How did biwa-playing bards preserve the story of the Heike clan?

The Heike monogatari, a medieval Japanese epic recounting the tragic downfall of the Taira (Heike) clan, was preserved and disseminated primarily through the oral tradition of biwa-playing bards.12

These minstrels, who were often blind, performed the poetic prose of the epic by chanting the text to the accompaniment of the biwa, a four-stringed lute. This practice drew upon the tradition of moso biwa, in which mendicant monks recited sutras at temples or from house to house. By performing these narratives in war camps, mansions, and temple grounds, these bards ensured the survival of the clan's history across generations.12

A specialized form of the instrument, the heikebiwa, was specifically utilized for chanting these stories. While the epic originated from unwritten traditional tales, a definitive version was recorded in 1371 by a disciple of the blind priest Kakuichi, who was a central figure in the transmission of the text.31