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Chapter 1

SWORDS AND HEROES

The most enduring traditional image of the samurai is that of the lone wanderer, owing allegiance to none but himself, and relying for his continued survival on his skills with the sword. This is a powerful picture, and one that has tended to dominate the perception of the archetypal Japanese warrior. However, as the following pages will show, this image owes as much to the peaceful years of the Tokugawa period (1603 – 1867) as it does to the preceding years of war. It is also a far cry from the reality of the earliest samurai warriors, who were aristocratic mounted archers rather than swordsmen. These men relied far less on the sword than on the bow. Nor did they hold allegiance only to themselves. Instead, they were part of a vast web of dependent feudal links, with their ultimate loyalty being to the lords who led them into battle. Their fierce sense of pride and personal honor, and their individual prowess at the martial arts, were the only features they had in common with their later popular image. Yet their exploits with horse, bow, and sword set the standard by which future generations of samurai would be judged.

The Sword and the Kami

The first use of the word “samurai” dates back to the eighth century ad, but this was preceded by many centuries of myth, legend, and history. Japan’s long military tradition, in fact, goes back over two millennia, and at the very beginning of time—according to the creation myths that explain the origins of the Japanese islands—we find the image of a weapon. This is the “Jewel-spear of Heaven” that Izanagi, the father of the kami (deities), plunges into the ocean, and from whose point drips water that coalesces into the land of Japan.¹ Later in the same work (the Kojiki, c. ad 712) we see a reference to the most enduring Japanese martial image of all, when Izanagi uses a sword to kill the fire god, whose birth has led to the death of his wife, Izanami.

Swords also played a part in the stories about the two surviving children of Izanagi: Susano-M, the thunder god, and Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun. The Kojiki tells us how Susano-ō destroyed a monstrous serpent that was terrorizing the people. He began by getting it drunk on sake (rice wine) and then hewed off its heads and tail. But when he reached the tail, his blade struck something it could not penetrate, and Susano-ō discovered a sword hidden therein. As it was a very fine sword, he presented it to his sister, Amaterasu, and because the serpent’s tail had been covered in black clouds, the sword was named Ame no murakomo no tsurugi, the Cloud Cluster Sword.² Amaterasu in turn gave the sword to her grandson, Ninigi, who was to descend from heaven and rule the earth. Ninigi eventually passed it on to his grandson Jimmu, identified as the first tennō (emperor) of Japan, whose traditional dates are 660–585 bc. Jimmu Tennō kept this sword as one of the “crown jewels” of the Japanese emperors.

Taira Shigehira, the classic samurai mounted archer.

The legendary Prince Yamato is the first of a long line of individual samurai swordsmen who meet a tragic death. In reality, Yamato is probably a composite character (Yamato is an early name for Japan), but the tales of his exploits give a fascinating insight into the attitudes of these early times.

Disguised as a woman, with the Cloud Cluster Sword concealed beneath his robes, Prince Yamato carried out an assassination. He joined in with the merrymaking at the rebel leader's banquet, and then at the right moment pounced on his victim.

Historical figures blend with the characters of mythology in the other early chronicle, the Nihon Shōki, which gives us many details about the early emperors, including several individuals renowned for their prowess at the martial arts. But the character who can be regarded as the first of the long line of brave individual swordsmen is Prince Yamato. Yamatotakeru-no mikoto, to give him his full title, is probably a composite character (Yamato is an ancient name for the Japanese nation), because his heavenly exploits make a statement about the very earthly struggles that were then going on in Japan. The descendants of the “sun line” of emperors by no means ruled unopposed, and had to strive to assert the authority of their uji (clan) against challengers.

Prince Yamato was the third son of Emperor Keikō, and began his career inauspiciously when he murdered his elder brother. As a punishment, he was dispatched on a series of missions to quell rebels to the throne, thus bringing into the story some elements of the “wandering swordsman” image. Like the later stereotypes, Prince Yamato was forced to journey to a distant land where he could put his warrior skills to positive use by opposing the enemies to the imperial line. It is, however, fascinating to note that Yamato’s first victory against a rebel chieftain was accomplished, not solely by the honorable use of a sword, but by employing skills that in later years would be considered techniques of nin-jutsu: the arts of stealth and invisibility. Yamato’s trick consisted of disguising himself as a woman, with the Cloud Cluster Sword concealed beneath his robes. He joined in with the merrymaking at the rebel leader’s banquet, and then at the right moment pounced on his victim.³ Not long afterwards, another sword appears in a story, but once more it is involved in a trick. Prince Yamato fashioned an imitation sword out of wood, challenged his victim to a duel, and sportingly suggested that they should exchange swords for the fight. The outcome may be guessed at.⁴

So far, the legend of Prince Yamato also conforms to another alternative samurai stereotype: that of the warrior as a deceitful trickster—the genesis of the image of the ninja. However, the conclusion of the Yamato story places the hero in a much more acceptable light. Before setting off on his final campaign, Prince Yamato called in at the Great Shrine of Ise, where he was presented with the sword called Ame no murakumo: the Cloud Cluster Sword, which Susano-ō had wrested from the tail of the serpent. Armed with this miraculous weapon, the hero set about defeating the rebels.⁵ The Cloud Cluster Sword also proved useful in an unconventional way when Prince Yamato was invited to join in a stag hunt near Mount Fuji, and realized very quickly that he was to be the quarry. The hunters set fire to the long, dry grass, with the aim of either burning Yamato to death or driving him in confusion toward their ambush. The prince took the sword and cut his way through the burning grass to freedom, so that the Cloud Cluster Sword became known as Kusanagi, the “Grass-Mowing Sword.” Here again is a powerful samurai image: that of the warrior slashing wildly about him with his sword. But a stranger enemy was lying in wait, in the shape of a huge serpent, which stung Yamato in the heel. This brought on a fever from which the prince died. The Yamato legend concludes with his death from the fever, after which he was transformed into a white bird.

