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Opposed to this interiority is the courage and pluck of the warrior class. They show little occasion or inclination for such introspection; indeed, Yoshitsune's bravado and exuberance are seen as part of his virtue. Here is one example. During one of the battles, Taira warriors try to capture him by pulling him off the boat.
"...during the struggle Yoshitsune's bow was pulled away into the water by one of the hooks. He leaned out of his saddle to try to pick it up, nudging the bow with his whip. His men urged him to let it go, but he would not, and at last he managed to recover it. He then rode, laughing, back to the beach. His veteran retainers, however, disapproved of their master's act.
"Our lord, you did a careless thing! However valuable a bow may be, can it be compared with our lord's life?"
"It was not because I grudged the loss of the bow," replied Yoshitsune. "If it were one that required two or three men to bend, a bow like that my uncle Tametomo, then I would gladly let it fall into the hands of the enemy. But if a weak one like mine were taken by them, they would laugh at it and say, 'Is this the bow of Yoshitsune, the commander-in-chief of the Genji?' That would be unbearable. I had to recover it even at the risk of my life.!"
(Kitagawa and Tsuchida pp. 662-663)
Different as they are, each side sometimes wishes it possessed the qualities of their opposites and enemies. The Minamoto admire the culture of the courtiers. Kumagai, when he meets the young Atsumori, remarks that he must have been the one who played such beautiful flute music the night before which he heard coming from the Taira encampment. And the nobility genuinely admire the pluck of the Minamoto as well. The virtues of the society as a whole are now split in two, and they can never be rejoined again in quite the same fashion.
The Tale of the Heike, quite unlike The Tale of Genji, does not deal with love affairs of any sort. The picture that emerges, rather, is one that provides vivid examples of the sadness of happy married couples, at every level of society, whose lives are destroyed when husbands are torn away from their loved ones, and sometimes even their children murdered. There is thus a constant tension between human love and the supremacy of an inevitable and cruel force that will override, even destroy such affection. One touching incident is as follows: one of the important courtiers and military figures of the court, Taira no Michimori, has died in battle and his wife commits suicide because of her deep affection for him. Left alone for a moment by her servant, she drowns herself.
The lady had been waiting for this chance, and slipping out quietly, ran to the rail of the vessel. For awhile she gazed into the distance over the vast waters. Searching for paradise, she turned toward the mountain that hides the fading moon and calmly chanted "Hail Amida Buddha!" All on board had fallen into deep sleep. At first no one noticed her. However, when she jumped overboard, the loud splash caught the attention of the helmsman, who alone had been awake. Many men jumped overboard in search of the lady. After some time they pulled her from the water; but her soul had already passed into the world beyond. They bound a suit of her husband's armor around her body so that she would not rise again and returned her to the waters.
(Kitagawa and Tsuchida, pp. 572-573)
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