From the Mountains of Kiso: Whose Child Did Yoshinaka Grow Up As?

In 1155, at Ōkura-yakata in Musashi Province （the modern Ranzan Town, Saitama Prefecture）, Minamoto no Yoshikata was killed.

The killer was his nephew Minamoto no Yoshihira （Yoritomo's elder brother）. The two-year-old orphan Komaōmaru was hidden by his wet-nurse's husband Nakahara Kaneto and taken to Kiso Valley in Shinano Province （the modern Kiso Town, Nagano Prefecture）.

From then on, he was raised as 'Kiso Yoshinaka.

Kiso lies in the southwest of Shinano, a deep mountain valley, a place isolated from the center even for the time.

The Nakahara were a leading local family, and Yoshinaka was raised almost as a brother to Kaneto's own children （Higuchi Kanemitsu, Imai Kanehira, and Tomoe Gozen — this site's id 28）.

These milk-brothers formed the core of the later Yoshinaka army.

In 1180, Prince Mochihito's call to arms reached Kiso as well. In the same summer that Yoritomo raised troops in Izu, Yoshinaka raised troops in Shinano.

He was twenty-six. Initial strength is said to have been a few hundred, but it swelled rapidly as he gathered the local warrior bodies.

In 1181, breaking Jō Sukemoto, protector of Echigo, he advanced into the northern land.

Across 1182 and 1183, Yoshinaka's army subjugated Echizen and Kaga and cornered the Taira northern army.

In only three years from Prince Mochihito's call, Yoshinaka had become one of the principal forces of the pursuit of the Taira.

Yoritomo was consolidating his ground in the east, and from the vantage of the capital, the one who appeared first as the field force pursuing the Taira was Yoshinaka.

In the fifth month of 1183, the two armies clashed at Kurikara Pass on the border of Etchū and Kaga.