661. Dawn of the Samurai: The Shōgun Triumphant (Part 4)

24:41Tom Holland:It is an honor to share.

24:43Dominic Sandbrook:No, it's our honor.

24:44Tom Holland:It is our larger honor. No, really. Stop.

24:48Dominic Sandbrook:You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. And participate in McDonald's while supplies last. Want to make the most of your tax refund? File with TurboTax on Intuit Credit Karma. They help you get your biggest refund and then we help you do more with it. With a personalized plan designed to help you hit your money goals. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app.

25:20Dominic Sandbrook: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.

25:51Tom Holland:so tom how's he going to cope with that it's going to be difficult because the minamoto are not a naval power they don't really have ships um and that means that the tire 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 um these two other islands so uh shikoko which lies directly parallel to western honshu so if you think of it as maybe mapping onto England it's like an enormous Isle of Wight kind of running parallel to the south coast and then Cushu 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 Cushu 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.

26:47Tom Holland: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 Yashima, which is a volcanic island immediately off the coast of northeastern Shikoku. And they assume Minamoto have no ships, we 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 and this is a place called ichinotani and they don't want to abandon honshu completely i mean that's why and 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 and the beaches that lie to the east and west of their base are guarded by very high walls so they feel you know completely secure

27:43Dominic Sandbrook:there 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 was not impregnable and somebody was about to take it i mean that's the nature whenever someone describes an impregnable citadel on a on a history podcast you know that it's going to fall about two pages of notes later particularly

28:01Tom Holland:if you've got an absolute legend like yoshitsune on the on the scene because being told that a cliff can't be descended is exactly the kind of challenge that he loves and so um you know he's informed oh there's no way that any horseman can can ride down these cliffs and he asks the local who's told him this um you know well can deer get down this cliff face and he's told yeah the deer they can get through why then your shits and 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 yushitsune turns around to the samurai he says let's go and down they go and it's very like um the end of uh two towers the peter jackson film where gandalf leads the riders row and down an improbably steep hill yeah yeah it's a brilliant scene 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 your shitsune everyone followed stifling whoops and shouts to the horses the drop was so steep they shut their eyes the feet seemed

29:22Dominic Sandbrook:all but superhuman something for gods or demons not men but i mean the tyra 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 but maybe they didn't realize they were in an epic poem that was their mistake 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 itch in a tani is

29:44Tom Holland:put to the torch and um the whole war would probably have been settled there and then had the Tyra not had their ship lined up ready to go so like the Greeks on the plains of Troy and then there's a great battle on the beach but most of the Tyra are able to escape onto their boats and sail away and among those who managed to get onto a boat is the five-year-old emperor Antoku and with him crucially this imperial regalia that you have to have if you're going to crown or you know institute a new emperor and as long as antoku keeps that with him then um the the minamoto can't

30:20Dominic Sandbrook:put a new emperor on the throne so that's kind of a result for the tyra can we just focus in on a particular episode from this uh battle because obviously this battle greatly celebrated 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 nawazane and what happens to kumagai nawazane and what makes him so celebrated he's a low-born samurai and therefore

31:01Tom Holland: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 yoshitsune in this kind of you know 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 you know one of the flanking walls um that is protecting the beach and it's you know 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 invalided out kumagai is very upset about this he's kind of brooding on it and as the tyra are making their escape he joins that the minamoto and he rides down to the beach to carry on the fight and he sees a tyra warrior who is swimming out to one of the ships and 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 tyra warrior hears this he stops swimming and he turns around and he you know wades back up through the 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 tyra down onto the ground and he tears off his adversary's helmet.

32:33Tom Holland: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 Akwemagai 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.

33:15Tom Holland: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 atzomori the son of an exceedingly high-ranking Tyra Lord, and that this flute had been a personal gift to him from the cloistered Emperor Toba, who died way back in episode two.

34:31Tom Holland: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, you know, he's on the beach of Ichinatani, 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. What are they grieving? The fact that he's aristocratic or the fact that he's young? 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 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

36:11Dominic Sandbrook: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 taira 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

36:28Tom Holland:to carry the fight to them yes so he's essentially he's a you know he's a napoleon very young and dashing, herring around all over the place, who transforms himself into a Nelson. And 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. And then having landed, unobserved by the Taira, he leads his cavalry overland by night, so as to maximize the surprise to the Tyra base on this volcanic island of Yashima, which we mentioned. And 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.

37:18Tom Holland:So it's kind of very affordable. And the Tyra, again, the Minamoto pull this trick, which Kiso had also been keen on, of raising up kind of phantom banners to make it seem like there's a much larger force than there actually is the minamotos see these banners and they panic and they 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 you know he's captured their base he's forced them off shikoku but because the taera have been able to withdraw and because they again they take the the the emperor and toku with them and the imperial regalia, it's still indecisive.

37:56Tom Holland:You know, they had the first battle, indecisive, the second battle, third time lucky.

38:00Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, in a poem, it's always the third battle as the winner, isn't it?

