The system, being thus discredited, fell into abeyance in the year 739, but that it was not abolished is shown by the fact that, in 780, we find the privy council memorializing the Throne in a sense unfavourable to the drafting of peasants into the ranks. The memorial alleged that the men lacked training; that they were physically unfit; that they busied themselves devising pretexts for evasion; that their chief function was to perform fatigue-duty for local governors, and that to send such men into the field of battle would be to throw away their lives fruitlessly. The council recommended that indiscriminate conscription of peasants should be replaced by a system of selection, the choice being limited to men with some previous training; that the number taken should be in proportion to the size of the province, and that those not physically robust should be left to till the land. These recommendations were approved. They constituted the first step towards complete abolishment of compulsory service and towards the glorifying of the profession of arms above that of agriculture. Experience quickly proved, however, that some more efficient management was necessary in the maritime provinces, and in 792, Kwammu being then on the throne, an edict abolished the provincial troops in all regions except those which, by their proximity to the continent of Asia, were exposed to danger, namely, Dazai-fu in Kyushu, and in Mutsu, Dewa, and Sado in the north. Some specially organized force was needed also for extraordinary service and for guarding official storehouses, offices, and places where post-bells (suzu) were kept. To that end the system previously practised during the reign of Shomu (724-749) was reverted to; that is to say, the most robust among the sons and younger brothers of provincial governors and local officials were enrolled in corps of strength varying with the duties to be performed. These were called kondei or kenji. We learn from the edict that the abuse of employing soldiers as labourers was still practised, but of course this did not apply to the kondei.

The tendency of the time was against imposing military service on the lower classes. During the period 810-820, the forces under the Dazai-fu jurisdiction, that is to say, in the six provinces of Chikuzen, Chikugo, Hizen, Higo, Buzen, and Bungo, were reduced from 17,100 to 9000. Dazai-fu and Mutsu being littoral regions, the conscription system still existed there, but in Mutsu there were not only heishi, that is to say, local militiamen of the ordinary type and kenji or kondei, but also chimpei, or guards who were required to serve at a distance from home. Small farmers, upon whom this duty devolved, had no choice but to take their wives and children with them, the family subsisting on the pittance given as rations eked out by money realized from sales of chattels and garments. Thus, on the expiration of their service they returned to their native place in a wholly destitute condition, and sometimes perished of hunger on the way. In consideration of the hardships of such a system, it was abolished, and thus the distinction between the soldier and the peasant received further accentuation.

There is no record as to the exact dimensions of Japan's standing army in the ninth century, but if we observe that troops were raised in the eight littoral provinces only—six in the south and two in the north—and in the island of Sado, and that the total number in the six southern provinces was only nine thousand, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the aggregate did not exceed thirty thousand. There were also the kondei (or kenji), but these, since they served solely as guards or for special purposes, can scarcely be counted a part of the standing army. The inference is that whatever the Yamato race may have been when it set out upon its original career of conquest, or when, in later eras, it sent great armies to the Asiatic continent, the close of the fifth cycle after the coming of Buddhism found the country reduced to a condition of comparative military weakness. As to that, however, clearer judgment may be formed in the context of the campaign—to be now spoken of—conducted by the Yamato against the Yemishi tribes throughout a great part of the eighth century and the early years of the ninth.

REVOLT OF THE YEMISHI

It has been shown that the close of the third decade of the eighth century saw the capital established at Nara amid conditions of great refinement, and saw the Court and the aristocracy absorbed in religious observances, while the provincial governments were, in many cases, corrupt and inefficient. In the year 724, Nara received news of an event which illustrated the danger of such a state of affairs. The Yemishi of the east had risen in arms and killed Koyamaro, warden of Mutsu. At that time the term "Mutsu" represented a much wider area than the modern region of the same name: it comprised the five provinces now distinguished as Iwaki, Iwashiro, Rikuzen, Rikuchu, and Mutsu—in other words, the whole of the northeastern and northern littoral of the main island. Similarly, the provinces now called Ugo and Uzen, which form the northwestern littoral, were comprised in the single term "Dewa." Nature has separated these two regions, Mutsu and Dewa, by a formidable chain of mountains, constituting the backbone of northern Japan. Within Dewa, Mutsu, and the island of Yezo, the aboriginal Yemishi had been held since Yamato-dake's signal campaign in the second century A.D., and though not so effectually quelled as to preclude all danger of insurrection, their potentialities caused little uneasiness to the Central Government.

But there was no paltering with the situation which arose in 724. Recourse was immediately had to the Fujiwara, whose position at the Imperial Court was paramount, and Umakai, grandson of the renowned Kamatari, set out at the head of thirty thousand men, levied from the eight Bands provinces, by which term Sagami, Musashi, Awa, Kazusa, Shimosa, Hitachi, Kotsuke, and Shimotsuke were designated. The expanded system of conscription established under the Daiho code was then in force, and thus a large body of troops could easily be assembled. Umakai's army did not experience any serious resistance. But neither did it achieve anything signal. Marching by two routes, it converged on the castle of Taga, a fortress just constructed by Ono Azumahito, the lord warden of the Eastern Marches. The plan pursued by the Yamato commanders was to build castles and barriers along the course of rivers giving access to the interior, as well as along the coast line. Taga Castle was the first of such works, and, by the year 767, the programme had been carried in Mutsu as far as the upper reaches of the Kitakami River,* and in Dewa as far as Akita.

*A monument still stands on the site of the old Taga Castle. It was put up in A.D. 762, and it records that the castle stood fifty miles from the island of Yezo.

History has nothing further to tell about the Yemishi until the year 774, when they again took up arms, captured one (Mono) of the Japanese forts and drove out its garrison. Again the eight Bando provinces were ordered to send levies, and at the head of the army thus raised a Japanese general penetrated far into Mutsu and destroyed the Yemishi's chief stronghold. This success was followed by an aggressive policy on the part of the lord-warden, Ki no Hirozumi. He extended the chain of forts to Kabe in Dewa, and to Isawa in Mutsu. This was in 780. But there ensued a strong movement of reprisal on the part of the Yemishi. Led by Iharu no Atamaro, they overwhelmed Hirozumi's army, killed the lord-warden himself, and pushed on to Taga Castle, which they burned, destroying vast stores of arms and provisions. It was precisely at this time that the State council, as related above, memorialized the Throne, denouncing the incompetency of the provincial conscripts and complaining that the provincial authorities, instead of training the soldiers, used them for forced labour. The overthrow of the army in Mutsu and the destruction of Taga Castle justified this memorial.

The Court appointed Fujiwara Tsugunawa to take command of a punitive expedition, and once again Bando levies converged on the site of the dismantled castle of Taga. But beyond that point no advance was essayed, in spite of bitter reproaches from Nara. "In summer," wrote the Emperor (Konin), "you plead that the grass is too dry; in winter you allege that bran is too scant. You discourse adroitly but you get no nearer to the foe." Konin's death followed shortly afterwards, but his successor, Kwammu, zealously undertook the pursuit of the campaign. Notice was sent (783) to the provincial authorities directing them to make preparations and to instruct the people that an armed expedition was inevitable. News had just been received of fresh outrages in Dewa. The Yemishi had completely dispersed and despoiled the inhabitants of two districts, so that it was found necessary to allot lands to them elsewhere and to erect houses for their shelter.

The Emperor said in his decree that the barbarian tribes, when pursued, fled like birds; when unmolested, gathered like ants; that the conscripts from the Bando provinces were reported to be weak and unfit for campaigning, and that those skilled in archery and physically robust stood aloof from military service, forgetting that they all owed a common duty to their country and their sovereign. Therefore, his Majesty directed that the sons and younger brothers of all local officials or provincial magnates should be examined with a view to the selection of those suited for military service, who should be enrolled and drilled, to the number of not less than five hundred and not more than two thousand per province according to its size. Thus, the eight Bando provinces must have furnished a force of from four to sixteen thousand men, all belonging to the aristocratic class. These formed the nucleus of the army. They were supplemented by 52,800 men, infantry and cavalry, collected from the provinces along the Eastern Sea (Tokai) and the Eastern Mountains (Tosan). so that the total force must have aggregated sixty thousand. The command in chief was conferred on Ki no Kosami, thirteenth in descent from the renowned Takenouchi-no-Sukune, who had been second in command of the Fujiwara Tsugunawa expedition nine years previously. A sword was conferred on him by the Emperor, and he received authority to act on his own discretion without seeking instructions from the Throne.

Meanwhile, the province of Mutsu had been ordered to send 35,000 koku (175,000 bushels) of hulled rice to Taga Castle, and the other provinces adjacent were required to store 23,000 koku (115,000 bushels) of hoshi-i (rice boiled and dried) and salt at the same place. The troops were to be massed at Taga, and all the provisions and munitions were collected there by April, 789. These figures are suggestive of the light in which the Government regarded the affair. Kosami moved out of Taga at the appointed time and pushed northward. But with every forward movement the difficulties multiplied. Snow in those regions lies many feet deep until the end of May, and the thaw ensuing brings down from the mountains heavy floods which convert the rivers into raging torrents and the roads into quagmires. On reaching the bank of the Koromo River, forty-five miles north of Taga, the troops halted. Their delay provoked much censure in the capital where the climatic conditions do not appear to have been fully understood or the transport difficulties appreciated. Urged by the Court to push on rapidly, Kosami resumed his march in June; failed to preserve efficient connexion between the parts of his army; had his van ambushed; fled precipitately himself, and suffered a heavy defeat, though only 2500 of his big army had come into action. His casualties were 25 killed, 245 wounded, and 1036 drowned. A truce was effected and the forces withdrew to Taga, while, as for Kosami, though he attempted to deceive the Court by a bombastic despatch, he was recalled and degraded together with all the senior officers of his army.

