The Akō Incident: a look at Heian Japan politics

I’ve been continuing my read of Prof. Robert Borgen’s excellent biography on the life and times of Sugawara Michizane, the famous poet and Confucian official who later became deified in Shinto as Tenjin after a wrongful exile. One incident covered in the biography, the Akō Incident (阿衡事件, akō jiken) provides a very interesting look at court politics in the Heian Era, power struggles, and Michizane’s small but admirable role in the incident. It’s a small incident, but says a lot in my opinion and worth exploring. Note this is completely unrelated to another similarly-named incident centuries later involving the 47 Ronin.

By Michizane’s time in the 9th century, the Emperor’s power was increasingly in check by the Fujiwara clan, whose intermarriages more and more dominated key positions in the Court, while their private holdings in the provinces increasingly fell outside the purview of taxation and administration under the Ritsuryō codes that served as the law of the land. Fujiwara no Mototsune’s young nephew became Emperor Yōzei in 876, and naturally Mototsune himself acted as regent until the boy was old enough to manage affairs himself. Trouble was, Emperor Yōzei was extremely mentally unstable, and numerous incidents recorded showed him to be aloof, violent and sadistic. After the Emperor murdered the son of his wet nurse,¹ the problem became so bad that the ministers unanimously demanded his retirement, and even Mototsune had to agree. After armed guards escorted the Emperor to his permanent retirement home, Mototsune had to find a new Emperor, but instead of appointing another child-relation to the throne, Mototsune made the wise, practical decision to have a mature, adult ascend the throne. That man became Emperor Kōkō, and although a “regent” was no longer needed, the new Emperor and Mototsune managed to work out an agreeable relationship whereby Mototsune retained his dual-post of Chancellor of the Realm (太政大臣, daijō daijin).

However, Emperor Kōkō became ill a few years later, and had to appoint a new heir to the throne, and that’s when the troubles began. The Emperor appointed his son, who had no Fujiwara relations at all and a mature adult himself, as Emperor Uda. Uda’s relationship with Mototsune, still in power, began well enough, but according to Borgen, trouble began as Uda sought to add more men to the Court who were loyal to the Emperor, and not the Fujiwara Clan or Mototsune, and Mototsune’s role in the government was now questionable. Per custom of the time, Mototsune withdrew to his personal residence for a time, to await the Emperor’s formal request to return to Court, and politely refused the request to come back as Kanpaku, a kind of advisor/regent. The refusal was just polite custom, no surprises. But then, the second request mistakenly asked him to return to court under the role of Akō (阿衡), which turned out to be a largely ceremonial role in Chinese culture (from which the Heian Court was modeled). Mototsune felt slighted and refused to respond. By 888, the problem worsened as Mototsune refused to return to Court, and many other officials also failed to appear claiming illness. As Borgen explains, most of them feared the wrath of Fujiwara no Mototsune if they appeared to side with the Emperor, so functions in the Court ground to a halt.

Emperor Uda had to defend his counselor Hiromi’s mistake, and sought to placate Mototsune to no avail. Finally, the stand-off ended when Emperor Uda sought to punish counselor Hiromi, and took Mototsune’s daughter as a consort, and life turned to normal at the Court.

At this time, Michizane, who was a close friend of Hiromi, wanted to defend his actions, but was serving faraway as governor of Sanuki Province, and heard about the incident well after it concluded due to delays in receiving letters. Hiromi, who made the slight to Mototsune, had been a loyal student under Michizane’s father, and he felt close to him, so he tried to defend Hiromi’s actions by further clarifying the role of Akō. While it sounds like a battle of semantics, it also became a battle between the Emperor’s camp and the Fujiwara one. Later, as Professor Borgen shows, he even sent a strong letter of reprimand to Mototsune while defending his friend:

You, Mototsune, occasionally served at the national shrine, but how can that service compare with the merit of Hiromi’s accumulated days of worship? Because of your position, you are supposed to be a model of behavior, but how can being a model compare with Hiromi’s active efforts as a teacher? Your office gives you the nobility of a great minister, but how can that status compare with his as the grandfather of princes?

Michizane had real temerity to reprimand Mototsune this way, but as Borgen shows, it helped Michizane gain favor with Emperor Uda and eventually reach the third-rank. It may also have later contributed to his downfall, states Borgen.

To me, reading this incident is a clear indication of why the Ritsuryo system of the Heian Period gradually broke down. You can see how although the Emperor was the head of government, and untouchable in a way, powerful families could still manipulate government, manipulate marriages, and exert real power to circumvent the system when necessary. By Michizane’s time, the Fujiwara Clan were already pretty entrenched, but by the time of Lady Murasaki and her diary a century later, they were practically all-powerful until the rise of the Heike and Genji samurai clans.

P.S. Interesting bit of trivia, Emperor’s Yōzei and Kōkō both have poems included in the Hyakunin Isshu poetry collection mentioned previously (poems #13 and #15 respectively), as does Michizane of course.

¹ Given the very real sentiment in Shinto towards death and pollution, and the belief at the time of the Emperor’s divine status, such an incident was especially shocking and impossible to pardon, let alone in the Imperial Palace itself.