In 998, two Taira warriors clashed in Ise
The fourth year of Chotoku (998).
In Ise Province, two warriors led their forces into open conflict.
Taira no Korehira and Taira no Muneyori.
Both were military nobles descended from the Kanmu Taira line, each surrounded by his own band of armed retainers.
The dispute became a formal matter for the court on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month that same year.
The diary of Fujiwara no Yukinari, the Gonki, records that the court decided to summon the two men after Korehira and Muneyori, leading “many followers,” entered the sacred districts of Ise and burdened the local population.
The sacred districts of Ise were an area deeply tied to the Ise Grand Shrine.
There, two warriors of Fifth Rank serving the court had each led an armed band into open conflict.
This was not something the capital could ignore.
Korehira’s line went on to deepen its ties to Ise, eventually growing into the family known as the Ise Taira.
Far down that line stood a man named Taira no Kiyomori.
Taira no Korehira — grandson of the man who struck down Masakado
Korehira’s grandfather was Taira no Sadamori.
In the third year of Tengyo (940), Sadamori, together with Fujiwara no Hidesato and others, struck down Taira no Masakado.
Fifty-eight years had passed since Masakado’s rebellion.
By Sadamori’s grandsons’ generation, the Taira had spread their activities across many regions.
Korehira was one of them.
In 998, Korehira held the post of Governor of Shimotsuke.
He did not, however, actually govern Shimotsuke as a resident governor. The Korehira who appears in the Gonki was a governor in name only, ruling from a distance.
And one of the places where Korehira had actually been building his own power was Ise.
This becomes enormously significant in hindsight.
Korehira’s descendants made Ise their central base, and from that line came
Taira no Korehira
↓
Taira no Masanori
↓
Taira no Masahira
↓
Taira no Masamori
↓
Taira no Tadamori
↓
Taira no Kiyomori
a line that continued in this way.
Kiyomori would become Chancellor roughly 170 years after Korehira’s own time.
In 998, this family was not yet the “Heike” that would move the whole realm.
They were a family living by military force within the world of the court and its aristocracy.
The other warrior: Taira no Muneyori
Taira no Muneyori, too, was a warrior connected to the Kanmu Taira line.
Getting to know this man reveals a great deal about what a “warrior” actually was at the end of the tenth century.
Muneyori was no rebel standing outside the court.
He was a military noble, connected to the aristocratic society of the capital while personally bearing arms.
At the center of politics at the time stood the emperor and the senior nobles.
It was the age in which Fujiwara no Michinaga was extending his power.
At the same time, the nobility needed men skilled in arms for guard duty, pursuit of criminals, and maintaining order in the provinces.
The men who gained power through this need were Muneyori, Korehira, and, active in the same period, Minamoto no Mitsunaka and his sons Yorimitsu and Yorinobu.
The nobility drove politics. The warriors bore the arms.
At the end of the tenth century, this balance of power was still perfectly clear.
Why did Korehira and Muneyori fight?
This point deserves a careful look.
The records from 998 confirm that the two men clashed by force in Ise.
But the sources do not support flatly stating a cause as simple as “they fought over supremacy in Ise.”
The later Konjaku Monogatarishu preserves a far more human story.
Korehira and Muneyori were both men who competed in martial reputation, and each had people around him whispering insults about the other.
Hearing these over and over, the relationship soured, until at last the two became enemies.
The tale goes further still, describing how Muneyori’s side moved to attack Korehira, and how the fighting that followed left many dead on both sides — among their “descendants, followers, retainers, and kin.”
The court moves — “Do not raise arms on your own authority”
December 14, 998.
The conduct of Korehira and Muneyori became a matter for the court.
It was not only the two men themselves that concerned the court.
It was the fact that they had entered Ise leading large numbers of followers, and had burdened the local population.
At the time, it was also a problem for men of Fifth Rank or above to leave the capital region without proper cause.
The court decided to summon the two men to the capital.
An edict came down on the twenty-sixth of the twelfth month, and on the twenty-ninth the governor of Ise submitted a further report.
From here, the affair shifted from a private feud in the provinces into a matter for judgment by the court itself.
This development is fascinating when set against the warrior society of later ages.
Both Korehira and Muneyori held real military force.
Both had retainers.
