ABSTRACT
Towards the end of the 11th century and in the course of the 12th a series of civil wars divided the Imperial House into two opposing parties who, with large numbers of samurai warriors on either side, fought several sanguinary battles. Towards the close of the struggle the Heike or Taira clan, guarding the child Emperor Antoku, and bearing, with him, the Three Divine Imperial Regalia1, retreated from the old capital of Kyoto before the forces of the Genji or Minamoto clan, by whom they were, in 1185, finally annihilated at the naval battle of Dannoura in the Inland Sea, when the infant Emperor was drowned and the replica of the Divine Sword was at the same time lost.