It would seem as though this disaster to one comparatively small section of a force aggregating from fifty to sixty thousand men need not have finally interrupted the campaign, especially when the enemy consisted of semi-civilized aborigines. The Government thought differently, however. There was no idea of abandoning the struggle, but the programme for its renewal assumed large dimensions, and events in the capital were not propitious for immediate action. The training of picked soldiers commenced at once, and the provision of arms and horses. Kosami's discomfiture took place in 789, and during the next two years orders were issued for the manufacture of 2000 suits of leather armour and 3000 of iron armour; the making of 34,500 arms, and the preparation of 1 10,000 bushels of hoshi-i. To the command-in-chief the Emperor (Kwammu) appointed Saka-no-ye no Tamuramaro.

This selection illustrates a conclusion already proved by the annals, namely, that racial prejudice had no weight in ancient Japan. For Tamuramaro was a direct descendant of that Achi no Omi who, as already related, crossed from China during the Han dynasty and became naturalized in Japan. His father, Karitamaro, distinguished himself by reporting the Dokyo intrigue, in the year 770, and received the post of chief of the palace guards, in which corps his son, Tamuramaro, thereafter served. Tradition has assigned supernatural capacities to Tamuramaro, and certainly in respect of personal prowess no less than strategical talent he was highly gifted. In June, 794, he invaded Mutsu at the head of a great army and, by a series of rapidly delivered blows, effectually crushed the aborigines, taking 457 heads, 100 prisoners, and 85 horses, and destroying the strongholds of 75 tribes. Thereafter, until the year of his death (811), he effectually held in check the spirit of revolt, crushing two other insurrections—in 801 and 804—and virtually annihilating the insurgents. He transferred the garrison headquarters from Taga to Isawa, where he erected a castle, organizing a body of four thousand militia (tonden-hei) to guard it; and in the following year (803), he built the castle of Shiba at a point still further north.

NATIONALITY OF THE INSURGENTS

Annals of historical repute are confined to the above account. There is, however, one unexplained feature, which reveals itself to even a casual reader. In their early opposition to Yamato aggression, the Yemishi—or Ainu, or Yezo, by whatever name they be called—displayed no fighting qualities that could be called formidable. Yet now, in the eighth century, they suddenly show themselves men of such prowess that the task of subduing them taxes the resources of the Yamato to the fullest. Some annalists are disposed to seek an explanation of this discrepancy in climatic and topographical difficulties. Kosami, in his despatch referring to the Koromo-gawa campaign, explains that 12,440 men had to be constantly employed in transporting provisions and that the quantity carried by them in twenty-four days did not exceed eleven days' rations for the troops. The hardship of campaigning in a country where means of communication were so defective is easily conjectured, and it has also to be noted that during only a brief period in summer did the climate of Mutsu permit taking the field. But these conditions existed equally in the eras of Yamato-dake and Hirafu. Whatever obstacles they presented in the eighth century must have been equally potent in the second and in the seventh.

Two explanations are offered. They are more or less conjectural. One is that the Yemishi of Mutsu were led by chieftains of Yamato origin, men who had migrated to the northeast in search of fortune or impelled by disaffection. It seems scarcely credible, however, that a fact so special would have eluded historical reference, whereas only one passing allusion is made to it and that, too, in a book not fully credible. The other explanation is that the Yemishi were in league with hordes of Tatars who had crossed from the mainland of Asia, or travelled south by the islands of Saghalien and Yezo. The main evidence in support of this theory is furnished by the names of the insurgent leaders Akuro-o, Akagashira, and Akahige. Ideographists point out that the character aku is frequently pronounced o, and with that reading the name "Akuro-o" becomes "Oro-o," which was the term used for "Russian." As for "Akagashira" and "Akahige," they frankly signify "red head" and "red beard," common Japanese names for foreigners. In a shrine at Suzuka-yama in Ise, to which point the insurgents pushed southward before Tamuramaro took the field, there used to be preserved a box, obviously of foreign construction, said to have been left there by the "Eastern Barbarians;" and in the Tsugaru district of the modern Mutsu province, relics exist of an extensive fortress presenting features not Japanese, which is conjectured to have been the basis of the Tatar invaders. But all these inferences rest on little more than hypothesis.

RISE OF MILITARY HOUSES

What is certain, however, is that a collateral result of these disturbances was to discredit the great Court nobles—the Otomo, the Tachibana, the Ki, and the Fujiwara—as leaders of armies, and to lay the foundation of the military houses (buke) which were destined to become feudal rulers of Japan in after ages. Ki no Hirozumi, Ki no Kosami, Otomo Yakamochi, Fujiwara Umakai, and Fujiwara Tsugunawa having all failed, the Court was compelled to have recourse to the representatives of a Chinese immigrant family, the Saka-no-ye. By those who trace the ringer of fate in earthly happenings, it has been called a dispensation that, at this particular juncture, a descendant of Achi no Omi should have been a warrior with a height of six feet nine inches,* eyes of a falcon, a beard like plaited gold-wire, a frown that terrified wild animals, and a smile that attracted children. For such is the traditional description of Tamuramaro. Another incidental issue of the situation was that conspicuous credit for fighting qualities attached to the troops specially organized in the Bando (Kwanto) provinces with the sons and younger brothers of local officials. These became the nucleus of a military class which ultimately monopolized the profession of arms.

*The height recorded is five feet eight inches, but as that would be a normal stature, there can be little doubt that "great" (dai) measure is referred to and that the figures indicate six feet nine inches.

RELATIONS WITH KOREA

During the eighth century relations of friendship were once more established with Koma. A Manchurian tribe, migrating from the valley of the Sungali River (then called the Sumo), settled on the east of the modern province of Shengking, and was there joined by a remnant of the Koma subjects after the fall of the latter kingdom. Ultimately receiving investiture at the hands of the Tang Court, the sovereign of the colony took the name of Tsuying, King of Pohai, and his son, Wu-i, sent an envoy to Japan in 727, when Shomu was on the throne. Where the embassy embarked there is no record, but, being blown out of their course, the boats finally made the coast of Dewa, where several of the envoy's suite were killed by the Yemishi. The envoy himself reached Nara safely, and, representing his sovereign as the successor of the Koma dynasty, was hospitably received, the usual interchange of gifts taking place.

Twenty-five years later (752), another envoy arrived. The Empress Koken then reigned at Nara, and her ministers insisted that, in the document presented by the ambassador, Pohai must distinctly occupy towards Japan the relation of vassal to suzerain, such having been the invariable custom observed by Koma in former times. The difficulty seems to have been met by substituting the name "Koma" for "Pohai," thus, by implication, admitting that the new kingdom held towards Japan the same status as that formerly held by Koma. Throughout the whole of her subsequent intercourse with the Pohai kingdom, intercourse which, though exceedingly fitful, lasted for nearly a century and a half, Japan uniformly insisted upon the maintenance of that attitude.

ENGRAVING: EMPEROR KWAMMU



CHAPTER XVIII

THE HEIAN EPOCH

THE FIFTIETH SOVEREIGN, THE EMPEROR KWAMMU (A.D. 782-805)

JAPANESE history divides itself readily into epochs, and among them not the least sharply defined is the period of 398 years separating the transfer of the Imperial palace from Nara to Kyoto (794) and the establishment of an administrative capital at Kamakura (1192). It is called the Heian epoch, the term "Heian-jo" (Castle of Peace) having been given to Kyoto soon after that city became the residence of the Mikado. The first ruler in the epoch was Kwammu. This monarch, as already shown, was specially selected by his father, Konin, at the instance of Fujiwara Momokawa, who observed in the young prince qualities essential to a ruler of men. Whether Kwammu's career as Emperor reached the full standard of his promise as prince, historians are not agreed.

Konin receives a larger meed of praise. His reforms of local abuses showed at once courage and zeal But he did not reach the root of the evil, nor did his son Kwammu, though in the matter of intention and ardour there was nothing to choose between the two. The basic trouble was arbitrary and unjust oppression of the lower classes by the upper. These latter, probably educated in part by the be system, which tended to reduce the worker with his hands to a position of marked subservience, had learned to regard their own hereditary privileges as practically unlimited, and to conclude that well nigh any measure of forced labour was due to them from their inferiors. Konin could not correct this conception, and neither could Kwammu. Indeed, in the latter's case, the Throne was specially disqualified as a source of remonstrance, for the sovereign himself had to make extravagant demands upon the working classes on account of the transfer of the capital from Nara to Kyoto. Thus, although Kwammu's warnings and exhortations were earnest, and his dismissals and degradations of provincial officials frequent, he failed to achieve anything radical.

