Later Years
Michinaga exercised such powers even after he formally retired from public life in 1019. He continued to direct the affairs of his son and successor, Fujiwara no Yorimichi.
Michinaga is popularly known as the Mido Kampaku, implying that he had usurped the full power of a kampaku without necessarily calling himself that, though he retained the title sesshō regent in a short term from 1016 till 1017. In 1017, he gave this office to his heir Yorimichi. Soon afterwards, a series of emperors started to retire to a monastery early in life, and put their young sons on the throne to run the country from behind the scenes. As it turned out, this tactic briefly allowed the emperors to wrestle power back from the Fujiwara clan, only to see it fall to the Taira warrior clan instead.
Read more about this topic: Fujiwara No Michinaga
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The real stumbling-block of totalitarian régimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is mens inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.”
—Simone Weil (19091943)