(Link to map)
Chapter 1 .
It was a very simple period, a primal period. Japan was beautiful and untouched then. The birds still played among the cherry blossoms and the waves of the blue seas still crashed on the sullen shores .
The people lived simply. The largest settlements of the time were nothing more than the smallest villages of today .
The core of a typical settlement consisted of just a small lord's mansion. Not a castle mind you. A small wooden mansion with multiple floors.The only building with multiple floors for miles around. This was surrounded by huts. Houses, utility places, and other huts.
This was further surrounded by farms and on the horizon loomed the forests and wildlands beyond which were the huge mountains or the silent seas .
Thus in those times of yore when nature ruled over man and dominated him in every aspect, humanly politics hardly mattered. Every small village was surrounded with forest and wildlands for miles on all sides, and so maintaining central authority was an impossible task for the emperor in faroff Kyoto. Thus, every chief was emperor in his own territory.
Power was concentrated into the hands of Daimyos and their armies of locals and tribesmen(The Samurai as a separate class was yet to emerge). Due to all this, anyone wanting to expand his power beyond the boundaries of his birthplace was seen as either mad or legendary .
The era was known collectively as the Heain period after the capital city(Another name for Kyoto). By no means did the emperor have as much power in this period as they say. While there were no Shogun nor Samurai, there were other constraints to his power,. These constraints most notably the ambitions of mighty families and clans. Three families in particular became so powerful that they were no longer seen as just clans or warlords. No, the Taira, Minamoto, and Fujiwara were slowly turning into political institutions themselves, with all the major and minor clans over Japan pledging their alliance to at least one of them.
These families were already heavily involved in the politics at both, the capital and the rest of the land and thus a delicate balance was established between them. So when the Taira made their move to interfere in the succession of the imperial princes, that balance was shattered and war broke out. It was called the Genpei war.
The Fujiwara were great, once. They could be great again. Educated, urbane, sophisticated and worldly, they were consummate courtiers and scholars, and had the ear of the emperor in all matters. They ruled from the shadows, with influence over the emperor, and over the upbringing of many imperial heirs. For that matter, the mothers of many imperial offspring were Fujiwara ladies.
All of that power slowly slipped away from the family after the coronation of the Emperor Go-Sanjo; his mother was not a Fujiwara. The northern and southern halves of the family quarrelled, and the quarrel became virtually open warfare. The “Hogen Disturbance” when the Fujiwara tried, and failed, to impose their choice of imperial heirs did not help their fortunes at all. The Fujiwara star was eclipsed by the power of other families, the Minamoto and the Taira. To the wider world their reduced position looked secure, but the Fujiwara leadership retired from politics, concentrating instead on their lands, the arts, and literature.
The Hiraizumi Fujiwara were also known as the northern Fujiwara. During the 12th Century, at the zenith of their rule, they attracted a number of artisans from Kyoto and created a capital city, Hiraizumi, in what is now Iwate Prefecture. They ruled over an independent region that derived its wealth from gold mining, horse trading and as middlemen in the trade in luxury items from continental Asian states and from the far northern Emishi and Ainu people. They were able to keep their independence vis-a-vis Kyoto by the strength of their warrior bands. By the time of the Genpei war, they were now the most optimistic among the elites to gain back the lost power of the Fujiwara family .
War had now come and on the throne was the resourceful but aging leader Fujiwara Hidehira.
Fujiwara Hidehira .This distinctive style of painting portrait effectively disguised old age in great men .He was born in 1122