Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), a modern scholar of folklore, referred often in his work to a tendency in traditional Japanese society for people and institutions to make a clear, binary distinction between the realms of public and private life.41 Drawing on historical sources, Yanagita used the term “hare"—literally meaning “sunny” or “clear”—to specify occasions and activities that were public or formal, such as rituals, festivals, annual observances, and rites of passage. In contrast to hare, he referred to the notion of ke, signifying the private or mundane, the profane, or even the defiled. According to Yanagita and those who subscribed to the idea of a hare/ke binary, the distinction between public and private life was particularly sharp before the dawn of the modern era. Premodern Japanese people, they suggest, saw themselves as having two interrelated, yet sharply distinct, social profiles: one as a private individual and another as a member of a social unit such as a family, temple, or other institution, endowed with certain duties and a public persona.
In the late 1960s, Kawakami Mitsugu applied the hare/ke binary to an examination of residential architecture in medieval Kyoto.42 With striking clarity, he showed that the distinction between public and private life took on physical form within the homes of the capital elite. As touched upon earlier, palaces built in the shinden style were ostensibly meant to be the prescribed venues of ritualized imperial statecraft.
Possessing a central shinden and its associated structures endowed members of the civil aristocracy with the physical infrastructure to conduct public rituals that—in their adherence to strict, status-specific protocols—reinforced and authenticated their membership in the imperial hierarchy.43 From the outset, however, there was a gulf separating the idealized public functions of elite palaces and the day-to-day needs of those who occupied them. To be sure, palaces were much more than sterile venues of ritual or public ceremony. They were also fully functional private residences, homes to large, multigenerational aristocratic families, and the headquarters of dynamic household enterprises. It was therefore necessary for them to accommodate the everyday lives of their occupants as well as those unofficial (or quasi-official) social, economic, and political activities through which members of the aristocracy accumulated and maintained their influence. Kawakami’s findings showed that from as early as the eighth century, the elite began partitioning the interiors of their palace structures so as to create private spaces along the north, or “back-facing,” sides.44 Appearing in documents as tsune-gosho (“everyday palace”) or even ke-gosho (“mundane palace”), the names of these spaces clearly capture their informal functions (see Figure 4.2). They also distinguish them sharply from their south-facing and, perhaps not coincidentally, sunnier counterparts, which continued to be reserved for public rituals, events, and official court business. Incidentally, it was the impulse to create more and better private spaces—while not too much compromising ritual spaces—that led to the emergence in about the fourteenth century of an entirely new, free-standing type of structure called kaisho (“meeting place”). Structurally and stylistically distinct from their shinden counterparts, early kaisho became the prototypes of shoin-style architecture, which, as the preferred venue of non-Ritsuryo business and cultural pursuits, proliferated from the early fifteenth century.45
The basic principle that informed a division of public and private space within elite palaces can be transposed onto Kyoto’s entire premodern urban landscape. As we have seen, despite how much the city had evolved over time, there continued to be a strong sense that capital space was public space and that it should be free from the mitigating forces of outside influence. While there was tacit acceptance of household enterprises and even private religious facilities, evidence suggests that social pressures forced a high degree of compliance regarding the principles of architectural comportment. Elaboration and expansion
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4.2. Early examples of "regular palaces" (tsune-gosho) on the north faces of central shinden (indicated with hashed lines). A: Sojo Yoshiyasu palace, ca. 1228 (Mon'yoki, zuzo, vol. 12, 71); B: Saionji Kitayama Palace, ca. 1285 (Saionji, Kinhira koki, V0I. I, 149-150); C: Imadegawa Palace, ca. 1303 (Sawamura et al., Shin kenchiku-gaku taikei, 278); D: Okazaki-bo Sanenori-in, ca. 1319 (Mon'yoki, zuzo, vol. 12, 199).
Had to take place in ways that did not violate—at least not flagrantly so—certain taboos or the basic tenet that a Kyoto residence was an official domicile, a honjo, built to a size and style consistent with its owner’s formal status. Tsune-gosho and kaisho, consequently, were always created on the northern or “back” sides of official palaces, separated by walls and distance from the south-facing formal and public venues. Private oratories, though numerous, remained relatively small, unremarkable fixtures and, perhaps because they generally possessed no sectarian affiliation, were never called “temples.” Those who broke the rules, for example by building palaces that were inordinately opulent or unjustifiably large, were frequently censured and sometimes even punished.46 By maintaining multiple capital residences of enormous size and architectural ostentation, the heads of the Fujiwara
Family during the ninth and tenth centuries were the worst offenders. They alone, however, could justify their extravagance on the grounds that they were creating sato-dairi, temporary imperial palaces, outfitted with the structures and spaces necessary for the emperor to conduct imperial rituals and government.47 In sum, it is difficult to find cases where members of the Kyoto elite flagrantly and without either justification or reproach gave material form to their often substantial private wealth or influence within the context of their official capital residences. To give form to their wealth, they turned to a place free of public pretentions and sumptuary restrictions: the capital’s immediate surroundings.
