Minamoto no Yoritomo

“ Thus their race is polluted and accursed, and they are hated accordingly.
Now this is how the Etas came to be under the jurisdiction of Danzayémon:—
When Minamoto no Yoritomo was yet a child, his father, Minamoto no Yoshitomo, fought with Taira no Kiyomori, and was killed by treachery: so his family was ruined; and Yoshitomo's concubine, whose name was Tokiwa, took her children and fled from the house, to save her own and their lives. But Kiyomori, desiring to destroy the family of Yoshitomo root and branch, ordered his retainers to divide themselves into bands, and seek out the children. ”

“ Although he bequeathed his power and the prestige of his name to his descendants, thus securing for the latter the possession of the Shôgunate, the office became a purely nominal affair. Like the illustrious dead Yoritomo, who had wrested all real authority from the imperial throne, leaving it only the bare show and pomp of power, so now the Hōjō stepped in, and in their hands the Minamoto Shôguns were but puppets moving at the will of their so-called guardians. ”

“ Kamakura certainly has topographical advantages. It is surrounded by mountains except on one face, which is washed by the sea. But this feature does not seem to have counted so much in Yoritomo's eyes as the fact that his father, Yoshitomo, had chosen Kamakura as a place of residence when he exercised military sway in the Kwanto, and Yoritomo wished to preserve the tradition of Minamoto power. He wished, also, to select a site so far from Kyoto that the debilitating and demoralizing influence of the Imperial metropolitan society might be powerless to reach the military capital. ”

“ Ultimately the Minamoto family prevailed, in the person of the famous warrior Yoritomo, about 1185 A.D., and seven years later, when his authority had been firmly established, he received from the reigning sovereign the title of Sei-I-Tai-Sho-Gun—i.e. ”

“ Here he spent several years devoting himself to the military duties which chiefly pertained to the government of that rough and barbarous province. He developed into the gallant and accomplished soldier who played a principal part in the wars which followed, and became the national hero around whose name have clustered the choicest traditions of his country.
Meanwhile, as we have seen, Yoritomo,114 the oldest [pg 138] son of Yoshitomo, and by inheritance the head of the Minamoto clan, had been banished to Izu and committed to the care of two faithful Taira adherents. ”

“ Meanwhile Yoshinaka, the Minamoto leader, had become so insolent as to be imprecated and dreaded by friend and vassal alike. He also quarreled with Yoritomo, who had hitherto confined his military operations to the eastern provinces, but who now sent his two brothers, Noriyori and Yoshitsune, to attack Yoshinaka. The latter was defeated at Seta in Ise, and killed in the midst of a rice-field by a stray arrow. The victors then marched on in triumph to Ichinotani to attack the Taira. The first conflict was successful for the Minamoto. The Taira lost many a stout soldier. ”

“ A youth of such honor, virtue, courage, and martial fire Japan had rarely known.
In the war that soon arose between Yoritomo and the Taira the youthful Bayard served his brother well. Kiyomori, in sparing the sons of the Minamoto chief, had left alive the two ablest of all who bore that name. So great were the skill and valor of the young warrior that his brother, on the rebellion of Yoshinaka, made Yoshitsuné commander of the army of the west, and sent him against the rebellious general, who was quickly defeated and slain. ”

“ The latter fell, and his son, Yoshinaka, a baby of two, was handed to Saito Sanemori to be executed; but the latter sent the child to Shinano, where it was brought up by Nakahara Kaneto, the husband of its nurse. Yoshinaka attained an immense stature as well as signal skill in archery and horsemanship. Like Yoritomo and Yoshitsune, he brooded much on the evil fortunes of the Minamoto, and paid frequent visits to Kyoto to observe the course of events. In the year 1180, the mandate of Prince Mochihito reached him, and learning that Yoritomo had taken the field, he gathered a force in Shinano. ”

“ He cried to an attendant to bring another horse; but the man fled. Shigéhira was then captured by Iyénaga, and eventually given up to Yoritomo, head of the Minamoto clan, who caused him to be sent in a cage to Kamakura. There, after sundry humiliations, he was treated for a time with consideration,—having been able, by a Chinese poem, to touch even the cruel heart of Yoritomo. But in the following year he was executed by request of the Buddhist priests of Nanto, against whom he had formerly waged war by order of Kiyomori. ”

