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Updated: September 14, 2025
Sir Robert is now looking into the military, monastic, and baronial architecture of the mediæval period on the Continent, and goes next year to Japan to begin the exhaustive researches which are to culminate in his next book, the "Lives of the Mikados."
The mikados had sunk out of sight, being regarded by the public with awe as spiritual emperors, while their ministers rose into power and became the leaders of life and the lords of events in Japan. They were of royal origin, and rose to leading power in the year 645, when Kamatari, the founder of the family, became regent of the empire.
All the great offices of the empire in time fell into the hands of the Fujiwaras: they married their daughters to the mikados, surrounded them with their adherents, and governed the empire in their name. In the end they decided who should be mikado, ruled the country like monarchs, and became in effect the proprietors of the throne.
For more than two centuries the Ashikaga lorded it over Japan, as the Hojo had done before them, and the mikados were tools in their strong hands. Then arose a man who overthrew this powerful clan. This man, Nobunaga by name, was a descendant of Kiyomori, the great leader of the Taira clan, his direct ancestor being one of the few who escaped from the great Minamoto massacre.
We shall, therefore, pass with a rapid tread over this long period, giving only its general historical trend. The conquest of Corea was of high importance to Japan. It opened the way for a new civilization to flow into the long isolated island realm. For centuries afterwards Corea served as the channel through which the arts and thoughts of Asia reached the empire of the mikados.
The Mikados lost all real power, and the Shoguns or Tycoons had the actual government in their hands. In recent times a revolution occurred which restored to the Mikado the power which had belonged to him in the ancient times, before the changes just related took place.
This despite the fact that the mythology and the so-called early history are recorded in the same works, and are characterised by like miraculous impossibilities; that the chronology is palpably fraudulent; that the speeches put into the mouths of ancient Mikados are centos culled from the Chinese classics; that their names are in some cases derived from Chinese sources; and that the earliest Japanese historical narratives, the earliest known social usages, and even the centralised Imperial form of Government itself, are all stained through and through with a Chinese dye, so much so that it is no longer possible to determine what percentage of old native thought may still linger on in fragments here and there.
As the shoguns became paramount over the mikados, so did the Hojo, the regents of the shoguns, become paramount over them, and for nearly one hundred and fifty years these vassals of a vassal were the virtual emperors of Japan. This condition of affairs gives a curious complication to the history of that country.
But they were far surpassed in longevity by a statesman named Takénouchi, who served five mikados as prime minister and dwelt upon the earth for more than three hundred and fifty years. There was not much "rotation in office" in those venerable times. We must come down for six hundred years from the days of Jimmu to find an emperor who made any history worth the telling.
The Mikados retired from personal contact with their subjects; and the power by degrees fell into the hands of the families related to the Mikado, and combined into clans. One family, the Fujiwara, by degrees absorbed the civil offices. They gradually sank into luxury.
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