The Tale of the Soga Brothers says a guardian took his ward's estate, the ward killed the guardian's son, and the son's boys killed him 17 years later

The Soga revenge is recorded history wrapped in legend. The killing in 1193 is in the chronicle Azuma Kagami; the estate quarrel behind it comes mainly from the Manabon text of the Soga monogatari. In that telling, Kudō Suketsune's father died while he was young and named his kinsman Itō Sukechika as guardian. Sukechika married his daughter to the boy. While Suketsune served in Kyoto, Sukechika took the Itō estate, gave the boy nothing, and married the daughter to another man. Suketsune's lawsuits in Kyoto failed; the historian Goza Yūichi notes the text says Sukechika bribed officials. In 1176 Suketsune's men ambushed Sukechika and killed his son Kawazu Sukeyasu instead. Sukeyasu's sons were five and three. On 28 May 1193, during Yoritomo's hunt at the foot of Mount Fuji, the brothers, Soga Sukenari, 22, and Tokimune, 20, killed Suketsune in his lodging. Sukenari was killed that night. Tokimune ran toward Yoritomo and was seized. Yoritomo was inclined to spare him, but after appeals, including from Suketsune's son, Tokimune was executed the next day. Historians since the 1910s have argued over whether others used the attack. Chikamatsu wrote a Soga play in 1683, and the story spread through Noh, puppet theatre and kabuki.