The peace achieved in Mutsu and Dewa in 1062 was upset two decades later in the time of Takenori’s grandson Sanehira, when his attempt to strengthen his authority as head of die Kiyohara clan’s main line caused dissatisfaction among clan members. A doyen ofthe clan, Kimiko no Hidetake, refused to accept the arrogant behav ior of his junior, Sanehira, and moved into open opposition to him.
Hidetake acted not only out of an old man’s sense of propriety and amour propre, but also in resistance to a restructuring of clan power that was replacing the more egalitarian practices of the kin alliance or confederation of Takenori’s day with a hierarchy culminating in clan lordship by the head of the main line. Sanehira launched a punitive attack in 1083 on his refractory senior relative in Dewa, only to find himself assaulted in Mutsu by his half-brother Iehira and by his stepbrother Kiyohira (1056-1128), to both of whom Hidetake had appealed for support.
Kiyohira was a son of Fujiwara noTsunekiyo, who had fought for Abe no Yoritoki and had been exe cuted at die end of the earlier war. His young son Kiyohira and his widow, a daughter of the Abe chief, Yoritoki, went as spoils of war to Takenori’s son,Takesada. He adopted Kiyohira and took the widowas wife; she subsequently bore him Iehira. Hence, Sanehira, Kiyo hira, and Iehira were all half- or stepbrothers, but none of them a full brother to either of the others. (See Figure 10.2, the genealogies of the Kiyohara and Oshu Fujiwara.)
Confronted by hostile forces in Dewa and on his rear in Mutsu,Sanehira remained at his headquarters in the northern Mutsu dis tricts until the new governor of the province, Minamoto noYoshiie, now head of the Seiwa Genji, arrived at his post in die autumn of io83.Yoshiie had a towering reputation as a skilled and courageous warrior, earned in the service of his father Yoriyoshi in die earlierwar. Yoshiie was quick to intervene in the Kiyohara family feud, os tensibly as a mediator on Sanehira’s behalf, but in fact he intended to supplant Kiyohara power in Dewa and Mutsu.Yoshiie petitioned the court for a commission to subdue Iehira, which would authorize him to mobilize troops and requisition supplies in neighboring Kanto provinces.
The court refused to intervene, declaring the conflict a private Kiyohara affair. Unlike rebels such as Masakado,Tada tsune, and the Abe, the Kiyohara had obeyed the orders of the provincial governors, paid their taxes, and performed their official duties. The court saw no reason for punitive action. Yoshiie was not dissuaded from intervening.
Assured of Yoshiie’s backing, Sanehira at last set off to attack Hidetake in Dewa. Taking advantage of Sanehira’s absence, Kiyohira and Iehira attacked his headquarters but were in turn assaulted androuted by Yoshiie. Sanehira fell ill and died en route to Dewa, however, obviating further hostilities, and the two half brothers there upon submitted to the authority of Yoshiie. He mediated the issue of the governance of the Back Six Districts of Mutsu by assigning threedistricts to each brother. This decision irked Iehira, who now con sidered himself head of the Kiyohara, while Kiyohira, as the onlysurvivor of the Abe clan remaining in the northeast, may have con sidered himself heir to the Six Districts.
Friction between the broth ers mounted, and when Ieharu’s forces raided Kiyohira’s base and slaughtered his wife and children, Kiyohira appealed toYoshiie. In the fall of io86,Yoshiie besieged Iehira in Numa Stockade with a force of «three thousand mounted warriors.» Heavy snow, cold, and hunger forced Yoshiie to lift the siege. His younger brother, Yoshimitsu, left his post at the capital to come to his aid, and after a larger force was collected, they laid siege to Iehira, now in Kanezawa Stockade, a short distance to the north (at what is now the city of Yokote in southeastern Akita Prefecture). After another difficult siege the brothers prevailed at the end of 1087. Iehira was slain, and the main Kiyohara line was at an end.
The court again denied Yoshiie’s request for rewards for himself and his men and official recognition of their hard-earned victory,maintaining with much justice that the fighting was a private quar rel. Yoshiie had used his considerable resources as governor of Mutsu, which was the principal center of gold mining, to conduct the war and provision his troops. He was now obliged to compensate his retainers and recruits from his own resources. Furthermore, the court disciplined Yoshiie, ending his appointment as governor of Mutsu the next year and requiring him to repay tax revenues from the province that he had diverted to support the war.
Fighting had its own, more important rewards for Yoshiie and his descendants. His victory over Kiyohara no Iehira further enhanced the prestige of his Minamoto line in the eyes of eastern warriors. Inthe two wars in the northeast, first Yoriyoshi, and then Yoshiie re cruited relatives, retainers, and allies in the east to mount campaigns against tribal chieftains. In the first war Yoriyoshi, as recipient of a court commission, had troops requisitioned on court orders, a force he commanded as provincial governor, and garrison guards he led as General of the chinjufu. In the second war Yoshiie was able to raise and later compensate an army using mostly his own resources.
