Taira Kiyomori

Japanese military leader

• Born: 1118
• Birthplace: Japan
• Died: March 21, 1181
• Place of death: Heian-kyo (now Kyoto), Japan

A warrior who rose to power in the last years of aristocratic government in Japan, Taira Kiyomori used political connections and the marriages of his daughters to control the imperial court. Shortly after his death, his family was destroyed, marking the most dramatic rise and fall of a family in Japanese history.

Early Life

Taira Kiyomori (ti-rah kee-yoh-moh-ree) was the son of the great warrior Taira Tadamori, whose military family had formed an alliance with retired emperors at the Japanese court. Both sides prospered from this alliance as the aristocratic Fujiwara family, which had dominated imperial government for generations, declined in power.

Actually, there is some doubt about Kiyomori’s parentage on both sides. He may have been the son of the emperor Shirakawa (r. 1073-1087, cloistered r. 1086-1129), who asked that Tadamori rear him as a warrior. His mother was said to be Lady Gion, a favorite mistress of Shirakawa. She was apparently very pious, for she commissioned costly Buddhist services, but little is known about her influence or the early training of the young Kiyomori. Imperial patronage helped gain for him important appointments and governorships in southwest Japan and the Inland Sea. These areas were important sources of revenue, because trade with the Song Dynasty (Sung; 969-1279) in China flowed through their harbors, many of which Kiyomori developed.

In twelfth century Japan, the aristocratic court in the imperial capital of Kyoto retained its prestige, but real power had fallen into the hands of warrior clans in the provinces. Some of these warriors realized that their ignorance of classical learning and lack of refined taste made them inferiors in the eyes of the nobility. The Ise branch of the Taira (the name can also be read Heike or Heishi) was particularly aware of this problem, as it was based near the capital. Kiyomori’s reputed father, Tadamori, took an interest in cultivating the arts and gained the favor of the court, including influential women. His rise in rank and privilege was a result of his provincial power base and successful currying of favors at the court. When Tadamori died in 1153, Kiyomori was ready to take his place.

Life’s Work

Kiyomori led his family to its peak of power in the 1170’, but his stubborn temperament also created many enemies who would crush the Taira family in 1185. He played a central but unsuccessful role in the transition from aristocratic to warrior rule in medieval Japan.

When Kiyomori took over the leadership of his powerful family in 1153, a complicated power structure existed in Japan. Retired emperors appointed a share of the country’s provincial governorships in return for protection of their private estates, and Taira estate managers profited from this imperial patronage system. Kiyomori was able to strengthen his influence at the court during two brief but important factional struggles.

The first was the Hōgen disturbance of 1156. Kiyomori and Minamoto Yoshitomo defended Go-Shirakawa (r. 1155-1158, cloistered r.1158-1192) against a coup attempt by the abdicated emperor Sutoku (r. 1123-1142) and Minamoto Tameyoshi. Yoshitomo was less generously rewarded than Kiyomori, so he attempted to rectify this slight in another coup attempt (Heiji disturbance) in 1159 directed against Go-Shirakawa, who was then a retired emperor, and Kiyomori. Unfortunately for the Minamoto warrior clan, Kiyomori was able to crush their uprising and make himself dominant as a member of the most powerful military family at the court.

Because he now had military control of the capital and court, Kiyomori was able to place Taira family members and supporters in many important posts for the next twenty years. Until he finally crushed all opposition to his position in 1179, however, there was an uneasy sharing of power with Go-Shirakawa, his former sponsor. In fact, Japanese scholar Ishimoda Sho has argued that in sharing authority, Go-Shirakawa had the upper hand until 1179 and that Kiyomori, far from being in control of Japan, had yet to emerge as the clear ruler even of Kyoto.

It is clear that Kiyomori continued to receive official appointments from the retired emperor, continuing the patron-client relationship. For his part, Go-Shirakawa was able to build up a huge landed base to support the imperial family. Facing no real military threat from the defeated Minamoto or other warrior clans, Kiyomori could have seized complete power, but he preferred to work within the old system of court alliances, marrying his daughters into the aristocracy and leaving the influential Fujiwara family their hereditary posts.

