Dawn of the Samurai: Bloodbath at the Bridge (Part 2)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
The Testaments, a new Hulu original series from the executive producers of The Handmaid's Tale.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:09)
It's easier to accept a story than believe that the people around you are monsters.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:14)
The battle isn't over.
Watch the new Hulu original series The Testaments, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:30)
Want to make the most of your tax refund? File with TurboTax on Intuit Credit Karma. They help you get your biggest refund and then we help you do more with it, with a personalized plan designed to help you hit your money goals. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (0:59)
The Gion Shoja Bells ring the passing of all things. Twin sile trees white in full flower declare the great man's certain fall. The arrogant do not long endure. They are like a dream one night in spring. The bold and brave perish in the end. They are as dust before the wind. So those are perhaps the most celebrated lines in all of Japanese literature. They will strike a chord surely with all of our listeners. They are the classic evocation of the Buddhist teaching that all things will and must pass. And today on The Rest Is History, many things will be as dust before the wind. The lives of formidable and brave warriors, the power of mighty dynasties and the peace and prosperity and security that for many years had reigned in Kyoto, the great imperial capital of Japan. And Tom, these events, we know about them because they're described in the book of the Heike, which is the great war epic, the Iliad of medieval Japan, isn't it?

**Tom Holland** (2:08)
Yes. And those lines you quoted are from its opening and it's in the translation by Royal Tyler for Penguin Classics. And it's a tremendous read.
So, Dominic, we met the Heike or the Taira, as they are better known in the first episode of this, our epic series on the rise of the samurai. And just to remind listeners about who the Heike or the Taira, as we'll be calling them, who they are. They are an aristocratic dynasty that had first emerged in Japan in the early ninth century and they descended from a kind of whole crowd of princes who had become surplus to imperial requirements. They'd also much too expensive to maintain, and so they'd been deprived of their princely status. They'd been given this surname of Taira. And so they had effectively been banished from the silken court of Kyoto with its love of calligraphy and perfumes and cherry blossom. And they'd gone off to the much rougher and wilder northeastern reaches of Honshu, the kind of the main island of Japan. And they'd made great names for themselves there. And these northeastern reaches of Japan in the early Middle Ages, this is where people lived who were viewed by the Japanese as barbarians. And they'd only just been subdued, brought under the rule of the emperor in Kyoto. And so it's still very much a kind of feel of a frontier zone. And as a result of this, the Taira, even though they are descended from emperors, they're not as into writing poetry, I think it's fair to say. As the courtiers and the great lords who are back in Kyoto, although they do still love a poem, as we will see. And we said how back in the court in Kyoto, warriors are despised. To be a fighter is to be seen as someone who is thuggish and uncultured. But of course, this is not the case beyond the mountains that lie east of Kyoto.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (4:10)
That attitude is a luxury, isn't it? It's a luxury that comes with comfort and security. Completely.

**Tom Holland** (4:16)
And there, for centuries now, it has been the custom for an entire order of men, so they might be low-ranking nobles, they might be upwardly mobile peasants, to be raised from childhood in the saddle, shooting arrows, this kind of demanding skill, which marks them out as kind of an elite warrior. And it's not just boys who are being raised to do this, girls are as well, to follow this path of the warrior, to ride spirited horses and to love great arrows and strong bows. Because if the men are riding off to war, then the women have to be able to fight and hold their strongholds. This is the thinking. And so the culture of these Eastern provinces is really strikingly different to that of the Great Imperial Court. And to serve as a governor there, as the Tyra lords often do, you need to have retainers, samurai in Japanese, steeped in the East's martial values. These people who've been raised in the saddle. And the question is, what do noblemen like the Tyra have to offer the samurai, to offer these hardened warriors?