For 200 years the Fujiwara (藤原) clan had controlled the Japanese court, and it was
about time someone handed them their butts.
The Heian Period could be split into 3 acts.
Act 1 was when the emperors ruled the court much like the previous Nara Period emperors.
In Act 2, the Fujiwara clan said “We hate where this story is going,” so they took
control of the government, making the emperor a figurehead in many ways.
And in Act 3, the story pivoted again and the Fujiwara were pushed aside by retired
emperors.
Emperors who had already stepped down from the throne ruled the court.
It’s a confusing story that doesn’t make sense sometimes, but that’s what happens
when the writers have no clear direction.
So how did these retired emperors overpower the Fujiwara juggernaut?
By demanding receipts.
It all started when Emperor Go-Sanjo (後三条) took the throne in 1068.
Go-Sanjo here just means Sanjo the Second.
Before ascending the throne, he had been the crown prince for a shocking 23 years, waiting
23 years to graduate to emperorship.
His student loans were crippling.
But he had a long time to train in the art of government and politics Jiu-jitsu.
Go-Sanjo was smart and ambitious.
But a lot of past emperors were smart and ambitious, and they still could not get past
the Fujiwara Wall.
What made Go-Sanjo different?
Two things.
One, he was a full-grown man of 33 when he took office.
Before that, most emperors came to office when they were little boys, so that they were
easier for the Fujiwara to control.
And two, he was the first emperor in 170 years not to have a Fujiwara mother.
He had no loyalty to them.
In fact, he was part of the anti-Fujiwara faction in court.
Go-Sanjo was a huge threat, so why would the Fujiwara let a guy like that on the throne?
Well, the answer involved complicated political 3D go moves, but to keep it simple, they tried
to stop him, but they had a shortage of candidates and a previous emperor had a dying wish to
one day put Go-Sanjo on the throne.
The Fujiwara clan was already losing power the closer they got to Go-Sanjo’s throneday.
There was infighting.
Also, this new clan called the Minamoto (源) started taking more seats in court, and they
were allies of Go-Sanjo.
When Go-Sanjo became emperor, he didn’t play on the Fujiwara’s team.
He wanted to return power to his own Imperial House.
Because of a stronger anti-Fujiwara faction and a weak Fujiwara regent, Go-Sanjo enjoyed
more freedom than the average emperor.
He launched his political war with an attack against shoen (荘園).
These were private lands that didn’t have to pay taxes to the state.
The amount of shoen in the Heian Period grew like a baby born from a fruit, starving the
state of that sweet rice money.
Why this happened deserves its own video, but basically everyone started relying on
shoen for money, even government officials.
And turned out the Fujiwara held the most shoen.
Less revenue is generally not desirable if you were the ruler of a state, so Emperor
Go-Sanjo ordered an inspection of shoen documents.
“Show me the receipts,” he said.
“Including those of the Fujiwara.”
It was a time before SQL databases came down from Amaterasu, and the inspection revealed
that a lot of people didn’t know how to keep proper documentation without SQL.
Many many documents were forged or invalid, you even had people who relied on a special
type of contract called words, from mouths.
Go-Sanjo got pissed and returned all shoen created after the year 1045 back to the state,
and declared that any shoen created before that could be taken if it lacked proper documentation.
Nicely done, Go-Sanjo, 10 out of 10.
That was only the beginning.
He kept on pushing for changes friendly to the Imperial Family, but he rocked the boat
too much and the other people on the boat were like, “Hey, stop rocking the boat.”
It got to a point where the Fujiwara threatened to take their court and go home.
They threatened to boycott the court altogether.
They made up most of the government, so a boycott would have been devastating.
Go-Sanjo realized he was in over his head and started backing off.
Real change was hard when Fujiwara men packed the government.
Then in 1072, Emperor Go-Sanjo stepped down to retire to a monastery, giving the throne
to his son, who became Emperor Shirakawa (白河).
Now Go-Sanjo was at the height of his power.
Why did he suddenly step down?
Some suggested that he was sick, or even that he wanted to start a government ruled by retired
emperors.
Those probably weren’t the reasons.
It’s not super clear, but it’s likely he wanted to ensure that his line continued
free from Fujiwara influence.
So he made his eldest son emperor and even made his other one-year-old son the crown
prince.
Both had no direct ties to the Fujiwara.
It seems he was laying out a succession plan that excluded the Fujiwara.
After Go-Sanjo retired, he didn’t really engage in politics, and died after a few months.
His strength as an emperor was a model for his son, Emperor Shirakawa, who continued
daddy’s Fujiwara butt kicking tradition.
But it was after Shirakawa abdicated the throne that things got interesting.
For a few years after retirement, he wasn’t that politically active.
It seems he really did intend to retire from politics.
But eventually, Shirakawa turned his sights back to the court, likely to deal with a threat
to his line.
This time, the threat was not from the Fujiwara, whose influence was starting to wane.
The Minamoto clan was grabbing government seats and the word around town was that the
son of a Minamoto woman may be named crown prince.
Outrageous, I know.
“There’s no way in Yomi (黄泉) I’m letting that damn Minamoto kid become emperor,”
Retired Emperor Shirakawa said.
Being a former emperor still gave you real influence, especially for a strong figure
like Shirakawa.
Like other ex-emperors, he created his own retired emperor’s office, called the In-no-cho (院庁).
It was larger than any of his predecessors’.
With that, Shirakawa unknowingly began hundreds of years of insei (院政), or oyster rule--
cloistered rule, where the government was ruled by retired emperors.
Running the government as a cloistered emperor was a pretty sweet gig.
They had their own office and staff, made their own edicts, and could ignore all of
the ceremonies that the sitting emperor had to attend.
Emperors spent so much time participating in rituals and ceremonies that they hardly
had time for anything else.
As a former emperor, you could spend all your time destroying your enemies.
Under the insei government, the emperor remained a figurehead and would forever be out of real
power.
And even as the retired emperors ruled, the capital was still losing its grasp on the
provinces.
Cloistered emperors tried to play the same game that the Fujiwara played.
Remember that the Fujiwara accumulated a bunch of shoen, diverting into their pockets tax
revenue that would have gone to the central government.
The retired emperors, instead of returning those land holdings back to the state, they
did the same thing.
They took back tax-free land from the Fujiwara and private landowners, but then made a lot
of those into tax-free land for the Imperial Family.
The Imperial Family would at one point own the most amount of such land in Japan.
Under cloistered rule, you could say that the retired emperors turned the Imperial House
into just another great clan competing with the Fujiwara and other great clans.
It seemed like no one was interested in restoring a strong central government.
By depriving the state of taxable land, the cloistered emperors actually hastened its
decline.
The insei system had its own issues.
With emperors, you could only have one emperor at a time, but that rule didn’t apply to
ex-emperors.
So if you had multiple former emperors living at the same time, as they often did, who was
in charge?
Good question.
Most of the time the senior retired emperor was in charge, but they did end up having
a healthy amount of political wrestling.
So the insei system kicked the ruling Fujiwara family off its pedestal forever.
Though they continued to be an influential force, and Fujiwara descendants are still
alive today, they would never again regain the strength they once held in the Heian Period.
Let’s take a moment to remember the Fujiwara Family’s supremacy and honor them by letting
their descendants marry into your family.
Because if you didn’t know, the Fujiwara (藤原) clan famously married their daughters
into the Imperial Family, allowing them control over the Heian court for 200 years.
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You guys, this is the last Fujiwara video for a while, but if you wanna see the rise
and decline of the Fujiwara clan, check out this playlist.
Alright much love, guys.
Spread the knowledge!