HISTORY OF JAPAN LIBRARY |
JAMES MURDOCH' HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM THE ORIGINSTO THE ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE IN 1542 ADCHAPTER X.THE CLOISTERED EMPERORS.
The accession of Sanjo II in 1069, the Fujiwara
autocracy received its first serious check. The Kwampaku, Yorimichi, had duly
married his daughters to the Emperors Shujaku II
(1037-1045) and Reizei II (1045-1068); and yet he lived to see a non-Fujiwara
Prince upon the throne. To elucidate this matter, as well as other important
events in the history of the subsequent century, the following chart will be
found of service:
In 1045, the Kwampaku, Yorimichi, had been hastily
summoned by the dying Emperor Shujaku II, and
informed by the sovereign that while his immediate successor was to be his
eldest son, it was his wish that his second son, then a boy of twelve, should
ultimately succeed his elder half-brother. Yorimichi’s half-brother, the
Dainagon Fujiwara Yoshinobu, hearing of this, insisted that a second Frown
Prince should immediately be proclaimed, but Yorimichi argued that there was no
pressing need for doing so. Yoshinobu carried his point, however; and on the
death of their father, one of the sons became the Emperor Reizei II, while the
other was installed in the Eastern Palace as Heir to the Crown. During the odd
twenty years of the reign of Reizei II, his younger half-brother lived in
constant dread of being deprived of the succession; but as the Emperor’s
Fujiwara consort proved childless, the young Prince at last came by his own and
ascended the throne as Go-Sanjo (Sanjo II) in 1068. He had meanwhile married
the adopted daughter of Fujiwara Yoshinobu, to whom he really owed his
position, and who had been appointed his majordomo while Crown-Prince; and this
lady became the mother of the next Emperor, Shirakawa. Yoshinobu’s devotion to
the Crown Prince may have been not altogether disinterested; yet the fact
remains that it was really he who broke the power of the great house of
Fujiwara to which he himself belonged, and once more placed a sovereign on the
throne who aspired to rule the Empire.
The aged Kwampaku, who had misgoverned the State for
half-a-century, now found it advisable to transfer his office to his younger
brother, Norimichi, then seventy-five years of age, and retire to his palace at
Uji. But even there he was subjected to worries and mortifications. His brother
Norimichi very soon made the discovery that the great office he held was
nothing better than a dignified sinecure, for all the real work of directing
the administration was undertaken by the new sovereign in person. Sanjo II, who
had studied hard under Oye Tadafusa and other distinguished and able teachers, had acquired a statesmanlike grasp
upon the pressing problems of the age; and when he ascended the throne at
thirty-five he was ready with very drastic solutions of his own for some of
them at least. He promptly established a new Council of his own—the Kirokusho, or Record Office—in which he presided
personally, toiling from morning to night in the endeavour to restore efficiency to the administrative and judicial machinery. One of the
earliest enactments of this new board was a derive for the confiscation of all
manors erected since 1045; a little later it issued orders that the title-deeds
of the Sho-en created before that date were to be
produced; if there were no title-deeds, or if those produced were not in order,
the estate was to be forfeited by the holder. A special messenger with a copy
of this enactment was sent to the ox-Kwampaku, Yorimichi, at Uji; but although
Yorimichi said he had no documents to show, it was found impossible to deal
with his vast domains. One of the chief evils lying at the root of the Sho-en menace was the extension of the Provincial Governors’
tenure of office to a second, or even to a third or fourth term. In some cases
governorships had become life-offices; in one or two instances they threatened
to become hereditary. This was the reward for looking after the interests of
the Kyoto Fujiwara in the provinces. Accordingly it was now enacted that no
Governor should hold office for more than a single term. It so happened that
just at this time the great Nara fane of Kofukuji had been building the Nan-en-do, and the Governor of Yamato had been superintending
the work. The Kofukuji, it will be remembered, was the ancestral temple of the
Fujiwara; and the Kwampaku, Norimichi, now petitioned that the Governor of
Yamato should be exempted from the scope of the now decree. The Emperor at
first sharply refused; but as the Fujiwara nobles went so far as to threaten to
withdraw from the Court in a body the sovereign had finally to yield. Yet
although thwarted by the Fujiwara on these two specific occasions, Sanjo II’s
administration of four years (1068-1072) inflicted a blow on the prestige of
the great clan from which it never recovered. Fujiwara Sessho and Kwampaku were
frequently, indeed almost regularly, appointed; but during the following
century these great offices were little more than honorary distinctions. Yet,
after Sanjo II, the real power was not with the sovereign actually on the
throne; it was the Ho-o, the Priest, or ex-Emperor who really directed affairs.
