[In the following essay, Varley examines how later interpretations of the Heike Monogatari served to lend an aristocratic character to various warriors.]

Japan's entry into the medieval age (1185-1573) in the late twelfth century was accompanied by an epochal transition in leadership of the country, when the emperor and the ministers who served him at his court in Kyoto relinquished national rule to provincial warrior chieftains. But this transition did not occur immediately, nor was it ever carried to completion in medieval times. Through much of the Kamakura period (1185-1333), for example, government continued to be divided between the court and the new warrior regime (bakufu) that was founded by Minamoto no Yoritomo in Kamakura. And even during the Muromachi period (1336-1573), when the court's political fortunes sank to their nadir, the emperor and his ministers still held high authority and the potential to exercise at least some political power.

In addition to thus retaining a measure of rulership, however slight, throughout the medieval age, the court (comprising imperial and courtier families) influenced and in various ways shaped and even culturally transformed the character of the warrior elite that increasingly dominated the age. Court influence was especially intense during the times when warrior rulers resided in Kyoto. These rulers included the Rokuhara magistrates (tandai), who were in Kyoto from 1221 until the overthrow of the Kamakura bakufu in 1333; the Ashikaga shoguns of the Muromachi period; and the daimyos or regional barons who served the Ashikaga and, from at least the late fourteenth century, also lived more or less permanently in Kyoto and visited their domains only infrequently.¹

THE ISE TAIRA

The forerunners of the medieval warrior rulers who resided in Kyoto were the Ise branch of the Taira (or Heike) family. Victors in the Heiji Conflict in 1159-1160, the Taira under their leader Kiyomori rose to power in Kyoto during the two decades or so from the Heiji Conflict until the Genpei (Minamoto-Taira) War of 1180-1185. Unlike their medieval successors, the Taira did not establish new institutions of warrior rule; rather, they entered court government and in large part emulated the political practices of the Fujiwara regents, even marrying into the imperial family and becoming maternal relatives of the emperor.

The great war tale Heike monogatari (The Tale of the Heike) tells us that the Ise Taira were—to coin a word—“aristocratized”² during their decades of prominence in Kyoto. Not only did they engage in court government; they actively participated in court society and embraced courtier culture and ways. The Heike, although based on history, is—as is well known—a highly embellished work of literature, having been molded and developed over a period of at least two centuries, especially by tale singers who chanted its stories while accompanying themselves with lutes (biwa).³ Hence the Heike's account of how the Ise Taira were aristocratized during their years in Kyoto cannot be accepted uncritically as history. But it is history of a kind, since Japanese through the centuries—even until very recent times—have believed it to be a generally accurate record of the past.⁴ The image of the Ise Taira as “courtiers” or courtly warriors was particularly powerful during the medieval age, making their story, primarily as it is given in the Heike, the starting point for any study of how the court, court life, and court culture recurrently affected the warrior elite as it evolved during medieval times.

The Taira, along with that other famous warrior family, the Minamoto (or Genji), were descended from the imperial family. Historians have traditionally recounted how surplus princes, excluded from the imperial family in a process of “dynastic shedding” and given the surnames of Taira or Minamoto, went out from the capital during the early Heian period (794-1185) to occupy offices in the provincial governments and, after completing their terms of office, settled down to become leaders in the emerging warrior society of the provinces. In fact, many of these men also continued to maintain residences in Kyoto and, in some cases, to spend more time there than in the provinces. An example is the Minamoto chieftain Yoshiie, victorious commander in the Later Three Years War (1083-1087) in northern Honshu in the late eleventh century, who spent most of his life after the war (he died in 1106) living in Kyoto.

Many provincial warrior chieftains also established patron-client (shujū) relations with leading courtiers or members of the imperial family that were very much like the lord-vassal ties of warriors and their followers. The Ise Taira from the time of Kiyomori's grandfather, Masamori, in the late eleventh century, for example, became clients of the senior retired emperors (in) who, from about the same time, increasingly surpassed the Fujiwara regents as wielders of power at court.

Not only did provincial warrior chieftains establish private patron-client relationships with courtiers and members of the imperial family, they also avidly sought court titles and posts in both the central and provincial governments. Thus, by the time the Ise Taira rose to national prominence in the second half of the twelfth century, the provincial warrior chieftains as a class had become, both privately and publicly, deeply involved in court life and court affairs; they had, in short, become substantially aristocratized. This does not mean that they were accepted as equals by court society. On the contrary, as the case of the Ise Taira in Heike monogatari clearly illustrates, warrior chieftains in Kyoto continued to be despised by courtiers as essentially barbarians, even though—as in the cases of the Taira and Minamoto—they may have been descended from royalty.

TAIRA NO TADAMORI

In its famous introduction, Heike monogatari announces the theme of and sets the tone for the story that is to be told. It will be a somber story, heavily colored by pessimistic Buddhist views of the impermanence of all things and, especially, the decline of the world during what was believed to be the age of mappō, or the “end of the Buddhist Law.” The Ise Taira family, under the leadership of Kiyomori, has risen to a dizzying height of grandeur and is headed for a fall, a fall that will be particularly great, and perhaps also very swift, both because of the height to which they have risen and the wickedness of Kiyomori as a ruler.

