Taira no Shigemori, eldest son of Taira clan leader Kiyomori, stands as a central yet conflicted figure in the narrative. Contrasting his father’s temperament with calm resolve, he balances responsibility and moral conflict, serving as the clan’s moderating voice. His heterochromatic eyes, enabling him to perceive spirits of the dead, bridge the living and supernatural realms, heightening his awareness of the Taira’s violent excesses and their looming repercussions.

Heir to the ascendant Taira clan, Shigemori navigates loyalty to his father with unease toward the clan’s authoritarian tactics. Torn between imperial duty and familial bonds, his anguished declaration—“If I am loyal, I cannot be filial; if I am filial, I cannot be loyal”—fuels interventions to temper Kiyomori’s impulsivity, such as disbanding enforcers who assaulted a regent’s procession and dispatching his son Sukemori to atone for insulting court nobles.

Father to Koremori, Sukemori, Kiyotsune, and Arimori, Shigemori witnesses the clan’s tragic trajectory through Koremori’s monastic life and drowning. Desperate to avert collapse, he commissions prayers, donates to Buddhist temples, and sends gold to Song-dynasty monasteries to accrue karmic merit.

A pivotal encounter with Biwa, a prophetess foreseeing the Taira’s ruin, prompts Shigemori to shelter her, seeking to alter fate. Yet her refusal to aid her father’s killers cements his role as a doomed visionary, foreseeing calamity but unable to halt it.

His death, linked to illness after a Kyoto whirlwind—historically tied to toxic fumes—marks the clan’s destabilization. Posthumously dubbed the “Lantern Minister” for erecting a temple with forty-eight lanterns symbolizing Amida Buddha’s vows, his legacy embodies devout Buddhism and quest for redemption.

Through lineage enduring via grandson Chikazane—later claimed as ancestor by Oda Nobunaga—Shigemori’s narrative weaves themes of impermanence and moral duality, framing him as a compassionate leader ensnared by the inexorable decay of power.