The imperial court in medieval Japanproblematic, thread in the historiography. The first work of this sort was Kitabatake Chikafusa’s
Jinnō Shōtōki (“A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns”), completed in 1343.^3 Kitabatake began his
analysis with the age of the gods, and then followed the succession of emperors over the centuries
that followed. Each chapter examines an emperor, many of whom were insignificant figures.
This made for brief entries, but Chikafusa filled out his history by elaborating on the rule of key
figures and offering insights and opinions about everything from court ceremonies and imperial
titles to political intrigue and Buddhist schools and practices. Like Hakuseki, Chikafusa stressed
the important roles of advisors, to the throne in Chikafusa’s case, to both throne and shogun in
Hakuseki’s.
Important as they are for understanding the eras in which their authors lived, Jinnō Shōtoki and
Tokushi Yoron have obvious limitations as treatises on the medieval court, primary among which
is their restricted focus, limited as it is to individuals (meaning emperors and their advisors) and
the visible workings of politics. In doing this, they miss much of the picture. And yet other schol-
ars have followed in their steps, and usually done so in less interesting and less compelling ways.
Such is the case of the British Japanophile Richard Ponsonby- Fane (1878–1937), whose work
included not just an emperor- by-emperor history of Japan, from Jinmu to Shōwa, but also a
study of the various princely houses, a history of exiled emperors, and an examination of Emperor
Chōkei (r. 1368–1383) (who I must admit, scandalous though it would be to Ponsonby- Fane, I
had never heard of ), whose enthronement ceremony (sokui) was in doubt for many centuries,
potentially removing him from the imperial line.^4
More recently, Ben- Ami Shillony has written Enigma of the Emperors: Sacred Subservience in
Japanese History. The title itself should be a warning to anyone interested in understanding the
complexities of the imperial court over time, for it suggests certain unchanging characteristics
among the emperors, be they individuals from the classical, medieval, or modern eras. The argu-
ment is summed up by the author in the statement:
The reason for this strange survival [of the imperial house], like the reason for the extra-
ordinary longevity of the dynasty, is that unlike other monarchs, the Japanese emperors
combined sanctity with passivity to such an extent, that they were too subservient to rule,
but too sacred to be deposed.^5In considering the emperors of the medieval period, one quickly concludes that this statement
distorts more than it clarifies.
It is easy to dismiss these studies, but there are things to be learned from them, foremost
among which is the folly of essentialist approaches—of scholarship that accepts the notion that
emperors possessed certain unchanging attributes, or “essences.” The point seems obvious when
viewed at this level, broad in scope and simplistic in argument. But on a finer scale, the distinc-
tions occasionally get ignored, as essentialist arguments slip into more discriminating studies. For
example, although emperors might not have possessed unchanging essences, it seems the same
cannot be said of courtiers, whose essences—defining them as highly cultured, effeminate, and
bereft of practical abilities and interests—are often presented as having been fixed during the
Heian period. One result has been an unwillingness to consider courtiers who led armies or
managed estates in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries as anything other than aberrations. In fact,
the evidence suggests a need to rethink the broader definition of “courtier,” to free these indi-
viduals from the essences with which historians have endowed them.
One emperor of the medieval era who deserves careful study as an individual was Go- Daigo
(1288–1339; r. 1318–1339), the subject of books in English by Paul Varley and Andrew Goble.^6
While Varley’s treatment follows a traditional line, seeing Go- Daigo’s efforts to assert power as