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Updated: June 21, 2025
On the opposite side of Owari Bay lay Ise province, the site of the principal Shinto shrine and the original domain of the Taira family, where, too, the remnants of the Southern Court had their home. Its hereditary governor was a Kitabatake, and even after the union of the two Courts that great family, descendants of the immortal historian and philosopher, Chikafusa, continued to exercise sway.
Such differentiation is of little practical value. Similar lines of demarcation might be drawn in the case of the Taira and Fujiwara themselves. If there were great captains in each of these famous families, there were also great courtiers. To the former category belonged Taira Tadatsune.
Nothing now remained for Yorimasa and Mochihito except to make a desperate rush on Kyoto or to ride away south to Nara, where temporary refuge offered. The latter course was chosen, in spite of Yorimasa's advice. On the banks of the Uji River in a dense fog they were overtaken by the Taira force, the latter numbering twenty thousand, the fugitives three or four hundred.
His last behest, that the head of Yoritomo should be laid on his grave, nerved his successors to fresh efforts. But the stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against the Taira. Kiyomori's son, Munemori, upon whom devolved the direction of the great clan's affairs, was wholly incompetent for such a trust. One gleam of sunshine, however, illumined the fortunes of the Heike.
*Tradition says that among the means employed by Mongaku to move Yoritomo was the exhibition of Yoshitomo's bones. The campaign was opened by Hojo Tokimasa on the 8th of September, 1180. He attacked the residence of the lieutenant-governor of Izu, Taira Kanetaka, burned the mansion, and killed Kanetaka, whose abortive nuptials with the lady Masa had been celebrated a few months previously.
They were debating, and had nearly recognized the propriety of falling back without challenging a combat or venturing their heads further into the tiger's mouth, when something a flight of water-birds, a reconnaissance in force, a rumour, or what not produced a panic, and before a blow had been struck, the Taira army was in full retreat for Kyoto.
Taira instantly gave the order to the engineers to go full speed ahead; but even before the engines could be started, a number of shells came hurtling about us, and one unfortunately passed through the boat's thin side and, without exploding, cut the steam pipe of Number 3 boiler.
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."
This was especially the case on the shoen of the puissant families of Taira and Minamoto. Subsequently, when the Minamoto crushed the Taira , the whole of the latter's estates were distributed by the former among the nobles who had fought under the Minamoto standard.
The shaft grazed the helmet of one warrior and pierced the breast of another. "Shoot it back!" cried Yoshitsuné. "It is short and weak," said Wada, plucking it from the dead man's breast. Taking a longer shaft from his quiver, he shot it with such force and sureness of aim that it passed through the armor and flesh of the Taira bowman and fell into the sea beyond.
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