From a Sovereign who began his reign with a display of
statesmanship, ability, and firmness of purpose the like of which had not been
seen in Japan since the days of Kwammu, much—indeed, everything—was to be
expected. If Sanjo II had continued to sway the fortunes of the Empire for
thirty or forty, instead of for three or four years, it is possible to conceive
that Japan would never have been ruled by Shoguns. But the accumulated evils of
generations had become too deeply seated to be eradicated in such a brief reign
as his proved to be. Unfortunately for the best interests of his subjects,
Sanjo II died at the early age of thirty-nine, in 1073. In the previous year,
he had abdicated and placed his eldest son, a youth of nineteen, on the throne
as Shirakawa Tenno, his intention being to govern through him. Shirakawa was
titular Sovereign for no more than fourteen years (1072-1086); but he was the
real ruler of the Empire down to his death forty-three years later on, in 1129.
He was not the first Cloistered Emperor; but he was the first Cloistered
Emperor who continued to direct the administration after receiving the tonsure.
During the twenty years’ reign of Shirakawa’s son Horikawa (1087-1107), the
sixteen years of his grandson Toha (1107-1123), and the first six years of his
great-grandson, Sutoku (1124-1141), the titular
Emperor wielded no authority. Then, on Shirakawa’s death, his grandson, Toha
Tenno, who had abdicated and become a Cloistered Emperor six years before,
stepped into his position and really governed down to his decease in 1156, his
two sons who meanwhile occupied the throne in succession being no more than
figure-heads. Shirakawa II, another son of Toha’s, succeeded to the throne in
the year of his father’s death (his elder brother, the ex-Emperor Sutoku, being still alive); and after a few months on the
throne he also became a Cloistered Emperor who aspired to rule the State. But
the day of Cloistered Emperors was past. Although Shirakawa II continued to be
a very prominent figure in Japanese history down to his decease in 1192, he was
at no time the real ruler of the country, for from 1156 onwards Japan was
governed not by the sceptre, but by the sword. In
that year the great military family of the Taira became all-powerful; the years
between 1181 and 1185 saw its overthrow and the swift rise of the rival house
of Minamoto to supremacy. When a Japanese speaks of the rule of the Cloistered
Emperors (Insci), he refers to Shirakawa I and
his grandson Toba. These really governed Japan from 1073 to 1156—a period of 83
years, during the first fourteen of which Shirakawa I was not cloistered, but
titular Sovereign.
One of the purposes supposed to be served by this new
form of administration was the curbing of the power of the Fujiwara Regents and
Kwampaku; and in this special direction the device was eminently successful.
Regents and Kwampaku and occasionally Chancellors were appointed; but they were
attached to the Court of the titular Sovereigns. But Shirakawa I, the
Cloistered Emperor, maintained a Court of his own, with officials and guards
and all the state that surrounded the actual occupant of the throne.
Moreover,—and this was the most important point of all,—he established in his
retreat an administrative and judicial council of his own, at the head of which
stood a Betto; and it was by this machinery, and not
by the old Council of State with its subordinate eight boards, that the Empire
was now actually controlled. The Dajokwan (Council of State) still issued its
decrees. Where they did not dash with those emanating from the Chancery of the
ex-Emperor they were valid; but in case of any conflict it was the ordinances
sealed by the Betto that carried supreme authority.
Shirakawa thus contrived to seize and to retain the power that had been wielded
by the Fujiwara for generations; and so far succeeded in correcting one very
grave abuse of longstanding. But the special remedy he provided for this evil
gave rise to others infinitely worse. In a variety of insidious ways, the
central stream of authority had been, and was being, deflected into numerous
minor side channels. What remained of the main current was now further parted
in twain. With conflicting decrees and ordinances emanating from two rival
chanceries, public respect for the throne and its laws could not but be
seriously impaired. The rise of two new parties,— an Emperor’s and an
ex-Emperor’s faction,—could only be a question of time.
