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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 , and, six years later, he was appointed chancellor of the empire in the sequel of the intrigues which had procured for his own grandson 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" . 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 , holding also the post of chancellor . 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 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 was nominated Prince Imperial. He succeeded to the throne as Emperor Uda on the death of his father, which occurred after a reign of two years.

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 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

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 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.

Events moved rapidly. Two years later , 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 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 at the age of fifty-eight, and was buried in the temple Anraku-ji in Chikuzen.

ENGRAVING: SHRINE OF SUGAWARA MICHIZANE AT KITANO, KYOTO

ENGRAVING: SAMISEN

ENGRAVING: SANJU-SANGEN-DO TEMPLE AT KYOTO

THE HEIAN EPOCH

THE ENGI ERA

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 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 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 , 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.

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. 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.

APPRECIATIONS OF THE MIYOSHI MEMORIAL

This celebrated document consisted of twelve articles and contained five thousand ideographs, so that nothing was wanting in the matter of voluminousness. The writer did not confine himself to enumerating abuses: he also suggested remedies. Thus he urged that no man, having become an equerry of the six corps of guards, should be allowed to return to his province during his term of service; that the spurious priests should be all unfrocked and punished; that the office of kebiishi should be restricted to men having legal knowledge; that the upper classes should set an example of economy in costumes and observances; that the ranks of the Buddhist priesthood should be purged of open violators of the laws of their creed, and so forth. Historians have justly eulogized the courage of a memorialist who thus openly attacked wide-spread and powerful abuses. But they have also noted that the document shows some reservations. For generations the Fujiwara family had virtually usurped the governing power; had dethroned Emperors and chosen Empresses; had consulted their own will alone in the administrations of justice and in the appointment and removal of officials. Yet of these things Miyoshi Kiyotsura says nothing whatever. The sole hope of their redress lay in Michizane; but instead of supporting that ill-starred statesman, Miyoshi had contributed to his downfall. Could a reformer with such a record be regarded as altogether sincere?

ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPEROR DAIGO

The Emperor Daigo, who ruled thirty-two years--from 898 to 930--is brought very close to us by the statement of a contemporary historian that he was "wise, intelligent, and kind-hearted," and that he always wore a smiling face, his own explanation of the latter habit being that he found it much easier to converse with men familiarly than solemnly. A celebrated incident of his career is that one winter's night he took off his wadded silk garment to evince sympathy with the poor who possessed no such protection against the cold. Partly because of his debonair manner and charitable impulses he is popularly remembered as "the wise Emperor of the Engi era." But close readers of the annals do not fully endorse that tribute. They note that Daigo's treatment of his father, Uda, on the celebrated occasion of the latter's visit to the palace to intercede for Michizane, was markedly unfilial; that his Majesty believed and acted upon slanders which touched the honour of his father no less than that of his well-proved servant, and that he made no resolute effort to correct the abuses of his time, even when they had been clearly pointed out by Miyoshi Kiyotsura. The usurpations of the Fujiwara; the prostitution of Buddhism to evil ends; the growth of luxurious and dissipated habits, and the subordination of practical ability to pedantic scholarship--these four malignant growths upon the national life found no healing treatment at Daigo's hands.

THE CLASSICAL AGE OF LITERATURE

The Engi era and the intervals of three or four decades before and after it may be regarded as the classical age of literature in Japan. Prose composition of a certain class was wholly in Chinese. All works of a historical, scientific, legal, or theological nature were in that language, and it cannot be said that they reached a very high level. Yet their authors had much honour. During the reigns of Uda and Daigo , Sugawara Michizane, Miyoshi Kiyotsura, Ki no Haseo, and Koze no Fumio, formed a quartet of famous masters of Chinese literature. From one point of view, Michizane's overthrow by Fujiwara Tokihira may be regarded as a collision between the Confucian doctrines which informed the polity of the Daika epoch and the power of aristocratic heredity. Kibi no Makibi and Sugawara no Michizane were the only two Japanese subjects that attained to be ministers of State solely in recognition of their learning, but several litt?rateurs reached high office, as chief chamberlain, councillor of State, minister of Education, and so forth. Miyoshi Kiyotsura ranks next to Michizane among the scholars of that age. He was profoundly versed in jurisprudence, mathematics , the Chinese classics, and history. But whereas Michizane bequeathed to posterity ten volumes of poems and two hundred volumes of a valuable historical work, no production of Kiyotsura's pen has survived except his celebrated memorial referred to above. He received the post of minister of the Household in 917 and died in the following year.

