Kurikara Pass: Why Did Taira no Koremori Collapse in May 1183?

On the night of the eleventh day of the fifth month of 1183, at Kurikara Pass on the border of Etchū and Kaga （the modern border of Oyabe City in Toyama Prefecture and Kahoku District in Ishikawa Prefecture）.

The Taira army of seventy thousand under Taira no Koremori had placed its headquarters on the southern slope of the pass and slept in exhaustion.

That Yoshinaka's army was circling from the north — no one had yet noticed.

It was in the fourth month of the same year that Taira no Koremori （son of Shigemori, grandson of Kiyomori） went northward with a great army of seventy thousand.

To crush Yoshinaka and destroy one corner of the rebellion before Yoritomo of the east could move — such was the Taira intent after Kiyomori's death.

But the northern-land terrain was sheer, unsuited to the advance of a great army.

Yoshinaka's army mounted a provocation from the front with a small force, pinning the Taira army in place at the pass, while it secretly detoured the main force around from the north.

In deep night, when the war-cries and whistling arrows rose from four directions, the Taira army was already surrounded.

On the steep slope of the pass, the great army of seventy thousand could not mount organized counterattack; it broke.

The Tale of the Heike depicts this battle with the 'Fire Ox' stratagem — Yoshinaka releasing 'oxen with torches lashed to their horns' into the Taira camp.

It is a famous scene in Japanese war literature, but the contemporary Azuma Kagami carries no specific description of fire oxen.

The dramatic invention of the Tale of the Heike most likely traveled on its own.

That the night attack and the use of terrain were the causes of victory, however, is corroborated in multiple sources.

With the defeat at Kurikara Pass, the Taira northern army was substantially annihilated.

Two months later, in the seventh month of 1183, Yoshinaka entered Kyoto. The Taira glory Kiyomori had built collapsed two and a half years after his death.