t
the feet, and in which a man could easily march twenty miles a day
continuously.

These remarks apply to all the fighting men of whatever part of
Japan, but as to the Kwanto bushi, their special characteristics are
thus described by a writer of the twelfth century: "Their ponderous
bows require three men or five to bend them. Their quivers, which
match these bows, hold fourteen or fifteen bundles of arrows. They
are very quick in releasing their shafts, and each arrow kills or
wounds two or three foemen, the impact being powerful enough to
pierce two or three thicknesses of armour at a time, and they never
fail to hit the mark. Every daimyo (owner of a great estate) has at
least twenty or thirty of such mounted archers, and even the owner of
a small barren estate has two or three. Their horses are very
excellent, for they are carefully selected, while as yet in pasture,
and then trained after their own peculiar fashion. With five or ten
such excellent mounts each, they go out hunting deer or foxes and
gallop up and down mountains and forests. Trained in these wild
methods, they are all splendid horsemen who know how to ride but
never how to fall. It is the habit of the Kwanto bushi that if in the
field of battle a father be killed, the son will not retreat, or if a
son be slain the father will not yield, but stepping over the dead,
they will fight to the death."*

*Murdoch's History of Japan.

The Taira, as noted above, had by this time largely recovered from
the disasters suffered in their first encounters with Yoshinaka's
forces. In the western provinces of the main island, in Shikoku, and
in Kyushu, scions of the clan had served as governors in former
times, so that ties of close intimacy had been established with the
inhabitants. Since the first flight to Kyushu in August, 1183, their
generals, Shigehira, Michimori, Noritsune, and others had defeated
the forces of Yoshinaka at Mizushima and those of Yukiiye at
Muroyama, so that no less than fourteen provinces of the Sanyo-do and
the Nankai-do owned Taira sway, and by the beginning of 1184 they had
re-occupied the Fukuhara district, establishing themselves at a
position of great natural strength called Ichi-no-tani in the
province of Harima. Their lines extended several miles, over which
space one hundred thousand men were distributed. They lay within a
semi-circle of mountains supposed to be inaccessible from the north;
their camp was washed on the south by t