Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Go-Daigo, in Kyoto, summoned Kusunoki Masashige to a conference. That able general spoke in definite tones. He declared it hopeless for the Imperialists with their comparatively petty force of worn-out warriors to make head against the great Ashikuga host of fresh fighters.
It was in February, 1348, that the battle took place at Shijo-nawate in Kawachi. Moronao had sixty thousand men at his disposal; Masatsura only three thousand. The combat raged during six hours, the Kusunoki brothers leading thirty charges, until finally they were both covered with wounds, and only fifty men remained out of the sworn band. Then this remnant committed suicide.
*Kusunoki Masashige is the Japanese type of a loyal and true soldier. He was forty-three at the time of his death. Three hundred and fifty-six years later , Minamoto Mitsukuni, feudal chief of Mito, caused a monument to be erected to his memory at the place of his last fight. It bore the simple epitaph "The Tomb of Kusunoki, a loyal subject."
This discord exercised a debilitating influence, and when Go-Murakami died , the Southerners found themselves in a parlous condition. For his son and successor, Chokei, failing to appreciate the situation, immediately planned an extensive campaign against Kyoto from the east and the south simultaneously. Then Kusunoki Masanori passed into the Northern camp.
Rokuhara was then under the command of Hojo Nakatoki, and upon him devolved the duty of seizing the Emperor's person. He directed an army against Hiei-zan, where Go-Daigo was believed to have found asylum. Go-Daigo then sent to Kusunoki Masashige a mandate to raise troops and move against the "rebels," for to that category the Hojo now belonged in the absence of an Imperial commission.
When Kamakura fell the only Hojo force remaining in the field was that which had been engaged for months in the siege of Chihaya, where Kusunoki Masashige held his own stoutly. This army had retired to Nara on receipt of the news of Rokuhara's capture, and when Kamakura met with the same fate, the leaders of the last Hojo force surrendered at the summons of Ashikaga Takauji's emissaries.
This must have been fully apparent to Kusunoki Masashige, an able strategist. Yet a delay of some weeks occurred. A quasi-historical record, the Taiheiki, ascribes this to Yoshinaga's infatuated reluctance to quit the company of a Court beauty whom the Emperor had bestowed on him. Probably the truth is that the Imperialists were seriously in want of rest and that Yoshisada fell ill with fever.
The last struggle in behalf of the Southern line took place in 1443, when "a band of determined men under Kusunoki Jiro and the Court noble, Hino Arimitsu, suddenly assailed the palace from two directions; all but succeeded in killing or capturing the Emperor, and actually got possession of the regalia.
If, two hundred years after his death, a chieftain was born of his blood to carry the Minamoto name to the pinnacle of glory, who shall say that heaven did not thus answer the prayer put up by Yoshisada at the shrine of Hiyoshi?" During these events, Go-Daigo sojourned at Yoshino, which was protected by Kusunoki Masatsura, Wada Masatomo, and others.
The records clearly show that on the roll of merit the first place, after Prince Morinaga, should have been given to Kusunoki Masashige's name. When Kasagi fell and when the Emperor was exiled, Masashige, alone among the feudatories of sixty provinces, continued to fight stoutly at the head of a small force, thus setting an example of steadfast loyalty which ultimately produced many imitators.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking