Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/185

 possession of armed strength which the Throne had no competence to control. There another broad line of cleavage is seen. Throughout the Fujiwara era the centre of political gravity, though shifted from the sovereign to the Court nobles, remained always in the Court. Throughout the era of the Taira, the Minamoto, and the Tokugawa, the centre of political gravity was transferred to a point altogether outside the Court, the headquarters of a military feudalism.

One fact has always to be remembered in connection with the usurpations of these families: their ancestors were not ordinary subjects. The Fujiwara traced their origin to the era of gods. The progenitors of the Taira and the Minamoto were sons of Emperors reigning at the commencement of the ninth century. The Tokugawa were a branch of the Minamoto. If a broad survey of Japanese history indicates that the sanctity derived by a sovereign from his divine lineage contributed to the stability of his throne only in so far as it constituted a charter of power for the nominal, but really usurping, agents of his will, the same history indicates that those agents were themselves scions of the Imperial stock.

In the year 794 the Imperial capital was transferred from Nara to Kyōtō by order of the Emperor, Kwammu. It has been conjectured that one of the chief objects of the change was to separate religion and politics. The extrav