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Japan Times
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
‘I scud before the autumn wind': Emperor Go-Daigo's fall from grace
The emperor was in flight, the palace besieged. It was Year 1 of the Genko Era, 1331 by today's calendar. The royal panic was ignominious, if heroism is the ideal. In the palace — 'the world above the clouds' — it was not. Poetry was. Poetry was divine, heroism merely human. Cowardice was no disgrace, fear no shame. Sad, yes — but sadness inspires poetry. 'When, sunk in despair / I scud before the autumn wind / I see colored leaves / red and yellow on a hill / I had never thought to visit.' This was the poem of the emperor in flight. Last month we introduced Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339) and his bold but doomed revolt against the bakufu, the military government ruling in remote Kamakura while he reigned powerless in Kyoto, a sort of divine poet-in-chief. We must now seek a deeper acquaintance with that tragic figure, so discontented with his imperial lot, so determined to change it, so helplessly overwhelmed by real life in the real world below the clouds, so unexpectedly victorious for a time, so abruptly undone in the end by the very unbowed arrogance that had sustained him through it all. Dying in disgrace, would he have been cheered to know what a heroic figure history would make of him, in a very distant future, an age much closer to our own than to his, of fanatic patriotism, rabid nationalism and triumphant militarism? And what a villain it would make of his ultimate undoer, whose military and political genius shaped Japan's history for 500 years beyond his lifetime? Go-Daigo came to the throne in 1318, a man whose immediate predecessors had all been children, a born ruler, as he thought, succeeding born puppets the bakufu could manipulate at will. He would break the mold. Just give him time. He would restore to Japan its divinity. Was he not a god himself? Were gods puppets? Were they not rather Japan's rightful rulers? They had been once and would be again — in his person and in those of his descendants. Seven years into his reign, in 1325, he seized a chance he thought he saw. A contemporary chronicle titled 'Masukagami' ('The Clear Mirror'), composed apparently by a high-ranking courtier, name unknown, gives a vivid picture of what went on and what it all felt like. 'Two courtiers ... were arrested by the (bakufu), subjected to harsh interrogation, and placed under strict guard. According to rumor, it had all started when the emperor summoned the warriors with the intention of disrupting the peace. ... Faced with unspeakably dreadful rumors, and greatly chagrined by the premature disclosure of his plans, Emperor Go-Daigo felt eager to bring the affair to a quiet conclusion.' He sent an envoy to Kamakura. 'When (the envoy) stated in unequivocal language that the emperor had known absolutely nothing about the matters, the eastern warriors (the bakufu) backed down, rough barbarians though they were.' Calm was restored — for a time. Seven years slipped quietly by; the 'Masukagami' shows us how (in a translation by George Perkins): 'In the spring of (1331), early in the third month, the emperor went to view cherry blossoms in the northern hills.' We're told who attended, what (depending on rank) they wore, who danced what, who played what instruments. Sonically and visually, it must have been lovely, beautiful beyond anything this vulgar age of ours can imagine. How could they know, these noble effete aesthetes, what history, that indefatigable dramatist, was so very soon to reveal: how sudden and rapid the fall is from the felicitous heights to the abject depths. Ruin waited quietly backstage. Abruptly it stepped forward. 'Around the summer of that year,' the narrative continues, 'it was reported that the emperor was receiving medication for an illness. ... And just then, at the worst possible time, the military authorities took it into their heads to apprehend Toshimoto, one of the men they had arrested earlier. Toshimoto sought refuge in the palace, and a raucous band of warriors chased after him. ... Immense confusion ensued, with everyone in the palace agitated beyond measure. Someone went to report to the emperor, who was lying in bed semi-comatose, and he received the news with dismay.' Toshimoto was seized and taken to Kamakura for interrogation. 