alamities were
attributed to the evil deeds of Kiyomori and his fellow clansmen, so
that the once omnipotent family gradually became an object of popular
execration. Kiyomori, however, did not live to witness the ruin of
his house. He expired at the age of sixty in March, 1181, just three
months after the restoration of Kyoto to metropolitan rank. Since
August of the preceding year, the Minamoto had shown signs of
troublesome activity, but as yet it seemed hardly possible that their
puny onsets should shake, still less pull down, the imposing edifice
of power raised by the Taira during twenty years of unprecedented
success. Nevertheless, Kiyomori, impatient of all reverses, bitterly
upbraided his sons and his officers for incompetence, and when, after
seven days' sickness, he saw the end approaching, his last commission
was that neither tomb nor temple should be raised to his memory until
Yoritomo's head had been placed on his grave.

ENGRAVING: ARTIST'S SEAL

ENGRAVING: SWORD-GUARDS (Tsuba) HAND-CARVED IN BRONZE

CHAPTER XXV

THE EPOCH OF THE GEN AND THE HEI (Continued)

OPENING OF THE CONFLICT

WHEN, after the great struggle of 1160, Yoritomo, the eldest of
Yoshitomo's surviving sons, fell into the hands of Taira Munekiyo and
was carried by the latter to Kyoto, for execution, as all supposed,
and as would have been in strict accord with the canons of the time,
the lad, then in his fourteenth year, won the sympathy of Munekiyo by
his nobly calm demeanour in the presence of death, and still more by
answering, when asked whether he did not wish to live, "Yes, since I
alone remain to pray for the memories of my father and my elder
brothers." Munekiyo then determined to save the boy if possible, and
he succeeded through the co-operation of Kiyomori's step-mother, whom
he persuaded that her own son, lost in his infancy, would have grown
up to resemble closely Yoritomo.

It was much to the credit of Kiyomori's heart but little to that of
his head that he listened to such a plea, and historians have further
censured his want of sagacity in choosing Izu for Yoritomo's place of
exile, seeing that the eastern regions were infested by Minamoto
kinsmen and partisans. But Kiyomori did not act blindly. He placed
Yoritomo in the keeping of two trusted wardens whose manors were
practically conterminous in the valley of the Kano stream on the
immediate west of Hakone Pass. These wardens were a Fujiwara, Ito
Sukechika, and