[ 45 ]
Chapter V
The Development of a Feudal Society
During the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Fujiwara held the spotlight on the stage of Japanese history, but, despite the brilliance of the literary and artistic accomplishments of the court they dominated, others off stage were preparing the next acts in the drama. The capital aristocrats had transformed the borrowed civilization of China into a native culture, but they had lost control over the political and economic life of the country.
While the courtiers were going through the forms and ceremonies of little more than a sham government, and devoting their energies more to the arts of poetry-writing and love-making than to governing, the provincial aristocrats were gaining practical experience, managing their estates and ruling the peasants on these estates with hardly any control or direction from the capital. The decadent, effeminate courtiers at Kyoto were producing a literature and an art that future generations were to look back to with pride, but their less sophisticated and hardier country cousins were laying the foundations for an entirely new Japan.
