CULMINATION OF THE NEW REGIME;
STAGNATION; RISE OF THE MILITARY REGIME
Whatever be the merit or the demerit of the reform of the Taikwa, it was
after all an honour to the Japanese nation that our ancestors ever
undertook this reform. Not only because they were able to provide
thereby for the needs of the state of that time, but because they were
bold enough, temerarious almost, to aspire to imitate the elaborate
system of the highly civilised T'ang. When an uncivilised people comes
into contact with one highly civilised, it is needless to say that the
former is generally induced to imitate the latter. This imitation is
sometimes of a low order, that is to say, it often verges on mimicry,
and not infrequently results in the dwindling of racial energy on the
part of the imitator. Very seldom does the imitation go so far as to
adopt the political institutions of the superior. If they, however, had
ventured impetuously to do so, the result would have been still worse,
while in the case of Japan as the imitator of China, it was quite
otherwise. At first sight, as China of the T'ang was so incomparably far
ahead of Japan of that time, it might seem rather foolish of our
forefathers to try straightway to imitate her. Moreover, on the whole,
the imitation ended in a failure indeed, as should have been expected.
But the original institutions of the T'ang itself proved a failure in
their own home; hence, had the imitation of those institutions resulted
in a success with us, it would have aroused a great astonishment. The
very fact that our forefathers dared to imitate China, and did not
thereby end in losing spirit and energy, is in itself a great credit to
the reputation of the Japanese as a nation, for it testifies that they
have been from the first a very aspiring nation, unwitting how to shirk
a difficulty. If it be an honour to the Germans not to have withered
before the high civilisation of the Romans, the same glory may be
accorded to the Japanese also.
This aspiring spirit of the nation not only made itself felt in the
importation of Chinese legislation, but also in adopting her arts and
literature. As to arts, it is difficult to ascertain to what degree of
accomplishment our forefathers had already attained before they came
under continental influence. Most probably it was limited to some simple
designs drawn on household utensils, _haniwa_ or terracotta-making, and
to an orchestra of rudimentary instruments. In what may be regarded as
literature, there were ballads, some of which are cited in the
_Nihongi_. Tales of heroic deeds, however, used to be transmitted from
generation to generation, not in the form of poetry, that is, not in
epic, but in oral prose narrations. In this respect the ancient Japanese
fell far short of the Ainu, who had developed a highly epic talent very
early. To summarise, the ancient Japanese apparently showed very few
indications of excelling other peoples in the same stage of civilisation
as regards arts and literature.
In the history of Japanese art, the introduction of Buddhism is a
noteworthy event. For, along with it, works of Chinese painting and
sculpture, both pertaining mainly to Buddhist worship, were sent as
presents to our imperial court by rulers of the peninsular states. Not
only articles of virtu, but also artists themselves, were sent over to
this country from the continent, who displayed their skill in building
temples, making images, decorating shrines with fresco paintings, and so
forth. Instructed by them, some gifted Japanese, too, became enabled to
develop themselves in several branches of art and artistic industry.
