Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 1/Chapter 6
Chapter VI
THE HEIAN EPOCH
(End of the Eighth to the Middle of the Twelfth Century)
IT has been shown that after the fall of the patriarchal system of government the administrative power reverted to the sovereign, and that a series of vigorous reforms were undertaken on the lines of Chinese civilisation. But the Emperor did not long remain autocratic, nor did many of the reforms prove permanent. Mommu's (697–707) democratic edict, declaring that the throne rested on the people, had scarcely been acclaimed by the nation when the Fujiwara[1] family began to wield power which soon assumed extraordinary proportions.
This family was founded by Kamatari. He came into notice by compassing the destruction of the last of the patriarchal clans (the Soga), and fate, with her usual irony, decreed that he himself should be the founder of a clan beside whose usurpations those of the Soga, or any other Japanese clan, look, insignificant. Kamatari traced his descent back to the days of Jimmu, but even if the reckoning commence with himself in the seventh century, the Fujiwara are sufficiently antique. There has been no break in the continuity of their line. They were the repositories of the administrative power for nearly five centuries. Their name is borne by ninety-five out of the hundred and forty-five families constituting the Japanese court nobility. Their daughters enjoyed through all ages, and still enjoy, a kind of prescriptive title to be the Emperors' consorts.[2] Their sons established a hereditary right to fill the highest offices in the State. The history of Japan, during the twelve hundred years covered by her written annals, may truly be described as the history of four families, the Fujiwara, the Taira, the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa.
It is usual to adopt as lines of division the Nara epoch, the Heian (Kyōtō) epoch, the Kamakura epoch, and the Yedo epoch,—a classification based on the fact that each of these places was in turn the seat of administrative authority. But the course of political change is more intelligently indicated by taking for landmarks the successive usurpations of the four great families. The Fujiwara governed through the Emperor; the Taira, the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa may be said to have governed in spite of the Emperor. The Fujiwara based their power on matrimonial alliances with the Throne; the Taira, the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa based theirs on the possession of armed strength which the Throne had no competence to control. There another broad line of cleavage is seen. Throughout the Fujiwara era the centre of political gravity, though shifted from the sovereign to the Court nobles, remained always in the Court. Throughout the era of the Taira, the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa, the centre of political gravity was transferred to a point altogether outside the Court, the headquarters of a military feudalism.
One fact has always to be remembered in connection with the usurpations of these families: their ancestors were not ordinary subjects. The Fujiwara traced their origin to the era of gods. The progenitors of the Taira and the Minamoto were sons of Emperors reigning at the commencement of the ninth century. The Tokugawa were a branch of the Minamoto. If a broad survey of Japanese history indicates that the sanctity derived by a sovereign from his divine lineage contributed to the stability of his throne only in so far as it constituted a charter of power for the nominal, but really usurping, agents of his will, the same history indicates that those agents were themselves scions of the Imperial stock.
In the year 794 the Imperial capital was transferred from Nara to Kyōtō[3] by order of the Emperor, Kwammu. It has been conjectured that one of the chief objects of the change was to separate religion and politics. The extrav-agant patronage bestowed on the Buddhist priests during the Nara epoch had educated in them a spirit of arrogance which Kwammu saw the necessity of checking. Some colour is lent to this theory by a fact, independently interesting, namely, that Kwammu worshipped the "heavenly King" with offerings of burnt sacrifices, thus apparently setting up a new supreme ruler and a new method of propitiating him. But that incident of his career probably indicates nothing more than a close study of Confucianism, which couples worship of Shang Ti, a shadowy "Supreme," with worship of ancestors, nor can any hostility to Buddhism be attributed to a monarch whose zeal in building and endowing Buddhist temples is historical. The more rational explanation of the transfer of the capital to Kyōtō is that it was part of a scheme for the better centralisation of administrative power.
At the close of the eighth century the three great difficulties of the time were the growth of provisional autocrats who ignored the mandates of the Throne; the continued revolt of the autochthons, and the reappearance of the system of hereditary office-bearers.
Less than a century had sufficed to nullify many of the Taikwa and Taihō reforms described in the last chapter. One great purpose of those reforms had been to give practical force to the principle of the Throne's eminent domain and to make the land the chief source of the State's income. But the reckless expenditure of the Court and of the patrician class necessitated such heavy rates of taxation that the farmers had to borrow money and rice from officials or Buddhist priests, and since they had nothing to offer by way of security except their lands, it resulted that the temples and the nobles began to acquire great estates of which the Government hesitated to resume possession, as prescribed by law, and the agricultural population gradually fell into a condition of practical serfdom. So miserable was their plight that many preferred to embrace the status of slaves, and others turned to highway robbery and piracy. The Court, absorbed in ceremonial observances, elaborate pastimes, and superstitious extravagances, made no serious effort to check these abuses, or to assert its authority over the provincial magnates, who generally took the precaution of allying themselves with some of the prominent families in the capital. Gradually both the provincial magnates and the metropolitan nobles began to openly defy the restrictions imposed by law upon the bearing of arms, attached to their persons large guards of sword-girt soldiers, and maintained autocratic state not much inferior to that of the Court itself. The sovereign might not venture to deprive such men of the administrative posts held by them, and thus the old vice of hereditary office-bearers again came into practice, while, at the same time, the administrative im-potence resulting from such anarchy encouraged the autochthons to vigorous revolt in the north.
