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Updated: May 21, 2025
The Taira fleet consisted of five hundred vessels, which held not only the fighting men, but their mothers, wives, and children, among them the dethroned mikado, a child six years of age. The Minamoto fleet was composed of seven hundred junks, containing none but men. In the battle that followed, the young leader of the Minamoto showed the highest intrepidity.
One of these, the Nakatomi, held, and still holds, the highest hereditary priesthood: the Nakatomi were, under the Emperor, the chiefs of the ancestral cult. All the great clans of early Japanese history such as the Fujiwara, the Taira, the Minamoto were Kuge; and most of the great regents and shoguns of later history were either Kuge or descendants of Kuge.
The explanation is that Tokimasa belonged to a large group of provincial Taira who were at once discontented because their claims to promotion had been ignored, and deeply resentful of indignities and ridicule to which their rustic manners and customs had exposed them at the hands of their upstart kinsmen in Kyoto.
Munemori, refusing to listen to the counsels of the more resolute among his officers, applied the torch to the Taira mansions at northern and southern Rokuhara, and, taking with him the Emperor Antoku, then in his sixth year, his Majesty's younger brother, and their mother, together with the regalia the mirror, the sword, and the gem retired westward, followed by the whole remnant of his clan.
Approached by Nobuyori, Yoshitomo joined hands with the plotters, and the Minamoto troops, forcing their way into the Sanjo palace, set fire to the edifice and killed Shinzei . The Taira chief, Kiyomori, happened to be then absent in Kumano, and Yoshitomo's plan was to attack him on his way back to Kyoto before the Taira forces had mustered.
In 1156 there were rival claimants for the throne, one supported by each of these great families. The Taira party succeeded, got possession of the palace, and controlled the emperor whom they had raised to the throne. Kiyomori soon attained the highest power in the realm, and in him the military caste first rose to pre-eminence.
But by this time the Taira were in motion. Kiyomori had despatched a body of fifty thousand men under Koremori, and Yoritomo had decided to meet this army on the banks of the Fuji river.
What he hoped to gain by this is not very clear, but it told against his own side, for the noise of the flocks was thought by the Taira force to be due to a night attack from their foes, and they fled in a sudden panic.
The chief obstacle to conferring on him the title of chancellor had been that the records contained only one instance of a military man's appointment to that exalted post. That instance was Taira no Kiyomori, whose example should have been deterrent to a Minamoto.
" Uda " of Omi, called also the Sasaki family " Saga " of Settsu " " " Watanabe " Hizen " of Hizen " " " Matsuura The Taira family became famous from the time of Sadamori, who quelled the insurrection of Masakado. Of this clan, there were these branches: The Daijo-uji of Hitachi, so called because for generations they held the office of daijo in Hitachi.
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