But before embarking on the story of the Ise Taira under Kiyomori, the Heike relates an incident in the life and career of Tadamori, Kiyomori's father, who greatly advanced the family fortunes while in the service of the senior retired emperor Toba during the middle decades of the twelfth century. Toba, we are told, wishes to bestow special reward on Tadamori for building a Buddhist temple that he, Toba, has personally promised to have erected. The reward is appointment to a provincial governorship and permission to “attend,” that is, to participate in courtier affairs, at the imperial palace (Seiryōden).⁵ This permission is extraordinary, if not unprecedented, both because it is granted to a warrior and because Tadamori holds only the senior fourth rank, lower grade, and attendance has by tradition been restricted to courtiers of the third rank and higher.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for us living in the present age to appreciate fully the pervasive importance of social status to a class such as the courtiers of ancient Japan. This status, believed to be granted by the gods and based almost exclusively on birth, was figuratively the air that the courtiers breathed. Violations of status were regarded as ethical transgressions of the most serious kind. We can imagine that the courtiers responded in a spirit of truly righteous indignation when Tadamori, in 1132, was granted the right of attendance at the palace. In the Heike account, the courtiers' indignation gives rise to a plot to assassinate Tadamori when he first appears at the palace, which is on the occasion of a banquet in the twelfth month.

Although brief, the account of this assassination plot and how Tadamori foiled it (told in “The Night Attack at the Palace”) is critical to an understanding of the Heike as a whole. We usually think of the Heike as the story of the rise and fall of the Ise Taira, but in a larger sense it is a record, admittedly much romanticized, of how and why warriors supplanted courtiers as the ruling elite of Japan in the late twelfth century. Seen in this light, the confrontation between Tadamori and the courtiers in “The Night Attack” becomes a parable for this momentous historical transition in ruling elites.

Informed in advance of the plot, Tadamori, upon his arrival at the palace, ostentatiously displays a large dagger he has brought with him in what is evidently a breach of proper court conduct. Startled by the display of this weapon, the courtiers are truly alarmed when they observe that one of Tadamori's retainers, armed with a sword, is seated in a garden outside the hall where the banquet is being held. When questioned, the retainer states that he has come because he has heard that there is to be an attempt to kill his lord that night.⁶

Obliged to abandon their plot, the courtiers seek some satisfaction by singing, while Tadamori dances as part of the evening's entertainment, a satirical verse that contains a phrase with several plays on words that can be taken to mean either “the Ise Heishi (or Heike; Tadamori) is squint-eyed” or “the bottle from Ise is a roughly made article” (or “is a vinegar bottle”). One meaning mocks Tadamori as physically flawed, and the other characterizes him as a countrified boor from the wilds of Ise.⁷

After the banquet, the courtiers submit their complaints about Tadamori to retired emperor Toba, claiming that he has violated court regulations, which stipulate that one may not, without special imperial authorization, enter the palace with a weapon or in the company of an escort. But Tadamori proves he has not broken the regulations because his dagger is a sham weapon, made of wood, and the retainer came not as an escort but of his own accord. Far from punishing Tadamori, Toba praises him for his resourcefulness in dealing with a difficult situation.⁸

This story of Tadamori and the courtiers is like a parable because it can be taken to signify, although in exaggerated form, the qualities that distinguished courtiers from warriors (represented by Tadamori) in this age and made inevitable the victory of the latter as the future rulers. Whereas Tadamori is determined, realistic, and resourceful, the courtiers are arrogant and aloof, unbending in their commitment to status and class privileges and to the rules that for centuries have tightly governed conduct at court. As Nagazumi Yasuaki points out, the Heike subtly enforces the courtiers' rigid commitment to privileges and rules by having them employ elaborate, Chinese-style language when they lodge their complaints about Tadamori with Toba.⁹

Although it may be interpreting too much from a few words voiced in anger, we can regard the courtiers' description of Tadamori as a “vinegar jar from Ise” as an indication of their unwillingness to recognize him as anything other than a barbarian. Yet we have observed that provincial warrior chieftains of this age frequently visited and resided in Kyoto, served at court, and participated in court life and culture. As heir to his father's (Masamori's) preferment in the service of the senior retired emperor, Tadamori had probably spent most of his life in Kyoto. Even the Heike alludes to Tadamori's courtliness when, in mentioning an affair he had with a court lady “of refinement,” it describes him as a man of “elegance.”¹⁰

TAIRA NO KIYOMORI

As he is portrayed in the Heike, Kiyomori is an archvillain who rivals all those heinous characters of Chinese and Japanese history who “did not obey the rule of their lords or former sovereigns, led dissolute lives, ignored admonitions, were not aware of the world's disorders, and were blind to the suffering of the people.”¹¹ Through the first half of the Heike, until his death in book 6, Kiyomori as archvillain looms over the story, representing a primary (although not the sole) reason that the Ise Taira are headed for decline and destruction.

