Dawn of the Samurai: Japan’s Greatest Warrior (Part 3)

**Dominic Sandbrook** (0:12)
And so they fought, now closing, now breaking. What shall Benkay do? For when he thinks that he has conquered, with his little sword, the boy thrusts the blow aside. Again and again, Benkay strikes. Again and again, his blows are parried. To that last, even he, mighty Benkay, can do battle no longer. So that's a scene from the Japanese Noh play, if you like Noh theater. It's called Benkay on the Bridge, and it was written in the 15th century, and it describes perhaps the most celebrated fight in the entire history of the samurai. So the British Museum right now, there are three different illustrations of this tremendous encounter. Tom, you love the story of Benkay on the Bridge, don't you?

**Tom Holland** (0:57)
I do. Who doesn't love the most famous fight in samurai history? Surely it's your favorite too.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:02)
It's certainly in the top five samurai fights.

**Tom Holland** (1:05)
Yeah. And it's famous because it's endlessly retold and it's endlessly re-illustrated. And the backdrop to it is, is that Benkay is a lawless warrior monk, always the most dangerous kind of warrior monk. He is built like a rugby player. He's got bloodshot eyes. He wears black armor and he holds seven weapons. So he has a sword, he has a staff, he has an axe, he has a sickle, he has a mallet, he has a Nagatana and he has a saw and a rake.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:33)
He's not holding them all at the same time, presumably.

**Tom Holland** (1:35)
No, he's not holding them all the time. And I like the fact he has a saw and a rake, so he can do a spot of gardening or something if he's...

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:40)
Yeah, those sort of zen gardens of a lot of gravel. Raking his zen garden.

**Tom Holland** (1:46)
He's ready and prepared for anything. Said he's a lawless warrior monk, and as lawless warrior monks often do, he vows to rob a thousand men of their swords. And so he stands on a bridge in Kyoto, the story goes, and every samurai he tries to cross it, Benkei fights him. And he is so invincible that he ends up with 999 swords. So he's got one sword to go to make the thousand. And the scene which you narrated, this is him trying to get his thousandth sword. And his opponent is a very slight, elegant youth, wearing a woman's cloak, who'd been playing the flute as he approached the bridge. So you know, kind of faint hint of the girlie about him, I guess.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (2:34)
Yeah, but maybe lulling him into a full sense of security, is he?

**Tom Holland** (2:37)
Well, maybe, because he turns out to be so formidable an opponent that Benkei ends up defeated.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (2:45)
Oh, what?

**Tom Holland** (2:46)
And we're told in the no play, he can do battle no longer. And he submits to his opponent. And from this point on, he is the victor's loyal follower. So he becomes his samurai. That's what samurai means, retainer.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (3:00)
And who is this person who's defeated him?

**Tom Holland** (3:02)
Well, he is a guy called Minamoto no Yoshitsune. And we actually met him in our previous episode, in which listeners may remember we were describing the outbreak of the great war between the Tyra clan and the Minamoto clan.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (3:22)
So in 12th century Japan, so medieval Japan, the emperors have become slightly sort of...

**Tom Holland** (3:30)
Kind of ciphers almost.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (3:31)
Yeah, ciphers, almost like puppet figures. And these two clans loosely related to the imperial family, sort of semi-detached in the imperial family. What do they call the Tyra and the Minamoto? They are fighting for supremacy. And remind me, which is the one that is strongest in the West, in the Kansai area?

**Tom Holland** (3:48)
So the Tyra have control over Kyoto, the great imperial capital. They have the imperial family under their thumb, and they had expelled the Minamoto pretty much from the kind of civilised centre of Japan. And they have all been disbursed to the barbarous northeastern stretches of Japan.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (4:07)
Yes.

**Tom Holland** (4:08)
Yoshitsune is a member of this clan. So hence Minamoto no Yoshitsune. And so this is the background for the fleeting appearance, as we said, of Yoshitsune in our previous episode. Because he was the baby who had been folded in the cloak of his mother, the concubine, Tokiwa, as she attempted to escape Kyoto in a snowstorm. And Tokiwa had become the concubine of Kiyomori, who was the most powerful man in Japan, the leader of the Tyra clan. And so therefore the inveterate enemy of the rival Minamoto clan. And Yoshitsune's father, Yoshitomo, had been the head of the Minamoto. And Yoshitomo had been killed in his bath. He'd been trying to get away, ended up murdered by a supposed friend. Kiyomori had only spared Yoshitsune out of affection for his mother because Tokio ends up as Kiyomori's concubine. And so Yoshitsune had been brought up in complete ignorance of his father's identity. He did not know that he was the son of this great Minamoto lord. He had no idea about that. And then at the age of six, he gets packed off by Kiyomori to a monastery north of Kyoto on the slopes of Mount Karama, great mountain north of Kyoto. And Kiyomori's plan is that Yoshitsune will grow up in harmless and ignorant seclusion as a monk. He doesn't know who his father is, doesn't know that he's a Minamoto, and he's a monk, so therefore, hopefully he's not going to grow up to become a samurai. But clearly, he's now out and about fighting warrior monks on a bridge. That plan hasn't worked out. So basically, the big question is, what's been going on in his life? How has he ended up this great warrior?