The first year of Chogen (1028).
In the east, a large-scale rebellion broke out that shook the court to its foundations.
The man at its center was Taira no Tadatsune.
One of the foremost warriors of Bando, he had built an enormous power base centered on Kazusa and Shimosa, and had also served as constabulary officer of Musashi Province.
Tadatsune invaded Awa Province and burned to death its governor, the Governor of Awa, Koretada. He then seized the Kazusa provincial headquarters and took the provincial officials into custody.
The court immediately ordered his subjugation.
But what followed dragged on for a very long time.
The commander dispatched from Kyoto, Taira no Naokata, spent roughly three years without ever bringing Tadatsune to heel.
The fighting spread across the three Boso provinces of Kazusa, Shimosa, and Awa; fields fell to ruin, people fled, and provincial administration itself collapsed.
Then, in the fourth year of Chogen (1031).
The court finally replaced its commander.
The newly chosen man was Minamoto no Yorinobu.
The founder of the Kawachi Genji line that would later lead to Minamoto no Yoriyoshi, Minamoto no Yoshiie, and eventually Minamoto no Yoritomo.
Then something strange happened.
Tadatsune, who had resisted the court’s army for three years, surrendered to Yorinobu without a single battle.
The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune cannot be understood by asking only “who was stronger.”
Why did Tadatsune rebel in the first place?
Why could Taira no Naokata not subdue him, while Minamoto no Yorinobu ended the rebellion without fighting at all?
The answer reveals a new kind of power relationship taking shape in the eastern provinces of Heian Japan: bonds of lord and vassal among warriors themselves.
Roughly 90 years after Masakado’s rebellion — Bando stirs again
The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune began in 1028, 88 years after Taira no Masakado’s rebellion was crushed in 940 (the rebellion of Taira no Masakado is covered in this article — Japanese only).
The stage was the same eastern provinces.
Tadatsune himself descended from the same Kanmu Taira line as Masakado.
Tracing the lineage:
Prince Takamochi
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Taira no Yoshifumi
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Taira no Tadayori
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Taira no Tadatsune
His grandfather Taira no Yoshifumi was a warrior known for spreading his power across Bando.
Tadatsune inherited this base and expanded his power, centered on Kazusa and Shimosa.
Having served as Vice Governor of Kazusa, Acting Vice Governor of Shimosa, and constabulary officer of Musashi, he was no mere local strongman.
He held court offices, while on the ground he had grown, on the strength of his vast private landholdings and military force, into a figure who overshadowed the provincial governors themselves.
The Konjaku Monogatarishu describes Tadatsune as a man who moved Kazusa and Shimosa entirely as he wished, so powerful that he paid no heed even to the public duties owed to the court.
By the early eleventh century, Boso had already given rise to an enormous local power that provincial governors dispatched from Kyoto could no longer easily control.
Why did he rebel? — this was never a war that began as “treason against the court”
The single most important point in understanding the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune is not to assume that Tadatsune raised arms from the start intending to overthrow the Kyoto court itself.
The spark was a clash between a provincial governor and a local power.
A “zuryo” was the resident governor who actually traveled to his province and personally oversaw tax collection and administration.
By the mid-Heian period, the court had tightened its system for securing a fixed amount of tax and goods from the provinces.
Collecting that tax was the zuryo’s job.
Meanwhile, powerful local figures like Tadatsune held land on the ground, commanded armed men, and had built their own spheres of power.
Naturally, “the tax-collecting governor” and “the local power holding land and arms” were bound to clash.
Tadatsune held enough power in Kazusa and Shimosa to neglect his public duties and ignore the governor’s orders entirely. The Yamakawa Dictionary of Japanese History likewise positions the rebellion as fundamentally an instance of anti-governor conflict, a pattern breaking out across the country at the time.
What is more, Tadatsune was never simply “a local armed strongman.”
He held titles such as Vice Governor of Kazusa, Acting Vice Governor of Shimosa, and constabulary officer of Musashi, standing at the very top of the resident-official class that wielded real influence within the provincial government offices themselves. In other words, Tadatsune was never fully separate from the court’s provincial administration — he held enormous land and military power precisely from within that very system.