These were the conditions with which Kwammu had to deal when he ascended the throne towards the close of the eighth century. The Taikwa and Taihō reforms had failed in certain important respects, and it is not difficult to detect the reason of their want of success. The system they introduced was, on the one hand, incompatible with the ends they were intended to compass, and, on the other, encouraged the tendencies they were designed to eradicate. The administrative principles of the Tang dynasty which the reformers copied, were so permeated with the spirit of pomp and ceremony; the functions of each office conferred such privileges and distinctions on its holder; the whole body of officialdom, wide as were the intervals between its various grades, was so far removed from the mass of the plebs, that irresistible forces became operative for the resurrection of the patriarchal rights which the fall of the Soga family had buried. Tenchi appreciated that his reforms could never be permanent unless he radically changed the status of the plebs. But the means he devised for that end—probably the only means within his power—were quite inadequate, and he does not seem to have perceived that the immense access of dignity and importance gained by the administrative class under the Chinese system, must surely revive the ambitions which had proved so irksome to his predecessors. He himself sought to better the condition of the commoners by remitting their taxes, but his successors paid little attention to that important point, and even if the exotic system had not tended to widen the distance between the two sections of the nation, the crushing fiscal burdens imposed on the lower orders must have produced that result. Kwammu, following him at an interval of nearly two centuries, showed equal vigour of purpose, but, for the same reasons, produced an equally ephemeral impression upon the abuses he sought to remedy. He commenced, as stated above, by transferring the capital to Kyōtō, and building it on a scale that educated in the minds of the people an overwhelming conception of the might and majesty of the Court. He then undertook to separate religion and politics by removing all priests from administrative posts, and he essayed to check the nation's extravagant expenditures on Buddhism by interdicting the building of temples without imperial permission. He forbade the seizure of lands for debt. He abolished offices that had been created for the sake of their occupants, and he ruthlessly removed all incompetent officials. To deal with the northern rebels, he ordered the eight provinces watered by the river Tone—namely, the Bando section of Japan—to organise each a body of from 500 to 1000 men, the sons of local administrators and ex-officials,[4] and he directed that they should be constantly trained in military arts. He made a bold effort to free himself from the interference of the great families which were again beginning to usurp the governing power. He essayed to get into close touch with the people, as his great-grandfather, Tenchi, had done. He tried to thrust aside the provincial autocrats and to bring the lower officials within the range of direct responsibility. He exhibited magnanimity[5] rare in any record. In short, he ranks as one of Japan's three greatest sovereigns,—Tenchi, Kwammu, and Godaigo,—yet he left no permanent mark upon his time, except, perhaps, the subjugation of the northern rebels,—the Yezo,—whose revolt, continuous during twenty-two years, was finally quelled by his generals after an eight years' campaign. It was partly Kwammu's misfortune, largely his fault, that so far from giving any financial relief to the lower classes, he imposed upon them a heavier burden of taxation than ever; for to the inevitable outlays caused by the long war against the Yezo, he added large expenditures for the building of temples in spite of his professed desire to check such extravagance,—and still larger for the indulgence of his passionate love of hunting, a mania that led him to organise no less than one hundred and forty hunting excursions during his reign of twenty-five years.
Kwammu's reign deserves this somewhat detailed notice because it marks the parting of the ways in mediæval Japan. His was the last really resolute struggle made during three and a half centuries to stem the influences that were plainly tending towards the substitution of bureaucracy for imperialism, the subordination of the Throne to the nobility.
Extraordinary importance attached to rank under the system introduced from China. Without attempting to explain the elaborate classification prescribed and strictly observed, it will suffice to say that the privilege of entrée to the "hall of purity and freshness" in the Palace was confined to officials of a certain grade and their sons, and could scarcely be obtained by any length of service or display of merit in a lower grade. Thus arose a broad division of the patrician order into "palatials" (denjo-bito) and "groundlings" (chige-bito), and so sternly was the distinction preserved that the latter stood to the former in a relation not much superior to serfdom.[6] The power and perquisites attaching to the higher offices were proportionately great, and since it thus became worth while to purchase the patronage of the leading dignitaries at the cost of almost any service, there grew up a large body of fortune-seekers who occupied a position of vassalage towards their patrons. The Emperor nevertheless remained the nominal fountain of all rank and office, and His Majesty's favour was courted not solely by displays of poetising skill or administrative ability, but also by the more elementary device of female influence.
There could be only one Empress. To that high dignity, therefore, not many aspired. But no limit existed as to the number of ladies having the entrée of the Imperial bed-chamber, and since any one of these nyogo (imperial dames), or koi (ladies of the wardrobe), as they were called, might become an "Imperial Resting Place" (Myasudokoro), if she had the good fortune to bear a child to the sovereign, or might attain the splendid title of "national mother" (Kokubo) if her son was nominated heir apparent; and since, even in the absence of any such incident, she might hope to win her Imperial master's favour by other means, the great nobles vied with each other to get their daughters or sisters into the palace. Some sacrifice had to be made for the purpose. The lady was required to have a guardian prepared to defray all the expenses of her apparel and paraphernalia, and to superintend her personal affairs. Without a guardian a girl's prospects were hopeless, and the same was true of a boy. However noble his birth, he ceased to be an object of consideration if, on the death of his parents, no man of position and means undertook responsibility for him.
But if the general body of the nobles were allowed to compete for their daughters' admission to the Imperial chamber, the Fujiwara family took care that the post of Empress should be reserved for ladies of their own lineage. That was their great political device. By progressive exercises of arbitrariness they gradually contrived that the choice of a consort for the sovereign should be legally limited to a daughter of their family, five branches of which were specially designated to that honour through all ages, and were consequently distinguished by the name Go-sekke (the five assistant houses). When a son was born to a sovereign, the Fujiwara took the child into one of their palaces, and on his accession to the Throne, the particular Fujiwara noble that happened to be his maternal grandfather became Regent of the Empire.
