The Tale of Heike is a story about
Female Samurai
Ashikaga Shogunate
Murasaki Shikibu
Male Samurai
Answers
The Tale of the Heike is an epic account compiled prior to 1330 of the struggle between the Taira clan and Minamoto clan for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century in the Genpei War (1180–1185). Heike refers to the Taira , hei being the Sino-Japanese reading of the first Chinese character. Note that in the title of the Genpei War, "hei" is in this combination read as "pei" and the "gen" is the first kanji used in the Minamoto (also known as "Genji" which is also pronounced using Sino-Japanese, for example as in The Tale of Genji) clan's name.
Detail of a screen portraying scenes from The Tales of Heike
It has been translated into English at least five times, the first by Arthur Lindsay Sadler in 1918–1921.[1] A complete translation in nearly 800 pages by Hiroshi Kitagawa & Bruce T. Tsuchida was published in 1975. Also translated by Helen McCullough in 1988. An abridged translation by Burton Watson was published in 2006. In 2012, Royall Tyler completed his translation, which seeks to be mindful of the performance style for which the work was originally intended.
It was famously retold in Japanese prose by historical novelist Eiji Yoshikawa, published in Asahi Weekly in 1950 with the title New Tale of the Heike (Shin Heike Monogatari).
The Tale of the Heike's origin cannot be reduced to a single creator. Like most epics (note: the work is in fact an epic chronicle in prose rather than verse), 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 Tsurezuregusa, which he wrote in 1330. According to Kenkō, "The former governor of Shinano, Yukinaga, wrote Heike monogatari and told 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.