Curses, evil spirits, battles with barbarians, and adulterous, incestuous affairs. No, this is not a certain HBO TV series, although it probably should be. This is the history of ancient Japan.
Join me today as we witness the creation of the city of Kyoto, the reign of a strong and driven emperor, the lives of two of Japan's most renowned holy men. and the humble birth of the legendary position of Seitai Shogun. Yes, if you've heard the word Shogun before, odds are this is what you're thinking of.
Strap yourselves in and get ready for a new era, because today we take our first dive into the Heian period in this eighth episode of Japanese History, the Textbook, here on the Buyuuden Japanese History Channel. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Japanese History the Textbook, the series where we explore Japan's history chronologically using exclusively Japanese language sources aimed at domestic learners. None of the sources for this series are the sort of dense, in-depth materials that graduate students or passionate adult history buffs might busy themselves with, but rather more basic history sourcebooks aimed at either kids and teenagers studying their own country's history in school, or adults who slept through history class one too many times and are looking to brush up on their knowledge.
All that being said, I think you will be surprised with the depth and comprehensiveness of the information which is considered, theoretically at least, to be common knowledge in Japan. And through these videos, I hope to provide, to anyone who needs it, the confidence to dive even deeper into this country's history in their own personal studies. On an unrelated note, we've gained something close to 100 subscribers since the first Nara Period video, so thank you and welcome to all the new people. And, of course, my continued gratitude goes out to everyone who's been on board for a while now. Other than that, I have no particular announcements of note to make today, so let's go ahead and jump right in.
Japanese History, the Textbook, Episode 8, The Heian Period, Part 1. On our last episode, we explored the life and reign of the quintessential Nara period monarch, Emperor Shomu, who built government-endorsed temples all throughout Japan and constructed the massive gilt bronze Daibutsu statue in Nara, all in the hopes of bringing stability to his country via the power of Buddhism. Sadly for Shōmu, his death was only followed by more turmoil, with his successors Empress Shōtoku and Emperor Junnin battling it out between themselves and various non-imperial interlopers such as Fujiwara no Nakamaro and the crafty monk Dōkyō to see who would ultimately hold the true reins of power in the imperial court of ancient Japan. Empress Shōtoku was ultimately the pyrrhic victor of these conflicts, but when she died in 770, she left behind no children and there was thus no peace.
no clear candidate to succeed her on the imperial throne. The government's top-ranking aristocrats met together to decide her successor, and they settled upon the 62-year-old Prince Shirakabe. a grandson of Emperor Tenji, who was at the time serving in the position of dainagon, or chief counselor of state. He ascended to the throne as Emperor Konin, becoming the first ruler of the Tenji line in nearly 100 years, as the period between the Jinshin War in 672 and Konin's accession in 770 was entirely monopolized by the descendants of our old friend Emperor Tenmu. Initially, it seemed that the two lines would be brought together under Emperor Konin, as shortly after being becoming emperor, he married a princess of the Tenmulain, and the child that she bore him the next year was quickly made crown prince.
However, in 772, both the new empress consort and the infant crown prince were removed from their positions due to accusations that the empress had attempted to place a curse on her husband in the hopes of bringing their son to the throne ahead of schedule. In the baby boy's place, a new crown prince was elevated, this one being the son of Emperor Konin and another wife, an aristocratic woman whose family was originally of Baekje Korean descent. This son would eventually come to the throne in 780. 1781 as Emperor Kammu, and his actions would go on to define the era which was to follow. The early Heian period was, in short, the age of Emperor Kammu and his three sons, who went on to sit on the imperial throne in succession as the emperors Heize, Saga and Juna.
During the Nara period, as we saw in our last episode, Emperor Shōmu attempted to rely on the power of Buddhism to bring peace and safety to the Japanese archipelago, but this had the unintended side effect of greatly straining the Japanese archipelago. strengthening the political influence which the major Buddhist temples of Nara held. This culminated in the rise of the ambitious Buddhist monk Dōkyō, who came frighteningly close to taking the imperial throne for himself, and the new Emperor Kammu thus had come to hold the opinion that the capital needed to be relocated somewhere slightly removed from the immediate influence of Japan's religious world. In 784, Emperor Kammu declared that the capital was to be relocated from Heijōkyō, aka Nara. to a new location in what is modern Kyoto Prefecture, and this new city would be called Nagaoka-kyo.
