failed to obtain court rank or any significant office in spite of his credentials and his patron's high status. The Jōhei-Tengyō Rebellion Beginning of hostilities (931–936) Disagreement exists about the exact cause of Masakado's rebellion. While some sources portray the uprising as revenge for his failure to secure a government post, the Shōmonki (将門記, also read as Masakadoki), an anonymous monograph on Masakado's life believed to have been completed as early as the 940s, suggests that the conflict originally began in 931 (Jōhei 1) as a dispute between Masakado, freshly returned from Heian-kyō, and his paternal uncle Taira no Yoshikane (平良兼) over a woman. The identity of this woman is uncertain, though one theory suggests that it may have been a daughter of Yoshikane who married her cousin and apparently went to live with him against her father's wishes. (Aristocratic marriages during the Heian period were usually matrilocal; the wife continued to reside with her parents while the husband either moved in with his wife's family or simply visited her.) Besides this affront to his honor, Masakado not obtaining any post or rank in the capital might have been another factor in Yoshikane's opposition to the marriage. Another theory based on folk tradition meanwhile suggests that Masakado and Yoshikane quarreled over a daughter of Minamoto no Mamoru (源護), former senior secretary (大掾, daijō) of Hitachi Province who had married off his daughters to Masakado's uncles, Yoshikane among them. On the other hand, the Konjaku Monogatarishū (c. 1120) gives another reason for the conflict, namely that Masakado's uncles had appropriated the lands the young man was supposed to inherit from his late father. Masakado's uncle Taira no Kunika (平国香), who as Takamochi's eldest son was the head of the clan, might have tried to take over his younger brother Yoshimochi's property and place it under his control. Kunika, like Yoshikane, was related by marriage ties to Mamoru, who would eventually become involved in the conflict. In the 2nd month of 935 (Jōhei 5), Masakado and his men were ambushed by Mamoru's three sons, Tasuku, Takashi, and Shigeru, at a place called Nomoto (野本) in the district of Makabe (真壁郡), near the border between Hitachi and Shimōsa (modern Chikusei, Ibaraki), but managed to repel their attack; the three brothers all died in the battle. In retaliation, Masakado then burned and ransacked the houses of Tasuku's supporters across southwestern Hitachi. Kunika also died