When a new zuryo arrived from Kyoto, he had to collect taxes. Tadatsune’s side had to defend the land, connections, and provincial posts handed down from his ancestors.
A clash of interests was inevitable.
In other words, the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune was never simply “the court against a rebel.”
Who actually controlled the provinces?
It was also a struggle over exactly that question.
This was an age in which incidents of local powers appealing to the central government against a zuryo broke out across the country, as with the Owari Petition (covered in this article — Japanese only), in which the district officials and commoners of Owari Province accused the governor Fujiwara no Motonaga of tyrannical rule.
In Tadatsune’s case, this conflict escalated not into a petition, but into open armed clash.
And the character of Bando itself compounded this. Far from Kyoto, in a region where local powers held their own military strength, the ability to resolve a dispute by one’s own force was, in itself, political power.
Before Tadatsune, another man had already burned a provincial headquarters — the rebellion of Taira no Koretsura
Looking only at the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune, the events of 1028 can seem to appear out of nowhere.
But 25 years earlier, an incident had already occurred in the east in which a provincial headquarters was burned.
In the fifth year of Choho (1003), Taira no Koretsura set fire to the Shimosa provincial headquarters.
Koretsura, sometimes identified with Taira no Koremochi, later known as “the General of Yogo,” was a warrior connected to the Sadamori line of the Taira.
The court ordered Koretsura’s subjugation, but the incident never escalated into large-scale punishment. Koretsura’s side had ties to Fujiwara no Michinaga and other central military nobles, and it is thought that these private connections to powerful figures in Kyoto influenced the outcome.
This precedent mattered a great deal to Tadatsune.
Even a violent clash with a provincial governor could, in some cases, be halted through appeals to powerful nobles in Kyoto.
In 1028, Tadatsune too would begin working the same kind of channels in the capital.
1028 — burning the Governor of Awa, Koretada, to death
And then, in the first year of Chogen (1028), the decisive incident finally occurred.
Tadatsune invaded Awa Province.
His target was the provincial governor, the Governor of Awa, Koretada.
Koretada came under attack from Tadatsune’s forces and burned to death.
Tadatsune then seized the Kazusa provincial headquarters.
The Vice Governor of Kazusa, Agatainukai no Tamemasa, along with his wife and children, was taken into custody by Tadatsune’s side.
A provincial governor was an official governing the provinces in the name of the emperor and the court.
Killing that governor, and seizing the provincial headquarters —
once matters had gone this far, Kyoto could no longer treat it as a minor local dispute.
On the fifth day of the sixth month, in the first year of Chogen (1028).
The court issued an edict ordering the subjugation of Taira no Tadatsune and his son Tsunemasa.
This was the moment the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune turned into a full-scale, nationwide military campaign.
He held the governor prisoner, yet never blocked tribute to the court
An interesting detail appears here.
Tadatsune’s conduct contains what looks, at first, like a contradiction.
Despite seizing the Kazusa headquarters and holding Vice Governor Agatainukai no Tamemasa prisoner, he never interfered with the tribute Tamemasa sent from Kazusa to Minister of the Right Fujiwara no Sanesuke in Kyoto.
He held the governor, yet let tribute to the center pass through unimpeded.
This matters for understanding that Tadatsune was trying to avoid “total war against the emperor and the court itself.”
The party Tadatsune was directly at odds with was the provincial governor sent out from the center.
But by killing the Governor of Awa, he had officially been designated by the court as a target of subjugation.
And so Tadatsune moved to work his political connections in Kyoto.
Tadatsune sent his own retainers to the capital to explain himself before the Imperial Police, and at the same time turned to Minister of the Interior Fujiwara no Norimichi.
Norimichi was Fujiwara no Michinaga’s son, a man at the very heart of the court at the time.
Tadatsune is believed to have already held a private bond of lord and vassal with Norimichi.
Tadatsune tried to use that relationship to have the edict for his subjugation withdrawn.
For a mid-Heian warrior, one’s relationship with the court was never simply a matter of “the state versus the individual.” Serving a powerful Fujiwara noble, and connecting to central politics through that person, was an essential means of survival.