In addition to having some distance from the Buddhist powers that be in Nara, Nagaoka-kyo's geographical position also brought with it a number of attractive perks. The city would be built along the Yodo River, allowing easy access to the Seto Inland Sea, and it was also closer than the old capital was to Lake Biwa. Japan's largest lake and a major hub of transportation between the country's central and outer regions. The vast majority of capital-bound products produced on the Sea of Japan side of the archipelago were ferried across Lake Biwa during some leg of their journey, so moving the capital closer to the lake would stimulate this domestic commerce and make it even easier to carry out.
Finally, Nagaoka-kyo's location also allowed slightly easier travel to Tohoku, Honshu's northernmost region. which was an important point for the Imperial Court considering that they were still struggling to fully place this region under their control. However, just because it was the Emperor's will to relocate the old capital did not mean that everyone was on board with this plan. In particular, those in or with close ties to Japan's religious world were less than thrilled with the decision, and they and their allies were determined to make sure that the move to Nagaoka-kyo did not go as planned.
The construction of the new capital was being overseen by Emperor Kanmu's trusted advisor, Fujiwara no Tane-tsugu, but in 785 he was mysteriously killed by unknown assassins. In a shocking turn of events, the name that bubbled to the surface after grilling a number of suspects was none other than Emperor Kanmu's own younger brother, the Crown Prince Sawara. Sawara had actually spent his early years as a Buddhist monk. entering the clergy as a boy and not returning to the secular world until being given an imperial order to do so, when he and Kammu's father, Konin, became emperor.
Prince Sawara was arrested and confined after his brother heard the accusations, but he vehemently denied his involvement in the assassination, and eventually stopped eating entirely in protest. Nevertheless, he was deemed guilty and exiled to the province of Awaji, but he perished of self-imposed starvation, before reaching his final destination. A succession of calamitous events followed Prince Sawara's death, including several royal family deaths and the disastrous flooding of the Nagaoka-kyo construction site, and Emperor Kammu came to view the incomplete city as a location cursed by his brother's vengeful spirit, finally deciding in 794 to re-relocate the capital to a new spot slightly to the northeast.
This location, still situated nearby to the Yodo River, and possessing all the same major geographic advantages which Nagaoka-kyo boasted, was to be christened Heian-kyo. The name Heian means peace in Japanese, and it is not hard to imagine that that is exactly what Emperor Kammu was wishing for after the chaos at Nagaoka-kyo, as well as the decades of political tumult which had preceded his rise to the throne. Interestingly, the exact location for Heian-kyo was decided after soliciting the opinion of Wake-no-Kiyomaro. the aristocrat we met in our last episode who helped stop Dokyo's rise to power back in the late 760s.
Evidently it was a good choice, as this new capital would go on to actually achieve the permanence which all its predecessors had failed to establish, eventually growing into the city that we know today as Kyoto and remaining as Japan's capital for the next thousand years. Along with the change of location, the province in which the city would be located was also renamed from Yamashiro. spelled with the kanji characters for mountain and back, to Yamashiro, spelled with the characters for mountain and castle. The province's original name was based on the fact that it had long been considered as being behind or to the back of the mountain range on the north side of Heijoukyo.
However, now, with the new capital being constructed here, a name with such backwater implications was seen as unbecoming, and the kanji characters were revised to correct it. this. The castle character was chosen based on Heianqiu's naturally defensible location, nestled between two rivers and several mountains.
It is thought that the choice of location for the new capital may have been based on Chinese feng shui thought, which places importance on a location's orientation in regard to the four cardinal directions. In Chinese mythology, the four directions are governed by the Azure Dragon in the east, the White Tiger in the west, the vermilion bird in the south, and the black tortoise in the north. And in the Japanese interpretation of this mythology, these guardians are said to respectively dwell in rivers, roads, lakes, and mountains.
With Heian-kyo having the Kamo River to its east, the Sangindo Road to its west, the Ogura Pond to its south, and Mount Hunaoka to its north, it was situated in a phenomenally auspicious location. At 23 square kilometers, it was ever so slightly smaller than the old capital of Heijoukyo, which was 25 square kilometers, but it did away with the outwardly jutting side segment of the old city, and was instead perfectly symmetrical, at least on paper. The daidairi, the imperial palace compound, was larger than the old one in Heijoukyo, and the main road cutting through the center of the city was wider than its predecessor, at 84 meters, although it too was called the Suzaku-Oji. or Suzaku Avenue. This avenue ran from the daidairi in the north down to the city's main gate in the south, the Rajomon, and this gate was flanked by the only two temples allowed in the city, Saiji, the west temple, and Tōji, the east temple.
