Abe no Sadatō

Abe no Sadatō (died 1062) led resistance to court-authorized forces in northern Japan during the Former Nine Years’ War. His father Yoritoki had risen within the local administration at Isawa and dominated six districts around the Kitakami basin. Sadatō held Kuriyagawa, in the area of present-day Morioka. Family strongholds and local office supported a regional authority operating within, and sometimes against, the court’s provincial order. [S01, S03]

The war began in 1051, with intervals of accommodation. Fighting renewed after Sadatō was accused in 1056 of attacking a provincial official’s sons. The accusation cannot by itself establish either the attack or the rejected-marriage motive supplied in some accounts. After his father died in 1057, Sadatō led the family’s forces and defeated Minamoto no Yoriyoshi at Kinomi, in present-day Iwate. Court appointment alone had not given Yoriyoshi the means to overcome the regional coalition. [S01, S02]

In 1062 Yoriyoshi secured help from the Kiyohara of Dewa, on the Japan Sea side of the north. That alliance shifted the balance: Sadatō’s positions fell, and he died after the final fighting at Kuriyagawa. The Kiyohara acquired the dominant regional position. Sadatō’s head was displayed in Kyoto. The conquest depended on a partnership with another northern power, whose own regional authority grew as the Abe lost theirs. [S01, S02, S03]