Tadatsune’s efforts failed, and on August 5, the subjugation force set out for the east.
The court had moved to armed subjugation.
“Minamoto no Yorinobu” was among the candidates for commander
The twenty-first day of the sixth month, in the first year of Chogen (1028).
The court debated who should be sent to subdue Tadatsune.
The candidates named were
Taira no Naokata, Taira no Masasuke, Minamoto no Yorinobu, and Nakahara no Nariyuki.
Here, Minister of the Right Fujiwara no Sanesuke pushed for Minamoto no Yorinobu.
Sanesuke, who kept the diary the Shoyuki, was among the most practical and capable senior nobles of his age.
But it was Regent Fujiwara no Yorimichi who pushed instead for Taira no Naokata.
In the end, the men appointed as commanders were Taira no Naokata and Nakahara no Nariyuki.
Minamoto no Yorinobu was not chosen.
This choice would come to carry enormous weight later.
Because, three years later, Yorinobu would end without a single battle the very rebellion that Taira no Naokata could not.
(A full profile of Taira no Naokata is available in English here.)
Taira no Naokata — in fact, a member of the same Kanmu Taira line as Tadatsune
Taira no Naokata, the first commander appointed, also came from an illustrious warrior house.
Naokata belonged to the line of Taira no Sadamori, the man who had struck down Taira no Masakado.
Tadatsune, by contrast, belonged to the line of Taira no Yoshifumi.
In other words, the two men, though both Kanmu Taira, belonged to separate branches.
Tadatsune = the Yoshifumi line. Naokata = the Sadamori line.
This rebellion carried, alongside the conflict between governor and local power, another dimension too: a struggle for supremacy within the Bando Taira themselves.
And this rivalry had not begun suddenly in 1028.
Armed conflict had already broken out, a generation earlier, between Tadatsune’s father, Taira no Tadayori, and Taira no Shigemori, who held power in Hitachi. Tadatsune’s Yoshifumi line and the Sadamori-line Hitachi Taira had been rivals since their ancestors’ own generation.
Naokata, a central military noble of the Sadamori line, also held power in Sagami and Izu. Defeating Tadatsune would weaken the Yoshifumi line’s reach across Boso and into southern Kanto — a golden opportunity for Naokata’s own family to unify the Bando Taira under itself.
From Tadatsune’s perspective, surrendering to Naokata meant not just submitting to the court, but also bowing to a rival branch of the Taira his family had contended with for generations.
Which is why, for Tadatsune, surrendering to Naokata could never be simply a matter of yielding to the court.
It was also a question bound up with the balance of power among the Taira clans of Bando.
The Yamakawa Dictionary of Japanese History likewise characterizes the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune as carrying, alongside anti-governor conflict, a struggle for supremacy within the Bando Taira.
A subjugation force of barely 200 men — departing Kyoto on August 5
Taira no Naokata and the others chosen as commanders did not depart at once.
Preparations and negotiations over the terms of the campaign continued, delaying their departure until August.
August 5.
Taira no Naokata and Nakahara no Nariyuki departed Kyoto.
The troops accompanying them are recorded at 200 men.
Of course, once they entered the east, they could mobilize local governors and armed forces there, so this was never a simple matter of “200 against Tadatsune’s army.”
Even so, as the central government’s initial move against a man who held such enormous power across Kazusa and Shimosa, this could hardly be called a great army.
In the second month of the following year, the second year of Chogen (1029), the court ordered the provinces of the Tokai, Tosan, and Hokuriku circuits to assist in the subjugation.
On the twenty-third of the same month, Naokata’s father, Taira no Koretoki, departed Kyoto as the new Vice Governor of Kazusa.
This was an extraordinary arrangement: the son, as commander, fighting at the front, while his father became governor of Kazusa, the very heart of the rebellion. Father and son, Naokata and Koretoki, together held both the provincial government’s military strength and the central authority to subdue the rebels.
The court further demanded troops and provisions from the provinces, tightening the encirclement of Tadatsune.
Yet the war did not end.
