It is spring in the year 1160, and a 13-year-old boy is about to leave the Japanese capital to start years of exile. He has been banished to the remote province of Izu on account of his father’s role in leading a rebellion against the imperial court, and against the Heike clan led by Taira no Kiyomori.
The boy’s name is Yoritomo of the Genji and before he departs on his journey, he is met by the Lady Ike, whose appeal for clemency swayed her step-son Kiyomori, and prevented the boy from being executed.
“Madam, I owe my life to your kindness” Yoritomo bows to her in gratitude.
“I am just glad that Kiyomori listened to my pleas,” she says, “especially now that I am merely an old nun.”
Yoritimo tries to restrain his tears, as the Lady Ike takes his head in her hands.
“I wonder what karma from past lives makes you so dear to me, when I am not your mother and you are not my son.”
Yoritomo wipes his eyes. “I lost my mother on the first of the third month of last year, and on the 3rd of the first month of this year, I lost my father. No one pitied me except you. No doubt they would be profoundly grateful for the way you have saved my life.”
The nun glances around and sees just a few assistants waiting to escort Yoritomo on his journey. “It’s pitiful to see so few men. Many have served your Genji forefathers for generations, but now you must face your future alone.”
Yoritomo nods. “Before she died, my mother told me that my life has a greater purpose, and above all I must stay alive. Without your aid, I would not be here today.”
Some of Kiyomori’s guards approach Yoritomo and order him to start moving.
“You have your whole life before you, Yoritomo, and your return to the capital will certainly come in its time. At my age, I can hardly expect to see that myself.
“I may never see you again. Good luck, my boy.”
At dawn on the 20th day of the third month, Yoritomo starts out on his long journey to the east.
It will be another 25 years before Lady Ike’s prediction comes true and Yoritomo finally returns to the capital.
There is a long road before him, but when Yoritomo does return he will no longer be an outcast. Instead he will return in triumph, as the country’s first Shogun.
The place to which Yoritomo was banished, in Izu province on the east coast of Japan, was a remote highland area surrounded by rice fields called Hirugakojima island – or Leech Island – named for the blood-sucking creatures that infested the flooded plains and marshes. It was here that he would spend his first years in exile, under the resentful eye of a local military commander named Ito Skeschika, far from the cultural and political life of the capital.
Every month, a messenger would arrive with news of the latest developments in capital. It was through these secret messages that Yoritomo learned that his younger half-brother, Ushiwaka, had been sent for religious training to the temple of Kurama, north of the capital.
“Mm, at least I am not the only one of Yoshitomo’s sons to survive,” thought Yoritomo. “I wonder if we will ever meet.”
Although little is known for sure about Yoritomo’s years in Izu, tales of his exile have been passed down over generations.
One story tells of how he came to fall in love with a young woman named Yaehime, who unfortunately for Yoritomo, was the daughter of his captor Ito Sukechika. As a retainer of the Heike clan, Sukechika would sometimes pay visits to the capital of Heian-kyo, and it was during one of these visits that his daughter became pregnant with Yoritomo’s child.
On his return to Izu, Yaehime’s father is incensed when he finds out that she has given birth, and that the father is the Genji exile. What’s more, the child is a boy, named Senzuru. He immediately has Yoritomo restrained, and forces his daughter into marriage with a local landowner. Sukechika is terrified that Lord Kiyomori will find out that he has allowed a child to be born – a son that could continue the Seiwa-Genji line.
And so in secret Sukechika wraps up the baby, takes him to a nearby riverbank, ties a stone to his body with a cord – and drops him in the river.
When Yoritomo discovers that Yaehime has been sent away and their child has been murdered, he vows to kill Sukuchika. One of his companions, Morinaga, urges him to hold off. It would be a suicide mission, he tells him – do not throw your life away, focus on the long term and get your revenge another day.
