Do you think your workplace is inefficient?
Well let me introduce you to the Japanese court in the Heian Period.
Here’s an example I found of a law that the Heian court issued and the process it
went through.
Sorry to the libertarians for your impending heart attacks.
So the Grand Council of State proposed a decree.
It went to the Emperor, who read it and wrote down his approval.
His approval was automatic, by the way, just a rubber stamp to move on to the next step.
Then it went to the Minister of Central Affairs, who read it and approved.
This was also automatic.
Then it went to the Senior Assistant Minister, who read it and approved.
Next, the Junior Assistant Minister, who read it and approved.
Then to the Scribes’ Office, which copied the document.
It went back to the Grand Council of State, which wrote a Report of Acknowledgement.
Then back to the Emperor, who approved.
Back to the Grand Council, which went through the document carefully and made needed changes.
Next, to the Scribes’ Office, which made a few copies that are sent to the Chief Minister
and all of the officials related to the issue.
They all read it and signed it.
And finally, it went to the Imperial palace and they had a whole ceremony to place the
Imperial seal on it.
I left out some steps, by the way.
And then after this whole ordeal, we find that the decree was about what type of hat
a noble of a certain rank could wear in court.
Now this may seem like a massive waste of time, but it’s a good example of what life
was like in Heian culture.
Efficient government was unimportant.
Heian culture was all about following proper protocol and etiquette.
And it worked in their government because they didn’t have many urgent crises to deal
with.
So, yes, it was a massive waste of time.
Why did they allow this?
Well, we gotta understand that the Heian aristocracy lived like
Bubble Boy, they had sheltered lives.
They were a tiny part of the population.
The aristocracy made up anywhere from 200 to 1000 people, in a country of a few million,
and only one or two dozen had any actual power in court, mostly the Fujiwara clan.
If you didn’t know, the Fujiwara famously married their daughters into the Imperial
Family, allowing them control over the Heian court for 200 years.
If you weren’t a Fujiwara, you probably didn’t have any power.
So most of the people in government were sitting around pushing papers and rubber stamping
them.
Work was a snorefest.
They saw being at work as a waste of time, when they could have been at home wasting
time pursuing their personal hobbies.
The aristocracy all lived in the capital of Heian-kyo, which would later be called Kyoto.
The capital was almost their entire world.
Government officials dreaded leaving the capital to go dick around in the provinces doing government
duties.
Heian court life was mostly an indoor life.
Women largely stayed in their homes.
They had 1,625,213 layers of clothing that made it hard to move and travel, and when
they did travel, they mostly stayed inside slow ox-drawn carts because you weren’t
supposed to see women outside.
Women rarely ventured outside the home, usually only for visiting temples and relatives.
Men traveled a lot more because they worked in government.
They had to move between their homes and the court and their mistresses’ homes.
But even then, they traveled only to go a different indoor location.
They didn’t play sports in open fields, but in gardens or open spaces inside someone’s
residence.
They generally didn’t execute nobles for serious crimes.
Instead, they exiled them from the capital.
To a capital noble, living in the provinces wasn’t much better than execution.
Things rarely pierced the capital bubble.
There was no danger of foreign invasion, governors in the provinces handled tax collection.
If the occasional annoying rebellion broke out, the court paid local warlords to shut
it down.
They rarely had actual emergencies.
Until the end of the Heian Period, when they had a huge emergency.
In this lax environment, the court had no incentive to become efficient in passing laws.
A law didn’t pass through the court.
It took detours, restroom breaks, went to a bar, stopped by a massage parlor, and ambled
through the court with bloodshot eyes and an itchy crotch.
The nobility had what scholars call a cult of beauty.
They became obsessed with beauty and tried to make everything beautiful to the max.
The emperor’s job was to participate in ceremonies and festivals that became more
and more complex and flashy.
He barely had time to do anything else.
Couple this cult of beauty with a strict adherence to manners and decorum and outward appearance,
and you got super posh people that you would never hang out with.
If you ever find yourself in a time machine going back to Heian Japan, here’s a few
rules of Heian etiquette to help you out.
It’s rude to laugh with your mouth open, you barbarian.
When eating, never touch the food with your hands and don’t let people see your mouth,
you piece of human garbage.
When writing someone a letter, use neat handwriting and fold it properly.
If not, the recipient may refuse to read it, you uncivilized piece of eye booger.
Make sure your clothes have colors that are not a little faded or a little too strong,
and your sleeves not even a centimeter short or long, unless you want people to gossip
about your ricockculous outfit.
The ideal face is round and white with a tiny mouth.
Both men and women should make their faces whiter with powder.
Women should blacken their teeth, and most men should too.
Being fat is more attractive than thin.
A man’s face should look a lot like a woman’s.
If you’re a man, make your own perfume.
People should be able to tell it’s you from your scent alone.
Men were effeminate by our standards, total opposite of the warrior culture that followed
the Heian Period.
Now we haven’t talked about that one activity that all nobles were obsessed with.
The Heian court was full of Robert Frosts and Maya Angelous.
Poetry wasn’t just an art, it was the courtly language.
The Chinese Sui and Tang dynasties were so advanced, so influential, so unable to quit
reminding you of it, that Japan used to emulate Chinese culture.
When the Tang teetered for a time and then toppled, the Japanese started thinking
"Hey maybe the Chinese weren’t all that”
and started cultivating their own culture.
They started writing poetry in Japanese instead of Chinese and made their own styles.
Everyone was expected to be able to create decent poems in normal social interactions.
Their poems were short in characters, but they rammed subtlety and meaning into those
characters like it was the second date.
Bad poets were laughed at, quietly and without showing teeth.
And bad poets definitely had a hard time getting under someone’s sheets.
The Imperial House periodically gathered poems into anthologies.
There was a warrior who fled the capital during wartime because he was an enemy of the court,
but then this crazy mofo snuck back inside to deliver a scroll full of his poems, hoping
that they would be included in the anthology once the war was over.
Some people may think him foolish,
those people didn’t get their poems published in an Imperial anthology.
Because fortunately for samurai Walt Whitman, the Imperial House did include one of his
poems it was so good.
Unfortunately, they left out his name because he was an enemy of the court.
I guess the court thought it was poetic justice.
Note that although the literary arts were important culturally, they didn’t lead to
success in government.
The most powerful politicians were not known for being great poets.
Living in this capital bubble, it’s easy to see how a person can get lost in the luxuries
and extravagance of elite life, and forget about how the rest of the people lived.
But you don’t have to.
If you wanna see how normal people lived, check out this video.
We have a new emperor this week, Kyle Matsumoto Burch.
Yay, thank you for being so generous.
And I also wanna thank the other patrons this week: Silang Sang, Adam Grandt,
Tia Doran from Dorne,
Alejandro Rocha, Symmetrymaster he’s very balanced, and Al Walter.
Alright, much love guys, and spread the knowledge!