Among the plastic arts, painting was very slow in making progress,
though a few examples of that age which have remained to this day are
very similar in style to those pictures and frescoes recently excavated
out of the desert in northwestern China, and have a high historical
value, giving us a glimpse of the T'ang painting. Architecture was
perhaps the art most patronised by the court. We can see it in the
construction of numerous palaces. It is a well known fact that before
the Empress Gemmyo, who was one of the daughters of the Emperor Tenchi
and ascended the throne next after the Emperor Mommu, each successive
emperor established his court at the place he liked, and the residence
of the previous emperor was generally abandoned by the next-comer. From
this fact we can imagine that all imperial palaces of those times, if
they could be named palaces at all, must have been very simply built and
not very imposing. The locality, too, where the residence was
established, was hardly apt to be called a metropolitan city, although
it might have served sufficiently as a political centre of the time. It
was in the third year of the said empress, 710 A.D., that Nara was first
selected as the new capital which was to be established in permanence,
contrary to the hitherto accepted usage, and in fact it remained the
country's chief city for more than eighty years. For the first time a
plan of the city was drawn, a plan very much like a checkerboard, having
been modelled after the contemporary Chinese metropolis. The
architectural style of the new palaces was also an imitation of that
which then prevailed in China. The only difference was that wood was
widely used here instead of brick, which was already the chief building
material in China. Nobles were encouraged by the court to build tiled
houses in place of thatched. Tiles began to come into use about that
time, and not for roofing only, but for flooring also, though the
checkerboard plan of the metropolitan city of Nara might never have
been realised in full detail, and though among those palaces once built
very few could escape the frequent fires and gradual decay, yet judging
from those very few which have fortunately survived to this day, we may
fairly imagine that they must have been grandiose in proportion to the
general condition of the age. What gives the best clue to the social
life of the higher classes of that time is the famous imperial treasury,
Sho-so-in, at Nara, now opened to a few specially honoured persons every
autumn, when the air is very agreeably dry in Japan. The treasury
contains various articles of daily and ceremonial use bequeathed by the
Emperor Shomu, who was the eldest son of the Emperor Mommu and died in
749 A.D. after a reign of twenty-five years. Being so multifarious in
their kinds, and having been wonderfully well preserved in a wooden
storehouse, these imperial treasures, if taken together with numerous
contemporary documents extant today, enable us to give a clear and
accurate picture of the social life of that time.
As _tatami_ matting was not yet known, and the houses occupied by men of
high circles had their floors generally tiled, it may be naturally
supposed that the indoor life of that time might have been nearer to
that of the Chinese or the European than to that of the modern Japanese.
Accordingly their outdoor life, too, must have been far different from
that of the present day. For example, modern Japanese are fond of
trimming or arranging flowers, putting two or three twigs into a small
vase or a short bamboo tube, by methods which, however dainty, are very
conventional after all. What they rejoice in thus is to produce a
distorted semblance in miniature as tiny as possible of a certain aspect
of nature. In the age of the Nara emperors, on the contrary, large
bunches of flowers must have been used profusely in decorating rooms and
tables, and perhaps to strew on the ground. A great many flower baskets,
which are kept in the said treasury, and are of a kind to the use of
which the modern Japanese are not accustomed, prove the above assertion.
Again, while modern Japanese ladies play exclusively on the _koto_, a
stringed musical instrument laid flat on the _tatami_ when played, Nara
musicians seem to have played on harps, too, one of which also is extant
in the treasury. Carpets seem to have been used not only in covering the
floor, but were put down on the ground on occasions of some ceremonial
processions. Hunting, rowing, and horsemanship were then the most
favourite pastimes of the nobles. Unlike modern Japanese ladies, women
of that time were not behind men in riding. This one fact will perhaps
suffice to attest the jovial and sprightly character of the social life
of the Nara age.
If we turn to the literature of the time, the progress was remarkable,
more easily perceivable than in any other department. We had now not
only ballads as before, but short epics also. Such a change must of
course be attributed to the influence of the Chinese literature
assiduously cultivated. In the year 751 a collection of 120 select poems
in Chinese, composed by the 64 Nara courtiers since the reign of the
Emperor Tenchi, was compiled and named the _Kwai-fu-so_. These poems are
quite Chinese in their diction, rhetoric, and strain, resembling in
every way those by first rate Chinese poets, and may fairly take rank
among them without betraying any sign of imitation or pasticcio. If we
consider that no kind of Japanese literature in its own mother tongue
could be committed to writing, save only in Chinese ideographs, the
influence of the Chinese literature, which flourished so rampantly at
that time in Japan, cannot be estimated too highly. No wonder that,
parallel to the compilation of the Chinese poems, a collection of
Japanese poems, beginning with that of the Emperor Yuryaku in the latter
half of the fifth century, was also undertaken. This collection is the
celebrated _Man-yo-shu_. The long and short poems selected, however,
were not restricted, as in the case of the _Kwai-fu-so_, to those by
courtiers only. On the contrary, it contained many poems sung by the
common people, into which no whit of Chinese civilisation could have
penetrated. The _Man-yo-shu_, therefore, is held by Japanese historians
to be a very useful source-book as regards the social history of the
time.
