United States or United States Minor Outlying Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sometimes the Buddhist priests lent themselves to the deception of becoming nominal owners of large estates in order to enable the real owners to escape taxation. Buddhism in Japan ultimately became a great militant power, ready at all times to appeal to force. Heijo, the fifty-first sovereign, was the eldest son of Kwammu.
The latter, warned by the distress that his own great expenditures on account of the new capital had produced, and fully sensible of the abuses practised by the provincial officials, urged upon the Crown Prince the imperative necessity of retrenchment, and Heijo, on ascending the throne, showed much resolution in discharging superfluous officials, curtailing all unneeded outlays, and simplifying administrative procedure.
However, not being an imperial Samaari but a home loving, family loving American, I shall miss not hearing very much, and not being able to tell you all how I love you. DALNY, July 27th, 1904. DEAR MOTHER: We left Shimonoseki three days ago and have had very pleasant going on the Heijo Maru a small but well run ship of 1,500 tons.
Mention has already been made of Ariwara no Narihira, a grandson of the Emperor Heijo and one of the most renowned among Japanese poets. He was a man of singular beauty, and his literary attainments, combined with the melancholy that marked his life of ignored rights, made him a specially interesting figure. He won the love of Taka, younger sister of Fujiwara Mototsune and niece of Yoshifusa.
Heijo might have bowed to Nakanari's fate, but Kusu's sentence of degradation and exile overtaxed his patience. He raised an army and attempted to move to the eastern provinces. In Mino, his route was intercepted by a force under Tamuramaro, and the ex-Emperor's troops being shattered, no recourse offered except to retreat to Nara. Those who had rallied to the ex-Emperor's standard were banished.
They persuaded the ex-Emperor to intimate a desire of reascending the throne. Saga acquiesced and would have handed over the sceptre, but at the eleventh hour, Heijo's conscientious scruples, or his prudence, caused a delay, whereupon Kusu and her brother, becoming desperate, publicly proclaimed that Heijo wished to transfer the capital to Nara.
When Heijo ceded the throne to Saga, the former's son, Takaoka, was nominated Crown Prince, though Saga had sons of his own. Evidently that step was taken for the purpose of averting precisely such incidents as those subsequently precipitated by the conspiracy to restore Heijo. This prince is believed to have been the first Japanese that travelled to India.
While still Crown Prince, he fixed his affections on Kusu, daughter of Fujiwara Tanetsugu, who had been assassinated by Prince Sagara during Kwammu's reign, and when Heijo ascended the throne, this lady's influence made itself felt within and without the palace, while her brother, Nakanari, a haughty, headstrong man, trading on his relationship to her, usurped almost Imperial authority.
Saga, after a most useful reign of thirteen years, stepped down frankly in favour of his younger brother. There is no valid reason to endorse the view of some historians that these acts of self-effacement were inspired by an indolent distaste for the cares of kingship. Neither Heijo nor Saga shrank from duty in any form.
Heijo died in 824, at the age of fifty-one. *His family was struck off the roll of princes and given the uji of Ariwara Asomi. It is memorable in the history of the ninth century that three brothers occupied the throne in succession, Heijo, Saga, and Junna. Heijo's abdication was certainly due in part to weak health, but his subsequent career proves that this reason was not imperative.
Word Of The Day