The organization of book 1 of the Heike conveys the sense that the rise of the Ise Taira under Kiyomori occurred very rapidly. If Tadamori faced formidable social and status barriers at court, his son Kiyomori, in the Heike account at least, seems scarcely troubled by them. With little commentary, the Heike relates Kiyomori's almost meteorlike ascent of the twin ladders of court rank and office to become chancellor (daijō daijin) with junior first rank. As he thus rises to the summits of court society and status, Kiyomori carries his entire family in his train, as we quickly learn from a listing of the preferments in office and rank given to other Ise Taira men and from the marriages arranged between Ise Taira women and members of the highest courtier families, including the Fujiwara regent family and even the imperial family (Kiyomori later becomes the grandfather of an emperor, Antoku).¹² So grand do the Ise Taira become that in the words of one of them, “all who do not belong to this family cannot be considered human beings.”¹³

Although Kiyomori is now, in regard to office and rank, the preeminent courtier of the land, the Heike tells us almost nothing else about how aristocratized or courtly he may have become. Aristocratization does not mean simply the attainment of office and rank at court but also the acquisition of those special qualities of attitude, bearing, and taste that distinguish courtiers from others. As portrayed in the Heike, Kiyomori is essentially a political leader, and not a very courtly one at that. Despite his occupancy of the office of chancellor, in times of crisis, for example, he usually responds not as we would expect a courtier of such exalted position to respond but rather like a warrior chief, by resorting to arms. In this, he differs most markedly from his oldest son and heir apparent, Shigemori.

TAIRA NO SHIGEMORI

In earlier war tales—Hōgen monogatari (The Tale of Hōgen) and Heiji monogatari (The Tale of Heiji)—Shigemori is the leading battlefield commander of the Ise Taira. In the Heike, however, he is almost entirely divested of his military attributes, becoming not only a “courtier” but one who exemplifies the highest ideals of the courtier as minister. We must here distinguish between two personae of the courtier: the courtier as minister and the courtier as romantic or lover. Shigemori's courtliness is completely in the ministerial realm; the Heike says nothing about his possessing a romantic side. He is married to a court woman, but we are told almost nothing about her or their marriage. Yet others among the Ise Taira, as we will see, display their courtliness primarily as romantics, reciting waka poems, playing musical instruments, having affairs with elegant court ladies.

As many commentators have observed, Shigemori the courtly minister functions in the Heike as a medium to defend the traditional rights of the imperial family and the courtier class in the face of the relentless assault on them by Shigemori's own family, led by his father Kiyomori.¹⁴ Shigemori defends these rights primarily in two sustained admonitions he delivers to his father in 1177, at the time of discovery of the Shishigatani plot to overthrow the Ise Taira. Kiyomori reacts to the revelation of the plot by summarily executing some of the conspirators and preparing to take military action against others, including the senior retired emperor Goshirakawa.

Shigemori delivers his second, longer admonition after rushing to Kiyomori's residence to forestall a plan to march on and seize Goshirakawa. In contrast to Kiyomori and the other Taira and family retainers assembled at the residence, who have donned their armor, Shigemori is attired—as he is always attired in the Heike—in courtly robes.¹⁵ Kiyomori, invariably flustered when confronted by this son who is universally admired for his unswerving adherence to the highest Confucian and Buddhist precepts, tries to hide his armor by hastily pulling a monk's robe over it. He then sits in silence as Shigemori speaks.

In the admonition, Shigemori talks of fate and karmic retribution, touching on themes that permeate the Heike. But the central point of his argument is the theory of imperial absolutism.¹⁶ After chiding his father for violating the law that a chancellor must never wear helmet and armor, he calls on Kiyomori to adhere to the supreme obligation of men to obey their sovereign.¹⁷ Although in fact the sovereign is the emperor, Shigemori here refers to senior retired emperor Goshirakawa who, as Uwayokote Masataka notes, is a political schemer capable of straining the faith and commitment of any subject.¹⁸ Shigemori acknowledges that Goshirakawa's thinking can be “unpredictable” but nevertheless asserts that it is the subject's duty to serve him and the court with unstinting loyalty.

Shigemori's courtliness is unique among Ise Taira in the Heike. No other member of the family assumes, in any significant way, the qualities of the courtier as minister. Rather, the aristocratization of other Ise Taira, apart from the receipt of court ranks and offices, lies largely in their acquisition of what I have called the romantic attributes of the courtier. But little is said about the Ise Taira as courtly romantics until the Heike's second half, when the Genpei War has begun and the family is launched on the road to what we know will be defeat and doom.

COURTLY WARRIORS IN THE GENPEI WAR

The Genpei War began in 1180 when an imperial prince, Mochihito, disgruntled because he had been bypassed through Kiyomori's interference in the succession to the emperorship, dispatched an edict to Minamoto chieftains in the provinces calling on them to rise up and overthrow the Ise Taira. Among the first to accept this call to arms against the Ise Taira were Minamoto no Yoritomo in the Kantō and his cousin Yoshinaka in Shinano Province.

