Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/22

JAPAN of the central government; against the autochthons, whom the provincial soldiers had been specially organised in the eighth century to resist, and against insurrections which occasionally occurred among sections of the military men themselves. The nation was, in effect, divided into three factions,—the Court nobles (Kuge), the military families (Buke), and the priests.

The military men had at the outset no literary attainments: they knew nothing about the Chinese classics or the art of turning a couplet. Arms and armour were their sole study, and the only law they acknowledged was that of might. The central government, altogether powerless to control them, found itself steadily weakened not only by their frank indifference to its mandates, but also by the shrinkage of revenue that gradually took place as the estates of the local captains ceased to pay taxes to Kyōtō. Had the Fujiwara family continued to produce men of genius and ambition, the capital would probably have struggled desperately against the growth of provincial autonomy. But the Fujiwara had fallen victims to their own greatness. By rendering their tenure of power independent of all qualifications to exercise it, they had ultimately ceased to possess any qualification whatever. The close of the Heian epoch found them as incapable of defending their usurped privileges as had been the patriarchal families upon whose ruins they 2