It is necessary to understand this term "Regent." Prior to the Fujiwara usurpations, the first subject in the Empire had been the Prime Minister (Daijo Daijin). But the Fujiwara's method of procedure demanded an office with still greater potentialities. Their plan for retaining the supreme power in their own hands was not to allow the sceptre to be held by an Emperor after he had attained his majority, or, if they suffered him to figure as sovereign during a few years of manhood, they compelled him to abdicate at the moment when his independent aspirations began to impair his docility. For purposes of administration in these constantly recurring minorities a new office was required, and towards the close of the ninth century the post of Kwampaku (Regent) was created and made hereditary in the Fujiwara family, as the office of Prime Minister had already become. The Regent continued to officiate even when the sovereign was a major. He stood between the Throne and the nation. Every official communication must pass through his hands before reaching the Emperor. Thus the authority of the Mikado (sublime gate) practically passed to the Fujiwara.[7]
If the responsibility of restoring the evil system of hereditary office-holding in the capital rests with the Fujiwara, the abuse, it must be admitted, had never been fully abolished in the provinces. An attempt to abolish it was made, but practical experience suggested that in the administration of remote regions, the interests of the central government, as well as those of the people, were best served by officials having permanent associations with the localities where their duties lay. Hence a provincial governor (Koku-shu), himself commissioned by the Court, received authority to appoint and remove district headmen (Gun-shi). But his nominees were generally creatures of his own, as was natural, and thus the whole province gradually passed beyond the control of the capital. In vain the Court tried to enforce its authority by means of "high constables" (chimbunshi) and inspectors (ansatsushi). These offi-cials were unable to assert themselves against the Governors and District Headmen acting in collusion, and it was therefore deemed expedient to make the two last mutually independent by restoring its hereditary character to the office of Headman. The expedient did not achieve its purpose. No expedient could have been serviceable under the conditions that existed; namely, powerlessness on the Court's part to give effect to its mandates, exceeding imperfection of communications, and large opportunities for profitable dishonesty. The Court had long ceased to possess any military force of its own. Having no standing army, it relied for protection solely on guards temporarily drafted from the provincial levies. The nation's perception of this weakness might have been postponed had not the rebellion of the autochthons in the north occurred. But the subjugation of these semi-savages defied the resources of the Court for twenty-two years, and was effected at last by the troops of the Bando provinces whom the Emperor Kwammu had caused to be organised. Here, then, was an object lesson not to be misinterpreted. The power of the sword obviously lay with the provinces, and the Court nobles showed their appreciation of the fact by cementing alliances with the Bando captains. Now the State derived its revenue chiefly from taxes levied on the land, and if a provincial governor reported that drought, tempest, or inundation had impaired or destroyed the tax-paying capacities of the farmers, no trustworthy means existed of verifying the report, for an imperial inspector could either be thwarted with impunity or shown a course more profitable than sincerity, and, failing those expedients, a defaulting governor could count on the protection of some great magnate in the capital with whose family he was connected. The Court was thus gradually stripped alike of its authority and of its revenues.
This page of history deserves attention, for it lays bare the foundations of the feudal system destined to come into existence three centuries later, and to stand intact for eight hundred years. Closely connected with that system is the land question. Japanese rulers, though their practice tended to the adoption of the single tax, do not appear to have been guided by any economical principle in dealing with this problem. Their fundamental idea was to bring a maximum area of land within the range of the tax-collector. It was always a recognised rule, however, that lands granted as official emoluments or in recognition of public merit should be exempted from taxation. Hence hereditary office involved perpetual tenure of untaxed land, and every claim established on the Court's favour by great families meant a further reduction of the taxable area with a correspondingly increased impost on the remaining lands. These abuses were well illustrated at the commencement of the Heian epoch. The Emperor Saga (810-825) conferred an estate of "fifteen thousand houses" on the Fujiwara family, and made large grants to princes, princesses, Court ladies and nobles; and a few years later, the Emperor Seiwa (859-876) so greatly extended the system that twenty-eight kinds of tax-free estates were officially catalogued, including temple lands, musicians' lands, school lands, and so on. Hence, during the first forty years of the Heian epoch, the rate of taxation for those remaining liable was doubled, and before the close of the ninth century each farmer was paying to the central government one-eleventh of the gross produce of his rice-land, in addition to a corvée of thirty days' labour annually. Further, in many instances the provincial governors levied independent taxes on behalf of Court magnates and imperial relatives with whom they had special relations. The Court itself possessed estates chosen in the most fruitful parts of the empire, but these resources did not suffice for the support of the rapidly growing number of Imperial princes, and it became necessary to give them family names so that they might lay aside their princely titles, and be enabled to take office in the capital or the provinces. Thus, in the year 814, the name of "Minamoto" was conferred on four princes, and in 835 the name of Taira "on a fifth, the provinces of Kazusa, Hitachi, and Kōzuke being assigned for the support of the former, who thenceforth ruled there as governors, while districts in the south were similarly allotted to the Taira family. In this way the foundations of the feudal system were firmly laid, and the ephemeral reforms directed against hereditary offices and perpetual tenure of land, ceased to be even nominally effective in the capital and the country alike.
This fall from the administrative and economic standards set up by the sovereigns Tenchi and Kwammu can scarcely be called retrogression, for in truth the nation had never lived up to such standards: they had been from the first incompatible with the state of its intelligence. And if, on the other side of the account, there stands to the credit of the Heian epoch much progress in the refinements of civilisation, it was a civilisation which tended rapidly to moral degeneration, and must have produced fatal consequences had it not been happily checked in the twelfth century by the evolution of a robust though comparatively rude militarism.
It is often said of the Japanese that they are conspicuously indifferent to religion. If by religion is meant belief in the supernatural, and in the constant interference of supernatural beings in the affairs of every-day life, then such a saying cannot be reconciled with the story of the Heian epoch. Perhaps it should be explained here that the term "Heian epoch" is used chronologically in the sense of the interval between the close of the eighth century and the beginning of the twelfth; and politically in the sense of the era during which the Fujiwara family administered the national affairs through the Court in Kyōtō.
There are, in fact, six great divisions of Japanese history: first, the patriarchal age when the sovereign was only the head of a group of tribal chiefs, each possessing a hereditary share of the governing power; secondly, a brief period, from the middle of the seventh to the early part of the eighth century, when the tribal chiefs had disappeared and the Throne was approximately autocratic; thirdly, an interval of some eighty years, called the Nara epoch, during which the propagandism of Buddhism, and the development of the material and artistic civilisation that came in that religion's train, engrossed the attention of the nation; fourthly, the Heian epoch, a period of three centuries, when the Court in Kyōtō ruled vicariously through the Fujiwara family; fifthly, the age of military feudalism, from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the administrative power was grasped by soldier nobles; and sixthly, the present, or Meiji, epoch of constitutional monarchy. Among these six eras, the Nara and Heian were richest in religious influences; the Meiji is poorest.