In the Genpei War, as it is narrated in the second half of the Heike, there is little doubt about the eventual outcome of the warfare between the Minamoto and the Ise Taira. The Minamoto, especially those from the eastern provinces of the Kantō, are famous as fierce fighting men—they are the cream of the horse-riding warrior class that had evolved in the provinces since early times. The Ise Taira, on the other hand, represent what the Heike categorizes as “western” warriors, who lack both the martial prowess and physical and mental toughness to stand up to their eastern adversaries.¹⁹ Although some Taira chieftains, such as Noritsune and Tadanori, are in fact impressive fighters, most are no match for their Minamoto counterparts.

The Taira problems in the Heike's version of the Genpei War begin with weak leadership. In 1179 Shigemori dies, convinced that the fortunes of the Ise Taira are nearing their end, and then in 1181 Kiyomori dies, angry and unrepentant to the last, less than a half year after the war's start. Although dictatorial and erratic, Kiyomori was at least a decisive leader. His successor as the head of the Ise Taira, his second son Munemori, is not only indecisive; he is quite devoid of martial spirit. When, for example, Minamoto no Yoshinaka leads his army to the gates of Kyoto in 1183, Munemori decides to take the child emperor Antoku (his nephew and Kiyomori's grandson) and flee the capital, rejecting the advice of other Taira chieftains who wish to remain and defend against Yoshinaka. Munemori gives as his reason for abandoning the capital his unwillingness to expose members of the imperial family, including the emperor and his mother, Kenreimon'in (Munemori's sister), to the distress of battling with Yoshinaka.²⁰

Munemori's fainthearted—one is tempted to say courtierlike—behavior in the face of the Yoshinaka threat sets the tone of the chapters in book 7 of the Heike that describe the sad departure of the Ise Taira from Kyoto and, indeed, of the work's entire second half. Until this point, the reader has generally despised the Ise Taira because of the evilness of Kiyomori and the hubris of the family as a whole; from here on, however, the reader is increasingly led to sympathize with them.

One reason for this newly felt sympathy is the disparity in fighting ability between the Ise Taira and their Minamoto adversaries: the reader pities the Taira as manifest underdogs. But another and, I believe, stronger reason for the elicitation of the reader's sympathy is the series of revelations about the romantic courtliness of Taira leaders. It can even be suggested that the Ise Taira become surrogates for the courtier class and that their destruction in the Genpei War symbolizes the historical displacement of this class as a ruling elite by rough warriors from the provinces.

The Ise Taira flight from Kyoto in 1183, at least as described in the Heike, is less tragic than pathetic. Some of the Taira are tough and are ready to fight. But the family in general is bewildered and in disarray. Munemori sets the tone by weeping when he informs his sister Kenreimon'in that they must leave the capital.²¹ The Minamoto also cry in the Heike, for example, Yoshitsune when his intimate follower, Satō no Tsuginobu, is killed defending him at the battle of Yashima early in 1185.²² But the Minamoto shed only “manly” tears—tears for fallen comrades or for the anguish of war itself. Munemori, on the other hand, cries like a courtier—drenching the sleeve of his robe—from a sense of frustration and impotence. Other Taira weep in similar courtly fashion, for example, Shigehira when parting from a mistress he is allowed to see briefly after he is captured by the Minamoto following the battle of Ichinotani.²³

In preparing for flight, the Taira decide to take their women with them (they also take Emperor Antoku, but that is for an important political reason: to give legitimacy to their cause). With the women in tow, the Taira are far from a typical army. Women seldom accompany armies in the war tales, and the presence of the Taira women during the flight from the capital contributes as much as anything to the sense of courtly poignancy surrounding what we know will be the family's inevitable fate in the Genpei War.

Although they occasionally rally and win battles, after Kyoto the Taira are essentially pathetic fugitives, afflicted at every turn by homesickness and depression resulting from grief over their plight and ceaseless longing for the capital and the life of luxury and glory they once knew. The Taira men would surely have been homesick and depressed without their women, but the presence of the women intensifies these feelings and, I believe, enhances the impression that the Heike conveys of the Ise Taira as surrogate victims for the courtiers who are losing out as a ruling elite in the transition to the medieval age.