In 1160, Kiyomori received the rank of imperial adviser, and he was appointed to the grand council of state. He also was given the office of chief police commissioner in the capital. None of these positions had ever been held by a warrior from the provinces, and the nobility resented his rise to prominence. As Kiyomori placed his sons and followers in more and more official posts, nearly all political factions turned against him in the 1170’. Plots were frequent as hostility toward the perceived arrogance of the Taira clan grew. Kiyomori had suffered an illness in 1168, and that, or a lack of discretion, led him to abandon the delicate compromise at the court.

In 1177, discontent surfaced in a plot by several of Go-Shirakawa’s followers. The incident was precipitated by the assignment of a military title coveted by one of Go-Shirakawa’s advisers to Kiyomori’s heir, Shigemori. This Shishigatani affair, named after the valley in which the conspiracy was hatched, was revealed by one of Kiyomori’s spies. Kiyomori rebuked his former patron, Go-Shirakawa, replaced high officials with Taira clansmen, seized Fujiwara land, and executed many of his enemies.

Despite the ruthlessness of Kiyomori’s suppression of the Shishigatani plot, opposition to his control continued to grow. In 1179, his enemies and Go-Shirakawa sought to take advantage of two misfortunes that befell the Taira house. Kiyomori’s daughter, who had married into the Fujiwara family to gain control of their land, died. The retired emperor seized the land. Only two months later, Kiyomori’s heir, Shigemori, also died, and Echizen Province was confiscated.

It appeared that the court was getting out of control, so once again Kiyomori ordered his troops into the capital in December, 1179. He placed Go-Shirakawa under house arrest, dismissed all officials opposed to his rule, and appointed his kinsmen in their place. Although Kiyomori’s personal power was greatly enlarged by the takeover of the capital, his actions destroyed the fragile balance of court power and threatened the economic and political interests of major Kyoto institutions, including the powerful monasteries.

In 1180, discontent surfaced yet again when Prince Mochihito, a son of Go-Shirakawa who had been passed over for succession, joined with Minamoto Yorimasa and several temples to overthrow the Taira. They were soon pursued by Taira troops to the banks of the Uji River, where Yorimasa, an ally of Kiyomori in the 1150’, committed seppuku (ritual suicide) within the grounds of a peaceful temple. Mochihito was also killed, but his call to arms against the Taira had reached the eastern provinces of Japan, where Minamoto Yoritomo, a son of Yoshitomo who was spared by Kiyomori in 1160, gathered around him a powerful military alliance. Mochihito’s move marked the beginning of the Gempei War (1180-1185), which ended with the Minamoto (Genji) destroying the Taira in 1185.

Kiyomori’s last years were therefore ones of danger and growing animosity to his rule. He had to rely on an army of informers and spies and was surrounded by troops at all times. To help forestall further plots, Kiyomori moved the court to his base at Fukuhara (modern Kōbe) in late 1180, but he was forced to return the court to Kyoto after six months. Not long after the return to Kyoto, Kiyomori took to his deathbed, dying of a fever on March 21, 1181. His last request was not for a Buddhist service but rather that Yoritomo be killed and his head be placed on his tomb. Kiyomori’s own death was not mourned by the court, and the official histories do not treat him sympathetically.

His son Munemori, a man of limited abilities, was left in charge, but the days of Taira power were already numbered. Early in 1180, Kiyomori’s grandson had become the emperor Antoku. Kiyomori was fond of the infant and hoped that he would perpetuate the Taira line, but he was destined to die a tragic death, one that is deeply ingrained in the Japanese mind through the classic war epic that depicts the military defeat of the Taira by the revived Minamoto clan, the Heike monogatari (c. 1240; The Tale of the Heike, 1918-1921).

This work is Japan’s greatest medieval war chronicle, and it tells of the Minamoto victories that drove the Taira from the capital in 1183 and forced them away from their base of power in the Inland Sea in 1184. The clan was destroyed in 1185 with the drowning of the young emperor Antoku (r. 1180-1185) in the last stand of the Taira in the famous sea Battle of Dannoura.