The total population of the city is thought to have been in the neighborhood of 120,000 to 130,000, making it slightly more populous than the old capital. Interestingly, the city as a whole seems to have gently sloped downward from the northeast, with its southwest quadrant being situated on low-lying marshland, and thus being only sparsely occupied by the city's residents. The number one goal for Emperor Kanmu's regime was the reconstruction of the now more than a century-old Ritsuryo system. Between the expansion of Buddhist religious power, unrest and rebellion in the northern Tohoku region, and a tax policy too harsh to effectively function, the ritsuryo system was on the verge of collapse. In other words, both the central government's authority and its finances were teetering on the edge of a precipice.
Emperor Kammu began his administrative repair work by creating a number of new offices and posts which existed outside the original stipulations of the ritsuryo system, and these offices are collectively referred to as ryōgen no kan, a word which literally means offices outside the ryo, with ryo being the original ritsuryo law code. The first of these new offices to which we must direct our attention is the kageyushi, known in English as the board of discharge examiners, an office which examined the documents that were created whenever a province's kokushi, aka its governor, changed. A kokushi's term lasted four years, and after handing over the baton to his successor, that successor was supposed to draw up and submit documents certifying that he had indeed taken over the office and its duties without problem.
However, it was quite common for conflicts and corruption to arise during this baton-passing phase, and so the office of kageyushi was created to crack down on this and ensure that provincial governors were performing their jobs properly. It was quite a profitable job to be a kokushi in this era, as one was way out in the provinces overseeing tax collection far from the prying eyes of the imperial court. and the central government needed to make sure greed wasn't getting the better of their governors if they wanted to actually see any of their tax revenue.
A second Ryōgen no Kan post created during the reign of Emperor Kammu was the one that would go on to greatly shape and be shaped by the course of Japanese history, the office of Seitai Shogun, often referred to by modern folk simply as Shogun. This office would go on to become the top position in Japan's warrior society of later centuries, its holder acting as the de facto ruler of the country. But at the time that it was created, it was no more than a very high-ranking military position.
It is often translated into English as Barbarian Subduing Generalissimo, which is a kind of awkward and unwieldy term, but to put it more plainly, the Seitai Shogun was the general placed temporarily in command of the central government's military operations against the northern Emishi people. The Emishi, as you may recall from our second episode on the Asuka period, were the people inhabiting the as-of-yet unconquered parts of the Tohoku region of Japan, the northernmost region of the main island of Honshu. The Ritsuryo system was teetering all throughout Japan, but it was easily at its most unstable in the Tohoku region, a point exemplified by an Emishi rebellion in 780, which saw the imperial court's main base of operations in the north, Taga Castle, aka Taga-jo, burned to the ground.
Taga Castle, located in the north of the Taga Castle, is a place of great importance to the Japanese people. located in modern Miyagi Prefecture, was the seat of the Chinjūhū, a key military government agency entrusted with the pacification and control of Northern Japan, and its destruction was an affront to the court which demanded retribution. This retribution was fruitlessly entrusted to several generals in the subsequent years, but it would be a man named Sakano Ueno Tamura Maro who would finally see it carried out successfully.
Tamura Maro, an experienced officer who had already seen action in numerous campaigns in northern Japan, was appointed Seitai Shogun by the emperor in 801 and tasked with subduing the rebellious Emishi tribes once and for all. The main base of the antagonistic Emishi forces was in the region of Isawa in the late 10th century. in the fertile middle basin of the Kitakami River, and here Tamura Maro at last managed to best their coalition army in battle.
That army was led by the legendary Emishi general Aterui, a man who had been a thorn in the court's side for many years at this point, and whom Tamura Maro seems to have quite respected as a worthy foe. Tamura Maro brought Aterui and his lieutenant More back to the capital alive as prisoners, whereupon he petitioned the emperor to pardon the two men, claiming that they could be helpful. in rebuilding and maintaining order in the newly conquered Emishi regions.
