Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 152, The Birth of the Samurai, Part 7.

We left off last week with an uneasy equilibrium between the two halves of the Minamoto family.

Yoshinaka had been forced to back down in the face of his stronger cousin Yoritomo,

and had handed over one of his children as a hostage to guarantee

obedience to his cousin's will. However, in June 1183, Yoshinaka would be forced to temporarily

put that humiliation to the side and return his attentions to what was ostensibly the real enemy,

the Tyra clan.

At this point in the war, Yoshinaka was on something of the back foot. He'd lost one of his most defensible positions in Hiuchi Castle, which had been compromised by a traitorous samurai

among his ranks. The Tyra were bearing down on him with a force that outnumbered his own.

More dramatic accounts have Yoshinaka outnumbered 5,000 to 40,000, but that's almost

certainly an over-exaggeration.

However, even if we chop down the enemy forces by 75%, he's still outnumbered 2 to 1, which is not exactly an ideal

position. Yoshinaka, however, had a plan. Yoshinaka met the Tyra in an entrenched

defensive position, and proceeded to open the battle in the usual way, with formal challenges between his samurai

and opposing Taira samurai, where the two sides would basically engage in honor duels.

The Taira accepted, because, look, we've got the upper hand here, so what's the rush?

Besides, even if the Tira commanders had wanted to force a swifter battle, it's unclear whether

they would have been able to.

These kind of formalized duels were important for samurai in order to make their reputations.

I'm honestly not sure if the samurai could have been convinced to forsake them for the sake of

something as silly as strategic necessity.

For Yoshinaka, this predilection worked out just fine. The formal duels were just a stalling

...