Samurai Spirits

The TV series "Shogun" brings Japanese history to life, but who was the first Shogun?
In the first episode of this new podcast series, Sean Bermingham explores Minamoto no Yoritomo's extraordinary rise to power in medieval Japan, amidst the dramatic backdrop of the Gempei War - an epic clash between two rival samurai clans, the Genji and the Heike. We'll see how the Tale of the Heike was passed down over generations by traveling storytellers - and in a secluded temple cemetery, we'll accompany a brave musician who has an unearthly encounter with samurai spirits from a vanished age...

Places mentioned in this episode:

Kitano Tenmangu Treasure House, Kyoto - the shrine preserves an ancient sword believed to be the Genji heirloom 'higekiri' : https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220826/p2a/00m/0et/037000c

Akama Shrine, Shimonoseki - shrine dedicated to the boy-Emperor Antoku and the Heike who died at Dan-no-Ura; the setting for the tale of Hoichi the Earless:
https://en.japantravel.com/yamaguchi/akama-shrine/17401

Music and sound effects from Pond 5: www.pond5.com

The First Shogun podcast website: https://firstshogun.buzzsprout.com

Chapters

• 0:00 A Boy Alone
• 2:58 Yoritomo Captured
• 7:28 Origins of the Story
• 9:37 The Tale of Hoichi the Earless
• 16:17 The Iliad of Japan
• 19:35 Traces of the Gempei War
• 21:04 Preview of Future Episodes

Transcript

THE FIRST SHOGUN

 Ep. 1: Samurai Spirits

It is nighttime in the middle of winter of the year 1160, and a twelve-year-old boy is lost, alone, in the mountains of central Japan. 

He has become separated from his father and companions in a thickening blizzard, unable to keep up as enemies pursue them from the capital Heian. He has only a few rations left, wears tattered robes, and straw sandals. Under his arm, wrapped in a straw mat, he clings to his sword Higekiri –a precious heirloom of the Genji clan.

For days he wanders through the forest, fleeing east, hoping desperately to rejoin his companions. Eventually he sees a band of men approaching. 

But when they notice his sword, the men realize this is no ordinary boy. Instead of offering aid, they take him prisoner.

“Tie him up,” says the leader,. “We’ll take him back to Rokuhara – Lord Kiyomori can decide what to do with him.”

The boy implores the men to tell him what has happened to his family. 

It is then he learns that his father– the head of the Genji clan - has been betrayed and murdered by one of his own retainers. 

His elder brother has been executed, and his younger brothers – mere babes and toddlers – and their mother are missing, and believed dead. 

His Genji family has been torn apart and their enemy – the Heike clan led by Lord Taira no Kiyomori - has taken control of the capital, supported by the Emperor. 

As far as the boy knows, he is all that remains of the great Genji clan. 

And yet – astonishingly – this bedraggled boy will go on to live another three decades. He will single-handedly provide the spark that brings together the scattered remains of a once-mighty clan and will give them renewed hope. He will lead the Genji to victory in the greatest samurai civil war in Japan’s history. 

The boy’s name is Minamoto no Yoritomo, and he will go down in history… as the First Shogun.

At the Heike stronghold of Rokuhara, the prisoner Yoritomo is led into an assembly hall. Eventually a hush descends among the gathered nobles and samurai as Lord Taira no Kiyomori arrives – the man who has ordered the destruction of the Genji clan, and the death of the boy’s father. 

In front of all the leading Heike warriors, the boy is ordered to bow to his most hated enemy. As he lowers his head, he hears Lord Kiyomori’s voice for the first time.

“So…, this is the son of the great Genji Lord Yoshitomo, now bowing before me?”

From the corner of his eye Yoritomo sees one of the attendants rise to present Lord Kiyomori with a gift – a precious item that was among the boy’s few possessions. 

He hears a familiar sound as the sword is drawn from its scabbard. 

“And so this… is Higekiri! The sword of legends!”

For a moment Kiyomori pauses, admiring the craftsmanship. 

Then Yoritomo tenses as he feels the tip of the sword pointed just inches from his neck.

