The Emperor's Teacher (2)—Talking Points-b

[a] Managed RF

I am devoting 2012 to one of the projects closest to my heart/mind (心). It is called The Emperor's Teacher, and deals with lessons that need to be understood by managers all over the world. "Managers?," I hear you ask? But I am a parent, a teacher, an employee, and, at home, a busy cook, bookkeeper, and sometime voter. I'm not a manager.                            Yes, you are. 

[b] Window RF

We are all managers, and we would do well to learn abiding lessons of how to make managing work. Some people in our midst (and in human history) have spent inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out how we might manage ourselves (since if you can't get your self right, you'll have a hard time with anything bigger...right?), our families (since a family is a whole bunch of interrelated selves in social communion), and the whole enchilada...all under heaven (天下). The latter term was used traditionally in China to refer to running the empire, but it had both moral and governmental innuendo that we would do well to consider in our own lives today. All three ideas (oneself, one's family, and all under heaven) are versatile enough to be read in secular or sacred terms, and, indeed, early Chinese cosmology had a plethora of ways of interpreting such matters. Interpret away. The concepts are big enough for all of us, as even Dong Zhongshu might have agreed.

My book, The Emperor's Teacher, introduces the greatest management book of all time (Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Ruling), and then explains its key teachings to readers in the twenty-first century. This is challenging stuff for readers today (in East Asia and the West, I might add), just as it was ten centuries ago. No book is deeper or richer with lessons you need to learn to manage your career, your family, your football team... 

Attention Coach Belichick: Your Art of War really needs this updated "app" (call me)

...or the corporation you lead. We all need it. My book takes you through the lessons found in a thousand year-old text. The "Talking Points" that follow in the next few posts will give a sense of the book as a whole. Close readers of Round and Square will know that I have already posted all of chapters one and two, and the first parts of chapters three on this blog (look for them below). I will post the entire "blog draft" on Round and Square in 2012. 

Front Matter:
Talking Points-a          Talking Points-b          Talking Points-c          Talking Points-d          Talking Points-e  
Table of Contents-a                                        Table of Contents-b                                        Table of Contents-c

Chapters:         
1-Breaking the Vessel (12)      2-Living and Learning (12)     3-Spring and Autumn Roles (12)      
4-The New Hierarchy (4)

The Emperor’s Teacher

Life Lessons from Chinese History
“Talking Points"—B

The Scene 

“Author” runs into “manager” in the grocery store, and the conversation turns toward the question of “why the manager should read The Emperor’s Teacher, since she has already read several “Chinese wisdom” books, such as the Art of War and Classic of the Way and Virtue.  The manager enjoyed these books, but still yearns for something more. 

Manager 
I run a small business, and I need results—things I can use.  I have read Chinese management texts, and they all flit like a butterfly here and there, without any specific information about what I should do. I want to manage.  Can your book really help?  The Art of War provides perspective, and I like to think in strategic terms.  But I still need to make concrete decisions about hiring, retention, and long-term planning.  I need specifics, not just strategies. 

[c] Long view RF

Author 
You have only read the “little” books of ancient Chinese philosophy.  They are wonderful and insightful—beautiful works of insight into the human condition.  But Chinese business managers would just chuckle if they thought that you were actually using them (alone) to run an organization—without reading the real management books that every administrator has read (up to now, in Chinese) for a thousand years.  The books that you have read help to think in broad, new ways, but they do not provide guidance for the specific kinds of decisions that you must make as a capable manager.  They provide a brilliant foundation, and they are great preparation for the next step in management thought. 

Manager 
What do you mean? I have read everything on the shelf at Barnes & Noble®. I have read The Art of War, the Book of Changes, the Classic of Virtue and the Way (Daodejing/Tao-te ching), and Confucius’s Analects.  I thought Chinese “business books” were all the same—brief, exotic, and a little strange (at least when I think of working with employees in my division or my bosses several floors up). 