It has been shown already that the supernatural had a large place in the thoughts of the early Japanese, and that for important guidance they relied on divination, omens, ordeals, and portents of various kinds. With the introduction of Chinese civilisation they added to this catalogue the superstitions of Confucianism as well as those of Taoism, and when Buddhism arrived, its teachings accentuated the confusion between the mundane and the supernal. This phase of Japanese ethics merits a moment's attention.
There is a tradition that the first professional fortune-teller in Japan learned his art in Korea. The truth appears to be that, about the third century of the Christian era, the method of divination anciently practised in Japan by scorching the bones of a deer, was replaced by a tortoise-shell-burning process, imported from Korea, while, at the same time, the marks produced by the fire ceased to be arbitrarily interpreted by the diviner and were explained by the aid of elaborate diagrams. In either case the soothsayer had to preface his divination by several days of supplication to the particular deity within whose province the affair lay, and had to abstain for some period from eating or touching anything unclean in a religious sense. Direct revelations from heaven vouchsafed after long fasting and meditation in a temple or shrine, were also regarded with as much reverential faith by the Japanese as by the Jews of old or the early Christians. This method of obtaining transcendental guidance had been in vogue for centuries before the introduction of Buddhism, but its credit was greatly enhanced by the latter, for the Buddhist priests attributed all their important acts to heavenly inspiration. The most vital affairs of State were regulated by these revelations. Even the title of an usurper to displace the legitimate line of emperors was thus determined. Confucianism with its Book of Changes, to which the great philosopher had devoted profoundest study, gave a new impetus to divination. At the beginning of the eighth century—in other words, at the very time when radical reforms, legislative, administrative, fiscal, and social, were being introduced from China, an office called the Bureau of the Two Principles was organised in the Department of Home Affairs, and placed under the direction of six diviners who undertook to read the will of heaven by reference to the operations of the male and female principles of nature—the yo (yang) and the in (ying). Faith in this form of divination increased constantly. It replaced almost completely the process of burning tortoise-shell, which ultimately was limited to religious services held in the Imperial Court or at the great Shintô shrine. The people, of course, resorted to simpler methods in the affairs of every day. Listening for the first words of a wayfarer at cross-roads or beyond the gate of a dwelling; planting a post, approaching it with steps adapted to a formula and constructing an omen from the word coincident with the last step; raising the first stone found on the wayside and calculating its weight; finding signs in water, in the sounds of music, in the bubbles of the rice-caldron,—these and a dozen other trivial accidents helped men and women to shirk the exercise of robust judgment. The Buddhist doctrine of metempsychosis added largely to the mystery of things. People now learned that the spirits of the dead, which had always been accredited with divine influence, might be present in their midst in some unrecognisable form. The ancestor before whose cenotaph a man burned incense might be watching him from the eyes of the ox that had drawn him to the temple, and the baying of a dog at the fall of the moon might be a voice from the grave of an honoured relative. Miraculous manifestations began to be generally credited. A disentombed skull found voice to express gratitude for favours bestowed on it in life. The mouth of a man who insulted a reader of the sutras was suddenly twisted by paralysis. A local headman, levying heavy taxes from the people, was transformed into a beast of burden. A fisherman who threw his nets with merciless frequency, fell into a supernaturally kindled flame. A man who overloaded his horse was beaten to death by hailstones. A crab became the means of bringing riches to its liberator. Multitudes of such tales circulated throughout the country. Even an Emperor (Kōken) was stricken with sickness for desecrating the foundations of a temple. It is observable that the ethical teaching of these miracles was good, however destructive their effects on the moral fibre of the nation. They were of course accompanied by an undergrowth of minor superstitions. A lover sleeping with his robe turned inside out, would certainly dream of the object of his affection. A man longed for by another or destined soon to enjoy a happy meeting, found the string of his under-garment loosen automatically. An itching eyebrow or a troublesome nose had its significance. A knot made on the twig of a tree remained tight or came untied according as a project was to succeed or fail. The house of a person who had set out on a journey must not be swept, nor must hair be combed there, for the space of three days. The traveller prayed at a cross-way or on a hill-top raising a periapt aloft in his hands. A voyage by sea was preceded by worship of the god of the wind. The grass of forgetfulness (wasure-gusa, the Day lily) was carried as a means of burying sad thoughts in oblivion, and a stumbling horse indicated homesickness on the part of his rider. All pure white animals or birds, a black fox, a forked lotus root or tree-branch,—these were held to be objects of the best omen. People procuring them and presenting them to the palace were liberally rewarded, and sometimes the imperial satisfaction took the form of a general amnesty or a change of the era's title.
With the growth of these superstitions faith in the efficacy of prayer and incantation grew also. From the welfare of the humblest subject to the safety of the State, everything was supposed to be obtainable by worship, and the priests who chaunted litanies and performed religious rites became objects of profound veneration. Every chamber in the Palace was open to them. So long as Shintô was the sole creed of the nation, men did not trouble themselves much about malevolent spirits. But with the advent of Buddhism, preaching its many hells peopled by cruel demons, people learned to attribute all the ills and mischances of life to the influence of dead enemies endowed with demoniacal attributes, or to supernatural power exercised by the living through the medium of incantations. The maleficent spirits were supposed to be always on the watch for an opportunity to work evil, and it was therefore necessary that constant watch should be kept by the side of a sick person. Some protection was obtained by observing certain ceremonies and repeating certain formulæ, but the intervention of a priest seemed the only complete safeguard, and thus the intoning of litanies and the rolling of rosaries came to be counted much more efficacious in cases of illness than the services of a physician. Scarcely any incident of every-day life failed to be interpreted as a portent, and men had to be constantly on the watch lest by neglecting some precaution they should cause a harmless sign to be perverted into an omen of evil. Naturally these disquieting fantasies had the effect of rendering people nervous and timid. Even a soldier dreaded to walk alone in the darkness. The feat by which Michinaga, one of the greatest and most unscrupulous of the Fujiwara nobles, laid the foundation of his fame, illustrates this craven mood. At a réunion of princes and nobles in the Palace of the Emperor Kwazan (985-987), some tales of ghostly appearances having been recounted, it was proposed that the listeners should exhibit their courage by proceeding, one at a time, to remote parts of the Palace. The three Fujiwara brothers volunteered to undertake the task, but only one of them, Michinaga, was able to achieve it, and his valour won universal eulogy. Sensual excesses, which were without limit in the Heian epoch, supplemented and strengthened this ever-present dread of the spirits of the dead and of evil, so that idiocy became common and the span of life in the upper classes was shortened to thirty or forty years. The Emperor Daigo (898-930) actually fell into a dangerous illness, owing to a belief that he was pursued by the vengeance of a loyal minister, Michizane, whose unjust punishment he had sanctioned, and as a protection against the same danger his baby son, the prince imperial, was confined day and night in one apartment and guarded by a chosen band of soldiers during the first three years after his birth. When the renowned Fujiwara chief, Tokihira, died, men said that he had been destroyed by the spirit of this same Michizane, whose disgrace and banishment he had contrived,[8] and every misfortune that befell a conspicuous family was ascribed to the angry ghost of some prince, nobleman, or soldier who had been done to death in the numerous political intrigues of the era. The Emperor Sanjo (1012-1015) believed that his calamity of partial blindness was caused by a vengeful spirit which, assuming the form of a winged dog, rode on his neck and flapped its pinions over his eyes. Above the palace of another sovereign a hideous creature, half monkey, half snake, hovered every night, throwing His Majesty into convulsions; and it was counted a deed of magnificent valour that a Minamoto warrior shot an arrow into the cloud enshrouding the monster.