The emperor and his advisors would have none of this, however, and both men were executed as the perpetrators of unforgivable crimes against the imperial court. Tamura Maro returned to Tohoku, where he constructed the castle of Isawajo, aka Isawa Castle, and then later pressed even further north and built Shiwajo, aka Shiwakastle, in what is the modern prefecture of Iwate. Jo, by the way, is the Japanese suffix. meaning castle, and I will probably be using the words somewhat interchangeably throughout the remainder of this series.
With the success of Saka no Ue no Tamuramaro's campaign, Imperial Japan's borders were pushed significantly farther north, and the greater part of northern Japan fell under the court's dominion, although campaigns to push the borders even further would continue thereafter. The crackdown on provincial government corruption and the subjugation of the troublesome Emishi were a solid start for Emperor Kammu in his quest to shore up the rickety Ritsuryo system. But another big problem still stood in his way.
Japan's suffocatingly heavy tax system. As we have seen in previous episodes, the tax burden which the Ritsuryo system imposed on Japan's peasantry was brutal enough to cause such widespread social problems as census fraud, the abandonment of farmland, and the proliferation of unauthorized holy men hoping to take advantage of religious tax exemptions. Emperor Kammu set about tackling this problem by relaxing his country's tax system in several key ways. First, he established the konde-no-sei, literally the stalwart youths system, as a new militia system for the provinces. Rather than forcing young peasant farmers to leave their fields for long periods of time to serve in the local militia, the new system would instead require the young men of the provincial leadership class, basically the sons and relatives of district managers and particularly wealthy farmers, to undergo training and defend the headquarters of their respective provinces.
Under this new system, there would be fewer active-duty soldiers, but individuals who were already particularly skilled in archery and horsemanship were singled out for service, so not only were peasants getting a break from military duty, but the militias themselves were also seeing a marked quality boost. It should be noted, however, that the old conscription system was left in place in Tohoku in the north and Kyushu in the south, the two parts of the country which the government wanted to make absolutely sure were well-stocked with troops at all times. Either way, this fundamental change in the military system from mass peasant conscription to a real war is not a coincidence. reliance on a smaller core of elite and wealthy individuals who were valued for their personal martial prowess would begin to pave the way for the unique warrior culture that would define Japan for centuries to come. The second tax break which Emperor Kammu implemented was, well, an actual tax break, specifically one targeting Zouyou taxes and Kusuiko loans.
You may recall the Zouyou taxes from our fifth and sixth episodes as the fourth pillar tacked on to the Soyou-cho tax triad. Zouyou was a tax paid in physical labor, otherwise known as corvée, requiring peasants to work for free for 60 days a year under the direction of provincial governing officers. Emperor Kamu slashed this obligation in half, reducing it to only 60 days a year. 30 days a year. Still an infuriating prospect when viewed from a modern perspective, but a major improvement nonetheless.
The emperor's second target, kusuiko, was a mandatory loan system. I repeat, mandatory, wherein the government would lend farmers a certain amount of rice every year, force them to plant it, and then collect interest on the harvested crop. This interest was initially charged at a mind-boggling 50%. but Emperor Kammu reduced it to an ever so slightly more reasonable 30%. These three elements, military conscription, the Zōyō-Korvē, and the Kusuiko loan, were known as the three great burdens of the ritsuryō tax system.
And by relaxing all of them, the emperor made it more likely that his subjects would actually farm their land and pay their taxes properly, a prospect which was ultimately beneficial not only for the common people, but also for the imperial treasury. The final adjustment which the emperor made to the old ritsuryo system was to adjust the length of the interval between reassignments of farmland. Remember, at this point, the majority of the country's farmland still belongs to the state and is effectively lent to the farmers who work it.
As new farmers are born and old farmers die, that land needs to be redistributed so that it continues to be cultivated. And up until this point, that redistribution was carried out every six years. However, The actual process of taking a new census, tabulating all the farmland in the country, and figuring out which land needed to be given to whom, was a massively complex and labor-intensive task.
Doing it at a frequency of once every six years was in fact so daunting that more often than not, it didn't really get done, leaving large amounts of land unassigned and large amounts of potential tax revenue uncapitalized upon. Emperor Kamu adjusted the interval from six years to twelve. hoping that the extra leeway between reassignments would ensure that the whole process actually got done properly.