Author 
With all due respect, you have only read some of the brief, ancient works (wonderful and rich as they are) that have been translated tens—even hundreds—of times. You may even have read books by some Western authors who have only read English translations of these ancient texts and then written their own interpretations, without knowing a word of Chinese.  You probably haven’t even heard of the books that Chinese administrators and managers studied in depth for years and years before they were truly capable of exercising leadership.  Those works used the texts you have studied as their foundation, but took management thinking to an entirely new level with what might be called the first “case studies” the world has ever known.  Almost a thousand years before the Harvard Business School opened its doors, Chinese writers were creating case studies as a management teaching tool. 

Manager 
I don’t know what to say.  I take my business reading seriously, and I devote at least ten hours a week to it.  I have studied everything on the bookshelf, from the One Minute Manager and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to From Good to Great and The Fifth Discipline.  I have bought and read every book on Chinese management that I can find.  What do you mean? How can it be that I have never even heard of the books that have been used in China for over a thousand years? 

[d] Highest steps RF

Author 
It is time for the next step.  It is time for you to see how management really worked in the Chinese empire in practice.  It is time for you to see how the Art of War and its wonderful lessons lead into the complex structures of the greatest empire the world ever knew until recent times.  Even Chinese readers dread the challenging language of the original texts, but they all know how important they are.  Every ruler (and manager below him…or her, if you want the truth) studied the lessons I am going to teach you.  What I am about to give you is the highest step ever taken in the management of people and organizations. 

Have you read the Art of War? Have you thought deeply about management? 

Are you ready? 

***  *** 

You need this book.  The other management books have prepared you for this moment, but the Comprehensive Mirror addresses all of the important management issues, and in a way that is strikingly new. 

*Do you want to attract talented people and retain them? 

*Do you want to get the most out of all of your employees—and not just the most motivated of them (or those in the best-rewarded positions)? 

*Would you like to have high morale even among middle managers, instead of people who are “just phoning it in?”  Would you like to get the most out of your work force? 

*Have you been frustrated that no matter how much diverse talent you hire, board meetings stay the same—with few people willing to share ideas? 

[e] Reflection RF

*Do you want to move your company from “good enough” to truly the highest level (the Tang dynasty at its height, so to speak) in every respect?  Do you want to lead employees who want to be at work and who truly care about the products they develop and sell?

The Comprehensive Mirror has taught these lessons for more than nine hundred years, and you have the opportunity to learn from its wisdom.  You have read the Art of War.  You have already learned from great Chinese management literature.  Are you ready for the next step? 

Are you ready?

Front Matter:
Talking Points-a          Talking Points-b          Talking Points-c          Talking Points-d          Talking Points-e  
Table of Contents-a                                        Table of Contents-b                                        Table of Contents-c

Chapters:         
1-Breaking the Vessel (12)      2-Living and Learning (12)     3-Spring and Autumn Roles (12)      
4-The New Hierarchy (4)

The Emperor's Teacher (1)—Talking Points-a

For the introduction to The Emperor's Teacher, click here (coming soon).

[a] Management RF

I am devoting 2012 to one of the projects closest to my heart/mind (心). It is called The Emperor's Teacher, and deals with lessons that need to be understood by managers all over the world. "Managers?," I hear you ask? But I am a parent, a teacher, an employee, and, at home, a busy cook, bookkeeper, and sometime voter. I'm not a manager.                            Yes, you are. 

[b] Versatile RF

We are all managers, and we would do well to learn abiding lessons of how to make managing work. Some people in our midst (and in human history) have spent inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out how we might manage ourselves (since if you can't get your self right, you'll have a hard time with anything bigger...right?), our families (since a family is a whole bunch of interrelated selves in social communion), and the whole enchilada...all under heaven (天下). The latter term was used traditionally in China to refer to running the empire, but it had both moral and governmental innuendo that we would do well to consider in our own lives today. All three ideas (oneself, one's family, and all under heaven) are versatile enough to be read in secular or sacred terms, and, indeed, early Chinese cosmology had a plethora of ways of interpreting such matters. Interpret away. The concepts are big enough for all of us, as even Dong Zhongshu might have agreed.

