After destroying the Taira clan, the conflict wasn’t over for the Minamoto.
Yoritomo the Clanslayer pointed his spear toward another clan, and his own brothers.
Minamoto no Yoritomo must’ve been proud.
The Battle of Dan-no-ura happened in 1185.
Just 5 years before, the Minamoto clan was basically dead,
defeated by the Taira and fading into obscurity.
Yoritomo managed to wipe out his old Taira enemies,
lift the Minamoto to number one on the top warrior charts,
and do something previous Kanto region warriors tried to do but couldn’t:
he created a government run by warriors.
By him specifically.
How did this guy do it when others before him couldn’t?
Long before, when the rebel leader Taira no Masakado tried to forge his own state in the
Kanto with him at the head, it ended with his head on a pike instead.
Masakado was a good warrior, but he no talk good.
He couldn’t convince the capital to let him rule that big chunk of land in peace.
Yoritomo could have ended up like Masakado, but Yoritomo was not only deadly on the battlefield,
he was also deadly in the office.
The government office.
He was good at politics, is what I’m trying to say.
He also differed from Taira no Kiyomori, the Taira leader at the beginning of the war.
Kiyomori played the game of thrones pretty well himself.
Problem was, Kiyomori thought that he could be the boss at the top giving orders while
alienating everyone.
He pissed off other court nobles, other warriors, and the temples.
When it was pew pew time, Kiyomori found it hard to raise his armies.
Yoritomo used that anti-Taira attitude and framed his war as part of a national war
against Taira oppression.
They weren’t looting and pillaging, they were rising up against tyranny.
But he knew that winning battles wasn’t enough.
Previous rebels won battles, but the capital just found other warlords to defeat them.
No, Yoritomo needed the cooperation of the capital.
He had to offer them something, but what did they need so much that they would stomach
an independent state to the east?
Well, lucky for him, the Japanese court had been backed into a corner.
The war was not only between Taira and Minamoto.
Revolts dotted the entire country, it looked like what happens to your face
right before a date.
Law and order no longer mattered.
Rebels were seizing land owned by the aristocrats in court.
Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa was the big boss man in the capital at the time.
In the middle of the war, Yoritomo emailed Go-Shirakawa with a proposal.
He would fight the rebels and protect the lands of the court nobles.
In return, the court had to recognize his own lands in the Kanto.
They spit and shook on it.
Yoritomo’s independent state and its capital at Kamakura became official in the eyes of
the court, but more importantly, his government became the country’s peacekeeper, its police.
Now, official recognition of the Kanto state wasn’t that important.
Yoritomo had complete control of those lands.
Even if the court didn’t accept it, they could go kiss his astounding strength.
But at least on paper, there became two governments in Japan:
the traditional one in Kyoto, and the military government in Kamakura.
But the more important outcome was that Kamakura had authority to keep the peace.
Go-Shirakawa realized that only Yoritomo’s warriors could stop the revolts.
The more the revolts dragged on, the more land the nobles in court lost.
Less land meant less tax revenue.
Less tax revenue meant less parties where people recited emo poems.
Yoritomo did a complete 180 and went from a rebel to a defender of the law.
He sent troops to fight rebels and protect the land rights of the aristocrats, when just
a few years before in the Kanto, he was violating the land rights of those same aristocrats.
It was kind of a dick move because when this whole thing started, Yoritomo promised land
to his followers if they won.
This promise he broke for some of his supporters.
Yoritomo found himself juggling 2 contradicting goals: bringing peace versus gaining followers.
To bring peace, he had to defeat warriors who were seizing land.
But to gain followers, he had to promise them land.
Props for how well he walked that tightrope.
The Battle of Dan-no-ura is traditionally seen as the end of the Genpei war, but actually
the country was still in conflict.
Also I feel like I didn’t focus enough on poor Emperor Antoku’s death
in the last video.
Let’s set aside a moment for baby Antoku.
Yeah so the Taira were smashed, but there were randos all over the country
just going around taking stuff.
This warlord took this piece of land, that warlord took that piece of land.
