Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast.

Episode 153, The Fall of the Samurai, Part 8.

So last week, we came to the end of the Gempai War, and this week we're going to deal

with the great eternal post-war question.

Now what?

Remember, the goal of this series was to introduce the basic process by which the samurai

came to dominate the Japanese political landscape which the samurai came to dominate the

Japanese political landscape. It might seem to you that domination is now accomplished. For a long

time, this is how the Genpei War was taught and presented. The traditional narrative of

Japanese history was that the samurai class became the dominant force in politics,

the exact date depending somewhat, based on who you asked, but happening somewhere around

1,100 or so. Once that happened, the only thing left to settle was who was going to rule over

the samurai class, which now ran Japan, which is what the Gempai War was supposedly all about.

This is nice, it's tidy, but it ignores historical reality.

As we've seen, first of all, Japan is not a samurai dictatorship at this point.

Armed Buddhist monks, aristocratic nobles from the Fujiwara family, imperial power brokers, they've all been

big parts of the story. After all, the Gampay war itself was started by an imperial family

member and some Buddhist monks with a grudge, not samurai. One of the most important factors

legitimating the Minamoto cause was a defection of a retired emperor over to their side.

And of course, while samurai power has definitely increased over the period we have surveyed,

it's worth noting that Fujiwara power was so established that it's very possible Tyroneokiyomori deliberately allowed a coup attempt to take place in order to try and break it.

So we should not just look at the year 1185 when the last Taira armies sank beneath the waves of Donnoura as the birth of samurai power over Japan.

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