TRANSFER OF THE CAPITAL TO KYOTO

The reign of Kwammu is remarkable for two things: the conquest of the eastern Yemishi by Tamuramaro and the transfer of the capital from Nara to Kyoto. Nara is in the province of Yamato; Kyoto, in the neighbouring province of Yamashiro,* and the two places lie twenty miles apart as the crow flies. It has been stated that to change the site of the capital on the accession of a sovereign was a common custom in Japan prior to the eighth century. In those early days the term "miyako," though used in the sense of "metropolis," bore chiefly the meaning "Imperial residence," and to alter its locality did not originally suggest a national effort. But when Kwammu ascended the throne, Nara had been the capital during eight reigns, covering a period of seventy-five years, and had grown into a great city, a centre alike of religion and of trade. To transfer it involved a correspondingly signal sacrifice. What was Kwammu's motive? Some have conjectured a desire to shake off the priestly influences which permeated the atmosphere of Nara; others, that he found the Yamato city too small to satisfy his ambitious views or to suit the quickly developing dimensions and prosperity of the nation. Probably both explanations are correct. Looking back only a few years, a ruler of Kwammu's sagacity must have appreciated that religious fanaticism, as practised at Nara, threatened to overshadow even the Imperial Court, and that the influence of the foreign creed tended to undermine the Shinto cult, which constituted the main bulwark of the Throne.

*Previously to becoming the metropolitan province, Yamashiro was written with ideographs signifying "behind the mountain" (yama no ushiro), but these were afterwards changed to "mountain castle" (yamashiro).

We shall presently see how this latter danger was averted at Kyoto, and it certainly does not appear extravagant to credit Kwammu with having promoted that result. At all events, he was not tempted by the superior advantages of any other site in particular. In 784, when he adopted the resolve to found a new capital, it was necessary to determine the place by sending out a search party under his most trusted minister, Fujiwara Tanetsugu. The choice of Tanetsugu fell, not upon Kyoto, but upon Nagaoka in the same province. There was no hesitation. The Emperor trusted Tanetsugu implicitly and appointed him chief commissioner of the building, which was commenced at once, a decree being issued that all taxes for the year should be paid at Nagaoka where also forced labourers were required to assemble and materials were collected. The Records state that the area of the site for the new palace measured 152 acres, for which the owners received compensation amounting to the equivalent of L2580 ($12,550); or an average of L17 ($82) per acre. The number of people employed is put at 314,000,* and the fund appropriated, at 680,000 sheaves of rice, having a value of about L40,800 ($200,000) according to modern prices.

*This does not mean that 314,000 persons were employed simultaneously, but only that the number of workmen multiplied by the number of days of work equalled 314,000.

The palace was never finished. While it was still uncompleted, the Emperor took up his abode there, in the fall of 784, and efforts to hasten the work were redoubled. But a shocking incident occurred. The Crown Prince, Sagara, procured the elevation of a member of the Saeki family to the high post of State councillor (sangi), and having been impeached for this unprecedented act by Fujiwara Tanetsugu, was deprived of his title to the throne. Shortly afterwards, the Emperor repaired to Nara, and during the absence of the Court from Nagaoka, Prince Sagara compassed the assassination of Tanetsugu. Kwammu exacted stern vengeance for his favourite minister. He disgraced the prince and sent him into exile in the island of Awaji, which place he did not reach alive, as was perhaps designed.

ENGRAVING: COURTYARD OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE, AT KYOTO

These occurrences moved the Emperor so profoundly that Nagaoka became intolerable to him. Gradually the work of building was abandoned, and, in 792, a new site was selected by Wake no Kiyomaro at Uda in the same province. So many attractions were claimed for this village that failure to choose it originally becomes difficult to understand. Imperial decrees eulogized its mountains and rivers, and people recalled a prediction uttered 170 years previously by Prince Shotoku that the place would ultimately be selected for the perpetual capital of the empire. The Tang metropolis, Changan, was taken for model. Commenced in April, 794, the new metropolis was finished in December, 805.

The city was laid out with mathematical exactness in the form of a rectangle, nearly three and one-half miles long, from north to south, and about three miles wide, from east to west. In each direction were nine principal thoroughfares, those running east and west crossing the north and south streets at right angles. The east and west streets were numbered from 1 to 9, and, although the regularity of structure and plan of the city has been altered by fire and other causes in eleven hundred years, traces of this early system of nomenclature are still found in the streets of Kyoto.* Running north from the centre of the south side was a great avenue, two hundred and eighty feet wide, which divided the city into two parts, the eastern, called "the left metropolis" (later Tokyo, "eastern capital"), and "the right metropolis" (or Saikyo, "western capital"),—the left, as always in Japan, having precedence over the right, and the direction being taken not from the southern entrance gate but from the Imperial palace, to which this great avenue led and which was on the northern limits of the city and, as the reader will see, at the very centre of the north wall. Grouped around the palace were government buildings of the different administrative departments and assembly and audience halls.

*The Kyoto of today is only a remnant of the ancient city; it was almost wholly destroyed by fire in the Onin war of 1467.

The main streets, which have already been mentioned as connecting the gates in opposite walls, varied in width from 80 feet to 170 feet. They divided the city into nine districts, all of the same area except the ones immediately east of the palace. The subdivisions were as formal and precise. Each of the nine districts contained four divisions. Each division was made up of four streets. A street was made up of four rows, each row containing eight "house-units." The house-unit was 50 by 100 feet. The main streets in either direction were crossed at regular intervals by lanes or minor streets, all meeting at right angles.

The Imperial citadel in the north central part of the city was 4600 feet long (from north to south) and 3840 feet wide, and was surrounded by a fence roofed with tiles and pierced with three gates on either side. The palace was roofed with green tiles of Chinese manufacture and a few private dwellings had roofs made of slate-coloured tiles, but most of them were shingled. In the earlier period, it is to be remembered, tiles were used almost exclusively for temple roofs. The architecture of the new city was in general very simple and unpretentious. The old canons of Shinto temple architecture had some influence even in this city built on a Chinese model. Whatever display or ornament there was, appeared not on the exterior but in inner rooms, especially those giving on inner court yards. That these resources were severely taxed, however, cannot be doubted, especially when we remember that the campaign against the Yemishi was simultaneously conducted. History relates that three-fifths of the national revenues were appropriated for the building.

INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA AND BUDDHIST PROPAGANDISM

The fact that the metropolis at Changan was taken for model in building Kyoto prepares us to find that intercourse with the Middle Kingdom was frequent and intimate. But although China under the Tang dynasty in the ninth century presented many industrial, artistic, and social features of an inspiring and attractive nature, her administrative methods had begun to fall into disorder, which discredited them in Japanese eyes. We find, therefore, that although renowned religionists went from Japan during the reign of Kwammu and familiarized themselves thoroughly with the Tang civilization, they did not, on their return, attempt to popularize the political system of China, but praised only her art, her literature, and certain forms and conceptions of Buddhism which they found at Changan.

ENGRAVING: PRIEST SAICHO, AFTERWARD KNOWN AS DENGYO DAISHI

The most celebrated of these religionists were Saicho and Kukai—immortalized under their posthumous names of Dengyo Daishi and Kobo Daishi, respectively. The former went to Changan in the train of the ambassador, Sugawara Kiyokimi, in 802, and the latter accompanied Fujiwara Kuzunomaro, two years later. Saicho was specially sent to China by his sovereign to study Buddhism, in order that, on his return, he might become lord-abbot of a monastery which his Majesty had caused to be built on Hie-no-yama—subsequently known as Hiei-zan—a hill on the northeast of the new palace in Kyoto. A Japanese superstition regarded the northeast as the "Demon's Gate," where a barrier must be erected against the ingress of evil influences. Saicho also brought from China many religious books.

Down to that time the Buddhist doctrine preached in Japan had been of a very dispiriting nature. It taught that salvation could not be reached except by efforts continued through three immeasurable periods of time. But Saicho acquired a new doctrine in China. From the monastery of Tientai (Japanese, Tendai) he carried back to Hiei-zan a creed founded on the "Lotus of the Good Law"—a creed that salvation is at once attainable by a knowledge of the Buddha nature, and that such knowledge may be acquired by meditation and wisdom. That was the basic conception, but it underwent some modification at Japanese hands. It became "a system of Japanese eclecticism, fitting the disciplinary and meditative methods of the Chinese sage to the pre-existing foundations of earlier sects."* This is not the place to discuss details of religious doctrine, but the introduction of the Tendai belief has historical importance. In the first place, it illustrates a fact which may be read between the lines of all Japanese annals, namely, that the Japanese are never blind borrowers from foreign systems: their habit is "to adapt what they borrow so as to fit it to what they possess." In the second place, the Tendai system became the parent of nearly all the great sects subsequently born in Japan. In the third place, the Buddhas of Contemplation, by whose aid the meditation of absolute truth is rendered possible, suggested the idea that they had frequently been incarnated for the welfare of mankind, and from that theory it was but a short step to the conviction that "the ancient gods whom the Japanese worshipped are but manifestations of these same mystical beings, and that the Buddhist faith had come, not to destroy the native Shinto, but to embody It into a higher and more universal system. From that moment the triumph of Buddhism was secured."** It is thus seen that the visit of Saicho (Dengyo Daishi) to China at the beginning of the ninth century and the introduction of the Tendai creed into Japan constitute landmarks in Japanese history.