My book, The Emperor's Teacher, introduces the greatest management book of all time (Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Ruling), and then explains its key teachings to readers in the twenty-first century. This is challenging stuff for readers today (in East Asia and the West, I might add), just as it was ten centuries ago. No book is deeper or richer with lessons you need to learn to manage your career, your family, your football team... 

Attention Coach Belichick: Your Art of War really needs this updated "app" (call me)

...or the corporation you lead. We all need it. My book takes you through the lessons found in a thousand year-old text. The "Talking Points" that follow in the next few posts will give a sense of the book as a whole. Close readers of Round and Square will know that I have already posted all of chapters one and two, and the first parts of chapters three on this blog (look for them below). I will post the entire "blog draft" on Round and Square in 2012.

Front Matter:
Talking Points-a          Talking Points-b          Talking Points-c          Talking Points-d          Talking Points-e  
Table of Contents-a                                        Table of Contents-b                                        Table of Contents-c

Chapters:         
1-Breaking the Vessel (12)      2-Living and Learning (12)     3-Spring and Autumn Roles (12)      
4-The New Hierarchy (4)

The Emperor’s Teacher
Life Lessons from Chinese History
“Talking Points"—A (The Query Letter) 

What's a "query letter?"   

Compressed Version
Maybe you've heard of China. Maybe you’ve read the Art of War, but is that all you know about an economy hurtling headlong into the still-new century?  The Art of War? O.k...check. What comes next? You'd better know, because no one has ever managed anything in China having only read the Art of War. What comes next is the greatest management book of all time—Sima Guang’s Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Ruling (1085). Every Chinese leader in the last nine hundred years has read it. Even Mao Zedong studied it on the back of a donkey during the Long March. Want more? He even disliked the "politics" of the author (nine centuries before his time), yet he read it anyway. Yup, it's that important. Its lessons will change the way we do business and think about time, work, urgency, and everything else. Ready? It is time to get started. There is not another millennium to lose. —Rob LaFleur     

Chinese business is eating America's lunch, and it is because they have read [the Comprehensive Mirror] and we haven’t.  This book exposes the principles that put us on the menu.     —Warren Palmer   

Abridged Query (without author’s “biography”)   
I am writing a book on the lessons of Chinese history for leaders in the twenty-first century. My goal has been to write an engaging, reflective work about how we learn from life and study—a book that will be relevant to business readers, academic administrators, teachers at all levels, and anyone who has ever sought to manage her personal affairs or her family. The “angle” that I have is one of the greatest management texts of all time, and I have devoted my research to it for the past two decades. It is an eleventh-century Chinese history that can best be translated as the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Ruling. Written by a scholar named Sima Guang (1019-1086), and intended to impart the greatest lessons of the past to serious readers, all of the major Chinese leaders in the last thousand years have studied it. Indeed, even Mao Zedong read from it as he rode on a donkey during the Communist Party’s “Long March.”  

[c] Next RF

 

My book addresses an audience acquainted with management lessons of the past—from Aristotle to Abraham Lincoln. It also speaks to a business audience that is increasingly aware of China, and that has been introduced to collections of Chinese maxims such as the Classic of the Way and the Art of War. Until now, there has not been a management book that can say, in effect, “You have read the Art of War, and want to build upon its foundations; here is an approach that takes you to an entirely new level.” In the Comprehensive Mirror, we have the key lessons explained in the kind of detail that the most capable Chinese leaders expected for a millennium. It is the next step in leadership. A quotation from my website sums it up:  
 

        The Comprehensive Mirror is the missing piece in management education, 

        during which students read translations of the Art of War and then cease to 

        read further in the Chinese tradition. I like to say that Sunzi (Sun-tzu) is “lunch” 

        and the Comprehensive Mirror is “what comes next—it’s what’s for supper.”  It 

        is essential reading for everyone at any level of management—from parent and 

        foreman to ruler of the world (for whom it was written in the first place). The 

        problem is that it is 10,000 pages long and is in Chinese—”medieval” Chinese, 

        at that. That is where I come in. I am here to help.
 

