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Updated: June 29, 2025
Kyoto was laid in ruins, and rare books lay on the roadside, no one caring to pick them up. Throughout the Ashikaga period the Kyoto university existed in name only, and students of Japanese literature in the provinces disappeared. A few courtiers, as Nakahara, Dye, Sugawara, Miyoshi, etc., still kept up the form of lecturing but they did not receive students at large.
It is noticeable that in the compilation of all these a leading part was taken by one or another of the great Fujiwara ministers, and that the fifth numbered among its authors the illustrious Sugawara Michizane. When the Emperor Mommu died , his son, the Prince Imperial, was too young to succeed.
The spirit of the ill-fated Sugawara Michizane was appeased by building shrines to his memory, and a similar resource exorcised the angry ghost of the rebel, Masakado; but no such prevention having been adopted in the case of Motokata, his spirit was supposed to have compassed the early deaths of his grandson's supplanter, Reizei, and of the latter's successors, Kwazan and Sanjo, whose three united reigns totalled only five years.
Greatest in this family was the renowned Sugawara Michizané, a polished courtier and famous scholar, whose talents raised him to the highest position in the realm. Japan had no man of greater learning; his historical works became famous, and some of them are still extant. But his genius did not save him from misfortune.
A school and hospital, founded by Fujiwara Fuyutsugu in 825, received an Imperial endowment. At almost exactly the same time the Bunsho-in was founded by Sugawara. The Sogaku-in was founded in 831 by Arihara Yukihara. In 850 the consort of the emperor Saga built the Gakkwan-in for the Tachibana family; and in 841 the palace of Junna became a school.
Oye Tomotsuna, Sugawara Fumitoki, Minamoto Shitago these were famous littérateurs, and Minamoto Hiromasa, grandson of the Emperor Uda, attained celebrity as a musical genius. Minamoto Narinobu, and Minamoto Toshikata. It is observable that in this necessarily brief summary the name "Minamoto" occurs several times, as does that of "Fujiwara" also.
It was strange, indeed, that in an age when the sword was the paramount tribunal, the highest dignitaries in the land revered the exponents of ethics and literature. Takauji and his younger brother, Tadayoshi, sat at the feet of Gen-e as their preceptor. Yoshimitsu appointed Sugawara Hidenaga to be Court lecturer. Ujimitsu, the Kamakura kwanryo, took Sugawara Toyonaga for preacher.
It is recorded of Moronao that he abducted the wife of Enya Takasada, and of Moroyasu that he desecrated the grave of Sugawara in order to enclose its site within his mansion, both outrages being condoned by the shogun, Takauji, In truth, even in the days of Taira overlordship, Kyoto was never so completely under the heel of the military as it was in early Ashikaga times.
Kibi no Makibi and Sugawara no Michizane were the only two Japanese subjects that attained to be ministers of State solely in recognition of their learning, but several littérateurs reached high office, as chief chamberlain, councillor of State, minister of Education, and so forth. Miyoshi Kiyotsura ranks next to Michizane among the scholars of that age.
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