The Heian period (794–1185)

Changes in ritsuryō government

In 794, as noted above, the emperor Kammu shifted his capital to Heian, diluted the ties between government and Buddhism, and attempted to revive government in accordance with the ritsuryō. Commanding that the provisions of the ritsuryō system be enforced, he also amended those articles that were no longer relevant to the age. Since it was difficult in practice to carry out the allocation of rice fields once every 6 years, this was amended to once in 12 years. A tighter watch was imposed on corruption among local officials. The original system of raising conscript troops from among the peasantry was abolished, and soldiers were thenceforth selected from among the sons of local officials with martial prowess. Kammu, continuing campaigns that had plagued the regime since Nara times, dispatched large conscript armies against the Ezo (Emishi), a nonsubject tribal group in the northern districts of Honshu who were regarded as aliens. The Ezo eventually were pacified, although the northern border was never fully brought under the control of the central government. Those Ezo who submitted to government forces were resettled throughout the empire and largely assimilated into the existing population.

Interference in affairs of state by religious authorities was forbidden, but they were encouraged to see that Buddhism fulfilled its proper functions. Kammu was a supporter of Buddhism for both national and individual purposes. He dispatched two brilliant monks, Saichō and Kūkai, to China to study. Each of them, on his return to Japan, established a new sect of Japanese Buddhism: the Tendai sect, founded by Saichō, and the Shingon sect, established by Kūkai. In the Nara period, Buddhism had been no more than a transplantation of the Buddhism of Tang China, but the two new sects, though derived from China, developed in a characteristically Japanese fashion. As headquarters of their new sects, Saichō and Kūkai founded, respectively, the Enryaku Temple on Mount Hiei and the Kongōbu Temple on Mount Kōya. The two sects were thenceforth to form the mainstream of Japanese Buddhism.

After Kammu, successive emperors carried on his policies, and society enjoyed some 150 years of peace. The formal aspects of government, at least, were carefully observed, and the supplementing of the legal codes, the compilation of histories, and the minting of coins all took place frequently in accordance with precedent. The social reality, however, became increasingly chaotic, and form and actuality were soon traveling along quite different courses. The very foundations of ritsuryō government began to crumble because of the difficulty of carrying out the allotment system based on census registers and the consequent decline in government revenue. Two changes were instituted early in the 10th century that, while temporarily shoring up government finances, eventually led to further erosion of the ideals of the authority-intensive ritsuryō system. First, the state decided to calculate taxes on the basis of land units rather than individuals. The government set up taxation units based on paddy fields upon which both rent and corvée could easily be assessed. Second, the central government gave up the details of administering provincial affairs, leaving local matters to governors (now increasingly called zuryō, or “tax managers”) and local resident officials (zaichō kanjin) who were mainly responsible for forwarding to Heian a specified tax amount. It now became easier to calculate the amount of taxable public land (kōden) in each province, but entrusting so much authority to governors opened the gates for further abuse, especially the possibilities of increasing the amount of lands held in tax-free estates. Thus, the reality of Heian society continued to deviate from the ritsuryō ideal.

Another example of the divergence between form and reality is the fact that while, on the surface, appointments to official posts were made in accord with ritsuryō stipulations, real power shifted to other posts that were newly created outside the codes as the occasion demanded. Early examples were the two new posts created during the early 9th century: kurōdo, a kind of secretary and archivist to the emperor, and kebiishi, the imperial police, who ultimately developed powers to investigate crimes and determine punishments. The two most important posts developed outside the ritsuryō codes were those of sesshō (regent) and kampaku (chief councillor), better known by an abbreviated combination of the two terms, sekkan (regency). The original role of the sesshō was to attend to affairs of state during the minority of the emperor, whereas the kampaku’s role was to attend to state matters for the emperor even after he had come of age. Neither post had been foreseen by the ritsuryō system, which was based on the principle of direct rule by the emperor.

Prior to the early Heian period, all sovereigns had been adults, and seemingly no one had envisioned the enthronement of a child emperor. In the mid-9th century, however, when nine-year-old Seiwa ascended the throne, his maternal grandfather, Fujiwara Yoshifusa, created the office of sesshō, based on the post once held by imperial family members such as the empress Jingū and the princes Nakano Ōe and Shōtoku. Yoshifusa’s son Mototsune became sesshō during the minority of the succeeding emperor Yōzei, and then in the reign of the emperor Uda, he created the post of kampaku. It thus became the established custom that a member of the Fujiwara family should serve as sesshō and kampaku. In order to hold the sekkan offices, it was necessary that the person concerned should marry his daughter into the imperial family and then establish the resulting offspring as emperor. In other words, the indispensable qualification was that one should be the emperor’s maternal grandfather or father-in-law. While not totally new with the Fujiwara—the maternal relatives of the early Yamato rulers (notably the Soga) were the important powers at court—the system reached its height and perfection under the Fujiwara. As a result of this complex system, there were constant struggles at court involving the expulsion of members of other families by the Fujiwara family or wrangling among the branches of the extensive Fujiwara clan itself.

