The Rise and Fall of the Heike

Near the end of the twelfth century in Japan, amidst decades of political meddling by the Fujiwara clan in Imperial court politics, an upstart samurai warlord named Taira no Kiyomori took control of his own clan, the Heike (平家) clan,¹ in 1159. The Heike were one of several offshoots of Imperial offspring in last generation and hung around the Imperial Court as minor aristocrats, lowly samurai, etc.

By 1179 Kiyomori seized control of the capitol in a coup. The head of his hated rivals, the Genji (源氏) clan,² was executed and his sons forced to live in separate provinces. The capitol was effectively under a military dictatorship under the guise of maintaining the Imperial Court, with Taira no Kiyomori pressuring the Emperor to award him the court rank of 1st rank junior (just under the Emperor). Kiyomori was said to wear brash clothing and flaunt Court etiquette. As he held onto power at the expense of the Emperor he could do what he wanted.

The Genji were now scattered, but not defeated. In time, starting with Minamoto no Yoritomo, they were able to gather allies, including a Heike-offshoot: the Hojo Clan. Further, the brothers of the Genji clan gradually reunited under Yoritomo, including the famous warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and push back the Heike. This “Genpei War” culminated with the navel battle of Dan-no-ura, when the Heike were almost totally wiped out and a couple of the Imperial sacred treasures were reportedly lost.

But by the time of Dan-no-ura, Taira no Kiyomori was already dead. Taira no Kiyomori has become something of a power-hungry villain in Japanese lore since the Tales of the Heike, and subsequent media. His death is dramatized as coming from a terrible illness with a fever so hot that no one could approach him, while in his fever dream he was said to have seen the denizens of hell waiting for him including Enma the Judge of the Underworld.

As the opening lines of the Tales of the Heike eloquently state, the powerful do not last long, and ultimately self-destruct. So it was with Kiyomori and the Heike.

P.S. The larger Heike clan persisted long after the Genpei War, mostly through off-shoots such as the Hojo, Miura, and so on. But Taira no Kiyomori’s ambitions were crushed and his immediately family and forces destroyed at Dan-no-ura. Minamoto no Yoritomo, for his part, wasn’t exactly a saintly figure either. Yoritomo’s own family and sons were hemmed in by the Hojo Clan who managed all the actual affairs of the new Kamakura Shogunate, relegating these new “warlords” to figurehead positions. Ah, politics. 🤦🏻‍♂️

¹ Also called the Taira clan. The Chinese character 平 can be read as either hei or taira. Welcome to the world of Japanese kanji.

² Same situation: 源 can be read as gen or as minamoto. They were another imperial offshoot clan with similar status to the Heike.