At the beginning of the Heian Period, Japan was more unified than it had ever been.
Emperors had actual power, the capital had decent control over the provinces.
But things would begin to fall apart,
like this channel would unless you click LIKE.
Hey you, stick around until the end, there’s a contest.
The early Heian emperors wanted to be the Chinese ideal of an absolute ruler, and they
came as close to it as they had ever gotten.
They were Kanmu, Heizei, Saga, Junna, and Ninmyo.
This was the period from 781 to 850.
Even before the Heian, Japanese emperors tried to model their government after that of the
Sui and Tang Dynasties of China.
But they began to realize that what worked in China didn’t necessarily work in Japan.
China had rulers with absolute power.
In Japan, the top clans in court were too strong for the Imperial Family to control,
it was a constant tug of war.
China appointed government officials using a civil service exam.
You got your job based on how you did, based on merit, at least in theory.
In Japan, the clans thought that was silly.
“Positions are best awarded based on clan connections and marital ties, how else would
you keep people loyal to their clans rather than the central government?
Now I’m gonna go bang my sister.”
Some students at the capital Academy did take exams, but they were basically unenforced.
Besides, you had to be well-connected to enter the Academy in the first place.
Many government positions stayed hereditary.
When Emperor Kanmu ascended the throne in 781, he was part of a new line of emperors.
Almost literally, a new bloodline.
More than a century before, after Emperor Tenji died, Emperor Tenmu seized the throne
from Tenji’s son.
Afterwards, Tenmu’s descendants occupied the throne for most of the Nara Period.
We call his descendants the Tenmu line.
But near the end of the Nara Period, they were running low on Tenmu descendants and
had to enthrone Emperor Konin, the first emperor for a hundred years NOT in the Tenmu line.
He was a grandson of old Emperor Tenji, so the throne switched back to the Tenji line.
Konin’s son was Emperor Kanmu, the first emperor of the Heian era, often called the
most powerful Japanese emperor in terms of his authority.
When Kanmu became emperor in 781, the court happened to be devoid of any strong Fujiwara
clansmen.
The Fujiwara were at the time the biggest challenge to imperial authority.
With their long shadow absent from the court,
Kanmu acted
immediately.
In 784, he took his capital and went home.
Literally.
He moved the capital out of Nara to Nagaoka-kyo, his maternal home.
He probably wanted to wrench the court away from the grip of Buddhist power in Nara and
away from the entrenched Nara politicians who had strong ties with the Tenmu line.
It was an opportunity to resume the Tenji line with a blank slate, or at least a less
messy slate.
But soon shenanigans went down in Nagaoka-kyo.
Someone killed Kanmu’s chief advisor and the blame fell on his brother, who escaped
exile via suicide by starvation.
More deaths came, and famine, and diseases, and Kanmu said,
“Let’s bail this joint”
and moved the capital again in 794 to Heian-kyo, kicking off the Heian Period with a balling
palace based on Chinese capitals.
794 was the middle of China’s Tang Dynasty, and around the time Charlemagne became the
first Holy Roman Emperor.
No, the other Charlemagne.
The biggest problem early Heian emperors faced was money.
They were running out of it.
Kanmu started wars against barbarians to the north, which we’ll discuss in another video.
This along with creating new capitals was a huge drain on government coffers, but the
main culprits were more insidious.
One issue was the growth of shoen, or tax-free private lands, we’ll also talk about this
in another video.
The other issue was hard to see within the halls of the capital.
A new class of people was quietly emerging in the provinces.
They were becoming richer and stronger.
Each province had its own local bureaucracy to manage things within the province,
a provincial government.
They were staffed with nobles who were too low-ranked to work in the capital.
Advances in farming methods increased crop yields, making life pretty sweet for these
provincial nobles.
Early Heian emperors kept tweaking the tax laws to siphon more taxes out of the provinces,
but the tax revenue river flowing into the capital became a tax revenue...
smaller river.
