THE HEIAN EPOCH
into an omen of evil. Naturally these disquieting fantasies had the effect of rendering people nervous and timid. Even a soldier dreaded to walk alone in the darkness. The feat by which Michinaga, one of the greatest and most unscrupulous of the Fujiwara nobles, laid the foundation of his fame, illustrates this craven mood. At a réunion of princes and nobles in the Palace of the Emperor Kwazan (985-987), some tales of ghostly appearances having been recounted, it was proposed that the listeners should exhibit their courage by proceeding, one at a time, to remote parts of the Palace. The three Fujiwara brothers volunteered to undertake the task, but only one of them, Michinaga, was able to achieve it, and his valour won universal eulogy. Sensual excesses, which were without limit in the Heian epoch, supplemented and strengthened this ever-present dread of the spirits of the dead and of evil, so that idiocy became common and the span of life in the upper classes was shortened to thirty or forty years. The Emperor Daigo (898-930) actually fell into a dangerous illness, owing to a belief that he was pursued by the vengeance of a loyal minister, Michizane, whose unjust punishment he had sanctioned, and as a protection against the same danger his baby son, the prince imperial, was confined day and night in one apartment and guarded by a chosen band of soldiers during the first three years after his birth. When the renowned Fujiwara chief,
179
