Minamoto no Yorimitsu
Japanese · mortal · mid heian · mortal
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-dōji
- overlord of: Watanabe no Tsuna
- overlord of: Sakata no Kintoki
- overlord of: Usui Sadamitsu
- overlord of: Urabe no Suetake
- ally: Abe no Seimei
Sources
- Reference treatments of Minamoto no Yorimitsu, his Shitennō and Abe no Seimei.