placate Yoshinaka while privately relying on Yoritomo. His
Majesty granted to the former the control of all the domains
previously held by the Taira; appointed him to the high office of
sei-i tai-shogun (barbarian-subduing generalissimo), and commissioned
him to attack Yoritomo while, at the same time, the latter was
secretly encouraged to destroy his cousin. At that moment (February,
1184), Yoritomo's two younger brothers, Yoshitsune and Noriyori, were
en route for Kyoto, where they had been ordered to convey the Kwanto
taxes. They had a force of five hundred men only, but these were
quickly transformed into the van of an army of fifty or sixty
thousand, which Yoritomo, with extraordinary expedition, sent from
Kamakura to attack Yoshinaka.

The "Morning Sun shogun" (Asahi-shogun), as Yoshinaka was commonly
called with reference to his brilliant career, now at last saw
himself confronted by the peril which had long disturbed his
thoughts. At a distance of three hundred miles from his own base,
with powerful foes on either flank and in a city whose population was
hostile to him, his situation seemed almost desperate. He took a step
dictated by dire necessity--made overtures to the Taira, asking that
a daughter of the house of Kiyomori be given him for wife. Munemori
refused. The fortunes of the Taira at that moment appeared to be
again in the ascendant. They were once more supreme in Kyushu; the
west of the main island from coast to coast was in their hands; they
had re-established themselves in Fukuhara, and at any moment they
might move against Kyoto. They could afford, therefore, to await the
issue of the conflict pending between the Minamoto cousins, sure that
it must end in disaster for one side and temporary weakness for the
other.

In fact, the situation was almost hopeless for Yoshinaka. There had
not been time to recall the main body of his troops which were
confronting the Taira. All that he could do was to arrest momentarily
the tide of onset by planting handfuls of men to guard the chief
avenues at Uji and Seta where, four years previously, Yorimasa had
died for the Minamoto cause, and Seta, where a long bridge spans the
waters of Lake Biwa as they narrow to form the Setagawa. To the Uji
bridge, Nenoi Yukichika was sent with three hundred men; to the Seta
bridge, Imai Kanehira with five hundred. The names of these men and
of their brothers, Higuchi Kanemitsu and Tate Chikatada, are immortal
in Japanese hi