*Developments of Japanese Buddhism, by the Rev. A. Lloyd. M. A.

**The doctrines that the Shinto deities were incarnations of the Buddhas of Contemplation (Dhyani) had already been enunciated by Gyogi but its general acceptance dates from the days of Dengyo Daishi. The doctrine was called honchi-suishaku.

ENGRAVING: PRIEST KOKAI, AFTERWARD KNOWN AS KOBO DAISHI

KOBO DAISHI

Contemporary with and even greater in the eyes of his countrymen than Dengyo Daishi, was Kobo Daishi (known as Kukai during his lifetime). He, too, visited China as a student of Buddhism, especially to learn the interpretation of a Sutra which had fallen into his hands in Japan, and on his return he founded the system of the True Word (Shingori), which has been practically identified with the Gnosticism of early Christian days. Kobo Daishi is the most famous of all Japanese Buddhist teachers; famous alike as a saint, as an artist, and as a calligraphist. His influence on the intellectual history of his country was marked, for he not only founded a religious system which to this day has a multitude of disciples, but he is also said to have invented, or at any rate to have materially improved, the Japanese syllabary (hira-gana).

THE SUBSERVIENCE OF SHINTO

That the disciples of the Shinto cult so readily endorsed a doctrine which relegated their creed to a subordinate place has suggested various explanations, but the simplest is the most convincing, namely, that Shinto possessed no intrinsic power to assert itself in the presence of a religion like Buddhism. At no period has Shinto produced a great propagandist. No Japanese sovereign ever thought of exchanging the tumultuous life of the Throne for the quiet of a Shinto shrine, nor did Shinto ever become a vehicle for the transmission of useful knowledge.

ENGRAVING: OKUNO-IN (Kobo Daishi's shrine) AT MT. KOYASAN

With Buddhism, the record is very different. Many of its followers were inspired by the prospect of using it as a stepping-stone to preferment rather than as a route to Nirvana. Official posts being practically monopolized by the aristocratic classes, those born in lowlier families found little opportunity to win honour and emoluments. But by embracing a religious career, a man might aspire to become an abbot or even a tutor to a prince or sovereign. Thus, learned and clever youths flocked to the portals of the priesthood, and the Emperor Saga is said to have lamented that the Court nobility possessed few great and able men, whereas the cloisters abounded in them. On the other hand, it has been observed with much reason that as troublers of the people the Buddhist priests were not far behind the provincial governors. In fact, it fared with Buddhism as it commonly fares with all human institutions—success begot abuses. The example of Dokyo exercised a demoralizing influence. The tonsure became a means of escaping official exactions in the shape of taxes or forced labour, and the building of temples a device to acquire property and wealth as well as to evade fiscal burdens. Sometimes the Buddhist priests lent themselves to the deception of becoming nominal owners of large estates in order to enable the real owners to escape taxation. Buddhism in Japan ultimately became a great militant power, ready at all times to appeal to force.

THE FIFTY-FIRST SOVEREIGN, THE EMPEROR HEIJO (A.D. 806-809)

Heijo, the fifty-first sovereign, was the eldest son of Kwammu. The latter, warned by the distress that his own great expenditures on account of the new capital had produced, and fully sensible of the abuses practised by the provincial officials, urged upon the Crown Prince the imperative necessity of retrenchment, and Heijo, on ascending the throne, showed much resolution in discharging superfluous officials, curtailing all unneeded outlays, and simplifying administrative procedure. But physical weakness—he was a confirmed invalid—and the influence of an ambitious woman wrecked his career. While still Crown Prince, he fixed his affections on Kusu, daughter of Fujiwara Tanetsugu, who had been assassinated by Prince Sagara during Kwammu's reign, and when Heijo ascended the throne, this lady's influence made itself felt within and without the palace, while her brother, Nakanari, a haughty, headstrong man, trading on his relationship to her, usurped almost Imperial authority.

Heijo's ill-health, however, compelled him to abdicate after a reign of only three years. He retired to the old palace at Nara, entrusting the sceptre to his brother, Saga. This step was profoundly disappointing to Kusu and her brother. The former aimed at becoming Empress—she possessed only the title of consort—and Fujiwara Nakanari looked for the post of prime minister. They persuaded the ex-Emperor to intimate a desire of reascending the throne. Saga acquiesced and would have handed over the sceptre, but at the eleventh hour, Heijo's conscientious scruples, or his prudence, caused a delay, whereupon Kusu and her brother, becoming desperate, publicly proclaimed that Heijo wished to transfer the capital to Nara. Before they could consummate this programme, however, Saga secured the assistance of Tamuramaro, famous as the conqueror of the Yemishi, and by his aid Fujiwara Nakanari was seized and thrown into prison, the lady Kusu being deprived of her rank as consort and condemned to be banished from Court. Heijo might have bowed to Nakanari's fate, but Kusu's sentence of degradation and exile overtaxed his patience. He raised an army and attempted to move to the eastern provinces. In Mino, his route was intercepted by a force under Tamuramaro, and the ex-Emperor's troops being shattered, no recourse offered except to retreat to Nara. Then the Jo-o (Heijo) took the tonsure, and his consort Kusu committed suicide. Those who had rallied to the ex-Emperor's standard were banished.

THE FIRST JAPANESE THAT ENTERED INDIA

When Heijo ceded the throne to Saga, the former's son, Takaoka, was nominated Crown Prince, though Saga had sons of his own. Evidently that step was taken for the purpose of averting precisely such incidents as those subsequently precipitated by the conspiracy to restore Heijo. Therefore on the day following Heijo's adoption of the tonsure, Takaoka was deprived of his rank.* Entering the priesthood, he called himself Shinnyo, retired to Higashi-dera and studied the doctrine of the True Word (Shingori). In 836, he proceeded to China to prosecute his religious researches, and ultimately made his way to India (in his eighty-first year), where he was killed by a tiger in the district now known as the Laos States of Siam. This prince is believed to have been the first Japanese that travelled to India. His father, the ex-Emperor Heijo, was a student of the same Buddhist doctrine (Shingon) and received instruction in it from Kukai. Heijo died in 824, at the age of fifty-one.

*His family was struck off the roll of princes and given the uji of Ariwara Asomi.

THE FIFTY-SECOND SOVEREIGN, THE EMPEROR SAGA (A.D. 810-823)

It is memorable in the history of the ninth century that three brothers occupied the throne in succession, Heijo, Saga, and Junna. Heijo's abdication was certainly due in part to weak health, but his subsequent career proves that this reason was not imperative. Saga, after a most useful reign of thirteen years, stepped down frankly in favour of his younger brother. There is no valid reason to endorse the view of some historians that these acts of self-effacement were inspired by an indolent distaste for the cares of kingship. Neither Heijo nor Saga shrank from duty in any form. During his brief tenure of power the former unflinchingly effected reforms of the most distasteful kind, as the dismissal of superfluous officials and the curtailing of expenses; and the latter's reign was distinguished by much useful legislation and organization. Heijo's abdication seems to have been due to genuine solicitude for the good of the State, and Saga's to a sense of reluctance to be outdone in magnanimity. Reciprocity of moral obligation (giri) has been a canon of Japanese conduct in all ages.

SANGI AND KURANDO

One of the earliest acts of Saga's reign was to establish the office of Court councillor (sangi) definitely and to determine the number of these officials at eight. The post of sangi had been instituted more than a century previously, but its occupants had neither fixed function, rank, nor number: they merely gave fortuitous advice about political affairs. Another office, dating from the same time (810), was that of kurando (called also kurodo). This seems to have been mainly a product of the political situation. At the palace of the retired Emperor in Nara—the Inchu, as it was called—the ambitious Fujiwara Nakanari and the Imperial consort, Kusu, were arrogating a large share of administrative and judicial business, and were flagrantly abusing their usurped authority. Saga did not know whom to trust. He feared that the council of State (Dajo-kwan) might include some traitors to his cause, and he therefore instituted a special office to be the depository of all secret documents, to adjudicate suits at law, to promulgate Imperial rescripts and decrees, to act as a kind of palace cabinet, and to have charge of all supplies for the Court. Ultimately this last function became the most important of the kurando's duties.

KEBIISHI AND TSUIHOSHI

It has already been explained that the Daiho legislators, at the beginning of the eighth century, having enacted a code (ryo) and a penal law (ritsu), supplemented these with a body of official rules (kyaku) and operative regulations (shiki). The necessity of revising these rules and regulations was appreciated by the Emperor Kwammu, but he did not live to witness the completion of the work, which he had entrusted to the sa-daijin, Fujiwara Uchimaro, and others. The task was therefore re-approached by a committee of which the dainagon, Fujiwara Fuyutsugu, was president, under orders from the Emperor Saga. Ten volumes of the rules and forty of the regulations were issued in 819, the former being a collection of all rescripts and decrees issued since the first year of Daiho (701), and the latter a synopsis of instructions given by various high officials and proved by practice since the same date. Here, then, was a sufficiently precise and comprehensive body of administrative guides. But men competent to utilize them were not readily forthcoming. The provincial governors and even the metropolitan officials, chosen from among men whose qualifications were generally limited to literary ability or aristocratic influence, showed themselves incapable of dealing with the lawless conditions existing in their districts.

