During the Heian Period of Japanese history there was a practice called “cloistered rule,” where an emperor would abdicate and retire to a monastery but in effect continue to rule, the new emperor being his puppet. The old emperor apparently did this to be freed of the religious and ritual duties and restrictions of the throne. But the linked article does not say what these duties are, or were. They cannot have been too taxing, as the heir and new emperor was sometimes a child (in one case a four-year-old), but they must have been otherwise onerous. Does anyone know? Also, does the emperor still have these duties, or were they discontinued at some point, and why?
There were a bunch of traditional Shinto rituals the Emperor had to perform. He planted the first rice in spring. He performed the jinkonjiki (a ceremonial meal he ate with the spirits of his ancestors). He made offerings for the harvest. He performed a ritual where he dressed in ceremonial clothes and called down the spirits of his ancestors to occupy his body. He tasted the new crop. There were a lot of them, mostly dealing with farming, offering sacrifices to the Kami, and purification.
The Emperor was basically seen as the descendant and heir to Amaterasu, and also the chief intercessor between the mortal world and the world of the kami. Because of his special role and status, the Emperor was the only one who existed both entirely in this world and also in the world of the spirit, which meant that it was his responsibility to keep the kami satisfied with Japan and let the Japanese know of their will.
Oh, to answer the rest of it, a lot of the rituals faded away over time, and the last of them disappeared, along with the official status of the Emperor after the Japanese defeat in World War II, the outlawing of State Shinto, and the renunciation of special status by the Emperor.
That doesn’t sound too onerous a set of duties. I wonder why so many emperors were eager to be rid of it?
There were a lot of rituals. Although it wasn’t only that. A lot of the Cloister Emperors became Cloistered Emperors not because they didn’t want to conduct the religious rituals, but because they were trying to blunt the power of the Fujiwara, who had come to control most of the senior positions at court. By retiring as emperor and setting up their own unofficial courts where they could appoint who they wanted, they could act outside the restraints of the Imperial system, which meant outside Fujiwara rule. Of course, that system had its own problems, and led to the rise of the shoguns and effective rule by the military, but…
Japan has a long tradition of indirect rule, with a puppet performing the public functions, while the real ruler pulls strings from behind the scenes.
In some centuries, it was customary to have an official emperor, a “cloister” emperor, an official shogun, and a “retired” shogun. The “retired” shogun actually ran the country, at three steps removed from the public face of the government.
Help clarify something for me, and/or fight some ignorance.
As I recall it, from the days following Hirohito, there were LOTS of retrospective articles reflecting on “the life and times” of Hirohito. One was that, after WWII, he was compelled to publicly renounce his divine god-like status, and become a mere mortal.
But was that just for him, or is that supposed to apply to all his descendants/successors as well? IIRC, when Akihito ascended to the throne (which was, of course, extensively reported in minute detail in all the media around the world), one of the ceremonies involved some ritual in which he became a god. So was it only Hirohito who became a mere mortal?
The Imperial Rescript on a New Japan states:
I’d guess the rituals were not onerous as much as obnoxious and distracting-- the equivalent of today’s royalty doing a lot of ribbon cutting and official receptions. It’s not hard or terrible, but it takes up a lot of time and quickly becomes unbearably dull.
The bigger issue was, like I said, Imperial resentment of Fujiwara control of the court. Insei rule stopped after the Hogen disturbance.
I wonder who is pulling them now?
From “The Problem of China,” by Bertrand Russell (1922):
Does that still apply?
No, but anyone who says they really understand Japanese politics can be locked up as delusional. Not really, but you need complex charts to keep track of which faction has how much power.
Japanese cabinets are formed by negotiations between the various factions of the ruling party, and career bureaucrats have more influence than what would been seen in the US. The questions for Diet members to ask the cabinet members, and the answers by the ministers often are written by the bureaucrats themselves.
For the Genro, they were losing influence as time went on. Your quote is from 1922, and as the 20s and 30s went along, Japan slide into increasingly greater militarization and ultra nationalism, and the genro lost influence.
IIRC Akihito still performs most/all of he traditional Shinto rituals, only now it’s as a private citizen practicing his religion instead in his of as head of state.