The Rest Is History - 660. Dawn of the Samurai: Japan’s Greatest Warrior (Part 3)

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

Who was Yoshitsune, one of the greatest generals in all Japanese history? What part did he play in the ferocious Samurai civil war between the Minamoto clan and the Taira? And, who would win the most decisive victory in all of Samurai history? Join Tom and Dominic as they delve deeper into the origin, rise, and triumph of the mighty Samurai, in 12th century Japan. _______ Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠restishistory.com⁠ _______ Advertise with us: [e-mail] To read our new newsletter, sign up at: therestishistory.com/newsletters _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton   Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill  Executive Producer: Dom Johnson  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And so they fought, now closing, now breaking. What shall Benkei do? For when he thinks that he has conquered, with his little sword, the boy thrusts the blow aside. Again and again, Benke strikes. Again and again, his blows are parrid. Till at last even he, mighty Benkei, can do battle no longer. So that's a scene from the Japanese no play, if you like, no theatre.

It's called Benkei on the bridge, and it was written in the 15th century. And it describes perhaps the most celebrated fight in the entire history of the samurai. So at the British Museum right now, there are three different illustrations of this tremendous encounter. Tom, you love the story of Benke-Kin-the-Bridge, don't you? I do. Who doesn't love the most famous fight in samurai history? Surely it's your favourite, too. It's certainly in the top five of samurai fights, yeah.

And it's famous because it's endlessly retold and it's endlessly illustrated. and the backdrop to it is is that Benke is a lawless warrior monk. Always the most dangerous kind of warrior monk. He is built like a rugby player. He's got bloodshot eyes. He wears black armor. And he holds seven weapons. So he has a sword.

He has a staff. He has an axe. He has a sickle. He has a mallet. He has a saw and a rake. He's not holding them all at the same time, presumably. No, he's not holding them all the time. And I like the fact he has a sore and a rake.

So he can do a spot of gar. gardening or something if he's... Yeah, yeah. Those sort of Zen gardens of a lot of gravel. Yes. He'd be raking his Zen garden. He's ready and prepared for anything. He said he's a lawless warrior monk.

And as lawless warrior monks often do, he vows to rob a thousand men of their swords. And so he stands on a bridge in Kyoto. The story goes. And every samurai who tries to cross it, Benke fights him. And he is so invincible that he ends up with 999 swords. So he's got one sword to go to make the thousand.

And the scene which you narrated, this is him trying to get his thousandth sword. And his opponent is a very slight, elegant youth wearing a woman's cloak who'd been playing the flute as he approached the bridge. So, you know, kind of faint hint of the girly about it, I guess. Yeah, but maybe lulling him into a full sense of security, is he? Well, maybe, because he turns out to be so formidable an opponent that Benkei ends up defeated. Oh, what? And we're told in the no play, he can do battle no longer. And he submits to his opponent.

And from this point on, he is the victor's loyal follower. So he becomes his samurai. That's what samurai means, retainer. And who is this person who's defeated him? Well, he is a guy called Minamoto no Yosh. Chitsune and we actually met him in our previous episode, in which listeners may remember we were describing the outbreak of the great war between the Tyra clan and the Minamoto clan. So we're in 12th century Japan, so medieval Japan, the emperors have become slightly sort of

kind of ciphers almost. Yeah, ciphers, almost like puppet figures. And these two clans loosely related to the imperial family, sort of, semi-detached from the imperial family, what are they called the Tyra and the Minamoto? They are fighting for supremacy. And remind me, which is the one that is strongest in the West in the Kansai area? So the Tyra have control over Kyoto, the Great Imperial Capital. They have the Imperial family under their thumb.

And they had expelled the Minamoto pretty much from the kind of civilized center of Japan. And they have all been dispersed to the barbarous northeastern stretches of Japan. Yes. Yoshitsune is a member of this clan. So hence Minamoto no Yoshitsunei. And so this is the background for the fleeting appearance, as we said, of Yashitsune in our previous episode. Because he was the baby who had been folded in the cloak of his mother, the concubine, Tokiwa, as she attempted to escape Kyoto in a snowstorm. And Tokuwa had become the concubine of Kiyomori, who was the most powerful man in Japan, the leader of the Tyra clan.

