The HEIAN period refers to the epoch in Japanese
history extending from 794 to 1186, when the capital city was located in Heianky¯ o (modern-day
Kyoto). This early medieval period began when the
emperor moved the capital from NARA, and it ended
after the Genpei War, when the victorious Minamoto clan transferred the capital to KAMAKURA.
The Heian period is distinguished for its refined, artistic court culture. Although the emperor’s court served as the cultural center, the real
political power lay with dominant clans, in particular the Fujiwaras. The aristocracy—making up
less than 1 percent of Japan’s approximately 5 million inhabitants—was divided into 10 ranks, with
rank determining a person’s job. We know about
this aristocracy through the writings of its members, but little is known of the lower classes.
The aristocracy resided in shinden palaces, typically one-story wooden structures consisting of
wings joined by corridors, surrounded by gardens.
Living arrangements were fluid. The principal wife,
for instance, might live with her family and have her
husband visit. The nobleman could have his own
mansion and assign his wives to various wings.
Aside from the official wife, the aristocrat may have
secondary wives. Though aristocrats practiced
polygamy (along with casual affairs), monogamy
was the norm for the lower classes who lacked the
funds and leisure time for multiple partners.
Heian Japan looked back to the Chinese TANG
DYNASTY of the 600s to 900s as a model, much in the
same way that medieval Europe was inspired by the
earlier Roman Empire. Fusing native Japanese characteristics with this borrowed Chinese culture, Heian
aristocracy devoted itself to what Ivan Morris calls
the “cult of beauty in art and nature” (194). Court
ceremonies and religious rituals (eiga) ruled aristocratic life. The refined nobleman was expected to
compose poetry and compete in literary contests,
play musical instruments and sing, dance, paint (calligraphy was especially cultivated), and master etiquette forms for conducting love affairs and other
social interactions. Such a code resembles the sprezzatura (“artful artlessness”) of Europe’s ruling class
during the early modern period.
The prevailing sensibility was aware, intense
emotion stemming from the Buddhist realization
of the ephemeral beauty of this world, and expressed in the arts through principles of elegant
aesthetics (miyabi). Although Buddhist ideas were
imported from China, they were modified by native Shinto thought. For instance the belief in spirits and demons was based in Shinto, but exorcists
were frequently Buddhist clerics.
Given the focus upon aesthetics, it is not surprising that the Heian era is the Japanese golden
age for the arts and produced the country’s greatest authors: MURASAKI SHIKIBU, author of Japan’s
most treasured classic, The TALE OF GENJI (Genji
Monogatari), classified as the world’s first novel
and one of the finest; SEI SHONAGON ¯ , whose Pillow
Book (Makura no S¯ oshi) is a complex piece of autobiographical writing that defies easy categorization and description; and IZUMI SHIKUBU, Heian
Japan’s foremost poet.
The above-mentioned authors were all women
living circa 1000, and their presence in the canon
of Japanese literature from their time to the present is unusual for literary canons. In contrast, medieval women writers from Europe had to be
“recovered” in recent decades. The reasons for this
dominance by women writers are much discussed,
but, in short, come from the fact that, as in medieval Europe, where men dominated the official
language of Latin, so, too, in medieval Japan, men
tended to write in the official language of Chinese.
Subsequently, Heian women developed the script
of onna-de (“woman’s hand”) to write in the vernacular language of Japanese. Secluded behind
screens from the prying eyes of men, women writers such as Murasaki Shikibu would entertain such
royal patrons as Empress Sh¯ oshi with romance
prose narratives interspersed with poetry (monogatari), waka poetry reflecting the Shinto appreciation of nature, and autobiographical writings,
such as diaries (nikki).
Once the Heian era ended, however, the number of women writers with their refined elegant
style declined, as the emperor and the aristocracy
in Heianky¯ o began to lose power to provincial military rulers and as more austere Confucian and
Buddhist attitudes began to dominate during the
Kamakura era.
Bibliography
Miner, Earl, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell.
The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1985.
Morris, Ivan. The World of the Shining Prince: Court
Life in Ancient Japan. New York: Knopf, 1969.
Stevenson, Barbara, and Cynthia Ho, eds. Crossing the
Bridge: Comparative Essays on Medieval European
and Heian Japanese Women Writers. New Middle
Ages Series, edited by Bonnie Wheeler. New York:
Palgrave/St. Martin’s, 2000.
Barbara Stevenson