Had Shirakawa been a statesman of the calibre of his father, Sanjo II, the results of the Insci system might have very well proved much less
disastrous than they ultimately did. But whatever he may have been, a statesman
Shirakawa was emphatically not. Sanjb II, while grappling vigorously with the
evils of the manor system, and providing for a sufficient national revenue, had
insisted upon the strictest economy in the management of the finances, and
curtailed all the luxurious extravagance of his Court and the capital. His son,
Shirakawa, imitated him only in the simplicity of his diet. But unfortunately
this was not from economic or political considerations; it was an outcome of
superstition. The Buddhist injunction against the taking of life was to be
strictly enforced, and infractions of it rigorously punished. Eight thousand
fishing nets were seized and burned; no gifts of fish were to be offered to the
Court; hunting and hawking were rigidly proscribed, and the hawks set at
liberty. Sanjo II used to dine on a herring sprinkled with a little pepper,
while his clothes had been of the simplest. Shirakawa would have nothing to do
with herrings, or indeed with fish or flesh of any kind; but his extravagance
and profuseness in other directions knew no bounds. There was indeed a certain
amount of restrictive sumptuary legislation under his rule, but the edicts were
rarely it ever enforced.
But it was not on the maintenance of a splendid court
that the rapidly minishing national revenue was most squandered and frittered
away. Like his younger contemporary, David I of Scotland—
Who illumined in
his days
His lands with churches
and with abbeys”
—Shirakawa Tenno was “a sore saint to the crown”.
Immense sums were expended on temple-building progresses to sacred places,
masses and other religious ceremonies, while the harvest reaped by Buddhist
artists and artificers at the expense of the nation must have been an
exceedingly rich one. Besides 5.470 scrolls or hanging-pictures painted and
presented to various fanes, Shirakawa was responsible for the erection of one
huge idol 32 feet in height, of 127 half that size, of 3,150 life-size, and of
2.930 three-feet images. Then of seven-storied pagodas the tale was twenty-one,
and of miniature pagodas as many as 44,030. To meet the costs of all this the
revenue trickling into the national treasury was, of course, utterly inadequate.
Before this time the sale of offices had been not
unknown; in fact it had occasionally assumed the proportions of a public
scandal. But what had hitherto been an occasional practice now developed into a
regular system. First,—for a material consideration, of course,—the Provincial
Governors’ term of office was prolonged from four to six years; next these
posts could be purchased for life, and, finally, as many as thirty of them were
allowed to become hereditary. Then the manor evil, which Sanjo II had striven
so hard to check, now became more pronounced than ever. In order to obtain
ready money, or its equivalent, great stretches of valuable national estate were
once more wantonly alienated. On Shirakawa’s death in 1129, as has been said,
his grandson, the ex-Emperor Toba, stepped into his position, and Toba made it
virtually impossible for any successor of his to create new Sho-en; for, before his demise, of the soil of the Empire not
more than one per cent, remained under the jurisdiction of the Provincial
Governors! Sovereign, ex-sovereigns, Empress, Imperial consorts, Crown Prince,
Fujiwara and other courtiers alike drew the bulk, indeed, almost the whole of
their revenues, from their manors. The theory of eminent domain, while still
doubtless maintained as a theory by Court lawyers, had, as regards practice,
been whistled down the wind. And there it was virtually to remain till the
Revolution, or Restoration, of 1868. It was mainly the rise and spread of the
manorial system that brought about the fall of the centralised government established by the Reformers of 645. It is to this that the decay
and long eclipse of the august line of the Sun-Goddess, so much deplored by
Japanese historians, is to be chiefly attributed. Such being the case, it is
neither the Fujiwaras, nor the Tairas, nor the Minamotos,
nor the Hojos, nor the Ashikaga, nor the Tokugawas that must be saddled with the wite. The Sho-en system began to be a danger under the three learned
Emperors, Saga, Junna, and Nimmyo (811-850) ; it effectually and finally paralysed the old centralised administration under Shirakawa I and Toba I. None of these five sovereigns were
fools; not one of them was a weakling, for without exception they all had wills
of their own, and when determined to have their own way, they almost invariably
succeeded in making opponents bend to their purposes. But when a Japanese
sovereign aspires to rule as well as to reign, it is well for him to be
equipped with all the wisdom and attributes of a statesman. Of the one hundred
and seven scions of the Sun-Goddess who have occupied the throne of Japan since
the days of Nintoku Tenno, four, and four only, have
shown themselves to have been so provided. These are Tenchi, Kwammu, Sanjo II,
and Mutsuhito, who is probably the greatest of the four. Daigo II (Go-Daigo) is
usually spoken of as one of the “three great Emperors of Japan.’’ As will be
attempted to be shown later on, Daigo II was a comparatively second-rate man;
very much inferior to Daigo I, who longo intervallo comes after the four sovereigns just mentioned.