I have spent the past twenty years studying Sima Guang and the Comprehensive Mirror, and have the foundation to articulate a series of leadership lessons from its complex narrative. My publications and teaching have dealt with many of the concepts found in the Comprehensive Mirror, and I am one of a relatively small number of scholars capable not only of articulating the broad historical context of the Comprehensive Mirror, but also of giving precise and vibrant translations to the highly concentrated classical Chinese prose in the text.

Front Matter:
Talking Points-a          Talking Points-b          Talking Points-c          Talking Points-d          Talking Points-e  
Table of Contents-a                                        Table of Contents-b                                        Table of Contents-c

Chapters:         
1-Breaking the Vessel (12)      2-Living and Learning (12)     3-Spring and Autumn Roles (12)      
4-The New Hierarchy (4)

[d] Great RF

NEXT 

More "Talking Points" that summarize the big management project called...The Emperor's Teacher. Tomorrow's post finds "author" and "manager" in the grocery store...talkin' management.

Hurtin', Leavin' and Longin' (38)—Big John

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."

[a] Lead mine RF

He's larger than life. He's a flawed hero who has been misunderstood all his life. He is so strong that he can both help and hurt. He is...

...no, I don't mean Newt Gingrich. Put down your newspaper (turn off your Kindle). The hero of this tale is quiet, reflective, and maybe even a little morose. There is not a touch of the grandiose anywhere to be found in this particular hero's self-image, only selflessness and sacrifice. Take a listen to the tale of Big Bad John.

Big Bad John 3:07

-->

       Big John
       Big John

       Every morning at the mine you could see him arrive  
       He stood six foot six and weighed two forty five
       Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip
       And everybody knew, ya didn't give no lip to Big John 

       Refrain 
       (Big John, Big John)  
        Big Bad John
       (Big John)

       Nobody seemed to know where John called home  
       He just drifted into town and stayed all alone
       He didn't say much, he kinda quiet and shy
       And if you spoke at all, he just said, "Hi" to Big John

       Somebody said he came from New Orleans  
       Where he got in a fight over a Cajun Queen
       And a crashing blow from a huge right hand
       Sent a Louisiana fellow to the Promised Land, Big John

       Refrain 
       Then came the day at the bottom of the mine  
       When a timber cracked and men started crying
       Miners were praying and hearts beat fast
       And everybody thought that they'd breathed their last, except John

      Through the dust and the smoke of this man made hell  
       Walked a giant of a man that the miners knew well
       Grabbed a sagging timber, gave out with a groan
       And like a giant Oak tree, he just stood there alone, Big John

       Refrain 

       And with all of his strength he gave a mighty shove  
       Then a miner yelled out, "There's a light up above"
       And twenty men scrambled from a would-be grave
       Now there's only one left down there to save, Big John

       With jacks and timbers they started back down  
       Then came that rumble way down in the ground
       And then smoke and gas belched out of that mine
       Everybody knew it was the end of the line for Big John

       Refrain 

       Now they never reopened that worthless pit  
       They just placed a marble stand in front of it
       These few words are written on that stand
       At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man, Big John 

       Refrain 

      Big John... 
      Big Bad John

Now there's a hero, and I mean that word in the Chinese sense of "larger-than-life-ness"—someone capable of great feats that can come to good or ill. We'll return to that idea at the end of this post. For know, though, we have a combination of Hercules and Lennie in a sad tale of loneliness, redemption, and despair. Big John didn't know his strength when he sent a Louisiana fella to the promised land, presumably many years ago.

[b] Quiet, strong RF

Quiet, shy, and strong...he is the very picture of exile. And exilic response. This is the stuff of mythology, and Jimmy Dean (before he started pitchin' sausage) sings the tale in just the right key of country irony. It is hard not to read it as a tale of redemption, of sorts, in which a man too strong for his own emotions channels that strength—as the last act in a misunderstood life—for the good of society.

Or something like that.

