Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/23

THE MILITARY EPOCH climbed to supremacy. And, just as the decadence of the patriarchal families and the usurpation of the Fujiwara were divided by a temporary restoration of authority to the Throne, so the decadence of the Fujiwara and the usurpation of the military clans were separated by a similar rehabilitation of imperialism.

Shirakawa (1073–1086) was the sovereign who took advantage of the Fujiwara's weakness to resume the administration of State affairs.

Yet Shirakawa himself inaugurated a new form of the very abuse he had abolished: he instituted a system of camera Emperors. Though he actually occupied the Throne for fourteen years only, he ruled the Empire forty-three years after his abdication, under the title of Hōwō (pontiff). In short, though great enough to conceive and consummate the kingly project of recovering the reality of imperial power from the Fujiwara nobles who had usurped it, he afterwards, by reducing the nominal sovereign to the status of a mere puppet vis-à-vis, the retired monarch deliberately placed himself in the position that the Fujiwara had occupied vis-à-vis the Throne. Neither could he escape the taint of his time, for though undoubtedly a man of high ability and forceful character, he was neither economical nor upright. He built several magnificent palaces standing in spacious and beautiful parks; he devised new and costly kinds of entertainment; he lavished vast sums on the construction of 3