Kurikara Pass: Breaking a Great Army in a Mountain Pass

歴史事件

Kiso Yoshinaka grew up in the Kiso valley, and in 1166, at age 13, he came of age here at what is now Hata-Age Hachiman Shrine, together with his foster father Nakahara Kanetō. Fourteen years later, in 1180, having received an edict from Prince Mochihito, Yoshinaka is said to have raised an army of over a thousand horsemen against the Taira clan at this very shrine. The great zelkova tree on the grounds is said to have been planted to mark either his coming-of-age ceremony or his raising of arms — but this remains a tradition, not a confirmed fact, and there is no historical record proving Yoshinaka planted it himself. Three years after raising his banner, in 1183, Yoshinaka confronted a large Taira army led by Taira no Koremori at Kurikara Pass, on the border of present-day Toyama and Ishikawa prefectures. War chronicles put the Taira force at tens of thousands of horsemen against a few thousand under Yoshinaka, but numbers recorded in war tales from this period are often exaggerated, and the true figures cannot be confirmed. What is certain is that, despite being outnumbered, Yoshinaka chose to fight in a narrow, poor-visibility mountain pass. A large army can bring its numbers to bear on open ground, but in a bottleneck like a mountain pass, only a fraction of its troops can fight at once — its size becomes a liability rather than an advantage. Yoshinaka struck at night, exploiting exactly that weakness. The famous "fire-ox stratagem" — said to have driven a herd of oxen with torches lashed to their horns into the Taira camp — is a vivid episode recorded in later war chronicles such as the Genpei Jōsuiki, but it is not established historical fact. The heart of this battle was never really about the oxen; it was about using terrain to keep a large army from ever fighting as a large army. The Taira forces, thrown into confusion, were driven into a ravine and shattered, and Yoshinaka marched on to Kyoto.

Characters

Spots

Hata-Age Hachiman Shrine

View

Journeys

Military Strategists Born in Shinshu

Read more