It is interesting to follow the Yamato legend just a little further, because the sword Kusanagi was already revered as the sacred sword of Japan, and with a sacred mirror and a set of jewels was one of the three items of the imperial regalia. After Prince Yamato’s adventures had finished, the Grass-Mowing Sword was placed in the Atsuta Shrine near modern Nagoya. In the appendix to the thirteenth-century epic the Heike Monogatari, known as The Book of Swords, the anonymous author recounts another legend associated with the sacred sword. It concerns an attempt to steal the sword, and brings in a further element of martial accomplishment, namely unarmed combat.

The thief was a Chinese priest called Dogyō, who came to worship at the Atsuta Shrine. He stayed for seven days, at the end of which he stole the sword, wrapping it in the folds of his kesa, the priest’s wide, scarflike garment. But the Grass-Mowing Sword had a will of its own; it cut its way through the kesa and flew back to the shrine. Once more the priest took it, and wrapped it more securely, but again the sword made its escape. On his third attempt, Dogyō managed to wrap the sword in nine folds of cloth, which was apparently sufficient to prevent it from cutting its way through, and he got a considerable distance away from the shrine. At this point, the enraged spirit of Prince Yamato enters the story. He sent a fellow kami, Sumiyoshi Daimyōjin, to fight Dogyō for the sword. An interesting point about their subsequent combat is that the deity achieved victory by kicking the thief to death, an early example of atemi, the decisive striking techniques with fist or foot that have always been part of unarmed combat in Japan.⁶

The Rise of the Samurai

For Prince Yamato, or for the actual warriors whose exploits provide the basis for the Yamato legend, the word “samurai,” which is often used to describe a Japanese fighting man at any period, did not in fact exist. Samurai means “one who serves,” and although it first referred to domestic servants, the word soon implied military service, provided for a powerful overlord or even the emperor of Japan. The very appearance of the word indicates the enormous change in the military and political life of Japan that had taken place since the days of the early emperors.

By the seventh century ad, the imperial system had evolved from a line of warrior chieftains, for whom martial prowess was a necessary fact of life, to a ruling house whose hegemony was largely accepted. The imperial lineage claimed to wield divine authority, through the emperor’s descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu. At this time the greatest threat to the existence of the imperial line, and indeed of Japan itself, was perceived as being invasion from China. There was also the danger of the emishi, the tribes who lived in the north and east of Japan and were the last to accept the dominance of the Yamato line. To counter these threats, a conscript system was created. Theoretically, all adult males who were fit for military duty were liable for enlistment as heishi (soldiers). The resulting army, which spent much of its time on guard duty in remote areas of Japan, was heavily infantry-based, but backed up by mounted troops supplied by the wealthier landowners. These men were descended from the old provincial nobility, some of whom had once opposed the rise of the Yamato state. The creation of the conscript system shows both the resources possessed by the emperors and the authority they now wielded.

Military service was unpopular, but the arrangement sufficed for several decades until the threat from China began to fade during the eighth century. Security policies now had to concentrate on more mundane issues such as the capture of criminals and the suppression of bandits. The lengthy process of raising a conscript army was too cumbersome for dealing with such eventualities. What was needed was a rapid response force, primarily mounted, who could respond quickly when needed.

The gap was filled by hiring the forces of the old nobility, and this proved so successful that the use of conscripted troops rapidly diminished, and then was completely abandoned in ad 792.⁷ The noble contribution had always been an elite force, the officer class in the conscript armies, largely privately funded and privately trained. The men who served in these elite forces were the first samurai, but it is important to realize that these samurai were still firmly under the control of the emperor, just as the conscripted peasants had been. The first samurai, who were virtually imperial mercenaries, may have constituted private armies, but they did not conduct private warfare.⁸

However, several factors would make their mark over the next three centuries to produce the spectacle of samurai fighting samurai in wars of their own, or in wars carried out only nominally in the name of the emperor. First, there was a succession of younger imperial princes leaving the capital and heading off for the “new frontiers” of Japan to serve their family’s name and open up new territories. This may have widened the emperor’s authority, but it also had the potential to weaken it by dispersal. Second, there was the domination of the imperial family by the Fujiwara clan, who supplied a seemingly endless line of imperial consorts, causing great jealousy among other powerful families, who felt squeezed out. Two in particular greatly resented the Fujiwara domination, the clans of Taira and Minamoto. Both these families had imperial blood in their veins, through intermarriage with some of the above-mentioned distant princes, and both had built up spheres of influence far from the capital. The Taira were based in the west, on the shores of the Inland Sea, and the Minamoto to the east and north.

Prince Genji dressed in the fashion of the Heian period and carrying a bow.

The emperors had the occasional rebels against the throne to deal with, and the frontiers of the civilized imperial state were constantly being pushed out. Both these tasks were performed eagerly by the samurai of the Taira and Minamoto, who grew rich on rewards for this service. They grew closer to the imperial court until, by a process of imperial matchmaking, Taira Kiyomori (1118–1181) held great influence at court by virtue of being the emperor’s grandfather. So the center held, and the “sun line” survived, as it has to this day, as the oldest established ruling house in the world. In fact, it is somewhat surprising that the samurai clans did not assert themselves politically earlier than they did, but the bonds of imperial loyalty and the generosity of the rewards that the emperor bestowed were both considerable.⁹

The maku (curtains) from which the term bakufu derives.