The strange feature in the case is that Japan became
covered with this network of manors in the teeth of constantly renewed
prohibitory edicts. Under the two Cloistered Emperors there was almost as much
of this farcical legislation as before. For instance, in 1091, the farmers
throughout the Empire were forbidden to “commend” themselves to Minamoto
Yoshiiye. Again, for instance, in 1127 new Sho-en were prohibited. In the decree of that year we are told that “the Shoji
(officers put in charge of Sho-en by the owners) are
earnestly inviting holders of public land to become tenants of the Sho-en”; and that “those who have become tenants on the Sho-en never return to their former status : and the Sho-en are all filled with farmers, while the public land in
the districts (Gun) and villages (Go) is left wild and uncultivated.” These are
fair specimens of the many anti-Sho-en decrees
emanating from the Imperial chancelleries of the time. But the fact is that a
gross mass of contemporary legislation was little better than dead-letter. The
case of a certain Naito, a retainer of Taira Tadamori,
is instructive. Summoned before the Kebiishi board
for an infringement of the anti-life-taking law, he at once pleaded guilty of
the offence, saying he would cheerfully submit to the penalty. What that
exactly was he did not know; at the worst it would be no more than banishment
or imprisonment. It was his duty to supply his master’s table with fish and
game; if he failed to do so the punishment would be death, for a violation of
certain of the House laws of the Minamotos and the
Tairas was attended with consequences much graver than any infringement of the
Imperial ordinances was. When reported to the ex-Emperor Shirakawa, the
incident was passed over with a laugh, no penalty being inflicted. In these
House laws of the Tairas and Minamotos we have a
glaring case of an imperium in imperio. A
century later, we shall find the great bulk of the Samurai class openly and
avowedly exempted from the operation of the common law, and subjected to the
provisions of a special code of their own,—the famous Joei Shikimoku of the Hojos (1232). The nucleus of this may not have been the Minamoto and
Taira House Statutes; but it is legitimate to surmise that these House laws
furnished the Kamakura feudal legislators with valuable hints.
Although the great military families were now rapidly rising
in power and influence, we have many indications that their manors were as yet
much less extensive than those of the Fujiwaras and other Kyoto courtiers.
Minamoto Yoshimitsu had a dispute with a Fujiwara noble about a Sho-en in Mutsu. The case was submitted to Shirakawa, who after
a long delay told Fujiwara that his claims were indisputable. However, to incur
the enmity of Yoshimitsu would be a very serious thing. Fujiwara had many
manors, and the loss of one would be of little consequence to him, whereas to
Yoshimitsu, who had scarcely enough to support his family and followers, even a
single manor was an important consideration. Therefore it would be advisable
for Fujiwara to yield. Now, this Yoshimitsu was the brother of the great
Yoshiiye, the Uji no Choja or head of the clan and
all its branches; the brother of the Minamoto, in short.
Where the military men often found their opportunity
was when a dispute about their possessions arose between two unwarlike
courtiers. In 1091, a Fujiwara and a Kiyowara could not agree about some
estates in Kawachi; one appealed to Minamoto Yoshiiye, the other to his brother
Yoshimitsu, and a small civil war seemed imminent. The Court then had to interfere,
and forbid Yoshiiye’s troops to enter the capital,
and the farmers throughout the Empire to “commend” themselves to that captain.
In Toba’s time a number of decrees were issued warning military men against
becoming vassals of the Minamoto or Taira chieftains. But withal, during the Insei period (1086-1156), the power and possessions of
these two great houses increased enormously.
At the end of the tenth and the beginning of the
eleventh century we have seen the Fujiwara Regents using the Minamotos, whom they called their “nails and teeth,” as a
buttress for their power. The influence of their Fujiwara patrons was now at an
end; but the Minamotos were far from finding their
occupation in the capital gone. The Cloistered Emperor established a guard
corps of his own ; and in this the Minamotos at first
found plenty of employment. At the same time they and the Tairas now discharged
the duties of the old Imperial Guards, among whom, as we have seen, all
discipline had so hopelessly broken down. However, as time went on, it was upon
the Tairas that Shirakawa and Toba came more especially to place their trust.