Throughout the Heian period and the first half of the medieval era, the most successful of the Kyoto elite—including imperial princes, civil aristocrats, and, later, warrior leaders—engaged in a layered building practice that can be read as a homology of their dual identities, first as civil servants and members of the imperial hierarchy, and second as men of great private power.48 Within the capital, they maintained official family residences that, in terms of their adherence—albeit imperfectly—to status-specific codes dictating sizes and styles, were emblems of their formal public profiles. Outside, they built residential compounds that, in their architectural and artistic lavishness, large sizes, and frequent incorporation of religious apparatuses, were monuments to their extra-public lives, private influence, and spiritual inclinations. Close examination of elite building patterns over time— including attention to who built what, when, where, and for which types of functions—reveals a public/private binary that maps neatly onto the geographic distinction between the capital and its surroundings. There emerges what can be read as an equation of Rakuchu with hare, the realm of public authority, officialdom, and the state; and Rakugai with ke, the world of the individual, a place where the rich and powerful could play, worship, and sometimes exercise sweeping influence in ways unencumbered by the strictures of formal public institutions.
The tendency for the elite to build exurban retreats—most often appearing in documents as betsugyo or besso—has traditionally been attributed to a desire to engage in private leisure activities amidst sites of extraordinary natural beauty (for the locations of major betsugyo, see Figure 3.11). This interpretation, however intuitive and probably not entirely incorrect, overlooks the fact that because betsugyo tended to i ncorporate substantial, sometimes monumental, religious
Facilities (indeed some encompassed full-fledged monasteries), their construction within the capital was probably considered taboo. More important, the greatest among them ended up being much more than mere retreats or temples, however grand. Upon their owner’s retirement from public office, they became full-time retirement palaces of substantial size, religious potency, and, most significantly, institutional consequence.
The pattern by which some of Japan’s most influential politicians retired from public office only to exercise greater power from behind the scenes is a well-rehearsed narrative. While retired emperors Shirakawa, Toba, and Goshirakawa are the most emblematic examples of the phenomenon, such was also the case with Fujiwara no Michinaga and his son Yorimichi, as well Saionji Sanekane (1249-1322) and the Ashikaga shoguns Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) and Yoshimasa (1436-1490). What often goes unnoticed about the late careers of these political giants is that in each case, the departure from public life corresponded with a departure from the capital. Formal retirement coincided with the quitting of an official capital residence and the promotion of a pre-established exurban betsugyo to the status of full-time palace, temple, and administrative headquarters. In sum, an individual’s transition from public authority to private power often meant a move from Rakuchu to Rakugai, from the capital to its surroundings.
Not all men of consequence retired to the capital’s outskirts. In fact, most did not. Those whose influence increased after leaving public office, however, almost always did. Again, the best examples are the several retired emperors who ruled in retirement from the massive temple-palace complexes of Shirakawa, Toba, and Hojuji. As we have seen in the previous chapter, in addition to lavish private living quarters, each of these sites included monastic structures as well as considerable spaces dedicated for use by teams of administrators, retainers, and military personnel. With only minor adjustments, a similar description can be applied to the retirement villas of the several figures mentioned above. Fujiwara no Michinaga’s Hojoji, for example, was more than merely a temple or even a luxurious retirement palace. It included a variety of nonmonastic structures that enabled the former regent to maintain a high level of political engagement, particularly with respect to marriage politics and the management of land wealth.49 Although his son, Yorimichi, was not as successful, the latter’s retirement complex at Uji, which encompassed the temple of Byodoin,
4.3* Phoenix Hall (Hoodo) of Byodoin Temple, originally part of the temple-palace complex of Fujiwara Yorimichi in Uji, south of Kyoto.
