FIELD REPORTS
The Morning at Koromogawa: Why Was Yoshitsune Killed by His Brother Yoritomo?
In 1185, Yoshitsune destroyed the Taira at Dannoura; four years later, he was taking his own life at an Ōshū palace. What happened in those four years from Dannoura to Koromogawa? The political structure of the brothers' conflict, and Yoshitsune's end, traced.
On the thirtieth of the leap fourth month of 1189, at the Koromogawa Palace in Ōshū Hiraizumi.
Minamoto no Yoshitsune, thirty-one, killed his lawful wife Satō Gozen and their four-year-old daughter with his own hand, and — after opening a book to read — took his own life.
So the Azuma Kagami, compiled by the Kamakura shogunate, records it briefly. Why did the man who a few years before had been the victor of the most famous war in Japan die here?
After Dannoura, the Rank from Go-Shirakawa
In April 1185, Yoshitsune destroyed the Taira at Dannoura. He was twenty-seven. On his triumphant return to Kyoto, the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa conferred on Yoshitsune the ranks of Lesser Captain of the Imperial Police and Governor of Iyo.
Yoshitsune accepted them — without going through the permission of his brother Yoritomo.
The Structure of Yoritomo's Rage
This was not a mere brotherly quarrel. At the core of the warrior government Yoritomo was building in Kamakura was Yoritomo's monopoly on the conferral of court rank on his retainers.
To leave in place a structure in which the Kyoto court directly appointed individual warriors would collapse the very ruling principle of the Kamakura regime.
Yoshitsune's acceptance of rank appeared to Yoritomo as a fundamental violation of the Kamakura regime's ruling structure.
Pursuit, and On to Koromogawa
In November 1185, Yoritomo ordered Yoshitsune pursued. Yoshitsune fled the capital and, disguised as a mountain ascetic, made his way through the northern land route and once again sought refuge at Ōshū Hiraizumi, where he had spent his youth.
His protector was Fujiwara no Hidehira — the same man. But when Hidehira died in 1187, his successor Yasuhira yielded to Yoritomo's pressure.
In the leap fourth month of 1189, Yasuhira attacked the Koromogawa Palace.
Yoshitsune's head was delivered to Yoritomo in Kamakura. Hōgan-biiki — the sympathy that later generations of Japanese have poured out for Yoshitsune arises from the asymmetric outcome for the brothers.
From the victory at Dannoura to the morning at Koromogawa — four years.
"Yoshitsune takes his own life at Koromogawa Palace. Aged thirty-one."
PRIMARY SOURCES & ARCHIVES
- PRIMARY
Azuma Kagami
Compiled by the Kamakura shogunate
Records the pursuit of Yoshitsune and his suicide at Koromogawa Palace from the perspective of the Kamakura regime
- SCHOLARSHIP
Minamoto no Yoshitsune
Motoki Yasuo / Yoshikawa Kōbunkan (Jinbutsu Sōsho)
Institutional-history examination of the structure of the conflict with Yoritomo
- ARCHIVE
Takadachi Gikei-dō
Hiraizumi Town, Iwate Prefecture
The site of Yoshitsune's end at the Koromogawa Palace; a memorial hall
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