The early seat of the Taira power had been the country
around and behind Tokyo Bay; and at this date the Heishi stock, when united (as
it very often was not), was all-powerful in the Kwanto,
and very powerful in Mutsu. However, it was neither from the Kwan to nor from
Mutsu that the greatest of the Tairas came. Taira Korechika, one of the four
great generals of the early eleventh century, had been punished for carrying on
a civil war against his brother, the Governor of Khimotsuke,
by banishment to Awaji. On his release he settled in Ise, and there founded a
branch house of the Taira known as the Ise Heishi. It was with Taira Masamori’s
reduction of the revolt of Minamoto Yoshichika in
Idzumo that the rise of the Ise Taira began. This Yoshichika was the second son of the famous Yoshiiye, Hachiinan Taro. Yoshichika had been appointed Governor of
Tsushima, but he found the limits of the island too narrow’ for his ambition.
So passing over to Hizen, he intermarried with the
great house of Takagi there, and proceeded to carve out a domain for himself,
the title-deeds being his own good sword. Already jealous of Yoshiiye and of
the warlike Minamotos, Shirakawa jumped at the
opportunity Yoshichika afforded, and sent Taira
troops to crush him. His father vainly implored Yoshichika to submit; instead of doing so he killed the Imperial messenger sent to summon
him to Kyoto. However, he soon had to yield. Sentenced to banishment to the
island of Oki, he gave his guards the slip in Idzumo, killed the acting
Governor there, seized the Government store-houses, and practically raised the
standard of rebellion. In 1107, Taira Masamori with his retainers was commissioned
to put down the revolt, and he did so effectually. His eldest son, Tadamori, then a boy of eleven, turned out to be a sort of
Japanese Diomede, and raised the lower stories of the huge fabric of Tse Heishi greatness on the foundations thus laid by
Masamori. He governed Harima, Ise, and Bizen in
succession; and in the capital he became Kebiishi and the fidus Achates of Shirakawa,
keeping by his side night and day. In 1129 he gained much reputation by the
prompt check he gave to piracy in the Inland Sea. On his return to Kyoto, he
became henchman to the ex-Emperor Tuba. His success naturally excited the
jealousy of his rivals, but all their efforts to shake his position proved
abortive. On his death in 1153, his son Kiyomori, who had served as Governor of
Aki seven years before, became head of the House; and under him the Taira clan
became virtually supreme in Japan, and governed the Empire according to its
fantasy for fully a score of years.
Down to 1156, however, Taira prestige was more than equalled by that of the Minamoto. In connection with the
rise of these two great military houses one peculiar fact must be noted. As has
been asserted, the Taira were most numerous in the Kwanto,
where, as well as in Mutsu, the various septs of the clan held a great, if not
the greater, part of the soil. Yet it was by service in Western Japan and in
the capital that successive Taira chieftains made the fortunes of the family.
On the other hand, while the manors of the Minamotos mainly lay within a radius of sixty miles from Kyoto, it was in the extreme
north of Japan, where they had little or no territorial foothold at all, that
they mainly acquired their fame, and found their most devoted followers.
It will be remembered that for his services in the
reduction of Abe Sadato (1062), Kiyowara Takenori had been appointed Chinjufu
Shogun, and invested with the administration of the six districts in Mutsu
composing the huge territorial domains of the Abé family. Takenori was
succeeded by his son Takesada, and he in turn by his son Sanehira. Meanwhile
administrative duties bad become confused with proprietary rights, and Sanehira
had develop into a semiindependent feudal potentate.
His brother Iyehira and his uncle Takehira chafed at the vassalage he had
imposed upon them in common with all the other landed proprietors in the six
districts, and were on the outlook for an opportunity to assert themselves.
About the year 1084, seemingly, this came. A relative of Sanehira’s wife, a certain Kimiono Hidetake, came from Dewa to call on Sanehira, bringing
valuable presents with him. At the moment of Hidetake’s arrival, Sanehira was engaged in a game of checkers with a friend, and paid no
attention whatsoever to the newly-arrived guest. In high dudgeon Hidetake threw
away the presents and hurried home to Dewa. Sanehira, on learning this, became
highly incensed, mustered men and advanced into Dewa to punish Hidetake. The
latter sent messengers to Takehira and Iyehira exhorting them to rise in Sanehira’s rear on their own behalf. Iyehira indeed needed
but little prompting to do so; and on a sudden the greater part of Mutsu was
furiously ablaze with the flames of civil war.