How on earth are we going to find an East Asian juxtaposition for a lyric like this? Well, I choose to follow the little sub-pattern in these posts of including a segment from a classic East Asian narrative. This scene from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義) pits the two "strongest" men in the realm against one another in the first of many episodes leading to combat. The key idea behind this is the term "hero." The English doesn't quite render it correctly, as I hinted above. The term 雄 (xiong) gives a sense of "bigger than life" and "beyond normal capacities." In a strict "dictionary" sense, it can be said to be neutral (we could quibble over that if you want to haul out your 大漢和辞典. Just let me know and we'll have coffee. For non-quibblers, the basics go this way. Another idea must be added to the "larger than life" core to make it work in most narrative contexts. To make a long etymological story short, we can add "shining" (英) or "treacherous" (奸) to that core, as you can see.

[c] Layers RF

英雄 "shining hero"     

奸雄 "deceitful" hero" 

So, we have the "shining, brilliant hero," on the one hand, and the "crafty, malevolent hero" on the other. We have, in the grand tradition, Liu Bei and Cao Cao. I won't go into the layer upon layer of challenges presented by these concepts in the 120 chapters (about a thousand pages in fine-print English translation) of the Chinese historical-fictional narrative. You owe it to yourself to read one of the most pivotal stories in all of Chinese history. You can check out the reference below. For now, though, let's take a look at a crucial early scene between "shining" Liu Bei and "treacherous" Cao Cao from Three Kingdoms lore.

-->

A flash storm was threatening.  Some pointed to a distant dragon suspended on the horizon.  The two men leaned against the balcony and watched it.

Cao: “Does my lordship understand the dragon’s multiform manifestations?”

Liu Bei:  “Not in any great detail.”

Cao Cao: “Dragons can enlarge and diminish themselves, surge aloft or lie beneath the surface.  Enlarged, they create clouds and spew mist.  Diminished, they can fit themselves into a granule.  Aloft they prance triumphant in the upper realm of space.  Under the surface they lurk among surging breakers.  Now in the fullness of spring they mount the season, like men who would fulfill an ambition and dominate the length and breadth of the land.  In this respect they can well be compared to the heroes of the age.  You yourself have traveled widely and surely must be familiar with the great warriors of our time.  Please describe them for me...”

And each name that Liu Bei raised—Liu Biao, Sun Ce—Cao dismissed derisively.

At last he said, “Now, what I mean by a hero is this: He cherishes ambition for grandeur, a mine of marvelous schemes, the ability to encompass the realm or disappear within it, and the will to swallow the world of men or spit it out!”  

Liu Bei: “Who merits such a description?”

Cao Cao pointed first to Liu Bei, then to himself.  “Heroes of the present day number but two—you, my lordship, and myself.”

[d] Larger than life RF

---

Notes

Moss Roberts, Three Kingdoms (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 26-27.

Bibliography

Roberts, Moss. Three Kingdoms. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.

NEXT

Sunday, February 5th

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Next week we'll examine another sad classic written by the inimitable Kris Kristoferson and sung by the unparalleled Johnny Cash.

Fieldnotes From History (29)—Hand Signals

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."

[a] Gateway RF

Part of an occasional Round and Square series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987—some nicely-stated and some embarrassing. Although the series began with my assumption that the entries can stand alone, I have found that separate comments and notes might help readers understand a world that is now, well, history. These are always separate from the original fieldnote.

[b] Approach RF

Comment

The information about the "historical" use of characters is generally solid, but I would not characterize it with quite the same glibness today ("nobody cares"). I just wish I had spent more time on the palm-writing idea. This is a good example of what some anthropologists call "headnotes." The simple fact of noting it in any form—even embedded in a little corner of an otherwise didactic and somewhat officious paragraph—is enough to call to mind whole areas of interpretation that might work their ways into ethnographic analysis. This is one of those places. 

Note

In this particular note, I failed to mention tones. There are 420 sounds (guang, ji, se, and so forth), but the vast majority of these employ all four tonal variations. There is still extraordinary potential for rhyme in Chinese (all dialects), but the tonal variation makes for key distinctions.