The wars were long and arduous, at least in part because the Minamoto’s forces did not have numerical superiority. In both wars victory came in the end thanks to alliances made with contending local tribalforces. The Minamoto leaders, nonetheless, gained fame as unri valed warriors.
The combined governorships of Mutsu and Dewa, which mayhave been one of Yoshiie’s goals, went instead to Kiyohira. He prof ited spectacularly from the war. As the sole survivor of the Abe and Kiyohara families, he gained the lands once held by both families inMutsu and Dewa, and was appointed General of the chinjufu. He re sumed the Fujiwara clan name of his father (who claimed descent from the Hidesato who defeated Masakado). Kiyohira moved his residence to the former base of his erstwhile Abe relatives south of the confluence of the Kitakami and Koromo rivers, a militarily strategic point in the southern part of modern Iwate Prefecture that had figured in the early Heian campaigns against the Emishi and had also more recently been the scene of fighting in which Kiyohira’sfather, Tsunekiyo, had participated. Known, probably from Kiyohira’s time, as Hiraizumi, the site grew into a vigorous urban cultural center distinguished by its prolific, luxurious religious archi tecture, its Buddhist art, and its landscape gardens, modeled in good part on the style and standards of the imperial capital at Heian.
The remarkable flowering of Hiraizumi culture under the lordship of the Oshu Fujiwara (the «Fujiwara of Mutsu»), as Kiyohira and his three direct lineal descendents are called, depended on the political and military supremacy of those lords in Dewa and Mutsu, and onthe great wealth they were able to extract from that large, rich terri tory, especially gold but also horses and agricultural produce. (Thewarmer climate prevailing at the time probably made the region bet ter farming land than it was subsequently.)
Kiyohira himself established or, according to temple legend,reestablished, the Chusonji Temple at Hiraizumi, perhaps for the sal vation of the war dead in the recent battles fought in the area. Under the Oshu Fujiwara, the temple’s mountain precincts came eventually to encompass scores of buildings and hundreds of monastic cells, the buildings including most notably the Konjikido («Golden Hall»),one of the best-known surviving historical structures in Japan. Con structed in 1124, the chapel-like hall provides beneath the altars of its Amidist statuary a final resting place for the mummified remains of the first three Oshu Fujiwara lords (Kiyohira, Motohira, and Hidehira) and for a severed head that is tentatively identified as that of the fourth and last lord,Yasuhira (1155-89).
The hall and a scripture storehouse were the only Chusonji structures to survive a wild fire that swept the mountain in 1337, but even by itself, the hall’s artistry is more than sufficient to impress upon a modern visitor akeen sense of the puissance, wealth, and cultural ambition of its Fu jiwara patrons.
Some understanding of the organization of the private warriors, mounted archers, recruited by the Minamoto leaders during the two wars can be gained from two sources: the Mutsu waki on the earlierwar and the commentary on the twelfth-century hand-scroll paint ing concerning the Later Three Years’War.
These works show that the roto were organized more systematically than in Masakado’s time, and that they formed the core of the bushidan (warrior band). Many of the roto recruited as retainers by Yoriyoshi and his son Yoshiie were from the provinces of Sagami and Mikawa. The Hogen monogatari (ca. 1219-22) quotes the warrior Kamata no Masakiyo as stating that he began his service to the Minamoto when Yoriyoshi was governor of Sagami; at this time he would have been a kenin. Thereafter he came to address Yoshiie and then Yoshiie’s son and grandson as «master,» which indicates that he had placed himself under Yoshiie’s protection and was considered a roto.
The primary change in the bushidan involved the strengthening of the lord-vassal relationship. There are numerous tales of vassals who, having accepted service with a lord, willingly sacrificed their lives against hopeless odds defending him.
Similar tales do not appear in the earlier Shomonki or Konjaku monogatari-shu. They are ev idence that loyalty to one’s lord, the keystone of the later warrior ethic {bushido, was being articulated as a guiding principle, at least in literary accounts. The commitment of vassals grew stronger when they looked to lords to guarantee their rights to land in return for military service. Bonds between lord and retainer were also forged in the hardships and sacrifices they suffered together in the long and arduous campaigns of the two wars.
As the lord came to have morecontrol over his vassal’s life, he assumed greater responsibilities to ward him. In 1091 Yoshiie and his brother Yoshitsuna, who had once been companion in arms in campaigns of the Earlier Nine Years’ War, were on the verge of combat over a land dispute between their respective roto. This incident is often cited as evidence of the strongcommitment of mutual support between lord and vassal in the bushi dan of this time.