“So,” says Lord Kiyomori. “What shall I do with you?”

The boy forces himself not to look up, careful not to reveal the hatred in his eyes. As Kiyomori gloats over his captive, the boy makes an oath, appealing to the God of War Hachiman for aid: 

“Great Bodhisattva Hachiman is with me,” Yoritomo says to himself, “To achieve my goal, I need only stay alive.”

He now listens as Kiyomori consults with his advisors. It appears there is some disagreement among the samurai and an elderly woman. Finally the Heike Lord rises, saying he will consider carefully what to do with his captive. The boy is taken away. 

As he awaits Kiyomori’s decision, the boy thinks back to the tumultuous events of recent days. 

Just a few weeks ago his father was martialling the Genji troops at the great Taiken Gate of the Imperial Palace, as the Heike army approached. 

He can still hear his elder brother bellowing defiance as he led just seventeen Genji riders in a desperate charge against more than 300 Heike. 

He can still feel the thrill - the jubilation - as the Heike vanguard retreated – and then the hushed silence as the two sides finally faced each other across the Kamo river, his father’s Genji to the west and Lord Kiyomori’s Heike to the east. 

Everything lay in the balance. But the day would not belong to the Genji.

“If it weren’t for that miserable turncoat Yorimasa,” thinks the boy, “we would have ended that day as victors.”  

Fighting back tears Yoritomo recalls how the few Genji survivors escaped through the mountains to the East of the capital, across Mount Hiei. In the gathering storm, his father had handed him the family sword, Higekiri - for generations a symbol of the Genji clan - entrusting him with the family’s honor.

He would never see his father again.

For now, the boy’s situation appears hopeless: The Genji are all but destroyed. Exhausted, humiliated and apparently alone, he faces almost certain death, perhaps torture, or at best banishment to a far-flung part of the island.

But what Yoritomo cannot yet know is that, through cunning and tenacity, he will not only outlast the Heike leader that has captured him, he will live to oversee the annihilation of Lord Kiyomori’s entire clan. 

But he will achieve much more: By the age of 45, he will surpass the power of the Emperor himself. In 1192 he will establish Japan’s first samurai government and become the first military leader, or Shogun, to rule the nation. 

“Shogun”

When we hear the word, many of us probably think of James Clavell’s novel, or perhaps the 1980s TV series, or the more recent adaptation starring Hiroyuki Sanada. But Clavell’s “Shogun” story was based on what we can call the start of the third great Shogunate, or period of military rule – that of the Tokugawa clan, founded in the early 1600s by Tokugawa Ieyasu, who served as the basis for Clavell’s fictional shogun Lord Toranaga. 

Some three centuries earlier saw the start of the second great shogunate – that of the Ashikaga clan. But we need to go back even further, more than eight centuries, to the early 1200s, to witness the start of Japan’s first period of military rule – the Kamakura Shogunate – named after a town founded by the first of its Genji rulers: Minamoto no Yoritomo, or “Yoritomo of the Minamoto clan”  – Minamoto is another way to read the characters for Genji.

The story of how Yoritomo rose to such a great height is almost impossible to believe, and yet it is based on historical truth. There are contemporary sources that document events of the time, and a series of ‘war stories’ or gunki monogatari – The Tale of Hogen, The Tale of Heiji, and – most famous of all – The Tale of the Heike, or Heike Monogatari, an epic account of the 5-year war between the Heike and Genji that is often referred to as the Iliad of Japan.

My own fascination with the Tale of the Heike began when I was a teenager and I watched on late night British TV Masaki Kobayashi’s film Kwaidan, which is based on a book of Japanese ghost stories compiled in the early 1900s by the writer Lafcadio Hearn. 

I still remember the thrill of watching the tale of Hoichi the Earless, a blind musician who had a ghostly encounter with long-lost warriors of the Heike clan.

This is how the tale goes…

In the town of Amagaseki, there once lived a blind musician named Hoichi, who was skilled at playing the biwa lute while singing tales of great deeds from the past. The young man’s most popular tale was how the Genji clan defeated the Heike long ago. Hoichi’s storytelling skill was so great that a priest invited him to stay at the Amidaiji temple where he would perform on occasion for the priest and his guests. 