Either in 1086 or a little before, Minamoto Yoshiiye
(Hachiman Taro), had come down as Governor of Mutsu; and to him Sanehira
promptly appealed for aid, which was at once rendered. But when Sanehira and
the Governor of Mutsu were engaged in operations against Hidetake, Takehira
rose in their rear and joined forces with Iyehira. At this point the original
authorities become exceedingly obscure and confusing in the details they
furnish. Sanehira disappears from the scene and we hear no more of him. Iyehira
and Takehira ultimately entrenched themselves in the strong stockade of
Kanazawa in Mutsu, and here they were assailed by Minamoto Yoshiiye, his
brother Yoshimitsu—who in defiance of orders had thrown up his office in Kyoto
and hastened to Yoshiiye’s assistance—by Hidetake,
and by Fujiwara Kiyohira. In the advance upon the stockade Yoshiiye observed a
flock of wild geese rising in disordered flight from a forest in the distance,
and at once concluded that an ambush was being laid there. It was as he
supposed, and his keen observation saved his force from what might have proved
a serious disaster. Once in the capital he had called on a Fujiwara statesman
and had given him an account of one of his previous campaigns. The great
scholar Oye Tadafusa happened to overhear the conversation, and remarked that it was sad to think
that a man so ignorant of the art of war as Yoshiiye showed himself to be
should be entrusted with high military command. Yoshiiye’s retainers informed their master of this remark, and asked his permission to
kill the impudent critic. But Yoshiiye, so far from listening to their request,
asked Oye to let him become his pupil; and under him
he read the seven Chinese military treatises. Of these the chief is by Sonshi, who lived about 550 BC and in his ninth chapter he
lays it down that “the rising of birds shows an ambush.” All this is
significant as indicating the rise of a military class that was beginning to
take itself and the soldier’s profession seriously. It also indicates that
certain of the savants in the capital were now beginning to regard military
treatises, and the principles of the art of war, as not unworthy of their
attention. A few generations before such studies would have been scouted as
vulgar and trivial, and a mere waste of time and effort. Tt must also be noted
that it was by Oye Tadafusa,
and men like him, that the real work of administration and legislation in the
capital was now conducted. They kept the accounts, and drew up all the decrees
and edicts and other important Government documents on which the high-born Kugé Ministers placed their seal often without so
much as a single glance at their text or purport. These men had perhaps as much
influence as a British permanent Under-Secretary of State; and when we find
them thus seriously directing their attention to mastering the principles of
the soldier’s profession, hitherto so much despised, we can form some idea of
the change that was coming over the spirit of the times.
In the long-protracted siege of Kanazawa, Yoshiiye
found the best of opportunities to imbue his troops with a sense of discipline
and with a proper respect for the most important, albeit the most primitive, of
military virtues. Day after day fierce assaults were delivered, and continued
to be delivered, to but little purpose. Yoshiiye in his camp set apart special
seats for the brave and for the shirkers; and after each assault, the soldiers
were assigned their places according to their deserts. Soon even among those
who were cowards by nature, life came to be regarded as of smaller consequence
than honour; while the brave were stimulated to
achieve still higher feats. A youth of sixteen, a certain Kamakura Gongoro, a Taira by birth, and the ancestor of the Nagao of Echigo, received an arrow in the eye in the course of
one of the assaults. He merely snapped off the shaft; and then returned his
enemy’s fire, and brought down the man who had hit him. When he took off his
helmet, he tumbled to earth with the barb still in his eye; and when a friend,
in extracting it, put his foot on his face to give himself a purchase, the
youthful warrior swore he would have his life for subjecting him to such an
indignity; for to trample on the face of a Bushi was an outrage that
could be expiated only by the blood of the offender. However, in spite of all
the gallantry of his men, Yoshiiye was forced to convert the siege into a
blockade.
At last provisions in the stockade gave out, and
Takehira asked for terms. Yoshiiye would give none. A little later the northern
winter became so terrible that Yoshiiye’s men begged
him to withdraw. He told them to burn their shelters, and warm themselves well
that night; tomorrow the stockade would surely be in their hands. That very
night Takehira and Tyehira fired their huts, and made
their escape. However, they were overtaken, captured, and brought before
Yoshiiye. who, after bitterly upbraiding them, ordered their heads to be struck
off. Eight and forty of their following shared their fate.
Yoshiiye had early requested the Court to forward a
commission to him for the reduction of the two Kiyowaras.
