developed in Japan well after their time. The rapid rise of certain notable figures to prominence, as well as their decline, have been popularly attributed to Dakiniten. A certain anecdote regarding the military leader Taira no Kiyomori found in the Genpei Jōsuiki (one of a number of variants of the Heike Monogatari) claims that Kiyomori once shot an arrow at a fox during a hunt. The fox then transformed into a woman who promised to grant Kiyomori whatever he wanted in exchange for her life. Kiyomori, realizing this woman is none other than the goddess Kiko Tennō (貴狐天王, lit. "Venerable Fox Deva-King," i.e. Dakiniten), spared her life. He subsequently became a devotee of the goddess, despite his awareness that the benefits obtained through the Dakiniten rite (吒天の法, Daten no hō) would not be passed on to his progeny. The story thus attributes both Kiyomori's rise in power and the subsequent fall of his clan to his performance of the Dakiniten ritual. According to the Kamakura period work Kokon Chomonjū, the late Heian period nobleman Fujiwara no Tadazane commissioned the performance of the Dakiniten rite for seven days as he was about to be sent into exile. At the end of that period, a fox came to eat his offering, a rice cake. He then later had a dream in which he was visited by a beautiful young woman. When she was getting ready to leave, he grasped her hair to hold her back, at which he woke up finding himself holding a fox's tail in his hands. The next day, instead of being exiled, he was promoted to a high rank. Attributing this turn of events to Dakiniten, Tadazane in thanksgiving worshiped the fox tail as a symbol of the deity. Other people claimed to have attained positions of authority due to their devotion to Dakiniten include the monk Ningai (951–1046), the founder of the Ono branch (小野流, Ono-ryū) of Shingon, and the Shingon Risshū monk Monkan (1278–1357), a close aide of Emperor Go-Daigo whose name became linked to the infamous Tachikawa branch (Tachikawa-ryū). Monkan's enemies in particular painted him in a negative light by emphasizing the dubious nature of the rites he performed; one notable rival, Yūkai, accused him of "making offerings to the ḍākinīs and conjuring dragons while he is reporting to the throne." The Tendai monk Kōshū (1276–1350), in his work Keiran Shūyōshū (渓嵐拾葉集, "Collected Leaves from