The Heian court and the birth of Japanese literature
The capital moves to Heian-kyō (Kyoto), where an aristocratic court develops the kana script and a refined culture that produces The Tale of Genji.
- The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan — Ivan Morris, Alfred A. Knopf (1964)
- The Tale of Genji (translation) — Murasaki Shikibu, trans. Royall Tyler, Viking (2001)
- A History of Japan (2nd edition) — Conrad Totman, Blackwell (2005)
In 794 Emperor Kanmu moved the capital to Heian-kyō, “capital of peace and tranquillity”, now Kyoto. It remained the imperial seat until 1868. For the next four centuries power lay largely with the Fujiwara family, who married their daughters to emperors and ruled as regents.
- A History of Japan (2nd edition) — Conrad Totman, Blackwell (2005)
- The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan — Ivan Morris, Alfred A. Knopf (1964)
Contact with China, which had shaped the early state, was scaled back after 894, and a more distinctly Japanese culture flowered. The kana syllabaries, simplified from Chinese characters, allowed Japanese to be written as it was spoken. Men still wrote official documents in Chinese, so much of the greatest writing of the era was by court women: Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book, and Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, written in the early eleventh century.
- The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan — Ivan Morris, Alfred A. Knopf (1964)
- The Tale of Genji (translation) — Murasaki Shikibu, trans. Royall Tyler, Viking (2001)
Court life prized poetry, calligraphy, the right colour of layered robes and sensitivity to the passing seasons. Ivan Morris called this world “the rule of taste”. Outside the capital, provincial warrior families were growing in strength, and by the twelfth century they would take over.
- The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan — Ivan Morris, Alfred A. Knopf (1964)
- A History of Japan (2nd edition) — Conrad Totman, Blackwell (2005)
Why it matters today
The Heian aesthetic of seasons, subtlety and the beauty of transience, *mono no aware*, still runs through Japanese art, poetry and everyday sensibility, from cherry-blossom viewing to the way emotion is understated. Kyoto, imperial capital for over a thousand years, remains the heart of "traditional" Japan.