It is not only because the Taira family was in general more refined than the Minamoto, and gave an impulse to the literature of Japan by its enlightened chivalry, that the period forms an important turning-point in the history of the civilisation of our country. Almost all the essential traits of our civilisation during the whole military regime can be said to have been initiated in this brief Taira epoch. As an inheritor of the borrowed civilisation, the Taira warriors were not so much saturated with the alien refinement as the Fujiwara nobles were, and therefore, when they came nearer the throne, the aspect of the court was not a little vulgarised, but instead there was a freshness in those warriors which was found wanting among the Fujiwara, already overwrought and exhausted by too much Chinese civilisation. This freshness may be considered an index of the revival of the conservative spirit, which had been long lurking in the lower strata of the nation. Conservatism in such a phase of history is generally on the side of strength and energy. It is true that Kiyomori, his sons, and grandsons endeavoured rather to go up the ladder of the courtiers higher and higher, in order to soar 'above the cloud.' In other words, it was not their first ambition to lead the people in the lower strata against the higher; they were not revolutionists at all. But whatever might have been their real intention, they could not ward off those followers who had a common interest with them. There was no doubt that the lower class of people sympathised with the military-men, whether they were of the Taira or of the Minamoto family, far more deeply than with the Fujiwara nobles. The ascendency, therefore, of the Taira stirred the long latent spirit of the majority of the nation, and this re-awakening of the Japanese, if we may call it so, gave life to every fibre of the social structure, urging the nation to energetic movement. The most tangible evidence of this resuscitation of Japan can be obtained in the sculpture of the age. The first flourishing period of Japanese sculpture anterior to this is the era of the Tempyo, that is to say, during the reign of the Emperor Shomu. After that the art fell gradually into decadence, and no period could compete with the Tempyo era except the Taira age. The works of Unkei and Tankei, representative masters who made their names at this time, though lagging far behind those of Tempyo sculptors in exquisite softness and serenity, yet surpassed the latter in vigour and strength. What they liked to represent most were statues of deities rather than Buddha himself, and of the deities they preferred those of martial character. Comparing them with the Tempyo sculptures, in which the subject is not so narrowly circumscribed, we can observe the change of the national spirit very clearly.