Famine in Kyoto

1181

A catastrophic famine, made worse by the Taira's prohibition on sending grain to the capital to starve out the Minamoto, devastated Kyoto. Kamo no Chomei later described corpses stacked along the roads and crows picking at the faces. The city's population fell sharply. The famine deepened popular contempt for the Taira regime, whose policies were widely blamed for turning a bad harvest into a humanitarian catastrophe.