THE HEIAN EPOCH (Continued)
60th Sovereign, Daigo (Continued)
61st " Emperor Shujaku A.D. 931-946
THE ENGI ERA (A.D. 901-923)
In the year 909, Fujiwara Tokihira died and was followed to the
grave, in 913, by Minamoto Hikaru. For an interval of some years no
minister of State was nominated; the Emperor Daigo himself
administered affairs. For this interregnum in the sway of the
Fujiwara, the Engi era is memorable.
It is memorable for other things also; notably for the compilation of
documents which throw much light on the conditions then existing in
Japan. The Emperor, in 914, called upon the Court officials to submit
memorials which should supply materials for administrative reforms.
The great scholar, Miyoshi Kiyotsura, responded with ability so
conspicuous that posterity has been disposed to question the justice
of the charges against him in connexion with Michizane's fate. He set
out by stating that, in the early times, the national sentiment had
been kind and simple; the people loyal to the Throne and obedient to
parents; the taxes moderate. But, thereafter, customs had gradually
deteriorated. Laws and regulations were promulgated with bewildering
rapidity. Taxes and forced labour grew heavier day by day. Cultivated
lands were suffered to lie fallow. Buddhism established such a hold
upon men's minds that people of all classes impoverished themselves
to build places of worship and to cast images. Upon the erection of
the provincial temples (Kokubun-ji) five-tenths of the national taxes
were expended; and in connexion with the removal of the capital to
Kyoto and the building of new palaces, a further sum of three-tenths
was paid out. Again, the Emperor Nimmyo's (834-850) love of luxury
and display led to architectural extravagance entirely unprecedented,
and involved the squandering of yet another tenth of the remaining
income of the State. Thereafter, in the Jokwan era (859-876),
frequent conflagrations destroyed the Imperial edifice, and its
restoration cost a tenth of the remaining revenue, so that only
one-twentieth was ultimately available for general expenses.
As illustrating the state of the rural regions, the memorialist
instanced the case of Bitchu, a province on the Inland Sea, where he
held an official appointment in the year 893. The local records
(Fudoki) showed that a levy made there about the middle of the
seventh century had produced twenty thousand able-bodied soldiers,*
whereas a century later, there were found only nineteen hundred; yet
another century afterwards, only seventy; at the close of the ninth
century, nine, and in the year 911, not one. To such a state of
desolation had the district been reduced in the space of 250 years,
and its story might be taken as typical.
*The district was consequently named Nima, an abbreviation of ni
(two) man (ten thousand).
Passing to the question of religion, the memorialist declared that
the Shinto ceremonials to secure good harvests had lost all
sincerity. The officials behaved as though there were no such thing
as deities. They used the offerings for their own private purposes,
sold the sacred horses, and recited the rituals without the least
show of reverence. As for Buddhist priests, before asking them to
pray for the welfare of their parishioners, they must be asked to
purge themselves of their own sins. The priests who ministered at the
provincial temples had lost all sense of shame. They had wives, built
houses, cultivated lands, and engaged in trade. Was it to be supposed
that heaven would hearken to the intervention of such sinners?
Meanwhile, luxury and extravagance had reached an extreme degree. On
one suit of clothes a patrimony was expended, and sometimes a year's
income barely sufficed for a single banquet. At funeral services all
classes launched into flagrant excesses. Feasts were prepared on such
a scale that the trays of viands covered the entire floor of a
temple. Thousands of pieces of gold were paid to the officiating
priests, and a ceremony, begun in mourning, ended in revelry.
Corresponding disorder existed with regard to the land. The original
distribution into kubunden, as we saw, had been partly for purposes
of taxation. But now these allotments were illegally appropriated, so
that they neither paid imposts nor furnished labourers; and while
governors held worthless regions, wealthy magnates annexed great
tracts of fertile land. Another abuse, prevalent according to Miyoshi
Kiyotsura's testimony, was that accusations were falsely preferred by
officials against their seniors. Provincial governors were said to
have frequently indulged in this treacherous practice and to have
been themselves at times the victims of similar attacks. The Court,
on receipt of such charges, seldom scrutinized them closely, but at
once despatched officers to deal with the incriminated persons, and
in the sequel, men occupying exalted positions were obliged to plead
on an equal footing with officials of low grade or even common
people. Self-respecting persons chose to stand aside altogether from
official life rather than to encounter such risks.
