Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Courtiers, Priests, Doctors, and Intellectuals
The Emperors, descendants of the sun goddess, had had only brief bursts of power since the
tenthcentury,buttheImperiallinehadneverdisappeared.TheirpalacewasinKyoto,where,
with a grant of lands from the government, they lived a quiet life of ceremony and literary
pursuits. The courtiers who had their homes there still filled the ancient ranks and offices,
and still wore court dress, which indicated distinctions of status by differences of detail. At
the Shogun's behest, ranks and offices in the Imperial court were conferred on warriors of
the upper grades, and on occasions of high ceremony they, too, wore Imperial court dress.
The Emperor continued to perform certain centuries-old ceremonies, such as those connec-
tedwiththeplantingofriceanditsharvesting,butthemainreasonforhissurvivalwassheer
conservatism, coupled with the maintenance by the Shogun of the fiction that his power de-
rived from his appointment as Commander-in-Chief by the Emperor. Travelers to Japan at
the time were scarcely aware of the existence of the Emperor, and Kaempfer in fact called
the Shogun by that title, referring to a sort of Pope living in Kyoto. However, the Emper-
ors had some consolation in that they did not expect to die in harness. They took an early
opportunity of abdicating and living in quiet retirement, watched, of course, as was the in-
cumbent, by officers appointed to them by the central authorities. The eldest son was often
still quite young when he succeeded his father. Younger sons became priests, and many im-
portant Buddhist temples had their chief priesthood reserved for members of the Imperial
family. Under the Tokugawa regime, the Emperor's daughters were not at first allowed to
marry, but had to enter religion.
Kyoto was very conscious that the Emperor lived in the city. Whereas merchants in Edo
hoped to become appointed to serve the Shogun's household, those in Kyoto exerted them-
selves to acquire customers from the court. This was probably not a very lucrative connec-
tion, but the prestige attached to it was considerable, and attracted a snobbish
clientele
who
were willing to pay extra for the glamour of being served by the same person who attended
to the “cloud-dwellers,” as the courtiers were sometimes called. The people of Kyoto would
occasionally see the denizens of the court as they went about their ceremonial business, rid-
ing in their ox-drawn carriages or on horseback. When they made more distant journeys,
perhaps as emissaries going to Nikkō to pay respects at Ieyasu's ornate mausoleum (
64
)
,
or
to the great shrine of Ise, or to Edo for some negotiation, they were granted the services of
