EXPLORING THE GATES OF POWER IN PREMODERN JAPAN
What Does 'The Gates of Power' (kenmon taisei) Actually Mean?
The term kenmon taisei was pioneered by historian Kuroda Toshio in his 1963 essay "Chūsei no kokka to tennō," translated as 'The Medieval State and the Emperor.'¹ Kuroda proposed that social and political order in Medieval Japan was dominated by three elite groups; kuge (公家), buke (武家) and jike (寺家).
This website has simplified these terms as 'ruling elite,' 'warriors' and 'monks.' These entities were organised around family-like structures and lineages, drawing their extensive wealth and influence from the land around them.²
Admittedly, our simplification of kenmon taisei into the categories of 'monks,' 'warriors' and 'ruling elite' is reductive; 'kenmon' could include a range of religious institutions of different Buddhist sects and numerous organs of governance operated by major nobles, the Imperial family, and later, the Kamakura and Muromachi bakufu.
Importantly, the kenmon were interdependent.
They often furthered each other's aspirations and were united under the Emperor, a figurehead that remained above the kenmon as an "untouchable symbol of the state" who continued to handle all central political appointments, including that of shogun during the Kamakura period.³
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FOOTNOTES
¹ James C. Dobbins, “Editor’s Introduction: Kuroda Toshio and His Scholarship,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 23, no. 3/4 (1996): 219.
² Karl F. Friday, Japan Emerging: Premodern History To 1850 (Boulder: Taylor and Francis Group), 131-132.
³ Ibid.
Unknown artist, Fujiwara no Kamatari as a Shinto Deity, produced in Japan c. 1350 during the Nanbokuchō period, hanging scroll with colour on silk, 60x24in., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1985.16.
We have included this scroll to demonstrate the extent to which kenmon - i.e. the noble and religious - could be interlinked in cultural imagery in premodern Japan, as though lending power from one another.
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Unknown sculptor, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, a pair of statues that flank the Cosmic Buddha Dainichi Nyorai, c. 12th century Japan, wood, 33x10.7/8inx8.1/16in., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1975.268.164 and 1975.268.165.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE GATES OF POWER
The enduring influence of the kenmon on premodern Japan's social, political, economic and religious landscape cannot be understated. This influence persisted from the Heian (794-1185AD) to the Muromachi period (1336-1573AD).
Interested in learning more about the kenmon taisei? See below.
These fearsome statues act
as protectors of Buddhism in
Japan. They defend
Buddhist teachings, temples and
the nation itself. They are
efficient visual representations of
just how much power - religious,
physical and even metaphysical - that
religious institutions wielded (and had
to preserve) in premodern
Japan.