In the sixth month of the second year of Chogen (1029), even as a third edict for subjugation was issued on the grounds that “Tadatsune’s violence has reached its peak,” that same month already saw the recall of Taira no Naokata raised as an issue at court.
Less than a year after his dispatch, doubts about the subjugation campaign had already surfaced in Kyoto.
The other commander, Nakahara no Nariyuki, was no military noble either, and showed a reluctant attitude toward the campaign; he was relieved of duty on the eighth of the twelfth month, in the second year of Chogen.
The task of subjugation was left almost entirely to Naokata and the military forces of Bando.
The Governor of Shimosa, warriors of Hitachi, and forces loyal to the governors of Kazusa and Awa also joined the subjugation army.
Yet Tadatsune did not fall.
Why couldn’t Taira no Naokata win?
Taira no Naokata was a warrior with real military experience in Bando.
Yet he could not bring Tadatsune to heel.
The reasons were not just one.
First, Tadatsune’s roots ran deep in the local soil.
Tadatsune held private lands and strongholds throughout Kazusa and Shimosa, and had won many local powers to his side.
Where the court’s army brought soldiers from Kyoto, Tadatsune’s side fought on ground it already knew.
He knew the terrain, held the local relationships, and had the base to secure his own provisions.
Second, Tadatsune resisted by making use of the mountainous terrain of Boso.
The Shoyuki records that Tadatsune, leading roughly 20 to 30 mounted men, withdrew into a mountainous area recorded as “Ishimiyama” — believed to correspond to the mountains around present-day Isumi District, Chiba Prefecture.
Rather than defending the provincial headquarters and the plains head-on, he withdrew into the mountains and moved his forces as needed.
On the twenty-seventh of the third month, in the third year of Chogen (1030), Tadatsune’s forces advanced into Awa once again. The new Governor of Awa, Fujiwara no Mitsunari, abandoned his official seal and the keys to the provincial granary and fled back to Kyoto.
Even roughly two years into the rebellion, Tadatsune’s army still had enough strength left to drive a provincial governor out of his own province.
Third, the war of subjugation itself was consuming the productive capacity of the region.
The subjugation army, too, had to draw its food and provisions from the land.
This increased the burden on farmers and local residents, exhausting the region as a whole.
The Sakeiki preserves a later account by Vice Governor of Kazusa Tatsushige, describing how, in Tadatsune’s home province of Kazusa, Commander Taira no Naokata and troops from the provinces requisitioned supplies for three straight years, leaving “not a speck of dust” behind.
Tadatsune’s army was not the only force to ravage Boso.
The court’s own subjugation army wore down the region through its own requisitions of provisions and supplies.
The war to defeat Tadatsune destroyed both Tadatsune’s own base and the lives of the people living there, all at once.
The three provinces of Boso became like “a ruined land”
What conveys the sheer scale of devastation in the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune is not the number of battlefield dead alone.
It is that the war ruined the three Boso provinces of Kazusa, Shimosa, and Awa in themselves.
By the third and fourth years of Chogen (1030–1031), Boso faced a serious crisis of people fleeing and famine.
In the third month of the fourth year of Chogen (1031), the Governor of Shimosa, Fujiwara no Tamenori, reported that the province had been “ruined” by the campaign against Tadatsune, its food stores exhausted, and famine setting in. Some of Tamenori’s own wife and children died along the way.
And in the seventh year of Chogen (1034), after the rebellion, the figures reported by Vice Governor of Kazusa Fujiwara no Tatsushige were staggering.
Before the rebellion, Kazusa Province had had more than 22,980 cho of cultivated rice paddy.
But by the end of Taira no Koretoki’s term as governor, a survey found only 18-odd cho still under cultivation.
Against a base of more than 22,980 cho, only about 0.08% remained in actual cultivation.
The Sakeiki even preserves the sentiment, in effect, that “even Masakado’s rebellion caused terrible devastation, but not on this scale.”
Roughly 90 years after Masakado’s rebellion, Boso suffered a blow judged even greater still.
Even by the time Tatsushige took office, only about 50 cho remained.
Through reconstruction efforts and the recall of those who had fled, cultivation finally recovered to roughly 1,200 cho by the seventh year of Chogen (1034).