One of the most celebrated affairs involving the expulsion of a member of another family by the Fujiwara was the removal of Sugawara Michizane from his post as minister and his exile to Kyushu. Born into a family of scholars, Michizane was an outstanding scholar whose ability in writing Chinese verse and prose was said to rival that of the Chinese themselves. Recognizing his talent, the emperor Uda singled Michizane out for an attempt to break the authority of the Fujiwara family, to whom the emperor had no connection. Uda appointed Michizane and Fujiwara Tokihira to a succession of government posts. In 899 Uda’s successor, the emperor Daigo, simultaneously appointed Tokihira and Michizane as his two top ministers. In 901 Tokihira, jealous of Michizane’s influence, falsely reported to Daigo (who was sympathetic to the Fujiwara) that Michizane was plotting treason. Michizane was demoted to a ministerial post in Kyushu, effectively sending him and his family into exile.

The culture of the 9th century was a continuation of that of the 8th, insofar as its foundations were predominantly Chinese. The writing of Chinese prose and verse was popular among scholars, and great respect for Chinese customs was shown in the daily lives of the aristocracy. Buddhist monks continued to travel to China to bring back as-yet-unknown scriptures and iconographic pictures. Buddhist sculpture and paintings produced in Japan were done in the Tang style. At the end of the 9th century, however, Japan cut off formal relations with Tang China, both because of the expense involved in sending regular envoys and because of the political unrest accompanying the breakup of the Tang empire. In fact, the Japanese court no longer had a model worthy of emulation, nor did it need one. The practical result was the stimulation of a more purely Japanese cultural tradition. Japanese touches were gradually added to the basically Tang styles, and a new culture slowly came into being, but it was not until the 10th century and later that this tendency became a strong current.

Aristocratic government at its peak

From the 10th century and through the 11th, successive generations of the northern branch of the Fujiwara clan continued to control the nation’s government by monopolizing the posts of sesshō and kampaku, and the wealth that poured into their coffers enabled them to lead lives of the greatest brilliance. The high-water mark was reached in the time of Fujiwara Michinaga (966–1028). Four of his daughters became consorts of four successive emperors, and three of their sons became emperors. Government during this period was based mostly on precedent, and the court had become little more than a center for highly ritualized ceremonies.

The ritsuryō system of public ownership of land and people survived in name alone; land passed into private hands, and people became private citizens. The fiscal changes of the early 10th century did not bring enough paddy fields into production, and tax rates remained high. Public revenue—the income of the Heian aristocrats—continued to decline, and the incentive to seek new private lands increased. Privately owned lands were known as shōen (“manors”), which developed primarily on the basis of rice fields under cultivation since the adoption of the ritsuryō system. Since the government-encouraged opening up of new land during the Nara period, temples and aristocrats with resources at their disposal had hastened to develop new areas, and vast private lands had accrued to them. Originally, private lands had been taxable, but shōen owners developed various techniques to obtain special exemption from taxes, so by mid-Heian times the shōen had gradually become nontaxable estates. The increase in shōen thus came to pose a serious threat to the government, which accordingly issued edicts intended to check the formation of new estates. This merely served, however, to establish more firmly the position of those already existing and failed to halt the tendency for such land to increase. Finally, an edict issued in 1069 recognized all estates established before 1045 and set up an office to investigate shōen records, thus legitimizing the accumulation of private estates. Since the owners of the shōen were the same high officials that constituted the government, it was extremely difficult to change the situation.

Although the aristocracy and temples around the capital enjoyed exemption from taxes on their private lands, the same privileges were not available to powerful families in the provinces. These, accordingly, commended their holdings to members of the imperial family or the aristocracy, concluding agreements with them that the latter should become owners in name while the former retained rights as actual administrators of the property. Thanks to such agreements, the estates of the aristocracy increased steadily, and their incomes swelled proportionately. The shōen of the Fujiwara family expanded greatly, especially in the 11th and 12th centuries.

