Analysis of the Gempei War Essay -- Gempei War Japanese History Essays

Analysis of the Gempei War In May 1180 Prince Mochihito, the son of Retired emperor Go-Shirakawa, issued a statement urging the Minamoto to rise against the Taira. While Mochihito would be killed in June and Minamoto Yorimasa crushed at the Battle of the Uji, a fire had been set. In September Minamoto Yoritomo, who had recieved Mochihito's call from Miyoshi Yasukiyo, set about raising an army in the Province of Izu, where he had been in exile. There was an irony in the preceeding events, as Taira Kiyomori had himself sown the seeds of the war, so the poetic tale goes. His great error, we are told, had been to spare the sons of Minamoto Yoshitomo in the wake of the Heiji disturbance, allowing these three boys - Yoritomo, Noriyori, and Yoshitsune - to mature and form the leadership of a new and dangerous threat. In fact, Yoritomo's own call to arms in the east was recieved cautiously at best. He did manage to kill the local Taira governor, but was defeated at the Battle of Ishibashiyama by Oba Kagechika. In the wake of this hard setback, however, Yoritomo did recieve the valuable additon of Kajiwara Kagetoki to his staff. Elsewhere in the Kanto, local families began to respond to Yoritomo in varying degrees and in Shimosa and elsewhere set about eliminating Kyoto-appointed officals. This often provoked inter-province and occasionally inter-clan civil war, a common and oft-overlooked element of the Gempei War. By the Spring of the following year, Yoritomo could count on at least the tacit support of most of the notable families in the Kanto, although the Chubu, though by now nominally Minamoto dominated, existed beyond his immediate control. Yoritomo's Kanto domain is occasionally referred to as the TÃ ´gaku, and rather then surge forward against the Taira, he contented himself for the time being with consolidating his hold locally. The Taira response to the violence was mixed and uncertain. Kiyomori dispatched his grandson Koremori with an army eastward, but he turned back at the Fuji River in Suruga Province. Closer to home, Taira Tomomori - who would prove the most able of the Taira - had defeated the combined forces of old Minamoto Yorimasa and the warrior monks of the Miidera at the Uji River in late June. To punish the monks for their involvement thus far in the fledgling conflict, Kiyomori ordered the Miidera burned and, a few months later, a nu... ...ted to a degree for the benefit of the audience. In a sense, the specifics of the Gempei War - the battles, armies, and tactics - were secondary to the political arena. The only truly decisive battle, from a 'war-winning' standpoint, was Kurikawa. The famous fights at Ichi no Tani, Yashima, and Dan no Ura were 'nails in the coffin', conducted while Yoritomo himself was busy consolidating his hold over Minamoto occupied Japan. One might even argue daringly that Dan no Ura, which looms so large in Japanese history, was essentially a 'mopping up' operation given legendary and almost Homeric (for lack of a better word) dimensions by the Heike Monogatari's prose. Any one of the three battles mentioned probably paled in significance to the 1184 Court-Minamoto agreement that, if nothing else, paved the way for the Kamakura Bakufu. In the final analysis, many of our questions about the Gempei War - and the years preceding it - will never be conclusively answered due to a simple lack of full historical documentation. At the same time, the 20th Century saw a long-overdue reevaluation of the events leading up to the foundation of the Kamakura Bakufu. Happily, this is an ongoing endeavor.