Fujiwara no Nagate

Who They Were

Fujiwara no Nagate (藤原永手, ふじわら ながて) was a court noble and statesman of the Nara period, the era when Japan's capital stood at Heijō-kyō, today's Nara, and when the imperial court was consolidating a Chinese-style bureaucracy of ranks, ministries and law codes. He was born in 714 and died on 12 March 771. Over a career of more than four decades he rose to Senior First Rank, the highest grade a subject could hold, and to the office of Minister of the Left, the senior of the two ministers who stood beneath the chancellor in the Daijō-kan (太政官, だいじょうかん), the council of state. He is also remembered by the sobriquet Nagaoka-Daijin (長岡大臣, ながおかのだいじん), "the Minister of Nagaoka", after the residence associated with him.

Nagate belonged to the Hokke (北家, ほっけ), the Northern House of the Fujiwara clan. His father was Fujiwara no Fusasaki (藤原房前), the courtier traditionally credited with founding that branch. His mother was Muro no Ookimi (牟漏女王). Because the Hokke line would go on to supply regents and chancellors to the throne for centuries, Nagate stands near the beginning of the family's long dominance of high court office.

Life and Career

Nagate was born in 714, in the seventh year of the Wadō era (和銅, わどう), during the reign of Empress Genmei. He was Fusasaki's second son. The Fujiwara had been founded as a court family by Nakatomi no Kamatari, who had helped destroy the Soga clan in the coup of 645 and was rewarded with the new surname Fujiwara; by Nagate's lifetime the family had split into four houses, and the Hokke was the branch to which he belonged.

His public life unfolded entirely within the Nara court, an environment of intense competition among noble houses for rank, marriage alliances and proximity to the sovereign. Nagate accumulated honours steadily, reaching Senior First Rank, and served as Minister of the Left. After his death he was granted the posthumous title of Chancellor of the Realm, the Daijō-daijin (太政大臣, だいじょうだいじん), the highest position in the Daijō-kan, normally reserved for a member of the imperial family or an exceptionally senior minister. He died on 12 March 771.

Nagate married three times. His wives were a daughter of Fujiwara no Yoshitsugu, a woman named Ōno no Nakachi, and a daughter of Fujiwara no Torikai. His children included Fujiwara no Ieyori, Fujiwara no Yorie and Fujiwara no Sōshi, along with daughters whose names are not recorded. Through these marriages and children he tied the Hokke more tightly to other branches of the clan and to the wider aristocracy.

Why They Matter

Nagate's importance is structural. In the eighth century the Fujiwara were not yet the unchallenged power they would become in the Heian period, when the office of regent became effectively hereditary within the Hokke. Nagate was one of the men who built the Hokke's position at court, holding the two highest civilian offices available to a commoner and embedding his branch of the family in the top tier of the Nara government.

His career also illustrates how the Nara state worked. Power ran through the Daijō-kan and the system of court ranks, and a family advanced by placing its sons in those offices and its daughters in the imperial bedchamber. Nagate did both. The posthumous grant of the chancellorship signals that the court regarded him as one of the leading statesmen of his generation, and the sobriquet Nagaoka-Daijin kept his name attached to a place in the capital long after his death.

The Name in Japanese

The full name is written 藤原永手. It is read ふじわら ながて in kana, and romanised as Fujiwara no Nagate. The particle の, usually written の or 之 in classical names, links the clan name to the personal name; in modern romanisation it is rendered "no".

藤 (ふじ, fuji) — "wisteria". This is the first element of the clan name. The Fujiwara took their name from the place where their ancestor Nakatomi no Kamatari was granted lands, and the wisteria flower became the family's emblem. The same character appears in the modern surname Fujiwara and in place names such as Fujisawa.

原 (わら, wara) — "field", "plain", "moor". Combined with 藤 it gives 藤原, "wisteria field". Note that the character is read わら here rather than its more common readings はら (hara) or げん (gen); this is a case of rendaku, the sound change that voices an initial consonant when a character follows another in a compound.

永 (なが, naga) — "eternal", "long-lasting". The same character appears in the era name Eien and in words such as 永遠 (えいえん, eien), "eternity". In personal names it is frequently read なが, as here.

手 (て, te) — "hand". On its own the character means a hand, and it is one of the first kanji a learner meets. In names it often carries the sense of a person who does something, a "doer" or "hand", and it is read simply て in this name.

Put together, 永手 reads as a single given name, Nagate, with no separate meaning intended for the two characters beyond the name itself. The whole name is therefore 藤原 (Fujiwara, the clan) + の (no, the linking particle) + 永手 (Nagate, the personal name). A reader encountering 藤原永手 in a Nara-period text should recognise the clan name first, then the given name, and should not be surprised to find the man referred to elsewhere simply as 長岡大臣, Nagaoka-Daijin.

Legacy

Nagate's line did not fade. The Hokke he helped elevate produced the Fujiwara regents who dominated the Heian court, and the family name he bore became, for centuries, almost synonymous with high office in Japan. His own descendants through Ieyori, Yorie and Sōshi carried the Hokke further into the aristocratic network of the capital.

He is remembered in the historical record chiefly through his offices: Senior First Rank, Minister of the Left, and posthumously Chancellor of the Realm. The dates of his life, 714 to 771, place him squarely in the Nara period, the century in which Japan's earliest surviving chronicles and poetry collections were compiled and in which the court at Heijō-kyō gave the country much of the institutional shape it kept for the rest of the classical era. Nagate was one of the men who ran that court.