Okay, as promised, we’re going to start some discussions on the general milieu of my latest book, Lady Safflower, and it seemed like the best place to start is with its historical setting: Heian-era Japan (794 CE—1185). And while I won’t be able to hit everything involved in a four hundred year timeframe in a single entry, I hope to give you all at least a taste of what makes this era unique in Japanese history before we get into some more specific aspects over the coming weeks. As I’ve said before, Heian Japan is a different animal from the medieval periods that followed it, which are better known and more recognizable in the west from their militaristic, samurai-based iconography. Because that’s really the crux of the matter, folks. Heian (平安) means ‘peace’ or ‘tranquility’ in Japanese, and while that is on the surface a good name for the period that preceded the nearly five hundred years of feudal warfare that followed it, as we’ll discover, the “Peaceful Era” wasn’t all it was advertised as, either.

But more directly, the Heian period gets its name—as the other eras of so-called classical Japan did—because Heian is the name chosen for the new capital that Emperor Kanmu (r. 781–806 CE) moved his court to from the old capital of Nara in 794. Officially named Heian-kyō (kyō simply being the Japanese word for ‘capital’), the city Kanmu founded is the modern city of Kyōto, whose own name (‘capital city’) reflects how Heian-kyō/Kyōto never technically stopped being Japan’s capital city, even after the government administration had moved to the various shōgunate strongholds and later, to Tokyo. Kanmu had chosen to move the court from Nara in an attempt to recall and reconsolidate the aristocracy that had begun to become too diffuse and independent during the preceding century or so.

This was a perennial issue for the classical-era emperors, who presided over an extremely centralized seat of power that had very little direct contact with the majority of their kingdom. Instead, a vast, complicated bureaucracy managed the actual day-to-day operations of the kingdom, like tax collection, food production, and military security. And these various apparatuses weren’t usually even being handled by the highest-ranking nobles, either. Rather, they were the purview of a web of lower aristocrats and gentry, as well as a cohort of military retainers, all of which were—theoretically—serving as banner men to the higher aristocracy, who remained in the capital amassing direct influence with the emperor.

While this seems like a stupid and dangerous way to run a country on the emperor’s part, there was an established cultural reason for this structure of power in medieval Japan. As opposed to, say, the French court of Louis XIV (or more pertinently, the medieval Capetian French kings like Louis VII), the emperor’s job—especially the deeper into the Heian period one goes—was not to wield specific feudal power over his kingdom through political and military action, or even to use ostentation and wealth to wield that power symbolically. Instead, the Heian emperors were above all the spiritual leaders of their kingdom. Oh, I know you could say that about the French kings I mentioned, too, but this is on an entirely different level. Medieval French kings were the physical embodiment of God’s will on earth through the transubstantiation of divine rule: Japanese emperors were the gods themselves.

Japanese imperial tradition held that the emperors descended from an unbroken genealogical line from the first emperor, Jimmu (c. 660 BCE), who himself was directly descended from two of Japan’s most powerful deities (kami): the great sun goddess Amaterasu, as well as her brother, Susanoo the god of storms. As such, the emperor was considered uniquely qualified to maintain Japan’s connection to the gods and intercede on the kingdom’s behalf. Aside from this indigenous foundational mythos, ancient and classical Japanese culture was heavily influenced by contemporary mainland Chinese culture once contact was established between the two kingdoms. This likely reinforced this divine descent tradition, as the Japanese emperors didn’t want to be out-“Son of Heaven”-ed by the Chinese emperors, but also increased the emphasis on political harmony and balance through the proper administration of rituals.

As a result, the role of emperor became more about having a sort of divine priest-above-priests who protected the kingdom not through political or military leadership, but by assuring the favor of the gods, powerful ancestors, and various primordial spirits through the competent and timely performance of—to be frank—a nearly incomprehensible number of archaic rituals and shrine/temple observances. That is why, aside from the aforementioned trips to particular shrines and temples, the emperor only traveled minutely away from the imperial palace complex within Heian-kyō. It was religiously important for him to be in a specific, ritualized location to prevent disasters and disharmony. This is not to imply, of course, that there weren’t ambitious emperors who attempted to wield more concrete temporal power—nor that the higher aristocracy was so pious in the face of imperial divinity that they didn’t snatch up what they could in this semi-enforced power vacuum. The most successful of the aristocratic families in this regard during the Heian period was the so-called northern branch of the Fujiwara clan, which held almost total control over the imperial government for nearly three hundred of the era’s four hundred-odd years.