“ Yoritomo (1147—1199) , son of Minamoto Yoshitomo, became the first Shōgun and the founder of Japanese feudalism. When his father's force was finally overcome in 1159, the boy was captured and condemned to death. Kiyomori spared him at the intercession of his stepmother, and Yoritomo was placed in the care of two officers who were responsible for him. He grew up shrewd, ambitious, and unscrupulous. In 1180 he rose against Kiyomori's tyranny, and with the help of his half-brother Yoshitsune and his cousin Yoshinaka finally shattered the Taira power and exterminated the clan, root and branch. ”

“ In justice to Yoritomo's strategy it must be noted that these orders were given almost simultaneously with the departure of the Minamoto army westward from Harima, so that by the time of Noriyori's arrival in Bungo, the military governor, Kagetoki, had got together some four hundred vessels at Watanabe.
Meanwhile, Yoshitsune had been chafing in Kyoto. To a man of his temperament enforced passivity on the eve of such epoch-making events must have been intolerable. ”

“ The same policy of extermination which Kiyomori had pursued against the Minamoto was now remorselessly enforced by the Minamoto against the Taira. The prisoners who were taken in the battle were executed to the last man. Munemori was taken prisoner and decapitated. Whenever a Taira man, woman, or child was found, death was the inevitable penalty inflicted. Yoritomo stationed his father-in-law Hōjō Tokimasa at Kyōto to search out and eradicate his enemies as well as to supervise the affairs of the government. ”

“ Those who obtained the posts of provincial governors acquired large influence in the districts administered by them, their descendants becoming military chiefs with great followings of relatives and retainers. The Minamoto clan comprised no less than fourteen families, among them the descendants of the Emperor Seiwa being the most numerous and important. It was from this clan that the great Yoritomo, the first feudal ruler of Japan, subsequently sprang. The Taira, on the other hand, consisted of four families, principally descendants of the Emperor Kwammu. ”

“ Masa, daughter of Hōjō Tokimasa, was one of the famous women of Japan. She was wooed and won by Yoritomo under romantic circumstances, and contributed largely to his rise. After his death, she turned her unusual intellectual and administrative ability to fostering the power of her own house, the Hōjō, at the expense of her husband's, the Minamoto. (See the Index.)
Masakado, a prominent member of the Taira clan in the tenth century, was one of the historic rebels of Japan. He was a governor in the East, but aspired to the control of the whole section, and set himself up as a pseudo-Emperor. ”

“ Hachiro means "the eighth," and he was so called because he was the eighth son of his father, General Tameyoshi of the house of Minamoto. Yoshitomo, who afterwards became such a great figure in Japanese history, was his elder brother. Tametomo was therefore uncle to the Shogun Yoritomo and the hero Yoshitsune, of whom you will soon read. He belonged to an illustrious family indeed.
As a child Hachiro gave promise of being a very strong man, and as he grew older this promise was more than fulfilled. ”

“ We cannot be sure as to the exact date when the great family's policy of boy-sovereigns first took definite shape, but the annals seem to show that Yoshifusa conceived the programme and that his adopted son, Mototsune, carried it out. A halo rests on Seiwa's head for the sake of his memorable descendants, the Minamoto chiefs, Yoritomo, Takauji, and Ieyasu. Heaven is supposed to have compensated the brevity of his own tenure of power by the overwhelming share that his posterity enjoyed in the administration of the empire. ”

“ Asuka made Empress; oppose Makibi and Gembo; Buddhism; abdication; family tree; choose Emperors; academy of; increase of power; policy of abdication; depose Yozei; oppose Tachibana; plot against Michizane; interregnum; war of Taira and Minamoto; influence on Court; oppose Tamehira; family quarrels; literature; Minamoto, "claws" of; provincial branches; Mutsu; power wanes; Imperial consorts; anti-military; power weakened by Kiyomon; Yoritomo's followers get their estates; conspiracy of 1252; loyal to Throne (1331) ; Hideyoshi adopted by
—Fuhito, son of Kamatari, Daiho and Yoro codes ”