Now at his lowest point, Yoritomo is distraught, powerless. He now learns that Sukechika is planning to execute him, too, and so his companion helps him to escape. “Find Hojo Tokimasa,” Morinaga tells him, “he is your only hope.”
Yoritomo flees the Sukechika household at night on horseback. As he rides into the night, he prays to the god of war:
“Do not abandon me, oh Bodhisattva Hachiman. Help me rid the world of my father’s killer Kiyomori, and let me smite the enemy of my child, Sukechika. Give me command of the fighting men of the east under the Genji banner – and make me sei-i-tai-shogun – that I might protect the realm and honor the gods!”
While Yoritomo is riding into an unknown future,, desperate and alone, back in the capital Lord Kiyomori continues his inevitable rise to power.
In 1167, Kiyomori achieves the rank of chief minister, the first samurai to reach that station; his two eldest sons command the palace Guards, and so many of his Heike relatives have risen in rank that more than sixty of them were senior nobles. It is said that men now bow to Kiyomori’s will as grass to the wind. Anyone looking to rise in the court seeks alliance with the Heike.
The citizens of the capital have good reason to fear the power of Kiyomori. He has selected hundreds of young men, known as the Rokuhara Boys, all with shortly cropped hair and dressed in red; they act as Kiyomori’s secret police. The red-shirted youths are everywhere in the city. If anyone speaks ill of the Heike, and a Rokuhara Boy overhears him, armed guards will burst into the offender’s house, seize their goods, and drag them off to Rokuhara.
Kiyomori’s rise in influence was also aided by a strange sequence of events in the imperial succession. In 1165, the reigning emperor Nijo, son of the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, became ill and died, the throne passing to the retired Emperor’s grandson Rokujo. But then Rokujo also became ill and died three years later, aged just 11. The throne was then passed back up a generation, to Rokujo’s uncle, the retired Emperor’s fourth son Takakura.
With these shifts in power, Lord Kiyomori saw an opportunity. In 1171, he arranged for his daughter, the 15-year-old Tokuko, to be married to the newly enthroned Emperor Takakura – thus allowing Kiyomori to take one step closer to full control of the capital.
So now the 10-year-old Emperor – Takakura – finds himself being pulled in two directions – on the one side, by his father the retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, and on the other by his father-in-law lord Kiyomori.
The rivalry between these two ambitious men will come to a head six years later, and will stem from what was essentially a traffic accident.
The incident occurred when Lord Kiyomori’s grandson Sukemori was returning from a hunting trip. Sukemori had recently been made a captain and a provincial governor as well even though he was just 13 years old.
On this evening, the boy is flushed with pride as he has caught many birds with his falcons during a long day of hunting, and as the light begins to fail, he is looking forward to celebrating with thirty of his retainers, all of them teenagers.
Suddenly, as the boys are heading south past the imperial palace, they collide with a group of horsemen coming from the east.
“Hey,” cries the leader of the horsemen. ‘Identify yourself! You are out of order! You are in the presence of the Regent Fujiwara no Motofusa. Dismount immediately!”
The arrogant Sukumori - grandson of the most powerful warlord in the land – doesn’t care at all that he has inconvenienced Motofusa, even though he must know that the Regent is the Emperor’s top court official.
Instead of dismounting, he urges his companions on and attempts to break through the Regent’s bodyguards. But the Regent’s men pull Sukemori and his companions from their horses, scold them, and then let them ride on, humiliated.
When he reaches Rokuhara, Sukemori tells his father and grandfather what has happened.
His grandfather Lord Kiyomori is furious: “This is outrageous, to humiliate a mere boy. I don’t care if he’s regent, I will not forgive him for this. That, Shigemori, is how we lose respect for our family. We need to teach him a lesson!”
Kiyomori’s eldest son Shigemori, on the other hand, urges caution.
“Father, why be offended? For a son of mine not to dismount when the meets the regent on the road – that is where the outrage lies.”
Shigemori orders his son to apologize to the regent and leaves it at that. Kiyomori has other ideas. Without saying a word to his son, he calls together a group of sixty hardened warriors, and tells them in secret of his plan.
