Stone Pagoda Monument - erected for Taira-no-Kiyomori, Kobe, Japan. Taira-no-Kiyomori was a samurai warrior in medieval Japan, the first samurai in history to take a political place among Japan?s nobility, thereby establishing a samurai-dominated administrative government in Japan. He is often described as a villain or an anti-hero in a famous piece of Japanese classical literature, ?the Tale of Heike.?