A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower by Kenneth Henshall Read Free Book Online Page B

me alone?
By rare chance I was born a man
And no meaner than my fellows,
But, wearing unwadded sleeveless clothes
In tatters, like weeds waving in the sea,
Hanging from my shoulders,
And under the sunken roof,
Within the leaning walls,
Here I lie on straw
Spread on bare earth,
With my parents at my pillow,
My wife and children at my feet,
All huddled in grief and tears.
No fire sends up smoke
At the cooking-place,
And in the cauldron
A spider spins its web.
With not a grain to cook,
We moan like the night thrush.
Then, ‘to cut’, as the saying is,
‘The ends of what is already too short’,
The village headman comes,
With rod in hand, to our sleeping place,
Growling for his dues.
Must it be so hopeless –
The way of this world?
     
    Okura’s poems give further valuable insights into general life in those times, such as the prevalence of illness, or a cheerless Buddhist view of the impermanence of human life and material things. One surprising observation is a widespread lack of respect for the elderly. As an aged Confucianist, Okura was particularly sensitive to this deviation from Confucian principles – a deviation which again shows there was a Japanese limit to the adoption of Chinese ways. In his ‘Elegy on the Impermanence of Human Life’ he laments the passing of youth, the onset of old age, and the life of old people: 13
…with staffs at their waists,
They totter along the road,
Laughed at here, and hated there.
This is the way of the world…
     
    The greatest victim of the age, however, may have been the central government. Its overall tax revenue was dwindling. The increasing independence ofthe private estates also eroded respect for central authority. No doubt aggravated by ongoing intrigues among court factions, by the end of the period there was already a certain sense of decay in the authority of central government. 14 This was ironic, for the period was the heyday of the
ritsury
system, which was meant to spread central imperial authority throughout the land.
    2.2   The Rise and Fall of the Court: The Heian Period (794–1185)
     
    Emperor Kammu (r.781–806) was particularly unhappy in Nara, and in 784 he decided it was time to move the capital again. No-one quite knows why. He may have felt oppressed by the increasing number of powerful Buddhist temples in the city. Or, since there had been so many disasters in recent times, he may simply have felt it was ill-fated. In any event, he left in a hurry.
    After a few years’ indecision a new capital was finally built in 794 a short distance to the north, in Heian – present-day Kyto. Like Nara, it was built on Chinese grid-pattern lines. Unlike Nara, it was to remain the official capital for more than a thousand years.
    At Heian the court was in many ways to reach its zenith. In its refinement, its artistic pursuits, and its etiquette, it rivalled courts of any time and place in the world. However, the more refined it became, the more it lost touch with reality, and that was to cost it dearly.
    The Heian court gave the world some of its finest early literature. For example, around 1004 the court lady Murasaki Shikibu wrote the world’s first novel,
Genji Monogatari
(Tale of [Prince] Genji). Many of its thousand pages reveal a life of exquisite refinement: 15
It was late in the Third Month. Murasaki’s spring garden was coming ever more to life with blossoms and singing birds. Elsewhere spring had departed, said the other ladies, and why did it remain here? Genji thought it a pity that the young women should have only distant glimpses of the moss on the island, a deeper green each day. He had carpenters at work on Chinese pleasure boats, and on the day they were launched he summoned palace musicians for water music. Princes and high courtiers came crowding to hear.
     
    The princes and courtiers had little else to do. By this stage the court had lost much of its power as a functioning government, and occupied itself instead with dilettantish