“ The Mito men walk with faces over their shoulders, looking to the past, and with ears closed against all reports of the disasters brought upon the Chinese by a like frog-in-the-well policy. The true cause of the Mikado owes much to your service and the service of this noble tojin sama.”
“I have broken the law; I have brought danger upon the House of Owari,” said Yoritomo. “I alone should receive punishment, and not my family. Shall it be hara-kiri, or shall I strip off the Tokugawa crest, and as a ronin seek to accomplish my mission, aided only by my tojin brother?” ”

“ Yeto Shimpei, resigns from ministry and leads a revolt, iv. 208. Yodo, Hideyoshi's mistress, devotion and death, iii. 88. Yōdō, chief of Tosa, foreign policy, iii. 221; memorial, 237; character, 237, 238; surrenders his fief, iv. 189, 190. Yodoya Tatsugoro, merchant, iv. 152. Yoritomo, Minamoto chief, and Masa, i. 234; overthrows the Taira, ii. 6; establishes feudalism, 6; character and policy, 7–11; first Shōgun, 8; taxation policy, iii. 121. Yoshida, court family, hereditary accomplishment, iv. 6. Yoshida family, wrestling umpires, iii. 70. Yoshida Shingu, and revival of Shintō, v. ”

“ A permanent military force was to be maintained by each province. To these measures the Emperor consented, and in 1192 bestowed upon Yoritomo the title of Sei-i Tai Shōgun or Barbarian-subduing Generalissimo. He was one of the ablest rulers of Japan, but a heartless tyrant. He looked with disfavour upon all other persons of ability or ambition, and killed off all possible rivals, including his brother Yoshitsune. He left no successor; his own children were weaklings from whom the power soon passed to the family of Yoritomo's wife, the Hōjō family. ”

“ Even at that early age he showed great intelligence, read the Sacred Books with avidity, and surprised the priests by his diligence and quickness of memory. He was naturally a very high-spirited youth, and could brook no control and hated to yield to others in anything whatsoever. As the years passed by and he grew older, he came to hear from his teachers and school friends of how his father Yoshitomo and his clan the Minamoto had been overthrown by the Taira, and this filled him with such intense sorrow and bitterness that sleeping or waking he could never banish the subject from his mind. ”

“ By a prompt and vigorous exercise of military talent he had crushed a Heike rising in Ise, which had threatened for a time to become perilously formidable. His mother may well have believed herself justified in representing to Hojo Tokimasa that such a man would make a much better Minamoto shogun than the half-witted libertine, Yoriiye, or the untried boy, Sanetomo. It has been inferred that her pleading was in Tokimasa's ears when he sent a band of assassins to murder Yoriiye in the Shuzen-ji monastery. ”

“ That had its inconvenient results, for presently came one Mikado who married the daughter of a powerful papa; and when the time came for retirement, and he had abdicated in favor of a son three years old, the powerful papa thrust him aside into a prison, and usurped the regency. A civil war was the result of this; Yoritomo leaped up as champion of the imprisoned man, so recently a king, released him, and restored him to the regency over his infant son. For this essential service good Yoritomo was made a sort [Pg 539] of field-marshal, or Ziogoon. ”

“ This, then, was Midzuano Echizen-no-kami, the Shogun’s grand vizier or premier,—our enemy and the friend of Mito. What chance had we of a fair trial before a court influenced if not overawed by the ally of those who sought our destruction? According to the ancient law of the land, we had committed deeds punishable with death. What possibility could there be for us to escape condemnation by a court acting in the interests of our enemies?
“Yoritomo, son of Owari dono!” called one of the secretaries, and he signed with his fan. ”

“ To give way to grief in the presence of a superior is a most serious breach of Japanese etiquette. The graver the grief or pain, the more pronounced the smile of the sufferer. Yoritomo uttered a soft laugh, and immediately turned the conversation to a less painful subject.
“My lord,” he said, “I have told how Woroto Sama received me aboard the black ship, and how he proved himself the generous friend and brother of the stranger. We believe the saying that the spirits of our ancestors are ever about us. ”