and so therefore the inveterate enemy of the rival Minamoto clan. And Yoshitsune's father, Yoshitomo, had been the head of the Minamoto. And Yoshitomo had been killed in his bath. He'd been trying to get away, ended up murdered by a supposed friend. Kiamori had only spared Yoshitsune out of affection for his mother, because Tokua ends up as Kiamori's concubine. And so Yoshitsune had been brought up in complete ignorance of his father. his identity. He did not know that he was the son of this great Minamoto Lord. He had no idea about

that. And then at the age of six, he gets packed off by Kiamori to a monastery north of Kyoto on the slopes of Mount Karama, great mountain north of Kyoto. And Kiamori's plan is that Shitsune will grow up in harmless and ignorant seclusion as a monk. He doesn't know who his father is, doesn't know that he's in Minamoto, and he's a monk. So therefore, hopefully he's not going to grow up to become a samurai. But clearly, he's now out and about fighting warrior monks on a bridge. You know, that plan hasn't worked out. So, you know, basically the big question is, what's been going on in his life?

How has he ended up this great warrior? Well, this is a great samurai tale, isn't it? So the story of his youth and how he basically grows up to become himself. And this is a story that evolved over the course of medieval Japanese history. People told it and retold it and elaborated on it, right? Yeah. And it becomes the best beloved of all the samurai tales. almost the kind of the archetypal samurai tale. And it tells how he's this young boy in his monastery

and then a servant who is loyal to his father's memory reveals to him his true identity. And Shitsune then goes up onto the side of the mountain of Mount Karama and he meets the great Tengu, who is the spirit lord of the mountain. And very fortunately for Shitsune, the greatest teacher of martial arts anywhere in the cosmos. And the great. Tengu instructs Yashitzine in swordsmanship. So in a sense, he is Yoda to Yishitsune's Luke. Or Merlin to his Arthur, surely. Yes. Yes. I mean, there is something archetypal about this story. There's no question about it. And the great Tengu then leads Yashitschinae to a palace that is deep within the mountains. So embedded within the rock. And here he meets with his father, his dead father, the guy who had been killed in the bath. Yoshitomo and Yoshitomo who's been reborn as a Buddha. And Yoshitomo, I mean, he's not kind of peace and love.

He's very much the go out and kill all my enemies, kill all the Tyra, have vengeance for the, you know, for my overthrow. And Yoshitomo tells his son, you are going to grow up and you are going to become the greatest of all the samurai. So you mentioned King Arthur. I mean, there's definitely a kind of King Arthur dimension there. the young boy who doesn't know his father who gets adopted by a kind of great wizard and is kind of given, you know, swords and all this kind of thing. But if you throw in the battle with Benkei on the bridge, which follow, you know, he leaves the monastery and he goes out to find his fortune in the world and he runs into Benkei. There is also a very strong element there of Robin Hood, because I'm sure that people will be reminded of Robin Hood meeting with Frye Tuck. And I know that, you know, Frye Tuck is a friar, not a monk.

but basically, you know, pretty much the same thing. It is kind of mad that islands at the opposite end of Eurasia should both have these 12th century folk heroes who fight a kind of monk-like figure on a bridge. But Yoshitsune is a genuine historical figure. And Robin Hood and King Arthur and indeed Luke Skywalker are arguably not. Arguably. There must be some kernel of historical truth behind the stories of Yusitzunay. I mean, more than a colonel, he is a very, very significant historical figure. And in fact,

he comes to rank as one of the greatest generals in the whole of Japanese history. And although lots of the stories that are told about him, and particularly about his youth, are obviously fantastical, they are hinting at aspects of his story that I think are genuinely mysterious. And they have evolved to try and explain things that admirers of Ishizs of Yeshizanay once he'd become this great general. They wanted to know where exactly he'd come from and there were clearly all kinds of puzzles around it. So, you know, he clearly was spared as a baby, despite being Yoshitomo's son. And presumably then, the story of him being sent to the monastery is true. I mean, that does kind of make sense. But if he sent to the monastery, then at some point he must have learned swordsmanship.

And if not with the great Tengu, then from someone else. And as a youth, we know that he definitely did attract a band of formidable samurai. and maybe Benkei, this warrior monk, was one of them. Hold on. Benkei definitely existed. There are early sources by which we mean kind of 60, 70 years after the events are supposed to have happened that do describe a warrior monk called Benkei in Yoshitsune's train. The only issue being that he is described as being very thin and ascetic and not built like a rugby player.