It is hardly to be denied that some of the Japanese poems of that age
were evidently composed and committed to writing with the object of
being read and not sung, as almost all modern Japanese poems are
accustomed to be. There were still many others at the same time which
must have been composed from the first in order only to be sung. Men of
the age, of high as well as of low rank, were singularly fond of
singing, generally accompanied by dancing. Many pathetic love stories
are told about those gatherings of singers and dancers, the _utagaki_,
which literally means the singing hedge or ring. This kind of gleeful
gathering used to take place on a street, in an open field, or on a
hill-top. In one of the _utagaki_ held in the city of Nara, it is said
that members of the imperial family took part too, shoulder to shoulder
with citizens and denizens of very modest standing. As to dances of the
time there might have been some styles original to the Japanese
themselves. At the same time there were to be found many dances of
foreign origin, imported, together with their musical accompaniments,
from China and the peninsular states. These dances have long ago been
entirely lost in their original homes, so that they can be witnessed
only in our country now. A strange survival of ancient culture indeed!
Of course even in our country those exotic and antiquated dances do not
conform to the modern taste, and on that account are not frequently
performed. They have been handed down through many generations,
however, by the band of court musicians, and at present these dances,
dating back to the T'ang dynasty, are performed only at certain archaic
court ceremonies.
From what has been stated above, one can well imagine that, in certain
respects, Japan of the Nara age had much in common with Greece just
about the time of the Persian invasion. In both it was an age in which a
vigorous race reached the first flourishing stage of civilisation, when
the national energy began to be devoted to aesthetic pursuits, but was
nevertheless not yet enervated by over-enlightenment. Whatever those
Japanese set their minds on doing, they set about it very briskly and
cheerfully, nor was their enthusiasm dampened by any fear of probable
mishap. Being naive, and therefore ignorant of obstacles inevitable to
the progress of a nation, they always soared higher and higher, full of
resplendent hope. How eager they were to essay at great things may be
conjectured from the size of the Daibutsu, the colossal statue of
Buddha, in the temple of the Todaiji at Nara. The statue, more than
fifty-three feet in height, was finished in 749 A.D. after several
successive failures encountered and overcome during four years, and is
the largest that was ever made in Japan. That such a great statue was
not only designed, but was executed by Japanese sculptors, whether their
origin be of immigrant stock or not, should be considered a great
credit to the enterprising spirit and the artistic acquirements of the
Japanese of that epoch.
Such a stride in the national progress, however, was only attained at
the expense of other quarters not at all insignificant. On the one hand,
it is true that Japan benefited immensely by having had as her neighbor
such a highly civilised country as China of the T'ang. On the other
hand, it should not be overlooked that it was a great misfortune to us
that we had such an over-shadowingly influential neighbour. China of
that time was a nation too far in advance of us to encourage us to
venture to compete with her. She left us no choice but to imitate her.
Who can blame the Japanese of the Nara age if they thought it the most
urgent business to run after China, and try to overtake her in the same
track down which they knew the Chinese had progressed a long way
already? The glory and splendour of the Chinese civilisation of the
T'ang was too enticing for them to turn their eyes aside and seek a yet
untrodden route. That they strove simply to imitate and rejoiced in
behaving as though they were real Chinese should not be a matter for
astonishment in the least. Perhaps it may be said to their credit that
the imitation was exquisite and the resemblance accurate. One of the
brilliant students then sent abroad remained there for eighteen years,
and after his return to this country he eventually became a prominent
minister of the Japanese government, notwithstanding his humble origin,
a promotion very rare in those days. Certain branches of Chinese
literature, many refined ceremonies, various kinds of Chinese pastimes,
many things Chinese, useful and beneficial to our people, to be found in
Japan even to this day have been attributed to his importation. Another
scholar who was obliged to stay in China for more than fifty years,
distinguished himself in the literary circles of the Chinese metropolis,
was taken into the service of a T'ang emperor as a very high official
under a Chinese name, and at last died there with a life-long yearning
for his native country.
