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Updated: June 17, 2025
Saiko and his two sons were beheaded; Narichika was exiled and subsequently put to death, and all the rest were banished. The great question was, how to deal with Go-Shirakawa. Kiyomori was for leading troops to arrest his Majesty, and to escort him as a prisoner to the Toba palace or the Taira mansion.
By the Emperor's orders, the Taira chief, Kiyomori, executed his uncle, Tadamasa; by the Emperor's orders, though not without protest, the Minamoto chief, Yoshitomo, put to death his father, Tameyoshi; by the Emperor's orders all the relatives of Yorinaga were sent into exile; by the Emperor's orders his nephew, Prince Shigehito, was compelled to take the tonsure, and by the Emperor's orders the sinews of Tametomo's bow-arm were cut and he was banished to the Izu island.* In justice it has to be noted that Go-Shirakawa did not himself conceive these merciless measures.
He took a step dictated by dire necessity made overtures to the Taira, asking that a daughter of the house of Kiyomori be given him for wife. Munemori refused. The fortunes of the Taira at that moment appeared to be again in the ascendant.
Nevertheless, Kiyomori, having contrived that the child should be entrusted to his daughter's care, asserted its claims so strenuously that many of the Fujiwara manors and all the heirlooms were handed over to it, the result being a visible weakening of the great family's influence.* *See Murdoch's History of Japan.
And when they also died, the care of the child fell to his mother's kinsmen, and he grew up to be a peasant. Now Kiyomori, the enemy of Yoritomo, had been gathered to his fathers; and Yoritomo had avenged the death of his father by slaying Munémori, the son of Kiyomori; and there was peace throughout the land.
The power of the Taira family increased until sixty men of the clan held important posts at court, while their lands spread over thirty provinces. They had splendid palaces in Kioto, the capital, and in Fukuwara, overlooking the Inland Sea. The two sons of Kiyomori were made generals of high rank, and his daughter became wife of the emperor Takakura, a boy eleven years of age.
"Would you like to live?" the boy's captor asked him. "Yes," he replied; "my father and mother are both dead, and who but I can pray for their happiness in the world to come?" The feelings of the officer were touched by this reply, and, hoping to save the boy, he told the story to the step-mother of Kiyomori, who was a Buddhist nun.
For, it having been discovered that they were in collusion with the newly risen Minamoto, Kiyomori sent his sons, Tomomori and Shigehira, at the head of a force which sacked and burned Onjo-ji, Todai-ji, and Kofuku-ji. During the greater part of three years, from 1180 to 1182 inclusive, the people suffered, first from famine and afterwards from pestilence.
His life, as already stated, had been saved in the Heiji disturbance, first, by the intrepidity of his mother, Tokiwa, and, afterwards, by the impression her dazzling beauty produced upon the Taira leader. Placed in the monastery of Kurama, as stipulated by Kiyomori, Yoshitsune had no sooner learned to think than he became inspired with an absorbing desire to restore the fortunes of his family.
But Kiyomori, desiring to destroy the family of Yoshitomo root and branch, ordered his retainers to divide themselves into bands, and seek out the children. At last they were found; but Tokiwa was so exceedingly beautiful that Kiyomori was inflamed with love for her, and desired her to become his own concubine.
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