But you could see perhaps, you know, it's a better story if he becomes this kind of great hulking monster in black armor. Yeah, yeah. I mean, essentially, we don't really know anything about his youth. He's a good swordsman. He has this band of samurai. He has discovered who his father is. And it's only when Yoshitsune is 20, so this is in the year 1180, that at last we get real

historical certainty, because this is the year when he emerges from this kind of obscurity that he's been veiled throughout his youth to join his half-brother, Yoritomo. who is now the head of the Minamoto clan. And this is a very dramatic moment because the two half-brothers have never met before. And it happens in the most iconic place possibly in the whole of Japan in the shadow of Mount Fuji, where Yoritomo is standing guard. And the reason that he is standing guard is because by this point, the Taira, led by Kiomori and the Minamoto, led by Yorotomo, are now at war.

All right. Well, let's pull the camera back and let's have a look at the island of Japan and see what the states are players. So let's start with the Taewa. They appear to be in the ascendant, don't they? You already said that they control Kyoto, which is the imperial capital. They control the emperor who is a puppet or a cipher, who is two years old and he is called Antoku. And he is the grandson of Kiomori. Right.

And they also control the plane, the Kansai, on which Kyoto stands. So if you think of Japan, archipelago, the single biggest island in the middle is Honshu, and they control the west of Honshu, right? Yes, and also the inland sea, which kind of lies between western Honshu and the two islands south of it, Shikoku and Kusu. So the Taira basically rule the waves. Right. They're effectively the only naval power in Japan.

And then what about their rivals, the Minamoto? So as I recall from last time, their heartland was around, was the other. The other great plain of Honshu, which is what's it called the Kanto, and that surrounds what's now Tokyo, which doesn't exist at this point. Yes, the Minamoto capital is a place called Kamakura, which is a port just west of what will come to be called Tokyo Bay. Right. And from Kamakura, Yoritomo is able to command the great plain of Kanto and all the kind of the mountainous reaches of eastern Honshu, which is the traditional home of the samurai. Yoritomo himself, so the head of the Minamoto, the elder half-brother of Yashitsunei, is not a natural warrior, but he is a brilliant war leader. He's very ruthlessly pragmatic, very cold-hearted in his hunger for power. He's prepared to elbow anyone aside. But he's also very, very charismatic and commanding. And he has spent 20 years in exile. So Kiyomori, had spared his life when he was just a boy, had sent him off into exile, and he spent 20 years

biding his time. He completely has the virtues of patience, and he understands the importance of waiting for the perfect moment to strike. And in that, he's very different to your Shitsune, whose great qualities are decisiveness and speed and aggression. And, you know, he's very different. And Yoritomo, when he meets this kind of young half-brother who he'd never met before, he very quickly comes to appreciate these qualities, to appreciate that his younger half-brother is potentially the great warrior, the great general that Yoritomo is, you know, is self-aware enough to realize that he will never be. And so he starts to trust him with all kinds of military responsibilities, even though he's still very, very young.

Right. But at first, they don't actually. launch a great war of aggression, do they? Because Yoritomo, his priority is to consolidate his base because he knows that the Taira won't attack him. Why won't they attack him the Tira when they control the waves and stuff? Well, they'd made an attempt, and we described it in the previous episode, they embarrassed themselves by running away from a flock of geese that kind of ran into them. And so Yoritomo has been able to kind of control the road that links Kyoto with Kanto, and he knows that the Tyra are not strong enough to kind of force that. So there's a bit of a kind of deadlock. And the other key event that has happened, which plays to the Minamoto's

advantage, is the fact that in March 1181, Kiamori had died, supposedly, if the hottest temperature in world history. And he had been a brilliant strategist, a brilliant strategist, whom the Tyra basically find impossible to replace. Right. But then, naturally, disaster or what you might seem a natural disaster. So we have plague and famine, don't we? So the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or however many horsemen there are, we're beginning to rear their heads. So what's the story here? The famine is first and then the plague or vice versa? Yeah, it's the famine first. And of course, it's caused by war because it disrupts the food supplies. So the famine had begun in the very early months of the war and its grip titans and titans and the plague then

follows in the wake of it. And in Kyoto, bodies start to pile up along the riverbanks, in the streets, terrible scenes. And there is famine too in Canto. But because the plane there is larger and more fertile than Canzai, the plane that surrounds Kyoto, there is more food. You know, this is a tremendous opportunity for Yoritomo because he's able very ostentatiously to muster reserves from his kind of granaries and his kind of rice depots. and send it to help people in the provinces around Kyoto. And the Tyra are desperate to keep Kyoto fed. And so they have been stripping these same provinces that surround Kyoto

and giving it to the people in the capital. And so the consequence is that the people around Kyoto are now starting to look to Yorotomo rather than to the Tyra as the guy who is going to give them their food and keep them fed. Famine diplomacy. Yeah. And so Yoritomo's prestige soors and Toro's. Hira prestige is very badly damaged. So we get to 1183 and now Yorotomo is ready to effectively reignite the war.