After leaving Kyoto, the Taira visit Fukuhara, their former base on the Inland Sea to which Kiyomori had once moved the imperial capital.²⁴ Assailed by memories of Fukuhara's transient grandeur and made wretched by its present desolate and deteriorated state, the Taira spend only one night there, “their tears mixing with dew on the grassy pillows of their travellers' beds.”²⁵ The description of the Taira departure from Fukuhara the following day is one of the saddest and most courtierlike passages in the Heike:

As dawn broke, the Taira set fire to the Fukuhara palace and, with the emperor, they all boarded the boats. Departing the capital had been more painful, but still their feelings of regret were great indeed. Smoke at eveningtime from seaweed burned by fisherfolk, the cries of deer on mountain peaks at dawn, waves lapping the shore, moonbeams bathing their tear-drenched sleeves, crickets chirping in the grasses—no sight met their eyes nor sounds reached their ears that failed to evoke sadness or pierce their hearts. Yesterday they were tens of thousands of horsemen with their bits aligned at Ōsaka Barrier; today, as they loosened their mooring lines on waves in the western sea, they numbered a mere seven thousand. The sky was cloudy and the sea calm as dusk approached. Lonely islands were shrouded in evening mists; the moon floated on the sea. Cleaving the waves to the distant horizon and drawn ever onward by the tides, the boats seemed to row up through the clouds in the sky. Days had passed, and they were already separated far from the mountains and rivers of the capital, which lay behind the clouds. They seemed to have gone as far as they could go. All had come to an end, except their endless tears.²⁶

As Ishimoda Shō has observed, the Heike differs from the earlier war tales in containing passages such as this one, written in a tone of classical lyricism and presenting visual images like scenes from Yamato-e (Japanese-style pictures).²⁷ Drawing on the aware aesthetic of courtly taste, the scenes in this passage are suffused with a sadness deriving from the haunting sights and sounds depicted and the uncontrollable grief of the Taira and also from the many metaphors related to water—sea, waves, tears, floating, tides, mists. These images heighten our awareness that the once supremely proud family of Kiyomori, now greatly reduced in strength, has literally lost its political and social moorings (“with the loosening of their mooring lines”) and is drifting toward an unknown, but inevitably dark, fate.

There is irony in the water metaphors inasmuch as the Ise Taira first gained fame as a sea power in the Inland Sea. The once great “kings of the water” are now its victims, carried along by its changing tides and shifting currents. There is irony also in the fact that the Taira are fleeing to the west, for they were not just a sea power but a “western” sea power as well. In the Heike, the war between the Ise Taira and the Minamoto is presented geographically as a conflict between the Minamoto of the east (land power) and the Taira of the west (sea power). The ultimate irony of this pairing is revealed, of course, in the final defeat of the Taira by the Minamoto in the sea battle of Dannoura in the west in the third month of 1185. But another irony deriving from the association of the Taira with the sea and the west appears in the Heike in the description of the family's flight from Kyoto and Fukuhara. Although by heading westward to Kyushu, the Taira hope to gather support from former adherents in that region, the Heike, as in the passage just quoted, portrays the west as remote and lonely, distant from the high civilization of the capital. The Taira, who have become aristocratized, now see their western heritage differently: compared with the “civilized” capital, the west is “uncivilized.” Sharing the sentiments of courtiers through the ages, they are agonized by their forced departure from the capital and can conceive of happiness only in terms of returning to Kyoto.

TADANORI AND TSUNEMASA

The Heike's description of the Taira flight from Kyoto emphasizes their courtliness also by highlighting the departure of two members of the family who exemplify acquisition of the courtly arts: Tadanori the poet and Tsunemasa the musician.

Tadanori was a younger brother of Kiyomori and one of the leading field commanders of the Ise Taira. More than any other member of his family as they are portrayed in the Heike, he combines the qualities of warrior and romantic courtier. In one of his early appearances in the Heike, Tadanori serves as the second in command of an ill-fated expeditionary force sent by Kiyomori to the Kantō against Minamoto no Yoritomo, shortly after Yoritomo rises in rebellion in 1180. We are told that for many years, Tadanori had been conducting an affair with the daughter of a princess and that the daughter, distressed that he must now leave on a military expedition, sends him a poem along with the gift of a robe. In responding to the daughter, Tadanori composes a poem that is described as containing lines of “great refinement”:

Wakareji o
nani ka nagekan
koete yuki
seki mo mukashi no
ato to omoeba
Why lament
Our parting,
When the barrier I cross
Leads to the sites
Of bygone days?(28)

Among the warriors in the Heike, only the Taira recite poetry. Even in the affairs they occasionally have with courtly women, the Minamoto are poetically silent.²⁹ The inclusion in the Heike of thirty or so poems by Taira—most of them in the work's second half, which describes the Genpei War—is one of the more important indices of how courtly the Taira have become during their years of ascendancy in Kyoto.

We know that Tadanori was, in historical fact, a poet of some distinction.³⁰ The Heike develops Tadanori's courtier poet side to make his flight from Kyoto with his Taira kinsmen and his subsequent death at the battle of Ichinotani one of the more poignant of the many tales of how the Taira perish, one after another, in the various battles of the Genpei War. As the Taira prepare to leave Kyoto, Tadanori visits Fujiwara no Shunzei, one of the leading court poets of the day, with whom he has studied poetry for many years. He implores Shunzei to read a scroll of poems he has written, in the hope that one or more may be included in a future anthology of imperially authorized poetry.³¹