But the Kyoto authorities refused to do so; and when Yoshiiye’s brother, Yoshimitsu, then in high judicial office in the capital, asked to be
allowed to carry reinforcements to the Governor of Mutsu his request was
refused. So leaving his insignia of office in the seat of judgement, he started
off for the North on his own private responsibility. As the Central Government
persisted in its refusal to issue any commission to Minamoto Yoshiiye, and
furthermore declined to reward him in any way for tranquillising the province of which he was Governor (Mutsu), he threw the heads of the
“rebels’’ away on the roadside and returned to Kyoto. He took good care,
however, to reward his troops from his own private resources; and as a
consequence the Kwanto warriors declared that in the
case of any quarrel between the Court and the Minamotos,
they would stand by the Minamotos!
From whatever point of view it may be regarded, the exEmperor Shirakawa’s policy here must lie unreservedly
and uncompromisingly condemned. If Yoshiiye was really suppressing rebellion,
he and his troops ought to have been rewarded, in consonance with a host of
precedents. If, as the Court contended, he was engaged merely in a quarrel of
his own. then the Court by implication sanctioned the right of private war. For
no punishment was inflicted on Yoshiiye for prosecuting what the Court chose to
call a “private war”!
At this date such power as the Minamoto wielded in the Kwanto and Mutsu was almost entirely the result of a
moral ascendancy. As yet they had little or no territorial foothold in these
quarters. On the conclusion of the Three Years’ campaign in the Far North,
Yoshiiye and his brother Yoshimitsu returned to the capital, where they
continued to act as virtual military commandants. It was the disgrace of Yoshiiye’s third son, Yoshikuni,
that led to the settlement of the Minamoto family in the Eastern provinces. In
the course of his duties as commander of the Palace Guards, Yoshikuni on horseback met the cortege of the Minister of the Right, Fujiwara Saneyoshi, in a narrow thoroughfare; and the Minister’s
followers pulled him (Yoshikuni) from his horse.
Thereupon Yoshikuni’s retainers promptly fired Sanevoshi’s mansion and reduced it to ashes. For this
outrage their master was banished to Shimotsuke,
where he settled and became the ancestor of some half-dozen of the greatest
feudal houses in Japan,— of the Ashikaga, Nitta, Tokugawa, Hosokawa, Yamana, and Satomi. As the great clans of the Minamoto and
Taira diverged into septs, the chiefs of the various sub-clans came to be known
by the name of the village or district where their domains lay.
The following abridged genealogical chart of the
Minamoto family indicates the origin of nearly a score of the “great names ” so
prominent in the annals of the thirteenth and subsequent centuries :—
What prevented either the Taira or the Minamoto from
making their influence fully felt was disunion and internal dissensions. No one
chief was sufficiently powerful to command the unquestioning obedience of the
whole body of his clansmen. Thus it came to pass that it was by neither of
these houses that the first great military fief was consolidated. This was the
work of the great Fujiwara of Mutsu.
We have already seen that Fujiwara Tsunekiyo was involved in the ruin of Abé Sadato in 1062, and that his son, Fujiwara
Kiyohira, was adopted into the Kiyowara family that succeeded to the Abé
estates at that time. This Fujiwara had aided the Minamotos to reduce the Kiyowara (1086-1089). He was now made Inspector (Oryoshi) of Mutsu and Dewa, and, later on,
Chinjufu-Shogun, while he at the same time succeeded to the lordship of what
had been the domain of his maternal grandfather, Abé Yoritoki. Before his
death, in 1126, Kiyohira had built up a semi-independent power, far greater and
far more extensive than was to be found anywhere else in contemporary Japan.
Thus it was in Ainu-land that the feudal system made its earliest appearance on
any considerable scale. It will be remembered that from the ninth century it
had been the policy of the Government to settle the Ainu in villages on the
footing of ordinary Japanese subjects; that these villages were placed under
head-men; and that a Superintendent-in-chief was appointed to exercise general
control over the affairs of these communities. It was the holders of this
office,—the Abés,—who laid the foundations of the
great fief of Mutsu. The great bulk of the retainers must have been of Ainu, or
mixed Japanese and Ainu stock. At the present day, marriages between Japanese
and Ainu are generally sterile,—a thing not to be wondered at perhaps when we
think of the vast difference in physical constitution occasioned by thirty or
forty consecutive generations of savage life. But with the settled Ainu of the
tenth and succeeding centuries the case might very well have been otherwise;
among them the conditions of life were not so very dissimilar to those of their
Japanese neighbours.
