The Importantness Of Sam
...to rise against the Taira. While Mochihito would be killed in June and Minamoto Yorimasa crushed at the Battle of the Uji, a fire had been set. In September Minamoto Yoritomo, who had received
Mochihito's call from Miyoshi Yasukiyo, set about raising an army in the Province of Izu, where he had been in exile. There was an irony in the preceding
events, as Taira Kiyomori had himself sown the seeds of the war, so the poetic tale goes. His great error, we are told, had been to spare the sons of Minamoto Yoshitomo in the wake of the Heiji disturbance, allowing these three boys - Yoritomo, Noriyori, and Yoshitsune - to mature and form the leadership of a new and dangerous threat.
In fact, Yoritomo's own call to arms in the east was received
cautiously at best. He did manage to kill the local Taira governor, but was defeated at the Battle of Ishibashiyama by Oba Kagechika. In the wake of this hard setback, however, Yoritomo did receive
the valuable additon of Kajiwara Kagetoki to his staff. Elsewhere in the Kanto, local families began to respond to Yoritomo in varying degrees and in Shimosa and elsewhere set about eliminating Kyoto-appointed officals. This often provoked inter-province and occasionally inter-clan civil war, a common and oft-overlooked element of the Gempei War. By the Spring of the following year, Yoritomo could count on at least the tacit support of most of the notable families in the Kanto, although the Chubu, though by now nominally Minamoto dominated, existed beyond his immediate control. Yoritomo's Kanto domain is occasionally referred to as the Tôgaku, and rather then surge forward against the Taira, he contented himself for the time being with consolidating his hold locally.
The Taira response to the violence was mixed and uncertain. Kiyomori dispatched his grandson Koremori with an army eastward, but he turned back at the Fuji...
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