Even so, this fell far short of pre-rebellion levels.
The court, to aid Kazusa’s recovery, waived state taxes for four years and thereafter allowed the remaining burden to be paid off in installments.
The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune was never simply a matter of warriors fighting each other.
It was a war that destroyed an entire regional society.
1030 — Tadatsune was already seeking peace
The third year of Chogen (1030).
More than two years had already passed since the rebellion began.
The subjugation army under Taira no Naokata could not achieve a decisive result.
Tadatsune’s power remained entrenched in Boso, and only the devastation of the region continued to advance.
In the fifth month of the third year of Chogen (1030), Taira no Naokata requested from the court a fourth edict of subjugation.
But Regent Fujiwara no Yorimichi did not grant it.
Reports indicated that Tadatsune’s forces at “Ishimiyama” were dwindling, and on the twentieth of the same month, word even reached Kyoto that Tadatsune had taken religious vows.
A document submitted on the twenty-third of the sixth month by Naokata, Taira no Koretoki, and the Governor of Musashi, Taira no Muneyori, made it clear that Tadatsune’s side was seeking peace.
The end of the war was already coming into view.
And on July 8, the court decided to recall Taira no Naokata.
Roughly two years into his campaign, having failed to capture Tadatsune, Naokata was summoned back to Kyoto.
In the ninth month of that year, the man chosen as the new commander was one who had already been a candidate two years before.
At the time, Yorinobu was serving as Governor of Kai.
A son of Minamoto no Mitsunaka, his elder brother was Minamoto no Yorimitsu, known for the “Four Guardian Kings of Yorimitsu.”
And Yorinobu himself was the man who would become the founder of the Kawachi Genji line, leaving an enormous mark on the warrior society of later generations.
Why Minamoto no Yorinobu? — Tadatsune had already submitted a “myobu” to him
The reason Yorinobu was chosen was never simply “because he excelled in arms.”
Yorinobu already had ties to the east from before.
Having served as a provincial governor in the east, including as Vice Governor of Hitachi, he had built connections with the warriors of Bando.
And most crucially, Taira no Tadatsune himself already held a private bond of lord and vassal with Yorinobu, formed before the rebellion.
Sources cited in the Sekai Dai Hyakka Jiten hold that Tadatsune, before the rebellion, had submitted a “myobu” — a document bearing his own name — to Yorinobu, becoming his retainer. A myobu was a document one presented to a lord, bearing one’s own name, as a pledge of service.
The Yamakawa Dictionary of Japanese History likewise records Tadatsune as “a retainer of Yorinobu.”
The Konjaku Monogatarishu and the Uji Shui Monogatari further preserve a tale of Yorinobu, once Vice Governor of Hitachi, attacking and subduing the disobedient Tadatsune.
The details of this tale cannot simply be mapped onto the events of 1031. Even so, the fact that Yorinobu and Tadatsune already shared a special relationship offers an important key to understanding how the rebellion ended.
This was the decisive difference from Taira no Naokata.
To Tadatsune, Taira no Naokata was a subjugator arriving from a rival branch of the Bando Taira.
Yorinobu, by contrast, was a lord he had already served.
The court had failed to defeat Tadatsune by military force.
In the end, what it chose was a commander who held the personal relationship needed to make Tadatsune himself submit.
Yorinobu had already won before he even reached Boso
What Yorinobu did from here is genuinely fascinating.
Becoming commander did not mean he immediately marched a great army into Boso.
Yorinobu was, at the time, Governor of Kai.
Sources even record that, as Yorinobu headed toward Bando as commander, he was accompanied by a monk who was Tadatsune’s own son.
And the decisive fact is that Tadatsune surrendered before ever fighting Yorinobu’s army in Boso.
In other words, rather than crushing Tadatsune’s forces head-on, Yorinobu first built “a path by which surrender was possible.”
Tadatsune, who had resisted Taira no Naokata to the bitter end for roughly three years.
Yet once Yorinobu became commander, the situation transformed completely.
April 1031 — Tadatsune travels to Kai with two sons and three retainers
The fourth month of the fourth year of Chogen (1031).