This was an almost inevitable result of the exceptional facilities
given to petitioners under the Daika and Daiho systems. Miyoshi
Kiyotsura urged that all petitioning and all resulting inquiries by
specially appointed officials should be interdicted, except in
matters relating to political crime, and that all offenders should be
handed over to the duly constituted administrators of justice. As to
these latter, he spoke very plainly. The kebiishi, he wrote, who,
being appointed to the various provinces, have to preserve law and
order within their jurisdictions, should be men specially versed in
law, whereas a majority of those serving in that capacity are
ignorant and incompetent persons who have purchased their offices. To
illustrate further the want of discrimination shown in selecting
officials, he refers to the experts appointed in the maritime
provinces for manufacturing catapults, and declares that many of
these so-called "experts" had never seen a catapult.
ENGRAVING: FAMILY LIFE OF NOBLES, HEIAN EPOCH, A.D. 782-1192
It is against the Buddhist priests and the soldiers of the six guards
that he inveighs most vehemently, however. He calls them "vicious and
ferocious," Those who take the tonsure, he says, number from two to
three thousand yearly, and about one-half of that total are wicked
men--low fellows who, desiring to evade taxation and forced labour,
have shaved their heads and donned priests vestments, aggregate
two-thirds of the population. They marry, eat animal food, practise
robbery, and carry on coining operations without any fear of
punishment. If a provincial governor attempts to restrain them, they
flock together and have recourse to violence. It was by bandits under
the command of wicked priests that Fujiwara Tokiyoshi, governor of
Aki, and Tachibana Kinkado, governor of Kii, were waylaid and
plundered.
As for the soldiers of the guards, instead of taking their monthly
term of duty at the palace, they are scattered over the country, and
being strong and audacious, they treat the people violently and the
provincial governors with contumacy, sometimes even forming leagues
to rob the latter and escaping to the capital when they are hard
pressed. (These guardsmen had arms and horses of their own and called
themselves bushi, a term destined to have wide vogue in Japan.) It is
interesting to note that they make their historical debut thus
unfavourably introduced. Miyoshi Kiyotsura says that instead of being
"metropolitan tigers" to guard the palace, they were "rural wolves"
to despoil the provinces.
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 (toneri) 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 (888-930), 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 littérateurs 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 (such as they
were at the time), 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 (pp.
239-240) 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 (Myriad Leaves), 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."
This Heian literature "reflects the pleasure-loving and effeminate,
but cultured and refined, character of the class of Japanese who
produced it. It has no serious masculine qualities and may be
described in one word as belles-lettres--poetry, fiction, diaries,
and essays of a desultory kind. The lower classes of the people had
no share in the literary activity of the time. Culture had not as yet
penetrated beyond a very narrow circle. Both writers and readers
belonged exclusively to the official caste. It is remarkable that a
very large and important part of the best literature which Japan has
produced was written by women. A good share of the Nara poetry is of
feminine authorship, and, in the Heian period, women took a still
more conspicuous part in maintaining the honour of the native
literature. The two greatest works which have come down from Heian
time are both by women.* This was no doubt partly due to the
absorption of the masculine intellect in Chinese studies. But there
was a still more effective cause. The position of women in ancient
Japan was very different from what it afterwards became when Chinese
ideals were in the ascendant. The Japanese of this early period did
not share the feeling common to most Eastern countries that women
should be kept in subjection and as far as possible in seclusion.
Though the morality which the Heian literature reveals is anything
but strait-laced, the language is uniformly refined and decent, in
this respect resembling the best literature of China."**
*The Genji Monogatari by Murasaki Shikibu, and the Makura Soshi by
Sei Shonagon.
**Japanese Literature, by W. G. Aston.
With the Heian epoch is connected the wide use of the phonetic script
known as kana, which may be described as a syllabary of forty-seven
symbols formed from abbreviated Chinese ideographs. There are two
varieties of the kana--the kata-kana and the hiragana* The former is
said to have been devised by Makibi, the latter by Kobo Daishi
(Kukai), but doubts have been cast on the accuracy of that record,
and nothing can be certainly affirmed except that both were known
before the close of the ninth century, though they do not seem to
have been largely used until the Heian epoch, and even then almost
entirely by women.
*Katakana means "side kana" because its symbols are fragments (sides)
of Chinese forms of whole ideographs.
ENGRAVING: MURASAKI SHIKIBU (COURT LADY AND POETESS)
"Much of the poetry of this time was the outcome of poetical
tournaments at which themes were proposed to the competitors by
judges who examined each phrase and word with the minutest critical
care before pronouncing their verdict. As might be expected, the
poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less
artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the
earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and
untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for
perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no
doubt to this quality that the great popularity of the Kokin-shu is
due. Sei Shonagon, writing in the early years of the eleventh
century, sums up a young lady's education as consisting of writing,
music, and the twenty volumes of the Kokin-shu."*
*Japanese Literature, by W. G. Aston.