Such an imitation, however useful it might have proved in behalf of our
country at large, could not fail to exact from the nation still young,
as Japan was at that time, a tremendous overexertion of their mental
faculties. Having been strained to the last extremity of tension, the
Japanese became naturally exceedingly nervous. From a lack of patience
to observe quietly the maturing of the effect of a stack of laws and
regulations already enacted, they hastily repudiated some of them as if
they were of no use, and replaced them by new laws quite as confounding
as the previous ones, and thus legislations contradictory in principle
rapidly succeeded one another, none of them having had time enough to be
experimented with exhaustively. Although along with this rage for
imitation there was a strong countercurrent, very conservative, which
struggled incessantly to preserve what was original and at the same
time precious, yet to determine which was worthy of preservation was a
matter of bewilderment to the contemporaries, for they were averse from
coming into any collision with things Chinese to which they were not at
all loth. Excitement and irritation, the natural result of this
topsyturvy state of things, can best be estimated by the belief in
ridiculous auspices. The discovery of a certain plant or animal, of rare
colour or of unusual shape, generally caused by deformities, was
enthusiastically welcomed as an augury of a long and peaceful reign, and
was wont to call forth some lengthy imperial proclamation in praise of
the government. Bounties were munificently distributed to commemorate
the happy occasion, discoverers of these rarities were amply rewarded,
criminals were released or had the hardships of their servitude
ameliorated. Naturally, many of these auguries proved vain, and only
served as a prop to sustain the self-conceit of responsible ministers,
or as a means of soothing general discontent, if such discontent could
ever be manifested in those "good old times." The greatest evil of this
fatuous hankering for sources of self-satisfaction was the throng of
rogues and sycophants thereby produced who vied with one another in
contriving false or specious rarities and begging imperial favour for
them. Superstitions of this kind would have suited well enough a people
quite uncivilised, or too civilised to care for rational things. As for
the Japanese, a people already on the way of youthful progress, radiant
with hope, belief in auspices was but an intolerable fetter. If viewed
from this single point, therefore, the regime ought to have been
reformed by any means.
Another and still greater evil of the age was the clashing of interests
between the different classes of people. Chinese civilisation could
permeate only the powerful, the higher classes. Though the chieftains
and lords, who had been mighty in the former regime, were bereft of
their power by the appropriation of their lands and people, a new class
of nobles soon arose in place of them, and among the latter the
descendants of Nakatomi-no-Kamatari were the most prominent. This
sagacious minister, of whom I have already spoken in the foregoing
chapters, was rewarded, in consideration of his meritorious services in
the destruction of the Soga, as well as in the execution of the most
radical reform Japan has ever known, with the office of the most
intimate advisory minister of the Emperor, and was granted the
honourable family appellation of Fujiwara. His descendants, who have
ramified into innumerable branches and include more than half of the
court-nobles of the present day, enjoyed ever-increasing imperial favour
generation after generation. What marked especially the sudden growth of
the family position was the elevation of one of the grand-daughters of
the minister to be the imperial consort of the Emperor Shomu. For
several centuries prior to this, it had been the custom to choose the
empress from the daughters of the families of the blood imperial. An
offspring of a subject, however high her father's rank might be, was not
recognised as qualified to that distinction. The privilege, which the
Fujiwara family was now exceptionally honoured with, meant that only
this family should have hereafter its place next to the imperial, so
that none other would be allowed to vie with it any more. The Fujiwara
became thus associated with the imperial family more and more closely,
and affairs of state gradually came to be transacted as if they were the
family business of the Fujiwara. The worst evil of this aggrandisement
was only prevented by the incessant and inveterate internecine feuds
within the clan itself, which eventually served to put a bridle on the
audacity and ambition of any one of the members.
