Tengyō no Ran

The Tengyō no Ran (天慶の乱) ("War in the Tengyō era" or "Tengyō Disturbance"), or Jōhei Tengyō no Ran refers to the name of a brief medieval Japanese conflict, in which Taira no Masakado rebelled against the central government. He was defeated after 59 days of fierce fighting with the imperial forces led by Fujiwara Hidesato and Taira Sadamori, who was Masakado's kinsman. One of the legends created about the conflict described how Masakado, fearing Hidesato's archery skills, employed doppelganger bodyguards to protect himself. The warrior-rebel was beheaded on 25 March 940 CE during the Battle of Kojima.

Prelude

The revolt in the east began inconspicuously in 935 as an armed squabble among members of a Taira family who had settled in the Kanto area around 890. They had grown into great landowners there, exercising control over a broad area that included the provinces of Kazusa, Hitachi, and Shimosa. One of the Taira leaders, Masakado, emerged from his Shimosa base as the chief military power and principal arbiter of disputes throughout the southern Kanto area. The disputes in which he involved himself centered on the resistance of landowners to provincial governors, Masakado taking the part of the aggrieved landholders. The fighting increasingly assumed the nature of rebellion against provincial authorities, who were mostly Masakado's kinsmen. But perhaps because the eastern provinces had a long history of banditry, unrest, and minor revolts, the central government at first paid scant heed to Masakado and his fighting, intervening only when a suit was brought against him by one of his victims, and then simply to assess a mild punishment that was almost immediately canceled in a general amnesty.