The first notable specimen of prose in Japanese style (wabun) was the
preface to the Kokin-shu, written by Ki no Tsurayuki, who contended,
and his own composition proved, that the introduction of Chinese
words might well be dispensed with in writing Japanese. But what may
be called the classical form of Japanese prose was fixed by the
Taketori Monogatari,* an anonymous work which appeared at the
beginning of the Engi era (901),** and was quickly followed by
others. Still, the honour in which the ideograph was held never
diminished. When Tsurayuki composed the Tosa Nikki (Tosa Diary), he
gave it out as the work of a woman, so reluctant was he to identify
himself with a book written in the kana syllabary; and the Emperor
Saga, Kobo Daishi, and Tachibana Hayanari will be remembered forever
in Japan as the "Three Calligraphists" (Sampitsu).
*The expression "monogatari" finds its nearest English equivalent in
"narrative."
**An excellent translation of this has been made by Mr. F. V. Dickins
in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Jan., 1887.
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 (Sandai-shu), the Kokin-shu, the
Gosen-shu, and the Shui-shu, as well as five of the Six National
Histories (Roku Kokushi), the Zoku Nihonki, the Nihon Koki, the Zoku
Nihon Koki, the Montoku Jitsuroku, and the Sandai Jitsuroku; and saw
a bureau of poetry (W aka-dokoro) established in Kyoto. Fine art also
was cultivated, and it is significant that calligraphy and painting
were coupled together in the current expression (shogwa) 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 (Diary of a Journey from Tosa), 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 (888-930), 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
(shoen).
Finally we have the jiden, or temple lands. These, too, were at the
outset granted for fixed terms, but when Buddhism became powerful the
limitation ceased to be operative, and moreover, in defiance of the
law, private persons presented tracts, large or small, to the temples
where the mortuary tablets of their families were preserved, and the
temples, oh their own account, acquired estates by purchase or by
reclamation. The jiden, like the other three kinds of land enumerated
above, were exempt from taxation. Owned by powerful nobles or
influential families, the shoen were largely cultivated by forced
labour, and as in many cases it paid the farmers better to rent such
land; and thus escape all fiscal obligations, than to till their own
fields, the latter were deserted pan passu with the development of
the manor system, and thus the State revenues suffered dual
reduction.
During the last quarter of the tenth century peremptory edicts were
issued to check this state of affairs, but the power of the Court to
exact obedience had then dwindled almost to cipher. History records
that during the Ho-en era (1135-1140), the regent Fujiwara
Tadamichi's manor of Shimazu comprised one-fourth of the province of
Osumi. On these great manors, alike of nobles and of temples, armed
forces soon began to be maintained for purposes nominally of police
protection but ultimately of military aggression. This was especially
the case on the shoen of the puissant families of Taira and Minamoto.
Thus, Minamoto Yoshitomo came to own fifteen of the eastern
provinces, and in the tumult of the Heiji era (1159-1160), he lost
all these to Taira no Kiyomori, who, supplementing them with his own
already large manors and with the shoen of many other nobles and
temples, became owner of five hundred districts comprising about
one-half of the empire. Subsequently, when the Minamoto crushed the
Taira (1185), the whole of the latter's estates were distributed by
the former among the nobles who had fought under the Minamoto
standard.
In that age the holders of manors were variously called ryoshu,
ryoke, shoya, or honjo, and the intendants were termed shocho, shoji,
kengyo, betto, or yoryudo, a diversity of nomenclature that is often
very perplexing. In many cases reclaimed lands went by the name of
the person who had reclaimed them. Such manors were spoken of as
myoden (name-land), and those owning large tracts were designated
daimyo (great name), while smaller holders were termed shomyo. Yet
another term for the intendants of these lands was nanushi-shoku.
It will be readily seen that in the presence of such a system the
lands paying taxes to the Central Government became steadily less and
less. Thus, in the reign of the Emperor Toba (1108-1123), the State
domains administered by the provincial governors are recorded to have
been only one per cent, of the area of the provinces. In these
circumstances, the governors deemed it unnecessary to proceed
themselves to their posts; they remained in Kyoto and despatched
deputies to the provinces, a course which conspired to reduce the
authority of the Crown.
For the sake of intelligent sequence of ideas, the above synopsis
makes some departure from the chronological order of these pages.
