Profiles in Virtue - Minamoto no Yoshitsune

As with most of the figures I have discussed so far in this series of posts, it is very difficult to assemble an accurate picture of Minamoto no Yoshitsune; one might reasonably describe him as in the same company as Arthur and Roland in terms of historicity.  There's something clearly there, but exactly what is subject to vigorous debate.  What we know is that the man existed, that he was an influential figure in his time, and that his memory was strong enough to pull even the most extravagant tales to attach themselves to him - raised by goblins, capable of impossible feats of grace and swordsmanship, loyal to his brother beyond all reason.

Minamoto no Yoshitsune.  Not shown: Bishounen.

Let us first set the man in his place.  In the middle of the twelfth century, Japan was not so much a country as a loose grouping of families bound together by a reverence for the imperial line.  Simplifying things tremendously, a shift between the old court aristocracy and the imperial family on one side, and the new military aristocracy typified by the Minamoto and Taira families on the other, redefined Japanese politics between 1160 and 1190, the years of Yoshitsune's life.  Before, power was defined by which court faction controlled the emperor, or could put its emperor on the throne, and the military class served (samurai, after all, comes from saburau, "to attend"); after, that power was filtered through the lens of the military class.  The civil wars which roiled Japan in the 1150s, and again in the 1180s, meant that the court aristocracy went into eclipse because they simply lacked the resources to fight civil wars and had to appeal to the military to do their work for them, and the military class, whose leaders were themselves imperial descendants, gained a taste for it.

This came to a head in 1180, when Prince Mochihito, dissatisfied with the Taira clan's domination of Japan, called for a general rising by the Minamoto.  The ensuing conflict would become known as the Genpei War, after the on'myoji pronunciation of 源平, the characters for the Minamoto and the Taira. There were several Minamoto branches, but the main branch was led by the son of the last undisputed clan leader, Minamoto no Yoritomo, who was a politician par excellence and had established a power base in the fertile Kanto plain.  War was at hand, it was time for men to make their names, and this was the Minamoto's main chance to throw down the Taira.  Where else, but to his brother the clan head, would young Minamoto no Yoshitsune turn?

We know precious little of Yoshitsune's upbringing; he was born posthumously, after his father's death in a failed coup in 1159.  Like all the young Minamoto of his generation, he was raised by foster-parents, in his case the Northern Fujiwara.  He was apparently a talented swordsman and a keen student of the art of war in both conventional and unconventional forms, and when given the choice of siding with any of the Minamoto family's branches, he did what the Confucian ideal dictated, and served his older half-brother.

The war that followed Mochihito's call to arms was only five years long, but was unparalleled in its scope in Japan, as it embroiled the entire country rather than merely the region around the capital.  It was also a mix of conventional and unconventional warfare, and despite what Yoritomo's propaganda would have us believe, Yoritomo himself was not the one who chased the Taira (and the imperial family) out of Kyoto.  That was his cousin, Yoshinaka, who chased them out in 1183; Yoritomo and his brothers Yoshitsune and Noriyori, saw this as their chance to sweep in and claim the prize, while simultaneously weakening the powerful Yoshinaka.

One of the ways that we know that Yoshitsune was a master of unconventional warfare - one of the potential historical role models for ninja, in fact - is that during the closing years of the Genpei War, Yoshitsune, again and again, led small bands of warriors through land that the Taira considered impassable, and attacked in places that he simply should not have been.  At Ichi-no-Tani, for instance, the Taira defended a fortified position with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other, and the main Minamoto force had to slog its way up the beach.  Yoshitsune, meanwhile, took a small force of cavalry and climbed above the Taira to launch one of the most famous cavalry charges in Japanese history.  Even the final battle of Dan-no-Ura was decided on Yoshitsune's ability to cause one of the final surviving Taira leaders to defect mid-battle.

After the Genpei War came to a close, though, Minamoto no Yoritomo, always on the lookout for threats to his power, was jealous of his brother's popularity and battlefield success.  When the cloistered emperor Go-Shirakawa awarded Yoshitsune honorary titles and revenues, Yoritomo had them cancelled, and Yoshitsune applied for, and received, formal permission from the emperor to ally with another disaffected Minamoto, Minamoto no Yukiie, against Yoritomo.  This conspiracy fell apart, Yoshitsune fled while protesting his innocence, and he returned to the family with whom he had fostered in his youth.  There is some evidence that this family, the Fujiwara, appointed him as a commander to resist Yoritomo, but that this came to nought.  Five years later, in 1189, with the government well in hand, Yoritomo came for his wayward brother, and Yoshitsune was trapped with a handful of followers, who fought a valiant last stand while he took his own life.  He was thirty, and his career had spanned a brief ten years.

