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Given what the next couple months are likely to look like,

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Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 148, The Birth of the Samurai, Part 3.

As we enter the 1100s, Japan is on something of a precipice.

The old careful balancing act of the Heon period, while it still works to a degree,

was under threat from increasingly powerful elite warrior families,

which, by hook or by crook, were starting to amass enough power to become seriously dangerous.

Specifically, the powerful Tyra and Minamoto families, descended from the imperial clan, were joined by a branch of the powerful Fujiwara clan, which had embedded itself in northern Japan.

The Tyra in particular had something of an astonishing rise under their war leader, Tyra no Masamori.

I can't tell you much about Masamori because we know very little about his life.

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