governor of Iyo. It is possible that had not the situation been
complicated by a new factor, the feud between the brothers might have
ended there. But Minamoto Yukiiye, learning of these strained
relations, emerged from hiding and applied himself to win the
friendship of Yoshitsune, who received his advances graciously.
Yoritomo, much incensed at this development, sent the son of Kajiwara
Kagetoki to Yoshitsune with a mandate for Yukiiye's execution. Such a
choice of messenger was ill calculated to promote concord.
Yoshitsune, pleading illness, declined to receive the envoy, and it
was determined at Kamakura that extreme measures must be employed.
Volunteers were called for to make away with Yoshitsune, and, in
response, a Nara bonze, Tosabo Shoshun, whose physical endowments had
brought him into prominence at Kamakura, undertook the task on
condition that a substantial reward be given him beforehand.

Shoshun did not waste any time. On the eighth night after his
departure from Kamakura, he, with sixty followers, attacked
Yoshitsune's mansion at Horikawa in Kyoto. By wholesale oaths, sworn
in the most solemn manner, he had endeavoured to disarm the
suspicions of his intended victim, and he so far succeeded that, when
the attack was delivered, Yoshitsune had only seven men to hold the
mansion against sixty. But these seven were the trusty and stalwart
comrades who had accompanied Yoshitsune from Mutsu and had shared all
the vicissitudes of his career. They held their assailants at bay
until Yukiiye, roused by the tumult, came to the rescue, and the
issue of Shoshun's essay was that his own head appeared on the
pillory in Kyoto. Yoshitsune was awakened and hastily armed on this
occasion by his beautiful mistress, Shizuka, who, originally a
danseuse of Kyoto, followed him for love's sake in weal and in woe.
Tokiwa, Tomoe, Kesa, and Shizuka--these four heroines will always
occupy a prominent place in Japanese history of the twelfth century.

After this event there could be no concealments between the two
brothers. With difficulty and not without some menaces, Yoshitsune
obtained from Go-Shirakawa a formal commission to proceed against
Yoritomo by force of arms. Matters now moved with great rapidity.
Yoritomo, always prescient, had fully foreseen the course of events.
Shoshun's abortive attack on the Horikawa mansion took place on
November 10, 1185, and before the close of the month three strong
columns of Kamakura troops