Kumagai Naozane was a Japanese warrior famous for having taken
the head of the yonng and handsome samurai Atsnmori. This episode
has become one of the best-known and best-loved stories in
the.Japanese historical classic, The Heike Story(Heike Monogatari).
This book is a fictionalized version of Kumagai's own attempt to
come to terms with his past--that real past which is his and that
other past which he hears the monks inventing as they compose the
text which will eventually become The Heike Story.
As the warrior remembers his past and compares it to its
fictional parallel, he evokes the wonders of the city of Heiankyo
(Kyoto) ; the wars which raised the Taira (Heike) clan to power and
later rednced it to ruin at the hands of the Genji clan; the
battles at the Uji River; life in the imperial court of the retired
emperor Go-Shirakawa; and the celebrated final Taira battle--the
naval encounter at Dannoura, where the infant emperor Antoku was
delivered to the depths of the sea. Among the many pleasures of
this brilliantly colored chronicle is how the common humanity of
this honest, hopeless ~nan tran-scends his time and milieu to speak
to us, here and now.