This state of affairs had been noticeable ever since the reign of Shomu (724-749), but not until the time of Saga was a remedy devised. It took the form of organizing a body of men called kebiishi, upon whom devolved the duty of pursuing and arresting lawbreakers. At first this measure was on a small scale and of a tentative character. But its results proved so satisfactory that the system was extended from the capital to the provinces, and, in 830, a Kebiishi-cho (Board of Kebiishi) was duly formed, the number and duties of its staff being definitely fixed four years later. The importance attaching to the post of chief of this board is attested by the fact that only the emon no Kami or the hyoye no Kami* was eligible originally, the bushi (military men) in the hereditary service of these high dignitaries being entrusted—under the name of tsuiho-shi—with the duty of enforcing the law against all violators. Ultimately the judicial functions hitherto discharged by the Efu (Guard Office), the Danjo-dai (Police Board) and the Gyobu-sho (Department of Justice) were all transferred to the Kebiishi-cho, and the latter's orders ranked next to Imperial decrees.

*Three corps of military guards formed part of the organization. The senior corps were the Imperial guards (konoe): then came the military guards (hyoye) and then the gate-guards (yemon). Each was divided into two battalions; a battalion of the Left and a battalion of the Right. Then there were the sa-konye and the u-konye, the sa-hyoye and the u-hyoye, the sa-yemon and the u-yemon. These six offices were known as roku-yefu, and the officer in chief command of each corps was a kami.

These kebiishi and tsuiho-shi have historical importance. They represent the unequivocal beginning of the military class which was destined ultimately to impose its sway over the whole of Japan. Their institution was also a distinct step towards transferring the conduct of affairs, both military and civil, from the direct control of the sovereign to the hands of officialdom. The Emperor's power now began to cease to be initiative and to be limited to sanction or veto. The Kurando-dokoro was the precursor of the kwampaku; the Kebiishi-cho, of the so-tsuihoshi.

FUJIWARA FUYUTSUGU

Fujiwara Fuyutsugu, who, as mentioned above, took such an important part in the legislation of his era, may be adduced as illustrating the error of the too common assertion that because the Fujiwara nobles abused their opportunities in the later centuries of the Heian epoch, the great family's services to its country were small. Fujiwara Fuyutsugu was at once a statesman, a legislator, an historian, and a soldier. Serving the State loyally and assiduously, he reached the rank of first minister (sa-daijiri) though he died at the early age of fifty-two, and it is beyond question that to his ability must be attributed a large measure of the success achieved by his Imperial master, Saga. The story of his private life may be gathered from the fact that he established and richly endowed an asylum for the relief of his indigent relatives; a college (the Kwangaku-iri) for the education of Fujiwara youths, and an uji-tera (Nanyen-do) at Nara for soliciting heaven's blessing on all that bore his name.

THE JAPANESE PEERAGE

An interesting episode of Saga's reign was the compilation of a record of all the uji (family names). Originally the right to use a family name had been guarded as carefully as is a title of nobility in Europe. The uji was, in truth, a hereditary title. But, as has been occasionally noted in these pages, an uji was from time to time bestowed on families of aliens, and thus, in the course of ages, confusion gradually arose. From the middle of the eighth century, efforts to compile a trustworthy record were made, and in Kwammu's reign a genealogical bureau (kankei-jo) was actually organized, its labours resulting in a catalogue of titles (seishi mokuroku). This proved defective, however, as did a subsequent effort in Heijo's time. Finally, the Emperor Saga entrusted the task to Prince Mamta, who, with a large staff of assistants, laboured for ten years, and, in 814, produced the Seishi-roku (Record of Uji) in thirty volumes. Though not absolutely exhaustive, this great work remained a classic down to modern times. It divided into three classes the whole body of uji—1182—enrolled in its pages: namely, Kwobetsu, or those of Imperial lineage; Shimbetsu, or those descended from the Kami, and Bambetsu, or those of alien origin (Chinese or Korean). A few who could not be clearly traced were placed in a "miscellaneous list." This paragraph of history suggests the quality of Japanese civilization in the ninth century.

ENGRAVING: HYO-NO-MA ROOM IN THE KOHOAN OF DAITOKU-JI, AT KYOTO

THE FIFTY-THIRD SOVEREIGN, THE EMPEROR JUNNA (A.D. 824-833)

Junna was Kwammu's third son. He ascended the throne on the abdication of his elder brother, Saga, and he himself abdicated in favour of the latter's son, Nimmyo, nine years later. Junna's reign is not remarkable for any achievement. No special legislation was inaugurated nor any campaign against abuses undertaken. The three brothers, Heijo, Saga, and Junna, may be said to have devoted paramount attention to the study of Chinese literature. History refuses, however, to connect this industry with a desire for ethical instruction. Their efforts are said to have been limited to the tracing of ideographs and the composition of verselets. A perfectly formed ideograph possesses in Japanese eyes many of the qualities that commend a pictorial masterpiece to Western appreciation. Saga achieved the distinction of being reckoned among the "Three Penmen" of his era,* and he carried his enthusiasm so far as to require that all the scions of the aristocracy should be instructed in the Chinese classics. Junna had less ability, but his admiration was not less profound for a fine specimen of script or a deftly turned couplet. It is, nevertheless, difficult to believe that these enthusiasts confined themselves to the superficialities of Chinese learning. The illustrations of altruism which they furnished by abdicating in one another's favour may well have been inspired by perusing the writings of Confucius.** However that may be, the reign of Junna, though not subjectively distinguished, forms a landmark in Japanese history as the period which closed the independent exercise of sovereign authority. When Junna laid down the sceptre, it may be said, as we shall presently see, to have been taken up by the Fujiwara.

*The other two were Kobo Daishi, and Tachibana Hayanari.

**Vide the remarks of the Chinese sage on Tai-pei, Chou-kung, Wen-wang, and Wu-wang.

ENGRAVING: "SHAKUHACHI," FLUTES MADE OF BAMBOO

ENGRAVING: "KARAMON" GATE OF NISHI HONGWAN-JI TEMPLE, AT KYOTO



CHAPTER XIX

THE HEIAN EPOCH (Continued)

54th Sovereign, Nimmyo A.D. 834-850

55th " Montoku 851-858

56th " Seiwa 859-876

57th " Yozei 877-884

58th " Koko 885-887

59th " Uda 888-897

60th " Daigo 898-930

BEGINNING OF FUJIWARA SUPREMACY

THE events that now occurred require to be prefaced by a table:

/ Heijo Saga Nimmyo (m. Jun, / Prince Michiyasu daughter of < (Emperor Montoku) Kwammu < Fujiwara Fuyutsugu) / Junna (m. Masa, < Prince Tsunesada daughter of Saga)

In the year 834, Junna abdicated in favour of his elder brother Saga's second son, who is known in history as Emperor Nimmyo. The latter was married to Jun, daughter of Fujiwara Fuyutsugu, and had a son, Prince Michiyasu. But, in consideration of the fact that Junna had handed over the sceptre to Nimmyo, Nimmyo, in turn, set aside the claim of his own son, Michiyasu, and conferred the dignity of Prince Imperial on Prince Tsunesada, Junna's son. A double debt of gratitude was thus paid, for Tsunesada was not only Junna's son but also Saga's grandson, and thus the abdications of Saga and Junna were both compensated. The new Prince Imperial, however, being a man of much sagacity, foresaw trouble if he consented to supplant Nimmyo's son. He struggled to avoid the nomination, but finally yielded to the wishes of his father and his grandfather.

While these two ex-Emperors lived, things moved smoothly, to all appearances. On their demise trouble arose immediately. The Fujiwara family perceived its opportunity and decided to profit by it. Fujiwara Fuyutsugu had died, and it chanced that his son Yoshifusa was a man of boundless ambition. By him and his partisans a slander was framed to the effect that the Crown Prince, Tsunesada, harboured rebellious designs, and the Emperor, believing the story—having, it is said, a disposition to believe it—pronounced sentence of exile against Prince Tsunesada, as well as his friends, the celebrated scholar, Tachibana no Hayanari, and the able statesman, Tomo no Kowamine, together with a number of others. It is recorded that the sympathy of the people was with the exiles.

These things happened in the year 843. The Fujiwara sought a precedent in the action of their renowned ancestor, Momokawa, who, in 772, contrived the degradation and death of the Crown Prince Osabe on a charge of sorcery But Momokawa acted from motives of pure patriotism, whereas Yoshifusa worked in the Fujiwara interests only. This, in fact, was the first step towards the transfer of administrative power from the Throne to the Fujiwara.