The Buddhist priests would probably have striven earnestly to dispel this noxious atmosphere of superstition had it not contributed so much to the growth of their own importance. At the close of the eighth century and in the beginning of the ninth, the creed found two propagandists of the highest genius, Dengyō and Kōbō—otherwise called Saicho and Kōkai,—the first preachers of sectarian Buddhism in Japan, Dengyō being the founder of the Tendai sect and Kōbō of the Shingon. The doctrines of these two sects presented no violent contrasts. They may be described as exoteric and esoteric exegeses of the same scripture; and in an era when religious tolerance extended to the blending of Shintô and Buddhism, distinctions so obscure as those between the Tendai and the Shingon sects were not likely to reflect any doubts on the infallibility of the original doctrine. The two great expounders contributed equally to the spread of Buddhism, and not only were they assisted during their life and after their death by zealots of scarcely inferior calibre, but their example of ecstatic devotion exercised an ennobling influence on the conduct of the priests in general. Long fasts, years of asceticism in mountain solitudes, and even self-inflicted tortures contributed, on the one hand, to win respect for the faith, and, on the other, to inculcate the importance of abstinence and self-denial. The chief temple of the Tendai sect (on Hiyei-zan) was erected on the northeast of Kyōtō in order to be a barrier against the evil spirits supposed to issue constantly from the "Demons' Gate," which was situated in that quarter of the firmament, and the priests, apparently without any exception, spared no pains to promote a belief that their services were essential to avert calamity or insure success. All classes of the nation accepted that view. Religious ceremonies on a magnificent scale were constantly held at the Imperial Court, as many as a thousand priests sometimes officiating. However straitened might be the finances of the State, funds were never spared for these purposes, or for the building of splendid temples. The Fujiwara family behaved as though it considered that its fortunes depended solely on the intervention of the priests, and the example thus set by the greatest nobles in the land did not fail to produce its effect on their inferiors. This delirious devotion to Buddhism reached its acme at the close of the eleventh century, when, during a reign of only thirteen years, the Emperor Shirakawa caused 5,470 religious pictures to be painted, ordered the casting of one hundred and twenty-seven statues of Buddha, each sixteen feet high, of 3,150 life-size images and of 2,930 smaller idols, and constructed twenty-one large temples and 446,630 religious edifices of various kinds. This same sovereign, in obedience to the Buddhist commandment against taking life, issued an edict prohibiting the slaughter of any living thing, ordering the release of all hawks, falcons, and other caged birds, forbidding the presentation of fish to the Palace, and requiring the destruction of all fishing nets, which last mandate was carried out in 8,800 cases. It became customary also to have services performed at temples on festive occasions. The enormous expense thus entailed may be inferred from the fact that, when a man reached the age of forty, he purchased a further span of life and happiness by causing masses to be said in forty temples; at fifty he enlisted the services of fifty temples; and at sixty those of sixty. Recovery from serious illness being generally attributed to the mercy of Buddha, men began to receive the tonsure as an evidence of gratitude, and many did so from a mere altruistic conception, namely, that if a person entered the priesthood, the future salvation of nine families related to him would be secured.
All these things refuse to be reconciled with the theory that the religious sentiment is deficient among the Japanese. They have proved themselves as accessible to supernatural influences as any nation known to history.
Undoubtedly Buddhism contributed immensely to the nation's moral and material progress. But its teachings had an unwholesome effect in the Heian epoch. The character of the Japanese underwent very marked modification during the first sixteen centuries of their history. At the time of their arrival as invaders they were hardy, fierce people, fond of fighting and ready to reduce to slavery every one that they overcame by force of arms. But by degrees the comparatively genial climate of their new home, its soft scenery, the introduction of Chinese civilisation with its endless codes of ceremony and etiquette, and the spread of a literature which occupied itself chiefly with tender sentiments and scenic charms, produced enervating effects. The rude warriors were transformed, first into votaries of pleasure, then into hysterical profligates, and finally into blasé pessimists. Buddhism greatly assisted the growth of this last mood. Partly from sincere belief, partly because the presence of a prince or noble in a cloister contributed materially to its wealth and reputation, the priests preached the doctrine of abandoning this sinful world and devoting life to heaven's service. Their exhortations prevailed even with emperors.[9] When a great personage took the tonsure, he presented usually a sum of money and often a tract of land to the temple which received him, and the priests obtained similar acknowledgment for preserving and praying before the cenotaphs of the dead.[10] The temples were not merely edifices for worship like Occidental churches. In the vicinity of the sacred structure where the image of Buddha was enshrined, there stood extensive buildings forming the residences of the priests, and containing suites of chambers where illustrious parishioners found accommodation on ceremonial occasions. The greater the prosperity of the temple, the more numerous and magnificent these buildings, so that, in some cases, a monastery constituted a little town inhabited by thousands of monks. Living practically beyond the pale of the civil authority, these communities of priests soon began to form military organisations, which were used at first for purposes of self-protection, but ultimately for all kinds of lawlessness and aggression. Formidable bands of halberdiers would issue from one monastery to attack another, or even to raid and burn the houses of their lay enemies, and if the Government attempted to check, them, or if they saw reason to complain of any administrative interference, they would march in a body to the Imperial Palace or to the residence of the Prime Minister, and prefer a clamorous protest. On such occasions they were careful to carry with them a "sacred car," or a "divine tree,"[11] for the presence of these emblems secured them effectually against armed opposition. If the authorities declined to grant them redress, they would roll their thousands of rosaries between the palms of their hands with frenzied vehemence, at the same time loudly invoking the curses of heaven and the pains of the nethermost hell on any one, however exalted his rank, who ventured to oppose the will of Buddha. Even the Emperor prostrated himself before this multitudinous imprecation and conceded everything demanded by the suppliants. It might be supposed that such acts would have discredited Buddhism in the eyes of the nation. But the priests never raised their hand against the people. Their feuds were with the usurping aristocrats, and especially with the military class; for the latter, as the Heian epoch wore to its close, began to grasp the administrative power and to exercise it in a manner subversive of much of the progress with which Buddhism had been closely associated from the time of its advent.