Was likewise designed to facilitate substantial political and economic engagement (see Figure 4.3). About a century later, Saionji Sanekane retired from the lofty imperial post of grand chancellor of state and withdrew to his family’s memorial temple located in the Kitayama Hills northwest of the capital.50 Not only did the eponymously named Saionji Temple serve as a potent political base for Sanekane over the following twenty-nine years, it was later used in much the same way by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. It was at this Kitayama Villa (Kitayama-dono) that Yoshimitsu—having retired from precisely the same imperial post as Sanekane—built a three-storied reliquary covered in gold leaf and famously received an embassy from the Ming court addressing him as “King of Japan” (Figure 4.4). Not only had the former shogun stepped outside the capital, he had assumed a title entirely outside the framework of Japanese politics. Finally, his grandson, Yoshimasa, built the Higashiyama Villa (Higashiyama-dono) east of the city very much in the mold of his predecessors. The site included elaborate facilities both for administrators and vassals, as well as a Kannon Hall dubbed the “Silver Pavilion” that resembled the “Golden Pavilion” at Kitayama (Figure 4.5).51
4.4* Golden Pavilion reliquary (Kinkaku shari-den) of Rokuonji Temple, originally part of the Kitayama Villa of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.
The pattern is clear.52 Capital elites who retired from formal imperial posts to exercise greater power from behind the scenes consistently did so from sites outside Kyoto. Incidentally, it is intriguing that the word used most frequently to describe these sites, betsugyo, can signify a “side business” or at least an alternative occupational profile.53 In this respect, these “retreats” might be though of as the linguistic and functional opposites of official honjo. Whereas honjo were the stately yet conventional capital residences of public servants, betsugyo were the luxuriant exurban homes of hereditary landholders who enjoyed expansive influence by right of their land wealth and close personal ties to both the court and religious establishments. Of critical importance is the fact that in this equation both the public servant and the landholder were the same person, each with a distinct power profile and each possessing a discrete base of operations. One was in the capital and of the state. The other was neither.
The impulse to leave the capital to establish an alternate center of political power should not be interpreted as a rejection of the imperial system, the state, or the emperor. On the contrary, it was a validation.
4.S* Silver Pavilion Kannon Hall (Ginkaku Kannon-den) ofJishoji Temple, originally part of the Higashiyama Villa of Ashikaga Yoshimasa.
That no betsugyo were built within the boundaries of the old city throughout most of the premodern age suggests a sustained respect for the principle of capital exclusivity and, by extension, imperial relevance. Indeed, the acuteness with which the elite remained conscious of Heian-kyo’s borders—again, despite how irrelevant they had become from a development perspective—is perhaps illustrated best in the location of Michinaga’s Hojoji. The former imperial regent built his retirement complex immediately adjacent to his official residence at Tsuchimikado. Nevertheless, it stood, critically, on the eastern side of Higashikyogoku Road, just outside the old city (see Figure 3.11). This is to say that it was as close to the formal zone of imperial power as physically possible, yet still technically outside it.
An additional example comes from 1130. That year, Fujiwara no Shoshi (1101-1145), the first wife of retired emperor Toba, built the temple-palace complex of Hokogoin near the intersection of Konoe and Nishikyogoku Roads, just outside Heian-kyo’s original western boundary.54 Construction occasioned a complete rebuilding of Nishikyogoku,
Which indicates at least two things. First, the need to reconstruct the road in the first place shows the degree to which that part of the city had declined by the twelfth century. More important, the impulse to reconstruct the road at all—merely to locate a temple-palace complex on the other side—suggests a sustained sensitivity to the classical urban ideal and, by association, a desire to underscore its continued relevance.
Inclusion was just as important as exclusion. Indeed, equal attention was paid to ensuring that certain structures—imperial palaces in particular—were not only located within the city but that their regular use did not require venturing outside. In 1317, for example, a decision was made to reorient the imperial residence built near the intersection of Nijo-Tominokoji. The reason given for such a decision, which required substantial human and financial resources, was that the property’s original main gate opened onto Higashikyogoku, an orientation that forced the emperor into the infelicitous position of having to venture out into “Rakugai” when departing his palace (see Figure 3.11).55
These and other examples suggest that reinforcing classical ideas about capital boundaries and exclusivity bolstered the efficacy of the institutions the city was built to accommodate. Maintaining the trappings of a relevant and viable state was key to maintaining the imperial hierarchy. And critically, it was the exploitation of that hierarchy that continued to be—well into the medieval era and beyond—the surest way of accumulating and eventually wielding private wealth and power.
World History