'The emperor's displeasure with the shogunate mounted after his recovery. He resolved on immediate execution of the plans he had had in mind for some time.' Loyalist troops would seize Kamakura and power would be his. Secrecy was essential but bakufu spies were everywhere. Word got out. Bakufu warriors poured into Kyoto. Royal terror seized the emperor. He shed his imperial dignity and fled, 'riding in a shabby women's carriage. ... He wondered how this could possibly be happening. It was like a dream.' A temple on Mount Kasagi, some 60 kilometers from the capital, offered refuge, its soldier-monks armed and ready but no match, as was soon clear, for the bakufu troops hot on the fugitive emperor's trail. History and legend link Go-Daigo indissolubly with a guerrilla warrior of heroic breadth, Kusunoki Masashige (1294-1336), the Che Guevara of his time. During his brief interval of safety at the temple, the emperor had a dream. Heavenly children led him to a throne of cushions facing south under a tree. Go-Daigo understood at once. Combine the Chinese characters for 'tree' and 'south' and you get 'kusunoki,' camphor tree. Was there a warrior of that name in the vicinity? There was. Summoned, Kusunoki reverently pledged his strength, his skills and his life to the imperial cause. He was as good as his word, and shares with Go-Daigo the heroic resurrection history would confer upon them half a millennium later. The villain in history's drama is Ashikaga Takauji (1305-58), leader of the bakufu forces sent in pursuit of the emperor once more in flight, this time from besieged Mount Kasagi. Chaos closes in. 'All too soon,' reports the 'Masukagami,' 'word came that warriors from the east' — Takauji at their head — 'were approaching in numbers so vast as to resemble banked clouds or dense haze. Panic ensued at Kasagi.' Temple buildings went up in flames, 'the smoke billowed close, leaving the emperor no option but to fare forth as best he could in shabby disguise. ... After traveling a short distance ... His Majesty fell into an alarming state of dejection on the unfamiliar mountain trail. ... Then, in a dreadful turn of events, a warrior came upon them and announced his intention of escorting him back to the capital.' The emperor was a prisoner. Worse was to come: exile, to a remote little island in the Sea of Japan, one of the Oki Islands. This, for a year, His Majesty was forced to call home — he who had once reigned in a palace, a god! His poem suggests his hopelessness: 'Though I were to return / along this selfsame road / there is little chance / that I might see again / the flowering of springtime.' 'Don't give up hope,' history in effect whispered to him. History is a great dramatist and Go-Daigo a great character — yet sadly flawed, as we'll see when this story concludes next month. The supporting cast is great too, larger than life: Kusunoki, relentlessly active in the imperial cause, together with — surprisingly — the bakufu warrior Takauji. Brilliant but unstable, nursing resentments that demanded redress but got none, he abruptly abandoned the bakufu cause and declared himself an imperial loyalist. His Majesty's triumphant return to the capital, to rule this time as well as reign, eternally he thought, very briefly as we know, owes much to Takauji, as would the second imperial downfall three years later when Takauji turned against him and declared himself shogun. This final act of the drama, from imperial victory to imperial undoing, opens in 1333, Year 1 of the Kenmu Era, and closes in 1336. History entitled it the Kenmu Restoration. Michael Hoffman is the author of 'Arimasen.'
Japan Times
15-03-2025
- General
- Japan Times
Divine authority and mortal desires in the turbulent 14th century
'In all things I yearn for the past.' It's a defining phrase, of a man and his book — the man, a literary monk named Yoshida no Kenko (1283-1350); the book, his classic miscellany 'Tsurezuregusa' ('Grasses of Idleness'). His monkish vows drew him out of the world; his literary vocation and his aristocratic ancestry and inclinations drew him into it. He hovered on the edge, a less than thoroughgoing recluse. He wrote: 'They speak of the degenerate, final phase of the world, yet how splendid is the ancient atmosphere, uncontaminated by the world, that still prevails within the palace walls.' Within those walls reigned the emperor — Emperor Go-Daigo from 1318 to 1339, Kenko's peak years — and the question immediately arises: How can the seat of rule be 'uncontaminated by the world'? It can't be. The emperor did not rule. He reigned. To rule was human, to reign merely divine. So it had been for a century and a half — actually far longer, though earlier it had been courtiers who had exercised power in the emperor's name; now it was a bakufu , a military government. An imperial succession dispute in the mid-12th century had drawn to opposing sides warrior clans marginalized until then by ruling courtiers whose power lay not in arms but in dance, music, poetry, calligraphy, handsomeness and very high birth. From the death struggle that followed, the Minamoto clan emerged supreme. Japan was reborn, a land now of warriors and war, a samurai land. Bakufu headquarters in remote Kamakura showed the court in Kyoto — the 'uncontaminated world' — outward deference, honoring its divinity but warning it in effect to stick to its traditional arts and ceremonies. Power would lie elsewhere. Power was contaminated and contaminating. Human, not divine, hands would wield it — the shogun's, not the emperor's.
