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 sesshÅ 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:
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
“The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman treads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)