It must be understood that the work of these scholars appealed to only a very limited number of their countrymen. The ako incident illustrates this; the rescript penned by Tachibana no Hiromi was not clearly comprehended outside a narrow circle of scholars. Official notices and enactments were intelligible by few men of the trading classes and by no women. But a different record is found in the realm of high literature. Here there is much wealth. The Nara epoch gave to Japan the famous Manyo-shu , and the Engi era gave her the scarcely less celebrated Kokin-shu, an anthology of over eleven hundred poems, ancient and modern. As between the two books, the advantage is with the former, though not by any means in a marked degree, but in the abundance and excellence of its prose writings--pure Japanese writings apart from the Chinese works referred to above--"the Heian epoch leaves the Nara far behind. The language had now attained to its full development. With its rich system of terminations and particles it was a pliant instrument in the writer's hands, and the vocabulary was varied and copious to a degree which is astonishing when we remember that it was drawn almost exclusively from native sources. The few words of Chinese origin which it contains seem to have found their way in through the spoken language and are not taken straight from Chinese books, as at a later stage when Japanese authors loaded their periods with alien vocables."

ENGRAVING: MURASAKI SHIKIBU

In short, an extraordinary love of literature and of all that pertained to it swayed the minds of Japan throughout the Nara and the Heian epochs. The ninth and tenth centuries produced such poets as Ariwara no Yukihira and his younger brother, Narihira; Otomo no Kuronushi, Ochikochi no Mitsune, Sojo Henjo, and the poetess Ono no Komachi; gave us three anthologies , the Kokin-shu, the Gosen-shu, and the Shui-shu, as well as five of the Six National Histories , the Zoku Nihonki, the Nihon Koki, the Zoku Nihon Koki, the Montoku Jitsuroku, and the Sandai Jitsuroku; and saw a bureau of poetry established in Kyoto. Fine art also was cultivated, and it is significant that calligraphy and painting were coupled together in the current expression for products of pictorial art. Kudara no Kawanari and Koze no Kanaoka, the first Japanese painters to achieve great renown, flourished in the ninth and tenth centuries, as did also a famous architect, Hida no Takumi.

INTERVAL BETWEEN THE CAPITAL AND THE PROVINCES

Thus, in the capital, Kyoto, where the Fujiwara family constituted the power behind the Throne, refinements and luxury were constantly developed, and men as well as women amused themselves composing Chinese and Japanese poems, playing on musical instruments, dancing, and making picnics to view the blossoms of the four seasons. But in the provincial districts very different conditions existed. There, men, being virtually without any knowledge of the ideographic script, found the literature and the laws of the capital a sealed book to them, and as for paying periodical visits to Kyoto, what that involved may be gathered from the fact that the poet Tsurayuki's return to the capital from the province of Tosa, where he had served as acting governor, occupied one hundred days, as shown in his Tosa Nikki , and that thirteen days were needed to get from the mouth of the Yodo to the city. The pageant of metropolitan civilization and magnificence never presented itself to provincial eyes.

ORIGIN OF THE SHOEN

Much has already been said on the subject of land tenure; but as this problem is responsible for some cardinal phases of Japanese history, a brief resume will be useful here. There were four chief causes for the existence of shoen, or manors. The first was reclamation. In the year 723, it was decreed that persons who reclaimed land should acquire a de facto title of tenure for three generations, and, twenty years later, the tenure of title was made perpetual, limits of area being fixed, however--1250 acres for princes and nobles of the first rank, and thereafter by various gradations, to twenty-five acres for a commoner. But these limits were not enforced, and in the year 767 it became necessary to issue a decree prohibiting further reclamation, which was followed, seventeen years later, by a rescript forbidding provincial governors to exact forced labour for tilling their manors.

That this did not check the evil is proved by an official record, compiled in 797, from which it appears that princes and influential nobles possessed manors of great extent; that they appointed intendants to manage them; that these intendants themselves engaged in operations of reclamation; that they abused their power by despoiling the peasants, and that dishonest farmers made a practice of evading taxes and tribute by settling within the bounds of a manor. These abuses reached their acme during the reigns of Uda and Daigo , when people living in the vicinity of a manor were ruthlessly robbed and plundered by the intendant and his servants, and when it became habitual to elude the payment of taxes by making spurious assignments of lands to influential officials in the capital. In vain was the ownership of lands by powerful nobles interdicted, and in vain its purchase by provincial governors: the metropolis had no power to enforce its vetoes in the provinces, and the provincials ignored them. Thus the shoen grew in number and extent.

The second factor which contributed to the extension of manors was the bestowal of estates in perpetuity on persons of conspicuous ability, and afterwards on men who enjoyed Imperial favour. Land thus granted was called shiden and enjoyed immunity from taxation. Then there were tracts given in recognition of public merit. These koden were originally of limited tenure, but that condition soon ceased to be observed, and the koden fell into the same category with manors .

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