Taira Shigehira, the classic samurai mounted archer.

But there was one other factor: the tendency that developed during the tenth century ad for an emperor to abdicate while still young and active, in favor of a child relative, thus freeing himself from the huge religious and ritual responsibility of kingship. The child emperor thus created was still honored, but was also extremely vulnerable to manipulation. No rebel in Japan would ever have sought to overthrow the emperor. Such a course of action was unthinkable, and was also totally unnecessary—the important thing was to control the emperor. It is the attempts by the Taira and the Minamoto to control emperors, or at least to control their nominees for the post, that form the background to the civil wars that exploded during the twelfth century. Two skirmishes, the Hōen and Heiji “disturbances,” named for the years when they were fought (1156 and 1160 respectively), were the curtain raisers to a major war that lasted from 1180 to 1185. It was called the Gempei War, from the Chinese reading of the names of the warring clans, the Minamoto (Genji) and Taira (Heike).

The Hōgen Rebellion, however, was fought in 1156 by two coalitions of warrior houses that included Taira and Minamoto warriors on each side. The subsequent 1160 troubles saw the first direct Minamoto/Taira clash, and the brutal way by which Taira Kiyomori, who had supplanted the Fujiwara in imperial favor, did away with his Minamoto rivals sowed the seeds of the major war that began in 1180. After some initial success by the Taira, their samurai were swept aside in a series of brilliant battles fought by the general Minamoto Yoshitsune, whose victories at Ichinotani (1184), Yashima (1184), and Dannoura (1185) enabled his elder brother Yoritomo to become military dictator.

Yoritomo took a title that is almost as familiar as samurai when he became Japan’s first shogun. The government of Japan thus passed from the system of abdicated emperors and imperial grandfathers to the newly created bakufu, or shogunate, which was based far from imperial Kyoto, in Kamakura. The term bakufu proclaimed its military origins, because it meant government from “behind the curtain” of the maku, the heavy ornamental curtains that marked a commander’s post on the battlefield. This set a pattern whereby Japan was to be dominated by the rule of the samurai for eight hundred years, although there was a brief early attempt at imperial restoration in 1221. Accounts of the fighting in this rebellion, the Shōkyū War, are included in the extracts that follow.

Before studying written accounts of samurai combat in this period, let us first examine the context in which such encounters were fought. The first point to note is that these contests were fought between men who were members of an elite: a status that depended as much on their ancestry as on their martial prowess. Martial skills, however, could sometimes compensate for being comparatively lowly born, as indicated by a story in the twelfth-century Konjaku Monogatari, which grudgingly praises a certain warrior in the following terms:

An excavated tanko, the early style of plate armor worn during the Nara Period.

This Noble Yasumasa was not a warrior inheriting the tradition of a military house. He was the son of a man called Munetada. However, he was not in the slightest degree inferior to such a warrior. He was bold in spirit, skilled with his hands and great in strength.¹⁰

The elite nature of the samurai is an important factor to remember when considering the historical sources for the period. Some, like the important Azuma Kagami, are in the form of diaries or official chronicles, but others are more like heroic epics, written for an aristocratic public who wished to read of the deeds of their own class, and preferably their own family’s ancestors. So, for example, the hundreds of foot soldiers who accompanied the samurai into battle are almost totally ignored. For this reason, these gunkimono (war tales) have to be treated with considerable caution as historical records. They are, however, invaluable for the light they shed on samurai values and beliefs, and in particular the ideals the samurai cherished about how they should behave in action.¹¹ Much of the description is concerned with the samurai acting as an individual and aristocratic lone warrior, whose brave deeds in single combat contribute to the overall victory. As will be explained below, this is a misleading construction, but it can provide very valuable information about the practice of the martial arts because the mode of combat and the use of various weapons are described within a framework of sound knowledge of the technical limitations of the arms and armor of the period.

Several of the most important gunkimono have been translated fully or partially into English. The earliest of the genre, the Shōmonki, which deals with the rebellion of Taira Masakado, was written about the year ad 954, and contains valuable early descriptions of combat.¹² The Konjaku Monogatari, which also includes Taira Masakado among its wide-ranging subject matter, has several sections of great interest, some of which are used here.¹³ Hōgen Monogatari contains vivid descriptions of the brief fighting of the 1156 rebellion.¹⁴ The later gunkimono, such as the well-known Heike Monogatari, are much less reliable in their descriptions of combat, and can indeed be very misleading. Karl Friday, in particular, has drawn attention to the deficiencies in Heike Monogatari, which is a work of polemics that achieved its present form as late as 1371. Among its stereotypes is an entirely fictitious contrast between the Minamoto as rough and ready warriors from the east, and the Taira as refined imperial courtiers.¹⁵

Samurai Arms and Armor

The samurai were fully armored and went into battle mounted on horses. By the twelfth century, the samurai wore armor of a characteristic design that was to have an important influence on the martial arts. It was made from small scales tied together and lacquered, then combined into armor plates by binding them together with silk or leather cords. A suit of armor made entirely from iron scales would have been prohibitively heavy, so a mixture of iron and leather scales was used, with iron predominating to protect the most vulnerable areas of the samurai’s body. This classic “samurai armor” was therefore of lamellar construction (armor made from small plates fastened together), the traditional defensive armor of Asia, rather than the plate and mail of European knights.¹⁶

The standard suit of armor of the classical samurai of the Gempei War was known as the yoroi. The body of the armor, the dō, was divided into four parts, giving the yoroi a characteristic boxlike appearance. Two large shoulder plates, the sode, were fastened at the rear of the armor by

a large ornamental bow called the agemaki. The agemaki allowed the arms fairly free movement, while keeping the body always covered, because the samurai did not use shields. Two guards were attached to the shoulder straps to prevent the tying cords from being cut, and a sheet of ornamented leather was fastened across the front to stop the bowstring from catching on any projection.

