The Genpei War: From Uji to Dan-no-ura

The battle at Uji on 20 June 1180 is regarded as the first of the war. The two sides faced each other across the bridge and traded arrows. The Heike Monogatari names three warrior monks there, among them Gochi-in no Tajima, so those feats belong to the tale. The documented end is plainer: Taira troops reached the gates of Byōdō-in, and Minamoto no Yorimasa, about 73, took his own life. The temple, founded in 998 as a villa, still stands, with its Phoenix Hall of 1053.

Visitor guidance: Byōdō-in is open to visitors; the Phoenix Hall is part of the UNESCO listing.

Yoritomo's first battle as commander went badly. About 300 Minamoto cavalry took the hill; roughly 3,000 Taira horsemen waited across a valley and struck at night in a heavy rainstorm. Yoritomo was crushed, fled into the Hakone mountains and escaped by boat to Awa to regroup. A famous story has him hiding inside a hollow tree, but that is only said to have happened. The site lies southwest of present-day Odawara.

Location precision: The fighting spread over a hill and valley; the pin marks the hill area southwest of Odawara, not a single field.

Yoritomo and the Kai Genji met a Taira army on the Fuji River, in Suruga. Little fighting followed: that night the Taira army suddenly withdrew. Recent scholarship credits the Kai Genji, not Yoritomo, with the victory. The Azuma Kagami records the wingbeat of startled waterfowl as sounding like an army, and the Heike Monogatari tells of the panic it caused. Treat the birds as the tradition's explanation; the withdrawal is the record.

Location precision: The armies faced each other along the river; the pin marks the Fuji River in Suruga, not a single camp.

Three years on, Yoshinaka held a mountain pass on the Etchū–Kaga border against a large Taira army. He showed thirty white banners to look stronger, then attacked at night, driving the Taira into confusion and off the cliffs; they lost most of their expedition. A later chronicle, the Genpei Jōsuiki, adds torches tied to the horns of oxen, but no manuscript of the Heike has this, so it is legend. The pass lies between Tsubata, Ishikawa and Oyabe, Toyama.

Location precision: Fighting spread over the pass and its slopes; the pin marks the pass.

On a narrow shore between mountains and sea west of Kobe, the Taira defended a fortress. Noriyori attacked at Ikuta Shrine while Yoshitsune came down from the ridge to the north. Only some 3,000 Taira escaped to Yashima. The death of Taira no Atsumori at Kumagai no Naozane's hand is a famous passage of the Heike Monogatari, a tale rather than a record. Markers in the Ikuta forest behind the shrine commemorate the fighting.

Visitor guidance: The shrine is in central Kobe; the commemorative markers stand in the forest behind it.

Retreating to Shikoku, the Taira built a fortress and an improvised palace for Emperor Antoku at Yashima. Yoshitsune sailed through a storm with about 150 men and lit bonfires on land behind them, convincing the Taira a large force was coming. In the Heike Monogatari, a lady in a Taira boat set a fan on a pole and Nasu no Yoichi hit it with one shot; the incident is the tale's. Yashima-ji, temple 84 of the Shikoku pilgrimage, sits on the plateau.

Location precision: The palace and shoreline fighting spread along the coast; the pin marks Yashima-ji on the plateau above.

Visitor guidance: Yashima-ji is an active temple on the plateau northeast of Takamatsu.

The war ended at sea in the Kanmon Straits. The morning tide favoured the Taira but turned against them in the afternoon, and Taguchi Shigeyoshi defected and revealed which ship carried the child Emperor Antoku. Antoku and his grandmother, the Nun of the Second Rank, died in the water. In the Heike Monogatari she tells him they will go to an underwater palace. Akama Shrine, dedicated to Antoku, stands on the shore behind a bright red gate, and seven mounds in its grounds honour the Heike dead. Yoritomo went on to become the first shogun.

Location precision: The battle was fought on the water of the strait; the pin marks the memorial shrine on the shore.

Visitor guidance: The shrine is on the Kanmon Strait waterfront in Shimonoseki.