The cloistered rule or Insei system (Japanese 院政 ) was a specific form of government in Japan during the Heian period. In this bifurcated system, an Emperor abdicated, but he retained power and influence. The emperors who withdrew to live in monasteries (in) continued to act in ways which were intended to counterbalance the influence of Fujiwara regents and the warrior class. Simultaneously, the titular emperor (the former emperor's successor) would fulfill all the ceremonial roles and formal duties of the monarch.
Retired emperors are called Daijō Tennō or Jōkō. Those emperors who entered a Buddhist monastic community became a Cloistered Emperor (Japanese 太上法皇 Daijō Hōō).
There were emperors who abdicated and cloistered emperors before and after the Heian period, but the cloistered rule system usually refers to the governing system put in place by Emperor Shirakawa in 1086 and remained in force until the rise of the Kamakura shogunate in 1192.
Read more about Cloistered Rule: Background, End of The Heian Period, During The Shogunates
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“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
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