When Taira no Kiyomori was governor of Aki, he was ordered to repair the Great Pagoda on Mount Koya. On the day it was finished, as Kiyomori visited the inner sanctuary, an old monk with white eyebrows appeared from nowhere and said, "If you repair Itsukushima in Aki, your rise in rank will surely be matched by no one," and vanished. It is said this was a message from Kobo Daishi.
Kiyomori believed it, rebuilt the halls of Itsukushima, and created a magnificent shrine with vermilion corridors running over the sea. From then on the Taira devoutly revered the god of Itsukushima, and Kiyomori made many pilgrimages there. The Heike Nokyo, the sutras the clan copied and dedicated, are splendid scrolls studded with gold and silver, still kept at Itsukushima Shrine as a National Treasure.
In 1180, when Emperor Antoku, born to Kiyomori's daughter the Empress Tokuko, came to the throne, the abdicated Retired Emperor Takakura broke with custom and chose Itsukushima for his first imperial pilgrimage. People in the capital wondered, "Why not Iwashimizu, Kamo or Kasuga, but the god of distant Aki?" It was Kiyomori's wish. The retired emperor crossed the Inland Sea by ship from Fukuhara and worshiped at Itsukushima.
It was believed that the Taira prospered by the protection of the god of Itsukushima. The great vermilion torii and halls that seem to float on the sea were also a symbol of the Taira's power over the Inland Sea. But those same Taira would perish at the far end of that same Inland Sea, at Dannoura.
Throughout the Tale of the Heike, prayers to gods and buddhas in many places are told, as in "The Pilgrimage to Chikubushima" in Book 7 and "Stamping His Feet" in Book 3. Of them all, Itsukushima was the shrine most deeply bound to the rise and fall of the Taira.