Back in 1986, I almost always referred to the Mandarin dialect as "Chinese." It took a little more experience (which started in Taiwan with Taiwanese) to realize how complicated it all is.

4 January 1986
Taipei
 Chinese has only four hundred and twenty sounds to base its spoken language on. If you consider that Chinese has well over four thousand commonly-used characters (actually there are over eighty thousand, but the vast majority are historical, and of no interest to anyone, not even historians, except for the government which reigned then), that makes an average of ten common characters—with totally different meanings—per sound. Actually, it is even more extreme, because certain sounds, like ji (it sounds very similar to “gee”) have maybe one hundred different characters. 

[c] Interpretive RF

In reading and writing it is no problem, of course, because you can see the character. But when people speak it can be confusing. (“Now did she mean `Your chicken meat is tender’ or `Your muscles are flexible’?”)  When Chinese people are not sure of someone’s meaning, they ask “Is that the ji of “chicken meat” or the ji of ‘muscles” or “tendons?” Someone might also draw the character on her palm so the other person can verify whether he was understood or not. A friend of mine who doesn’t study Chinese thinks the habit of drawing characters on your palm is funny, and I have been told me that it looks like I am trying to wipe something off the tip of my finger. 

Asian Miscellany (20)—Housing in Heian Japan

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Asian Miscellany.

[a] Housing RF

My last few posts in "Asian Miscellany" have been driven by deadline—and many of them will follow in the coming weeks and months, since I have signed contracts to deliver a whole passel of encyclopedic material to various publishers before a self-imposed deadline of January 30th. As I explained in the introduction, this series of posts allows me to try out a few ideas that I plan eventually to include in various encyclopedias or on-line sites that have asked for my input. They are not the same as the pieces that will eventually be published, but constitute more of a "long draft," meant to work through a few ideas as I work on brief essays that often mandate strict "word counts" of 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 words. 

For the next dozen or so posts, I have been asked to write about Heian Japan (794-1185). It is one of the most fascinating periods in world history, so I trust that the topics will "connect" for readers of the first ten "Asian Miscellany" posts (almost all of the topics—children, family, urban/rural—are the same). They work well for people interested in a brief introduction to Heian Japan or for people interested in comparative issues. Although an introduction to the Heian period in Japan would require its own introduction, I trust that a reading of these "Heian Japan posts (11-20 in Asian Miscellany) will encourage a few of you to read a bit of the literature of the period.

Click here for other posts in the Heian Japan mini-series:
City-Country    Children         Food-Drink      Entertainment               Sports-Games
Education        Family Life     Work-Labor     Language-Literature     Housing-Shelter

Housing in Heian Japan was dominated by a common theme and a stark variation. The divide can be seen between urban and rural locales, where in each case the structures were made to fit the demands of ritual and commercial life, on the one hand, and agricultural productivity, on the other. Housing in Japan’s tenth century began with functionality and moved outward toward more and more refined definitions of space and place. What they all had in common is just as important as the differences, and that is wood. This is also one of the reasons that the oldest housing in Japan having exact origins dates back only to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Various reasons—from climate to disaster and simple desire to rebuild—have been given for the fact that structures in Japan rarely approach the age of those in China or Europe. As we will see, there are many reasons for Japan’s distinctiveness, and its housing combines to this day a balance of materials dominated by wood. 

[b] Wooden RF

Wood Architecture 
Wood has dominated Japanese architecture in a way that is paralleled by only a few world civilizations, and none as complex as Japan’s. Long after other materials were abundantly available, many builders preferred the elegant simplicity of wooden structures, as well as the powerful linkages created by traditional “joinery” of wooden beams, which created a formidable stability that was rivaled by few other materials. To be sure, the elaborate castles of later ages were made of many materials, including wood, stone, and mortar, and the most elaborate palace structures in Heian Japan used multiple materials. Still, wooden beams provided the vast majority of housing materials during this period, and the very connotations of wood have cultural powers rivaled only by a few other items in Japan.  