Tadanori is killed attempting to escape when the Minamoto, in the second month of 1184, rout the Taira from the fortress they have established at Ichinotani on the shore of the Inland Sea. The enemy knows Tadanori to be a high-ranking Taira commander because his teeth are blackened in the courtly fashion. He is able to make a precise identification when he finds a poem, written and signed by Tadanori, by Tadanori, in Tadanori's armor. There are none among friend or foe, we are told, who do not shed tears upon hearing of Tadanori's death: “How sad! [everyone said]. He was a person who excelled in both the martial arts and the way of poetry. He is a general who will be sorely missed.”³²

When Shunzei compiles the anthology Senzaishū in 1187, he in fact includes one of Tadanori's poems. But because the Ise Taira, having by then been defeated and destroyed in the Genpei War, are regarded as enemies of the court, Shunzei is obliged to label the poem “anonymous”:

Sazanami ya
Shiga no miyako wa
are ni shi o
mukashinagara no
yamazakura kana
Though the old Shiga capital
Lies in ruins,
The mountain cherries
Ripple like waves
As of yore.(33)

Tsunemasa was a nephew of Kiyomori, who as a youth had served at Ninnaji (temple) in Kyoto and who, because of his extraordinary musical talent, had been entrusted by the temple's abbot with the famous lute Seizan, which centuries earlier had been brought to the Japanese court from China. The bestowal of Seizan, an instrument once prized by emperors, upon a young Taira was an extraordinary tribute to the skill of a warrior in one of the courtly arts. Although it is possible that Tsunemasa was given Seizan to curry favor with the powerful Taira family, the Heike avers that he fully deserved it—presumably above potential courtier recipients—on grounds of his musicality alone.³⁴

As the Taira prepare to abandon Kyoto, Tsunemasa hurries to Ninnaji to return Seizan to the abbot. Weeping, Tsunemasa says that he cannot bring himself to take such a treasured instrument into “the dust of the hinterland.”³⁵ What he means, metaphorically, is that he must leave behind “civilization” (or culture, represented by Seizan) because he is heading into the “uncivilized” (and hence uncultured) western provinces. He expresses the hope that if the fortune of the Taira should through some miracle change and he is able to return to the capital/civilization, he might be given Seizan to play once again. After exchanging poems of parting with the abbot, he leaves Ninnaji. Tsunemasa's performance in this touching scene—his relinquishment of the lute, his weeping, his dread of venturing into the “hinterland,” his exchange of poems with the abbot—is thoroughly courtly.

The theme of the Taira warrior as musician reappears in the famous story of Tsunemasa's younger brother Atsumori. The setting is again the Minamoto rout of the Taira at Ichinotani. Atsumori, who is only sixteen or seventeen, is attempting to escape to the Taira ships moored offshore and fights with the fearsome Minamoto adherent Kumagai no Naozane. Wrestling Atsumori to the ground and tearing off his helmet to behead him, Naozane is amazed to see the face—with blackened teeth—of a beautiful youth. To Naozane, Atsumori is like a courtier. He also reminds Naozane, who wishes to spare him, of his own son. But Naozane is forced to kill Atsumori when he sees a band of Minamoto approaching and knows they will show the youthful Taira no mercy. Later, Naozane discovers a flute in a pouch at Atsumori's waist and realizes that it had been Atsumori playing the flute in the Taira fortress that morning. Observing that none among the Minamoto would think of bringing a flute to a battle, Naozane proclaims: “These lofty people [the Taira] are truly men of refinement!”³⁶

THE END OF THE ISE TAIRA

The Taira journey to Kyushu in the distant west avails them little, for they are driven also from that region, which had once been an important family base, by a renegade former vassal. Adrift again, they make their way to Yashima off Shikoku Island, where Munemori and the other Taira, all of whom hold high court ranks, must “spend their days in the rush-thatched huts of fishermen and their nights in mean hovels.”³⁷ The Taira are, however, able to win some battles against forces sent from Kyoto by Yoshinaka, who is under increasing threat from his cousin and rival for Minamoto leadership, Yoritomo of Kamakura.

In the first month of 1184, Yoshinaka is destroyed by an army under the half brothers Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Noriyori, dispatched from Kamakura by Yoritomo (another half brother). With Kyoto secured, the quick-acting Yoshitsune attacks the fortress that the Taira have meanwhile established at Ichinotani on the Honshu littoral of the Inland Sea, near Fukuhara. The Taira loss at Ichinotani is devastating; the Heike lists among the family dead ten of its most prominent members, including all three of those discussed in the last section—Tadanori, Tsunemasa, and Atsumori.³⁸

Only one Taira commander, Kiyomori's son Shigehira, is captured at Ichinotani. Shigehira, as we find him in the Heike, rivals his uncle Tadanori as a possessor of outstanding qualities as both warrior and romantic courtier. Much of the Heike's book 10 is devoted to Shigehira in captivity (he is held for about a year and a half before being executed after the Genpei War), during which time he is taken to see Yoritomo in Kamakura. In an earlier meeting with a mistress (mentioned earlier) and while on the trip to Kamakura, Shigehira shows himself to be a person of great courtly sensitivity, composing waka poetry, engaging in a brief affair with a girl at an inn, and charming people with his lute playing and chanting at Kamakura. Yoritomo pronounces him to be “the most cultivated of men.”³⁹