The iron helmet bowl was commonly of eight to twelve plates, fastened together with large projecting conical rivets, and the neck was protected with a heavy, five-piece shikoro, or neck guard, which hung from the bowl. The top four plates were folded back at the front to form the fukigayeshi, which stopped downward cuts aimed at the horizontal lacing of the shikoro. The samurai’s pigtail of hair was allowed to pass through the tehen, the hole in the center of the helmet’s crown, where the plates met, either with or without a hat to cover it, which would give some extra protection. No armor was worn on the right arm, to leave the arm free for drawing the bow, but a kote, a simple baglike sleeve with sewn-on plates, was worn on the left. This completed the costume of the samurai which had one overriding purpose: to provide the maximum protection for a man who was a mounted archer. This role was so important that the samurai referred to their calling as kyūba no michi, or “the way of horse and bow.”

The design of the traditional Japanese bow that the samurai wielded from his horse is still used today in the martial art of kyūdō. The bow was a longbow constructed from laminations of wood and bound with rattan. The arrow was loosed from about a third of the way up the length of the bow. A high level of accuracy resulted from hours of practice on ranges where the arrows were discharged at small wooden targets, from the back of a galloping horse. This became the traditional art of yabusame, which is still performed at festivals, notably in the city of Kamakura and the Tōshōgu Shrine in Nikkō. The archer, dressed nowadays in traditional hunting gear, discharges the bow at right angles to his direction of movement.

The Way of Horse and Bow

In ancient times, horses had been known only as beasts of burden, and the Japanese first came across war-horses during one of their early expeditions in Korea. During the first five centuries of the Christian era, Korea was ruled by the three rival kingdoms of Koguryo, Silla, and Paekche. Kinship ties with Paekche meant that this was a conflict in which Japan inevitably became involved, and in about ad 400 a Japanese army, sent to support Paekche and composed entirely of foot soldiers, was heavily defeated in battle by a Koguryo army riding horses. This battle was Japan’s first encounter with cavalry, and there is archaeological evidence that horses were being ridden in Japan within a century of this event. The plains of eastern Japan proved to be ideal ground for horse breeding and pasturing, and as riding skills developed, so did the notion of cavalry warfare, with mounted archery coming to be the preferred technique. In 553, Paekche once again sought Japanese help, and this time asked specifically for a large supply of bows and horses, thus indicating that the combination of horsemanship and archery was now firmly established in Japan. There are further references to the deployment of mounted archers in ad 672, when the brother of the late Emperor Tenchi asserted his claim to the throne in a bold revolt against his usurping nephew, and used the powerful striking force of a squad of mounted archers.

Shimazu Yoshihisa of Satsuma (1533–1611), dressed in full armor.

A hunting party, one of the best ways of training a mounted archer.

A fur covered quiver and a selection of arrows.

A face mask, complete with moustache.

A nodowa, giving protection of the throat.

One of the most celebrated demonstrations of skill given by a mounted archer occurred at the Battle of Yashima in 1184. The Taira fastened a fan to the mast of one of their ships and challenged the Minamoto to bring it down. This drawing by Hokusai shows the young Nasu no Yoichi earning great glory for himself by hitting the fan with his first arrow, which greatly enhanced the morale of the Minamoto.

Samurai mounted combat, single or in the form of a pitched battle, began with the bow, and usually ended with it. Accounts of sword fighting between samurai, or even hand-to-hand grappling with dagger or bare hands, are quite clearly descriptions of what happened at the end of an encounter if, and only if, the mounted samurai had lost the use of his bow, or horse, or both. Otherwise, a fight between mounted samurai would be decided by bow and arrow. The following account from Konjaku Monogatari is probably the best of the genre:

Then fitting arrows with forked heads to their bows, they urged their horses toward each other, and each let off his first arrow at the other. Intending that his next arrow would hit his rival without fail, each drew his bow and released the arrow as he galloped past. Then they drew up their horses and turned; again drawing their bows they galloped by but did not shoot off their arrows. When they had both passed again, they pulled up, turned, drew their bows and aimed.¹⁷

This example is somewhat unusual in that it took the form of a personal duel between two opponents, but it nevertheless illustrates the technique of one-to-one mounted archery—a skill so highly prized that it could be applauded in an enemy. There is an interesting account in this vein in Heike Monogatari of what happened during the Battle of Yashima in 1184. The Taira fought from a rear defensive line of ships anchored in Yashima Bay. Towards evening, when the fighting was at a lull, they hung a fan from the mast of one of their ships and invited the Minamoto to shoot it down, hoping thereby to persuade one of their finest archers to waste precious arrows, along with being disgraced by his failure. But young Nasu no Yoichi hit the fan with his first arrow, even though he was on horseback in the water, and the boat he was aiming at was bobbing up and down. This achievement was an excellent morale booster for the Minamoto, but it is also interesting to note what happened immediately afterwards. As men who valued good archery, the Taira samurai appreciated the feat, and one of them started dancing on the boat in his enthusiasm. At the urging of one of his superiors, Nasu no Yoichi took another arrow and shot the celebrant dead. This act was not at all approved of by the Taira, who regarded it as both cruel and unnecessary.¹⁸

The gunkimono relate many incidents of skill with the bow and arrow during actual fighting. A notable example is the archer Minamoto Tametomo, who fought during the attack on the Shirakawa Palace in the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156. He was renowned both for his skill and for his immense strength, and shot many arrows clean through saddles, horses, and his opponents, as the Hōgen Monogatari tells us:

Minamoto Tametomo, the great archer, is exiled following his defeat in battle.

