ghest offices (spoken of as
san-ko) could not be held by any save members of the Fujiwara or Kuga
families; and for offices carrying fifth rank upwards (designated
taifu) the range of eligible families extended to only four others,
the Ariwara, the Ki, the Oye, and the Kiyowara. All this was changed
after the Heiji commotion. The Fujiwara had used the military leaders
for their own ends; Kiyomori supplemented his military strength with
Fujiwara methods. He caused himself to be appointed sangi (councillor
of State) and to be raised to the first grade of the third rank, and
he procured for his friends and relations posts as provincial
governors, so that they were able to organize throughout the empire
military forces devoted to the Taira cause.

These steps were mere preludes to his ambitious programme. He married
his wife's elder sister to the ex-Emperor, Go-Shirakawa, and the
fruit of this union was a prince who subsequently ascended the throne
as Takakura. The Emperor Nijo had died in 1166, after five years of
effort, only partially successful, to restrain his father,
Go-Shirakawa's, interference in the administration. Nijo was
succeeded by his son, Rokujo, a baby of two years; and, a few months
later, Takakura, then in his seventh year, was proclaimed Prince
Imperial. Rokujo (the seventy-ninth sovereign) was not given time to
learn the meaning of the title "Emperor." In three years he was
deposed by Go-Shirakawa with Kiyomori's co-operation, and Takakura
(eightieth sovereign) ascended the throne in 1169, occupying it until
1180. Thus, Kiyomori found himself uncle of an Emperor only ten years
of age. Whatever may have been the Taira leader's defects, failure to
make the most of an opportunity was not among them. The influence he
exercised in the palace through his sister-in-law was far more
exacting and imperious than that exercised by Go-Shirakawa himself,
and the latter, while bitterly resenting this state of affairs, found
himself powerless to correct it. Finally, to evince his discontent,
he entered the priesthood, a demonstration which afforded Kiyomori
more pleasure than pain. On the nomination of Takakura to be Crown
Prince the Taira leader was appointed--appointed himself would be a
more accurate form of speech--to the office of nai-daijin, and within
a very brief period he ascended to the chancellorship, overleaping
the two intervening posts of u-daijin and sa-daijin. This was in the
fiftieth year of his life