Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/193

 to the Imperial chamber, the Fujiwara family took care that the post of Empress should be reserved for ladies of their own lineage. That was their great political device. By progressive exercises of arbitrariness they gradually contrived that the choice of a consort for the sovereign should be legally limited to a daughter of their family, five branches of which were specially designated to that honour through all ages, and were consequently distinguished by the name Go-sekke (the five assistant houses). When a son was born to a sovereign, the Fujiwara took the child into one of their palaces, and on his accession to the Throne, the particular Fujiwara noble that happened to be his maternal grandfather became Regent of the Empire.

It is necessary to understand this term "Regent." Prior to the Fujiwara usurpations, the first subject in the Empire had been the Prime Minister (Daijo Daijin). But the Fujiwara's method of procedure demanded an office with still greater potentialities. Their plan for retaining the supreme power in their own hands was not to allow the sceptre to be held by an Emperor after he had attained his majority, or, if they suffered him to figure as sovereign during a few years of manhood, they compelled him to abdicate at the moment when his independent aspirations began to impair his docility. For purposes of administration in these constantly recurring minorities a new office was required,