29 - The rise of medieval warrior tales:Hōgen monogatariandHeiji monogatari

Summary

In general, war tales describe historical warfare and the lives of warriors and the people close to them. The main characters are heroic and often take on the hyperbolic dimensions. The earliest of the medieval war tales are the group describing the causes and effects of the Genpei War: Hogen monogatari, Heiji monogatari, and Heike monogatari. Together with Jokyuki, these tales concerning the formative years of the Kamakura period were sometimes considered as a four-part set that together narrates the consolidation of power under the Kamakura shogunate. Scholars often pair Hogen monogatari and Heiji monogatari because of their connected storylines, characters, and shared compositional and reception histories. Both tales consist of three chapters, and both seem to have been written after the Genpei War, as they open with statements pointing toward a shared endpoint and anticipate the events of the 1170s and 1180s as the destination of their narratives.