Minamoto no Yorimitsu
Japanese · mortal · mid heian · Recorded classification
The registry holds about twenty Minamoto — the late-Heian line from Yoshiie through Yoshitomo to Yoritomo and Yoshitsune — and did not hold the one the stories are about. Yorimitsu is two generations earlier and belongs to a different kind of history: not the civil wars but the demon-hunting, which is what the Heian capital's anxieties looked like when they were written down. He is the reason there is a Japanese genre of the warrior who kills monsters, and every later figure in it is measured against him.
Domains
- warfare
- exorcism
Relations
- killer of: Shuten-dōjiReference treatment of Yorimitsu's defeat of Shuten-dōji on Mount Ōe. (secondary)
- overlord of: Watanabe no TsunaThe first of his four.Reference treatment of Watanabe no Tsuna as leader of Yorimitsu's Four Guardian Kings. (secondary)
- overlord of: Sakata no KintokiReference treatment of the four retainers referred to in legend as the Shitennō. (secondary)
- overlord of: Usui SadamitsuReference treatment of the four retainers referred to in legend as the Shitennō. (secondary)
- overlord of: Urabe no SuetakeReference treatment of the four retainers referred to in legend as the Shitennō. (secondary)
- ally: Abe no SeimeiReference treatment of Abe no Seimei working alongside Minamoto no Yorimitsu and his Four Guardian Kings in vanquishing oni and yōkai outside the capital. (secondary)
Sources
- Minamoto no Yorimitsu, Raikō (948-1021), is the Heian warrior and Fujiwara retainer famous for killing Shuten-dōji on Mount Ōe and subduing the yōkai around the capital, with his four Shitennō and the onmyōji Abe no Seimei.: Reference treatments of Minamoto no Yorimitsu, his Shitennō and Abe no Seimei. (secondary)