UNCONVINCED, Kagechika ordered his cousin back to the forest, and this time went with him. After hours of fruitless wandering, Kagechika’s frustration boiled over and he struck out in quite another direction, which by chance passed the hollow tree. He was about to peer inside when Kagetoki exclaimed, ‘Look! There is a spider’s web across the opening. Nobody has gone in there.’ It was hardly conclusive. Kagechika was already poking through it with his bow, barely an inch from Yoritomo’s armour, when two doves suddenly flew out. At last the samurai was satisfied. ‘Our enemy cannot lie concealed here,’ Kagechika pronounced. ‘Let us go.’

Yoritomo eventually emerged and established new headquarters at Kamakura. The Genpei War raged on, and five years later, after a fleet commanded by his half-brother Minamoto Yoshitsune defeated the Taira fleet at the Battle of Dan-no-ura,* Yoritomo became the first of the Shoguns, military dictators who ruled Japan de facto until 1868.* He did not forget to raise a shrine to the war-god Hachiman, whose messenger is the dove.