Returning to the early part of the tenth century, the historian may
affirm that the salient features of the era were virtual abrogation
of the Daiho laws imposing restrictions upon the area and period of
land-ownership; rapid growth of tax-free manors and consequent
impoverishment of the Court in Kyoto; the appearance of provincial
magnates who yielded scant obedience to the Crown, and the
organization of military classes which acknowledged the authority of
their own leaders only.
REVOLT OF TAIRA NO MASAKADO
The above state of affairs soon bore practical fruit. In the year
930, the Emperor Daigo died and was succeeded by his son Shujaku, a
child of eight, whose mother was a daughter of Fujiwara Mototsune. In
accordance with the system now fully established, Fujiwara Tadahira
became regent. History depicts this Tadahira as an effeminate
dilettante, one of whose foibles was to have a cuckoo painted on his
fan and to imitate the cry of the bird whenever he opened it. But as
representative of the chief aristocratic family in an age when to be
a Fujiwara was to possess a title superior to that conferred by
ability in any form and however conspicuous, his right to administer
the government in the capacity of regent obtained universal
recognition.
It had become the custom at that time for the provincial magnates to
send their sons to Kyoto, where they served in the corps of guards,
became acquainted with refined life, and established relations of
friendship with the Taira and the Minamoto, the former descended from
the Emperor Kwammu, the latter from the Emperor Seiwa. Thus, at the
time of Daigo's death, a scion of the Taira, by name Masakado, was
serving under Tadahira in the capital. Believing himself endowed with
high military capacity, Masakado aspired to be appointed kebiishi of
his native province, Shimosa. But his archery, his horsemanship, and
his fencing elicited no applause in Kyoto, whereas a relative,
Sadabumi, attracted admiration by a licentious life.
Masakado finally retired to Shimosa in an angry mood. At first,
however, the idea of revolt does not seem to have occurred to him. On
the contrary, the evidence is against such a hypothesis. For his
military career began with family feuds, and after he had killed one
of his uncles on account of a dispute about the boundaries of a
manor, and sacked the residence of another in consequence of a
trouble about a woman, he did not hesitate to obey a summons to Kyoto
to answer for his acts of violence. Such quarrels were indeed of not
uncommon occurrence in the provinces, as is shown by the memorial of
Miyoshi Kiyotsura, and the capital appears to have left them severely
alone, so far as practical interference was concerned, though the
pretence of jurisdiction might be preserved. Thus, Masakado was
acquitted after the formality of investigation had been satisfied.
Naturally this judgment did not prove a deterrent; on the contrary,
it amounted to a mandate.
On his return to Kwanto, Masakado was soon found once more in the
arena. The details of his campaign have little interest except as
indicating that the provincial officials followed the example of
Kyoto in suffering local disturbances to settle themselves, and that
the abuses catalogued in the Miyoshi memorial were true to fact. A
raid that Masakado made into Musashi province is memorable as the
occasion of the first collision between the Taira and the Minamoto,*
which great families were destined ultimately to convert all Japan
into a battlefield. Finally, Masakado carried his raids so far that
he allowed himself to be persuaded of the hopelessness of pardon. It
was then that he resolved to revolt. Overrunning the whole eight
provinces of the Kwanto, he appointed his own partisans to all posts
of importance and set up a court after the Kyoto model. A letter
written by him at this time to the regent Tadahira affords an
interesting guide to the ethics of the era:
"The genealogy of my house shows that I am the fifth in descent from
the Emperor Kwammu. Therefore, though I hold one-half of a province,
that cannot be attributed to mere good fortune. In the history of
ancient times there are occasions where a whole country was
appropriated by force of arms. Nature has endowed me with military
talent. None, I presume, excels me in that respect. You, however, had
no praise to bestow on me. Rather was I frequently reprimanded when I
served in the capital, so that my shame was unendurable, whereas your
sympathy would have delighted me. While Masakado was still a youth he
served Tadahira, the prime minister, for tens of years, and when
Tadahira became regent, Masakado never entertained his present
project. I have no words to express my regret. Though I have
conspired to revolt, I will not forget my old master, and I hope that
he will make allowances for the circumstances in which I am placed."
*The vice-governor of Musashi, Minamoto Tsunemoto, was at feud with
the governor, Prince Okiyo, and Masakado espoused the latter's cause.