FRESH COMPLICATIONS ABOUT THE SUCCESSION

Another table may be consulted with advantage:

Emperor Heijo Prince Aho Ariwara no Narihira > / Aritsune a daughter / Ki no Natora < Shizu a daughter > Prince Koretaka Emperor Montoku / Emperor Montoku > Prince Korehito Fujiwara Yoshifusa (Emperor Seiwa) Princess Kiyo > Aki (Empress Somedono) (daughter of Saga) / /

In the year 851, the Emperor Montoku ascended the throne, and Fujiwara Yoshifusa was appointed minister of the Right. Yoshifusa married Princess Kiyo, daughter of the Emperor Saga. She had been given the uji of Minamoto in order to legalize this union, and she bore to Yoshifusa a daughter who became Montoku's Empress under the name of Somedono. By her, Montoku had a son, Prince Korehito, whose chance of succeeding to the crown should have been very slender since he had three half-brothers, the oldest of whom, Prince Koretaka, had already attained his fourth year at the time of Korehito's birth, and was his father's favourite. In fact, Montoku would certainly have nominated Koretaka to be Prince Imperial had he not feared to offend the Fujiwara. These let it be seen very plainly what they designed. The baby, Korehito, was taken from the palace into Yoshifusa's mansion, and when only nine months old was nominated Crown Prince. The event enriched Japanese literature. For Montoku's first born, Prince Koretaka, seeing himself deprived of his birthright, went into seclusion in Ono at the foot of Mount Hiei, and there, in the shadow of the great Tendai monastery, devoted his days to composing verselets. In that pastime he was frequently joined by Ariwara no Narihira, who, as a grandson of the Emperor Heijo, possessed a title to the succession more valid than even that of the disappointed Koretaka. In the celebrated Japanese anthology, the Kokin-shu, compiled at the beginning of the tenth century, there are found several couplets from the pens of Koretaka and Narihira.

THE FUJIWARA REGENCY

It was in the days of Fujiwara Yoshifusa that the descendants of Kamatari first assumed the role of kingmakers. Yoshifusa obtained the position of minister of the Right on the accession of Montoku (851), and, six years later, he was appointed chancellor of the empire (dajo daijin) in the sequel of the intrigues which had procured for his own grandson (Korehito) the nomination of Prince Imperial. The latter, known in history as the Emperor Seiwa, ascended the throne in the year 859. He was then a child of nine, and naturally the whole duty of administration devolved upon the chancellor. This situation fell short of the Fujiwara leader's ideal in nomenclature only. There had been many "chancellors" but few "regents" (sessho). In fact, the office of regent had always been practically confined to princes of the Blood, and the qualifications for holding it were prescribed in very high terms by the Daiho statutes. Yoshifusa did not possess any of the qualifications, but he wielded power sufficient to dispense with them, and, in the year 866, he celebrated the Emperor's attainment of his majority by having himself named sessho. The appointment carried with it a sustenance fief of three thousand houses; the privilege of being constantly attended by squadrons of the Right and Left Imperial guards, and the honour of receiving the allowances and the treatment of the Sangu, that is to say, of an Empress, a Dowager Empress, or a Grand Dowager Empress. Husband of an Empress, father of an Empress Dowager, grandfather of a reigning Emperor, chancellor of the empire, and a regent—a subject could climb no higher. Yoshifusa died in 872 at the age of sixty-eight. Having no son of his own, he adopted his nephew, Mototsune, son of Fujiwara Nagara.

SEIWA'S EMPRESS

Seiwa abdicated in 876, at the age of twenty-seven. Some historians ascribe his abdication to a sentiment of remorse. He had ascended the throne in despite of the superior claims of his elder brother, Koretaka, and the usurpation weighed heavily on his conscience. It is at least credible that since, in taking the sceptre he obeyed the dictates of the Fujiwara, so in laying it down he followed the same guidance. We cannot be sure as to the exact date when the great family's policy of boy-sovereigns first took definite shape, but the annals seem to show that Yoshifusa conceived the programme and that his adopted son, Mototsune, carried it out. A halo rests on Seiwa's head for the sake of his memorable descendants, the Minamoto chiefs, Yoritomo, Takauji, and Ieyasu. Heaven is supposed to have compensated the brevity of his own tenure of power by the overwhelming share that his posterity enjoyed in the administration of the empire.

But Seiwa was undoubtedly a good man as well as a zealous sovereign. One episode in his career deserves attention as illustrating the customs of the era. Mention has already been made of Ariwara no Narihira, a grandson of the Emperor Heijo and one of the most renowned among Japanese poets. He was a man of singular beauty, and his literary attainments, combined with the melancholy that marked his life of ignored rights, made him a specially interesting figure. He won the love of Taka, younger sister of Fujiwara Mototsune and niece of Yoshifusa. Their liaison was not hidden. But Yoshifusa, in default of a child of his own, was just then seeking some Fujiwara maiden suitable to be the consort of the young Emperor, Seiwa, in pursuance of the newly conceived policy of building the Fujiwara power on the influence of the ladies' apartments in the palace. Taka possessed all the necessary qualifications. In another age the obstacle of her blemished purity must have proved fatal. Yoshifusa's audacity, however, was as limitless as his authority. He ordered the poet prince to cut his hair and go eastward in expiation of the crime of seeking to win Taka's affections, and having thus officially rehabilitated her reputation, he introduced her into the household of the Empress Dowager, his own daughter, through whose connivance the lady soon found her way to the young Emperor's chamber and became the mother of his successor, Yozei.

Nor was this all. Though only a Fujiwara, and a soiled Fujiwara at that, Taka was subsequently raised to the rank of Empress. Ultimately, when Empress Dowager, her name was coupled with that of the priest Zenyu of Toko-ji, as the Empress Koken's had been with that of Dokyo, a hundred years previously, and she suffered deprivation of Imperial rank. As for Narihira, after a few years he was allowed to return from exile, but finding that all his hopes of preferment were vain, he abandoned himself to a life of indolence and debauchery. His name, however, will always stand next to those of Hitomaro and Akahito on the roll of Japanese poets.

ENGRAVING: FUJIWARA SEIWA

YOZEI, UDA, AND THE KWAMPAKU

The fifty-seventh sovereign was Yozei, offspring of the Emperor Seiwa's union with the lady Taka. He ascended the throne in the year 877, at the age of ten, and Fujiwara Mototsune—Yoshifusa had died five years previously—became regent (sessho), holding also the post of chancellor (dajo-daijin). When Yozei was approaching his seventeenth year he was overtaken by an illness which left him a lunatic. It is related that he behaved in an extraordinary manner. He set dogs and monkeys to fight and then slaughtered them; he fed toads to snakes, and finally compelling a man lo ascend a tree, he stabbed him among the branches. The regent decided that he must be dethroned, and a council of State was convened to consider the matter. There had never been an example of an act so sacrilegious as the deposition of an Emperor at the dictate of his subjects. The ministers hesitated. Then one of the Fujiwara magnates (Morokuzu) loudly proclaimed that anyone dissenting from the chancellor's proposal would have to answer for his contumacy. Thereafter, no one hesitated—so overshadowing was the power of the Fujiwara. When carried to a special palace—thenceforth called Yozei-in—and informed that he had been dethroned for killing a man, the young Emperor burst into a flood of tears.

No hesitation was shown in appointing Yozei's successor. Prince Tokiyasu, son of the Emperor Nimmyo, satisfied all the requirements. His mother, a daughter of Fujiwara Tsugunawa, was Mototsune's maternal aunt, and the Prince himself, already in his fifty-fifth year, had a son, Sadami, who was married to the daughter of Fujiwara Takafuji, a close relation to Mototsune. There can be no doubt that the latter had the whole programme in view when he proposed the dethronement of Yozei. Shortly after his accession, Prince Tokiyasu—known in history as the Emperor Koko—fell ill, and at Mototsune's instance the sovereign's third son (Sadami) was nominated Prince Imperial. He succeeded to the throne as Emperor Uda on the death of his father, which occurred (887) after a reign of two years.

This event saw fresh extension of the Fujiwara's power. Uda was twenty-two years of age when he received the sceptre, but recognizing that he owed his elevation to Mototsune's influence and that his prospects of a peaceful reign depended upon retaining the Fujiwara's favour, his first act was to decree that the administration should be carried on wholly by the chancellor, the latter merely reporting to the Throne. This involved the exercise of power hitherto unprecedented. To meet the situation a new office had to be created, namely, that of kwampaku. The actual duties of this post were those of regent to a sovereign who had attained his majority, whereas sessho signified regent to a minor. Hence the kwampaku was obviously the more honourable office, since its incumbent officiated in lieu of an Emperor of mature years. Accordingly, the kwampaku—or mayor of the palace, as the term is usually translated—took precedence of all other officials. A subject could rise no higher without ceasing to yield allegiance. As Mototsune was the first kwampaku, he has been called the most ambitious and the least scrupulous of the Fujiwara. But Mototsune merely stood at the pinnacle of an edifice, to the building of which many had contributed, and among those builders not a few fully deserved all they achieved. The names of such members of the Fujiwara family as Mimori, Otsugu, Yoshino, Sadanushi, Nagara, Yoshisuke, and Yasunori, who wrought and ruled in the period from Heijo and Saga to Montoku and Seiwa, might justly stand high in any record.*

*The office of Kwampaku was continued from the time of its creation, 882, to 1868.