This influential family of the Fujiwara, together with a few other
nobles of different lineage, including scions of the imperial family,
monopolised almost all the wealth and power in the country. They kept a
great number of slaves in their households, and held vast tracts of
private estates, too. As to the land, they developed and cultivated the
fields by the hands of their slaves or leased them for rent. Besides,
they turned into private properties those lands of which they were
legally allowed only the usufruct. By the reform legislation, the
usufruct of a public land was granted to one who did much service to
the state, but the duration of the right was limited to his life or at
most to that of his grand-children. None was permitted to hold the
public land as a hereditary possession without time limit. It was by the
infringement of these regulations that arbitrary occupation was
realised.
Another means of the aggrandisement of the estates of the nobles was a
fraudulent practice on the part of the common people. Those who were
independent landowners or legal leaseholders of public lands were liable
to taxation, as may be supposed, and as the taxes and imposts of that
time were pretty heavy, those landholders thought it wiser to alienate
the land formally by presenting it to some influential nobles or some
Buddhist temples, which came to be privileged, or asserted the right to
be exempted from the burden of taxation. In reality, of course, those
people continued to hold the land as before, and were very glad to see
their burden much alleviated, for the tribute which they were obliged to
pay to the nominal landlord by the transaction must have been less than
the regular taxes which they owed to the government. Moreover, by this
presentation they could enter under the protection of those nobles or
temples, which was useful for them in defying the law, should need
arise. The number of independent landholders thus gradually diminished
by the renunciation of the legal right and duty on the part of the
holders, and consequently the amount of the levied tax grew less and
less. The state, however, could not curtail the necessary amount of the
expenditure on that account. The dignity of the court had to be upheld
higher and higher, state ceremonies performed regularly, and the
national defence was not to be neglected for a moment. All these were
causes which necessitated a continual increase of revenue. In order to
fill up the deficit, the burden was transferred, doubled or trebled, to
those who remained longer honest, so that it soon became quite
unbearable for them also. The hardships borne by the law-abiding people
of that time could be compared to those of the Huguenots who, faithful
to their confession, were impoverished by the dragonnade. In this way,
more and more people were induced to give up their independent stand and
take shelter under the shield of mighty protectors. Military service,
too, was another grievance for the common people. They had to serve in
the western islands against continental invaders, or on the northern
frontier against the Ainu. Not only did they thereby risk their lives,
but sometimes they were obliged to procure their provisions at their own
cost, for the government could not afford it. If those people would once
renounce their right of independence and turn voluntary vagabonds, then
they could at once elude the military duty and the tax. No wonder this
was possible since it was an age in which the national consciousness was
not yet developed enough to teach them implicitly that it was their
duty to be ready to expose themselves to any peril for the sake of the
state. This underhand transaction is one exceedingly analogous to the
process in which Frankish allod-holders gradually turned their lands
into fiefs, in order to escape taxation and at the same time obtain
protection from influential persons. If one should think that the
census, which was ordained in the reform law to take place periodically,
would prove efficient to check the increase of these outcasts, it would
be a great mistake in forming a just conception of these ages. Soon
after the enactment of the census law, it ceased to be regularly
executed, and even while the law was observed with punctuality, the
extent to which it was applied must have been very limited. It was at
such a time that the great statue of Buddha was completed in the city of
Nara, and ten thousand priests were invited to take part in a grand
ceremony of rejoicing.
