Battle of Yashima

What Happened

On 22 March 1185, the Minamoto forces under Minamoto no Yoshitsune crossed from the mainland to the island of Yashima, on the coast of Sanuki Province — the area now occupied by Takamatsu in Kagawa Prefecture. Yashima was the headquarters of the Taira clan, who had set up their court there after being driven out of the capital. The Taira had a fortress position on the plateau overlooking the sea, and a fleet in the bay below.

Yoshitsune's attack was a surprise. He marched his horsemen along the coast and crossed the strait, then set fires in the hills behind the Taira camp to make his force look far larger than it was. The Taira, believing a great army was descending on them, abandoned Yashima and fled to their ships. The Minamoto had won the island with very little fighting.

The famous episode attached to the battle is the archery duel at the water's edge. A Taira archer on a boat challenged the Minamoto to hit a fan set on a pole on the mast of a boat. Nasu no Yoichi, a young Minamoto archer on horseback, rode into the surf and shot the fan down with a single arrow. The Taira then sent a boat out to retrieve the fan, and the Minamoto held their fire.

Background

The Genpei War was a civil war between two warrior clans, the Minamoto (also called Genji) and the Taira (also called Heike), fought over control of the imperial court and the country. It ran from 1180 to 1185. The Taira had dominated the court for two decades before the war; the Minamoto rose against them and, after years of seesaw campaigning, began to push them back.

By 1185 the Taira had lost the capital and their western strongholds. They had retreated to Yashima, on the island of Shikoku, where they held a fortified position with a harbour and a fleet. The Minamoto commander Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a younger brother of the clan head Minamoto no Yoritomo, was pursuing them.

The battle took place in the first year of the Bunji era (文治), during the Kamakura period. It was not the final battle of the war. After Yashima, the Taira withdrew by sea to the strait of Dan-no-ura, where the Minamoto destroyed them in a naval engagement on 25 April 1185. The Battle of Shido, fought shortly after Yashima, is recorded as following it.

Why It Mattered

Yashima broke the Taira's last defensible position on land. It drove them onto their ships and into the sea, where the Minamoto could bring the war to a conclusion at Dan-no-ura. The Taira never recovered a foothold on the mainland after Yashima.

The battle also made Yoshitsune's reputation. His night crossing, his use of fire to exaggerate his numbers, and the archery feat of Nasu no Yoichi became set pieces in the war tales that circulated for centuries afterwards. The image of the Minamoto horsemen riding into the sea at Yashima is one of the most reproduced scenes in Japanese narrative art.

For the wider political order, the outcome of the Genpei War put the Minamoto in power and led to the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate, the first warrior government in Japan. The Kamakura period, which began in 1185, takes its name from the city where Yoritomo based his administration.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 屋島の戦い, read in kana as やしまのたたかい and romanised as Yashima no tatakai.

Breaking it down:

• 屋 — read here as や (ya). The kanji means "house", "roof" or "shop". It is a common element in place names, where it usually refers to a building or a settlement.
• 島 — read here as しま (shima). It means "island". Yashima is a plateau that was once an island in the sea off Shikoku; the name preserves that geography.
• の — the possessive particle, written in hiragana. It links the place name to the noun that follows, so 屋島の戦い is literally "the battle of Yashima".
• 戦 — read here as たたか (tataka), from the verb 戦う (tatakau, "to fight"). The kanji means "war", "battle" or "combat".
• い — the hiragana ending that completes the noun 戦い (tatakai, "a battle" or "a fight"). The kanji 戦 on its own is read sen in compounds such as 戦争 (sensō, "war"); the native Japanese reading tatakai is used when the word stands alone.

So the whole name is a plain descriptive phrase: the battle of Yashima. The place name itself, 屋島, is made of "house" plus "island".

Key Figures

Minamoto no Yoshitsune (源義経) commanded the Minamoto force at Yashima. He was the younger half-brother of Minamoto no Yoritomo and the most successful field commander of the Genpei War. His tactics at Yashima — the surprise crossing and the use of fire — are the central events of the battle.

Nasu no Yoichi (那須与一) was the Minamoto archer who shot down the fan from the mast of a Taira boat. He was a young warrior from the Nasu district, and the shot at Yashima is the deed for which he is remembered.

The Taira commanders held Yashima as their headquarters before the battle. The clan's leader, Taira no Munemori, was among those who fled to the ships and went on to Dan-no-ura. The Taira archer who set the fan on the mast is not named in the account.

Minamoto no Yoritomo (源頼朝) was the head of the Minamoto clan and the political architect of its victory. He was not present at Yashima; he directed the war from Kamakura, and his relationship with Yoshitsune broke down after the war ended.