And he's basically going to get his brother, you know, trained in a monastery or wherever trained by Yoda to do this for him, right? Because his brother is clearly the more competent commander. But then there's a twist. Dominic, there is indeed a twist because spring 1183, the war does. resume, the Tyra and the Minamoto start to clash again directly. It does see the Tyra launch a full-scale assault on the Minamoto Heartlands. And it does indeed see a very charismatic, a very able, a very aggressive young general kind of blaze like a meteor across the plains and mountains of Japan

and establish himself as an absolute top samurai legend. But the amazing twist is that this general, is not Yoshitsunei, or at least initially it isn't. Because Kanto is not the only Minamoto stronghold. And listeners may remember from our previous episode that there is also a second Minamoto stronghold. 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 to rain, but not completely inaccessible because there is this river valley that cuts through it. And the river, the queso, 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 Tyra 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. And it's been happening under yet another samurai chief whose name begins with Y and ends in a vow. 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. Before you plunge into that, Tom, let's just pause a second and get these three people in there 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, okay, 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. So his father had been killed, not by Kiamori, but in a Minimato 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 whys with vowels on the end of their name bubbling around, we should call him Kee's.

He was called Kiso as well as Yoshinaka. So we'll call him Kiso. Brilliant. This is a dream. And by 1183, Kiso in his kind of great mountain fastness east of Kyoto, has become a really pressing threat to the Tyra. 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, 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 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 Tyra.

And then they reach a mountain pass. Always an ominous moment, I think, in an invasion. Yes. So it's the end of May and the pass is called Kourikara. 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,

the other side. But what happens? Well, 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 plane, then it will absolutely kind of be to their benefit. But when they reached the top of this pass, Kurokara, 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 Kiso would have been able to bring into the field. Obviously, they don't. They don't want to continue their march down the pass into the flatlands below with their flank exposed to this vast Minamoto force. 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, the kind of Star Wars echoes are throughout this story. Yeah, he's come from the Degaba system. So Kiso arrives the next day, doesn't he to join you to join Yoda. Yeah.

But he has 20,000 men. He has a substantial force. So remind us that Tyra had 100,000. That was the claim? 100,000. So it's still outnumbered 5 to 1, 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 unmaneuverable. 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? 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 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. 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, you know, 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. of samurai peacocking. So this involves shouting out their lineage, boasting about, you know, how distinguished they are, issuing challenges, engaging in ritualized displays of archery, all this kind of thing.

And in the tale of the Heke, our great source for this war, these displays are often described as happening in the context of actual battles themselves, which I think is 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 similar thing. Yeah, yeah, of course. But I think that 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 Heke and the Tyra, suspecting no scheme to drive them towards the ravine, played along with them, poor men, until the light began to fail. 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 Sea, 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. And so again, Barry 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 that all these vast numbers, these thousands upon thousands of men had marched up to the summit of the Kurikara Pass.

And of these huge numbers, only 2,000 survive. So to quote the tale of the haki, 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, Kourikara. The result of this is the most crushing 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 prejudice, doesn't he? He does because he wants to complete the route.

And so huge question now, hanging over the prospects of 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.

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. Ah, where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm.

Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Hi there, Aleister 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 Vrodmere Zelenskyy of Ukraine. It is a fascinating interview, reflects on his upbringing,

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history what's tension and what's a cliffhanger we are now in early august 1183 so seven weeks after queso won that tremendous victory unexpected victory with this blazing oxen and whatnot at the pass of kuri kara and kiotto 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 a hundred 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. 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 Tyra clan, who is the eldest surviving son of Kiamori, a man called Munamori. And he, it has to be said, is not a very impressive bigger. He is a shadow of his father. And Munamori gives orders for the evacuation of the capital. So to quote the, the, the of the hake. Men, saddled horses, tightened girths and galloped north, southeast and west, carrying things to hide. And Monomori orders the headquarters of the Tyra 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 of burn the evidence of your occupation and you have this pool of black smoke starting to drift across the capital. 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. 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 Raimonin, who is the mother of the emperor, so the daughter of Kiomori. And he speaks to her in the 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 Ken Raimonin, you have to go and you have to take your son, the five-year-old, Antoku the emperor, you have to take him with you. And so mother and son leave the next morning at six o'clock in the imperial palanquin 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. 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 abound 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. Yeah, but one person doesn't go with them. And this is somebody called Gosurakawa. And Gosurikawa is the most, cunning and slippery, isn't he, of all the what they call the cloistered emperors. So explain to us the role of go-shurakawa. 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 go-shurikawa was slightly unusual. because normally the emperors would rule as children, as boys, and then have to abdicate as they were approaching adolescents. Gosherakawa 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 it only for three years. 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 Tyra. You know, he'd found it a humiliation to be subordinated to a samurai lord. And Prince Machihito, 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 Macha Hito had been Goshirakaa's son. And somehow, Goshirikawa had avoided suspicion of complicity in that plot. I mean, he must have been embroiled. But Kiomori kind of left him alone. And he's still very much on the scene. And now, with the Tyra leaving and Kiso fast approaching the capital, his chance

has come. So on the 13th of August, as the Tyra are evacuating Kyoto, Gosherakawa slips away unnoticed from Kyoto. And we're told the cloistered emperor stole away to seek refuge on Mount Hiya. 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, Goshirikawa, and the great samurai warlord Kiso do business? And Dominic, indeed they can. Well, that's exciting. So they clearly strike a deal because Goshiakoua, 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 said this is a massive twist. It is. So again, the tale of the Hakey, no such banner had been seen to enter the capital for a good 20 years and more. These were astonishing events. And Gosherakawa, with this escort of Minamoto Warriors, is able now, back in Kyoto, to set himself up in a splendid palace. And this is called the Hojuchi, 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 Gosherakawa settles himself in there with great enthusiasm. And from the Hujiji, he issues decrees, which confirm to the world that everything has indeed been turned upside down and that the Tyra are now the outlaws and it's the Minamoto who are the defenders of the throne. And Gosherakawa formally strips 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 Gosherakawa thinks that he has a solution. And he eyes up Antikou, 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, clearly lining him up to become a replacement emperor. But there is this problem.

they don't have the imperial regalia because the Tira have taken it with them. It's with Antikou. So that is an issue, but it's not an insuperable one because Goshaerakawa has a great general who can go after the Tira and hopefully get the imperial regalia back. And this, of course, is Kiso. And Gosherakawa gives Kiso an absolutely splendid title. And this is the Asahi Shogun, the general of the rising sun. Okay, that is a good name.

Unfortunately, Kesea 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 capital. No, so it's like, you know, Buckingham Palace has been taken over by the Wurzels or something. So Kiso's samurai roaming around Kyoto kind of pillaging and drinking cider and. driving tractors and all that kind of thing. Right.

And this is terrible for Goshirokawa, 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.

But he and Kiso are in alliance, right? 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 Yorotomo is very interested to hear from Gosherakawa, and Gosherakawa is very, very interested in Yorotomo. Tomo is not a bumpkin. He has immense military reserves, so he has at least as many men as Kiso. And above all, you know, basically he's a completely ruthless bastard who is jealous of Kiso and resentful of his success. And Gosherakawa 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 Goshirokawa describes as the wild monkey of Kiso. So meanwhile, Kiso is oblivious to this, and Kiso has been saying to go Shurikawa, my plan is I'm going to march on the canto 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. Yes, and this isn't what Goshirokawa wants at all, because Goshiakawa actually wants the regalia back. That's his priority because he wants to enshrine.

the reigning emperor's little brother, go toba he's called, as the new emperor. And so he says, you know, don't bother attacking Yorotomo. 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, the Tyra to kind of recover from their meltdown. They've still got their fleet, the seas of theirs, there's still a kind of massive brooding threat. You know, and Kiso wants to get the imperial regalia back as well. 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 at the head of his troops again, he is targeting not Yoritomo, but the Taira. So just hold on on that. Goshirokawa suggesting that. Is that a ruse? Is that a part of a plot? That's genuine. Well, Goseerikawa's priority is to eliminate the Taira.

