In 1185, having broken with Yoritomo for good, Yoshitsune left the capital for the western provinces, but at Daimotsu Bay his ships were wrecked in a storm, and with a few followers he fled into Mount Yoshino in Yamato. It was deep winter on Mount Yoshino, heavy with snow.
At his side was his beloved shirabyoshi dancer, Shizuka Gozen. But Mount Yoshino was a holy mountain closed to women, and the mountain's monks had begun moving to capture Yoshitsune. Yoshitsune resolved that he could not take Shizuka any further.
He gave her gold, silver and robes and sent her back to the capital with several attendants. Shizuka clung to him weeping, "Let me follow you wherever you go," but Yoshitsune tore himself away in tears. Through the snow, he went off deeper into the mountains.
But the attendants he had given Shizuka stole her treasures on the way and ran off. Shizuka wandered alone through the snowy mountains of Yoshino, and when at last she reached the Zao Hall, she was seized by the monks.
Shizuka was sent to Kamakura and questioned harshly before Yoritomo about where Yoshitsune had gone. Then she was ordered to dance before Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. With Yoritomo and the Kamakura vassals looking on, Shizuka danced, singing of her longing for Yoshitsune:
"Yoshino-yama mine no shirayuki fumiwakete irinishi hito no ato zo koishiki" (Treading through the white snow on the peaks of Mount Yoshino, he went in deep; how I long for his footprints)
"Shizu ya shizu shizu no odamaki kurikaeshi mukashi o ima ni nasu yoshi mogana" (As thread winds again and again on the spool for weaving shizu cloth, if only there were a way to make the past the present once more)
Yoritomo was furious that she sang of longing for a rebel, but his wife Hojo Masako soothed him: "When you were an exile, I too, longing for you, lost my way on dark nights and braved the rain to go to you. Shizuka's heart is the same as mine was then." And so, it is said, Yoritomo's anger subsided.