Heian period

Kanmu and his immediate successors ruled actively, campaigning against the Emishi of the northeast – the general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro received the title sei-i taishōgun and secured the surrender of the Emishi leader Aterui in 802. From the mid-ninth century, however, the northern branch of the Fujiwara clan monopolised power by marrying daughters to emperors and ruling as regents: Fujiwara no Yoshifusa became the first regent (sesshō) from outside the imperial family in 866, and his successors also held the office of chancellor (kanpaku) for adult emperors. The system peaked under Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028), father-in-law of three emperors and grandfather of three more.

In 1086 Emperor Shirakawa abdicated but continued to govern from retirement, beginning the era of cloistered rule (insei), which weakened the Fujiwara. Court factions increasingly relied on warriors, and in the Hōgen (1156) and Heiji (1159) disturbances the Taira clan under Taira no Kiyomori emerged supreme. Kiyomori became chancellor of the realm and grandfather of an emperor, but Taira dominance provoked the Genpei War (1180–1185), which ended with the destruction of the Taira at the sea battle of Dan-no-ura.

Heian society was sharply divided between a court aristocracy of a few thousand people and the mass of cultivators. Rank at court was everything; provincial posts were valued mainly as a source of income, and many governors never left the capital, delegating administration to deputies.

The allotment system of the ritsuryō codes collapsed during the ninth and tenth centuries. In its place, private estates (shōen) spread across the country, commended by local landholders to powerful aristocrats or temples in exchange for protection and tax exemption. Local strongmen armed themselves to defend their holdings, forming the warrior bands (bushidan) from which the samurai emerged. The state ceased minting coins after 958, and in the late Heian period imported Song Chinese coins began to circulate, encouraged by Kiyomori's development of the port of Ōwada near present-day Kobe.

Two monks who travelled to Tang China in 804 transformed Japanese Buddhism. Saichō founded the Tendai school on Mount Hiei, whose monastery Enryaku-ji became the great training centre of Japanese Buddhism; Kūkai founded the Shingon school of esoteric Buddhism, with its headquarters on Mount Kōya and at Tō-ji in the capital. Both taught that enlightenment was attainable in this life through ritual, meditation and devotion, and both developed close ties with the court.

From the tenth century the belief spread that the world was entering mappō, the age of the decline of the Dharma, calculated to begin in 1052. Many turned to the Buddha Amida and the hope of rebirth in his Pure Land, expressed in the monk Genshin's Essentials of Rebirth (985) and in Amida halls such as the Phoenix Hall of Byōdō-in. The combination of kami and buddhas (shinbutsu shūgō) was theorised as honji suijaku, and festivals to pacify vengeful spirits, such as the goryōe from which the Gion Matsuri developed, became part of urban life.

After the missions to Tang China were suspended in 894, court culture developed a more distinctly Japanese character, often called kokufū bunka ('national-style culture'). The simplified phonetic scripts hiragana and katakana made it possible to write Japanese as it was spoken. The imperial poetry anthology Kokinshū (905) set the norms of waka poetry for centuries, and Ki no Tsurayuki's Tosa Diary (935) adopted a woman's voice to write in kana.

Women at court produced the period's greatest prose. Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji, written in the early eleventh century, is often called the world's first novel; Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book is a sharp-eyed collection of lists and observations. Painting in the native Yamato-e style flourished in illustrated handscrolls (emaki) such as the Tale of Genji scrolls and the Frolicking Animals (Chōjū-giga). Aristocratic life unfolded in shinden-style mansions set in gardens with ponds, and in elaborate layered robes (the jūnihitoe) whose colour combinations followed the seasons.

Outside the capital, the Heian period was far from peaceful. Taira no Masakado declared himself 'new emperor' in the Kanto in 939, and Fujiwara no Sumitomo raided the Inland Sea at the same time; both were suppressed by other warriors. In the northeast, wars in the eleventh century established the Northern Fujiwara, who for a century ruled the gold-rich north from Hiraizumi. Their temples, above all the gold-covered Konjikidō of Chūson-ji (1124), expressed the Pure Land faith in a provincial capital that rivalled Kyoto in splendour.

The Heian period gave Japan its classical culture. The aesthetics of the court – sensitivity to the seasons, the melancholy awareness of impermanence (mono no aware), the ideal of refined taste – shaped Japanese literature and art ever after, and The Tale of Genji remains a central reference. Kyoto kept its role as imperial capital until 1868, and its street grid still reflects the plan of 794.

Politically, the period's lasting outcome was the reverse of its ideals: the private estate and the private army replaced the bureaucratic state. When Minamoto no Yoritomo set up his headquarters in Kamakura after 1180, power passed to the warriors for almost seven centuries. Historians date the end of the period either to 1185, when the Taira fell and Yoritomo gained the right to appoint stewards and constables, or to 1192, when he was named shōgun.