The Battle of the Uji River also spelled the end of Prince Mochihito’s rebellion. The Prince
himself did not long evade his pursuers, and died from an arrow wound soon after the battle. His
demise, however, was known only to his immediate followers, who kept it quiet while the
proclamations continued to circle among the Minamoto samurai. As the news spread of Yorimasa’s
last stand on the Uji River, the rumour persisted that Yorimasa had been successful, and that even
now Prince Mochihito was heading east to join with his loyal Minamoto followers.
Among the Taira, ignorance about the death of Prince Mochihito prompted Kiyomori to take
drastic measures. In a gesture that shows the magnitude of his concern he moved the infant
Emperor Antoku and the two surviving Retired Emperors to Fukuhara on the coast of the Inland Sea,
effectively moving the capital of the country for six months. It was only after the Taira and their
lieges slunk back into Kyōto towards the close of the year that Kiyomori took military action. With
news drifting in of thousands of Minamoto on the march in several different parts of the east,
Kiyomori sent three of his own sons at the head of armies to deal with their problem. Their first
targets, oddly, were not Minamoto strongholds, but two strongholds of warrior monks, ‘which have
become enemies of the court, in the one case by harbouring the Prince, and in the other by going to
meet him’.
The temples were razed to the ground with immense loss of life. Kiyomori’s holocaust
against the Buddhists bought him nothing but further trouble, and perhaps even an attack of
conscience. Within weeks, the aged dictator had succumbed to a powerful fever, legendarily said to
have raised his body temperature so high that his bathwaters would boil. On one occasion, the
feverish Kiyomori was convinced that he saw a pile of skulls in his mansion garden; on another, he
was awoken by a giant’s face staring down at him. The Taira, specifically Kiyomori, were plagued by
strange omens and hallucinations, including ghostly laughter and phantom noises, such as that of a
tree falling in a palace ground where no trees stood. Taira archers were posted in shifts, shooting a
constant barrage of humming-bulb arrows into the air the screaming arrows were thought to scare
off evil spirits, but cannot have done much for Taira morale.“
All the while, reports drifted in of thousands of Minamoto mobilizing in the east. Paramount
among them, by the end if not at the start, was Minamoto Yoritomo, the son of Yoshitomo exiled
after the Heiji Insurrection and spared through his mother’s intercession. He had spent his adult life
on the remote Izu peninsula, and was now on the move. His first encounter with Taira forces, on the
road from the Kanto to the west, was a disaster for the Minamoto. Camped in a bad position, facing
a massive Taira army and surprised by a rearguard assault in the middle of a fierce summer
rainstorm, Yoritomo was forced to flee, and took refuge in a cave where, according to legend, he
was discovered by a Taira samurai, but allowed to escape. He somehow made it across the short
strait to the Izu peninsula, and began to regroup his scattered forces. By luck or by design,
Yoritomo’s route required him to make a complete anti-clockwise circuit of what is now Tōkyō Bay, a
journey that took him right through the heartland of the Kantō plain — he was sure to have rounded
up the largest possible number of willing warriors. The first sign of Yoritomo’s return was relatively
minor - a raid on a Taira mansion in Mishima that was little more than brigandage, but before long
he was at the head of a true army, and heading west. By the time he reached the natural fortress of
Kamakura, his father’s old headquarters, he had been accepted as the commander of a vast group,
not only of Minamoto warriors, but of his in-laws the Hōjō clan, his cousins among the Miura, and
many other powerful Kantō clans.
Soon after reaching Kamakura, Yoritomo heard that a huge Taira force was heading out to
meet him. The Taira army, however, lacked the fanaticism or will of the Minamoto many of the
°Taira’ soldiers were little better than conscripts, who swiftly deserted when they saw the size of the
Minamoto force. While Kiyomori and his Taira clansmen enjoyed an immediate hold over the court,
the Taira power base had always been to the west, along the coast of the Inland Seal We might call
Kiyomori a big fish in a little pond, whose sway over the capital brought him to a pre-eminent
position only for as long as his authority was not challenged in the provinces by brute force and
sheer numbers. The east had always favoured the Minamoto, and Yoritomo’s army notably