The archer Minamoto Tametomo, who fought during the attack on the Shirakawa Palace in the Hogen Incident of 1156, was renowned both for his skill and for his immense strength. In this print, we see him on his island of exile, but his bow is still ready for action.

Pausing a moment, he let it off whistling. Piercing unchecked the breastplate of Itō Roku who was in the lead, the arrow passed on the other side through the left sleeve of Itō Go and stuck in the lining of his armour. Rokurō fell dead on the spot.¹⁹

Later in the same action:

His first arrow having missed, Koreyuki was fitting the second to his string when Tametomo drew his bow to the full and fired with a whiz. The shot went through from the front bow of Yamada Kosaburō’s saddle, passing through the armour skirts and hitting the rear bow, and the point stuck out more than three inches on the other side. For a moment he seemed to be staying in the saddle, held up by the arrow. Then when he fell headlong to the left, the arrowhead remained in the saddle, and the horse galloped towards the riverbed.²⁰

Minamoto Tametomo is also credited with using a bow and arrow to sink a ship full of Taira samurai, as a gesture of defiance, immediately before he committed suicide. The massive arrowhead struck the overloaded boat just above the waterline and split the planking!²¹

The Samurai Battle

A samurai battle would traditionally begin by the firing of signal arrows high into the air over the enemy lines. Each signal arrow had a large, bulblike, perforated wooden head that whistled as it flew through the air. The sound was a call to the kami, to draw their attention to the great deeds of bravery that were about to be performed by rival warriors. The two armies would then clash, and it is concerning this phase of a battle that the gunkimono can be most misleading. Heike Monogatari gives the impression that what followed was a series of almost exclusively individual combats between worthy opponents, who sought each other out by issuing a verbal challenge that involved reciting one’s exploits and pedigree. The challenge would be answered from within the opposing army, providing a recognized mechanism whereby only worthy opponents would meet in combat. This process, the stock in trade of the traditional samurai image, has recently been discussed critically and convincingly by Karl Friday.²² Leaving aside the obvious difficul-ties of being able to conduct verbal negotiations among the din of battle, there are in fact very few examples in the gunkimono where elaborate declarations are recorded. Instead, a more likely scenario is that samurai, when entering a battle situation, shouted out their names as war cries. Also, as Friday cleverly points out, “in any given pairing of warriors, one of the challengers would always have been a worthwhile adversary for the other,” and would be most unlikely to let the occasion pass if the other disdained his challenge! He concludes by suggesting that name calling and pedigree recitations were general, rather than specific challenges.²³

The recital of pedigrees is only one aspect of samurai combat that had a ritualized form, which again has led to the misunderstanding that battles themselves were largely ritual-istic affairs: mock battles where honor could be satisfied without actually killing anyone. In fact there is only one encounter in Heike Monogatari that can be regarded as a ritualized battle, and this is the archery duel, and the series of challenges that followed it, at the Battle of Kurikara (also known as the Battle of Tonamiyama) in 1183, but on this occasion the madness had method in it. Minamoto Yoshinaka planned to divide his forces and surround the Taira army, but how was he to cover these movements and hold the Taira in position? His solution was to conceal his maneuvers by fighting a battle, but a battle so formal and so stylized that there would be no risk of his side being defeated. Nor would there be any opportunity for the Taira to realize that the whole purpose was to confine them to this small area until night fell. The trick worked, and the Taira samurai gave it their full concentration, hoping thereby to earn a name for themselves in the epic poetry that would be written about the event in the future. As Heike Monogatari relates, the Minamoto “purposely avoided a decision.”²⁴

A suit of armor opened out flat, from a military manual.

Taira Tomomori, defeated at the battle of Dannoura in 1185, prepares to drown himself, tied to a massive anchor.

The cruel reality of samurai warfare could not have been further from the notion of battle as a ritualized set piece. Yoshinaka’s illustrious predecessor Minamoto Tametomo believed that surprise was essential to victory, particularly when fire was involved:

Whether to break strong positions though surrounded by the enemy, or to destroy the enemy when attacking a fortified place, in any case there is nothing equal to night attack to achieve victory. Therefore if we bear down on the Takamatsu Palace immediately, set fire to it on three sides and hold them in check on the fourth side, those who escape fire cannot escape arrows, and those who escape arrows cannot escape fire.²⁵

Konjaku Monogatari shows one encounter beginning with clear enthusiasm for the element of surprise that the situation offered:

As he advanced Yogo had a man sent ahead with orders to search out carefully where Sawamata was and report back. The scout came running back and said, “They are in a meadow with a marsh on the south face of that hill over there. They’ve been eating and drinking sake; some are lying down, and some seem to be sick.” Yogo was delighted to hear this and he commanded his men, “Just hit them fast.”²⁶

In the Azuma Kagami, the sequence of events in a battle may be traced in all its savagery and confusion, from the use of deception at the start:

The complete antithesis to the “super-swordsman” is Mionoya Juro of Musashi. He had his horse shot from under him during the Battle of Yashima in 1184. He was attacked by a samurai with a naginata, who grabbed him by the neckpiece of his helmet. When the lacing tore apart, Mionoya escaped.

