Prince Mochihito's Call to Arms: Why Did the Taira Glory Collapse in 1180?

In the fifth month of 1180, a single document was issued from Kyoto to the whole country.

The call to arms of Prince Mochihito — a document by which the son of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa, Prince Mochihito, ordered the Genji of the various provinces to hunt down the Taira.

Prince Mochihito himself fell in battle at Uji in the fifth month of the same year.

But the document had reached the hand of Minamoto no Yoritomo, exiled in Izu; of Minamoto no Yoshinaka in Shinano; and of the various other Genji across the land.

In August 1180, Yoritomo rose in Izu. In September of the same year, Yoshinaka rose in Shinano.

Within a few months, anti-Taira armament spread through the eastern land and Shin'etsu.

The ruling structure Kiyomori had built up over forty years was suddenly exposed to internal war from every region.

Kiyomori's response was severe. In December 1180, a Taira force under Taira no Shigehira burned Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji, which had shown an anti-Taira posture.

The 'burning of the southern capital' — an event in which the great temple complex including the Great Buddha Hall went up in flame — made the estrangement of the court and aristocratic society from the Taira decisive.

In the same year, Kiyomori moved the capital from Kyoto to Fukuhara （the modern Kobe）, but the reaction of the aristocracy and the court forced him to return the capital to Kyoto after half a year.

On the fourth day of the leap second month of 1181, Kiyomori died suddenly in Kyoto.

Of fever, the Tale of the Heike transmits. He was sixty-four. The dramatic description — the head grew hot, and water poured over it turned to steam — is most likely later narrative-making; but that he died of acute fever symptoms is itself corroborated in multiple sources.

With Kiyomori's death, the cohesive force of the Taira was lost. The Taira thereafter, under his successor Munemori, turned to the defensive, and were destroyed at Dannoura four years later.

From the moment Kiyomori as the first warrior stood at the summit of the state to the sinking of his family into the sea — a single generation, under fifty years.