In spite of the vogue acquired by Buddhism, and in spite of the fact that it had apparently absorbed Shintô the latter retained its hold on the heart of the nation, and its ceremonials continued to be scrupulously observed in the Imperial Court. Buddhist priests were strictly excluded from the great rites of the indigenous creed. More extravagant than ever were the restrictions imposed by the canon of purity, which, with ancestor-worship, may be called the basis of Shintô. Defilement, originally attributed only to uncleanliness or to the commission of sin, was extended in this age of superstition to many inevitable incidents of daily life—such as deaths, births,[12] burials, in memoriam ceremonies, the eating of flesh, the tasting of anything acid, the application of the moxa, contact with disease and so on. To have been contaminated in any of these ways disqualified a man for association with his friends and for the discharge of his official duties, during a period of varying duration. There was an elaborate chain of vicarious defilement. If, A being defiled, B happened to sit where A had sat, then B and all his family incurred defilement; and if, thereafter, C went into B's residence, then C too became defiled, but not the members of his family. If, however, the process were reversed by B going into C's house, then the taint fell upon the whole of C's family. At C the chain ended: D might enter C's house with impunity.[13] In the observance of these rules most unnatural violence was done to the instinct of charity. Servants attacked by serious maladies were sometimes shut into a secluded building and left to die without succour, or were even carried to an unfrequented place and abandoned to their fate. A man having driven his sick brother from his house, the patient, failing to obtain admittance to the residence of any friend, was ultimately transported to the cremation ground, where he lay till death came; and an apparently credible record tells how the corpse of a mendicant friar lay unburied for a month in the belfry of a temple, neither priests nor parishioners venturing to incur defilement by removing the body. Such indifference to the prompting of mercy is strange to Japanese character. It was an artificial mood bred of the superstitious vapours that obscured men's moral vision in that singular age.
The effeminacy of the Court nobles was as great as their superstition, and their eccentricities suggest that sensual indulgence had reduced them to a state of imbecility. Tadahira, the younger brother of Tokihira, the great Fujiwara chief, painted a cuckoo on his fan, and imitated the cry of the bird whenever he opened the fan. At the time when he distinguished himself by these callow antics he held high military rank. Another of the Fujiwara nobles (Yasutada) made a habit of carrying hot rice-dumplings in the bosom of his garment, for the sake of their warmth, and throwing them away when they cooled, for the sake of displaying his opulence. To play the samisen[14] was the accomplishment of a legislator; to turn a couplet the proof of a statesman's capacity. It is impossible to recognise the Japanese of later eras in some of the hysterical creatures with whom history peoples the Heian Court. The stoical samurai, whose first rule of conduct was imperturbability whatever gusts of passion assailed him, had no representative among these voluptuaries of the capital: they were as emotional as the weakest of women. The disappointment of not meeting his lover, or of brief separation from her, produced an access of weeping that drove a man to his couch, and no one thought shame of shedding floods of idle tears in the presence of verdant spring and solemn autumn, or of sobbing in unison with the cricket's chirp and the stag's cry. At no time in the nation's story did wifely fidelity fall so low in public esteem. Widows took a second or a third husband without compunction. Divorced women did not forfeit their eligibility for new ties. Wives had often two or three "protectors." Husbands made a boast of the number of mistresses they supported. A wife was put away or a mistress deserted in the ordinary routine of daily doings. An extraordinary and scarcely comprehensible mania for poetical composition contributed to this immorality. It would have been almost a sacrilege to limit the success of a gracefully turned couplet. Men and women surrendered themselves to the poetical delirium, so that a dainty thought deftly expressed came to be counted a sufficient price for a lady's virtue. Imperial concubines received the addresses of court officials. To rob a man of his wife did not shock society. Brothers and cousins suffered such thefts at each other's hands. Fujiwara no Tokihira, regent and prime minister, purchased his uncle's wife. Mothers received the embraces of their step-sons. Such vices among the patrician classes found a rude reflection in the conduct of the plebeians. Women were expected, or compelled, to be facile under all circumstances, and in the general extermination of shame Buddhist priests took their part by openly violating their vows of celibacy or abandoning the cowl for the sake of pursuing an illicit intrigue.
This immorality was not accompanied by immodesty. On the contrary, social punctilio exacted the closest observance. A love affair might be notorious, but it must never be scandalous or obtrusive. Even the preliminaries of marriage consisted often in an interchange of letters and poems rather than in meetings or conversations. A man estimated the conjugal qualities of a young lady by her skill in finding scholarly similes and her perception of the cadence of words. If, indeed, a woman was so fortunate as to acquire a reputation for learning, she possessed a certificate of universal virtue and amiability. Therefore polite society tabooed every form of wooing more demonstrative than the use of pen and paper. Nothing could exceed the decorum of the aristocratic lady. She hid her depravity behind a mask of demureness. To allow her face to be seen in public or her voice to be heard by a stranger was a shocking solecism. If she had not a carriage to ride abroad, she covered her face with a hood. She never addressed a man of the lower orders except through a servant, and even then did not permit him to ascend to the level where she sat. With one of a better, though still inferior, grade she conversed directly, divided from him, however, by a paper sliding-door; and the next step of condescension was to talk from behind a screen, hiding her face with a fan. Even her own step-brother must not be met face to face.
