The Position and Role of Provincial Governors at the Height of the Heian Period

Although the author of the Genji monogatari was the daughter and wife of resident provincial governors, she was little concerned with such officials in her work, and those who do appear in it are often caricatured. The administration of the state and the economic support of the court, however, were wholly dependent on these middle-ranking officials. The topic of provincial governors is addressed in four sections: (1) a governor’s mission, essentially to maintain order and carry out taxation; (2) family background—some governors came from a long line of middle-ranking officials while others were younger sons of high-ranking aristocrats; (3) the processes of a governor’s appointment and performance evaluation, both determined in part by his client relationship to eminent nobles; and (4) the governors’ role—motivated by profit, and aided by subordinates—in the movement of goods. Among his subordinates, a governor’s men at arms (rōdō 郎頭) could be particularly helpful on this front; a rōdō is the subject of a passage from the Shin sarugakuki translated in Appendix 2. As the work of a woman, the Genji monogatari cannot provide an in-depth description of mid-Heian Japan; yet it clearly evokes the growing distance between middle-ranking officials and their aristocratic superiors—men whose attachment to the symbols of power increased in direct proportion to their gradual loss of power itself.