Fujiwara clan

Overview

The Fujiwara clan (藤原氏, Fujiwara-shi) was a Japanese family that supplied imperial regents for centuries and dominated the politics of the Heian period (794–1185). Its founder, Nakatomi no Kamatari (614–669), received the honorific name "Fujiwara" from Emperor Tenji on 13 November 669, the date the clan counts as its beginning. The family held the court title of Ason (朝臣, ason), a noble rank granted to leading lineages, and its members monopolised the two great regent offices, sesshō (摂政, sesshō — regent for a child emperor) and kampaku (関白, kanpaku — chief adviser to an adult emperor). The clan's abbreviated name is Tōshi (藤氏, tōshi).

History

The Fujiwara descended from the Nakatomi clan (中臣氏, Nakatomi-shi), whose hereditary duty was the performance of Shinto rites at court. The clan's own eighth-century history, the Tōshi Kaden (藤氏家伝), traces the line back to the ancestral deity Ame-no-Koyane no Mikoto and records that the family had for generations "administered the rites for Heaven and Earth."

Kamatari's rise came through a conspiracy. He befriended Prince Naka, the future Emperor Tenji, over a game of kemari (蹴鞠, kemari — a courtly ball game), and the two men plotted the elimination of the Soga clan (蘇我氏, Soga-shi), the dominant family at court. The reward for Kamatari's role was the new name Fujiwara, taken from the wisteria (藤, fuji) field on Mount Tōno, in what is now Sakurai City. The name began as a surname for Kamatari and his descendants and in time became a clan name in its own right.

The clan split into four branches, the Nanke, Hokke, Shikike and Kyōke, each descended from one of Kamatari's sons or grandsons. From these lines came the statesmen who shaped the Heian court, among them Fujiwara no Fusasaki, Fujiwara no Muchimaro, Fujiwara no Umakai, Fujiwara no Yoshifusa, Fujiwara no Tokihira and Fujiwara no Nakahira. The poet Fujiwara no Toshinari, one of the compilers of the imperial anthology Senzai Wakashū, shows the family's reach into literature as well as government.

Territory and Influence

The Fujiwara strategy for power was marriage. Daughters of the clan were married to emperors, and by custom a prince was raised in his mother's household, owing loyalty to his maternal grandfather. A Fujiwara grandfather could therefore expect to act as regent for his own grandson on the throne, and the family's grip on the sesshō and kampaku offices became effectively hereditary.

That system held until the late eleventh century, when abdicated emperors began to rule from behind the scenes in a practice known as insei (院政, insei — cloistered rule). The rise of the warrior class further eroded Fujiwara control over mainstream politics. In the twelfth century a branch known as the Northern Fujiwara (奥州藤原氏, Ōshū Fujiwara-shi) ruled the Tōhoku region of northeast Honshū.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 藤原氏, read ふじわらし in kana and written Fujiwara-shi in romaji.

• 藤 — read fuji here; the kanji means "wisteria." The name was taken from the wisteria field on Mount Tōno where Kamatari and Prince Naka laid their plans.
• 原 — read hara here (voiced to wara inside the compound); the kanji means "plain" or "field." Together, 藤原 is "wisteria field."
• 氏 — read shi; the kanji means "clan" or "family lineage." It is the standard suffix attached to a family name when referring to the clan as an institution, so 藤原氏 means "the Fujiwara clan" rather than an individual Fujiwara.

The same 氏 appears in the names of other great houses, such as the Nakatomi and Soga, and marks the word as a lineage rather than a person. The clan's short form, 藤氏 (Tōshi), uses the first character of the name alone with the same suffix.

Legacy

The Fujiwara continued to monopolise the titles of sesshō and kampaku for much of the time beyond the twelfth century, even as their real influence declined, and remained close advisers to successive emperors. The regency system itself survived until it was abolished in the Meiji era, which began in 1868 — the endpoint of a Fujiwara presence at the heart of the court stretching back to Kamatari's grant of the name in 669.