The pastimes of the upper classes reached their highest point of elaboration in this era. At the head of all stood the game of competitive-couplet making (uta-awase). The manner of this pursuit, as practised in the Nara epoch, has already been briefly described. New importance was given to it by the Empress Kōkō, at the close of the ninth century. In her Palace of Horikawa she organised poem parties on an unprecedented scale. The proprieties were strictly observed. On one side of the room the ladies were marshalled, on the other the men, and a genuine contest of literary skill ensued, every guest being required to compose a stanza on a given subject. Sometimes Chinese poetic models were followed; sometimes Japanese; sometimes both. But it is not to be understood that the rhyming terminals of Chinese verse formed at any time a visible feature of Japanese poetical composition. Here, indeed, is exposed one of the most irrational conceits that the literature of any country furnishes. Many of the Japanese poetasters of the Heian era took infinite pains to compose couplets which, they supposed, would satisfy the rhyming requirements of Chinese verse if the Chinese sounds of the ideographs were accurately given and Chinese syntactical order duly preserved. But the true Chinese pronunciation of an ideograph was never known in Japan, and the Chinese order of words had to be changed to make a sentence intelligible to Japanese ears. Hence a verselet laboriously constructed according to the Chinese laws, lost its rhyming terminals altogether when the ideographs received their true pronunciation, and, in fact, retained nothing of its original character except the sense. To expect that an English verbatim translation of the Bucolics of Virgil must fall naturally into hexameters and pentameters, were not more reasonable than to anticipate that a Japanese rendering of a Chinese couplet should preserve the rhyme and metre of the Chinese original. It was characteristic of the silly artificialism of the time that men's energies should be absorbed in the manufacture of such deformities. The genuine Japanese style of couplet was chiefly in vogue, however, though always with increasing loss of the old vigour of thought, and increasing reliance on tricks of diction and trivialities of conception. Several of these poem-composing parties became historical events, not merely for the sake of the couplets produced, but also because of the magnificence and tastefulness of the entertainments. Often a feature of the arrangements was a display of choice flowering plants which served to inspire the poetasters and to reward the most successful. Loose as were the morals of the time, the language of these verses was seldom indelicate. But in the closing days of the Heian epoch, when luxury and self-indulgence reached their extreme point, a new pastime was introduced,—the competitive composition of love-letters. In these all phases of carnal affection were depicted or suggested by the aid of refined and scholarly phraseology.[15] Nevertheless, in everything that concerned outward appearance, the conventions of decorum were observed with the utmost strictness in all Japanese polite pastimes at whatever era. The costumes and customs of an Occidental ball-room in the nineteenth century would have seemed altogether shocking to mediæval Japanese.
Gathering plants of the sweet-flag in June and comparing the length of their roots; writing verses 
A WINTER SCENE IN YOKOHAMA.
Love for flowers, which amounts almost to a passion in Japan, had declared itself long before the time now under review, but, like everything else, it assumed an extravagant character in that epoch. Large trees were completely covered with artificial blossoms of the plum or the cherry to recall the spring, ancient pines overhanging miniature lakes were festooned with wistaria blooms in autumn, snow was piled in vast heaps so as to preserve some traces of it under sunny skies. To be unnatural, abnormal, unreasonable, was to possess a special charm. One of the manias of the time was to keep pet dogs and cats. The annals speak of the "delightful voice and winning ways" of the cat, and tell how not only were cats and dogs called by human beings' names, but official titles also were bestowed on them, and religious services were performed when they died. A pet cat in the Palace bore kittens in the year 999, whereupon the Emperor and the Ministers of State sent presents appropriate to occasions of childbirth, and a Court lady was appointed to nurse the kittens. This incident provoked ridicule among the public, but did not seem inconsistent with the ways of the Court.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 34.
Note 34.—"Fujiwara" signifies "Wistaria plain." The name was conferred by the sovereign on Kamatari in recognition of his services.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 35.
Note 35.—The consort of the late Emperor Kōmei (1847-66) was a Fujiwara, and the bride of the present Prince Imperial is also a Fujiwara.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 36.
Note 36.—Kyōtō continued to be the Imperial capital during 1,074 years, until the Meiji Restoration of 1867, when the Court was transferred to Yedo (now Tōkyō). Seventy- seven Emperors held their courts successively in Kyōtō. During an interval so protracted, the city, of course, underwent many changes, but to this day its general plan remains on the lines of its earliest projection. It was built after the general scheme of Nara, but on a much grander scale. The outline was rectangular, 17,530 feet from north to south, and 15,080 feet from east to west. Moats and palisades surrounded the whole—the system of crenelated walls and flanking towers not having been yet introduced—and the Imperial Palace, its citadel, administrative departments, and assembly halls occupied the centre of the northern portion. The Palace was approached from the south, its main gate opening upon a long street 280 feet wide which ran right down the centre of the city. Thus the city was divided into two equal parts, of which the eastern was designated "left metropolis," and the western, "right metropolis." The superficial division was into districts, of which there were nine, all equal in size except those on the east and west of the Palace. An elaborate system of subdivision was adopted. The unit, or house, was a space measuring 100 feet by 50. Eight of these units made a row; four rows, a street; four streets, a division; four divisions, a district. The entire capital contained 1,216 streets and 38,912 houses, with a population of about two hundred thousand. The arrangement of the streets was strictly regular. They lay parallel and at right angles, like the lines on a checker-board. The Imperial citadel measured 3,840 feet from east to west, and 4,600 feet from north to south. On each side were three gates; in the middle stood the Palace, surrounded by the buildings of the various administrative departments, and in front were the assembly and audience halls. The nine districts were divided from each other by main streets, varying in width from 170 feet to 80 feet. They intersected the city from east to west; were numbered from 1 to 9, and were themselves intersected in turn by similar streets running north and south, and by lanes at regular intervals. The buildings were in general lowly and unpretentious. Even in the case of the Palace, the architects observed the austere canons of the Shintô cult, which prescribed purity and simplicity as the essential attributes of refinement; and in the case of the citizens' dwellings, every effort to obtain lightness, airiness, or ornamentation was reserved for chambers opening upon inner courts, or looking out on miniature back-gardens, so that the front effect was sombre and monotonous. Many of the houses were roofed with shingles, but some had slate-coloured tiles, and the Palace itself was rendered conspicuous by green glazed tiles imported from China. The conception of such a city at such an epoch—half a century before Lodbrok the Dane sailed up the Seine, and fifty-five years before the birth of Alfred the Great—bears eloquent testimony to the highly civilised condition of Japan and to the Emperor Kwammu's greatness of mind and resources.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 37.
