yoshifusa

This, in fact, was the first step towards the transfer of administrative power from the Throne to the Fujiwara. In the year 851, the Emperor Montoku ascended the throne, and Fujiwara Yoshifusa was appointed minister of the Right. Yoshifusa married Princess Kiyo, daughter of the Emperor Saga.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

It is recorded that the sympathy of the people was with the exiles. These things happened in the year 843. The Fujiwara sought a precedent in the action of their renowned ancestor, Momokawa, who, in 772, contrived the degradation and death of the Crown Prince Osabe on a charge of sorcery But Momokawa acted from motives of pure patriotism, whereas Yoshifusa worked in the Fujiwara interests only.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

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.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Yoshifusa did not possess any of the qualifications, but he wielded power sufficient to dispense with them, and, in the year 866, he celebrated the Emperor's attainment of his majority by having himself named sessho.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Fujiwara Fuyutsugu had died, and it chanced that his son Yoshifusa was a man of boundless ambition.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

We cannot be sure as to the exact date when the great family's policy of boy-sovereigns first took definite shape, but the annals seem to show that Yoshifusa conceived the programme and that his adopted son, Mototsune, carried it out. A halo rests on Seiwa's head for the sake of his memorable descendants, the Minamoto chiefs, Yoritomo, Takauji, and Ieyasu.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

She had been given the uji of Minamoto in order to legalize this union, and she bore to Yoshifusa a daughter who became Montoku's Empress under the name of Somedono.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

It was in the days of Fujiwara Yoshifusa that the descendants of Kamatari first assumed the role of kingmakers. The latter, known in history as the Emperor Seiwa, ascended the throne in the year 859. He was then a child of nine, and naturally the whole duty of administration devolved upon the chancellor. This situation fell short of the Fujiwara leader's ideal in nomenclature only.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Their liaison was not hidden. But Yoshifusa, in default of a child of his own, was just then seeking some Fujiwara maiden suitable to be the consort of the young Emperor, Seiwa, in pursuance of the newly conceived policy of building the Fujiwara power on the influence of the ladies' apartments in the palace. Taka possessed all the necessary qualifications.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Husband of an Empress, father of an Empress Dowager, grandfather of a reigning Emperor, chancellor of the empire, and a regent a subject could climb no higher. Yoshifusa died in 872 at the age of sixty-eight. Having no son of his own, he adopted his nephew, Mototsune, son of Fujiwara Nagara. Seiwa abdicated in 876, at the age of twenty-seven.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era