These are the documentable historical facts, for which there is archaeological and literary evidence: Yoshitsune was an effective commander fond of fast-moving strikes where his opponents did not expect him.  Even when he adhered to the military conventions of the time, such as combat by champion, he did so as a way of acquiring an advantage.  In a period of under-handed political dealings, what we know of his involved betraying his own brother.  Why, then, would this man become a byword in Japan for tragic loyalty?

The answer is the literary Yoshitsune.  The various epic tales of the Genpei War, and of Yoshitsune himself, cast this clever, unpredictable war leader as a paragon of the warrior class.  He was loyal to a father he had never met, he chose to fight beside a brother he had never known.  He was raised by mountain goblins.  He was raised by ascetic students of the art of war and studied ancient Chinese texts on revolution, seducing his keepers' daughters to steal the precious texts.  He bested feared bandits and indestructible warrior monks when he was only fifteen.  He was accompanied everywhere by a fearsome, ascetic giant (Saitou Musashibou Benkei), who defended him to the death and even in death did not fall.  Legends just attached themselves to Yoshitsune, because he was brilliant, charismatic, and died young, while Yoritomo, who outlived him by a decade, was subtle, conspiratorial, paranoid, and died after killing all of his rivals, even those rivals (such as Yoshitsune) that he had made himself.

What are the bases for this loyalty? Why is his conspiracy with Yukiie overlooked? The answer is that, just as with Liu Bei, just as with William Marshal, loyalty was not absolute, but conditional on not breaching the prevailing social contract, and mixed with a healthy dose of self-interest.  In Yoshitsune's case he inspired ferocious loyalty from his peers and subordinates - Benkei, for instance, refused to fall even after death, so that Yoshitsune would die in peace.  His brother Noriyori trusted him at Ichi-no-Tani and several other battles, and Yoshitsune made a point of living up to that trust.  He did follow the Confucian ideal of serving his older brother, and he followed both Confucian and Shinto ideals by avenging his father at the first opportunity.  Even in his conspiracy against his brother, he did what he was supposed to do - he got the emperor's approval to try to remove Yoritomo.

In other words, there was more than enough of a skeleton to hang this image of the perfect warrior on Yoshitsune.  In most respects, just as with Liu Bei and William Marshal, he was a product of his time.  His father won one coup and lost another; his brother was constantly watching out for conspiracies; the dynasty they led foundered into assassination and puppet governments within twenty years.  It would be more suspicious if we had no record of Yoshitsune participating in court intrigue; what is instead surprising is that we have a record of him being bad at something - specifically, intrigue in court, rather than on the battlefield.  That he was bad at it is sustained by the fact that he asked for permission to conspire, and by the number of known plots against Yoritomo, plots that multiplied after Yoritomo hounded Yoshitsune to death.

Yoshitsune's behavior - loyalty until pushed beyond his limits - would doubtless have been on the minds of men like Akechi Mitsuhide, who turned on his own lord, Oda Nobunaga.  So would Yoshitsune's unpredictability on the battlefield, as at Sekigahara, when Tokugawa Ieyasu convinced a large portion of the enemy army to turn against their own lord.  So would his legendary sword prowess, as generations of swordsmen could visit his shrine at Shirahata, on the road between Edo (modern Tokyo) and Kyoto.

I have tried to contrast historic examples and modern to show part of why the past is a different country, and they do things differently there.  In Yoshitsune's case, though, I don't think that is necessary: he is best understood as a man who was less a creature of pure virtue, and brought closer to us, than made more exotic.  I have also tried to emphasize what choices impacted his virtue, and that, at least, I shall do here as well.  Yoshitsune had his pick of Minamoto factions that he could have chosen, or, like his Fujiwara foster family, he could have sat out the Genpei War.  Instead, he made the best choice, according to the lights of his society: he chose to offer his services to his brother, and executed that service faithfully.  Given how many other warriors' service wavered long before his, he served right up to his limits.  Even when his service broke down, he chose to fall back on foster-family connections. Even when he himself was obviously a falling star and could provide no patronage, he inspired fierce loyalty in those around him.  These choices - both Yoshitsune's, and the choices of those he kept with him - were why historical Yoshitsune, a clever commander, became literary Yoshitsune, an unattainable hero.