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| 880 |
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Fujiwara Mototsune (836–91) became the first kanpaku (regent for an emperor who was no longer a minor), a post thereafter customarily held by the head of the clan when an adult emperor was on the throne, while the post of sessh came to be reserved for the clan head in the time of a minor emperor. | 1 |
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| 889 |
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| The branch of the warrior Taira clan (or Heike), which was to rule Japan for part of the 12th century, was founded when a great-grandson of Kanmu was given this surname. The clan was established in 825 by another imperial prince. In 814 the rival military clan of Minamoto (or Genji) was founded by other members of the imperial clan, and in 961 the princely progenitor of the later Minamoto rulers received this surname. The descendants of such imperial princes, reduced to the ranks of commoners, often went to the provinces to seek their fortunes, and there some of them merged with the rising class of warriors that was soon to dominate the land. | 2 |
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| 891 |
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| Emperor Uda (r. 887–97, d. 931), who was not the son of a Fujiwara mother, made a determined effort to rule independently without Fujiwara influence and refused to appoint a new kanpaku after Mototsune's death. To further this end, he used the brilliant scholar Sugawara no Michizane as his confidential minister, but after Uda's abdication, Fujiwara Tokihira (871–909) managed to have Michizane removed to a provincial post, where he soon died. He was posthumously awarded many honors and deified, because it was believed that his vengeful spirit had caused certain calamities. Throughout his official career, Tokihira strove valiantly but in vain to stem the tide of governmental corruption and disintegration. | 3 |
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| 905 |
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The Kokinsh (Collection of Ancient and Modern Times), an anthology of more than 1,000 poems, was compiled by imperial order in a revival of interest in Japanese poetry. For more than a century, almost all literary effort and scholarship had been devoted to prose and poetry in Chinese, but Ki no Tsurayuki (869–946) wrote the preface to the Kokinsh in Japanese and followed it in 935 with a travel account, Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary), also in Japanese. Within but a century, Japanese prose would rise to great heights of literary achievement. An important contributing factor to the revival of Japanese literature at this time was the fact that in the preceding century a simple syllabary for writing Japanese phonetically had been devised from the more complicated Chinese characters. | 4 |
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| 930 |
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| The offices of sessh and kanpaku were revived after a lapse of four decades when Fujiwara Tadahira (880–949) became sessh in 930 and kanpaku in 941. | 5 |
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| 935–41 |
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| Civil strife in the provinces broke out on an unprecedented scale, giving witness to the rise of a provincial military class. From 936 until his death in 941, former provincial official Fujiwara no Sumitomo controlled the Inland Sea as a pirate captain, while in eastern Japan an imperial scion, Taira no Masakado, after waging war on his relatives and neighbors, declared himself emperor (940) but was soon killed. | 6 |
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| 967–1068 |
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| Although Emperor Murakami (r. 947–67) did not appoint a successor to Tadahira in 949, after the former's demise, the successive heads of the Fujiwara clan occupied the posts of sessh and kanpaku almost uninterruptedly for a full century. This was the heyday of the Fujiwara clan and the core of the Fujiwara period. Court life was ostentatious and extravagant. At the same time, petty jealousies and intrigues disrupted the Fujiwara; members of the provincial warrior class began to appear on the capital stage as petty military officers and came to be used by court nobles in their disputes; manors continued to grow apace, further limiting government resources; and the general collapse of the central government continued unabated. | 7 |
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| 985 |
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The  j ysh (Essentials of Salvation), written by the monk Genshin (942–1017), gave literary expression to new religious currents that were emerging. A belief had sprung up that the age of mapp (the latter days of the Buddhist law), a period of degeneracy to come 2,000 years after the Buddha's death, had already commenced. There was a growing belief in the Pure Land (Jdo), the Paradise of Amida (in Sanskrit, Amit bha), and in salvation through his benign intervention in favor of the believer and not only through one's own efforts, as earlier Buddhists had taught. Emphasis was increasingly placed on nenbutsu, the repetition of Amida's name or a simple Amidist formula. Kya (903–72), an itinerant monk, was the first to articulate this new religious movement, and Genshin gave it sound literary formulation. The movement continued to develop, and in the 12th and 13th centuries it produced important new Buddhists sects. | 8 |
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| 995–1027 |
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| The rule of Fujiwara Michinaga (966–1027) over clan and state saw the zenith of clan power and some of the most brilliant decades of artistic and literary achievement of the epoch. Although he was never officially kanpaku and was sessh for only a short period prior to his official retirement in 1017, he was perhaps the most powerful leader the Fujiwara produced. At this time, the classic prose of Japan reached its height in Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji) by Murasaki Shikibu (978–c. 1016), a court lady, and in Makura no sshi (Pillow Book), a shorter miscellany by another court lady, Sei Shnagon. Jch (d. 1057), a famous Buddhist sculptor, was active, and Michinaga's successor, Yorimichi (992–1074; sessh 1017–20, kanpaku 1020–68), built the Bydin, the outstanding architectural work remaining from the age. | 9 |
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| 1039 |
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| Armed Enryakuji monks invaded Kyoto to force their will on the government, but were driven off by Taira troops at Yorimichi's command. Such descents on the capital, known as “forceful appeals,” were common during the 11th and later centuries and occasionally led to actual fighting. The turbulence of the monks, who fought fiercely among themselves as well as with the court, made it necessary for the court to appeal to the Taira and Minamoto for military aid, and the warrior clans consequently became more influential at court. | 10 |
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| 1051–62 |
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| In the Earlier Nine Years War, Minamoto Yoriyoshi, on imperial command, destroyed the Abe, a powerful military clan from northern Japan. He thus established the prestige of his branch of the Minamoto clan in eastern and northern Japan. Yoriyoshi's ancestors had already started the military renown of the house, and its status at court as “the claws and teeth of the Fujiwara” greatly increased its power. | 11 |
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| 1068–72 |
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| Emperor Gosanj, not born of a Fujiwara mother, ruled directly without interference from the Fujiwara. Although the latter continued to occupy the posts of sessh and kanpaku, they never again gained full control of the government. Gosanj established a records office (kirokujo) to examine title deeds of manors in an effort to check their growth, but in this attempt he was blocked by Fujiwara opposition. | 12 |
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