Both were fully capable of fighting in the provinces.
And yet, once summoned by the court, they were the ones to be judged.
The warriors were growing stronger. But political authority still belonged to the court.
The position of the year 998 in this larger story comes through with real clarity here.
999 — Korehira apologized. Muneyori did not
The following year, the first year of Choho (999).
The investigation into the two men moved into full swing.
Questioned by the Imperial Police, the two men’s responses diverged sharply.
Korehira submitted a “letter of fault.”
Such a letter was a document acknowledging one’s own wrongdoing, submitted voluntarily.
Muneyori, for his part, submitted no such letter.
On the twenty-sixth of the third month, scholars of law examined the charges, and on the fifth of the fifth month a council of nine senior nobles, led by Fujiwara no Michinaga, deliberated the case.
The deliberations continued further still, into the seventh month and the twelfth.
The court spent months examining a private feud between two warriors from a single province.
That alone shows how serious a matter a clash between armed men had become.
Execution was considered, once
Then, in the twelfth month.
The punishment moved toward severity.
At the council of the fifteenth of the twelfth month, it is said that, had the judgment of legal scholars been followed exactly, both men would have faced execution.
But in the end, the sentence was changed, partly at the wish of Emperor Ichijo.
December 27.
Muneyori was stripped of his court rank and exiled to Oki Province.
Korehira, keeping his Fifth Rank, was relocated to Awaji Province.
A clear difference separated the two men’s sentences.
The later Konjaku Monogatarishu spells out the reason even more plainly.
Muneyori, who struck the first blow, bore the heavier guilt. Korehira, who fought only in response, bore the lighter guilt.
And so, the tale says, Muneyori was sent to the distant island of Oki, while Korehira escaped with a mere relocation to Awaji.
Though this is a narrative shaped for storytelling, the actual punishments really did carry different weights.
That Korehira submitted a letter of fault while Muneyori did not also matters for understanding why.
Exiled to Oki, Muneyori returned within just two years
Muneyori was sent to Oki.
The present-day Oki Islands, Shimane Prefecture.
But he did not spend the rest of his life there.
In the third year of Choho (1001), Muneyori was pardoned and returned to the capital.
Only about two years had passed since his sentence.
And Muneyori’s reputation as a “warrior” never faded.
The later Jikkinsho names Muneyori as one of “the four supreme warriors of the age.”
A man once exiled by the court came to be remembered by later generations as a warrior of the first rank.
Here, too, the values of this age come through clearly.
1007 — Muneyori’s name surfaces in a rumor of a plot to kill Fujiwara no Michinaga
Muneyori has one more striking episode to his name.
The fourth year of Kanko (1007).
When Fujiwara no Michinaga made a pilgrimage to Mount Kinpu, an unsettling rumor swept through the capital.
It claimed that the brothers Fujiwara no Korechika and Takaie, Michinaga’s political rivals, were using Taira no Muneyori to try to kill him.
No assassination actually took place.
Michinaga completed his pilgrimage without incident.
What matters is that Muneyori’s name came up as the rumored “man for the job.”
The Shimane Prefectural Center for Ancient Culture also introduces this episode, preserved in Michinaga’s own diary, the Midokanpakuki.
Why Muneyori?
Because he was known as a man of real martial force.
Nobles contended for power among themselves.
And whenever force became necessary, a warrior appeared on the scene.
Though nothing actually happened, this rumor captures well how close, and how useful, the relationship between the nobility and the warriors had become.
Meanwhile, Minamoto no Yorimitsu stood at Michinaga’s side
Looking at one more figure makes the shape of the age even clearer.
Minamoto no Yorimitsu.
A son of Minamoto no Mitsunaka, later famous for defeating the demon Shuten-doji.
In 1007, when Michinaga returned from Mount Kinpu, Yorimitsu’s name is recorded among those who came out to greet him.
On one hand,
a rumor was circulating that “Muneyori will be used to attack Michinaga.”
On the other,
Minamoto no Yorimitsu stood close by Michinaga’s side.
Both men were military nobles.
In other words, this was not an age in which the warriors stood united as one bloc against the nobility.
Each warrior built his own ties to a powerful noble, and raised his own standing through that relationship.
This point matters.
