HISTORY OF JAPAN LIBRARY

JAMES MURDOCH' HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM THE ORIGINS

TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE IN 1542 AD

CHAPTER VIII .

THE LEARNED EMPERORS. (806 TO 850 A.D.)

SINCE 645 one Emperor of Japan had been deposed and died in exile, while there had been six cases of abdication. In five of these the sovereign had been a female, and two of these ex-Empresses had reassumed the cares of State and had died in possession of the throne. So far, the only Emperor who had seen fit to retire to the ease of private life had been the ultra-devout and priest-ridden Shomu, the professed servant of the “Three Sacred Things.” Konin Tenno had not abdicated in spite of his three-score years and twelve, while Kwammu proved himself to be truly of the breed of those great workers whose fondest aspiration it is to meet their fate in harness at the post of duty. His three sons and successors on the throne were of much less vigorous fibre. All abdicated in turn—Heijo at 35, Saga at 37, and Junna at 47; and in 824 there were two ex-Emperors with their respective Courts. Among the several causes which led not merely to the decline, but to the utter wreck and ruin of the Imperial power and prestige, this tendency to shirk the onerous duties of the throne was surely not one of the least. It was well calculated to provide ambitious and unscrupulous subjects with the best of opportunities for self-aggrandisement. In the first half of the ninth century the evil effects of the practice were perhaps not so very conspicuously apparent. But within a hundred and fifty years thereafter it was impossible for even the dullest capacity to misinterpret the results. In 987, when the sixty-sixth sovereign, Ichijo, was placed on the throne at the age of seven, there were no fewer than three ex-Emperors. Of these Reizei had abdicated at 19, Enyu at 24, and Kwazan at 18. On the very face of it, it at once becomes evident that the sovereign is being used as a puppet; and that the king-maker is at work on a scale and with a dexterity that make the Soga of old Yamato appear in the light of crude and small-souled bunglers.

During the first year or so of the reign of Heijo Tenno (806-809) the nation had some reason to believe that the new sovereign was no unworthy son of his illustrious sire. Doubtless in accordance with the dying instructions of Kwammu, the work of retrenchment and reform was vigorously prosecuted, the two favoured and pampered departments of the Nakatsu-kasa-Sho and the Kunai-Sho coming in for a large measure of unappreciated attention. But Heijo soon fell under the spell of female society, and abdicated after a short reign of three years. This step was far from pleasing to his Fujiwara favourite, the Lady Kusuri, however; and together with her younger brother, Nakanari, she formed an intrigue to restore the capital to Nara, and Heijo to the throne. The ex-Emperor started for the Eastern country to raise troops, and a civil war seemed imminent. It was on this occasion that Saka-no-Uye no Tamura Maro and his lieutenant Fumiya no Watamaro proved themselves arbiters of the Imperial fortunes. They seized all the strategic positions, and effectually stamped out the incipient revolt. Heijo had to return to Nara and shave his head, Nakanari was put to death, while the Lady Kusuri poisoned herself.

Saga Tenno (810 -823), Heijo’s uterine brother and Kwammu’s favourite son, was undoubtedly a highly accomplished man of brilliant parts. One of the finest scholars of the age, he was counted as one of the famous Sawpit su (Three Pens), the others being his relative by marriage Tachibana nayanari, known at the Chinese Court as the “talented Tachibana,” and the monk Kukai, or Kobo Daishi. All Kwammu’s sons were deeply versed in Chinese literature, did everything to encourage its study, and exerted themselves to complete the Sinicisation of Japan. Unfortunately it was as much the luxury and the magnificence as the culture of the Chinese Court that appealed to them. Chinese dress and etiquette were now introduced into the palace of Kyoto, and the expenses of high life in the Japanese capital increased enormously. Princes and courtiers soon found the strain upon their ordinary and official incomes becoming excessive, and had perforce to cast about for some other means of procuring the additional revenue necessary for keeping afloat in the devouring whirlpool of Court and fashionable society. Most commonly relief was found in obtaining a special grant of tax-free land from the sovereign. In Saga Tenno’s time, thousands of acres of the best land in the home provinces had been alienated and withdrawn from obligation to the national fisc in this way. Under his brother and successor, Junna (824-833), vast areas in Musashi, Shimotsuke, Shimosa, Bizen, and Nagato had been granted away in a similar fashion, while under Saga’s son, Nimmyo Tenno (834 -850), the abuse became still more notorious. These luxury-loving sovereigns were indeed sowing the wind, and their ill-starred descendants and successors were destined to reap something worse than the whirlwind in consequence. These estates were the notorious Shoen, or non­taxpaying manors. In the Nara age it was mainly the manors of the Buddhist temples that had been so extensive as to afford any grave cause for apprehension. Kwammu Tenno had taken due steps to render this special national menace innocuous, while he had also taken care to prevent the assignment of such estates to princes, or courtiers, or nobles. Before fifty years had passed since his ashes became cold, his excellent work in this respect had been virtually undone. Junna Tenno (824-833) still further depleted the national treasury by alienating the revenues of three of the most opulent provinces. Princes of the Blood were nominated Governors (Taishu) of Kodzuke, Hitachi, and Kazusa, and the taxes of the finest half of the Kwanto were thenceforward supposed to be deposited in special warehouses in Kyoto, to enable a trio of the numerous Imperial relatives to maintain the dignity of their position in 1he capital.