Thus, at the beginning of the twelfth century, there
were three great military houses in Japan. The Taira and the Minamoto were
weakened by chronic internal dissension; but on the other hand, the presence of
their chieftains in the capital or its vicinity enabled them to play an
all-important part in the astounding political developments of the century. The
Fujiwara chief maintained strict control over his kinsmen and vassals; but the
remoteness of his situation prevented him from exercising any great influence
upon the course of national affairs at large. In addition to these three great
clans, there was yet one more military power that had to be very seriously
reckoned with,—that of the Great Monasteries.
About 970, as has been said, his Eminence, the Abbot
of Hi-ei-zan, or Enryaku-ji, had formed a corps of mercenaries to protect
the monastery and its possessions, and to prosecute its quarrels with its
rivals and foes. The example had been promptly followed by several of the great
religious foundations, among which the Monastery of Onjoji or Miidera, at the base of Hi-ei-zan,
near Otsu, and the Kofukuji of Nara came to be the most notorious. By the end
of the eleventh century any one of these great fanes could readily place several
thousand men in the field at very short notice. Each of them had become a huge
Cave of Adullam,—a refuge for every sturdy knave with a soul above earning a
livelihood by the commonplace drudgery of honest work. Each of them had in
truth assumed the aspect of a great fortress garrisoned by a turbulent rabble
of armed ruffians. And each of them had degenerated into a hotbed of vice,
where the most important precepts of the moral code were openly and wantonly
flouted. In truth, at this date, 1100 A.D., Buddhism in Japan from a moral
point of view was in not a whit better case than was the Church of Rome between
the death of Sylvester II (1003) and the election of Leo IX (1049). And yet, in
spite of the foulness of their lives, the prestige of the priests had never
stood higher, while the resources of the monasteries had never been greater;
and year by year they were adding to their wealth.
The years 1081 and 1082 were convulsed with armed
strife between the Kofukuji and the monastery of Tamu-no-Mine on the one hand,
and Hi ei-zan and Miidera on the other. In the latter
contest, Miidera was burnt to the ground, and the most valuable of its
treasures carried off by the assailants. Then the latter year saw the beginning
of a new terror. A priest of Kumano had been killed by an Owari official.
Thereupon three hundred of the dead man’s companions shouldered the Jinyo,—the sacred sedan in which the god is carried in procession
on fête days,—marched to the capital, and there clamorously appealed for
justice, or revenge. This practice was at once copied by the priests of Hivoshi, Gion, and Kitano, and a little later on (1093) by
the Kofukuji. It would have been a bold man indeed who would have dared to
offer violence to the sacred car that bore the shintai or god-body, for to do
so was an outrage no less heinous than presuming to lay sacrilegious hands upon
the Ark of the Covenant Henceforth it became common for the priests of all
these temples to enter the capital sometimes thousands strong, and, with their
sacred cars at their head, blockade the mansions of statesmen who had offended
them, only withdrawing when their claims were satisfied. Now and then the
Emperor and the ex-Emperor were the recipients of their attentions, and
subjected to a blockade by these Japanese Dervishes. The nuisance presently was
felt to be insufferable; and the protection of the Taira and the Minamoto was
invoked. In 1095 a Minamoto killed eight of the leaders of one of these
demonstrations and wounded as many. In 1113 Hi-ei-zan and the Kofukuji were on the point of fighting out
their quarrel in the streets of the capital. Minamoto Mitsukuni was sent to hold the Hi-ei-zan troops in check, while Minamoto Tameyoshi advanced to
Uji and came into conflict with the Kofukuji army, some 20,000 or 30,000
strong. The result was that the priests had to throw down the car with the Shimboku (sacred tree) in the middle of the road and
beat a precipitate retreat. These are only a few instances of sacerdotal riot
and disorder culled from many. Time and again the capital was thrown into a
ferment of panic by the truculence of the monks and their armed bands. The
ex-Emperor Shirakawa once remarked that although he was the ruler of Japan there
were three things in the Empire beyond his control,—the freaks of the River
Kamo (which often inundated and devastated the capital), the fall of the dice,
and the turbulence of the priests!
CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT HOUSE OF FUJIWARA.CHAPTER X. THE CLOISTERED EMPERORS.
CHAPTER XI.
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