Tadatsune, now in monk’s robes, presented himself before Yorinobu in Kai, accompanied by his two sons and three retainers.
This was his surrender.
No great decisive battle ever took place.
In the votive text Yorinobu later dedicated to Iwashimizu Hachimangu Shrine,
he records, in effect, that he never mustered his troops, beat a drum, raised a banner, drew a bow, or loosed an arrow —
and yet took the rebel captive, as his own achievement.
This is a text in which Yorinobu strongly dramatizes his own achievement. Even so, the core of the event — that Tadatsune surrendered to Yorinobu without any major engagement — matches contemporary records as well.
The man Taira no Naokata could not defeat in roughly three years of fighting, Yorinobu brought to submission without a single battle.
A striking scene showing that the outcome of a war could turn not on force alone, but on the bond of lord and vassal — on “whom one chose to follow.”
The Konjaku Monogatarishu tells a different “Yorinobu against Tadatsune”
The later Konjaku Monogatarishu preserves an even more dramatic tale of the relationship between Yorinobu and Tadatsune.
There, Yorinobu and his son are depicted bearing down on Tadatsune together with a force of several thousand mounted men led by the powerful Hitachi warrior Taira no Koremoto, forcing Tadatsune’s submission.
This, however, differs from the contemporary sources that actually record the rebellion’s conclusion in 1031.
The picture confirmed by Yorinobu’s own votive text and the diaries of senior nobles is that Tadatsune presented himself before Yorinobu in Kai and surrendered.
The tale in the Konjaku Monogatarishu is best read as a story reflecting the martial authority Yorinobu had already built in the east, and his relationship with Tadatsune.
Historical fact, and legend.
Laying the two together makes clear why the people of the time saw Yorinobu as “a man who could make the warriors of Bando submit without ever fighting.”
June 6 — Tadatsune dies in Mino
Having surrendered, Tadatsune was to be escorted to Kyoto by Yorinobu.
But Tadatsune would never again set foot in the capital.
June 6, in the fourth year of Chogen (1031).
He died of illness near Nogami, in Mino Province.
Yorinobu carried Tadatsune’s head and entered Kyoto on June 16.
The end of a man who had shaken the three Boso provinces for roughly three years.
Yet the affair was not entirely closed by Tadatsune’s death alone.
Tadatsune’s sons Tsunemasa and Tsunechika remained in Boso, still not having submitted.
At the court council of June 27, whether to subjugate them was debated, but in the end no large-scale campaign followed, and the path toward pardoning the sons was taken instead.
Their bloodline did not die out either.
From Tadatsune’s descendants would later grow the lines that became the Chiba clan and the Kazusa clan, the leading warrior houses of Boso.
That the story does not end in “a rebel family’s simple annihilation” is itself a defining feature of Heian warrior society.
What Yorinobu gained — not “battlefield victory,” but the reputation of Bando itself
The man who gained the greatest fame from the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune.
That was Minamoto no Yorinobu.
Yorinobu never struck Tadatsune down in a great decisive battle.
If anything, the opposite.
He ended the rebellion without ever fighting.
Which is precisely why his reputation grew so large.
“A man who could make even the great warriors of the east, whom the court’s own armies could not restrain, submit to him.”
This was the reputation he earned.
And through this success, Yorinobu’s descendants strengthened their ties to the warriors of the east still further.
What matters here is not to understand Yorinobu’s victory as “Yorinobu overwhelming Tadatsune with the strongest possible force.”
By 1030, Tadatsune’s side was already exhausted and seeking peace. With Naokata’s recall, and the change of commander to Yorinobu, who already held ties of lord and vassal with him, a man Tadatsune could submit to had finally appeared.
Yorinobu made use of that situation, ending the rebellion without slaughtering large numbers of the enemy on the battlefield.
Which is exactly why his martial reputation rose so high.
What a warrior needed was never simply his own personal strength.
It was the power to bring even his enemies to follow him.
What Yorinobu demonstrated in Bando was precisely this power of a “chieftain.”
Yorinobu’s son was Minamoto no Yoriyoshi. His grandson was Minamoto no Yoshiie, known as “Hachiman Taro.”