There is no need, for the purpose of this chapter, to describe the final year of the Genpei War; it is enough to note that the Ise Taira are badly defeated again at the battle of Yashima in the second month of 1185 and are driven westward once more in their boats. A month later they are decimated in the naval battle at Dannoura. Most of the remaining Taira leaders are killed or drown themselves, along with the child emperor Antoku, at Dannoura. The few Taira who are captured, including Munemori, are subsequently executed, and other Taira who did not participate in the Dannoura fighting, including children, are hunted down and killed. The Heike is brought to a conclusion with the final pronouncement, after the execution of Shigemori's grandson (and Kiyomori's great-grandson) Rokudai, that “thus the progeny of the Heike [Taira] came finally to an end.”⁴⁰

CONCLUSION

As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, the Kakuichi version of the Heike monogatari that I used was completed in 1371 and was the product of nearly two centuries of textual development and embellishment, especially by itinerant tale singers. The picture of the Ise Taira as aristocratized or courtly warriors in the Kakuichi Heike is therefore historically inaccurate (although the Taira certainly became aristocratized to some extent during their years of ascendancy in Kyoto), and it does not even necessarily represent the tastes and attitudes of the late twelfth century, the time of the Heike's story. Rather, at least some, if not a great deal, of what we find in the Kakuichi Heike reflects the tastes and attitudes of the early Muromachi period. We know, for example, that in the early Muromachi period, the Ashikaga and other members of the warrior elite, most of them maintaining their principal residences in Kyoto, were commencing a historical process in which they themselves became aristocratized and that they enjoyed being informed about courtier-warriors of the past, especially the Ise Taira of the Genpei age. Zeami, one of the creators of the nō theater, who began his career in the theater about the time of the completion of the Kakuichi Heike, catered to this desire of the Muromachi warrior elite to learn about the Ise Taira as courtier-warriors by creating the warrior category of nō plays and by basing all his warrior plays on the Kakuichi Heike.⁴¹

The transformation of the Ise Taira into courtly warriors in the Kakuichi Heike is achieved by various means. Among these are the constant use, and thus highlighting, of Taira-held court ranks and titles (the Minamoto in the Heike, with few exceptions, have no such ranks and titles); the recording of poems composed by Taira; the description of Taira, especially from the time of their forced departure from Kyoto in 1183, weeping when moved by such unmanly or un-warrior-like feelings as longing for a loved one, homesickness (for Kyoto), and the bewilderment and frustration caused by the disruptions of the Genpei War; and the narration of the love affairs the Taira have with court ladies. Among the most prominent Taira lovers, as they are identified in the Heike, are Tadamori, Tadanori, Michimori, and Shigehira.⁴² Although the Minamoto also occasionally engage in affairs with court ladies in the Heike (for example, Yoshinaka and Yoshitsune), we are told nothing about their styles of courtship.

When speaking of the intrusion of Muromachi tastes into the war tales that recount the Taira-Minamoto stories of the Genpei age, Helen McCullough has commented on “the idealization of the fleeing Taira as elegant and bewildered aristocrats.”⁴³ This comment appears, in fact, in a discussion of how Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who remains manly and warriorlike throughout the Heike, is aristocratized in Gikeiki (Chronicle of Yoshitsune), a Muromachi-period work whose primary focus is on the flight of Yoshitsune and a small band of supporters to the northern provinces after the Genpei War to avoid the wrath of Yoritomo, who is determined to destroy—and finally succeeds in destroying—Yoshitsune. One should be cautious about drawing analogies between Heike monogatari and Gikeiki, since they are very different kinds of works. Nevertheless, in both we see the “flight” used prominently as a narrative device for the purpose of transforming warriors into courtly warriors.

Still another important means by which the Heike transforms the Taira into courtly warriors is through the use of classical court language, such as the language in the description quoted earlier of the Taira flight from Fukuhara and in the stories of their affairs with court ladies. The classical language we find in this and other sections of the Heike is one of the reasons it, alone among the war tales, is admired as a literary masterpiece.

Many other examples of Ise Taira aristocratization or courtliness in the Heike could be cited. But I hope what I have presented conveys a general sense of the extraordinarily rich tradition, in both history (insofar as people regard the Heike as history) and literature, of this family as courtly warriors, especially romantic courtly warriors, as they are portrayed in the Heike's second half when they flee from Kyoto, are hunted down, and are annihilated in the Genpei War and its aftermath.

Notes

1. Records of the fourteenth century, especially the war tale Taiheiki, suggest that many daimyos had already voluntarily taken up residence in Kyoto before they were required to do so by the third Ashikaga shogun Yoshimitsu. The first third of Taiheiki can be found in English translation in Helen Craig McCullough, trans., Taiheiki: A Chronicle of Medieval Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

2. The Japanese term for aristocratization is kizoku-ka. See the reference to this in Yasuda Motohisa, Heike no gunzō (Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 1967), p. 18.

