The Tale of The Heike - Authorship

Authorship

The Tale of the Heike's origin cannot be reduced to a single creator. Like most epic poems, it is the result of the conglomeration of differing versions passed down through an oral tradition by biwa-playing bards known as biwa hōshi.

The monk Yoshida Kenkō (1282-1350) offers a theory as to the authorship of the text, in his famous work "Essays in Idleness" (Tsurezuregusa), which he wrote in 1330. According to Kenkō, "The former governor of Shinano, Yukinaga, wrote Heike monogatari and showed it to a blind man called Shōbutsu to chant it". He also confirms the biwa connection of that blind man, who "was natural from the eastern tract", and who was sent from Yukinaga to "recollect some information about samurai, about their bows, their horses and their war strategy. Yukinaga wrote it after that". One of the key points in this theory is that the book was written in a difficult combination of Chinese and Japanese (wakan konkō shō), which in those days was only mastered by educated monks, such as Yukinaga. However, in the end, as the tale is the result of a long oral tradition, there is no single true author; Yukinaga is only one possibility of being the first to compile this masterpiece into a written form. Moreover, as it is true that there are frequent steps back, and that the style is not the same throughout the composition, this cannot mean anything but that it is a collective work.