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Updated: June 2, 2025
The conspirators, at whose head were the minister of the Left, Soga no Akae, and the minister of the Right, Nakatomi no Kane, aimed at reverting to the times when, by placing on the throne a prince of their own choice, one or two great uji had grasped the whole political power. The prime mover was Kane, muraji of the Nakatomi.
But his brother Noriyori had no qualities at all likely to be dangerously exercised. A commonplace, simple-hearted man, he was living quietly on his estate in Izu when false news came that Yoritomo had perished under the sword of the Soga brothers. Yoritomo's wife being prostrated by the intelligence, Noriyori bade her be reassured since he, Noriyori, survived.
War broke out, fighting took place, and the Buddhist temple was burned and the idols thrown into the river, near Osaka. Great portents followed, and the enemies of Buddhism were, it is said, burned up by flames descending from heaven. The tide then turned in favor of the Indian faith, and Soga rebuilt his temple.
The roles which the five uji mentioned above acted in subsequent history deserve to be studied, and will therefore be briefly set down here. This uji had for founder Koze no Ogara. Thereafter, the heads of the uji occupied prominent positions under successive sovereigns. Soga no Ishikawa founded this uji. Iname's son, Umako, and the latter's son, Yemishi, will be much heard of hereafter.
A miyatsuko, by name Kawakatsu, had the courage to kill the designing preacher of this extravagance, and the moral epidemic was thus stayed. AFTER the fall of the Soga and the abdication of the Empress Kogyoku, her son, Prince Naka, would have been the natural successor, and such was her own expressed wish.
They appreciated that the system prevailing in their own country from time immemorial had developed abuses which were sapping the strength of the nation, and in sweeping the Soga from the path to the throne, their ambition had been to gain an eminence from which the new civilization might be authoritatively proclaimed.
Prince Tamura then ascended the throne he is known in history as Jomei but Soga no Emishi virtually ruled the empire. Jomei died in 641, after a reign of twelve years, and by the contrivance of Emishi the sceptre was placed in the hands of an Empress, Kogyoku, a great-granddaughter of the Emperor Bidatsu, the claims of the son of Shotoku Taishi being again ignored.
Cognate instances might be multiplied. In the year 1193, the first case of the vendetta occurred in Japan. Yoritomo organized a grand hunting party on the moors at the southern base of Fuji-yama. Among those that accompanied him was Kudo Suketsune, who had done to death Soga no Sukeyasu. The elder was killed in the enterprise; the younger, captured and beheaded.
That this represented a part only of the o-muraji's property is held by historians, who point to the fact that the o-omi's wife, a younger sister of the o-muraji, incited her husband to destroy Moriya for the sake of getting possession of his wealth. The deaths of Prince Anahobe and Moriya left the Government completely in the hands of Soga no Umako. There was no o-muraji; the o-omi was supreme.
The minister of state, however, one Soga no Inamé, expressed himself in favor of Buddhism, and put the images in his country house which he converted into a temple. When, soon after, the land was afflicted with a pestilence, the opponents of the new faith attributed it to the wrath of the gods at the hospitality given to the new idols.
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