The palaces and temples in Nara, as well as the imperial mansions and
the abodes of nobles scattered about the country, seem in a great
measure to have been solidly and magnificently built, with their roofs
covered with tiles as beforementioned. The nobles who had no permanent
residence in the city, had as their bounden duty to pay certain duty
visits, as it were, to the imperial court, and learn there how to refine
their country life by adopting the metropolitan ways of living. Some of
the household furniture used by the nobles and members of the imperial
family was bought in China. The education of the higher classes enabled
them not only to read and write the literary Chinese with ease and
fluency, but to behave correctly according to Chinese etiquette, as if
they were themselves genuine Chinese. These are the bright aspects of
the history of the Nara age. Around the metropolitan city, however, and
those aristocratic abodes in the country, swarmed the impoverished
people, utterly uneducated, receiving no benefit whatever from the
imported Chinese civilisation. Here one might perhaps ask, could not
Buddhism give them any solace at all? Not in the least. The shrewd
Buddhists, having seen that Shintoism had been strangely tenacious in
resisting the propagation of their creed notwithstanding its lack of
system and dogma, wisely invented a clever method to keep a firm hold
even on the conservative mind by identifying the patron deities of
Buddhism with the national gods of our country. It resembles in some
ways the device of the early Christian missionaries in northern Europe,
who tried to blend Teutonic mythology with Christian legend. The only
difference between them is that those missionaries did not go so far as
our Buddhist priests did. This device of the Buddhists was crowned with
complete success. By this identification Buddhism became a religion
which could be embraced without any palpable contradiction to Shintoism,
in other words, with no risk of injuring the national traditions. Nay,
it came to be considered that Shintoism was not only compatible with
Buddhism, but also subservient to its real interests. Thus we find
almost everywhere a Shinto shrine standing within the same precincts as
a Buddhist temple, the Shinto deity being regarded as the patron of the
Buddhist creed and its place of worship. This strange combination
continued to be looked upon as a matter of course until the Restoration
of Meidji, when the revival of the imperial prerogative was accompanied
by a reaction against Buddhism, and the purification of Shintoism from
its Buddhistic admixture was enthusiastically undertaken. On account of
the dubiosity of their religious character, many finely built temples
and images of exquisite art were ruthlessly demolished, much to the
regret of art connoisseurs.
In the year 794, the Emperor Kwammu transferred his capital to the
province of Yamashiro, and gave it the felicitous appellation of Hei-an,
which means peace and tranquility. The place, however, has been commonly
designated by the name of Kyoto, which means literally the capital, and
continued henceforth to be the centre of Japan for more than one
thousand years. There might have been several motives which caused the
capital to be removed from Nara. The valley, in which the old capital
was situated, might have been too narrow to allow free expansion, or it
might have been found inconveniently situated as regards communications.
Party strife among the nobles might have been another reason. At any
rate the choice of the new site cannot be regarded as a mistake. Kyoto
is better connected with Naniwa, Osaka of the present day, than Nara was
at that time. From Kyoto one was able to reach the port within a few
hours, by going down the river Yodo by boat. There is no natural
hindrance on the way like the mountain chain which divides the two
provinces of Yamato and Settsu. At the same time, Kyoto is quite near to
Ohtsu, the gate toward the eastern provinces, and those selfsame
provinces were the regions which had for long been engrossing the
attention of far-sighted contemporary statesmen.
The energetic Emperor Kwammu undertook the conquest of the Ainu with a
renewed vigour. That part of the Ainu country which faced the Sea of
Japan was already made a province before the accession of that
sovereign. In the Emperor's reign the success of the Japanese arms was
carried far into the Ainu land by the victorious general
Sakanouye-no-Tamuramaro. The boundary of the province of Mutsu, the
region facing the Pacific, was pushed northward into the middle of the
present province of Rikuchu. Enterprising Japanese settled in those
lands or travelled to and fro in quest of trade. The Ainu, however, was
not completely subjugated, nor was he easily driven away out of the main
island. Beyond Shirakawa, the place which had for a long time been
considered the northernmost limit of civilised Japan, numerous hordes
of half-domesticated Ainu continued to reside as before. As the result
of the constant contact with the Japanese, they were slowly influenced
by the civilisation which the latter had already acquired. They could
consolidate their forces under the leadership of some valiant chiefs,
and frequently dared to rise against oppressive governors sent from
Kyoto. In short, they proved to be intractable as ever, so that more
than three centuries were still necessary to put their land in the same
status as the ordinary Japanese province. The interminable wars and
skirmishes waged thenceforth between the two races were one of the
principal causes of the financial embarrassment of the government at
Kyoto, and finally undermined its power.
