onflict was a brother of the Tametomo just mentioned. He was
greatly offended by the violent use which Kiyomori made of the power which
had come into his hands. With all the Minamoto and Fujiwara he conspired
to overthrow the victorious and arrogant Taira. But Kiyomori suspecting
the plans of his enemies took measures to counteract them and suddenly
fell upon them in the city of Kyoto. Yoshitomo was obliged to save himself
by fleeing to Owari, where he was assassinated by the agents of Kiyomori.
The death of the head of the Minamoto only made the tyrant more determined
to crush all opposition. Even the ex-Emperor Go-Shirakawa, who was a
son-in-law of Kiyomori, but who showed some signs of disapproval, was sent
into exile. Several of the sons of Yoshitomo were put to death; but
Yoritomo then a boy of thirteen was saved by the interference of the
mother-in-law of Kiyomori, and was sent into exile in the province of Izu,
and put into the safe-keeping of two faithful Taira men, one of whom Hojo
Tokimasa will be heard of hereafter.

Besides the four sons of Yoshitomo by his wife, he had also three sons by
a concubine named Tokiwa. She was a woman of great beauty, and for that
reason as well as because she was the mother of the romantic hero
Yoshitsune, she has often been chosen by Japanese artists as the subject
of their pictures. Tokiwa and her three children, of whom Yoshitsune was
then an infant at the breast, fled at the breaking out of the storm upon
Yoshitomo and the Minamoto clan. They are often represented as wandering
through a storm of snow, Yoshitsune being carried as an infant on the back
of his mother, and the other two little ones pattering along with unequal
steps at her side. In this forlorn condition they were met by one of the
Taira soldiers, who took pity on them and gave them shelter. From him they
learned that Kiyomori had taken the mother of Tokiwa prisoner, and held
her in confinement, knowing that this would surely bring back to him the
fair fugitive and her children. In the Chinese teachings of that day, in
which Tokiwa had been educated, the duty of a child to its mother was
paramount to that of a mother to her child. So Tokiwa felt that it was
unquestionably her duty to go back at once to the capital and surrender
herself in order to procure the release of her mother. But her maternal
heart rebelled when she remembered that her babes would surely be
sacrificed by this devotion. Her woman's wit devise