The epic of the Genpei war, in the form the reciters gave it over the century after 1200. It tells of Kiyomori's rule, the court of Go-Shirakawa, the Minamoto rising of 1180, the fall of the capital and the sea battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, which made the world that Kamakura and Kyoto inhabited in 1200. It is literature, not record, and its versions differ; use it for the memory and the manners of the warrior houses, not for dates, and check its events against the Azuma kagami and the Gyokuyo.
About this source
- Title
- Heike monogatari (平家物語)
- Author
- Anonymous; traditionally attributed to Shinano no Zenji Yukinaga, performed and reshaped by blind reciters
- Written
- early thirteenth century in its first form; the standard Kakuichi text was fixed in 1371
- Language
- Japanese
- Covers
- the rise and fall of the Taira, about 1160 to 1185, with a coda on the survivors
- Kind
- Poem
A later literary text, included as optional background. A. L. Sadler's 1918 to 1921 English translation (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan) is out of copyright but no scan was located within this task's search budget.
Where to read it
Translations
- H. C. McCullough, The Tale of the Heike (Stanford, 1988); R. Tyler, The Tale of the Heike (Viking, 2012); both English and under copyright (not freely online)