The Story of the Japanese 00746 [Late Kamakura Period] The Appearance of Kusunoki Masashige

After Emperor Go-Daigo entered Mount Kasagi on August 27, 1331 (Genko 1/Gentoku 3), samurai who supported him began to gather little by little, but the number was smaller than expected, and the court nobles and samurai on the Emperor's side began to grow impatient.
At that time, Emperor Go-Daigo suddenly said,
"I have had a strange dream."
The dream was as follows:
There was a large evergreen tree in what appeared to be the front garden of the Shishinden, and its southern branches were particularly lush and spreading. All the courtiers, from the ministers down, were seated in a row on the north side, and the seat of honor on the south side was vacant. Two children appeared there and said to Emperor Go-Daigo,
"This is the throne. Please hide yourself here for a while."
Emperor Go-Daigo interpreted the meaning of this dream himself.
"The seat on the south side of the tree is empty. If you write 'tree' (木) and 'south' (南) together, it reads 'Kusunoki' (楠). It must mean that I should call someone by the name of Kusunoki. Is there anyone by that name?"
When the courtiers investigated, they found that there was a local samurai named Kusunoki Masashige, a descendant of Tachibana no Moroe, in Mount Kongo in Kawachi Province (Chihayaakasaka Village, Osaka Prefecture).
By the Emperor's order, Madenokoji Fujifusa (1296–?) was sent to Kawachi as an imperial envoy to order Kusunoki Masashige to join the forces at Kasagi. Fujifusa was the son of the aforementioned Madenokoji Nobufusa and was one of the closest aides who would continue to act alongside Emperor Go-Daigo. It must have been an unprecedented and rare event for a court noble to visit such a rural area.
Summoned to Mount Kasagi and granted an audience with the Emperor, Kusunoki Masashige was asked about how to fight the shogunate, and he replied,
"The rule of battle is not to be obsessed with individual victories or defeats. Please believe that as long as I, Masashige, am alive, your Majesty's fortune will surely turn around."
At this point, Masashige had already decided to fight the shogunate not with conventional decisive battles, but with guerrilla tactics.
Even so, the story of Emperor Go-Daigo's dream seems too perfect. Whether it was a later creation or a story made up by Emperor Go-Daigo himself after he already knew of Kusunoki's existence, the truth is unknown, but it is a story fitting for the first appearance of the hero Kusunoki Masashige, who raced through the turmoil of the Northern and Southern Courts period.
By the way, in the Taiheiki, it is written as 'Kusu Masashige,' but since it is written as 'Kusunoki Masashige' in contemporary historical documents, this is considered to be correct. In this article, I will standardize it to 'Kusunoki Masashige'.