38:04Tom Holland: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 Shitsune 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 yashitsune meets the entire tyra 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 bridge that separate honshu from the

38:57Dominic Sandbrook:neighboring island of kushu so at yashima so a month before yoshitsune had been a little bit hesitant about facing that irsc hadn't he because you know they're the experts on sea he's a relative novice but now he's absolutely gonna go for it and what has changed new ships new tactics what's the difference yeah i think i mean it's a bit like the romans attacking the

39:21Tom Holland:carthaginians in the first punic war you know they're not proficient sailors but um yoshitsune is confident now that he has enough ships to um to at least rival the number that the the tyra have at the minamoto shipyards have been working flat out because of course um 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.

40:02Tom Holland: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 uh 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 those qualities he has boldness he has vision he has drive he has a kind of sense for the moment and the battle begins um kind of towards midday it's the late morning and by the late afternoon yoshitsune has effectively won the tara fleet um have been caught by this massive riptide and they're starting to drift helplessly backwards towards um a rocky beach on the shore of honshu called danora and this time there's no escape for the the little boy emperor antiku he's had a he's had a tough time that that boy you know he's just he's just spent his whole life kind of jumping onto ships and being ferrored away but this time there is nowhere for him to go and so um he's with his grandmother who is the widow of kiamori the the great tyra lord who died of horrible temperature and antiku'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 um 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

41:40Dominic Sandbrook:the sea and they sink good line it's a really good line i mean i respect it yeah a really good line

41:47Tom Holland:and the ceremonial sword you know which you need to inaugurate a new emperor that also it is said vanishes into the depths although opinions differ um there are there are those in japan who say that it was recovered um 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 uh you know they're still in existence to this day uh 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 Tyra 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 a 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 how many people thousands and thousands sinking down into the depths um there are survivors so ken raimony in who is the the mother of antiku the daughter of kia mori 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 um so she survived and monomori who is her brother and the highest ranking of all the tyra so the eldest surviving son of kia mori he also was captured because he had hesitated to jump.

43:18Tom Holland:So in a way, he's the kind of the Bruce Ismay of the samurai, the guy. Oh, yeah.

43:23Dominic Sandbrook:He's the coward. Is he lambasted for the rest of his life like Bruce Ismay was?

43:27Tom Holland: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 in the Taira clan. Again, there are these incredibly famous lines from the tale of the Heki. 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 no yeah just just the face of a crab actually should you or anyone be skeptical then have a look at the shells of these crabs the haikagane they call the taina crabs and on these shells you will clearly see the faces of drowned samurai no i totally

44:36Dominic Sandbrook:believe this i don't i'm not skeptical at all so um you were comparing this to uh the naval battle i don't know between like rome and carthage but i mean rome and carthage had nothing on this the the young emperor with his grandmother going down to their capital beneath the waves the the sword that's disappeared and never found the samurai crabs i mean this is good stuff yeah

44:58Tom Holland:it's an incredibly haunting eerie battle as well as being you know 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 um 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.

45:36Tom Holland:And from this moment on, the only way is down. The future is not good

45:41Dominic Sandbrook:for this great victor in the war. 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? He is so not.

46:00Tom Holland:He's 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 um yoritomo hasn't fought um you know 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 wily go shirikawa is already trying to foster divisions between them by kind of absolutely lavishing yoshitsune with honors which is almost calculated to infuriate yoritomo and yoritomo is you know he is not in a mood to show clemency to anyone and particularly not to the the taira either So Munamori, the Bruce Ismay of the Tyra, he is executed and his head is exhibited in Kyoto Marketplace.

47:09Tom Holland:I mean, if you're a fan of severed 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 Raimon-in, so the mother of the drowned emperor, the boy emperor, she is she is spared but she's sent to a particularly poverty stricken nunnery where she lives the rest of her life so that's the tyra gone but how is yoritomo going to deal with yoshitsune um well first of all he refuses to see uh the victorious general yoritomo you know he's not having him um anywhere near kamakura um 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 um you know his great victory over the Taira uh at at Danonura Yoshitsune gets the message and he slips away from from Kyoto and he vanishes effectively into the dimensions of legend because from this point on he is basically Robin Hood he is an law he's always escaping villainous lawmen who are trying to hunt him down um and of course he you know he has a little john in the form of this colossal warrior monk benke he is basically friar

48:30Dominic Sandbrook:tuck and little john combined into one character yes and he ends up so robin hood lurking around in the north of england and he is lurking around in the north of japan he is and as with robin

48:40Tom Holland: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 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 seppulchre he slits open his stomach and outside while he's 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 benke this colossal warrior monk is left and he pauses the besieging force of samurai is so intimidated by him that they withdraw.

49:41Tom Holland:Benke 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, Benke 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 all the arrows that have struck him through and are feathering him. That's a good story. It's very Wild West, isn't it? It's exactly the kind of thing that you could imagine, you know, a shootout in a saloon or someone.

