The Return from the Kumano Pilgrimage: The Heiji Rebellion and Kiyomori's Night

On the ninth day of the first month of 1160, Kyoto burned. The armies of Fujiwara no Nobuyori and Minamoto no Yoshitomo set fire to the Sanjō Palace and placed the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa and Emperor Nijō under confinement — the outbreak of the Heiji Rebellion.

At the time, Taira no Kiyomori was en route from the Kumano pilgrimage, at Tanabe in Kii Province （the modern Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture）.

Forty-two.

Family left in Kyoto, the base at Rokuhara, and the thin Taira force there — Kiyomori had left everything in the capital.

The speed of Kiyomori on receiving news of the rebellion at Tanabe fixed Japan's political history from there on.

On the night of the ninth, he began the northward march from Kii, and returned to Kyoto in about twenty days.

Minamoto no Yoshitomo had, in league with Fujiwara no Nobuyori, seized Kyoto. But after Kiyomori's return, Emperor Nijō was secretly moved to Rokuhara.

Once Kiyomori had the person of the emperor in his possession, the contest was decided.

Nobuyori was arrested and executed; Yoshitomo attempted flight to the east and was killed by his own retainer in Owari.

Thirty-seven.

Yoshitomo had several sons. The eldest, Yoshihira, was captured and executed; the second, Tomonaga, died of illness in flight; the third, Yoritomo, was exiled to Izu; and the ninth, Ushiwaka, in his second year, was placed at a temple together with his mother Tokiwa Gozen.

The fates of these brothers — who twenty years later would destroy the Taira — were fixed in the aftermath of the Heiji Rebellion.

With victory at the Heiji Rebellion, Kiyomori established his position at the top of the warrior class.

Seven years later he took office as Chancellor of the Realm, and the Taira reached the summit of their glory.

At the same moment, the two he spared here — Yoritomo and Yoshitsune — became the protagonists of the destruction of the Taira twenty years on.