Fujiwara no Fusasaki

Who They Were

Fujiwara no Fusasaki (藤原房前, ふじわら の ふささき) was a court noble of the Fujiwara clan who lived from 681 to 737. He held the office of Naidaijin (内大臣, ないだいじん), the Minister of the Interior, and also served as Sangi (参議, さんぎ), an Associate Counselor in the Imperial Court. He was the founder of the Hokke House, one of the four branches into which the Fujiwara clan divided, and he established the temple of Sugimoto-dera in Kamakura, in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture.

He was born into the Asuka period (538–710), the era in which Japan's first permanent capital and its earliest written law codes took shape. His career continued into the following century, and he died on 21 May 737.

Life and Career

Fusasaki was the son of Fujiwara no Fuhito (藤原不比等), the statesman who did more than any other figure to secure the Fujiwara clan's place at the centre of Japanese government. His mother was Soga no Shōshi (蘇我娼子), a daughter of the Soga clan, the family that had dominated the court before the Fujiwara rose. Through both parents, then, Fusasaki carried the blood of the two great houses of the early Japanese state.

He was born in 681, the year before the death of Emperor Tenmu, and grew up as the court moved through a series of reforms that remade taxation, landholding and official rank along continental lines. His father Fuhito served as the chief architect of much of that legislation.

Fusasaki married into several prominent families. His wives included Muro no Ookimi (牟漏女王), a woman of royal descent, a daughter of Kasuganokura no Oyu, and a daughter of Katano no Ason. He had many children, among them Fujiwara no Matate (藤原真楯), Fujiwara no Nagate (藤原永手), Fujiwara no Uona (藤原魚名), Fujiwara no Kaedemaro, Fujiwara no Ohirako, Fujiwara no Kiyokawa, Fujiwara no Torikai, and Fujiwara no Mitate. Three of his sons — Nagate, Matate and Uona — are recorded as having had their father's line traced back through them, which is another way of saying that the family's future ran through this household.

He reached the position of Naidaijin, the Minister of the Interior, and held the post of Sangi, an office created to give senior nobles a formal voice in the council of state. He died on 21 May 737.

Why They Matter

The single most consequential thing about Fusasaki is the house he founded. The Fujiwara clan divided into four branches — the Hokke, the Nanke, the Shikike and the Kyōke — and Fusasaki is the ancestor of the Hokke (北家, ほっけ), literally the "northern house." Of those four lines, it was the Hokke that came to dominate Japanese politics for centuries, supplying regents and chancellors who governed in the name of child emperors. Every later Fujiwara regent traced his descent to Fusasaki.

His own career sat at the hinge between two eras. His father Fuhito had built the clan's power; Fusasaki and his brothers consolidated it. The offices he held, Naidaijin and Sangi, were instruments of a centralising state that was still new in his lifetime, and his presence in them shows how quickly the Fujiwara had moved from being one noble family among many to being the family at court.

He is also remembered as a founder of temples. Sugimoto-dera in Kamakura is credited to him, making him part of the long tradition of court nobles who sponsored Buddhist institutions in the provinces as well as the capital.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 藤原房前. It is read ふじわら の ふささき in kana, and rendered in romaji as Fujiwara no Fusasaki. The の is a possessive particle, so the name means, roughly, "Fusasaki of the Fujiwara."

藤 — read here as fuji. It means "wisteria," the climbing vine with hanging purple blossoms. The Fujiwara took their name from the place where the family's ancestor Nakatomi no Kamatari was buried, and the wisteria became the clan's emblem.

原 — read here as wara. It means "plain," "field" or "moor." Combined with 藤, the two characters spell out "wisteria field," a place name that became a surname.

房 — read here as fusa. It means "room," "chamber," or "bunch" — as in a cluster of flowers or grapes. In personal names of this period it was a common element, and it appears in the names of several of Fusasaki's own sons.

前 — read here as saki. It means "before," "in front," or "previous." As the final element of a male given name it was conventional, and it recurs across the Fujiwara family.

The whole name, then, is a place-derived surname followed by a two-character given name: "Fusasaki of the Wisteria Field." Names of this shape — clan name plus の plus personal name — were standard for aristocrats of the Asuka and Nara periods, and the の is the marker that tells a reader the first element is a family and the second a person.

Legacy

Fusasaki's descendants carried the Hokke line into the highest offices of the Japanese state. His sons Nagate, Matate and Uona each continued the family's service at court, and the branch they represented outlasted the other three Fujiwara houses in political importance.

The temple he founded, Sugimoto-dera, still stands in Kamakura, making him one of the earliest figures connected to a city that would later become the seat of the Kamakura shogunate. For a noble whose life was spent in the capital, that association with a provincial temple is an unusual and durable part of his memory.

He died in 737, the year a smallpox epidemic swept through the court and killed several senior nobles in quick succession. His name survives chiefly through the house he founded and the line of regents that came from it.