Where did Kitabatake Akiie die?

Ishidu Stop of Hankai Tram Line is 21 stops, or 9.7 kilometers, south from Kitabatake Stop. I wonder if we can call the tram a street car, as the tram rails run on and off roads. The tram rails run south on a road for a while from Kitabatake Stop, and depart it at Tedukayama-3-chome Stop. The tram rattles on through houses and small buildings till Sumiyoshi Stop. It runs along another road just for a stop in front of Sumiyoshi Shrine, and burrows into houses and buildings again. After Abikomichi Stop, it crimes up the bank of Yamato River and crosses an old-fashioned iron bridge into Sakai City. The river used not to run there before Edo Period. In ancient time, there used to be 2 fishing villages in today's Sakai City area: Sakai in the north and Ishidu in the south. The Ishidu River used to be the first large river, or a protective water barrier, when you traveled south from today's Osaka City area.

Where did Akiie, a general of the loyalist Southern Dynasty in Japan, die? Official history says he was killed by the Northern Dynasty army led by Ko Moronao at Ishidu on May the 22nd, 1338, when the Licet juris issued by Frankfort declared that the electors were capable of choosing an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire without papal intervention, which effectively divorced the Empire from the papacy. Another story claims Akiie was killed at Abeno on March the 16th in the same year. Some another suggests he died somewhere between Abeno and Ishidu on May the 22nd.

The Abeno area has 3 Abe-something shrines: One is most simply named Abeno Shrine, literally Abe Field Shrine. Another is Abeno Oji Shrine, literally Abe Field Station Shrine, where one of countless “stations” used to be opened for the pilgrims to Kuamano Shrine. The other is Abe Seimei Shrine, with different homophonic Chinese character for “be.” Abe Seimei was a famous astronomer, an well-known astrologer, or a popular sorcerer, who has 3 supposed birthplaces, which itself is another mystery.

Abeno Shrine was built in the month of January in the 15th year of Meiji, or in 1882, on the old battle field where Akiie fought against the Northen Dynasty army, or Ashikaga Shogunate army. Akiie's second monument was built in the shrine to commemorate his loyalty at the same time.

Akiie's first monument had been built in 1713 at Ishidu, and his grave in 1720's at today's Kitabatake park. In those days, tokugawa Shogunate, wwith the leadership and ideology of Arai Hakuseki, strictly prohibited contraband trading with foreign countries and ever limited the trade even via Nagasaki, to stop the wealth, mainly gold and silver, flowing out of the country. He might have needed some chauvinism to support or to justify his policy.

I visited Ishidu area on one rainy day. I took off a tram at Ishidu Stop, and walked toward Ishidu River. The river runs east to west toward Seto Inland Sea, through which Ashikaga Takauji had fought back eastward from Kyushu to Kyoto. The bridge nearby is called Taiyo-bashi, literally Sun Bridge, because people used to worship the sun rising upriver. Most of Akiie's men, on the other hand, had fought westward to recapture the capital. They could not go back east, nor could see the next sunrise. Akiie must have deadly wanted to cross the river to the north, ahead to Kyoto, to accomplish his destine to guard the ancient rules.

Akiie's third monument was built at Ishidu in 1919, at the end of World War I. The Japanese people at the time cognized that they had won 3 big foreign wars consequently and succesively: Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, and the First World War.

Akiie's fourth monumant was built at Ishidu in 1937, at the dawn of the second World War. Whenever nationalism, patriotism, or chauvinism, whatever you may call, was on the flood tide, or was needed by someone, Akiie was cast spotlight on his deed and death. I wonder, or am afraid, when his fifth monument will be built.

Let's go back to the Abeno area. When you walk from Sumiyoshi Senior High School to Abeno Shrine, you can find a tiny shallow valley between, which we can hardly find on a map but runs north-south. The valley turns eastward at Aioi Hill, and runs to the foot of a hill whose top has Kitabatake Park, which is just a 10-minute walk from Abeno Shrine. The two hills must have been within a battlefield.

If I had been there to fight a battle, I would have occupied either hill top to command a view of the battlefield. If Kitabatake Akiie had been killed in this Abeno Battle at today's Kitabatake Park, and if he had been what he is suggested to be in some stories, he must have attacked his enemy's main body for himself with his men. It means Akiie had based in today's Abeno Shrine, and the Northern Dynasty army around today's Kitabatake Park.

In the Nara period, Japan was run with political centralism. The political centralism, of course, implies military centralism and economic centralism. The centralism was undermined by then-mushrooming manors. Later, some lords of manors became bushi or warriors themselves; while others were overcome by their men, bushi, below. Shugo-jito (provincial military commissioner and manoral military lord) system was half established during the Kamakura period. Kenmu Restoration tried to reverse the trend to restore the ancient centralism, but rather opened a Pandora's box: the start of military libertarian age.

Akiie's death meant the triumph of Ashikaga Takauji, Akiie's major foe, and also meant the death of integration and the triumph of the decentralization of government to local warlords, shugo-daimyo. Takauji, the founder of the next Shogunate, the Muromachi Shogunate, barely kept his station as a boss of an alliance of some warlords. Such alliances used to be a short one, and even Takauji was once house-arrested by his brother, Tadayoshi.

It was five and a quarter centuries after Akiie's death that a monumental royalist performance was carried out: A wooden statue of Ashikaga Takauji was carried away from Toji-in Temple and gibbeted with a sign "a disloyal bandit" on his head at the Sanjo river bed in Kyoto on February 23, 1863. On the very day, as it happened, Roshi-gumi, later known as Shinsen-gumi, arrived at Kyoto from Edo to guard against anti-Shogunate movements.

It seems if you have a loyalism in your mind, several centuries barely have any significance. Countless memorials in Abeno Shrine suggest Kitabatake Akiie still lives in the minds of today's loyalists in Japan. No wonder he could have survived for 66 days after his first possible death.