Had it rested with Kyoto to subdue this revolt, Masakado might have
attained his goal. But chance and the curious spirit of the time
fought for the Court. A trifling breach of etiquette on the part of
Masakado--not pausing to bind up his hair before receiving a
visitor--forfeited the co-operation of a great soldier, Fujiwara
Hidesato, (afterwards known as Tawara Toda), and the latter, joining
forces with Taira Sadamori, whose father Masakado had killed,
attacked the rebels in a moment of elated carelessness, shattered
them completely, and sent Masakado's head to the capital. The whole
affair teaches that the Fujiwara aristocrats, ruling in Kyoto, had
neither power nor inclination to meddle with provincial
administration, and that the districts distant from the metropolis
wore practically under the sway of military magnates in whose eyes
might constituted right. This was especially notable in the case of
the Kwanto, that is to say the eight provinces surrounding the
present Tokyo Bay, extending north to the Nikko Mountains. Musashi,
indeed, was so infested with law-breakers that, from the days of the
Emperor Seiwa (859-876), it became customary to appoint one kebiishi
in each of its districts, whereas elsewhere the establishment was one
to each province. The kebiishi represented the really puissant arm of
the law, the provincial governors, originally so powerful, having now
degenerated into weaklings.
THE REVOLT OF FUJIWARA SUMITOMO
Another event, characteristic of the time, occurred in Nankai-do (the
four provinces of the island of Shikoku) contemporaneously with the
revolt of Masakado. During the Shohei era (931-937) the ravages of
pirates became so frequent in those waters that Fujiwara no Sumitomo
was specially despatched from Kyoto to restrain them. This he
effected without difficulty. But instead of returning to the capital,
he collected a number of armed men together with a squadron of
vessels, and conducted a campaign of spoliation and outrage in the
waters of the Inland Sea as well as the channels of Kii and Bungo.
Masakado's death, in 939, relieved the Court from the pressure in the
east, and an expedition was despatched against Sumitomo under the
command of Ono no Yoshifuru, general of the guards.
Yoshifuru mustered only two hundred ships whereas Sumitomo had
fifteen hundred. The issue might have been foretold had not the
pirate chief's lieutenant gone over to the Imperial forces. Sumitomo,
after an obstinate resistance and after one signal success, was
finally routed and killed. Some historians* have contended that
Masakado and Sumitomo, when they were together in Kyoto, conspired a
simultaneous revolt in the east and the south; but such a conclusion
is inconsistent with the established fact that Masakado's treason was
not premeditated.
*Notably the authors of the Okagami and the Nihon Gwaishi.
That the two events synchronized is attributable wholly to the
conditions of the time. We have seen what was the state of affairs in
Kwanto, and that of Kyushu and Shikoku is clearly set forth in a
memorial presented (946) by Ono Yoshifuru on his return from the
Sumitomo campaign. In that document he says: "My information is that
those who pursue irregular courses are not necessarily sons of
provincial governors alone. Many others make lawless use of power and
authority; form confederacies; engage daily in military exercises;
collect and maintain men and horses under pretext of hunting game;
menace the district governors; plunder the common people; violate
their wives and daughters, and steal their beasts of burden and
employ them for their own purposes, thus interrupting agricultural
operations. Yesterday, they were outcasts, with barely sufficient
clothes to cover their nakedness; to-day, they ride on horseback and
don rich raiment. Meanwhile the country falls into a state of decay,
and the homesteads are desolate. My appeal is that, with the
exception of provincial governors' envoys, any who enter a province
at the head of parties carrying bows and arrows, intimidate the
inhabitants, and rob them of their property, shall be recognized as
common bandits and thrown into prison on apprehension."
In a word, the aristocratic officialdom in Kyoto, headed by the
Fujiwara, though holding all the high administrative posts, wielded
no real power outside the capital, nor were they competent to
preserve order even within its precincts, for the palace itself was
not secure against incendiarism and depredation. When the heads of
the Minamoto and the Taira families were appointed provincial
governors in the Kwanto, they trained their servants in the use of
arms, calling them iye-no-ko (house-boys) or rodo (retainers), and
other local magnates purchased freedom from molestation by doing
homage and obeying their behests. Taira Masakado, Minamoto Tsunemoto,
Fujiwara Hidesato, and Taira Sadamori, who figure in the above
narrative, were all alike provincial chiefs, possessing private
estates and keeping armed retinues which they used for protection or
for plunder. The Imperial Court, when confronted with any crisis, was
constrained to borrow the aid of these magnates, and thus there came
into existence the buke, or military houses, as distinguished from
the kuge, or Court houses.
ENGRAVING: UMBRELLAS
ENGRAVING: KINKAKU-JI, AT KYOTO