Yoriyoshi and Yoshiie, father and son, would go on to build their martial reputation through the Former Nine Years’ War and the Later Three Years’ War in the northeast.
And from that same lineage came
Minamoto no Yoshitomo
↓
Minamoto no Yoritomo
continuing the line down to Yoritomo himself.
Roughly 160 years later, Minamoto no Yoritomo would lead the warriors of the east and build a warrior government at Kamakura.
Among the distant starting points of that story stands the surrender of Taira no Tadatsune in 1031.
The defeated Taira no Naokata marries into the Genji — from here, Yoshiie is born
A fascinating connection emerged in the aftermath of this rebellion.
Taira no Naokata, the first commander, later deepened his relationship with Minamoto no Yorinobu‘s son, Minamoto no Yoriyoshi.
Naokata’s daughter became Yoriyoshi’s wife.
From Naokata’s daughter and Yoriyoshi came Minamoto no Yoshiie, later known as “Hachiman Taro,” along with Kamo Jiro Yoshitsuna and Shinra Saburo Yoshimitsu.
Later tradition also holds that Naokata handed over his residence and lands at Kamakura to Yoriyoshi.
This was Kamakura, the very place that would later become Minamoto no Yoritomo’s base.
Taira no Naokata, who failed in his subjugation campaign against Tadatsune.
His family was bound by marriage to the family of Minamoto no Yorinobu, the man who had ended the rebellion in his place.
The house of the commander who failed to defeat Tadatsune, and the house of the man who brought about Tadatsune’s surrender, came together in marriage once the rebellion had ended.
In the eastern provinces of the early eleventh century, the map of warrior power was already being shaped not only by battle, but by marriage, bonds of lord and vassal, and the inheritance of land.
(A full profile of Taira no Naokata is available in English here.)
1031 — into an age when “an edict” alone could no longer move the east
The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune ran roughly three years, from 1028 to 1031.
The court issued edict after edict of subjugation, sent commander after commander, and mobilized the provinces of the Tokai, Tosan, and Hokuriku circuits.
Even so, for more than two years, it could not bring Tadatsune to submission.
The three Boso provinces were left in ruin, and Kazusa fell into such devastation that, at one point, only 18 cho of paddy remained under cultivation.
In the end, the man the court turned to was Minamoto no Yorinobu.
What lay between Yorinobu and Tadatsune was never merely a matter of central court office.
It was a bond of lord and vassal between warriors themselves.
The moment Tadatsune stood before Yorinobu, he surrendered without a fight.
In that single moment, the shift of the age becomes unmistakably clear.
An edict from Kyoto alone could no longer move the east.
In moving the warriors on the ground, who one held a private bond of lord and vassal with had begun to matter just as much as central court office.
The rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune marks the point from which Minamoto no Yorinobu‘s house — the Kawachi Genji — began to command real presence in the east.
Roughly 30 years later, Yorinobu’s son Yoriyoshi and grandson Yoshiie would head to the Former Nine Years’ War.
And the bond between the warriors of the east and the Genji would only grow stronger still.
In the rebellion of Taira no Masakado, the Taira shook the east.
In the rebellion of Taira no Tadatsune, the Genji who ended it put down roots in the east instead.
And Taira no Tadatsune’s own bloodline did not vanish either.
From Tadatsune’s descendants would later grow the Chiba and Kazusa clans, the leading warrior houses of Boso. Roughly 150 years on, they would become vital forces supporting Minamoto no Yoritomo’s uprising and the founding of the Kamakura government.
The descendants of the Taira who rebelled, and the descendants of the Genji who ended that rebellion.
After 1031, the two deepened their bonds of lord and vassal in the eastern provinces.
Eighty-eight years after the rebellion of Taira no Masakado.
This second great rebellion to shake Bando exposed the weakness of the court’s provincial rule, while at the same time opening the gateway to an age in which the Genji and the warriors of the east would bind themselves together.
(The rivalry of Taira no Korehira and Taira no Muneyori is available in English here, a profile of Taira no Tadatsune himself here, and a profile of Taira no Naokata here.)
