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 the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)