The military clash that erupted in the capital in the first year ofHogen (1156) resulted from a quarrel that deeply divided the impe rial family and from rivalries within the Fujiwara regental family (sekkanke). The administrative organization of the retired emperor’s household, the inset or cloister government (see Chapter 9), shaped by Shirakawa, was perpetuated by Toba and Go-Shirakawa, who successively wielded power as senior retired emperor (hon’in) until the latter’s death in 1192. This unusual system of administration was effective in improving the economic resources of the imperial family and in reducing the influence of the Fujiwara regents, but it led totensions within the imperial family. The dominant role of the clois tered emperor in governmental matters as well as family affairs was resented by the reigning emperor and his entourage, and by junior retired emperors who were excluded from the powers of the senior position.
Shirakawa controlled the court during the reigns of his sonHorikawa, his grandson Toba, and Sutoku, supposedly his great grandson. (According to the Kojidan, a thirteenth-century collection of tales and anecdotes, it was common knowledge that Sutoku, theson ofToba’s consort, Shirakawa’s «adopted daughter» Taikemmonin [Fujiwara no Shoshi], was actually fathered by Shirakawa.) Shi rakawa required Toba to abdicate in favor of Sutoku.
Upon Shi rakawa’s death in 1129, Toba, succeeding as senior retired emperor,immediately began to undo much of what Shirakawa had accom plished. He replaced Shirakawa’s closest retainers, but Taira noTadamori managed to retain his position as the main military re tainer. Toba recalled the former regent, Fujiwara no Tadazane, who had been banished from the court by Shirakawa. Tadazane made plans to reestablish the fortunes of the regental family by reunifyingits divided estates, which had diminished under Go-Sanjo and Shi rakawa, and by expanding existing shoen. In 1150 he also attempted to remove his son Tadamichi from the position of regent in order to entrust leadership of the clan to his favored younger son, Yorinaga.
However, Yorinaga was outmaneuvered by his half brother Tadamichi andToba’s consort Bifukumon-in (Fujiwara noTokushi). Ac cused of causing the illness of which Emperor Konoe died in 1155 by sticking needles into the eyes of a statue of the emperor, Yorinagawas excluded from the court and a bitter rivalry divided the regen tal family.
Toba had forced Sutoku to abdicate in 1141 in favor of his younger»brother» Konoe. Sutoku then pinned his hopes on his own son be coming crown prince, but when Konoe died in 1155, Toba selected another of his own sons, Go-Shirakawa, as emperor and the latter’sson as crown prince (the future emperor Nijo). Sutoku was still determined that his son should gain the throne, and that, as a consequence, he himself would become the senior retired emperor as fa ther of the reigning emperor. He was supported in this ambition by Yorinaga, who aimed to wrest the leadership of the regental house from Tadamichi. When Toba fell critically ill the next year, Sutoku sought military supporters.
The fraternal quarrels between Go-Shirakawa and Sutoku and be tween Tadamichi and Yorinaga would likely have been resolved inearlier centuries by maneuver, political manipulation, and a judi cious use of exile, but the ready availability now of military forces was a temptation too great for either side to resist.
It was rumoredthat Sutoku and Yorinaga, who were backed militarily by the Mi namoto toryo Tameyoshi, and by Taira no Tadamasa (younger brother of Tadamori), were about to «mobilize troops and overthrow the state.»
Taira no Tadamori’s son, Kiyomori, and Tameyoshi’s son, Yoshitomo, who was on bad terms with his father, followed bymost of the Minamoto row, aligned themselves with the imperial fac tion of Go-Shirakawa. The dying Toba issued orders to his military chiefs, Kiyomori and Yoshitomo, to mobilize their retainers for the defense of his palace near the junction of the Kamo and Katsura rivers south of the city, and also Go-Shirakawa’s Takamatsu palace.
With the death of Toba on the second day of the seventh month, Su toku became concerned for his own personal safety and summoned such military support as he could command: Yoshitomo’s father, Tameyoshi, and two of Tameyoshi’s junior sons; Minamoto warriors from Yamato province; some Taira warriors, most notably Sutoku’s favorite Tadamasa; Yorinaga and the armed men he had mustered from his shoen; and the armed monks of the Kofukuji Temple at Nara. The warriors responding to Sutoku’s call included formidable fighters, but among them theYamato Minamoto were taken prisoner by Go-Shirakawa’s men before they reached the capital, and the Kofukuji monks never arrived, so that the total number of fighters defending Sutoku’s Shirakawa palace remained small.
The Shirakawa palace was a large establishment east of the Kamo River at the northwest corner of what is now the site of the HeianShrine. The palace was about a mile and a quarter from Go-Shi rakawa’s residence and base at the Takamatsu palace north of Sanjo Avenue just southwest of the Greater Imperial Palace. On the night of the eleventh, fighting erupted in a furious attack, launched atnightfall on Shirakawa palace by the forces of Go-Shirakawa. The at tacking force included Kiyomori with about three hundred mounted men,Yoshitomo with two hundred, andYoshiyasu with one hundred.
They set fire to the palace, and Sutoku’s men fled. Within a few hours both the battle and the war were over.
Sutoku succeeded in escaping to the Ninnaji Temple just beyond the northwest corner of the capital, where he was captured and sent into exile in Sanuki on Shikoku, dying there a bitter man. Hit by a stray arrow during the fighting at Shirakawa, Sutoku’s supporter and accomplice Yorinaga died a few days later. Men linked withYorinaga at court were exiled, and some seventeen of Sutoku’s warriors were – against three and a half centuries of bloodless precedent — condemned to execution by imperial order. Despite Yoshi tomo’s plea for his father Tameyoshi’s life, he was ordered toexecute him, as was Kiyomori his uncle Tadamasa. This tsuwamono like disposition of prisoners stunned the court, a decision that wasurged by Go-Shirakawa’s eminence grise, Lesser Counselor Fujiwara no Michinori, known by his Buddhist name Shinzei (110660). Although he was of low rank, he enjoyed the trust of the emperor because his wife had been Go-Shirakawa’s wet-nurse, pre sumably creating the kind of emotional bond that the fiction of the period suggests.
Although the fighting had demonstrated for the first time the effectiveness of the warrior families in determining events in the capital, their rewards were meager. Go-Shirakawa was no more gener ous in his treatment of Kiyomori andYoshitomo after the coup thanmost previous emperors and regents had been in rewarding war riors. From the court’s point of view, the warriors who had defended the emperor and stormed the Shirakawa palace were simply useful servants of the throne who could be employed in time of need and otherwise mostly ignored. The rewards publicly granted the two great warriors were insignificant in comparison with their political and economic strength. Kiyomori, the senior warrior representativeat court and the heir to a long family tradition of court service, received merely the governorship of Harima; Yoshitomo, the Mi namoto chieftain and the architect of the victory at Shirakawa, had to be content with lowly appointment as Provisional Head of the Left Horse Guards, a post of minimal distinction and probably no power or remuneration whatever.
The Hogen Disturbance resolved sharp conflicts within the impe rial and Fujiwara leadership, placing control of the court firmly inthe hands of the reigning emperor, but it left unanswered the ques tion of military supremacy as between Go-Shirakawa’s two chief warrior leaders, Kiyomori andYoshitomo, and the further and morefundamental issue of the role of powerful warriors vis-a-vis the im perial court that remained, fatally to the regime, unaddressed.