Nijō Michihira

Who They Were

Nijō Michihira (二条道平) was a court noble — a kugyō (公卿, くぎょう, a senior courtier holding one of the highest ranks at the imperial court) — active in the late Kamakura period. He was born in 1288, the son of Nijō Kanemoto, and belonged to the Nijō branch of the Fujiwara clan, a family that had for generations supplied the kampaku (関白, かんぱく, chief advisor to the emperor and effective head of the civilian government) and sesshō (摂政, せっしょう, regent for a child emperor). His life was spent almost entirely inside the machinery of the imperial court in Kyoto, at a time when real military power lay with the Kamakura shogunate in the east.

Life and Career

Michihira was born in 1288, in the first year of the Shōō era (正応, しょうおう). He was the son of Nijō Kanemoto, and the family he was born into was one of the two great branches of the Fujiwara regental house — the Nijō and the Kujō — which alternated in the highest offices of the court.

He reached the office of kampaku in 1316, holding it until 1318. This was the position of chief advisor to the emperor, the summit of a civilian career. He held the same office a second time from 1327 to 1330, which placed him at the centre of court politics during the final years of the Kamakura period.

Michihira married twice. One wife was a daughter of Nijō Morotada; the other was a daughter of Saionji Kin'aki, a member of the Saionji family that had long supplied brides to the imperial line. From this second marriage came a son, Nijō Yoshimoto, who would become one of the most consequential cultural figures of the following century, and a daughter who later became a consort of Emperor Go-Daigo. Another son was adopted by the Tominokouji family and became known as Tominokouji Michinao.

Michihira died on 27 February 1335, in the second year after the fall of the Kamakura shogunate and the beginning of the Kenmu Restoration. His life thus spanned almost exactly the period of Kamakura rule, from its mature decades to its collapse.

Why They Matter

Michihira's importance is twofold. First, he twice held the kampaku office, which made him the formal head of the imperial court's civil administration at moments of acute political tension — the late 1310s and the late 1320s, when Emperor Go-Daigo was manoeuvring against the shogunate.

Second, and more lastingly, he was the father of Nijō Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto became sesshō and kampaku in his own right, and is remembered as a poet and as the compiler of the Tsurezuregusa tradition's associated anthologies and of the Renga rules that shaped linked-verse poetry for centuries. The Nijō poetic school, which dominated Japanese court poetry into the fifteenth century, takes its name from this family line. Michihira stands at the head of that inheritance.

His daughter's marriage into Emperor Go-Daigo's household tied the Nijō house directly to the emperor whose revolt against Kamakura ended the shogunate. Michihira did not live to see the full consequences of that upheaval, but his children were positioned at the centre of it.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 二条道平.

• Kana reading: にじょう みちひら
• Romaji: Nijō Michihira

Character by character:

二 — read ni here. It is the numeral two. It appears in many Japanese place names and surnames.

条 — read jō here. It means "article", "clause", or "strip/line". In the old capital's grid, a jō was a numbered east–west street. 二条, "Second Street", was a major avenue in Heian-kyō (the old name for Kyoto), and the noble families whose mansions stood along it took it as a surname. The Nijō family name is therefore literally an address.

道 — read michi here. It means "way", "road", or "path", and by extension "the Way" in the sense of a discipline or doctrine. It is a very common element in male given names.

平 — read hira here. It means "flat", "level", or "peace/calm". It is also the second character of the great warrior clan name Taira (平), read hei in that context. In personal names it is frequently read hira.

Note the reading shift: 道平 as a whole is Michihira, not Dōhei or Michihei. Japanese personal names of this period often use kun'yomi (native Japanese readings) for the second character, and michi + hira is the conventional reading for this name. The surname 二条 uses the on'yomi (Sino-Japanese readings) ni + jō.

A reader encountering 二条道平 in a text should therefore parse it as: surname 二条 (Nijō, a Kyoto street name turned family name), given name 道平 (Michihira).

Legacy

Michihira's direct legacy runs through his son Nijō Yoshimoto, whose career as regent, poet, and arbiter of linked verse carried the Nijō name to the height of its cultural authority. The Nijō poetic school, which he founded, shaped the composition and judging of renga (連歌, れんが, linked verse) and of court waka (和歌, わか, classical Japanese poetry) for generations after his death.

Michihira himself is remembered chiefly as a holder of the kampaku office during the last decades of Kamakura rule, and as the link between the Nijō regental line of the thirteenth century and the literary flowering of the fourteenth. His daughter's place in Emperor Go-Daigo's court connected the family to the political convulsions that ended the Kamakura shogunate in 1333, two years before his own death.