One night, while the priest was away delivering a service, Hoichi sat alone at the temple. 

As it was a hot evening, he sat outside on a veranda and practiced his biwa songs. The evening was quiet until suddenly he heard a voice:

“Hoichi!”

Hoichi called out that he was blind and could not see who was approaching. 

“Hoichi,” the voice said, “come with me. My master requires that you perform for him this evening”

In awe at the man’s commanding voice, Hoichi took his hand and was led through the garden behind the temple. Eventually a woman’s hand escorted him to an open area where he could sense many men and women were awaiting him. 

“Perform for us the Tale of the Heike,” the woman commanded.

“The tale is long,” Hoichi replied. “Which part do you most desire?”

“Sing to us of the battle of Dan-no-Ura.”

And so Hoichi  began to deliver the greatest performance of his life. 

He sang of how the Heike gathered their boats to protect the boy-Emperor Antoku and then prepared to withstand the Genji onslaught. 

He sang of how the Genji General Yoshitsune - younger brother of Yoritomo - leapt from ship to ship, cutting down Heike warriors in his path. 

He recounted how the Heike, realizing they were defeated, either fought to the death or took their own lives. 

And at the story’s climax, he told of how the Lady Nii-no-ama clasped the imperial sword at her side, gathered the young Emperor in her arms, and whispered to him:

“Down there, far beneath the waves, another capital awaits us." 

With that, she plunged with the Emperor into the depths of the sea.

As he ended his performance, Hoichi could hear muffled tears around him.

“Your skill is without equal,” the woman told him. “My lord commands that you come again for the next six nights. Do not tell anyone of what you have performed tonight.” 

The following evening, the same warrior called for him, and again Hoichi gave the same performance. When he returned to the temple, the priest was suspicious. And so he asked two of his servants to keep watch on Hoichi.

The next night, the servants followed Hoichi. For a while they lost track of him, until they heard a voice coming from the cemetery at the back of the temple. There they found him performing his biwa recitation, sitting alone in the graveyard before the memorial tomb of the long-dead Emperor Antoku.

“Hoichi, what are you doing? Are you bewitched?” they cried. 

Despite his protests, they managed to escort Hoichi back to the temple, where he explained to the priest what had happened on the previous nights.

“Ah, this is very grave,” said the priest. “These are surely spirits of the Heike dead, and once they have no use of you, they will surely kill you.”

The priest and his servants decided on a plan: Over all of Hoichi’s body and face they painted holy writing – that way, they said, he would remain invisible to the spirits who call for him. 

“On no account must you make any sound, Hoichi,” the priest warned. “Whatever happens, remain totally silent.”

That night, Hoichi sat outside again as he waited for his summons, but this time he made no sound. 

Eventually he heard footsteps approaching him on the veranda.

“Hoichi”

He made no reply.

“HOICHI!”

Still he remained silent.

“Mm, this is very strange,” he heard the warrior say. “I can see his biwa on the floor, but no sign of the man …. I just see his two ears in the air. Well, I don’t understand this, but I had better return with something – that’s all I can do.”

Suddenly, Hoichi felt the sides of his head gripped by two ice-cold fists - and, in an instant, his ears were torn from his head.

Despite the pain, Hoichi uttered no sound. He heard the warrior retreat as blood seeped down his body.

Some time later, the priest found Hoichi and was overcome with grief and remorse. 

“My poor Hoichi,” he cried, “What have we done? The holy texts were written all over your body,… except your ears.”

Over time the priest nursed him back to health, and Hoichi regained his skills at performing. The Heike spirits no longer troubled the temple. But from that day on, the brave musician was known by a new name: ‘Hoichi the Earless.’

Hoichi may not have been a real person, but traveling bards like him did exist – and it is through their retelling that the Tale of the Heike was passed down over generations. Just as with Homer’s Iliad, the story was conveyed orally by wandering performers until it was written down many years later. 

