Heian Japan: Centers and Peripheries (review)

Scholars and students of Japanese history and culture should buy this book. Centers and Peripheries weaves together the latest scholarship in history, religion, literature, and art during the first three centuries (794–1086) of the Heian era (794–1185). It is welcome to have such an outstanding collection of first-rate essays in one volume.

The articles in this volume demonstrate how durable bonds of kinship and lordship underpinned the ad hoc and pragmatic policies of the Heian court in the aftermath of the administrative collapse of the earlier bureaucratic state with its intrusive mechanisms of control and taxation. Culturally, “fertile innovations and epochal achievements in literature and the arts” (p. 1) appeared as a Chinese-Japanese hybrid style of writing and language came to be used by men and women of the court and, with less skill, members of the provincial administration. Buddhism, too, experienced a marked shift from text to ritual as the basis for practice, and at the same time, Buddhist rituals originating in the capital came to influence beliefs and sculpture in the provinces.

The Fujiwara, members of a noble lineage who dominated the court during much of this period, merit the attention of Joan Piggott and G. Cameron Hurst. Piggott explores how Fujiwara no Tadahira ensured Fujiwara influence through institutional innovations and ties to the provinces, while Hurst analyzes how the famous Fujiwara no Michinaga wielded power through alliances with provincial governors. How the rank of “mother of the nation” allowed Fujiwara women to exercise political power that was otherwise institutionally denied them becomes evident in Fukutō Sanae’s related essay.

Well-written essays by Bruce Batten and Karl Friday provide an important counterpoint to the centrally themed essays of Hurst, Piggott, and Fukutō. Friday elucidates the relationship of center and province from the perspective of a warrior, Taira no Tadatsune. Informal networks of kinship and lordship tied even the most recalcitrant warrior to the capital, and the court astutely relied on rivalries and alliances when choosing to use military force. Pragmatism outweighed a narrow concern for legality. After Tadatsune’s death and posthumous pardon, his sons were forgiven as well, even though they did not “officially” surrender.

The western island of Kyushu serves as the backdrop for Batten’s essay. The court delegated authority and the ability to defend Japan’s borders to the northern Kyushu headquarters of Dazaifu. This area remained important by serving as an entrepot for trade even as official diplomatic missions ceased. Links to the capital remained vibrant because state policies meshed with “parochial interests.”

Robert Borgen’s account of the travels of the priest Jōjin from the Heian court to the capital of the Song Dynasty illustrates how pragmatic diplomatic exchanges had become as priests were treated as if they were official envoys. In contrast to the practice of earlier ages, knotty diplomatic quandaries were resolved in favor of verbal exchanges. Remarkably, the Song emperors even took the opportunity when meeting with visiting priests to correspond, informally of course, with their Japanese counterparts. Ties to the Fujiwara influenced Jōjin’s actions as well: he offered the hair of one of their deceased consorts to a Chinese temple, thereby melding his “private” and “public” responsibilities.

The essays of Charlotte von Verschuer and Wayne Farris provide a snapshot into the life of the provinces. Verschuer’s detailed and informative account focuses on the nature of trade and taxes. Skilled use of archaeological evidence and analysis of a complaint penned by low-ranking provincial employee against a rapacious governor allow one to reconstruct life in the provinces and infer how factional alliances at the court permeated local administration, with some members siding with and others against provincial governors.

Farris provides an overview of the environmental causes of famine in the Heian era. His narrative contains striking and largely unexamined references to monetary transactions: the price of brown rice fluctuated; peasants were criticized for attempting to sell their progeny; and...