Okay. And also he wants an alliance with Yoritomo, so he doesn't want Kiso going off and attacking Yorotomo rather than the Tira. 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 Kesea goes off and fights a war, there is always a prospect that he might end up dead. So, go Shirikawa 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 Satira and gets the imperial regalia back, then again, you know, every which way, go Shirikawa is a winner. So he's playing quite a shrewd and subtle game. Now, in the event, Kiso's campaign against the Taira goes very badly wrong. Kiso has never fought at sea. You know, 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 Goshaakawa has been up to with Yorotomo. essentially trying to kind of elbow him aside and kind of build bridges with Yoritomo. And he is understandably furious. And what's more, Gosherakawa has formerly condemned Kiso's men for robbing all the local farmers, for going out from the city and kind of robbing their storehouses and knicking 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, Kita, 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 Hujogi Palace, you know, this great place with the lake and the Golden Hall and everything, you know, with his men. It's not an easy nut to crack because the Hujogi Palace is guarded by.

by a crack squad of warrior monks. No. 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. Goshirakawa, 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. 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 Kesea 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. It's 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 say are slaughtered, vast piles of heads are raised. the heads of a hundred of the guards employed by Gosherakawa in the palace are harvested, stuck on spikes along the river bank. And meanwhile, listeners may be wondering, what of Gosherakawa 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 Gosherakawa was put effectively under house arrest in a second palace. And Gotoba, this little boy, he was escorted to not even a palace, just to a private mansion. And the tale of that, the Heke cannot, you know, just kind of goes over.

with the horror and the pathos of this scene. The pathetic nature of this progress truly defies description. And it's such a, it's such a historic moment because, you know, the golden age of Imperial Kuto was, 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. all 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 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 court rituals, the ethos of course. 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 compared Kyoto to Versailles. If the Mongols had sacked Louis XIV's France.

Yeah. Or something. Yeah. It's something like that. Yeah. It's seen. I mean, it's treating the emperor who should be treated or, you know, who's the 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. 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 Yorotomo, his cause now has legitimacy because he can say I'm defending the empire against this country bumpkin, can't he? It's brilliant for Yorotomo.

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 Kaiso, and if he defeats Kaiso, sees 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 Tyra nor my cousin had been able to bring peace. But there's also another factor which Yorotomo 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 Yorotomo, exceptionally, he's the first samurai lord to feel this. he has no loyalty to Kyoto. 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. 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 Kiyos. and hopefully sees in 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. 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 Yoshitsunei. Yashitsunei has an elder brother, Minamoto No, Noriyori. Brilliant name for Nori Yori. 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 Yoshitsunei 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. Noriorei 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 Setter Bridge, it's called, which crosses the southernmost tip of this huge lake, Lake Bewa. 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.

And Uji Bridge, like Setta 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 hold the Minamoto attack wherever it's most pressing. So it's Uji that becomes the epicenter of the action, isn't it? It's Uji that Yotschitsune 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, tell us the story about the two samurai. It's a good story. So Yashitsunay's army is approaching the river Uji, the bridges 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 Kajawara, 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. And there is a second samurai, Sasaki, who sees him do it and follows him. And he's galloping behind Kajawara. 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 Kajewara 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 Kajawar is furious, of course. He's been tricked, follows him in and tries to pay Sasaki back in the same coin. So he calls that, look out, Sasaki, don't play the fool out of a desperate thirst for fame. There must be ropes stretched underwater. But Sasaki draws his sword, he slatters 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. Kajawara, I mean, he's very cross, but he is the second.

He manages to make it to the far bank as well. 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? Because he is in a hurry.

He wants to get there quickly because he wants to find Gosurikawa and he wants to get the legitimacy that the cloistered emperor can give him. Because Kiso, if he was smart, is going to kill this bloke. And Yoshitsune wants to get there first. Yes. So he goes herring up the road from Uji to Kyoto. And he arrives at the palace where Gosherakawa was under house arrest. And Yoshisunay 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. Gosherakawa is still alive. And understandably, he greets the arrival of your Shitsunei with enormous relief and gratitude. You know, 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, Yoshitsunei. Craigie, 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, you know, 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. So if there are any members of our own Samurai Brotherhood out there, the 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.

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, aligato, guzamas, and sayonara, everybody. Bye-bye.