Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast episode 629, Flowering Fortunes, Part 4.

Despite his best efforts, I think by the year 2001, a gambling man would have started to hedge

his bets against the odds of Fujiwara and Omichinaga's continued success in Heon politics.

Yes, he was the regent of all Japan.

Yes, he had succeeded in driving his primary rivals for power, his nephews, Korya Chica and

Takaye, out of Kyoto and into exile.

Yes, his daughter, Shoshi, was in the imperial harem.

But her position was not secure because Emperor Ichigyo was paying far more attention

to Shoshi's older cousin, Tashi, who was older and more secure in the emperor's affections.

Michinaga's position was in fact weakening enough that by 998, he was forced to walk back

what had been the political coup that

theoretically secured his career, the exile of his nephews.

One of the ladies of the emperor's household, the daughter of a previous emperor, had taken

ill, and the rumor going around the capital was that the cause was the spiritual resentments

created by the exiles of the two young

men.

It's a bit hard to wrap your head around from a modern perspective, but the belief at the time was

that human resentment had an almost supernatural power to harm others, even if the person

holding those emotions didn't intend it.

In the tale of Genji, for example, it's resentments of that type from the spurned Lady Rochjo

which kill Genji's wife, Ali No Ue.

The notion that human emotion was so powerful it could affect the physical world was deeply embedded

...