Even despite the Emperor's best efforts, the imperial court's finances failed to experience any drastic improvements, and in 805, Emperor Kammu called together two of his top advisors, Fujiwara no Otsugu and Sugano no Mamichi, to debate what next steps the government ought to take. In this debate, remembered to history as the Tokusei Sōron, Fujiwara no Otsugu boldly declared that the military campaigns in the north and the construction of the capital of Heian-kyo were the two prime culprits behind the government's fiscal problems, and that both ought to be called off immediately. Sugano no Mamichi argued that because the Chinese emperors engaged in grand projects such as these, Emperor Kanmu should continue to do so as well. But the emperor ultimately sided with Otsugu, and both activities were brought to a halt. The city of Heian-kyo, despite having been home to the emperor and the court for more than a decade now, was still only about half finished going by the original construction plan, and with the emperor's decision, the city would be left permanently incomplete.
From here on, the city would continue to grow and evolve naturally, eventually becoming the medieval metropolis of Kyoto, but the vision of its original architects was never fully realized. As mentioned earlier, Emperor Kammu had prohibited the powerful temples of Heijōkyō from relocating to the new capital, taking a somewhat wary and standoffish posture towards them, and building only the state-sponsored temples of Saiji and Tōji in the new city. This atmosphere of distrust for the old guard of Japanese Buddhism created an environment ripe for the flowering of new schools of Buddhist thought, and it is no coincidence that this is the era that birthed two of Japan's most famous holy men. Saicho and Kūkai.
The former, Saicho, was born into a wealthy Gozoku family in Omi province, entering into the priesthood at age 13 and receiving official ordination rights at Todaiji Temple at the age of 20. At this time, only 10 monks a year were permitted to receive these rights, putting Saicho in the top lair of the country's elite monks, but only shortly thereafter he discarded his newly acquired status and entered into the wilderness of Mount Hiei. on the border of the modern Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, to seek enlightenment among nature. During this period, he eventually came to the conclusion that he must travel to China to study Buddhism at its source, and in 804 he managed to secure a place on an outgoing Kentoshi embassy to the Tang.
Also on this voyage, though boarding a different vessel, was a young monk named Kukai, eight years Saicho's junior. who was the son of a Gozoku family of Sanuki province on the island of Shikoku. Kukai had initially traveled to Heijoukyo to study at a university there, in preparation to become a bureaucrat. But during his studies, he became enamored by the mysteries of Buddhism, and eventually dragged popped out of school to carry out Buddhist training in the wilderness, much like Saicho had. It is unknown exactly how the no-name Kukai managed to secure his spot on the 804 embassy to the Tang, but either way, he and Saicho made landfall on the Asian continent in the late summer of that year.
The men would return to Japan in 806 and 805 respectively, after only a short period in China, with Saicho having studied the Tendai school of Buddhism. and Kūkai having studied the Shingon or true word school, with particular emphasis on Mikkyō, literally secret teachings, a tradition of pseudo-magic rituals passed on only by word of mouth. Saichō, who returned first, built the temple of Enyakuji on his old stomping grounds of Mount Hiei, and became the founder of Japanese Tendai Buddhism, preaching the idea that all people, highborn or low, were capable of achieving Buddhahood after death.
He also espoused that members of the clergy should stay away from the affairs of government, and instead spend their time helping people, an idea which may have won him some popularity with Emperor Kammu, who permitted the Tendai sect to become an official government-recognized school of Buddhism within Japan. Kūkai, upon his return to Japan, built the Temple of Kongō-buji on Mount Kōya in the northeastern part of modern Wakayama Prefecture. and became the founder of the Japanese school of Shingon Buddhism.
Kukai's brand of Buddhism placed the Buddha Dainichi Nyorai, also known as Vairokana, at its center as the universe's most important celestial being, and it espoused the idea that humans could attain Buddhahood in this life while still living. It also placed emphasis on using prayer rituals to drive away misfortune and obtain benefits in the mortal world. a concept which not only built the foundations for much of modern Japanese Buddhism, but was also very popular with the aristocratic lair of society, and led to a close bond between them and the Japanese Shingon school of Buddhism.
Kukai spent many years after his return to Japan traveling around the country, particularly his home island of Shikoku, engaging in public works projects, and expending great efforts to improve the lives of the common people of Japan. Numerous legends about him exist to this day in nearly every corner of the country, and just in Shikoku, there are 88 temples which claim to be connected to him in some way. He is credited with building many of the hot springs and water reservoirs throughout Japan, and is even said to be responsible for the famous noodle dish Sanuki Udon, a local specialty in modern Kagawa Prefecture, which Kukai is said to have invented after learning noodle-making techniques in Tang China. He is also held to be one of Japan's three great calligraphy masters, and is said to have been able to write with five brushes at once, holding one in each hand, one with each foot, and one in his mouth.