The Fujiwaras did this in part by being good administrators, first rising to prominence as a stabilizing force in the government during the succession struggle that arose between several of the imperial princes after Emperor Kanmu’s death in 806. This helped to place them in a kind of hereditary regent position over the imperial household, which they held onto even after the succession had been decided, and from which they would continue to siphon off political influence until the rise of the shōgunates. But their longterm stranglehold on power would derive almost entirely from aggressively intermarrying their daughters with the imperial line. This led to a situation where almost every Heian emperor was the son of a Fujiwara mother and typically the grandson of the highest-ranking of his court ministers—in a culture that placed a lot of emphasis on imported Confucian values of filial obedience. At the height of their authority, the Fujiwara regent was also basically the person who appointed a succeeding emperor, so it became common to simply force an adult emperor to retire at a point where his heir would be too young to rule anyway, which would increase the control of the regent on the reins of government. The retired emperor would often take nominal religious vows and live in comfort, but this continued to weaken the rest of the imperial family, and non-reigning princes and princesses were forced to live on the whims of the Fujiwaras.

Some of this led to the creation of the Minamoto clan by Emperor Saga (r. 809-823). The original Minamoto were entirely comprised of imperial princes who had been “demoted” to common noble status, a practice other Heian emperors would continue. This sounds like a bad thing, as it left these young men technically ineligible for the throne, but Saga’s positive rationale was twofold. One, it would help to mitigate the sort of succession crisis that had precipitated the Fujiwaras’ rise in the first place by putting limits on the potential number of emperor’s sons in line for the succession. But arguably more important was the second reason: that as “regular” nobles, the former princes were not bound by whatever imperial stipend was availed to them, and were now eligible to hold ministerial positions and governorships in the provinces, where they could amass wealth and influence outside of the Fujiwaras’ sphere at court. They could also contract marriages with women who were not imperial princesses, as they would have otherwise been restricted to, which opened up another avenue to acquire wealth and clan alliances. Oh, and obviously, creating the Minamoto invented a clan with enough power and influence to occasionally take some away from the otherwise unassailable Fujiwaras.

The Minamoto were also sometimes referred to by the clan name Genji—which is where the titular hero of Murasaki Shikibu’s novel gets his not-name from, as he is demoted in just this fashion by his father, the emperor, to protect him from the jealousy of his stepmother, the ranking empress, after the death of Genji’s mother leaves him no support structure at court. This sequence I’ve described is why the clan identity and loyalties of an emperor’s mother was so important to his future; but this was true for all Heian children, not just a prince or emperor. Because Heian society was polygamous, but more unusually in world history, it was also uxorilocal. This means that unlike what is generally considered traditional polygamy—where a man establishes a single household with multiple wives and their children all living together—in Heian Japan, a man would establish marital ties with multiple wives, but those women would continue to live with their natal family, as would any children resulting from the relationship. The man would then continue the marriage by making regular visits to each of these wives. There was no practical way to divorce in this system, but a man could basically let a relationship fizzle out by ceasing to visit a wife, who was by custom relatively homebound in her family’s domicile and had no real recourse to call him back outside of getting her family to harangue the absentee husband about it. But if the wife’s family had less power than the husband, it wouldn’t cost him too much to ignore them.

This could stink for an “abandoned” wife, but the system—while certainly not without its faults—offered women some benefits not usually available to wives in more traditional polygamous arrangements. One was that, as they never left their natal family, they continued to have that emotional and resource support behind them, even if their husband lost interest in them or their children. And the second was even more unusual: as support structures were tilted toward a child’s matrilineal family and less about establishing concrete paternity, Heian society was, at least in theory, much less hung up on controlling female sexuality than most polygamous cultures. Women had a degree of sexual autonomy very atypical anywhere in the medieval period, and could seek out extramarital partners within certain parameters (mostly hinging on the affair’s discretion and a partner being of an appropriate social rank). But all of this is why children typically derived more practical support from their matrilineal family than from their biological father.

