THE PILLOW BOOK

Appendix 2: THE GOVERNMENT In the seventh century the leaders of Japan instituted a Great Reform which at least on paper, affected every aspect of national life. Their main aim was to weaken the ancient dan-family system that had dominated Japanese society since the beginning of history and to substitute a modern Chinese style of government. As in the corresponding great change some twelve centuries later when Japan renovated herself on Western models, the reform movement of the seventh century was spread over several decades; the final codes incorporating the changes were not promulgated until the eighth century. Though few of the specific changes were to be permanent, and though the structure collapsed almost entirely with the advent of feudalism, the new modes of provincial and central administration were still the theoretical basis of government in Sei Shōnagon ’s time, and some of the innovations have lasted in form until modern times.

A primary motive of the reformers was centralization. In the provinces all local officials were subordinated to a Governor who was appointed every six years by the central government. The central government itself was reorganized in pyramidal form. with the emperor at the apex.

Theoretically all authority in the land derived ultimately from him; but, as it turned out, few emperors in Japanese history had any real secular power, and by Shōnagon ’s period the divine sovereign was in fact an impotent young puppet manipulated by the Fujiwara family.

Under the emperor came the two divisions of government, one religious and the other secular.

The secular branch was headed by the Great Council of State, whose hierarchy included a Prime Minister and the Great Ministers of the Left, Right, and Centre. Since the first and last of these posts were usually unfilled, the highest officials were the Ministers of the Left and Right, who from the middle of the ninth century were usually leading members of the Fujiwara family.

By Shōnagon’s time, however, the real ruler of the country was neither the emperor nor any of these Great Ministers but the Chancellor, who was always the head of “northern” branch of the Fujiwaras. This post was extra-legal in the sense that it was not part of the system officially adopted in the seventh century. Though the Chinese hierarchy was never repudiated, no one in Shōnagon ’s period would have dreamt of challenging the hegemony of the Fujiwara Chancellor. A similar dichotomy between theory and reality applied to many of the lower strata of the hierarchy. Almost all the multifarious government departments and officials established as part of the Great Reform were preserved; but more and more frequently their actual functions were usurped by private or extra-legal organs of government. As a result, many of the impressive titles mentioned in The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji were almost entirely formal, and the corresponding posts had become mere sinecures; real work and power had moved else- where, often to the Administrative Councils of the vast and prepotent Fujiwara family. This distinction should be kept in mind when examining the following account of the hierarchy under the Great Council of State.

Next in rank to the Great Ministers were the Major, Middle, and Minor Counsellors and the eight Imperial Advisers, who were all members of the Great Council. The Major Counsellors, of