Given the number of legends surrounding his life, it should probably come as no surprise that there are a number of sayings in the Japanese language in which Kūkai is referenced. One of the most prominent of these is 工房にも筆の誤り, which means even Kūkai makes mistakes in his writing. and is the equivalent of the English sayings, nobody's perfect or everyone makes mistakes. Another saying is kōbō fude o erabazu, which means Kūkai isn't picky about which brush he uses, and is similar to the English saying, a good workman doesn't blame his tools. Kūkai's posthumous honorific name, by the way, is kōbō daishi, which is why you're not hearing the name Kūkai in either of these sayings.
Whatever you prefer to call him, this great monk's life's work would not end in until the year 835, when he passed away at the age of 62. Or, if you believe the legends of Mount Koya, he entered into eternal meditation in the temple complex's inner sanctuary, which he continues to this very day. However, 835 is a bit farther ahead than we need to be right now, so I'm going to take this opportunity to rewind the clock back several decades to 806, the year when Kukai had just returned to Japan from Tang China. It was in this year that the man who had raised the curtain on the Heian period, Emperor Kammu, passed away at the ripe old age of 70. Kammu was succeeded by his eldest son, who ascended to the throne as Emperor Heizei, and continued the trend of strong imperial rule established by his father. During Heizei's reign, a woman named Fujiwara no Kusuko came to be greatly favored by the new emperor, and she rose high in the imperial court under his patronage.
She was actually the daughter of Fujiwara no Tane-tsugu, the man in charge of building Nagaoka-kyo, whose assassination kicked off the long string of unfortunate events there. Kusuko became acquainted with Emperor Heize while he was still crown prince, when her daughter became one of his wives and father. Following custom, she moved to the palace together with the girl. Despite their mother-in-law-son-in-law relationship, Emperor Heize seems to have found Cusco more appealing than her daughter, and the two ended up beginning an illicit love affair on the side. Following Heize's coronation, Kusuka would rise to the rank of Jusammi, or junior third rank, and become the head of the Naishi no Tsukasa, otherwise known as the handmaid's office, where she fulfilled a role akin to the emperor's secretary.
Kusuko's older brother, Fujiwara no Nakanari, also managed to ride his sister and niece's coattails to a position of significant influence. However, Emperor Heize was a sickly man, and in 809, by reason of illness, he passed on the imperial throne to his younger brother, who ascended to the throne as Emperor Saga. Naturally, Kusuko and her brother, who had been enjoying the trappings of power under Emperor Heize, were none too pleased about this, and they eventually persuaded the retired Emperor to leave.
retired emperor that he ought to make a return to the throne. Heize, who had recovered from his illness by now, began gathering political allies, and in 810 he issued an imperial order moving the capital from Heian back to Heijoukyou. As you will recall, there were many political actors who were unhappy with the move to the new capital in the first place, so the retired emperor quickly gained a lot of backers supporting his comeback bid, and his actions here temporarily created a situation in which he was able to win the battle. which, effectively, two capitals and two emperors existed. The true sovereign, Emperor Saga, was having none of this, however, and he immediately embarked on some quick and decisive military action.
He had Kusuko's brother Nakanari arrested and executed by bow and arrow all in the span of a day, and then sent troops under the conqueror of the north, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, to prevent Heize from leaving the old capital to raise troops. The retired emperor realized he had been beaten, and after surrendering, he shaved his head and entered into the Buddhist priesthood as a gesture of his total lack of further ambition. Following this, a despondent Kusuko, with her ambitions shattered beyond repair, committed suicide by poison. This whole course of events was long called the Fujiwara no Kusuko Incident, but in recent years it has come to be referred to more and more as the Retired Emperor Heize Incident. The original name was probably derived from a desire to protect Emperor Heize's reputation, and shift blame away from the imperial house.
Indeed, Heize was pardoned afterwards. and allowed to live out the remainder of his days in peace and quiet. However, modern scholars are now acknowledging the fact that the retired emperor was a grown man acting of his own free will, and regardless of any persuasion that he may have received from Kusuko, he was ultimately the more powerful figure in the relationship, and thus the one on whom responsibility ought to fall.