Rural Housing 
It is difficult to speak with authority about rural housing in Heian Japan, since few documents mention structural details beyond the configuration of housing and fields. Several authors mention the advantage of a village-field structure that mimicked the classical Chinese model of the “well-field” system, in which agricultural fields bordered a central village, whose workers would move out in the various directions to tend to the work of the allied families farming the area. 

The Chinese character used to represent the “well-field” system (井) gives a clear representation of this ideal. Each of the outer fields would be equipped with a boarding house for adolescent boys and working-age men, who would spend significant amounts of time in the late-spring, summer, and autumn working the fields. Whole communities, dominated traditionally by women planting the rice seedlings, would begin the year in the joint effort to create a crop that would culminate in a robust harvest in the autumn.

Architectural designs emerge from social and productive activities. The very facts of agricultural life demanded structures that could store grain, dry it, and allow for processing. It is not difficult to see that these structures needed to be centrally located within the village, and the grains were transported from the outer fields to these buildings in the village center. Residential housing in rural areas was built around these key economic sites. With a combination of “centered” housing and outer “field” housing, the villages were able to integrate a fairly large territory under the labor of a rural community. Above this, however, lay one more integral element: the growing manorial (shōen) system that increasingly linked rural areas to the capital, and eventually would lead to a complete political and economic transformation of Japan.

[c] Beaming RF

Urban Housing
The manorial system (shōen) is the key linkage between urban and rural life, including housing. The revenues that would build elaborate structures in the Heian capital came from the provinces, the rural areas. Even though almost none of the literature of Heian Japan speaks to these matters, a few records show the burgeoning economic life beyond the capital. Many of these revenues were sent to the related and powerful families in the capital, not the least being the imperial family itself and the most dominant family in all of Heian life, the Fujiwara.[1]

The metropolis of Heian Kyō exhibited these tensions between rural and urban revenues. The money came from afar, but the life of the capital was directed toward the inner realm of the palace buildings. Not unlike the schema seen in rural life, the capital formed the center of a conceptual grid, and wealthy or well-connected families encircled the palace grounds. Having a well-placed location near the palace was a sign of wealth and connections, and such things were highly prized. 

Beyond the palace grounds—where disastrous fires led to temporary accommodations every decade or so during the worst conflagrations of the tenth and eleventh centuries—lay the most venerable temple structures. Of these, few can match the Tōdaiji temple, one of the greatest Buddhist structures in all of Japan, and a center for artistic enterprise and Buddhist worship for centuries. Centered in Nara (the capital before Heian times), the Tōdaiji temple’s wooden structure houses a mammoth fifty-three foot “Great Buddha” that has cast a distinctive architectural gaze over the islands of Japan since its “eye-opening” ceremony in 752, which is still known as one of the greatest public ceremonies in all of Japanese history. 

[d] Meticulous RF

Nearby is the completely wooden Shōshōin, which has been described as a kind of elegant and religious cabin of wooden beams that has been raised almost three meters over the ground on wooden pillars. Maintained and meticulously rebuilt over the centuries, the building houses some of the rarest collections in all of Japan, including the personal items of Emperor Shōmu from the eighth century. It also houses items that break with the common view of Japanese diplomatic history—materials from the Silk Road trade that include objects from central Asia, Europe, China, as well as south, south-east, and northern Asia. The wooden architecture of this simple building speaks to its ability to preserve among the rarest items in the entire country in a housing of wooden logs.

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The materials came from afar—farthest of all when considering the capital. In each case, housing was built according to a grid that fit the economic, social, and commercial needs of the community. These differed greatly between the outer provinces and the inner capital, but wooden structures dominated and the burgeoning agricultural income from the provinces should never be forgotten when studying the life of Heian Japan. 

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[e] Tree-lined RF

[1] Although even experienced authors vary in their styles, East Asian surnames generally do not take an “s” in their plural forms when rendered into Romanized letters. For this reason, these essays refer to the Fujiwara (not “Fujiwaras”) in plural form.