THE AKO INCIDENT

The Emperor Uda, as already stated, owed everything to the Fujiwara. He himself did not possess even the claim of primogeniture, since he was the third among several sons, and he had stepped out of the ranks of the Imperial princes by accepting a family name. His decree conferring administrative autocracy on Mototsune was thus a natural expression of gratitude.

Yet this very document proved a source of serious trouble. It was drafted by Tachibana Hiromi, a ripe scholar, whose family stood as high on the aristocratic roll as did that of the Fujiwara themselves. At that time literary attainments conferred immense prestige in Kyoto. To be skilled in calligraphy; to be well versed in the classics; to be capable of composing a sonorous decree or devising a graceful couplet—such accomplishments constituted a passport not only to high office but even to the love of women. Tachibana Hiromi was one of the leading literati of his era. He rendered into most academical terms the Emperor's intentions towards Mototsune. From time immemorial it has always been a canon of Japanese etiquette not to receive anything with avidity. Mototsune declined the rescript; the Emperor directed Hiromi to re-write it. Thus far the procedure had been normal. But Hiromi's second draft ran thus: "You have toiled for the welfare of the country. You have aided me in accordance with the late sovereign's will. You are the chief servant of the empire, not my vassal. You will henceforth discharge the duties of ako." This term "ako" occurs in Chinese history. It signifies "reliance on equity," a name given by an early Emperor to the administration of the sage, I Yin. Hiromi inserted it solely to impart a classical flavour to the decree and in all good faith.

But Fujiwara Sukeyo, a rival literatus who possessed the confidence of Mototsune, persuaded the latter that the epithet "ako" could not apply to the discharge of active duties. What followed was characteristic. Mototsune caused a number of horses to be let loose in the city, his explanation being that, as he had no official functions to discharge, neither had he any need of horses. Naturally a number of horses running wild in the streets of the capital caused confusion which soon came to the notice of the palace. The Emperor at once convoked a meeting of literati to discuss the matter, but these hesitated so long between their scholarly convictions and their political apprehensions that, for several months, a state of administrative anarchy prevailed, and the Emperor recorded in his diary a lament over the corruption of the age. At last, by the advice of the minister of the Left, Minamoto Toru, his Majesty sacrificed Hiromi. A third decree was drafted, laying the blame on Hiromi's shoulders, and Mototsune graciously consented to resume the duties of the first subject in the empire. Just forty-five years previously, Hayanari, another illustrious scholar of the Tachibana family, had been among the victims of the false charge preferred against the Crown Prince, Tsunesada, by the Fujiwara partisans. Mototsune may well have been desirous of removing from the immediate neighbourhood of the throne the representative of a family having such a cause of umbrage against the Fujiwara.

At the same time, it is only just to note that he found ready coadjutors among the jealous schoolmen of the time. Rival colleges, rival academies, and rival literati quarrelled with all the rancour of medieval Europe. The great luminaries of the era were Sugawara Michizane, Ki no Haseo, Koze no Fumio, Miyoshi Kiyotsura, and Tachibana Hiromi. There was little mutual recognition of talent. Kiyotsura abused Haseo as a pundit inferior to any of his predecessors. Michizane ridiculed Fumio's panegyric of Kiyotsura, The pupils of these men endorsed their teachers' verdicts. Ajnong them all, Tachibana Hiromi occupied the most important position until the day of his downfall. He practically managed the affairs of the Court under Yozei, Koko, and Uda. Fujiwara Sukeyo, a greatly inferior scholar, served as his subordinate, and was the willing tool in contriving his degradation. It did not cause the Fujiwara any serious concern that in compassing the ruin of Hiromi, they effectually alienated the sympathies of the sovereign.

CESSATION OF EMBASSIES TO CHINA

It may be supposed that in an era when Chinese literati attracted so much attention, visits to the Middle Kingdom were frequent. But from the closing years of the eighth century, the great Tang dynasty began to fall into disorder, and the embassies sent from Japan reported a discouraging state of affairs. The last of these embassies (kento-shi) was in the year 838. It had long ceased to take the overland route via Liaoyang; the envoys' vessels were obliged to go by long sea, and the dangers were so great that to be named for this duty was regarded with consternation. In Uda's reign a project was formed to appoint Sugawara Michizane as kento-shi, and Ki no Haseo as his lieutenant. There is reason to think that this suggestion came from Michizane's enemies who wished to remove him from a scene where his presence threatened to become embarrassing. The course Michizane adopted at this crisis showed moral courage, whatever may be thought of its expediency. He memorialized the Throne in the sense that the dangers of the journey were not compensated by its results. The memorial was approved. Since the days of the Empress Suiko, when the first kento-shi was despatched by Prince Shotoku, 294 years had elapsed, and by some critics the abandonment of the custom has been condemned. But it is certain that China in the ninth century had little to teach Japan in the matter of either material or moral civilization.

THE AFFAIR OF THE ENGI ERA

The Emperor Uda not only possessed great literary knowledge but was also deeply sensible of the abuse that had grown out of the virtual usurpation of administrative authority by one family. As illustrating his desire to extend the circle of the Throne's servants and to enlist erudite men into the service of the State, it is recorded that he caused the interior of the palace to be decorated* with portraits of renowned statesmen and literati from the annals of China. Fate seemed disposed to assist his design, for, in the year 891, the all-powerful Fujiwara Mototsune died, leaving three sons, Tokihira, Nakahira, and Tadahira, the eldest of whom was only twenty-one. During the life of Mototsune, to whom the Emperor owed everything, it would not have been politically or morally possible to contrive any radical change of system, and even after his death, the Fujiwara family's claim to the Throne's gratitude precluded any direct attempt on Uda's part to supplant them. Therefore, he formed the plan of abdicating in favour of his son, as soon as the latter should attain a suitable age—a plan inspired in some degree by his own feeble health and by a keen desire to pass the closing years of his life in comparative retirement. He carried out this design in the year 897, and was thenceforth known as Uda-in.**

*It is on this occasion that we hear of Koze no Kanaoka, the first Japanese artist of great repute.

**The suffix in was now first used for the names of retired Emperors.

His son, Daigo, who now ascended the throne, was thirteen years old, but no Fujiwara regent was appointed, Tokihira, the one person eligible in respect of lineage, being precluded by youth. Therefore the office of minister of the Left was conferred on Tokihira, and Sugawara Michizane (called also Kwanko) became minister of the Right.

It was to this Michizane that the ex-Emperor looked for material assistance in the prosecution of his design. The Sugawara family traced its descent to Nomi no Sukune, the champion wrestler of the last century before Christ and the originator of clay substitutes for human sacrifices at burials, though the name "Sugawara" did not belong to the family until eight hundred years later, when the Emperor Konin bestowed it on the then representative in recognition of his great scholarship. Thenceforth, the name was borne by a succession of renowned literati, the most erudite and the most famous of all being Michizane.

The ex-Emperor, on the accession of his thirteen-year-old son, Daigo, handed to the latter an autograph document known in history as the Counsels of the Kwampei Era. Its gist was: "Be just. Do not be swayed by love or hate. Study to think impartially. Control your emotion and never let it be externally visible. The sa-daijin, Fujiwara Tokihira, is the descendant of meritorious servants of the Crown. Though still young, he is already well versed in the administration of State affairs. Some years ago, he sinned with a woman,* but I have no longer any memory of the event. You will consult him and be guided by his counsels. The u-daijin, Sugawara Michizane, is a man of profound literary knowledge. He is also acquainted with politics. Frequently I have profited by his admonitions. When I was elected Crown Prince I had but Michizane to advise me. Not only has he been a loyal servant to me, but he will be a loyal servant to my successor also." Plainly the intention of the document was to place Michizane on a footing at least equal to that of Tokihira. Michizane understood the perils of such preferment. He knew that the scion of a comparatively obscure family would not be tolerated as a rival by the Fujiwara. Three times he declined the high post offered to him. In his second refusal he compared himself to a man walking on thin ice, and in the third he said: "If I myself am astounded at my promotion, how must others regard it? The end will come like a flash of lightning." But the Emperor and the ex-Emperor had laid their plans, and Michizane was an indispensable factor.

*A liaison with his uncle's wife.

Events moved rapidly. Two years later (900), the Emperor, in concert with the cloistered sovereign, proposed to raise Michizane to the post of chancellor and to entrust the whole administration to him. This was the signal for the Fujiwara to take action. One opportunity for slandering Michizane offered; his daughter had been married to Prince Tokiyo, the Emperor's younger brother. A rumour was busily circulated that this meant a plot for the dethronement of Daigo in favour of Tokiyo. Miyoshi Kiyotsura, an eminent scholar, acting subtly at the instance of the Fujiwara, addressed a seemingly friendly letter to Michizane, warning him that his career had become dangerously rapid and explaining that the stars presaged a revolution in the following year. At the same time, Minamoto Hikaru, son of the Emperor Nimmyo; Fujiwara Sadakuni, father-in-law of Daigo, and several others who were jealous of Michizane's preferment or of his scholarship, separately or jointly memorialized the Throne, impeaching Michizane as a traitor who plotted against his sovereign.

