A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

The most signal result of the Hogen and Heiji insurrections was to transfer the administrative power from the Court nobles to the military chiefs. In no country were class distinctions more scrupulously observed than in Japan. All officials of the fifth rank and upwards must belong to the families of the Court nobility, and no office carrying with it rank higher than the sixth might be occupied by a military man. In all the history of the empire down to the twelfth century there had been only one departure from this rule, and that was in the case of the illustrious General Saka-no-ye no Tamura-maro, who had been raised to the third rank and made dainagon.

The social positions of the two groups were even more rigidly differentiated; those of the fifth rank and upwards being termed tenjo-bito, or men having the privilege of entree to the palace and to the Imperial presence; while the lower group (from the sixth downwards) had no such privilege and were consequently termed chige-bito, or groundlings. The three highest offices (spoken of as san-ko) could not be held by any save members of the Fujiwara or Kuga families; and for offices carrying fifth rank upwards (designated taifu) the range of eligible families extended to only four others, the Ariwara, the Ki, the Oye, and the Kiyowara. All this was changed after the Heiji commotion. The Fujiwara had used the military leaders for their own ends; Kiyomori supplemented his military strength with Fujiwara methods. He caused himself to be appointed sangi (councillor of State) and to be raised to the first grade of the third rank, and he procured for his friends and relations posts as provincial governors, so that they were able to organize throughout the empire military forces devoted to the Taira cause.

These steps were mere preludes to his ambitious programme. He married his wife's elder sister to the ex-Emperor, Go-Shirakawa, and the fruit of this union was a prince who subsequently ascended the throne as Takakura. The Emperor Nijo had died in 1166, after five years of effort, only partially successful, to restrain his father, Go-Shirakawa's, interference in the administration. Nijo was succeeded by his son, Rokujo, a baby of two years; and, a few months later, Takakura, then in his seventh year, was proclaimed Prince Imperial. Rokujo (the seventy-ninth sovereign) was not given time to learn the meaning of the title "Emperor." In three years he was deposed by Go-Shirakawa with Kiyomori's co-operation, and Takakura (eightieth sovereign) ascended the throne in 1169, occupying it until 1180. Thus, Kiyomori found himself uncle of an Emperor only ten years of age. Whatever may have been the Taira leader's defects, failure to make the most of an opportunity was not among them. The influence he exercised in the palace through his sister-in-law was far more exacting and imperious than that exercised by Go-Shirakawa himself, and the latter, while bitterly resenting this state of affairs, found himself powerless to correct it. Finally, to evince his discontent, he entered the priesthood, a demonstration which afforded Kiyomori more pleasure than pain. On the nomination of Takakura to be Crown Prince the Taira leader was appointed—appointed himself would be a more accurate form of speech—to the office of nai-daijin, and within a very brief period he ascended to the chancellorship, overleaping the two intervening posts of u-daijin and sa-daijin. This was in the fiftieth year of his life. At fifty-one, he fell seriously ill and took the tonsure by way of soliciting heaven's aid. People spoke of him as Dajo Nyudo, or the "lay-priest chancellor." Recovering, he developed a mood of increased arrogance. His residence at Rokuhara was a magnificent pile of building, as architecture then went, standing in a park of great extent and beauty. There he administered State affairs with all the pomp and circumstance of an Imperial court. He introduced his daughter, Toku, into the Household and very soon she was made Empress, under the name of Kenrei-mon-in.

Thus completely were the Fujiwara beaten at their own game and the traditions of centuries set at naught. A majority of the highest posts were filled by Kiyomori's kinsmen. Fifteen of his family were of, or above, the third rank, and thirty were tenjo-bito. "Akitsushima (Japan) was divided into sixty-six provinces. Of these thirty were governed by Taira partisans. Their manors were to be found in five hundred places, and their fields were innumerable. Their mansions were full of splendid garments and rich robes like flowers, and the spaces before their portals were so thronged with ox-carriages and horses that markets were often held there. Not to be a Taira was not to be a man."*

*Gen-pei Seisuiki (Records of the Vicissitudes of the Minamoto and the Taira).

