Japanese Pirates’ Medieval Times (1) ——Introduction——

Taira Kiyomori (1118-1181), the second Japanese pirate king, learned a lesson from the failure of Fujiwara Sumitomo (?-941), the first Japanese pirate king. Sumitomo was so independent from the central power that he allowed the central noble clans to exploit local powerful families with promotion as lures. Kiyomori, in contrast, was successful in establishing himself as a member of the Cabinet in 1160, and, later, as a Prime Minister in 1167. Taira Clan was, however, too much involved in the central power struggles. At their height of their power and hegemony, they were losing the support and mandate from local powerful families or samurais, and lost recognition as a master samurai to Minamoto Clan, who later established the Kamakura Shogunate in 1185. What about sea people? Did they learn some lesson through successes and failures of Ancient Japanese piracy? We can hardly say they did. It almost took them the first half of Medieval times to accumulate enough experience to get along not only with land samurais but also with each other and to control the Seto Inland Sea.