All these Emperors,—Saga, Junna, and Nimmyo,—were men of more than average mental capacity; none of them were vicious, and all were workers. Yet it is they who must in no small measure be held responsible for the subsequent decline of the Imperial authority. It would be unjust to hold their Ministers to account for this, since there is nothing to indicate that during this half-century the sovereign was under the ascendency of any servant. Nay, we find Ministers, Fujiwaras among them, pointing out the need of retrenchment and a stricter handling of the national resources.

The simple fact is that the energies of these three rulers were sadly misdirected. Their unbalanced craze for Chinese fashions, for Chinese manners, and above all for Chinese literature proved utterly detrimental to the best interests of the throne of Japan. At the Court of Hsian learning was patronised and encouraged as it has rarely been at any Court. There the rewards of the exercise of supreme literary ability were truly munificent For more than one aspiring plebeian it had opened the path to the highest office in the Empire. In Japan this never had been the case, for except in the case of the priesthood learning and office alike had been strictly confined to a numerically insignificant ring of courtiers and aristocrats. At this time the Japanese sovereigns were paying Hsian the sincerest kind of flattery, and hence the attention devoted to learning in Kyoto presently came to be all-engrossing. All claims to consideration and social distinction were based mainly on the courtier’s ability to read Chinese fluently, to write Chinese characters artistically, to turn Chinese stanzas neatly, and to produce what passed for elegant Chinese prose composition in the latitude of Kyoto. Matter, real thought, was of the slightest consequence; what was all-important was what was regarded as refinement, polish, distinction of style. All this in truth was at best but a sterile culture. But for admission to office and advancement in the world it was now an absolutely necessary equipment.

In 757 the University—apart from the departments of music, astrology, and medicine, which each then received 25 acres—was endowed with 75 acres of rice-land. In Kwammu’s time (794), yet another 250 acres in Echizen were added; and subsequently still further private and official endowments were contributed. Now in Junna’s time (824-833), extra estates, 250 acres in extent, were granted to it.

But the University was soon destined to be eclipsed by certain of the private schools which were established about this time. The Bunsho-in, founded by Sugawara in 823, and placed under the superintendence of Oye no Otohito and Sugawara no Kiyo-gimi, soon became filled to overflowing. In 825, Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu erected a special school, as well as a charity­hospital for the benefit of his poorer clansmen. A few years later it received an Imperial endowment; and a ceremony of annually presenting its graduates for the public service was also introduced. Then there were the Sogaku-in, founded in 831 by Arihara no Yukihira, a grandson of Heijo Tenno, and the Junna-in, the Palace of the Emperor Junna converted into a school, in 841. Both these institutions were for the education of the sons of the less important Imperial relatives. Lastly, in 850, the consort of Saga Tenno erected the Gakkwan-in, “in which young persons of her family—that of Tachibana —might be educated in the Chinese classics and histories.” All these institutions, be it observed, were for the official and aristocratic classes exclusively. At this time there was only one single school in the whole of the Empire open to vulgar plebeians—the So-geishu-chi-in, organised by Kobo Daishi in connection with the Toji monastery to the south of the capital.

