The Early Stages of the Heike monogatariTadashi Hasegawa

Excerpt

The culture of the Heian period was the product of a small aristocracy in the metropolis of Heian or Kyoto, capital of a highly centralized political system. It bloomed in the soil of luxury consumption maintained by the produce of the aristocracy held in every province of the country. But the power structure of this society was severely shaken by three disturbances which came in succession after the twelfth century. These were the Hōgen and Heiji wars of 1156 and 1159, the war between the Taira and Minamoto from 1177 to 1185, and the Shōkyū war of 1221. Centered on the second of these disturbances, the war between the Taira and Minamoto, the Heike monogatari tells of the eminence of the warrior clan known as Heike or Taira and its ultimate downfall. It is in many ways a description of the age itself.

The warrior class had undergone a considerable period of development before it was ready to play its leading role as a political force in the Hōgen and Heiji wars of the mid twelfth century. The rise of the warrior class and the expansion of its power were intimately related to political and economic changes which took place in the agricultural villages of the provinces. The Hōgen and Heiji wars were waged by military clans matured in the provinces which competed for power in Kyoto by allying themselves with rival houses of the civil aristocracy. But no sooner had the Taira clan gained the victory than it began an amazingly rapid transformation into a metropolitan aristocracy itself. The reasons for this changing character of the Taira need to be examined here, because it was precisely their transformation into a civil aristocracy which contributed most to their downfall.