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Thus, the eight Bando provinces must have furnished a force of from four to sixteen thousand men, all belonging to the aristocratic class. These formed the nucleus of the army. The command in chief was conferred on Ki no Kosami, thirteenth in descent from the renowned Takenouchi-no-Sukune, who had been second in command of the Fujiwara Tsugunawa expedition nine years previously.
But all these inferences rest on little more than hypothesis. Ki no Hirozumi, Ki no Kosami, Otomo Yakamochi, Fujiwara Umakai, and Fujiwara Tsugunawa having all failed, the Court was compelled to have recourse to the representatives of a Chinese immigrant family, the Saka-no-ye.
The Court appointed Fujiwara Tsugunawa to take command of a punitive expedition, and once again Bando levies converged on the site of the dismantled castle of Taga. But beyond that point no advance was essayed, in spite of bitter reproaches from Nara. You discourse adroitly but you get no nearer to the foe."
For a time this system worked satisfactorily, but ultimately it inosculated itself with the views it was designed to nullify, and the Fujiwara became flagrant abusers of the power handed down to them. Momokawa's immediate followers were worthy to wear his mantle. Tanetsugu, Korekimi, Tsugunawa these are names that deserve to be printed in letters of gold on the pages of Japan's annals.
His mother, a daughter of Fujiwara Tsugunawa, was Mototsune's maternal aunt, and the Prince himself, already in his fifty-fifth year, had a son, Sadami, who was married to the daughter of Fujiwara Takafuji, a close relation to Mototsune. There can be no doubt that the latter had the whole programme in view when he proposed the dethronement of Yozei.
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