Fujiwara no Korekimi

Who They Were

Fujiwara no Korekimi (藤原是公) was a Japanese aristocrat and statesman of the Nara period, the era that ran from 710 to 794 and took its name from the capital city of Nara. He was born in 727 and died on 12 October 789. Over a career of more than four decades at the imperial court, he rose to the court rank of Junior Second Rank and to the office of Minister of the Right, known in Japanese as udaijin (右大臣, うだいじん), one of the two highest ministerial posts in the government of the time. After his death he was promoted to Junior First Rank, the highest honour the court could confer on a subject.

He belonged to the Nanke (南家), the "Southern House" of the Fujiwara clan, one of the four branches into which the family divided itself as it grew into the dominant aristocratic lineage of early Japan. His father was Fujiwara no Otomaro (藤原乙麻呂). He was also known by the nickname Ushiya-daijin (牛屋大臣), meaning roughly "the Minister of the Ox House" — a court sobriquet of the kind that Nara and Heian aristocrats often acquired alongside their formal names. He was married to Tachibana no Matsuga (橘真津賀), and the couple had at least five children: the sons Fujiwara no Tomohito, Fujiwara no Matomo, Fujiwara no Ototomo and Fujiwara no Otomo, and a daughter, Fujiwara no Yoshiko.

Life and Career

Korekimi was born in 727, in the fourth year of the era Jinki (神亀, じんき), during the reign of Emperor Shōmu. The Nara period into which he was born was a time of rapid institutional building: the court had only recently settled into its new capital, and the machinery of a Chinese-style bureaucracy — ranks, ministries, examinations of precedent — was being assembled around the imperial throne. The Fujiwara, who had married their daughters into the imperial line for generations, sat at the centre of that project.

His rise through the court ranks is recorded in the official chronicles as a steady accumulation of office rather than a single dramatic leap. By the closing decades of his life he had reached Junior Second Rank, a position near the very top of the noble hierarchy, and had been appointed Minister of the Right. In the Nara court the Minister of the Right stood alongside the Minister of the Left and the Chancellor as one of the great officers of state, with responsibility for the conduct of government business and for advising the emperor directly.

Korekimi died on 12 October 789, at the age of sixty-two by Japanese reckoning. The court granted him a posthumous promotion to Junior First Rank, a mark of exceptional standing awarded to a small number of senior nobles. His death fell in the early years of the Heian period, after the capital had been moved from Nara to Kyoto, but his career belonged entirely to the Nara world in which he had been raised.

Why They Matter

Korekimi's importance lies in the structure of power he helped to hold together. The Nara period was the age in which the Fujiwara clan consolidated its grip on the highest offices of the Japanese state, and Korekimi was one of the men through whom that grip was exercised. As Minister of the Right he sat at the point where imperial authority, aristocratic interest and the machinery of government met.

He also represents the Nanke, the branch of the Fujiwara descended from Fujiwara no Muchimaro, which competed with the other three houses — the Hokke, Shikike and Kyōke — for precedence at court. The division of the clan into these houses shaped the politics of the eighth and ninth centuries, and Korekimi's career as a Nanke minister is one of the clearest examples of how a branch line could reach the top of the government.

His posthumous promotion to Junior First Rank is itself a historical fact of some weight. Such honours were not automatic even for ministers, and the grant indicates that the court regarded his service as exceptional. The nickname Ushiya-daijin, preserved alongside his formal name, shows that he remained a remembered figure in the generations after his death.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 藤原是公 in kanji. It is read in kana as ふじわら これきみ, and in romanised form as Fujiwara no Korekimi.

藤 (ふじ, fuji) — the wisteria plant. This is the founding kanji of the Fujiwara surname. The clan took its name from the wisteria vines that grew at the site of its ancestral shrine, and the character appears in the surnames of every branch of the family.

原 (わら, wara) — a field, plain or wilderness. Combined with 藤, it forms 藤原 (ふじわら, Fujiwara), literally "wisteria field". The reading わら rather than the more common はら is a fixed element of this surname.

是 (これ, kore) — "this", "right" or "correct". In personal names of the Nara period the character was often chosen for its auspicious sense of rectitude rather than for any literal meaning.

公 (きみ, kimi) — a lord, a duke, or a term of respect for a high noble. In the Nara court 公 was used both as a title for senior aristocrats and as a common closing element in male personal names.

The particle の in Fujiwara no Korekimi is the classical Japanese possessive marker, linking the clan name to the personal name. In modern Japanese it would be written 藤原の是公, but by convention the particle is dropped in romanisation of historical names and the name is written simply 藤原是公.

Legacy

Korekimi's memory survived chiefly through his descendants and through the record of his rank. His sons Fujiwara no Tomohito, Fujiwara no Matomo, Fujiwara no Ototomo and Fujiwara no Otomo, and his daughter Fujiwara no Yoshiko, carried the Nanke line forward into the Heian period, when the Fujiwara reached the height of their power as regents to successive emperors.

The name Ushiya-daijin remained attached to him in later references, a reminder that Nara courtiers were often known by the places or establishments associated with them as much as by their formal titles. For readers of Japanese history, he stands as a representative of the Nara aristocracy at its most institutional: a man whose life was measured out in ranks, offices and posthumous promotions, and whose family name became one of the most consequential in the Japanese language.