Taira no Masakado

Taira no Masakado (平 将門, died in the second lunar month of 940) was a samurai in the Heian period of Japan, who led a rebellion against the central government of Kyoto.

History

Masakado was born into a prominent noble lineage, the Kanmu Heishi (or Taira clan descended from Emperor Kanmu). He served the imperial court in the capital as a youth, and then settled down to the life of a country gentleman in the provinces of eastern Japan, to the northeast of modern-day Tokyo.

His career is detailed in Shōmonki ("The Masakado Chronicle"), a literary account of his life believed to have been completed as early as the 940s (although the earliest surviving copy dates from 1099) by an anonymous author.

The Taira Masakado Insurrection of 939-940 (known in Japanese as Jōhei - Tengyō no ran, after the calendar eras in which it occurred) ranks among the most dramatic episodes in the early history of the samurai. Coinciding with earthquakes, rainbows and lunar eclipses in the capital; uprisings in the north; and pirate disturbances in the west; it threw the court and the capital into a panic, and climaxed, according to most versions of the story, with the protagonist’s claiming for himself the title, “New Emperor.” Many historians have perceived the incident as an early harbinger of the late twelfth-, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century events that, step by step, ushered in the medieval era of warrior rule.