It is necessary to note, too, with regard to these manors, that many of them were tax-free lands (koderi) granted in perpetuity. Such grants, as has been already shown, were not infrequent. 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. It is true that similar fiefs existed in the north and in the south, but their number was so greatly increased in the days of Taira ascendancy as almost to constitute a new departure. Kiyomori was, in truth, one of the most despotic rulers that ever held sway in Japan. He organized a band of three hundred youths whose business was to go about Kyoto and listen to the citizens' talk. If anyone was reported by these spies as having spoken ill of the Taira, he was seized and punished. One day Kiyomori's grandson, Sukemori, met the regent, Fujiwara Motofusa, and failing to alight from his carriage, as etiquette required, was compelled by the regent's retinue to do so. On learning of this incident, Kiyomori ordered three hundred men to lie in wait for the regent, drag him from his car and cut off his cue.

PLOTS AGAINST THE TAIRA: KIYOMORI'S LAST YEARS

All these arbitrary acts provoked indignation among every class of the people. A conspiracy known in history as the "Shishi-ga-tani plot," from the name of the place where the conspirators met to consult, was organized in 1177, having for object a general uprising against the Taira. At the Court of the cloistered Emperor the post of gon-dainagon was filled by Fujiwara Narichika, who harboured resentment against Kiyomori's two sons, Shigemori and Munemori, inasmuch as they held positions for which he had striven in vain, the Left and Right generals of the guards. There was also a bonze, Saiko, who enjoyed the full confidence of Go-Shirakawa. In those days any cause was legitimized if its advocates could show an Imperial edict or point to the presence of the sovereign in their midst. Thus, in the Heiji insurrection, the Minamoto received their severest blow when Fujiwara Korekata contrived that, under cover of darkness, the Emperor, disguised as a maid-of-honour in the household of the Empress, should be transported in her Majesty's suite, from the Kurodo palace to the Taira mansion at Rokuhara. The Minamoto were thus transformed into rebels, and the Taira became the representatives of Imperial authority. Therefore, in the Shishi-ga-tani plot the part assigned to the priest Saiko was to induce Go-Shirakawa to take active interest in the conspiracy and to issue a mandate to the Minamoto bushi throughout the country. No such mandate was issued, nor does it appear that the ex-Emperor attended any of the meetings in Shishi-ga-tani, but there can be no doubt that he had full cognizance of, and sympathized with, what was in progress.

The conspiracy never matured. It was betrayed by Minamoto Yukitsuna. Saiko and his two sons were beheaded; Narichika was exiled and subsequently put to death, and all the rest were banished. The great question was, how to deal with Go-Shirakawa. Kiyomori was for leading troops to arrest his Majesty, and to escort him as a prisoner to the Toba palace or the Taira mansion. None of the despot's kinsmen or adherents ventured to gainsay this purpose until Kiyomori's eldest son, Shigemori, appeared upon the scene. Shigemori had contributed much to the signal success of the Taira. Dowered with all the strategical skill and political sagacity which his father lacked, he had won victories for the family arms, and again and again had restrained the rash exercise of Kiyomori's impetuous arrogance. The Taira chief had learned to stand in awe of his son's reproaches, and when Shigemori declared that he would not survive any violence done to Go-Shirakawa, Kiyomori left the council chamber, bidding Shigemori to manage the matter as he thought fit.* Thus, Go-Shirakawa escaped all the consequences of his association with the conspirators. But Kiyomori took care that a copy of the bonze Saiko's confession, extracted under torture and fully incriminating his Majesty, should come into the Imperial hands.

*It is recorded that, on this occasion, Kiyomori, learning of his son's approach, attempted unsuccessfully to conceal under priestly robes the armour he had donned to go to the arrest of Go-Shirakawa.