SOURCE: “Warriors as Courtiers: The Taira in Heike Monogatari,” in Currents in Japanese Culture: Translations and Transformations, edited by Amy Vladeck Heinrich, Columbia University Press, 1997, pp. 53-70.

In the following essay, Varley examines how later interpretations of the Heike Monogatari served to lend an aristocratic character to various warriors.

Japan's entry into the medieval age (1185-1573) in the late twelfth century was accompanied by an epochal transition in leadership of the country, when the emperor and the ministers who served him at his court in Kyoto relinquished national rule to provincial warrior chieftains. But this transition did not occur immediately, nor was it ever carried to completion in medieval times. Through much of the Kamakura period (1185-1333), for example, government continued to be divided between the court and the new warrior regime (bakufu) that was founded by Minamoto no Yoritomo in Kamakura. And even during the Muromachi period...