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A hunting party, one of the best ways of training a mounted archer.
A fur covered quiver and a selection of arrows.
A face mask, complete with moustache.
A nodowa, giving protection of the throat.
One of the most celebrated demonstrations of skill given by a mounted archer occurred at the Battle of Yashima in 1184. The Taira fastened a fan to the mast of one of their ships and challenged the Minamoto to bring it down. This drawing by Hokusai shows the young Nasu no Yoichi earning great glory for himself by hitting the fan with his first arrow, which greatly enhanced the morale of the Minamoto.
Samurai mounted combat, single or in the form of a pitched battle, began with the bow, and usually ended with it. Accounts of sword fighting between samurai, or even hand-to-hand grappling with dagger or bare hands, are quite clearly descriptions of what happened at the end of an encounter if, and only if, the mounted samurai had lost the use of his bow, or horse, or both. Otherwise, a fight between mounted samurai would be decided by bow and arrow. The following account from Konjaku Monogatari is probably the best of the genre:
Then fitting arrows with forked heads to their bows, they urged their horses toward each other, and each let off his first arrow at the other. Intending that his next arrow would hit his rival without fail, each drew his bow and released the arrow as he galloped past. Then they drew up their horses and turned; again drawing their bows they galloped by but did not shoot off their arrows. When they had both passed again, they pulled up, turned, drew their bows and aimed.17
This example is somewhat unusual in that it took the form of a personal duel between two opponents, but it nevertheless illustrates the technique of one-to-one mounted archery—a skill so highly prized that it could be applauded in an enemy. There is an interesting account in this vein in Heike Monogatari of what happened during the Battle of Yashima in 1184. The Taira fought from a rear defensive line of ships anchored in Yashima Bay. Towards evening, when the fighting was at a lull, they hung a fan from the mast of one of their ships and invited the Minamoto to shoot it down, hoping thereby to persuade one of their finest archers to waste precious arrows, along with being disgraced by his failure. But young Nasu no Yoichi hit the fan with his first arrow, even though he was on horseback in the water, and the boat he was aiming at was bobbing up and down. This achievement was an excellent morale booster for the Minamoto, but it is also interesting to note what happened immediately afterwards. As men who valued good archery, the Taira samurai appreciated the feat, and one of them started dancing on the boat in his enthusiasm. At the urging of one of his superiors, Nasu no Yoichi took another arrow and shot the celebrant dead. This act was not at all approved of by the Taira, who regarded it as both cruel and unnecessary.18
The gunkimono relate many incidents of skill with the bow and arrow during actual fighting. A notable example is the archer Minamoto Tametomo, who fought during the attack on the Shirakawa Palace in the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156. He was renowned both for his skill and for his immense strength, and shot many arrows clean through saddles, horses, and his opponents, as the Hōgen Monogatari tells us:
Minamoto Tametomo, the great archer, is exiled following his defeat in battle.
The archer Minamoto Tametomo, who fought during the attack on the Shirakawa Palace in the Hogen Incident of 1156, was renowned both for his skill and for his immense strength. In this print, we see him on his island of exile, but his bow is still ready for action.
Pausing a moment, he let it off whistling. Piercing unchecked the breastplate of Itō Roku who was in the lead, the arrow passed on the other side through the left sleeve of Itō Go and stuck in the lining of his armour. Rokurō fell dead on the spot.19
Later in the same action:
His first arrow having missed, Koreyuki was fitting the second to his string when Tametomo drew his bow to the full and fired with a whiz. The shot went through from the front bow of Yamada Kosaburō’s saddle, passing through the armour skirts and hitting the rear bow, and the point stuck out more than three inches on the other side. For a moment he seemed to be staying in the saddle, held up by the arrow. Then when he fell headlong to the left, the arrowhead remained in the saddle, and the horse galloped towards the riverbed.20
Minamoto Tametomo is also credited with using a bow and arrow to sink a ship full of Taira samurai, as a gesture of defiance, immediately before he committed suicide. The massive arrowhead struck the overloaded boat just above the waterline and split the planking!21
The Samurai Battle
A samurai battle would traditionally begin by the firing of signal arrows high into the air over the enemy lines. Each signal arrow had a large, bulblike, perforated wooden head that whistled as it flew through the air. The sound was a call to the kami, to draw their attention to the great deeds of bravery that were about to be performed by rival warriors. The two armies would then clash, and it is concerning this phase of a battle that the gunkimono can be most misleading. Heike Monogatari gives the impression that what followed was a series of almost exclusively individual combats between worthy opponents, who sought each other out by issuing a verbal challenge that involved reciting one’s exploits and pedigree. The challenge would be answered from within the opposing army, providing a recognized mechanism whereby only worthy opponents would meet in combat. This process, the stock in trade of the traditional samurai image, has recently been discussed critically and convincingly by Karl Friday.22 Leaving aside the obvious difficul-ties of being able to conduct verbal negotiations among the din of battle, there are in fact very few examples in the gunkimono where elaborate declarations are recorded. Instead, a more likely scenario is that samurai, when entering a battle situation, shouted out their names as war cries. Also, as Friday cleverly points out, “in any given pairing of warriors, one of the challengers would always have been a worthwhile adversary for the other,” and would be most unlikely to let the occasion pass if the other disdained his challenge! He concludes by suggesting that name calling and pedigree recitations were general, rather than specific challenges.23
The recital of pedigrees is only one aspect of samurai combat that had a ritualized form, which again has led to the misunderstanding that battles themselves were largely ritual-istic affairs: mock battles where honor could be satisfied without actually killing anyone. In fact there is only one encounter in Heike Monogatari that can be regarded as a ritualized battle, and this is the archery duel, and the series of challenges that followed it, at the Battle of Kurikara (also known as the Battle of Tonamiyama) in 1183, but on this occasion the madness had method in it. Minamoto Yoshinaka planned to divide his forces and surround the Taira army, but how was he to cover these movements and hold the Taira in position? His solution was to conceal his maneuvers by fighting a battle, but a battle so formal and so stylized that there would be no risk of his side being defeated. Nor would there be any opportunity for the Taira to realize that the whole purpose was to confine them to this small area until night fell. The trick worked, and the Taira samurai gave it their full concentration, hoping thereby to earn a name for themselves in the epic poetry that would be
