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Updated: June 21, 2025
It has been related above that one of Kiyomori's politic acts after the Heiji insurrection was to give his daughter to the regent; that, on the latter's death, his child, Motomichi, by a Fujiwara, was entrusted to the care of the Taira lady; that a large part of the Fujiwara estates were diverted from the regent and settled upon Motomichi, and that the latter was taken into a Taira mansion.
The father of this Taira chief was a soldier whose valor had won him a large estate. Nobunaga added to it, built himself a strong castle, and became the friend and patron of the last of the Ashikaga, whom he made shogun. After two hundred and thirty-eight years of dominion the lordship of the Ashikaga thus came to an end.
Arrived at Fukuhara, they devoted a night to praying, making sacred music, and reading Sutras at Kiyomori's tomb, whereafter they set fire to all the Taira palaces, mansions, and official buildings, and embarked for the Dazai-fu in Chikuzen. They reckoned on the allegiance of the whole of Kyushu and of at least one-half of Shikoku.
Yoshitsune selected for the venture seventy-five men, among them being Benkei, Hatakeyama Shigetada, and others of his most trusted comrades. They succeeded in riding down the steep declivity, and they rushed at the Taira position, setting fire to everything inflammable. What ensued is soon told.
But they had been made, for the most part, to civilian officials, by whose serfs they were farmed, the proceeds being forwarded to Kyoto for the support of their owners; whereas the koden bestowed on Taira officers were, in effect, military fiefs.
Moreover, it is not extravagant to suppose, in view of the extraordinary abilities subsequently shown by Tokimasa, that he presaged the instability of the Taira edifice long before any ominous symptoms became outwardly visible. At any rate, while remaining Yoritomo's ostensible warden, he became his confidant and abettor. This did not happen immediately, however.
In these newly won provinces Yoritomo placed military governors and nominated to these posts Doi Sanehira and Kajiwara Kagetoki, heroes, respectively, of the cryptomeria forest and the hollow tree. But this contributed little to the solution of the vital problem, how to get at the Taira in Shikoku and in Kyushu.
In the days of the Fujiwara and the Taira more than one-half of the arable land throughout the empire was absorbed into such estates, which paid no taxes to anyone except their direct owners. Hence it became customary for provincial governors not to proceed in person to the place of their function.
CIVIL WAR: FEUDALISM. The final struggle of the two clans, the Hei or Taira, and the Gen or Minamoto, was in the naval battle of Dannoura, in 1185, which was followed by the extermination of the Taira. Yoritomo, the victor, was known as the Shogun after 1192. The supremacy of his clan gave way in 1219 to that of their adherents, the Hojo family, who ruled the Shogun and the emperor both.
The manner of Yoshitomo's death, too, reveals something of the ethics of the bushi in the twelfth century. Accompanied by Kamada Masaie and a few others, the Minamoto chief escaped from the fight and took refuge in the house of his concubine, Enju, at Awobaka in Owari. There they were surrounded and attacked by the Taira partisans. The end seemed inevitable.
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