3. See Kenneth Dean Butler, “The Textual Evolution of the Heike Monogatari,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 26 (1965-66): 5-51. See also the summary of the Heike's textual evolution in Paul Varley, Warriors of Japan, as Portrayed in the War Tales (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), pp. 82-85.

4. Yasuda, Heike no gunzō, pp. 14, 77. Yasuda cites two important Tokugawa-period histories, the Mito school's Dai Nihon shi and Rai San'yō's Nihon gaishi, that use the Heike as a primary source.

5. Takagi Ichinosuke et al., eds., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vols. 32-33 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1959), p. 84. This is the 1371 Kakuichi text of the Heike, which is the work's rufubon, or the most widely disseminated of the hundred or more surviving versions of the Heike. My chapter is based solely on the Kakuichi Heike, and the translations are mine. For a full English translation, see Helen Craig McCullough, The Tale of the Heike (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988). The reference to Tadamori's receipt of a provincial governorship and permission to attend at the imperial palace appears on p. 24 of the McCullough translation.

6. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, p. 85; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 24.

7. Ibid.

8. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, pp. 87-88; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 25-26.

9. Nagazumi Yasuaki, Heike monogatari o yomu (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1980), pp. 19-20.

10. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, p. 89; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 27.

11. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, p. 83; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 23.

12. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, pp. 92-94; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 27-30.

13. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, pp. 90-91; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 28.

14. For example, Tomikura Tokujirō, Heike monogatari (Tokyo: NHK, 1972), p. 56.

15. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, p. 171; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 74. There is one occasion in the Heike when Shigemori presumably wears armor: in book 1, where he is said to assume responsibility for defending several gates of the imperial palace against warrior monks. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, p. 135; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 53.

16. See the discussion of this in Uwayokote Masataka, Heike monogatari no kyokō to shinjitsu (Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 81-88.

17. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, p. 172; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 75.

18. Uwayokote suggests that the Heike's author(s) used Shigemori to criticize Kiyomori because Goshirakawa was too embroiled himself in court politics to be a credible critic. Heike monogatari no kyokō to shinjitsu, vol. 1, pp. 85-86.

19. See the analysis of the differences between “eastern” and “western” warriors by Saitō no Sanemori, an eastern warrior allied with the Taira. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, pp. 372-73; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 188-90. See also the discussion of this subject in Varley, Warriors of Japan, pp. 91-92.

20. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 94; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 242.

21. Ibid.

22. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, pp. 314-16; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 365-66.

23. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 247; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 330.

24. Kiyomori moved the capital to Fukuhara in the sixth month of 1180 and returned it to Kyoto five months later.

25. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 115; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 254.

26. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 116; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 254-55. Tomikura Tokujirō notes that this passage of the Taira flight from Fukuhara has, because of its lyricism, been one of the favorites of the Heike tale singers. See his Heike monogatari (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1975), p. 235.

27. Ishimoda Shō, Heike monogatari (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1957), pp. 167-68.

28. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 1, pp. 367-68; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 185-86. The Heike goes on to say that the “sites” Tadanori refers to must be the places where Taira no Sadamori was victorious when he led an expedition eastward in the ninth century to subdue the rebel Masakado.

29. There are two exceptions to this statement. Kajiwara no Kagetaka recites a poem before charging into battle at Ichinotani in book 9, and Minamoto no Yorimasa, identified in the Heike as an ardent poet, is the author of several poems in book 4. But the case of Yorimasa is unusual, since he was the only prominent Minamoto to side with the Taira in the Heiji Conflict of 1159-60 and, as a result, the only one to remain in the capital thereafter. Despite his Minamoto surname, Yorimasa is really like a Taira in the Heike, that is, one who was aristocratized in the years leading to the Genpei War.

30. Sixteen of Tadanori's poems are in imperially sponsored anthologies. Kajiwara Masaaki, Heike monogatari (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1982), p. 230.

31. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, pp. 102-4; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 246-47.

32. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, pp. 215-17; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 313-14.

33. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 104; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 247. Shiga, in Ōmi Province, had once in ancient times been the imperial capital.

34. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, pp. 107-8; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 249-50.

35. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 106; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 248. I have taken the word hinterland from the McCullough translation.

36. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, pp. 219-22; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 315-17.

37. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 135; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 266.

38. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 226; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 320.

39. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 226; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, pp. 340-41.

40. Takagi et al., Heike monogatari, vol. 2, p. 422; McCullough, Tale of the Heike, p. 425. Helen McCullough provides a freer, more dramatic translation of this passage: “Thus did the sons of the Heike vanish forever from the face of the earth.”

41. See the discussion of this in Thomas Blenman Hare, Zeami's Style (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), p. 185.

42. Michimori's courtship of and marriage to the court lady Kozaishō and her suicide by drowning when she learns of his death in the battle of Ichinotani are recounted in “Kozaishō's Suicide,” the last chapter of book 9. Tadamori, Tadanori, and Shigehira as lovers have been discussed.

43. Helen McCullough, trans., Yoshitsune (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966), p. 54.