50:20Dominic Sandbrook:He's been shot and then very slowly he topples over and, you know, a 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. I like to think it happened

50:31Tom Holland: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 elder brother in Kamakura, Yoritomo. And it's preserved in sweet sake, we're told. And Yoritomo inspects it and disposes of it. And that seems to be the end of Yoshitsune. but as with Robin Hood you know there are stories that he survived and lived to old age similar stories are told of Yashitsune 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

51:17Dominic Sandbrook:Genghis Khan Wow I mean there are accounts of Genghis Khan as a boy and 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 i'm probably not you know these stories don't

51:32Tom Holland:have to be true to be influential and the stories that are told of your shitsune in particular over the course of the centuries you know they have a massive influence on the figure of the samurai as myth and by extension i think therefore on the figure of the the cowboy in westerns and on luke skywalker in star wars i mean we've said that and so i think you you know you could imagine that if your Shitsune were to meet Luke Skywalker,

51:59Dominic Sandbrook:let's say that happens. 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.

52:09Tom Holland:What would your Shitsune say if he met Luke? He would say, I am your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Luke.

52:18Dominic Sandbrook:Oh, what a great joke that is. Keep back of the net. George Lucas 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.

52:30Tom Holland:Thank you. Thank you very much. And also, I hope you know that I've been saying video game throughout this series as well.

52:36Dominic Sandbrook: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.

52:51Tom Holland:We've been doing this podcast for years and years now. and I like to think that I have learned from you. A bit like Yoshitsune at the feet of the great demon in the mountain.

52:59Dominic Sandbrook:Here's my real question. How did you know about the game Ghost of Tsushima? Is that in the British Museum exhibition or something?

53:05Tom Holland:Because I knew that samurai were a massive theme of video games. There's lots about that in the British Museum catalogue.

53:12Dominic Sandbrook: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 and 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 sushima thank you i mean that amazed me my mission is done yeah i mean

53:33Tom Holland:this is part of what makes the samurai so fascinating is that they are part of the fabric of of video games right i mean i kind of you know in japan they're colossal but they're also part of kind of western video games and that's what makes them so fascinating and exceptional okay let's get

53:50Dominic Sandbrook: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 right because they're not just figures of fantasy they

53:59Tom Holland:are you know they are now going to be the rulers of japan basically for 700 years yeah of course

54:04Dominic Sandbrook: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

54:14Tom Holland:unappealing i like to think that um i wouldn't for instance hound my my own brother to his death I feel that that's very poor and I'd 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 okay 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 Kamikura this town very close to you know 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 you know 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 you know 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 the very crafty the very inconstant the very shifty go shirakawa and actually yoritomo sees um go shirakawa as 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 you'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.

56:43Tom Holland: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. Remind me, who is the emperor at this point? Who is the actual emperor? 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 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 um he waits for go shirikawa to die and go shirikawa finally dies in spring of 1192 and so gotoba this little boy is now um you know he no longer has his uh his grandfather kind of operating behind the scenes and so he's much easier for yoritomo to influence And so Yoritomo leans on the little boy Gotoba, the emperor, very heavily.

57:38Tom Holland:And on the 21st of August, 1192, Yoritomo is formally appointed shogun. And of course, this is a title that means general, but, you know, 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 veiled in the robes of the old imperial state.

58:22Tom Holland: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 kioto is rome kamakura is constantinople yeah because the shogunate

59:02Dominic Sandbrook: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 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

59:27Tom Holland:yeah so he died in 1199 um 15 years after the end of the civil war he fell from his horse but everything that he constructed basically remains in place so kamakura um stays as the the center of government the the country is uh essentially united under the rule of the shogunate across uh honshu across uh kushu across shikuku uh across uh sashima it is the samurai who are the local bigwigs they are they they hold the reins of power and they're all really kind of beds down and i think even more than tokugawa yesu the the guy who establishes the shogunate and it's kind of very um stratified form in the early 17th century yoritomo is the greatest political figure in samurai history.

1:00:16Tom Holland: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.

1:00:28Dominic Sandbrook: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 So the system he has built is pretty resilient. But the 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

1:01:21Tom Holland:unbelievable gonna 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.

1:01:34Dominic Sandbrook:Great story. And of course, members of our Restless History Club will be able to hear all that story in one go 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 a complete and utter change of mood and pace as we return to 1970s Britain. so we'll be back with fan favorites 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 we'll see how that worked out uh britain going bankrupt and having to get a bailout from the international monetary fund and all kinds of amusingly seedy and shabby 70s 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.

1:02:26Dominic Sandbrook: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 70s and all sorts. And you get a host of, I think the technical term is unbelievable benefits, isn't it, Tom? Yeah, unbelievable additional benefits, I think. Additional benefits, additional benefits on top of the benefits you're already getting. That was an epic journey, Tom. So, adagathe gozaimasu to you, Tom, and adagathe gozaimasu, everybody. and we will see you next week for the 70s bye-bye bye-bye