The Taira Clan is an interesting part of Japanese history. I imagine there’s a fair set of Westerners who have heard of them who have done so through a love of Japanese spooks and thus the infamous Taira no Masakado. But, there’s history behind the ghost story, itself both widely reported and significantly mythologized, mostly do do with the eventual conflict between the Taira and their rivals, the Minamoto.
The two clans are also known as the Heike (Taira) and Genji (Minamoto), and their clash, the Genpei War, did a lot of heavy lifting to shape the history of Japan. Though the Minamoto were the ultimate victors, The Tale of Heike is one of the most famed (and period) literary accounts of the war. The Heike Story promises to provide a take on the aged epic.
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