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WHEN, after the great struggle of 1160, Yoritomo, the eldest of Yoshitomo's surviving sons, fell into the hands of Taira Munekiyo and was carried by the latter to Kyoto, for execution, as all supposed, and as would have been in strict accord with the canons of the time, the lad, then in his fourteenth year, won the sympathy of Munekiyo by his nobly calm demeanour in the presence of death, and still more by answering, when asked whether he did not wish to live, "Yes, since I alone remain to pray for the memories of my father and my elder brothers."
Now this is how the Etas came to be under the jurisdiction of Danzayémon: When Minamoto no Yoritomo was yet a child, his father, Minamoto no Yoshitomo, fought with Taira no Kiyomori, and was killed by treachery: so his family was ruined; and Yoshitomo's concubine, whose name was Tokiwa, took her children and fled from the house, to save her own and their lives.
The manner of Yoshitomo's death, too, reveals something of the ethics of the bushi in the twelfth century. Accompanied by Kamada Masaie and a few others, the Minamoto chief escaped from the fight and took refuge in the house of his concubine, Enju, at Awobaka in Owari. There they were surrounded and attacked by the Taira partisans. The end seemed inevitable.
But just as Fujiwara Yorinaga had wrecked his cause in the Hogen tumult by ignoring Minamoto Tametomo's advice, so in the Heiji disturbance, Fujiwara Nobuyori courted defeat by rejecting Minamoto Yoshitomo's strategy.
To Yoshitomo's formal proposal of a marriage between his daughter and Shinzei's son, not only had a refusal been given, but also the nuptials of the youth with the daughter of the Taira chief, Kiyomori, had been subsequently celebrated with much eclat.
The scheme succeeded in part, but as Yoshitomo's squire, Konno, a noted swordsman, accompanied his chief to the bath, the assassins dared not attack. Presently, however, Konno went to seek a bath-robe, and thereupon the three men leaped out. Yoshitomo hurled one assailant from the room, but was stabbed to death by the other two, who, in their turn, were slaughtered by the squire.
*Tradition says that among the means employed by Mongaku to move Yoritomo was the exhibition of Yoshitomo's bones. The campaign was opened by Hojo Tokimasa on the 8th of September, 1180. He attacked the residence of the lieutenant-governor of Izu, Taira Kanetaka, burned the mansion, and killed Kanetaka, whose abortive nuptials with the lady Masa had been celebrated a few months previously.
To avert such an unnatural conflict, Tametomo, having proclaimed his identity, as was usual among bushi, drew his bow with such unerring aim that the arrow shore off an ornament from Yoshitomo's helmet without injuring him in any way. Yoshitomo withdrew, and the Taira took up the attack. Not less heartless was the treatment of the vanquished nobles. The Fujiwara alone escaped.
His mother, Tokiwa, one of Yoshitomo's mistresses, a woman of rare beauty, fled from the Minamoto mansion during a snow-storm after the Heiji disaster, and, with her three children, succeeded in reaching a village in Yamato, where she might have lain concealed had not her mother fallen into the hands of Kiyomori's agents.
Fujiwara Yorinaga's refusal to follow Tametomo's advice and Fujiwara Nobuyori's rejection of Yoshitomo's counsels were wholly responsible for the disasters that ensued, and were also illustrative of the contempt in which the Fujiwara held the military magnates, who, in turn, were well aware of the impotence of the Court nobles on the battle-field.
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