While the aristocracy was leading a life of luxury on the proceeds from its estates, the first stirrings of a new power in the land—the warrior, or samurai, class—were taking place in the provinces. Younger members of the imperial family and lower-ranking aristocrats dissatisfied with the Fujiwara monopoly of high government offices would take up posts as local officials in the provinces, where they settled permanently, acquired lands of their own, and established their own power. In order to protect their territories or expand their power, they began to organize local inhabitants (especially the zaichō kanjin) into service. Since many of these local officials had for centuries practiced martial skills, a number of powerful provincial aristocrats developed significant armed forces. As a consequence, when such men of true martial ability and sufficient autonomy emerged, the slightest incident involving any one of them might provoke armed conflict. The risings of Taira Masakado (d. 940) in the Kantō district and of Fujiwara Sumitomo (d. 941) in western Japan are examples of large war bands extending their control in the provinces; for a time, Masakado controlled as many as seven provinces. Although the government was able to suppress the rebellions, these conflicts had an enormous effect in lowering the government’s prestige and encouraging the desolation of the provinces.

During the 10th century a truly Japanese culture developed, one of the most important contributing factors being the emergence of indigenous scripts, the kana syllabaries. Until then, Japan had no writing of its own; Chinese ideographs were used both for their meaning and for their pronunciation in order to represent the Japanese language, which was entirely different grammatically from Chinese. Educated men and women of the day, however, gradually evolved a system of writing that used a purely phonetic, syllabic script formed by simplifying a certain number of the Chinese characters; another script was created by abbreviating Chinese characters. These two scripts, called hiragana and katakana, respectively, made it possible to write the national language with complete freedom, and their invention was an epochal event in the history of the expression of ideas in Japan. Thanks to the kana, a great amount of verse and prose in Japanese was to be produced.

Particularly noteworthy in this respect were the daughters of the Fujiwara family, who, under the aristocratic government of the day, became the consorts of successive emperors and surrounded themselves with talented women who vied with each other in learning and the ability to produce fine writing. The hiragana script—largely shunned by men, who composed official documents in stilted Chinese—provided such women with an opportunity to create works of literature. Among such works, The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), a novel by Murasaki Shikibu, and The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (Makura no sōshi), a collection of vivid scenes and incidents of court life by Sei Shōnagon, who was a lady-in-waiting to the empress Sadako, are masterpieces of world literature.

By Heian times, the diverse poetic forms found in the Man’yōshū had been refined into one form called waka. The waka, consisting of 31 syllables, was an indispensable part of the daily lives of the aristocracy, and proficiency in verse making was counted an essential accomplishment for a courtier. The value placed on the skillful composition of poetry led to the compilation in 905 of the Kokinshū (or Kokin wakashū), the first of a series of anthologies of verse made at imperial command. So popular was the craze for composition that formal and informal poetic competitions were common among the aristocracy; careers and even love affairs depended on one’s skill at versification.

The same trend toward the development of purely Japanese qualities became strongly marked in Buddhism as well. Both the Tendai and Shingon sects produced a succession of gifted monks and continued, as sects, to flourish. But, being closely connected with the court and aristocracy, they tended to pursue worldly wealth and riches at the expense of purely religious goals, and it was left to the Pure Land (Jōdo) sect of Buddhism to preach a religion that sought to arouse a desire for salvation in ordinary people.

Pure Land Buddhism, which became a distinct sect only in the 12th and 13th centuries, expounded the glories of the paradise of Amida (Amitābha, or Buddha of Infinite Light)—the world after death—and urged all to renounce the defilements of the present world for the sake of rebirth in that paradise; it seemed to offer an ideal hope of salvation in the midst of the disorder and decay of the old order. It grew in popularity as society began to unravel and violence spread at the end of the Heian period. Pure Land religion was very approachable in that it eschewed difficult theories and ascetic practices, teaching that in order to achieve rebirth it was necessary only to invoke the name of Amida and dwell on the marks of his divinity. This same teaching also inspired artists to produce an astonishing number of representations of Amida in both sculpture and painting. The mildness of his countenance and the softly curving folds of his robe contrasted strongly with the grotesque Buddhist sculpture in the preceding age and represented a much more truly Japanese taste.

Another example of this Japanization of culture is the style called Yamato-e (“Japanese painting”). Most Yamato-e dealt with secular affairs—for example, the career of Sugawara Michizane or The Tale of Genji—and there were even satirical works lampooning the behavior of the court nobles. The signs of the growing independence of Japanese culture, apparent in every field, were an indication that by now, two centuries after the first ingestion of continental culture, the process of naturalization was nearing completion.