What was especially needed at this time was a strong and efficient central administration with thoroughly capable and trustworthy agents in the various provincial posts. But during these three reigns there was no Chancellor of the Empire; down to 833, only a single one of the Two Great Ministers of the Left and the Right, while at one time all three great offices had been vacant for two years. For the sovereign to act as his own Prime Minister would have perhaps been highly beneficial if he had been a Kwammu and had construed the duties of his Imperial office as Kwammu had done. But Saga, Junna, and Nimmyo found it more congenial to act as the arbiters of taste and fashion in clothes and exotic belles-lettres than to spend laborious days holding provincial and district officers to a strict discharge of their onerous responsibilities. Instead of forming a school of administrators with a stern sense of public duty and a creed of honest work, they reared an ever-pullulating brood of greedy, needy, frivolous dilettanti,—as often as not foully licentious, utterly effeminate, incapable of any worthy achievement, but withal the polished exponents of high breeding and correct “form.” Now and then a better man did occasionally emerge ; but one just man is impotent to avert the doom of an intellectual Sodom. And the one just man not infrequently appeared in the shape of a portentously learned but hopelessly arid and frigid pedant. And it was from those formed in the great aristocratic schools of Kyoto that the public service was to be recruited. A pretty showing, indeed, these pampered minions and bepowdered poetasters might be expected to make as administrators in the wilds of Echigo or the Kwanto! Even if honestly inclined,—which in the majority of cases he was not,—such an official found himself unfitted by his training to grapple with the stern realities of the situation. One result was that great stretches of the Empire were soon seething with disorder that occasionally threatened to assume the dimensions of anarchy. As early as 862, the Inland Sea pirates had had the audacity to pillage the Bizen tax-rice on its way to the capital, after kill­ing the officer in charge. In 866, Settsu, Idzumi, Harirna, Bizen, Bingo, Aki, Suwo, Nagato, and all the provinces of the Nankaido were infested by swarms of freebooters, whose out­rages were ceaseless. A little later on, and the state of affairs had become as bad in many other sections of the country. Just as the contemporary descents of the Vikings contributed to the growth of the feudal system in France, so this unbridled lawless ness greatly favoured the spread of those manors (Sho-yen) which ultimately rung the knell of the Imperial power and the old civilian government of Kyoto. The rampant disorder supplied an additional motive for, and intensified the natural tendency to, commendation. The peaceable cultivator, despairing of adequate protection from the responsible authorities, was only too eager to find a refuge as a thrall on one of those great tax-free estates where the strong man in possession, or his agent, was more or less capable of repelling force by force.

In Prince Ito’s Commentaries on the Constitution we read: “In the reign of the Emperor Tenchi (662-671 a.d.), the Council of State (Dajo-kwan) was first established, and after that, the control over affairs of State was confided to the Chancellor of the Empire (Dajo-daijin), to the Minister of the Left (Sa-daijin) and to the Minister of the Right (U-daijin); while the First Adviser of State (Dai-nagon) took part in advising, and the Minister of the Nakatsukasa-Sho inspected and affixed his seal to Imperial Rescripts. Under the Council of State were placed the eight departments. Thus the organisation of the Government was nearly complete. In later times, Court favourites took sole charge of the affairs of State, and even such petty officials as Kurando gradually came to assume the issuing of Imperial Orders; and important-measures of State were also executed on the authority of an ex-Emperor, or the private wishes of the Empress, or of written notes of ladies of the Court. The result was a complete slackening of the reins of power.”

It was at this time that the Kurando were instituted; but they could not justly be characterised as “petty officials” at that date, nor indeed for several generations. In 810, after attempt to repossess himself of the throne, Saga Tenno, finding that he could not rely upon the fidelity of many of the superior officials, entrusted the two Commandants of the Imperial Guards,—Fujiwara Fuyutsugu and Kose Notari,—with the duty of drawing up and seeing to the due promulgation of Imperial decrees and of taking cognisance of all suits. In 897, Fujiwara Tokihira was made Betto of the Kurando-dokoro, an appointment which added greatly to the prestige of the Board. At first all the members were nobles of high rank; but later on three members of the fifth rank and four of the sixth rank were added to it; while a staff of sixty or seventy subordinates came to be employed.

The Kurando was not the most important administrative innovation of this half-century, however. The hopeless inefficiency of the police and the criminal courts made some serious attempt at reform imperative, and in 839 a special Board,—the Kebiishi-cho,—was instituted to meet the urgent needs of the situation. It had full power to arrest, to try, and to punish; and its officials (1 Betto, 4 Suke, and 4 Tai-i) were provided with the means of making themselves respected by evil-doers. At first, its operations were confined to the capi­tal; presently disturbances in the Kwanto led to the installa­tion of some of its officials there, and in 857 a Kebiishi-cho was assigned to every province. Presently it was enacted that the ordinances of the Kebiishi should be of equal validity with those issuing from the Imperial Chancery. As the Kebiishi was—what the provincial governorship was not—a military office empowered and in a position to supplement the argu­ments of moral suasion when they proved insufficient with something more convincing, it became a position worth striving for. Contests for the post of Kebiishi-Bettd were frequent, and gave rise to more than one civil commotion. The institu­tion of this office gave clear indication that it was coming to be recognised that Japan, and especially provincial Japan, could no longer be ruled by the ink-brush alone. As has often been insisted upon, one of the main objects of the Reformers of 645 had been to prevent the rise of a military class. For two hundred years their efforts had been crowned with success. Now, perforce towards the close of the ninth cen­tury, a large measure of authority has to be entrusted to the warrior in mail; and the ultimate rise, if not the ascendency, of a military class becomes merely a question of time.