Minor Minamoto inroads aside, Fujiwara influence is seen to have reached its apogee under the prolonged regency of Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1028). Michinaga was especially adept at consolidating imperial bureaucratic control, and four of his daughters would serve as empresses, most notably Shōshi, who was the mother of two later emperors thanks to her father’s influence and whom Murasaki Shikibu served as a lady-in-waiting. Michinaga’s iron grip on authority also appears to have allowed—because what else was everyone going to do?—a great flourishing of art and culture during his tenure. Although male courtiers would engage in traditionally masculine pursuits such as hunting, horseback riding, and archery, imperial Heian court culture would become historically defined by its refined sensibilities toward more sedate, feminine-coded activities: writing poetry, ikebana (the art of flower arrangement), landscape painting, calligraphy, creating incense mixtures, and musical performance being among the most prominent.

The benefit to the ladies at court is that these were things they were permitted to do, and so all genders could show off their talents. Murasaki and her contemporary, Sei Shōnagon, rose to fame as erudite members in the households of Emperor Ichigo’s rival empresses (Shōshi and Teishi, respectively). Artistic competition was even applied to how one dressed, as ladies’ multi-layered jūnihitoe (“twelve layers”) robes gave ample opportunity to demonstrate not only one’s social standing (as there were strict sumptuary rules about rank and the colors one was permitted to wear), but also one’s artistic abilities through complicated color combinations meant to evoke appropriate attention to the seasons, a specific occasion, or mood. Even when the jūnihitoe wasn’t living up to its name and contained fewer layers of robes, the sheer weight of clothing court women were expected to wear combined with the weight of their hair, which they wore loose and long (at least ankle-length, with the desired length of at least a foot past their feet) also probably meant that the ladies were glad to have so many activities to do that could be done from a sitting position.

The underlying conceit of Heian art is expressed by the Japanese concept of mono no aware (物の哀れ), loosely translated as “the pathos of things,” a sensitivity to life’s impermanence. Tied to Buddhist teachings about surrendering desire in search of karmic release, cultivating mono no aware was not only a way to show one’s spiritual evolution, but probably a pretty handy cope for men and women basically trapped in the glittering, safe, often tedious environment of the imperial palace, heavily regulated by the ritual duties of the emperor and those who waited on him. Being able to say that this too shall pass could acknowledge the sorrows of the world, but also take the sting out of life’s disappointments.

Because there were plenty of disappointments to be had in this era of tranquility, not to mention a lot more violence. One of the drawbacks to having your entire court and high aristocracy cordoned off in a special city is that Heian life was a lot dicier out in the real world, especially the farther out in the provinces one got. Bandits and brigands were ubiquitous on the haphazardly maintained roads, and most of the population eked out a bare subsistence-level existence in the rice paddies of the nobility. Even more so than the serfs in medieval Europe, the lower classes are practically invisible to those in the aristocracy and their beloved art. The countryside is admired for its beauty, but the people who live are little better than livestock getting in the way of the view.

In fact, because what little we know about anything during this period comes from the higher classes, we know next to nothing about how the man-on-the-street Heian person lived. For example, the polygamous relationships I described earlier might have been solely an artifact of the aristocracy because, like in many polygamous societies, it may have not been financially viable for anyone else. But we just don’t have that much information; all we can make are inferences. A good example of that is we can be fairly confident that lower class people had little contact with hard currency, as even the Heian nobility rarely did. The entire Heian economy was structured on land ownership at a macro-level, and on allotments of rice in the micro, rather than specie. Which added further strain on its stability any time there was widespread crop failures or major epidemics that interrupted labor—both of which happened frequently.

None of this is deeply explored in the explosion of literature to come out of the period, but the occasional throwaway journal references to stacks of corpses outside the gates of Heian-kyō or the dread of various nobles at the thought of banishment from court as Michinaga and Murasaki’s time passes into the later days in which my novel takes place shows that the peace of the Heian was often as much a mask as those worn by the Nōh actors who entertained the imperial court. The shōgunate years would bring the threat of violence to the aristocracy’s doorstep and change Japan forever after. But the allure of the Heian’s many artistic achievements, its philosophical approach of mono no aware to life’s hardships, these would remain—and despite their inherent flaws and artificiality—would continue to beguile those who followed them long after the opaque world they came out of had disappeared.