" Konoe 1142-1155

77th " " Go-Shirakawa 1156-1158

DECADENCE OF FUJIWARA AUTOCRACY

During two centuries the administrative power remained in the hands
of the Fujiwara. They lost it by their own timidity rather than
through the machinations of their enemies. When the Emperor
Go-Shujaku was mortally ill, he appointed his eldest son, Go-Reizei,
to be his successor, and signified his desire that the latter's
half-brother, Takahito, should be nominated Crown Prince. Fujiwara
Yorimichi was then regent (kwampaku). To him, also, the dying
sovereign made known his wishes. Now Takahito had not been born of a
Fujiwara mother. The regent, therefore, while complying at once in
Go-Reizei's case, said that the matter of the Crown Prince might be
deferred, his purpose being to wait until a Fujiwara lady should bear
a son to Go-Reizei.

In thus acting, Yorimichi obeyed the policy from which his family had
never swerved through many generations, and which had now become an
unwritten law of the State. But his brother, Yoshinobu, read the
signs of the times in a sinister light. He argued that the real power
had passed to the military magnates, and that by attempting to stem
the current the Fujiwara might be swept away altogether. He therefore
repaired to the palace, and simulating ignorance of what had passed
between the late sovereign and the kwampaku, inquired whether it was
intended that Prince Takahito should enter a monastery. Go-Reizei
replied emphatically in the negative and related the facts, whereupon
Yoshinobu declared that the prince should be nominated forthwith. It
was done, and thus for the first time in a long series of years a
successor to the throne was proclaimed who had not the qualification
of a Fujiwara mother.

There remained to the kwampaku only one way of expressing his
dissent. During many years it had been customary that the Prince
Imperial, on his nomination, should receive from the Fujiwara regent
a famous sword called Tsubo-kiri (Jar-cutter). Yorimichi declined to
make the presentation in the case of Prince Takahito on the ground
that he was not of Fujiwara lineage. The prince--afterwards
Go-Sanjo--had the courage to deride this omission. "Of what service
is the sword to me?" he said. "I have no need of it."

Such an attitude was very significant of the changing times. During
more than twenty years of probation as Crown Prince, this sovereign,
Go-Sa