A few days later, the young Emperor Takakura is preparing a great banquet to celebrate his coming of age. He calls upon the Regent to help with his preparations. The Regent sets out with a great train of nobles, heading westward to the palace. Eventually the procession approaches the Taiken Gate – the site of the great battle between Genji and Heike some ten years earlier.
As they come near, Kiyomori’s Rokuhara forces are lying in wait. 300 helmeted riders in full armor suddenly surround the Regent’s procession, front and rear, and with one voice raise their battle cry.
The regent’s attendants, dressed in all their court finery, are chased here and there and are dragged from their mounts, trampled into the dust. Every one of them then has their hair shaved off, and their assailants ride back to Rokuhara, clutching their trophies, whooping with glee.
Realizing that Kiyomori has undermined him, Shigemori is forced to banish his son to a distant province as punishment. But inwardly he questions whether his father really is wise enough to govern.
But Shigemori is not the only one to think that Kiyomori’s rise to power is a reason to be alarmed.
Some months later, a group of nobles gather in a secret location in the mountains overlooking the capital. The site of their discussion is a villa owned by a priest named Shunkan, in a ravine below the Eastern hills, called shishi-ga-tani.
Among the attendants that night is Lord Narichika, a court nobleman now about 40 years old who narrowly avoided being executed for his role in the Heiji rebellion a decade earlier.
Also present at this secret rendezvous are Joken, the son of the former imperial advisor Shinzei, who had been killed during the Heiji rebellion; also a police lieutenant named Yasuyori, a chamberlain Yukitsuna, and a monk named Saiko, who has his own grudge against the Heike clan.
The men have been meeting regularly at Shunkan’s villa, to plot the downfall of the Heike. But on this particular night, they have a very special guest. He sits quietly in the corner and is intrigued by their conversation.
As usual, after many bottles of sake, the topic of the Heike’s rise to power comes up.
Lord Narichika is particularly incensed.
‘I should have been appointed the right commander, but no, it had to be Kiyomori’s second son – that idiot Munemori. If it was Shigemori maybe I wouldn’t have objected, but Munemori? I’ll find a way to bring down the Heike and get what I want!”
“Narichika,” says the police lieutenant Yasuyori, “how is that even possible? The Genji are gone now, destroyed. Without them, how can we possibly challenge Kiyomori? The Heiji rebellion did not end well as you will know, and that was when we had Yoshitomo on our side.”
“Yes, I know,” says Narichika. “but the reason it failed was because Yoshitomo put his faith in Nobuyori. When Kiyomori’s army was attacking, I knocked on Nobuyori’s door and found that idiot in his room, drunk with his courtesans. And then he fell off his horse before he could even lead out his troops.”
The monk Saiko rises and pours everyone another drink.
“Well, I think we will all be a lot smarter than Nobuyori”, he says. He now looks to the member of their group who until now has been sitting in the corner of the room, not saying anything.
“What is your opinion, your eminence?” asks Saiko.
“The situation is very interesting,” says the man, smiling. The others hang on every word he says, for the quiet man in the corner is the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa.
At that moment, as Narichika rises to his feet the sleeve of his cloak catches a wine jar and knocks it over.
“Mm,” says the retired emperor. “What does that mean, I wonder?”
There is a pause as they all look at the spilled wine.
“It means, down go the Heike!” says Narichika.
The retired emperor chuckles, “Ah, so that must be it”
“Ah, these wine jars,” says Yasuyori, who by now is very drunk. “Like the Heike, there are too many.”
“So, what are we going to do about it?” asks the priest Shunkan.
The monk Saiko stands up before his companions and grabs a wine jar.
“This is our time, gentlemen!” he says and smashes off the top of the jar. “After all, there’s nothing like taking heads!”
In the next episode, we see how Kiyomori deals with the conspirators, and how Yoritomo faces an unexpected call to action.