Korehira, sent to Awaji, did not disappear either
Korehira, too, made his own comeback.
And his is the more striking story.
The twenty-eighth day of the first month, in the third year of Kanko (1006).
The court debated who would become the next Governor of Ise.
The name put forward was Taira no Korehira.
One man reacted strongly to this.
Fujiwara no Michinaga.
Michinaga recorded his objection to appointing Korehira as Governor of Ise in his diary, the Midokanpakuki,
writing, in effect, that it was “an unsuitable idea.”
His main reason was that Korehira already had deep ties to Ise, and was the very man who had caused the incident there.
Yet Michinaga’s objection did not carry the day.
Korehira was appointed Governor of Ise.
The man who had started a private feud in Ise in 998 and been relocated to Awaji
was, eight years later, formally appointed by the court itself as the governor charged with ruling Ise Province.
Few stories illustrate the mid-Heian warrior more clearly than this one.
Even “a dangerous warrior,” the court still put to use
Korehira’s career shows the relationship between the court and its warriors with real clarity.
Raise arms without authorization, and you are punished.
Cause disorder in the provinces, and you are summoned.
If necessary, you are exiled.
But that is not the end of the story.
If you have ability, and remain useful, you are given office once again.
Korehira went on to also serve as Deputy Governor of Kozuke, Governor of Bizen, and Deputy Governor of Hitachi.
To the court, warriors were never mere troublemakers.
They were also necessary for governing the provinces and maintaining order.
And the warriors, for their part, made use of their ties to the court and the nobility.
Gain office. Travel to the province. Build ties with local powers. Gather more retainers. Build an economic base.
Through all of this, a family’s power grew stronger.
This cycle would only grow larger once the eleventh century began.
In this age, the warriors were still “used by the nobility”
Place the year 998 within the wider sweep of Japanese history.
Fifty-eight years after Taira no Masakado was struck down in 940.
120 years before Taira no Kiyomori’s birth in 1118.
182 years before Minamoto no Yoritomo entered Kamakura in 1180.
The age in which warriors would become the true protagonists of politics was still a long way off.
The warriors of this period were men who held court office, formed bonds of lord and vassal with the nobility, and operated within that structure.
This was an age in which the nobility made use of the warriors.
Have them stand guard. Have them chase down bandits. Have them keep order in the provinces. Use them as a military force when necessary.
In exchange, the warriors gained office and economic benefit through their ties to the nobility.
Korehira, Muneyori, Minamoto no Yorimitsu, and others all built their strength within this very system.
But within it lay the seed of a far greater change to come.
To be useful, one first needed strength.
The stronger a warrior was, the more he was valued. The more he was valued, the more office he gained.
The more office he gained, the deeper his ties to the provinces grew.
The deeper his provincial ties grew, the more retainers gathered around him.
And so he grew stronger still.
The very system by which the nobility used the warriors ended up, as a result, raising the warriors themselves.
Beyond Korehira lies Taira no Kiyomori
Korehira’s line grew stronger as it deepened its ties to Ise.
A few generations after Korehira came Taira no Masamori.
Masamori deepened his ties to Retired Emperor Shirakawa, propelling the Ise Taira to a great leap forward in central politics.
His son was Taira no Tadamori.
And Tadamori’s son was Taira no Kiyomori.
In 998, Korehira had been summoned before the court to be judged.
Roughly 170 years later, in the second year of Nin’an (1167),
his descendant Taira no Kiyomori rose to Chancellor.
The same family had gone from warriors judged by the court, to warriors holding the highest office the court had to offer.
In the time between, the standing of warriors in Japanese society changed dramatically.
And that change was never confined to Korehira’s family alone.
On another front, the Seiwa Genji were growing as well.
Minamoto no Mitsunaka’s son, Minamoto no Yorinobu.
Thirty years after Korehira and Muneyori fought in Ise in 998.
In the first year of Chogen (1028), a great rebellion broke out in the east.
The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune.
The court struggled to suppress it, and in the end had to rely on one man.
That man was Minamoto no Yorinobu.
From “an age in which the nobility used the warriors” to “an age in which the court could no longer hold the provinces without the warriors’ own strength.”
The standing of the warriors would go on changing from here.
(The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune is available in English here, and a profile of Taira no Tadatsune himself here.)
