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It will be remembered that after the murder of Minamoto Sanetomo by his nephew Kugyo, in 1219, some difficulty was experienced in persuading the Imperial Court to appoint a successor to the shogunate, and finally the choice fell upon Fujiwara Yoritsune, then a child of two, who was not actually nominated shogun until 1226.
In the year 1081, the priest-soldiers of the latter set the torch to the former, and, flocking to Kyoto in thousands, threw the capital into disorder. Order was with difficulty restored through the exertions of the kebiishi and the two Minamoto magnates, Yoshiiye and Yoshitsuna, but it was deemed expedient to guard the palace and the person of the Emperor with bushi.
He and Nitta Yoshisada are the central figures in the long campaign upon which Japan now entered. Masashige belonged to the Tachibana family, which stood second among the four great septs of Japan the Fujiwara, the Tachibana, the Minamoto, and the Taira and Yoshisada claimed kinship with the Minamoto.
His sword becomes an object of profound veneration from the days of Minamoto Mitsunaka, who summons a skilled swordsmith to the capital and entrusts to him the task of forging two blades, which, after seven days of fasting and prayer and sixty days of tempering, emerge so trenchant that they are thereafter handed down from generation to generation of the Minamoto as treasured heirlooms.*
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.
The twelve-year-old boy was to be invited to Minamoto Tomomasa's mansion and there destroyed. This was the lady Maki's plan. The lady Masa discovered it, and hastened to secure Sanetomo's safety by carrying him to the house of her brother, Yoshitoki. The political career of Hojo Tokimasa ended here.
Quoting a popular saying that the worst enemies of the Minamoto were their own dissensions, he directed his troops to withdraw into Echigo, leaving to Yoritomo a free hand in Shinano. When this was reported to Yoritomo, he recalled his troops from Shinano, and asked Yoshinaka to send a hostage.
To the proud Kiyomori this was a bitter draught. He fell sick unto death, and the high officials of the empire gathered round his bed, in mortal fear lest he to whom they owed their power should be swept away. With his last breath the vindictive old chief uttered invectives against his foes. "My only regret is that I am dying," he said, "and have not yet seen the head of Yoritomo of the Minamoto.
He singled out Yoshitsune for the object of his attack, but being unable to reach him, he seized two Minamoto bushi and sprang into the sea with them. Tomomori, Munemori's brother, who had proved himself a most able general, leaped overboard carrying an anchor. Yoshitsune spoke in strongly laudatory terms of Noritsune and ascribed to him much of the power hitherto wielded by the Taira.
These, at the suggestion of Doi Sanehira, he ordered to scatter and seek safety in flight, while he himself with Sanehira hid in a hollow tree. Their hiding-place was discovered by Kajiwara Kagetoki, a member of the Oba family, whose sympathies were with the Minamoto. He placed himself before the tree and signalled that the fugitives had taken another direction.
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