Funny thing was, many of these randolords had been fighting under the Minamoto banner
even though their relationship to the Minamoto was basically, “Oh, I think they’re cool…”
But now when the actual Minamoto leader was telling them to stop, they were like,
“You know, you used be cool” and many of them didn’t comply.
After the Taira all drank too much sea water and died in 1185, Yoritomo’s brother, Yoshitsune,
was hailed as a conquering hero in the capital.
The man with the head of a thousand schemes, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa,
backed Yoshitsune in court.
He was probably hoping Yoshitsune would be a check against his brother.
In response, Yoritomo sent people to the Kyoto capital to kill his own brother.
He escaped though.
Yoshitsune the hide-and-seek master hid for 2 years.
Then in 1187, he ran to Hiraizumi, the capital of the north.
It was the domain of the Oshu Fujiwara.
These guys were pretty much independent from the rest of the country, though they did pay
taxes like gold and horses to the Kyoto capital.
During the war, the Oshu Fujiwara were sitting in the north going,
“I hope they forgot about us, I hope they forgot about us.”
Yoritomo had stayed in Kamakura for most of the war, possibly because he was afraid of
an invasion from Hiraizumi.
But now the clanslayer looked north.
He became a pain in the ass for them, demanding tax revenue,
but when he heard that they gave Yoshitsune protection, he was livid.
He demanded they hand over Yoshitsune.
The Oshu Fujiwara leader was named Fujiwara no Yasuhira.
Yasuhira heard the demands, got mad that this Yoritomo guy was giving him orders, and forced
Yoshitsune the hide-and-seek master to commit suicide.
Look, he didn’t want no trouble okay?
In 1189, he mailed Yoshitsune’s head to Yoritomo, eating a massive shipping fee because
heads cost extra.
Yasuhira then killed any allies that Yoshitsune made in Hiraizumi,
including Yasuhira’s own brother.
He really didn’t want a fight.
When Yoritomo received the head, he got even madder and tried to get Go-Shirakawa to issue
an arrest order against Yasuhira.
Go-Shirakawa refused, saying it was a private matter, not a matter of state.
Yoritomo was annoyed, but then realized, “Oh wait, I’m me, I don’t need no permission”
and marched north with an army anyways.
He demolished the Hiraizumi forces.
Yasuhira ran north, possibly hoping to reach Hokkaido.
But he never did because one of his samurai retainers killed him
and sent his head to Yoritomo.
When Yoritomo received it, he smiled, then ordered the head of that dirty samurai traitor
who took his own lord’s life.
The Oshu Fujiwara traced its lineage back to the old Fujiwara, the same clan that ruled
the Heian court for 200 years, and the Emishi.
After a few battles, poof, it was gone.
The clanslayer struck again.
Hiraizumi was destroyed.
It’s a shame because it was the jewel of the north, it might have even rivaled Kyoto
as an economic hub.
Afterwards, the court had to save face and issue that order to arrest Yasuhira,
like Yoritomo originally wanted.
Like, after the man already died.
One more thing.
We gotta talk about the third Minamoto brother, Noriyori, the forgotten brother.
When the brotherly feud was happening, Yoritomo ordered Noriyori to go arrest Yoshitsune.
Noriyori refused and just ignored the order because, you know,
he didn’t want to kill his own brother.
Some years after Yoshitsune died, a rumor spread that
Yoritomo had been killed in an incident.
Noriyori comforted Yoritomo’s wife and promised to take care of her and her clan.
When Yoritomo heard this, he got suspicious.
And in 1193, he had Noriyori killed.
Ah, twice a clanslayer, and twice a kinslayer.
Yoritomo became the top warlord, and the chief military power in Japan.
And a massive douche not gonna lie.
Alright, today’s quiz question is this: which outcast village had a monopoly over
pee collection in Osaka in the Edo Period?
Let me know in the comments.
I’ll choose a winner from the correct answers in 24 hours.
This is for US and Canada only.
Good luck!
We have some new patrons this week, Skipadoo skipadee doo da skipadee ay,
Dao Phong,
and Amy Powell.
Thanks so much you guys.
Alright, much love, and spread the knowledge.