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Updated: June 18, 2025
After the death of Kusunoki Masashige, of Nitta Yoshisada, and of Kitabatake Akiiye, the strategical direction of the war devolved mainly upon Kitabatake Chikafusa, so far as the Southern Court was concerned.
Some two months later, January 23, 1337, Go-Daigo, disguised as a woman for the second time in his career, fled from his place of detention through a broken fence, and reached Yoshino in Yamato, where he was received by Masatsura, son of Kusunoki Masashige, and by Kitabatake Chikafusa.
The proximate cause was the fall of the Kusunoki stronghold, which had been built by Masashige, and during sixty years had remained unconquered.
LAURUS CAMPHORA, or "kusunoki," as it is called in Japan, grows mainly in those provinces in the islands Shikobu and Kinshin, which have the southern sea coast. It also grows abundantly in the province of Kishu. The amount of camphor varies according to the age of the tree. That of a hundred years old is tolerably rich in camphor.
When Masashige Kusunoki waged a hopeless war on behalf of one branch of the then divided dynasty, and finally preferred to die by his own hand rather than endure the sight of a victorious rebel, he is considered to have exhibited the highest possible evidence of devoted loyalty. One often hears his name in the sermons of Christian preachers as a model worthy of all honor.
And the filial piety impelling such sacrifice becomes, by extension, the loyalty that will sacrifice even the family itself for the sake of the lord, or, by yet further extension, the loyalty that prays, like Kusunoki Masashige, for seven successive lives to lay down on behalf of the sovereign.
Kusunoki Masashige had but five hundred men under his command when he entrenched himself at Akasaka. There for twenty days he held out against the attacks of the greatly superior Hojo forces, until finally, no help arriving and his provisions being exhausted, he would have committed suicide had he not realized that his life belonged to the Imperial cause.
The first outward indications of the trouble were seen in 1348, when the able general, Ko Moronao, instead of following up his victory over the Southern Court after the death of Kusunoki Masatsura, turned suddenly northward from Yamato and hastened back to Kyoto. His own safety dictated that step.
But the pride of the collection were the conifers and evergreens trees which have Japanese and Latin names only, the hinoki, the enoki, the sasaki, the keyaki, the maki, the surgi and the kusunoki all trees of the dark funereal families of fir and laurel, which the birds avoid, and whose deep winter green in the summer turns to rust.
The Nitta chieftain himself retired rapidly to Kyoto with a mere remnant of his army, and effected a union with the forces of the ever-loyal Kusunoki Masashige and Nawa Nagatoshi, who had given asylum to Go-Daigo at the time of the escape from Oki. The cenobites of Hiei-zan also took the field in the Imperial cause.
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