on who
ultimately ascended the throne as Sutoku. But, rightly or wrongly,
Toba learned to suspect that before she became his wife, the lady's
relations with Shirakawa had been over-intimate and that Sutoku was
illegitimate. Therefore, immediately after Shirakawa's demise, Toba
took to himself an Empress, Kaya-no-in, daughter of Fujiwara
Tadazane; and failing offspring by her, chose another Fujiwara lady,
Bifuku-mon-in, daughter of Nagazane. For this, his third consort, he
conceived a strong affection, and when she bore to him a prince, Toba
placed the latter on the throne at the age of three, compelling
Sutoku to resign. This happened in the year 1141, and there were
thenceforth two cloistered Emperors, Toba and Sutoku, standing to
each other in the relation of grandfather and grandson. The baby
sovereign was called Konoe, and Fujiwara Tadamichi, brother of
Bifu-ku-mon-in, became kwampaku.

Between this Tadamichi and his younger brother, Yorinaga, who held
the post of sa-daijin, there existed acute rivalry. The kwampaku had
the knack of composing a deft couplet and tracing a graceful
ideograph. The sa-daijin, a profound scholar and an able economist,
ridiculed penmanship and poetry as mere ornament. Their father's
sympathies were wholly with Yorinaga, and he ultimately went so far
as to depose Tadamichi from his hereditary position as o-uji of the
Fujiwara. Thus, the enmity between Tadamichi and Yorinaga needed only
an opportunity to burst into flame, and that opportunity was soon
furnished.

The Emperor Konoe died (1155) at the early age of seventeen, and the
cloistered sovereign, Sutoku, sought to secure the throne for his son
Shigehito, whom Toba's suspicions had disqualified. But
Bifuku-mon-in, believing, or pretending to believe, that the
premature death of her son had been caused by Sutoku's incantations,
persuaded the cloistered Emperor, Toba, in that sense, and having
secured the co-operation of the kwampaku, Tadamichi, she set upon the
throne Toba's fourth son, under the name of Go-Shirakawa (1156-1158),
the latter's son, Morihito, being nominated Crown Prince, to the
complete exclusion of Sutoku's offspring. So long as Toba lived the
arrangement remained undisturbed, but on his death in the following
year (1156), Sutoku, supported by the sa-daijin, Yorinaga, planned to
ascend the throne again, and there ensued a desperate struggle.
Stated thus briefly, the complication suggests merely a quarrel for
the suc