It was in this century that the age-long contest with the aborigines was brought to a close. In 812, ten years after Saka-no-Uye no Tamura Maro’s triumphant return to the capital, the Ainu had once more risen and resumed their devastating forays. Fumiya no Watamaro was dispatched against them in the capacity of Scii-tai Shogun, and succeeded in stamping out the revolt in a single vigorous campaign. About 855 a civil war broke out among the aborigines; and this so weakened them that when they again rose, in 878, they were compara­tively easily dealt with. They then succeeded in burning the Castle of Akita, and in inflicting two subsequent defeats upon the Japanese commander, in one of which he lost 500 men. But when that excellent officer Fujiwara Yasunori was dispatched to deal with them, tranquillity was soon restored. By a rare display of firmness, tact, and magnanimity, Yasunori brought them to reason and subjection without the loss of a single Japanese soldier. And this was the end of the Ainu question; although Ainuland in possession of its new masters continued to be fruitful in vexed problems of its own, the solution of which exercised an important reflex effect upon the fortunes of the Empire at large.

At the conclusion of the campaign of 812, the northern aborigines were for the first time definitely placed upon the same footing as ordinary Japanese subjects. They were assigned Kobunden (Mouth-share land) in their native seats, and organised in mura, or parishes, each with a headman, while over all these was a general officer (a Japanese) of tolerably high official rank. Previous to 812 the Ainu prisoners of war had invariably been distributed in communities among the several provinces of the Empire. In the eighth century we meet with instances of such settlements being established in the far-distant Shikoku and Kyushu; and we have already seen that the provincial budgets now and then bore an appropria­tion for the support of the “barbarian prisoners of war.”

It is with considerable diffidence that I venture to advance the hypothesis that it is in these transplanted and isolated communities of Ainu that we must seek for one, if not the main, source of the Eta, who formed a large part of the pariah class of feudal Japan. These “barbarian prisoners of war” had all been hunters and flesh-eaters; their chief articles of barter with Japanese traders had been, we know, hides and skins and the trophies of the chase. They had none of the Yamato superstitious squeamishness about contact, either vicarious or direct, with the dead; while being almost entirely uninfluenced by Buddhistic ideas, they were equally ready to kill a mad dog or to decapitate a criminal. As has been already remarked, serious crime was then increasing apace in Japan on account of the reluctance to take life and of the difficulty of tilling the position of public executioner. The captive Ainu would here be available to render highly necessary, but not very highly esteemed, services. In removing and disposing of the carcases of oxen and horses and other animals that had died a natural death—(as they were usually allowed to do)—these strong-stomached savages would also find occupation; their chief or their only reward, perhaps, being the skin of the dead animal. At all events, dealing with skins or leather until after it was tanned was unclean in feudal Japan, and tanning was a monopoly of the Eta. So also was all the work in connection 'with the common execution-grounds.

What seems a fatal objection to this hypothesis admits of a very easy and a very ready answer. It is urged that there was little or nothing of the Ainu physiognomy to be seen in the Eta communities of 1898. How far that is really true I cannot pretend to say. But after 812, no more communities of Ainu prisoners of Avar were settled anywhere outside of the two provinces of Mutsu and Dewa. And Japanese outcasts and famine-stricken peasants now and then driven to cannibalism would be glad to pocket their pride of race, and with their female dependents take refuge in the Ainu communities (which as a rule appear to have been tolerably well off), and intermarry there. If this went on for centuries, it is easy to understand how the physiognomy of the Eta, although originally pure Ainu, would gradually approximate to that of the general population around them.

CHAPTER VII. THE EMPEROR KWAMMU. (782 TO 805 A.D.)

CHAPTER VIII. THE LEARNED EMPERORS. (806 TO 850 A.D.)

CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT HOUSE OF FUJIWARA.