Heian Aristocrats in Japan

An important contextual factor of understanding daily life and customs of the Heian aristocracy is that the Heian period appears to have been two things at the same time in Japan. First, it was very much a set piece, in its details and priorities different from previous and following aristocratic environments in Japanese history. Second--and almost a contradiction, as it seems--it appears to have set the tone for certain features of subsequent generations of Japanese culture and society that persist into the modern period.

From one point of view, the relationship of the Heian aristocracy to the natural seems paradoxical. That is because, on the whole, the experience of the Heian upper class appears to have been very much an indoor one, especially for women, whose presence in the culture was defined--though apparently not enforced, as in a harem--more or less behind screens and curtains (Morris 167). Morris cites the "circumscribed, almost claustrophobic, nature [of Heian upper-class life]. It is to a large extent an indoor life" (167). This, he says, is consistent with the fact that the range of interests among t

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nvestment the Heian had in the quality of experience in general, not only with the environment but also with fellow aristocrats in that environment. Discussion of the structure of interpersonal relationships of the Heian aristocracy must be prefaced by discussion of the sociological structure of the Heian community--or more exactly by discussion of the Heian community as structure. For the evidence of the Heian texts, if they are to be taken as representative of prevailing cultural attitudes, is that no human relationships reach meaning in the modern mind without reference to the fact that Heian society was highly stratified, highly structured, highly formalized. If it cannot be said too strongly that nature informed Heian literature, it seems even more important to stress that human experience among the Heian aristocracy was informed by carefully wrought and observed limits of social hierarchy and social/moral authority. This began with the emperor, although as Morris points out the imperial function was largely symbolic, ceremonial, cultural, and courtly by 950, subsumed as a matter of practical administration by the bureaucracy. Indeed, only if one begins from a premise of strict social structure can one fully appreciate the ps
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Approximate Word count = 1936
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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