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Updated: May 14, 2025


The eldest of these was Yoritomo, then only fourteen. After killing two men who attempted to intercept his flight, he fell into the hands of Taira Munekiyo, who, pitying his youth, induced Kiyomori's step-mother to intercede for his life, and he was finally banished to Izu, whence, a few years later, he emerged to the destruction of the Taira.

But Kiyomori's brother, who had interceded for the life of Yoritomo after the Heiji emeule, was pardoned, his rank and property being restored to him; and Taira no Munekiyo, who also had acted an important part in saving Yoritomo at that time, was invited to visit Kamakura where he would have been received with honour; but he declined the invitation, declaring that a change of allegiance at such a moment would be unworthy of a bushi.

Again, it will be remembered that when, as a boy of fourteen, Yoritomo had been condemned to death by Kiyomori, the lad's life was saved through the intercession of Kiyomori's step-mother, Ike, who had been prompted by Taira no Munekiyo.

Munekiyo then determined to save the boy if possible, and he succeeded through the co-operation of Kiyomori's step-mother, whom he persuaded that her own son, lost in his infancy, would have grown up to resemble closely Yoritomo.

WHEN, after the great struggle of 1160, Yoritomo, the eldest of Yoshitomo's surviving sons, fell into the hands of Taira Munekiyo and was carried by the latter to Kyoto, for execution, as all supposed, and as would have been in strict accord with the canons of the time, the lad, then in his fourteenth year, won the sympathy of Munekiyo by his nobly calm demeanour in the presence of death, and still more by answering, when asked whether he did not wish to live, "Yes, since I alone remain to pray for the memories of my father and my elder brothers."

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