One major byproduct of the retired emperor Heizei incident was the creation of another Ryōgen no Kan office, the Kurododoku. an office which was in charge of handling the Emperor's top secret correspondence, and is known in English as the Chamberlain's Office. During the height of the commotion, Emperor Saga had experienced significant difficulty keeping confidential information from falling into the hands of Heizei and his allies, and so he established the office as a response to this.
Saga's closest advisor during the power struggle with Heizei had been a man named Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu, and as a reward for his loyal service, Fuyutsugu became the first man appointed to be head of the new Chamberlain's office, a position known as Kurodo no Tou. You may have noticed, by the way, that we had Fujiwaras on both sides of the field in this incident, and this of course begs the question, why are Fujiwaras suddenly fighting other Fujiwaras? Well, if we wind the clock back nearly a century, you will recall that the architect of the Taiho and Yoro Ritsuryo codes, Fujiwara no Fuhito, was succeeded in the political war.
world by his four sons, the four Fujiwara brothers. These brothers all had children of their own, some of whom we have already met, and each of these lines came to be referred to by its own distinct moniker. The Hokke, or the Northern House, the Nanke, or the Southern House, the Kyoke, or the Kyou House, and the Shikike, or the Shiki House. The latter two are derived from the names of specific court posts, by the way.
Anyway, with the Fujiwara clan having splintered off into into these four distinct lines, it wasn't long before each line's goals began to diverge and rivalries began to build between them. Fujiwara no Kusuko and her brother were members of the Shiki House, while Fuyutsugu was of the Northern House, and with he and Emperor Saga's victory in the retired Emperor Heize incident, the Northern House came to be the most prominent and powerful branch of the Fujiwara clan. If Emperor Kammu's reign had been focused on strengthening the Ritsuryo system out in the provinces, then Emperor Saga's reign was focused on strengthening it in and around the capital. He is particularly famous for creating the Imperial Police Organization, known in Japanese as the Kebiishi.
This organization was yet another Ryōgen-o-kan office, an office not stipulated in the Ritsuryo Code, and it was in charge of maintaining order and enforcing the law within Heiankyo. Prior to this, Peasant farmers had been forced to take turns serving as guardsmen in the capital, for periods of a year at a time. But with the creation of the kebiishi, the capital now had its own professional armed peacekeeping force.
The second major act for which Emperor Saga is remembered today is his creation, or rather his ordering of the creation, of the Kōnin Kyakushiki, a document compiled to aid in the implementation of the Ritsuryō Code's various laws. Its name very literally comes from it being a collection of kyaku and shiki, with the former, kyaku, being supplements and amendments to the original content of the Ritsuryo law code, and the latter, shiki, being detailed explanations of how the various laws worked in practice. By compiling all of these together in one official document, the emperor could reduce legal confusion and in doing so, further increase the authority of the central government.
Two more of these, the Jōgan kyaku shiki, and the Engi Kyakushiki would be created in the following two centuries, and together they are known as the Sandai Kyakushiki, or the Three Great Kyakushiki. The Konin Kyakushiki would also be followed up in the reign of the next emperor, Emperor Junna, by a document called the Ryo no Gige, which was the imperial court's official book on how to correctly interpret the Ritsuryo Code. It is from this document, by the way, that modern scholars have been able to ascertain the original content of the Yōrō-Ritsuryō law code, as the code itself no longer exists, but it is described in detail in the Ryo no Gige. Most images I have shown in previous episodes depicting the Ritsuryō code have come from the various iterations of this document. Emperor Saga's successor, his younger brother Emperor Junna.
was the last son of Emperor Kanmu to sit on the imperial throne, and he would continue the pattern of strong rule established by his predecessors. However, Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu and the Northern House of the Fujiwara clan would continue to maintain their presence at the heart of government, and their influence would only continue to grow over the coming decades, eventually culminating in a level of power which would leave their family name indelibly inked into the fabric of history. That, however, is a tale for next time, when we jump into the middle Heian period and explore the years known colloquially as the Golden Age of the Fujiwara, an era when the refined elegance of Heian aristocratic life arguably reached its sumptuous peak.
As always, if you enjoyed the video, please like it, comment, and maybe even share it with a like-minded friend. And if you are a studier of Japanese, then stay tuned till the very end. to see a Japanese mnemonic for remembering the dates of Emperor Kammu's two capital transfers. Anyway, that's all from me. Thanks for watching, have a great day, and HOO!