Kiyomori's attachment to Fukuhara was not sentimental -- it was strategic. After crushing the rival Minamoto clan in the Heiji Rebellion of 1160, Kiyomori established his retirement residence at Fukuhara and began pouring resources into the nearby port of Owada (the ancestor of modern Kobe's harbor). He envisioned a Japan oriented toward the sea, trading directly with Song dynasty China. He ordered mountains cut and coastline filled to create artificial harbor infrastructure, engineering a forty-hectare island to protect ships from waves. Exports of sulfur, mercury, and lumber flowed out; Chinese silk, porcelain, and copper coins flowed in. The coins became Japan's de facto currency. From Fukuhara, Kiyomori could see his ships and his future -- a maritime empire that Kyoto's landlocked aristocrats could never understand.

In June 1180, Kiyomori made his move. A massive procession of nobles, officials, and imperial family members -- including the child Emperor Antoku and the Cloistered Emperors Takakura and Go-Shirakawa -- wound its way from Kyoto to Fukuhara. Government offices were reestablished in the lavish residences that Taira clan members had built along the hillside. Kiyomori had been appointed Daijo Daijin, Chancellor of the Realm, in 1167, and had married his daughter into the imperial family, making young Antoku his grandson. He had the political leverage to compel the move. But leverage and legitimacy are different things. The court arrived to find cramped quarters, unfamiliar surroundings, and the persistent damp of a port town. Nobles who had spent their lives in the refined pavilions of Heian-kyo now found themselves staring at fishing boats.

The complaints began almost immediately. The wet weather of the coast depressed courtiers accustomed to Kyoto's more sheltered basin. Administrative functions faltered without the established infrastructure of the old capital. Meanwhile, the political situation outside Fukuhara was deteriorating rapidly. Minamoto forces were regrouping across eastern Japan, and the Genpei War -- the great conflict between the Taira and Minamoto clans -- was igniting. Kiyomori, facing enemies abroad and grumbling within, reversed course. By late 1180, the imperial court was back in Kyoto. Kiyomori followed, his dream of a maritime capital abandoned. He died the following year, in 1181, and his Taira clan would be destroyed at the naval Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185. Fukuhara's brief moment as capital was over.

The Tale of Heike, the great medieval epic of the Taira clan's rise and fall, records Fukuhara's final chapter. In the autumn of 1183, the retreating Heike forces -- now on the losing side of the Genpei War -- paused for one night at Fukuhara. On departure, they set fire to the imperial palace. The chronicle captures their mood with characteristic elegance: 'Even though their departure was perhaps not as painful as that when they left the capital, it nevertheless filled them with regret.' Today, small stone monuments in Hyogo Ward mark the supposed sites of Kiyomori's palace, the imperial residences, and Kiyomori's tomb. The neighborhood is ordinary urban Kobe -- apartment buildings, convenience stores, railway crossings. Only the markers remain to indicate that for half a year, this unremarkable patch of ground was the center of Japanese power.