THE FUJIWARA PERIOD AND WARS OF GEMPEI Kwammu removed the court to Nagaoka, Yamashiro; then in 794 to the new city of Kyoto, which continued to be the imperial residence until 1869. The chief reason for the change was no doubt the fear that at Nara the Government might be made subservient to the Buddhist church, and the incident of DOkyo shows that there were ambitious prelates who dreamt of a state analogous to the Papacy or the Lamaist hierarchy of Tibet. At Kyoto the Gov ernment was for the time being at any rate not exposed to undue ecclesiastical influence. Not that Kwammu in any way quarrelled with the Buddhist church : he built many temples himself, but he made an enactment that imperial sanction was necessary for the construction of new ones. Kwammu also tried to abolish, though without permanent success, the hereditary tenure of office enjoyed by provincial governors. These officials owned large tax-free es tates called shoen which, like those of the monasteries, continually increased by absorbing the neighbouring land owned by peasants. This system had two most important consequences : first it created a class of quasi-independent territorial magnates and secondly it impoverished the exchequer by increasing the extent of areas which paid no taxes. Kwammu's reign was also remark able for a long campaign against the Ainu. At this time the ex treme outpost of the Japanese empire was the fortress of Taga about so miles to the north of Sendai. The Ainu seized it in 78o and it was not till 802 that the fighting was over. The hero of these wars was Sakanoe Tamuramaro, whom Japanese romances represent as the ideal soldier, most terrible to his enemies but gentle and unassuming among his friends.. He was the first to receive the title of Sei-i-tai-Shogun, or Barbarian-subduing-Gen eralissimo, which was the name by which the later rulers of Japan were known.
The sovereigns who immediately succeeded Kwammu were not without ability and have been called the learned emperors. But from this point onward a most remarkable and persistent feature makes its. appearance in Japanese history. This is the constant tendency to separate titular and real authority, to preserve a venerable hereditary office but to set up beside it a recognized and efficient power which was also generally hereditary. Not only was the Government during many centuries administered by a Shogun but the effective power of the Shogun sometimes passed to a deputy and at other times an emperor who had nominally abdi cated in favour of a minor retained the real control of the State. The history of Japan from Kwammu to Meiji is not a history of emperors but of certain great families of whom the Fujiwaras were the first. Yet the really remarkable fact is the continued existence of the imperial house and the veneration in which it was held through all these vicissitudes. The period from the beginning of the 9th century to the middle of the 11th is commonly known as the period of the Fujiwaras. They were not like the later Shoguns, a military power which brought pressure to bear on the court : they ruled by identifying themselves with the imperial family. For instance, Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027) who governed the country for thirty years, was the father-in-law of three emperors and the grandfather of four more. The emperors married Fujiwara ladies and their children were educated in Fujiwara palaces. Very often the emperor was a minor and in that case his maternal grandfather acted as regent. If he was of full age, a Fujiwara filled the office of Kwambaku, a sort of chancellor. If the em peror showed any inclination to assert himself, he generally had to retire to a monastery. During 200 years of Fujiwara rule there were fifteen emperors, of whom seven were minors and eight abdicated.
The Fujiwara or Heian period as it is sometimes called (Heian kyo, or capital of peace, being another name of Kyoto) was a peaceful time. There were, indeed, some disturbances, such as piracy and the short-lived attempt of Masakado (939) to make himself emperor in the Kwanto and there was in the north some fighting with the Ainus and with the Japanese family of Abe which had established itself there. But such distant troubles did not much affect the court at Kyoto. Literature, art and gallantry flourished. Buddhism also flourished and the great monasteries on Mount Hieizan began to acquire a dangerous importance in politics, as those of Nara had done before. Scholars like Kobo Daishi and Dengyo Daishi visited China and brought back with them novel ties in art and religion. As at Nara, everything Chinese was fashionable. The fault of this pleasant and cultured society was that being engrossed with its own refined amusements, it neglected the provinces where great estates continued to grow and attract the military spirit of the country.
the young Emperor had to sign an edict appointing Michizane viceroy of Kyushu, then regarded as a remote province, and the ex-Emperor protested in vain. But after Michizane's death at his distant post some years afterwards the country was visited with droughts, fires, floods and other calamities, in which popular imagination saw the vengeance of his indignant spirit. He was canonized as Tenjin Sama, the god of calligraphy, and his temples, marked by plum trees, of which he was specially fond, are to be found in most Japanese towns.
The first check to the power of the Fujiwara family was the reign of the Emperor Go-sanjo (1068-1072) who cam to the throne because the Fujiwara bride selected as Empress for his predecessor was childless and who ruled with considerable inde pendence. He seriously attacked the evils of provincial adminis tration, ordered that no governor should hold office for more than one term and confiscated many shOen which could produce no title deeds. Unfortunately he reigned only four years. The next period, 1073-1156, is sometimes called the rule of the Cloistered Emperors, because the two sovereigns Shirakawa and Toba, though they became monks and nominally retired from the world, managed to keep the real power with a court and a council of their own, whereas the Fujiwara could only control the titular emperor, who was a minor. But the system did not work well. There was a natural conflict of authority between the two courts and the Cloistered Emperors, having become nominal monks, allowed the church to acquire great temporal power. Enormous sums were spent on building and adorning temples, and the mon asteries of Hieizan, which had established the practice of keeping mercenaries, became veritable fortresses whence, if any eccle siastical interest was at stake, armed forces used to descend into Kyoto to over-awe the Government. Even Shirakawa complained that, though he was emperor, there were three things he could not control: the inundations of the river Kamo, the hazards of the dice and the monks of Hieizan. The evils of provincial ad ministration increased, for the court stultified its own edicts. It prohibited the extension of shaen but at the same time, being in need of money, it sold appointments and prolongation of office.
Troubles about the succession in 1156 and a conspiracy in I 16o, for taking part in which many Minamoto lost their lives, made the Taira supreme and Kiyomori, the head of the house, was practically a dictator until his death in 1181. The brief rule of the Taira does not seem to have been inspired by any original policy or to have had any special consequences for the history of Japan and it was unpopular. Kiyomori was haughty and exacting: he distributed all the great offices of state among his kinsmen: he made enemies of the Buddhist clergy, although when he was ill he took the tonsure according to the custom of the time and, strange to say, recovered: at great expense and inconvenience to both nobles and commoners he made the court remove for a time to Fukuwara near the modern Kobe where he had his private resi dence. Besides this, evils for which he was not responsible, pes tilence, fire and famine ravaged Kyoto and though he died in peace himself, the rule of the Taira came to an end four years after his death and gave way to the Minamoto, led by Yoritomo.