One alternative ending to the Tale of the Heike
The Engyōbon of 1309, a read-lineage text, offers a very different ending from “The Initiates’ Scroll.” The Engyōbon is notable for including lots of digressions: stories about the founding of temples and shrines; anecdotes about Chinese history; and complete battle descriptions. It also has a less clearly sectarian (religious) perspective than most other variants.
It concludes with this passage:
"The barbarian-subduing general, former Major Captain of the Right Inner Palace Guards [Minamoto no Yoritomo], was a man of great destiny. He quelled the white waves of the western seas and calmed the green forests in the far north. Then he dressed himself in brocade hitatare, entered the capital and was appointed urin taishōgun (Great General of the Royal Guards)… he renewed Buddhist authority and royal authority. He subdued the proud Heike and assuaged the people’s grief. He expelled the disloyal and rewarded the loyal, without favoritism or regard for proximity or distance. Who would have thought that the Major Captain, bereft of his mother when he was just twelve, separated from his father at thirteen, and exiled to Hirugashima in Izu Province would rise to be such a man of great destiny? Even he could not have expected it."
Yoritomo is of course the victor in the Genpei War, who here restores order as shogun. He accomplishes this by balancing royal and Buddhist authority. The text begins with “Gion shōja,” as does the Kakuichibon: it is a Buddhist cautionary tale about rebels against the throne, specifically Kiyomori, and concludes with the ascendency of Kiyomori’s enemy, Yoritomo. In contrast to Kiyomori’s capricious behavior, Yoritomo is praised for harmonizing Buddhist and royal orders. Note the role that movement through the political landscape plays: the former exile Yoritomo returns to the capital after he has restored order evenhandedly at the realm’s edges. In other words, he moves from his peripheral site of exile to the center. Interestingly, we don’t see him then going back to Kamakura, from where he would operate in his new role. Rather, the text ends felicitously with harmony between royal and religious authority restored by a wise general in service to both.