Ball (nobility)

The Kuge ( Japanese 公家 ) or civil nobility was a Japanese aristocratic class that emerged from the uji , the upper class of the Yamato state.

history

In the course of aristocratization in the seventh century, the uji elite transformed into a noble society that, detached from its warlike characteristics, was exclusively active at the imperial court. This change is also related to the immigration of many Korean scribes who imported Chinese court culture, script and Buddhism, in connection with Yamato's alliance with the Kingdom of Baekje on the Korean peninsula and the flight of the local elites to Japan.

The highest members of the ball were the imperial regents, called Sesshō and Kampaku , whose posts were reserved for the five regent houses of the Fujiwara family .

They ruled the court in Heijō-kyō ( Nara period ) and Heian-kyō ( Heian period ), until the warrior class ( Buke ) gained strength in the 12th century and pushed back the Kuge, which ultimately resulted in the establishment of the first shogunate by Minamoto no Yoritomo and the beginning of the Kamakura period . With the failed restoration of imperial power in the Kemmu Restoration (1336) and the subsequent rise of the daimyo in the Sengoku period as a new aristocratic upper class, they finally lost their importance.

To distinguish between the two classes of aristocracy, the Buke is called the sword aristocracy and the ball is called the civil aristocracy.

During the Meiji Restoration in 1869 they were combined with the daimyo in a single aristocratic group, the Kazoku .

swell

• Sansom, George Bailey (1962). "Japan: A short cultural history." New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
• Turnbull, Stephen (1998). The Samurai Sourcebook . London: Cassell & Co.
• John Whitney Hall, The Cambridge History of Japan