Tomomasa’s men, who had climbed the trees at Todorokizawa and at Jigokutani, emitted battle cries according to a prearranged plan. The cries reverberated through the ravine, giving the impression of a huge force. In his astonishment and confusion Yoshihiro was attacked by Tomomasa’s followers.... At the time strong winds blowing from the southeast raised a cloud of dust from the burning fields and obscured the vision of men and horses, causing many to break ranks and lose their footing.²⁷

The Sword in Combat

If a samurai had run out of arrows, or had otherwise lost the use of his bow, he would have to use cutting weapons, the best known of which, of course, was the famous “samurai sword.” The word usually used for the long sword carried by samurai in this early period is tachi. This was the samurai’s principal side arm. The other edged weapon that the samurai would carry was a sword with a much shorter blade, and the meticulous research of Karl Friday has shown that the names given to this weapon vary through history.²⁸ What we see being worn on picture scrolls such as Heiji Monogatari Emaki are the tachi, which is slung from a separate sword belt with the cutting edge downwards, and the shorter weapon, which is stuck through the wide sashlike belt around the waist of the armor. Although it is frequently referred to as a tantō (dagger), Friday points out that this word is of much later origin. In translations of Heike Monogatari such as those quoted below, the shorter edged weapon usually appears as “dagger”—a convention I have retained for clarity. Contemporary names for this second weapon include katana —the word used later in history for the standard fighting sword—and koshigatana, the prefix koshi- meaning “the hips.” The tachi would be used for sword fighting, and when its use is described in the chronicles and the gunkimono, we note the use of verbs such as “cut” and “strike,” while the katana is used to “stab” and “thrust.”

There was, however, another type of sword coming into use, called an uchi-gatana. This was like a short tachi or a very long katana, and it was carried in the same way as the katana: that is, thrust through the belt. Originally used by warriors too poor to afford a tachi, it was eventually to supplant the tachi as the weapon of choice, as its size and position enabled the wearer to make a devastating stroke straight from the scabbard. With its name shortened to katana, it became the most familiar form of samurai sword. Some uchi-katana were in fact shortened tachi.²⁹

However, as was implied by the phrase kyūba no michi, a samurai’s worth was measured in terms of his prowess with the bow, rather than the sword. Now, to the modern mind, the ideas of a samurai and of a sword are almost inseparable. The sword has acquired a quasi-religious, almost mystical, symbolism, and is wielded in a way that often appears to be a combination of superhuman skill and technical perfection. But between the tenth and twelfth centuries, all the traditions to be associated with the Japanese sword lay in the future, including that of the invincible swordsman. One incident in particular, described in Heike Monogatari, in fact describes the complete antithesis to the “super-swordsman.” Mionoya Jūrō of Musashi has had his horse shot from under him during the Battle of Yashima in 1184:

The rider at once threw his left leg over the animal and vaulted down to the right, drawing his sword to continue the fight, but when he saw the warrior behind the shield come to meet him flourishing a huge halberd, he knew that his own small sword would be useless, and blew on a conch and retreated.³⁰

Two competing samurai could really only engage in swordplay when they had dismounted. Here, one samurai appears to have been unhorsed by a kumade (a rakelike polearm), which now is broken.

The story then diverges even further from the traditional samurai image:

The other immediately followed him, and it looked as though he would cut him down with his halberd, but instead of doing so, gripping the halberd under his left arm, he tried to seize Mionoya no Jūrō by the neckpiece of his helmet with his right. Three times Mionoya eluded his grasp, but at the fourth attempt his opponent held on. For a moment he could do nothing, but then, giving a sudden violent wrench, the neckpiece parted where it joined the helmet, and Mionoya escaped and hid behind his four companions to recover his breath.³¹

The “halberd” in the above account refers to a weapon known as a naginata, which had a long shaft, oval in cross section, and a curved blade. This gave a samurai a longer reach than a sword, but whatever the quality of his cutting weapons, the skill he showed with a bow was unquestionably the samurai’s most prized accomplishment. At the Battle of Yashima in 1184, the Minamoto commander, Yoshitsune, accidentally dropped his bow into the sea, and put himself at some personal risk in his efforts to retrieve it. When his older retainers reproached him, he replied:

It was not that I grudged the bow... and if the bow were one that required two or three men to bend it, like that of my uncle Tametomo, they would be quite welcome to it, but I should not like a weak one like mine to fall into the hands of the enemy for them to laugh at it.³²

Yoshitsune clearly felt that his reputation as an archer, and therefore as a samurai, would be undermined if his enemies realized that he lacked the physical strength to draw a large bow. But this feeling that the sword was as nothing compared to the bow was not confined to the battlefield, and a passage in Konjaku Monogatari provides the most surprising anecdote for anyone brought up with the tradition of the invincible samurai swordsman. One night, robbers attacked a certain Tachibana Norimitsu while he was on his way to visit a female acquaintance. He was armed only with a sword:

A statue of a warrior dressed in a tanko armor of about AD 700.

A selection of arrowheads.

The two monk heroes of the Battle of Uji in 1180. They are fighting with sword and naginata across the broken beams of the bridge.

Sato Tsuginobu, one of the loyal followers of Minamoto Yoshitsune, fighting in the snow with a drawn sword.

Norimitsu crouched down and looked around, but as he could not see any sign of a bow, but only a great glittering sword, he thought with relief, “It’s not a bow at any rate.”³³

He did in fact vanquish the robbers, but his evident relief that he was not up against anyone armed with a bow is very telling. Common sense, after all, states that a bow gave a skilled archer (as all samurai were trained to be) a considerable advantage over a swordsman, who could be shot or incapacitated long before he came within striking distance.