The imperial family and the nobles lived their lives at Kyoto, largely
as they were wont to do at the old capital of Nara. The family of the
Fujiwara was ever as ascendant as before. Abundant court intrigues were
now not the outcome of the antagonism between the different great
families, but of the internal quarrels within the single family of the
Fujiwara, not infrequently intermingled with disputes concerning the
imperial succession. All the high and lucrative offices were monopolised
by the members of that able and ambitious family. Most of the empresses
of the successive sovereigns were their daughters. The regency became
the hereditary function of the family, and they filled the office one
after another without any regard to the age or health conditions of the
reigning emperor. It was very rare indeed for members of families other
than the Fujiwara to be promoted to one of the three great
ministerships. Even scions of the imperial family had to yield to them
in power and position.
Their literary attainments were generally high, being but little
inferior to those of the professional literati, who formed a class of
secondary courtiers, and proceeded generally from the families of the
Sugawara, Kiyowara, and so forth. Ships with ambassadors, students, and
priests were sent by them to China of the T'ang as before. For they
still burned with an ardent desire to get more and more knowledge about
things Chinese. Their Sinicomania was carried indeed to such an excess
that the physiognomical type of the Chinese came to be regarded as the
finest ideal of mankind, and any Japanese who was of that type was
adored as having the ideal features.
The despatch of the official ships continued as in the days of Nara, not
at regular intervals, but generally once during the reign of every
Japanese emperor. The impetuous imitation of Chinese legislation
slackened in fact, for in that respect we had already borrowed enough.
The connection of our country with China began to take the form of
ordinary international intercourse, with due reciprocation of
courtesies. There remained, however, some need of keeping pace with the
political changes in China, and we could not make up our minds to
refrain altogether from peeping into the land which we held to be far
above our country in civilisation. The last of such an embassy was that
sent in the year 843. Half a century afterwards another squadron was
ordered to be despatched, and Sugawara-no-Michizane was appointed
ambassador. But the squadron was never really sent. For at that time the
long dynasty of the T'ang was just drawing near to its end, and the
civil war of a century's duration was beginning. There was no more any
stable government in China with which we could communicate. Moreover,
there was danger to be feared that we might be somehow embroiled in the
anarchical disturbances in the Middle Kingdom. The ambassador, Michizane
himself, was also of the opinion that little was to be gained by the
despatch of the intended squadron, and dissuaded the government from
sending it.
Japan now entered into the stage of the assimilation of the alien
culture already imported in full. Hitherto we had been too busy to make
discrimination among those things Chinese which we had engulfed at
random. Now we had to make clear which of them was suited, and how
others were to be modified in order to make them useful to our country.
In short, we had to digest; or to speak by the book, we had to ruminate
on what we had already taken. After all it must have been a wise policy
to put a stop to the state of national nervousness caused by the
incessant introduction of foreign laws, manners, customs, things. The
infiltration, however superficial it might have been, left an
ineradicable influence owing to the continual process of several
centuries. The spirit of the culture of the dominant class became
essentially Chinese. Though the saying, "Japanese spirit and Chinese
erudition" was henceforth fondly spoken of, the Japanese spirit itself
was not yet clearly defined, and did not enter into the full
consciousness of the nation. What the ruling nobles, who had imbibed the
Chinese spirit already too deeply, could do was only to discard things
which became superannuated and untenable.
The characteristics of the age of rumination may be discerned in the
history of our literature from the latter half of the ninth century to
the beginning of the eleventh. At first, while literary works were still
being written almost exclusively in Chinese, we begin to find in their
style traces of Japanisation, becoming more and more marked as time goes
on. Along with works in Chinese, those in our own language began to
appear, though very sparsely at first. Then gradually these attempts in
the vernacular increased, so that eventually the end of the tenth
century became the culminating period of the classical Japanese
literature. Religious and scholastic works were written in Chinese as
before. August and ceremonial documents continued to be composed in the
same language. Chinese poetry was as much in vogue among the courtiers
as ever. At the same time, however, numerous works in Japanese now
appeared in the form of chronicles, diaries, short stories, novels,
satirical sketches, and poems. What was most remarkable, however, is
that the greater part of those works was written not by men, but by
court ladies. Among the ladies, who by their wit and literary genius
brightened the court of the Emperor Ichijo, stood at the forefront
Murasaki-shikibu, the author of the _Genji-monogatari_, and
Sei-Shonagon, the author of _Makura-no-soshi_.