The court began playing a game that your parents liked to play after they had you,
How to Not Go Broke.
By Broker Brothers.
New government agencies arose.
Kanmu created a new office to audit the accounts of provincial governors.
This suggests that there was a lot of “mistakes” when the provinces were sending tax money
to the capital.
Emperor Saga created the Kurodo-dokoro, often translated as the Chamberlain’s Office.
The emperor’s trusted men ran this office, and it was directly under the emperor’s
control.
The office handled imperial documents, but over time it became the actual heart of the
court, allowing the emperor to bypass a bunch of different offices.
Saga also created the Kebiishi, an Imperial Police agency.
They not only investigated criminals, but judged and imprisoned them.
It was an FBI, judiciary, and prison system all in one.
This office also bypassed existing offices, so it saved a bunch of money.
Overall, I give the plan 4 out of 5 Gestapos.
They not only went after the usual crimes like murder and failure to recite a poem on
the spot, but also crimes of the rich, like tax evasion.
You get the sense that tax evasion among government officials was common, as well as a lax view
on, you know, following the law.
The government seemed to be bloated, not working that well.
It’s not surprising since they had funding issues and government officials were appointed
by clan connections instead of merit.
The new offices quickly made large chunks of the government obsolete.
By the late 800s, half of the old government positions were slashed, the number of government
officials plummeted.
This saved money and made things more efficient, but it also further pushed people away from
the capital and into the provincial governments.
Another money-saving plan they had was the purge of Imperial Family members.
Don’t worry, it wasn’t a violent purge.
You see, the descendants of an emperor were considered princes or princesses.
This applied as far down as the 5th or even the 6th generation descendant.
And if you were a member of the Lucky Gamete Club, you were given riches, land, and respect.
Considering the fact that emperors had a hard time keeping it in their pants,
Saga had 49 kids,
it was a huge drain on resources.
Emperor Kanmu started the practice of kicking people out of his house, his Imperial House.
He declared that anyone born from an emperor after the 4th generation was not royalty and
demoted more than a hundred members of the Imperial House.
Emperor Saga even demoted a bunch of his own first-generation descendants, aka his kids.
He probably didn’t even know, he had 49 of them.
Demotion happened this way.
If you hadn’t noticed, members of the Imperial House did not have a surname.
So it’s Emperor Kanmu, not Emperor Kanmu... Jackson.
Members who were ousted were given a clan name.
Minamoto was the most prestigious name.
Children of emperors usually got this name.
The second generation and below were given less prestigious names like Taira.
Remember these two clans, because they would become pretty important in later years.
The court also reduced the money that went to Imperial Family members, causing unimportant
members to be living in near-poverty.
Many of these poor and demoted princes fled to the provinces seeking opportunity, further
strengthening the provincial noble class.
Still running low on funds, the court began paying its officials in land.
Turned out this weakened the central government even more.
Certain government offices received land to use as a source of revenue.
And because they had a source of income separate from the court, it weakened the court’s
control over them.
This growth of private lands for public offices happened at the same time that the number
of shoen was increasing in the provinces.
Even worse, the absence of a powerful Fujiwara clan pushing back against imperial power allowed
emperors to amass land for themselves and their family.
These were private lands for the emperor, not public.
It left even less land for the state to draw revenue from.
You can probably guess these changes set the stage for future problems, but that’s a
story for another day.
Hey guys, so as promised, here’s the contest to win the book Premodern Japan.
This is only for patrons on Patreon.
If you already have that book, I can give you another book actually.
Alright, so I left a secret message in this video about dead bodies.
Go watch it and find the burning hot secret message that I buried in there and then come
back to this video THIS video and leave a reply with the secret message.
The first patron to leave a reply wins, and let me know the name you use on Patreon please.
Good luck.
Also, this week’s new patrons are Jonathan Polley, polley a great guy, and Brett Winterton,
greetings House Winterton.
Thank you both.
Much love guys, now get out there and spread the knowledge.