Although often compared with The Iliad, a closer analogy may be what happened centuries later in England during the War of the Roses, the inspiration for many of Shakespeare’s historical plays. In both cases, the conflict centres on two great families: the Heike and the Genji being Japan’s equivalent of medieval England’s Yorks and the Lancasters, or-  in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones - the Starks and the Lannisters. 

And just like the real War of the Roses - or the fictional Game of Thrones – the story of the Genji and Heike is essentially about the pursuit of power: Who ultimately controls the throne? 

To achieve that end there are battles, conspiracies, betrayals, secret attacks, dramatic duels. And because this is an era before firearms, battles are decided through archery, swordsmanship, hand to hand combat. And just as in real life, we cannot always predict who will survive – heroic warriors and powerful leaders get cut down in their prime, sometimes in battle, sometimes just from illness or bad luck.

In some of the more fanciful parts, the Tale of the Heike reads more like a fantasy tale like Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. The imperial family possesses three ancient treasures believed to have supernatural power; there are tales of mythical flying creatures, vengeful spirits who can conjure up storms, goblins who join battle and train samurai in the art of war. There is even a reference to a time in an even more distant past when a huge spider threatens the ancient capital and is defeated by a brave Genji warrior.

The tale stretches the length of Japan and has a cast of thousands, many of whom we know to be true, others perhaps more legendary than real. But it is not a simple story of good and evil. All the characters are flawed and think what they are doing is right – and that’s what makes it so fascinating. It is a tale of human emotions - courage, jealousy, revenge, love, arrogance, honour. There are many realistic moments, too – a mother experiencing the difficulties of childbirth, a husband bidding farewell to a family he may never see again, a leader so fearful of war he falls off his horse before he can even leave his camp. 

This is also a time when many warriors are also philosophers or poets. Before rushing into battle, a samurai might pause to write a haiku poem on the transient beauty of life. It’s an age of chivalry that coincides with the romantic age of medieval knights in Europe. But unlike in Europe this was not a religious war - although religion played an important part in people’s lives. Instead, it was a war built on family feuds, honor, the pursuit of power.

Despite comparisons to Homer or Shakespeare or the Crusades, it is at heart a very Japanese story, a tale has impacted the nation’s consciousness more than any other in its history. Its legacy can still be seen in towns and villages across Japan, and in particular the ancient capital Kyoto – formerly known as Heian – where the story is celebrated in temple celebrations and festivals. A shrine in Kyoto even keeps what is said to be the fabled Genji sword higekiri. 

Travel to the very southern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, and gaze across the narrow straits at Shimonoseki, and it is still possible to imagine the great sea-battle of Dan-no Ura, where the Genji-Heike clash – or Gempei War - was decided. Close by is Akama Shrine, dedicated to the drowned boy-Emperor Antoku – where you can still see the cemetery where Hoichi the Earless is said to have met spirits of the Heike. 

On a beach facing the battle site is a statue of Yoshitsune, who was just a few months old when his elder brother Yoritomo had been captured by the Heike Lord Kiyomori. Yoshitsune would become perhaps the most famous general in Japan’s history – a wayward, brilliant, and seemingly invincible warrior, like Achilles in Homer’s Iliad – the man who broke the Heike fleet at Dan-no-Ura and would become his brother Yoritomo’s greatest rival. 

So in this series of podcasts, we’ll cover all of this: We’ll trace Yoritomo’s dramatic rise to power. We’ll see how Yoritomo’s father Yoshitomo sacrificed everything – and lost his life - to maintain the Genji family’s honor and the pride of the samurai. We’ll see how the young Yoritomo survived exile, raised a rebellion, and managed to turn the tide against the Heike. We’ll follow his love of Hojo Masako – a woman who would later establish her own ruling dynasty. And – just like a medieval version of The Godfather - we’ll see how the all-powerful Yoritomo eventually turned against his own family, betrayed his brother … and ultimately paid the price.

So, how did that 12-year-old boy who had been forced to cower before his enemy eventually rise to become the most powerful military ruler Japan had ever seen?

Join me as we explore the rise of the Genji and discover how Minamoto no Yoritomo climbed a slippery slope in medieval Japan to become . . .  the First Shogun.