and he calls out to him of all the rivers here in the west this is the biggest your girth looks loose better tighten it and so Kajiwara leans down from his saddle to cinch the girth tighter and as he does so Sasaki speeds past him shouting loser plunges into the river and begins making for the far bank And Kajiwara is furious, of course. He's been tricked, follows him in and tries to pay Sasaki back in the same coin. So he calls out, look out, Sasaki. Don't play the fool out of a desperate thirst for fame.

57:53Tom Holland:There must be ropes stretched underwater. But Sasaki draws his sword. He slashes at the ropes. He cuts them through. He gallops up the far banks. He rises in his stirrups and he cries out in a Stentorian voice, descended from Emperor Uda nine generations in the past. Fourth son of Sasaki Hideyoshi, I am Sasaki Shiro Takatsuna, the first man across the Uji River. So it is so classic samurai. It's yelling out your forebears, announcing who you are, beating your chest, saying that you are the first into battle. Kajiwara, I mean, he's very cross, but he is the second. He manages to make it to the far bank as well.

58:36Tom Holland:and their example inspires first of all hundreds of horsemen then thousands to follow across the river lots of them are swept away but lots of them make it across they overwhelm the defenders uji is taken and the road to kyoto lies open it's exciting and yoshitsune takes this road doesn't he

58:55Dominic Sandbrook:because he is in a hurry he wants to get there quickly because he wants to find go shurikawa and he wants to get the legitimacy that the cloistered emperor can give him. Because Kiso, if he was smart, was going to kill this bloke. And Yoshitsune wants to get there first. Yes.

59:11Tom Holland:So he goes herring up the road from Uji to Kyoto, and he arrives at the palace where Go Shirakawa was under house arrest. And Yoshitsune dismounts. He knocks. He announces himself in a ringing voice. I'm sure there's lots of stuff about his great ancestry and all that kind of thing. And he finds that he has arrived in time. Go Shirakawa is still alive. And understandably, he greets the arrival of Yoshitsune with enormous relief and gratitude. He's safe. He's got rid of this awful kind of bumpkin. He is under the protection of Yoritomo and his dashing younger brother, Yoshitsune.

59:52Dominic Sandbrook:Crigy. But we don't know what's happened to Kiso, do we? So what's happened to him and what is he planning? Well, we will be finding out in the final episode of this epic series in which the great civil war of the samurai will reach its blood-soaked and terrifying climax. And not only that, Tom, but we'll be meeting history's most famous female samurai, so it'd be nice to get a woman onto the show. That'll be exciting. There will be a spectacular mass suicide. We shall finally be encountering something that, again, sadly lacking from this series, which has been samurai crabs. And we will be continuing the swashbuckling story of the hero of this story, who is, of course, Yoshitsune.

1:00:35Dominic Sandbrook:So if there are any members of our own samurai brotherhood out there, members of the Rest is History Club, you can hear that episode right away. And, of course, you'll also be getting all the fantastic content in the special extended newsletter. letter if you would like to join the rest is history club and get the host of unbelievable benefits that come with it then you merely need to go to the rest is history.com and on that note tom allagato gozaimasu and sayonara everybody bye