In addition to the absence of a sword mystique in the gunkimono, there is also an apparent absence of sword technique, with a shortage of references to anything resembling proper swordplay, either from the saddle or on foot. There is in fact only one incident in Heike Monogatari that suggests mounted sword combat, when two comrades support each other as they lead an assault on the Taira fortress of Ichinotani in 1184:

Kumagai and Hirayama both bore themselves most valiantly, one charging forward when the other gave back, and neither yielding to the other in strength and boldness, hewing at the foe with loud shouts while the sparks flew from their weapons.³⁴

When not mounted on his horse, the samurai could wield his sword more freely, though he was still encumbered somewhat by the design of the yoroi armor. In this illustration to Heike Monogatari, we see Kajiwara Genda, whose horse has been shot from under him, fighting on foot with his helmet struck from his head and his long hair flying in the wind.

This passage is very ambiguous, however, because the account goes on to say that Kumagai’s horse had been shot in the belly. He dismounted and stood leaning on his bow, which would have been an unusual thing to do if he had discarded his bow for a swordfight. He then began to pull arrows out of his armor, indicating that arrowheads caused the “sparks” that flew off the two opponents, not sword blades. A samurai who had lost his horse would still prefer to use his bow, as long as he had arrows left. Only when he had no more arrows would he move on to using his sword. At the Battle of Shinohara in 1183:

Arikuni, having penetrated very deeply into the ranks of the foe, had his horse shot from under him, and then while he was fighting on foot, his helmet was struck from his head, so that he looked like a youth fighting with his long hair streaming in all directions. By this time his arrows were exhausted, so he drew his sword and laid about him mightily, until, pierced by seven or eight shafts, he met his death still on his feet and glaring at his enemies.³⁵

The unusual situation of a battle fought completely dismounted is illustrated by the Battle of Mizushima (1183), which was fought from on board ship, and again we see a preference for the bow. The Taira had tied their ships together and created a flat surface using planking, but even though their horses had been left on land, the battle began with bows, which continued “until they came to close quarters, when they drew their swords and engaged each other hand to hand.”³⁶ A samurai was therefore most unlikely to voluntarily abandon his bow for a sword, particularly when his enemy still had the use of a bow, as is perfectly illustrated in Azuma Kagami. In 1180 the Minamoto under Yoritomo were fighting Oba Kagechika:

When they encountered Kagehisa at Hashida Mountain, they turned their horses and attacked him. Caught without bowstrings and forced to use their long swords, Kagehisa and his men could not defend themselves adequately against the arrows and the stones, and many of them were struck. Although Yasuda’s men could not escape the enemy swords entirely, nevertheless, Kagehisa pocketed his pride and quietly took flight.³⁷

On rare occasions, a brave samurai might approach an opponent with sword drawn, hoping, no doubt, that the demands of samurai honor would cause his enemy to hesitate to put an arrow into him. An example of this appears in Azuma Kagami:

Then Takatsuna moved up to the edge of the courtyard and released an arrow. This was the moment of the beginning of the Minamoto war against the Taira. A bright moon above made the night as bright as midday. Nobutō’s followers, seeing Takatsuna’s challenge, shot their arrows at him, while Nobutō, his long sword in hand, went forth round toward the southwest to confront Takatsuna. The latter discarded his bow, grasped his long sword, and facing his adversary to the northeast, engaged him in combat. Both excelled in bravery, but Takatsuna was struck by an arrow.³⁸

So Takatsuna respects Nobutō’s unusual approach, but his more conventional comrades do not, with fatal results. The most famous example of a warrior armed with a cutting weapon taking on bows and arrows occurs in the Heike Monogatari account of the Battle of Uji in 1180. The retreating Minamoto army, accompanied by their monk allies, had torn up the planking on the bridge over the Uji River to delay pursuit by the Taira, and had taken their stand on the far bank of the river. One group of mounted Taira samurai charged out of the morning mist and went straight through the hole on the bridge, but then the fight began with a series of arrow duels and individual combats across the broken beams. Tajima, who was a sōhei (warrior monk) from the temple of Miidera, was one of those who mounted the bridge. He used his naginata (the sōhei’s traditional weapon) in a very unusual way:

Then Gochin-no-Tajima, throwing away the sheath of his long naginata, strode forth alone on to the bridge, whereupon the Heike straightaway shot at him fast and furious. Tajima, not at all perturbed, ducking to avoid the higher ones and leaping up over those that flew low, cut through those that flew straight with his whirring naginata, so that even the enemy looked on in admiration. Thus it was that he was dubbed “Tajima the arrow-cutter.”³⁹

We may assume that the whirling of the naginata was designed to put the Taira archers off their concentration, rather than represent any serious attempt to deflect arrows. (An illustration of a monk whirling a naginata to this purpose appears on the picture scroll called the Ishiyamadera emaki). We may also reasonably assume that by the time Tajima mounted the bridge to perform his strange feat, he had exhausted his own supply of arrows, because he was followed onto the broken structure by his comrade Tsutsui Jomyō Meishū, who ran through the whole repertoire of samurai weaponry before retiring:

And loosing off his twenty-four arrows like lightning flashes he slew twelve of the Heike soldiers and wounded eleven more. One arrow yet remained in his quiver, but flinging away his bow, he stripped off his quiver and threw that after it, cast off his foot gear, and springing barefoot on to the beams of the bridge, he strode across.... With his naginata he mows down five of the enemy, but with the sixth the halberd snaps asunder in the midst and flinging it away he draws his tachi, and wielding it in the zig-zag style, the interlacing, cross, reverse dragonfly, waterwheel and eight sides at once styles of fencing, and cutting down eight men; but as he brought down the ninth with an exceeding mighty blow on the helmet the blade snapped at the hilt and fell splash into the water beneath. Then seizing the dagger which was his only weapon left he plied it as one in the death fury.⁴¹

When Jomyō finally rested after his exertions, he counted sixty-three arrows or arrow wounds in his armor or his body. This fascinating account also confirms the existence, by the mid-fourteenth century at least, of several recognized styles of ken-jutsu (sword-fighting techniques). However, little technique is recognizable when a sword is used for a swift opportunistic stroke against a samurai who has just spared the swordsman’s life, as at the Battle of Shinohara (1183) in Heike Monogatari:

Then Takahashi got off his horse to recover his breath and wait to see if any of his retainers would come up, and Nyūzen also dismounted, but, still thinking what a feat it would be to kill such a famous leader, even though he had just spared his life, he cast about to see how he could take him unawares. Takahashi, never dreaming of such treachery, was talking to him quite without reserve, when Nūzen, who was famous for the rapidity of his movements, catching him off guard, suddenly drew his sword and aimed a lightning thrust under his helmet.⁴²

Hand-to-Hand Fighting

If archery did not produce a direct hit or a mortal wound, the two competing samurai would try to grapple with one another, using the techniques later given the name yoroi-gumi (armor grappling). This would result in the unhorsing of one or both, at which point the short katana (rendered into English as “dagger” in the accounts that follow) was the weapon most favored for close-quarters fighting. This directly contradicts the usually accepted theory that the tachi developed as a fairly long, curved-bladed weapon that could more easily be wielded from the saddle. One may perhaps hypothesize that the reason for the yoroi-gumi style of combat was largely the samurai’s primary role as a mounted archer. While mounted and wearing a suit of armor built like a rigid box, he was effectively a mobile “gun platform.” When unable to wield his bow, he was ungainly and unwieldy, able only to grapple in the most clumsy fashion. His defensive costume, although not unduly heavy, was not designed to allow him to take the fight to the enemy, and was certainly not helpful in allowing a sword to be used from the saddle. The tachi was also a two-handed weapon, so to draw it, the samurai would have to discard his bow, which required his opponent to be already helpless. In the Shōkyūki, which deals with ex-emperor Go-Toba’s rebellion of 1221, a “grapnel” (probably a kumade, a polearm with several hooks at the end) is used to hold an enemy out of range while the sword is drawn: “... he rushed up and hooked his grapnel into the crown of Satsuma’s helmet, pulled him close, and struck off his head.”⁴³

Several examples of similar practices are recorded in Heike Monogatari, such as the account of a fight that eventually led to the death of Taira Tadanori at the Battle of Ichinotani in 1184:

But Satsuma-no-kami, who had been brought up at Kumano, was famous for his strength, and was extremely active and agile besides, so clutching Tadazumi he pulled him from his horse, dealing him two stabs with his dagger while he was yet in the saddle, and following them with another as he was falling. The first two blows fell on his armour and failed to pierce it, while the third wounded him in the face but was not mortal....⁴⁴

At the same battle, the single combat between Etchū Zenji Moritoshi and Inomata Noritsuna began without an archery exchange.

Rushing upon each other, they grappled fiercely so that both fell from their horses... he gripped his adversary and pinned him down so that he could not rise. Thus prostrate beneath his foe, try how he would to shift him or draw his sword, he could not so much as stir a finger to the hilt, and even when he strove to speak, so great was the pressure that no word would come forth.⁴⁵

Two bows mounted on a bow stand with a quiver.

A fine suit of armor laced throughout with white silk.

The intervention of a third party caused a pause in the combat, but soon they returned to the fray:

He suddenly sprang up from the ground and dealt Moritoshi a heavy blow on the breastplate with his closed fist. Losing his balance at this unexpected attack, Moritoshi fell over backwards, when Inomata immediately leapt upon him, snatched his dagger from his side, and pulling up the skirt of his armour, stabbed him so deeply thrice that the hilt and fist went in after the blade. Having thus despatched him he cut off his head.⁴⁶

In Shōkyūki we have a full account of a vivid encounter that begins with an archery duel and is concluded by a yoroi-gumi fight using tantō:

Pulling an outer arrow from his quiver and fitting it to his rattan-striped bow, he drew the shaft to its full length and let fly. The arrow pierced the breast plate of Takeda Rokurō’s chief retainer, who was standing at the left side of his lord, and shot through to the clover-leaf bow (the agemaki) at the armour’s back, toppling the retainer instantly from his horse. Saburō shot again, and his second arrow passed completely through the neck bone of one of Takeda Rokurō’s pages. Then Rokurō and Saburō grappled together and fell from their horses. As they tumbled back and forth, Saburō drew his dagger and pulled the crown of Rokurō’s helmet down as far as the shoulder straps of his armour. Rokurō looked to be in danger, but just at that moment Takeda Hachirō came upon the scene, and pushing Rokurō aside, cut off his assailant’s head.⁴⁷

That was the reality of samurai warfare during the “golden age.” A samurai was primarily an archer, with the sword as a secondary weapon. Yet all had to be skilled at wrestling also. This is very different from the popular image of the samurai, but it was to change dramatically over the next few centuries, as we will see.

A suit of armor of nuinobe-do style, typical of the sixteenth century.

Armor with a distinctive checkerboard pattern woven into the breastplate.