Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/26

 of the Interior, and his second son, Junior Minister of State. He organised a band of three hundred lads who went about the city in disguise to report any one that spoke ill of the Taira, and the results of such reports were so terrible that people learned to say "not to be a Taira is to be reckoned a beast." He brought his mailed hand down with relentless force on the Buddhist priests when they took up arms against the Taira at the instigation of an ex-Emperor, and he did not hesitate to seize the person of the ex-Emperor himself and place him in confinement. He showed equally scant consideration for the Fujiwara nobles, whom the prestige of long association with the Throne had rendered sacred in the eyes of the nation: some he deprived of their posts; others of their lands, and others he put to death. He set the torch to temples and levied taxes on the estates of Shintō shrines. Nothing deterred him; nothing was suffered to thwart his plans, and the Taira chiefs in the provinces followed his arbitrary example.

Such a government was not likely to last long. Twenty-two years measured its life. Then the Minamoto rose in arms and triumphed completely under the leadership of Yoritomo, who had fought as a boy of thirteen in the battle that established the supremacy of his father's foes, the Taira. The fall of the latter happened in the last quarter of the twelfth century. It is remarkable as the complete establishment of military feudalism in Japan.