Heian period

The Heian period, from 794 to 1185, was the last era of classical Japanese history, named after the new capital Heian-kyō, today's Kyoto. Heian means "peace". It is remembered as the high point of the imperial court and its refined culture, when Japanese writing, literature and art took on forms of their own, but real power drifted from the emperors to the Fujiwara regents, then to retired emperors, and finally to the warrior clans who ended the era.

Emperor Kammu first moved the court from Nara to Nagaoka-kyō and then, after a run of disasters there, to Heian-kyō in 794. One aim was to escape the growing political weight of the Buddhist temples of Nara. The new city was laid out on the grid of the Tang capital Chang'an, larger than Nara, with good river and road links, and it remained the imperial capital for about a thousand years. Kammu also fought the Emishi of the north and east; his general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, given the title Seii Taishōgun, had defeated them by 801 and carried imperial rule to the eastern end of Honshū.

The Fujiwara clan, descended from Nakatomi no Kamatari of the Yamato period, married its daughters into the imperial family, so that most Heian emperors had Fujiwara mothers. Fujiwara men served as regents (sesshō) for child emperors and held the senior office of kampaku. Apart from a spell of direct rule under Emperor Daigo (897–930), their grip tightened, and by about 1000 Fujiwara no Michinaga could make and unmake emperors. Meanwhile, the official missions to Tang China ended in 838, and the Chinese-style land and tax system decayed as great families and temples built up tax-exempt private estates called shōen.

Fujiwara rule coincided with a flowering of court culture. The kana syllabaries, katakana and hiragana, let Japanese be written as it was spoken, and much of the new vernacular literature came from court women, who were less often trained in Chinese than men. Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji, often called one of the world's first novels, and her contemporary Sei Shōnagon recorded court life in The Pillow Book. Poetry was part of everyday courtly exchange, and calligraphy was taken as a mirror of character. Painting in the native yamato-e style developed, and the lyrics of the modern national anthem, Kimigayo, date from this period.

Two esoteric Buddhist schools grew up with the new capital. Saichō brought the Tendai school from China and founded its monastery on Mount Hiei above Kyoto, while Kūkai introduced Shingon, with its rituals, mantras and mandalas. Both cultivated close ties with the court and the aristocracy.

As central control weakened, provincial landholders built up their own armed followings, and a class of professional warriors, the samurai, formed around families such as the Taira and Minamoto. In 1068 Emperor Go-Sanjō, the first in generations without a Fujiwara mother, began to curb the clan, and from 1086 retired emperors ruled behind the throne through the insei system. Succession disputes led to fighting in 1156 and 1159, after which Taira no Kiyomori dominated the court for some twenty years, filling offices with relatives and placing his grandson on the throne. The Minamoto then rose against the Taira in the Genpei War, and in 1185 Minamoto no Yoritomo took power, founding the Kamakura shogunate and an age of warrior government.

Our 1000 and 1100 maps label Japan Imperial Japan (Fujiwara), after the regent family that dominated the court, covering much of Honshū, Shikoku and Kyūshū in today's Japan.