ENGRAVING: SUGAWARA MICHIZANE

Supplemented by Miyoshi's "friendly" notice of a star-predicated cataclysm, this cumulative evidence convinced, and doubtless the number and rank of the accusers alarmed the Emperor, then only in his seventeenth year. Michizane was not invited to defend himself. In the first year (901) of the Engi era, a decree went out stripping him of all his high offices, and banishing him to Dazai-fu in Kyushu as vice-governor. Many other officials were degraded as his partisans. The ex-Emperor, to whose pity he pleaded in a plaintive couplet, made a resolute attempt to aid him. His Majesty repaired to the palace for the purpose of remonstrating with his son, Daigo. Had a meeting taken place, Michizane's innocence would doubtless have been established. But the Fujiwara had provided against such an obvious miscarriage of their design. The palace guards refused to admit the ex-Emperor, and, after waiting throughout a winter's day seated on a straw mat before the gate, Uda went away in the evening, sorehearted and profoundly humiliated. Michizane's twenty-three children were banished to five places, and he himself, having only a nominal post, did not receive emoluments sufficient to support him in comfort. Even oil for a night-lamp was often unprocurable, and after spending twenty-five months in voluntary confinement with only the society of his sorrows, he expired (903) at the age of fifty-eight, and was buried in the temple Anraku-ji in Chikuzen.

ENGRAVING: SHRINE OF SUGAWARA MICHIZANE AT KITANO, KYOTO

No figure in Japanese history has received such an abundant share of national sympathy. His unjust fate and the idea that he suffered for his sovereign appealed powerfully to popular imagination. Moreover, lightning struck the palace in Kyoto, and the three principal contrivers of Michizane's disgrace, Fujiwara Tokihira, Fujiwara Sugane, and Minamoto Hikaru, all expired within a few years' interval. At that epoch a wide-spread belief existed in the powers of disembodied spirits for evil or for good. Such a creed grew logically out of the cult of ancestor worship. It began to be whispered abroad that Michizane's spirit was taking vengeance upon his enemies. The Emperor was the first to act upon this superstition. He restored Michizane's titles, raised him to the first grade of the second rank, and caused all the documents relating to his exile to be burned. Retribution did not stop there. Forty-five years after Michizane's death, the people of Kyoto erected to his memory the shrine of Temman Tenjin,* and in the year 1004, the Emperor Ichijo not only conferred on him the posthumous office of chancellor with the unprecedented honour of first grade of the first rank, but also repaired in person to worship at the shrine. In later times, memorial shrines were built in various places, and to this day he is fervently worshipped as the deity of calligraphy, so high was he elevated by the Fujiwara's attempt to drag him down.

*Michizane was apotheosized under the name of Tenjin. He is known also as Kan Shojo, and Temmangu.

ENGRAVING: SAMISEN (A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT)

ENGRAVING: SANJU-SANGEN-DO TEMPLE AT KYOTO



CHAPTER XX

THE HEIAN EPOCH (Continued)

60th Sovereign, Daigo (Continued) 61st " Emperor Shujaku A.D. 931-946

THE ENGI ERA (A.D. 901-923)

In the year 909, Fujiwara Tokihira died and was followed to the grave, in 913, by Minamoto Hikaru. For an interval of some years no minister of State was nominated; the Emperor Daigo himself administered affairs. For this interregnum in the sway of the Fujiwara, the Engi era is memorable.

It is memorable for other things also; notably for the compilation of documents which throw much light on the conditions then existing in Japan. The Emperor, in 914, called upon the Court officials to submit memorials which should supply materials for administrative reforms. The great scholar, Miyoshi Kiyotsura, responded with ability so conspicuous that posterity has been disposed to question the justice of the charges against him in connexion with Michizane's fate. He set out by stating that, in the early times, the national sentiment had been kind and simple; the people loyal to the Throne and obedient to parents; the taxes moderate. But, thereafter, customs had gradually deteriorated. Laws and regulations were promulgated with bewildering rapidity. Taxes and forced labour grew heavier day by day. Cultivated lands were suffered to lie fallow. Buddhism established such a hold upon men's minds that people of all classes impoverished themselves to build places of worship and to cast images. Upon the erection of the provincial temples (Kokubun-ji) five-tenths of the national taxes were expended; and in connexion with the removal of the capital to Kyoto and the building of new palaces, a further sum of three-tenths was paid out. Again, the Emperor Nimmyo's (834-850) love of luxury and display led to architectural extravagance entirely unprecedented, and involved the squandering of yet another tenth of the remaining income of the State. Thereafter, in the Jokwan era (859-876), frequent conflagrations destroyed the Imperial edifice, and its restoration cost a tenth of the remaining revenue, so that only one-twentieth was ultimately available for general expenses.

As illustrating the state of the rural regions, the memorialist instanced the case of Bitchu, a province on the Inland Sea, where he held an official appointment in the year 893. The local records (Fudoki) showed that a levy made there about the middle of the seventh century had produced twenty thousand able-bodied soldiers,* whereas a century later, there were found only nineteen hundred; yet another century afterwards, only seventy; at the close of the ninth century, nine, and in the year 911, not one. To such a state of desolation had the district been reduced in the space of 250 years, and its story might be taken as typical.

*The district was consequently named Nima, an abbreviation of ni (two) man (ten thousand).

Passing to the question of religion, the memorialist declared that the Shinto ceremonials to secure good harvests had lost all sincerity. The officials behaved as though there were no such thing as deities. They used the offerings for their own private purposes, sold the sacred horses, and recited the rituals without the least show of reverence. As for Buddhist priests, before asking them to pray for the welfare of their parishioners, they must be asked to purge themselves of their own sins. The priests who ministered at the provincial temples had lost all sense of shame. They had wives, built houses, cultivated lands, and engaged in trade. Was it to be supposed that heaven would hearken to the intervention of such sinners?

Meanwhile, luxury and extravagance had reached an extreme degree. On one suit of clothes a patrimony was expended, and sometimes a year's income barely sufficed for a single banquet. At funeral services all classes launched into flagrant excesses. Feasts were prepared on such a scale that the trays of viands covered the entire floor of a temple. Thousands of pieces of gold were paid to the officiating priests, and a ceremony, begun in mourning, ended in revelry. Corresponding disorder existed with regard to the land. The original distribution into kubunden, as we saw, had been partly for purposes of taxation. But now these allotments were illegally appropriated, so that they neither paid imposts nor furnished labourers; and while governors held worthless regions, wealthy magnates annexed great tracts of fertile land. Another abuse, prevalent according to Miyoshi Kiyotsura's testimony, was that accusations were falsely preferred by officials against their seniors. Provincial governors were said to have frequently indulged in this treacherous practice and to have been themselves at times the victims of similar attacks. The Court, on receipt of such charges, seldom scrutinized them closely, but at once despatched officers to deal with the incriminated persons, and in the sequel, men occupying exalted positions were obliged to plead on an equal footing with officials of low grade or even common people. Self-respecting persons chose to stand aside altogether from official life rather than to encounter such risks.

This was an almost inevitable result of the exceptional facilities given to petitioners under the Daika and Daiho systems. Miyoshi Kiyotsura urged that all petitioning and all resulting inquiries by specially appointed officials should be interdicted, except in matters relating to political crime, and that all offenders should be handed over to the duly constituted administrators of justice. As to these latter, he spoke very plainly. The kebiishi, he wrote, who, being appointed to the various provinces, have to preserve law and order within their jurisdictions, should be men specially versed in law, whereas a majority of those serving in that capacity are ignorant and incompetent persons who have purchased their offices. To illustrate further the want of discrimination shown in selecting officials, he refers to the experts appointed in the maritime provinces for manufacturing catapults, and declares that many of these so-called "experts" had never seen a catapult.

ENGRAVING: FAMILY LIFE OF NOBLES, HEIAN EPOCH, A.D. 782-1192

It is against the Buddhist priests and the soldiers of the six guards that he inveighs most vehemently, however. He calls them "vicious and ferocious," Those who take the tonsure, he says, number from two to three thousand yearly, and about one-half of that total are wicked men—low fellows who, desiring to evade taxation and forced labour, have shaved their heads and donned priests vestments, aggregate two-thirds of the population. They marry, eat animal food, practise robbery, and carry on coining operations without any fear of punishment. If a provincial governor attempts to restrain them, they flock together and have recourse to violence. It was by bandits under the command of wicked priests that Fujiwara Tokiyoshi, governor of Aki, and Tachibana Kinkado, governor of Kii, were waylaid and plundered.

As for the soldiers of the guards, instead of taking their monthly term of duty at the palace, they are scattered over the country, and being strong and audacious, they treat the people violently and the provincial governors with contumacy, sometimes even forming leagues to rob the latter and escaping to the capital when they are hard pressed. (These guardsmen had arms and horses of their own and called themselves bushi, a term destined to have wide vogue in Japan.) It is interesting to note that they make their historical debut thus unfavourably introduced. Miyoshi Kiyotsura says that instead of being "metropolitan tigers" to guard the palace, they were "rural wolves" to despoil the provinces.