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This was recognized after a time, and Kajiwara Kagetoki received orders to collect or construct a fleet with all possible expedition, which orders he applied himself to carry out at Watanabe, in Settsu, near the eastern entrance to the Inland Sea.
We have seen that ever since the Ichi-no-tani fight, the Minamoto generals, especially Kajiwara Kagetoki, had been actively engaged in building, or otherwise acquiring, war-junks. By April, 1185, they had brought together a squadron of seven to eight hundred; whereas, in the sequel of Yashima and minor engagements, the Taira fleet had been reduced to some five hundred.
All these acts could scarcely fail to be interpreted by Yoritomo as preluding the very results which he particularly desired to avert, namely, a house of Minamoto divided against itself and the re-establishment of Court influence over a strong military party in Kyoto. His apprehensions received confirmation from reports furnished by Kajiwara Kagetoki. Yoritomo trusted this man implicitly.
In that command Kajiwara had been superseded by Yoshitsune, and had moreover been brought into ridicule in connexion not only with the shipbuilding incident but also, and in a far more flagrant manner, with the great fight at Yashima.
To a man of his temperament enforced passivity on the eve of such epoch-making events must have been intolerable. He saw plainly that to drive the Taira from Shikoku was an essential preliminary to their ultimate defeat, and he saw, too, that for such an enterprise a larger measure of resolution and daring was needed than Kajiwara Kagetoki seemed disposed to employ. Complications ensued at once.
Never forgetting that Kajiwara had saved his life in the affair of the hollow tree, he appointed him to the post of military governor and to the command of the army destined to drive the Taira from Shikoku after the battle of Ichi-no-tani.
In these newly won provinces Yoritomo placed military governors and nominated to these posts Doi Sanehira and Kajiwara Kagetoki, heroes, respectively, of the cryptomeria forest and the hollow tree. But this contributed little to the solution of the vital problem, how to get at the Taira in Shikoku and in Kyushu.
Soon the Taira fleet was flying down the Inland Sea, and when Kajiwara Kagetoki, having at length completed his preparations, arrived off Yashima on the 25th of March with some four hundred war-vessels, he found only the ashes of the Taira palaces and palisades. Munemori, with the boy Emperor and all the survivors of the Taira, had fled by sea to join Tomomori at Hikoshima.
*Japanese tradition loves to tell of a contest between Sasaki Takatsuna and Kajiwara Kagesue as to which should cross the river first. Kagesue was the son of that Kajiwara who had saved. Yoritomo's life in the episode of the hollow tree.
But Minamoto Yukiiye, learning of these strained relations, emerged from hiding and applied himself to win the friendship of Yoshitsune, who received his advances graciously. Yoritomo, much incensed at this development, sent the son of Kajiwara Kagetoki to Yoshitsune with a mandate for Yukiiye's execution. Such a choice of messenger was ill calculated to promote concord.
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