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Updated: June 19, 2025
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.
Receiving Go-Daigo's order, Kusunoki Masashige quickly collected a troop of local bushi and constructed entrenchments at Akasaka, a naturally strong position in his native province of Kawachi. Takatoki now caused Prince Kazuhito to be proclaimed sovereign under the name of Kogon. But this monarch was not destined to find a place among the recognized occupants of the throne.
The fall of 1332 saw Masashige strongly posted at the Chihaya fortress on Kongo Mountain; his lieutenants holding Akasaka; Prince Morinaga in possession of Yoshino Castle, and Akamatsu Norimura of Harima blocking the two highways called the Sanindo and the Sanyodo.
*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."
But there can be no doubt that, like others of his sept, he had long resented the comparatively subordinate position occupied by Yoritomo's descendants, and the most trustworthy annals show that already while engaged in besieging Masashige in Chihaya fortress, he conceived the idea of deserting the Hojo's cause.
Kusunoki Masashigé, the white flower of Japanese chivalry, is but one, typical not only of a thousand but of thousands of thousands of soldiers, who hated parents, wife, child, friend in order to be disciple to the supreme loyalty. He sealed his creed by emptying his own veins. Kiyomori, like King David of Israel, on his dying bed ordered the assassination of his personal enemy.
Well, to-day I went to see some of the regiments return. Arches of greenery had been erected over the street they were to pass through, leading from Kobe station to Nanko-San, the great temple dedicated to the hero spirit of Kusunoki Masashige.
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.
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.
At another, Kusunoki Masashige spreads a rumour of Yoshisada's death in battle, and having thus induced Takauji to detach large forces in pursuit of the deceased's troops, falls on him, and drives him to Hyogo, where, after a heavy defeat, he has to flee to Bingo. Now, for a second time, the Ashikaga cause seemed hopeless when Akamatsu Norimura again played a most important role.
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