Then and now The Tale of the Heike is a reminder that those who flourish are destined to fall, a Buddhist message regarding the impermanence of things. In the opening paragraph of the epic, Kiyomori’s fate is predicted: “The brave and violent man he too must die away in the end, like a whirl of dust in the wind.”

Significance

Although Taira Kiyomori is not treated with sympathy in The Tale of the Heike, he played an important role in the transition from aristocratic court government in Japan to the warrior rule of the Kamakura (1185-1333) and later periods. Kiyomori at first ruled in cooperation with Go-Shirakawa, but his nepotism and provincial origins were resented and finally resisted by a court full of pride but with little real power beyond tradition.

The continuing prestige of that tradition was what attracted Kiyomori to the court and caused him to create a military coalition centered in Kyoto. His very success in gaining control over official positions and adopting the values of the court may have separated him from his warrior followers in the provinces. In any case, it was the resurrected Minamoto clan, led by Minamoto Yoritomo, that represented the new power of the provincial warrior class that would rise and destroy Kyoto-centered political authority in Japan.

Much has been written by court officials about the errors of Kiyomori and his character defects, yet the message that comes down through the ages is a tragic tale of the impermanence of glory. It was not only the Taira clan that perished in 1185 but also the last vestiges of the Heian court-dominated society and most of the refined aristocratic values that the aristocratic age embodied. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Kiyomori and his clan was that they were crushed in the transition from one great period of Japanese history to the next.

Bibliography

Hall, John W., and Jeffrey P. Mass, eds. Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History. 1974. Reprint. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988. Eleven essays and an epilogue by scholars of medieval Japan. The chapters on insei (retired emperor) government by G. Cameron Hurst and on the emergence of the Kamakura government by Mass provide insights on Kiyomori.

Hurst, G. Cameron. Insei: Abdicated Sovereigns in the Politics of Late Heian Japan, 1086-1185. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. An important study of the institution of insei, who made the important decisions of state. Retired emperors such as Go-Shirakawa could ignore the sitting emperor (often an infant) and establish channels of imperial government. Chapter 7 analyzes the complicated relationship between Kiyomori and Go-Shirakawa.

Mass, Jeffrey P. Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura Bakufu, Shugo, and Jitō. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974. Analysis of how power shifted from the court to local power bases of warrior clans. Mass argues that until 1179 Kiyomori shared power and benefits with his patron, the retired emperor Shirakawa.

Mass, Jeffrey P. Yoritomo and the Founding of the First Bakufu. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999. Revisionist work stressing Yoritomo’s conservatism and the slow implementation of his system.

Mass, Jeffrey P., ed. Court and Bakufu in Japan: Essays in Kamakura History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982. Nine articles consider the development of feudal institutions in Japan following the demise of the Taira.

Morris, Ivan. The Nobility of Failure. 1975. Reprint. New York: Penguin Books, 1980. A highly readable survey of failed heroes in Japanese history. Chapter 5 deals with Minamoto Yoshitsune.

Sansom, George. A History of Japan to 1334. Vol. 1. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958. A classic study of early Japanese history that is still valuable for its lucid style, although many of the details and interpretations have been revised by later studies. Contains a chapter on Kiyomori that discusses his character, the Shishigatani affair, the dangers of monastic armies, and Kiyomori’s enemies.

The Tale of the Heike. 2 vols. Translated by Hiroshi Kitagawa and Bruce T. Tsuchida. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1975-1977. A careful translation of Heike monogatari, Japan’s greatest war chronicle. This thirteenth century epic culminates in the three battles that destroyed the Taira. It is the most important source for Nō drama, and its tales are found in Kabuki and puppet theater, as well as modern film and television.

The Tale of the Heike. Translated by Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988. A translation of the famous war epic by a respected scholar of classical Japanese. Contains an introduction by the translator.

Yoshitsune: A Fifteenth-Century Japanese Chronicle. Translated by Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1966. A translation and introduction to a medieval war tale that depicts the life of the most famous figure of his time, Minamoto Yoshitsune, who defeated the Taira and was in turn killed by his brother Yoritomo.