Why Didn’t JAPAN Have A Dynastic Cycle? #history #japan #dynasty

[youthoughtaboutit]

The position of emperor is quite interesting: roughly going from what was essentially a tribal alliance based high kingship rather than an emperor position (often called the Yamato Kingship for that period) to limited actual control (with heavy overlap with the last period as this period is roughly when the Yamato stopped being referred to/calling themselves Okimi and started being referred to/calling themselves Tennō), but de facto super leaned on/influenced by the Soga, Nakatomi (said to be ancestors of the fujiwara, who would go on to completely dominate the positions of Sessho and Kampaku later on) and Mononobe (all theee were rivals of each other, but the Mononobe were the only ones to oppose Buddhism in Japan and as such the other two ended up allying together, leading to the fall of the Mononobe, which I which I would find more alternate histories based on them winning and Buddhism failing to take hold in Japan since it sounds fascinating and isn’t focused on much) clans, to mostly ridding themselves of that influence and ruling under themselves (taika reforms) and from those clans, to one of them (an empress/female emperor actually) being the puppet of a monk one time and supposedly almost replaced by him, to the emperors having de facto powers of their own again to the emperors having their own powers again (taika reforms part two kind of power in some ways), to the emperors being puppets of “regents” (Sessho or Kampaku, depending if the child was a child or an adult), to literally one emperor having rule in his own power, to the emperors being puppeted by abdicated/retired/cloistered emperors (sometimes multiple at the name time) who often/generally abdicated in order to do so as soon as they could, to beyond puppets of the first shogunate (Kamakura/Kamakura shogunate), to actual power again but for only three years, to being puppets of the Muromachi/Ashikaga shogunates, to being puppets of of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (technically not a shogun due to being of peasant birth/origin), to being puppets of the Tokugawa shogunate, to being puppets of the Genrō and to a *far* more limited degree, the greater Meiji oligarchy (this was the Meiji restoration, as even Meiji de facto was mostly poppet, just in a different form), to the era of Taisho Democracy (so arguably still a puppet, just to a democratically elected body), to being a puppet of the military (Hirohito/Showa), to a form of constitutional monarchy that by its own constitution is de jure even more restrictive than the British one (the British one is just as mostly restrictive de facto, as using most of their powers by their own will would instantly get them either stripped of those abilities or outright dethroned, the Japanese one technically doesn’t even have the emperors set as head of state, but rather the somewhat more vague “living symbols of the state, and if I recall correctly, can’t even do things like charitable foundations and such like their monarchical peers without approval of the government of Japan), of today, which in a way is even more puppet-making than never before. So yeah, the emperors havn’t truly had powers to exercise on their own since the kenmu restoration, and that only lasted three years from 1333 to 1336, and the only real amount of time they had real power in their own right was between 770-858 after the fall from power of Dōkyō (the monk earlier mentioned that supposedly puppeted the empress/emporer and supposedly wanted to become emperor himself, was stripped of his titles and banished by the next emperor), but before the rise of the rule by regents, which itself amounts to less than 100 years. Before that, their period of rule in their own right was was mostly (unless you want to count the three clans influence era, which isn’t really fully able to be argued due to both the influence of said clans and the extremely inefficiently decentralized nature of the state) 645-758, after the Taika reforms, but before the rise of Dōkyō, with all that time of actual power lasting around 100 years.

So yeah, it’s been a very *long* time since the Japanese emperors held power in their own right and when it did, historically speaking, it rarely lasted for very long.

Sorry about the walk of text 😅

[danielsantiagourtado]

Love your content! Japan is amazing 🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵

[youthoughtaboutit]

Side note: could we get a video about “what if the Buddhism failed in Japan, but other Chinese government reforms succeeded?”

I would say “what if the Mononobe succeeded”, but that would probably just result in the answer of “all foreign influence of the time gets rejected entirely and things remain as they were completely), which is kind of boring lol

[andydufresnefromshawshank]

Speaking of Shogun. That’s a great series!

[PhilipNickerson]

Possible History: What if Japan had dynastic cycles😊

[jefferyhanderson]

The emperor and the Imperial court more or less became a mock government during the mid-Heian era(10th century).
Since then, the emperor was basically the tool of legitimacy for the shogunate.
During the Muromachi period, the dignity of the Imperial Court had fallen so low that Courtesans had to sell their bodies for money and local children threw rocks at the Imperial procession for fun… and didn’t get punished.
A dead emperor(Emperor Gotsuchimikado)couldn’t get a funeral because the court lacked “donations, ” and his son(Emperor Gokashiwabara) couldn’t get an official coronation for 22 years because the Chancellor of the then shogun saw it as “a waste of funds for something pompous and meaningless.” (Emperor Gokashiwabara died 4-years later after his coronation at 34.) And then HIS son, the Emperor Gonara had to beg the powerful Sengoku Daimyos of Gohojo, Ouchi, and Imagawa for donations for his coronation. Gonara himself had to work as a calligrapher to pay some of the debts.
After the Sengoku period, during the Edo period, the emperor had retained SOME of his authority back… enough for him to be perceived as a glorified figurehead and not to be mistreated to the point he had to drink watered down Sake or have leftovers for dinners…😰

[dylangtech]

Ya gotta admit, they are quite good at letting others be responsible so they can focus on the arts and culture. The Windsors got nothing on these guys

[oxvendivil]

The Imperial family had a role like the Popes minus the papal states of sorts, their role was spiritual mostly while the Shoguns took the role of Kings anointed by the Emperor/Pope, so if I was translating properly, Shoguns=Kings/Grand Dukes while Emperor=Pope/Patriarch, while in China, the Emperor was the Emperor, someone above Kings and Dukes, and China did not allow anyone to claim being an Emperor except the one sitting on China's throne ruling the Han ethnicity more similar with the European concept of Emperors.

[baraon]

what about the ottomans? their ruling house lasted from 1299 until 1923 while they had full control of the state unlike the japanese emperors