Note 37.—Such persons were named ronin, literally, "wave men;" that is to say, individuals without any fixed status or employment. They are met here for the first time in Japanese history, where they thenceforth figure as a perpetual element of unrest.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 38.
Note 38.—He employed able men without any regard for the part they had acted in his own life. He gave the command of the Bando troops to Tamura-no-maro, whose father had intrigued to procure the Throne for a different prince, and he appointed as tutor to the Heir apparent a man who had twice endeavoured to thwart his purposes.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 39.
Note 39.—It is noticeable that this spirit of exclusiveness did not take any account of alien origin. Tamura-no-Maro, who commanded the Emperor Kwammu's Bando soldiery, was descended from a naturalised Chinaman. Yet, on returning to Kyotō after the final defeat of the Yezo, he received the Emperor's daughter in marriage, and became the father of the next sovereign, Heizei.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 40.
Note 40.—The extreme possibilities of this system were illustrated in the case of the Fujiwara chief Michinaga. He held the office of Regent during the reigns of three Emperors (987-1037); his three daughters became the consorts of three successive sovereigns, and he was grandfather simultaneously of a reigning Emperor and of an heir apparent. Nothing was allowed to interfere with the consummation of this nobleman's designs. Desiring that his daughter, Aki, should enter the Palace where his elder brother's daughter, Sada, already held the position of Empress, and unwilling that his child should have inferior rank, he devised for Aki a special title, carrying with it all the privileges of an Imperial consort. There were thus two Empresses, each living in a palace of her own.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 41.
Note 41.—The memory of this unfortunate statesman, Sugawara-no-Michizane, is surrounded by a halo of romance which affords an insight into Japanese character. He belonged to an ancient family of professional litterateurs, and had none of the titles which in that age were commonly considered essential to official preferment. By extraordinary scholarship, singular sweetness of disposition, and unswerving fidelity to justice and truth, he won a high reputation, and had he been content with the fame that his writings brought him, and with promoting the cause of scholarship through the medium of a school which he endowed, he might have ended his days in peace. But, in an evil hour, he accepted office, and thus found himself required to discharge the duties of statesmanship at a time of extreme difficulty, when an immense interval separated the rich and the poor, when political power was usurped by some and abused by others, when the arbitrariness and extortions of the local governors had become a burning question, when the nobles and princes were crushing the people with merciless taxes, and when the finances of the Court were in extreme disorder. Michizane, a gentle conservative, was not fitted to cope with these difficulties, and his situation at Court was complicated by the favour of an ex-Emperor (Uda) who had abdicated but still sought to take part in the administration, and by the jealousy of the Fujiwara representative, Tokihira, a young, impetuous, arrogant, but highly gifted nobleman. These two men, Michizane and Tokihira, became the central figures in a very unequal struggle, the forces on the one side being the whole Fujiwara clan headed by the unscrupulously daring and ambitious Tokihira; those on the other, a few scholars, the love and respect of the lower orders and the benevolent tolerance of the self-effacing Michizane. The end was inevitable. Michizane, falsely accused of conspiring to obtain the Throne for his grandson—an Imperial prince had married his daughter—was banished to Dazaifu, and his family and friends were either killed or reduced to serfdom. The story is not remarkable. It contains no great crises or dazzling incidents. Yet if Michizane had been the most brilliant statesman and the most successful general ever possessed by Japan, his name could not have been handed down through all generations of his countrymen with greater veneration and affection.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 42.
Note 42.—The Emperor Seiwa (859-876) was the first, and his example was followed by Uda (888-897). But there was a difference. Seiwa, after surrendering the sceptre, devoted himself sincerely to prayer and pilgrimages: Uda took the title of Hō (high pontiff) and, as the head of all the Buddhist prelates, led a life of splendour scarcely inferior to his previous state.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 43.
Note 43.—The posthumous name given to the deceased by the Buddhist priests was inscribed with letters of gold on a black lacquered tablet, and was entrusted to the care of the temple where the body was buried.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 44.
Note 44.—The "divine tree" was the emblem of Shintô. It will therefore be understood that these menacing demonstrations, though inaugurated by the Buddhist priests, were employed sometimes by Shintô ministers also. Instances of the latter nature were comparatively rare, however.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 45.
Note 45.—This included the birth of a domesticated animal or bird, barn-door fowl excepted.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 46.
Note 46.—These rules are quoted from a book of etiquette published at the beginning of the tenth century.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 47.
Note 47.—A species of guitar with three strings; essentially a woman's instrument.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 48.
Note 48.—This game was called iro-bumi-awase (composing love-letters), and the method of procedure corresponded to that of the uta-awase (composing poems). It found great favour during the reign of Horikawa (1087—1107).
- ↑ See Appendix, note 49.
Note 49.—Every Chinese ideograph has a basic element, which is called the radical; and a phonetic part which suggests the sound. Numbers of ideographs being mononymous, have the same phonetic part, with different radicals, and numbers have the same radical with different phonetic parts. Given a certain radical, to construct from memory as many as possible of the ideographs composed with it; or given a certain phonetic, to draw up an exhaustive list of the mononyms it belongs to,—such was the method of the old-time calligraphic competitions.