That these intelligent and talented court ladies were versed in Chinese
literature can be perceived in what they wrote in Japanese. In other
words, the culture, essentially Chinese, of the high circles of society
was not monopolised by the men only, but shared by the women. And these
court ladies were fairly emancipated, and far from being subject to the
caprices of men. It is often argued that the progress of a country can
be measured rightly by the social status of the women in it. If that be
true, Japan at the beginning of the eleventh century must have been very
highly civilised. And it was really so in a certain sense. This
civilised Japan, however, was confined to the very narrow circle in
Kyoto, and for that very circle the Chinese enlightenment penetrated too
deep. The great nobles of the Fujiwara family were too refined, too
effeminate for holders of the helm of the state, the young state in
which there was still much to be done vigorously.
The Ainu on the north were menacing as ever. For though they had lost in
extent of territory, they had gained in civilisation. The demand of the
state was for energetic ministers as well as for valiant warriors. The
high-class nobles became unfitted for both, and especially for the rough
life of the latter. As generals, therefore, not to speak of officers,
were employed men of comparatively low rank among the courtiers. In this
way military affairs became the hereditary profession of certain
families which happened to be engaged in them most frequently, and were
at last monopolised by them. As the government, however, could not and
did not care to provide these generals with a sufficiency of soldiers,
provisions, and armaments, they were obliged to help themselves to those
necessaries, just like the leaders of the landsknechts in Europe. The
intimate relation of vassalage, not legally recognised of course, thus
arose between those generals and their private soldiers, and as this
condition lasted for a considerable time, the relationship became
hereditary. Needless to say that such a condition of affairs was
naturally set up in the provinces, where the Ainu was still powerful
enough to raise frequent disturbances. On account of the fact that these
generals and their relatives were often appointed to the governorship of
distant provinces, where the influence of the Kyoto government was too
weak to check their arbitrary conduct, the same connection of vassalage
was formed there also between them and the provincials who were in need
of their protection. Not only did they thus become masters of bands of
strong and warlike people, but they also appropriated to themselves by
sundry means vast tracts of land, and fattened their purses thereby.
That they did not venture at once to overthrow the political regime
upheld by the nobles of the Fujiwara family may be accounted for by the
time-honoured prestige of the latter. For a long while those warriors
went even so far as to do homage to this or that noble of the Fujiwara
as his vassals, and served as tools to this or that party in court
intrigues. The courtiers, who employed them as their instruments, had no
apprehension that those military men, subservient for the moment to
their needs, would one day turn into rivals, powerful enough in the long
run to overturn them, and flattered themselves that they would remain as
their cat's-paws forever. An exact analogy of this in the history of
Rome may be found in the shortsightedness of the senate, which
complacently believed that the Scipios and the Caesars would for ever
remain obedient to their order. It would be a fatal mistake to think
that a cat's-paw would always remain docile and faithful to its
employer. Especially when it is frequently used and abused it becomes
conscious of its own usefulness and real strength; and self-assertion
is born. The next step for it must be the sounding of the strength of
its master, then the desire awakens to take the place of the master,
when it is found that he is not so strong as he looks to be.
Moreover in any country, in whatever condition, war cannot be carried on
without a great number of participants, while it must be directed by a
single head. War, therefore, tends on the one hand to create a dictator,
and on the other hand to precipitate the democratisation of a country.
None would be so ignorant for long as to discharge gladly an imposed
duty without enjoying their right to compensation for service rendered.
The time must come when these military leaders should supersede the
ultracivilised Kyoto nobles, and hold the reins of government
themselves. The transference of political power from the higher to the
lower stratum was unavoidable. These generals, howsoever inferior they
might be in rank compared with the court nobles of the Fujiwara, were
still to be classed among the nobles, and it was yet a very far cry to
the time when the common people could have some share in the politics of
their own country.