Minamoto no Yoshitsuna

Who They Were

Minamoto no Yoshitsuna (源義綱, みなもと よしつな) was a samurai of the Minamoto clan, born in Kawachi Province in 1042 and dead in 1132. He was a son of Minamoto no Yoriyoshi and a brother of Minamoto no Yoshiie and Minamoto no Yoshimitsu. His mother was a daughter of Taira no Naokata, which tied him by blood to the Taira as well as the Minamoto — a detail worth holding on to, because the two clans would later become the great military rivals of the Heian period.

He is also remembered by the name Kamo Jirō (鴨 次郎). He lived his whole life inside the Heian period (794–1185), the long aristocratic age before the warrior government at Kamakura. He was born in the third year of the Chōkyū era (長久), and he died in exile.

Life and Career

Yoshitsuna was one of the sons of Minamoto no Yoriyoshi, a leading warrior of the Minamoto house. He fought in the Zenkunen War, also called the Former Nine Years' War, alongside his father Yoriyoshi and his brother Yoshiie. The campaign was a prolonged struggle in the north, and it made the reputations of the men who fought it.

Relations with his older brother Yoshiie were poor, and in May 1091 the tension between the two nearly became open battle, with retainers gathering around Kawachi Province.

On 8 August 1106, Yoshiie died. Yoshiie had named his fourth son, Minamoto no Yoshitada, as his successor. On the night of 13 March 1109, Yoshitada was attacked. He died five days later.

Yoshitsuna and his son were suspected in Yoshitada's death and fled, but they were captured in the mountains of Omi Province by Minamoto no Tameyoshi. On surrender they became priests and were banished to Sado Province. Six of Yoshitsuna's sons met violent ends. His eldest son Minamoto no Yoshihiro and second son Minamoto no Yoshitoshi killed themselves by throwing themselves into a valley. His third son Minamoto no Yoshiaki was named the ringleader in Yoshitada's death and died in battle while being hunted down. His fourth son Minamoto no Yoshinaka jumped into a fire and was burned to death. His fifth son Minamoto no Yoshinori died by seppuku (切腹, せっぷく), suicide by disembowelment. His sixth son, Minamoto no Giko (源義公), killed himself.

In 1132, during his exile on Sado, Yoshitsuna was hunted down again by Minamoto no Tameyoshi and killed himself. Afterwards it emerged that the charge of killing Yoshitada was false, and that the true perpetrator had been his brother Minamoto no Yoshimitsu.

Why They Matter

Yoshitsuna's life is a case study in how the Minamoto clan destroyed itself from the inside. The killing of Yoshitada in 1109 and the destruction of Yoshitsuna's line removed a whole branch of the family — six sons in a single purge — and the man blamed for it turned out to be innocent. The accusation against Yoshitsuna was false; the real killer was his own brother Yoshimitsu.

That pattern, brothers and cousins eliminating one another, is the backdrop to the far larger Minamoto–Taira war later in the twelfth century. Yoshitsuna's career also shows the mechanics of Heian-era punishment: defeat did not always mean execution. Tonsure and banishment to a distant province such as Sado was a standard sentence for a noble or warrior of rank, and it left the condemned man alive, watched, and available to be hunted down again — which is exactly what happened to Yoshitsuna in 1132.

The Name in Japanese

The full name is written 源義綱. In kana it is みなもと よしつな, and in romaji, Minamoto no Yoshitsuna. The particle の (no) between the surname and the given name marks possession or affiliation, so the name literally reads as "Yoshitsuna of the Minamoto."

源 (みなもと, Minamoto) — the clan name. The character means "source," "origin," or "fountainhead." It was granted as a surname to members of the imperial family who were demoted out of the line of succession and given a fresh family name; 源 is read gen in many compounds but minamoto when it stands as this surname.

義 (よし, yoshi) — the first element of the given name. It means "righteousness," "justice," or "duty." This character was a favourite in Minamoto personal names of the period: Yoshitsuna's brothers Yoshiie (義家) and Yoshimitsu (義光) carry the same first element, and so do several of his sons.

綱 (つな, tsuna) — the second element. It means "rope," "cable," or "hawser," and by extension "principle" or "main line." Read on its own it is tsuna; in other combinations the same character appears as kō.

So the name breaks down as clan name 源 plus a two-character given name, 義綱, "righteous rope" — a pairing of an abstract virtue with a concrete object, which is typical of samurai naming of the era. Note that the individual kanji readings inside a name are not the same as the readings the characters carry in ordinary vocabulary; 義 is normally gi and 綱 is normally kō in compounds, but in this name they are read yoshi and tsuna.

Legacy

Yoshitsuna's memory survives mainly through the disaster that ended his line. The deaths of his six sons — two by leaping into a valley, one burned, one by seppuku, one killed in battle, one by his own hand — and his own suicide on Sado in 1132 make him one of the starkest examples of the Minamoto clan's internal violence in the late Heian period. His alternative name, Kamo Jirō, and his descent from Minamoto no Yoriyoshi place him firmly in the generation that fought the Zenkunen War and shaped the warrior class that would soon take power. The revelation that he had been falsely accused, and that Minamoto no Yoshimitsu was the true killer of Yoshitada, left his condemnation on the record as a miscarriage of justice rather than a punishment earned.