Taira no Kiyomori

Born in 1118 （Gen'ei 1）, the eldest son of Taira no Tadamori of the Ise Taira. In 1153 he succeeded to the family headship upon his father's death.

Winning the Hōgen Rebellion （1156） and then defeating Minamoto no Yoshitomo at the Heiji Rebellion （1159）, he established Taira military supremacy among the warrior class.

In 1167, at fifty, he was appointed Chancellor of the Realm — the first warrior ever to hold that office. The chancellorship had been limited to the Sekkanke or the imperial house; no warrior appointment had ever occurred.

He then placed his daughter Tokuko as consort to Emperor Takakura, and in 1180 realized the accession of his grandson as Emperor Antoku — the Taira house at the summit of its glory.

But that same year, the call to arms issued by Prince Mochihito touched off anti-Taira uprisings across the country. Kiyomori died suddenly in Kyoto in the second month of 1181 （leap month）, of a fever.

He was sixty-four. With Kiyomori's death the cohesive force of the Taira was lost, leading to their destruction at Dannoura in 1185.

As the precursor to warrior government, he laid the ground for the later establishment of the Kamakura shogunate.

“Whoever is not of this house is not a person.”

As the precedent of a warrior standing at the summit of state governance, a turning point in Japanese political history.

Kiyomori's active engagement in overseas trade — the expansion of Japan-Song trade and the development of Ōwada-no-Tomari harbor — is also a major achievement in the history of Japanese external relations.

As the protagonist of the Tale of the Heike, he has continued to be depicted for nearly a thousand years across Nō, kabuki, jōruri, and modern taiga dramas.

The Gyokuyō — the diary of his contemporary Kujō Kanezane — survives as a primary source transmitting the political reality of the Kiyomori era.