Ro No Onkata (The Taira Family) (廊御方 (平家))
Ro no onkata (1161? – date of death unknown) was a woman who lived at the end of Heian period. She was the eighth daughter of TAIRA no Kiyomori. Her mother was Tokiwa gozen. Her older paternal half-brothers included TAIRA no Shigemori, TAIRA no Munemori, TAIRA no Tomomori, and TAIRA no Shigehira; her older paternal half-sisters included TAIRA no Tokuko; and her older maternal half-brothers included Zenjo ANO, Gien and MINAMOTO no Yoshitsune; her younger maternal half-brothers included Yoshinari ICHIJO. She was also known as Sanjo-dono.
Biography
Ro no onkata was born after the Heiji War when her mother, Tokiwa, became Kiyomori's mistress. Reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Japan, Lady Ro was on good terms the wife of FUJIWARA no Kanemasa, the Minister of the Left (who was also the eldest daughter of Kiyomori) and was therefore able to become a high ranking lady and later the mistress of Kanemasa, by whom she had a daughter. She was a master of the Wagon (Japanese harp) and So (stringed instruments).
She joined the Taira family in their exile from the capital until the Battle of Dan no ura, after which she was captured by the Minamoto clan along with TAIRA no Tokuko and others.
Other views
Note, however, the information that Lady Ro was a younger paternal half-sister of Yoshitsune appears only in the "Heike Monogatari" (Tale of the Heike (the Taira family)) and the "Genpei Seisuiki" (Rise and Fall of the Minamoto and Taira clans), and has not been verified in historical sources such as "Gyokuyo" (Diary of Kanezane KUJO) and "Azuma Kagami" (Mirror of the East).
Although a Lady Ro is mentioned in the genealogy of the Kanmu-Heishi (Taira clan) in the "Sonpi Bunmyaku" (Lineage Sects of Noble and Humble) as the daughter of Kiyomori by Tokiwa, this book was written at the end of the period of the Northern and Southern Courts (Japan) with further information being added from the Muromachi period onwards, and it is possible that this information was a late addition. The genealogy mentions another daughter of Kiyomori, who was an older sister of TAIRA no Tokuko and became a lawful wife of FUJIWARA no Kanemasa, the Minister of the Left; but if this woman is supposed to be Tokiwa's daughter, then a discrepancy in date arises, and it is thus suspected that an extra woman was added to the genealogy at a later date. Nevertheless, the theory that Tokiwa gave birth to Kiyomori's daughter is little more than a legend.