one in despite of the superior claims of his elder brother,
Koretaka, and the usurpation weighed heavily on his conscience. It is
at least credible that since, in taking the sceptre he obeyed the
dictates of the Fujiwara, so in laying it down he followed the same
guidance. We cannot be sure as to the exact date when the great
family's policy of boy-sovereigns first took definite shape, but the
annals seem to show that Yoshifusa conceived the programme and that
his adopted son, Mototsune, carried it out. A halo rests on Seiwa's
head for the sake of his memorable descendants, the Minamoto chiefs,
Yoritomo, Takauji, and Ieyasu. Heaven is supposed to have compensated
the brevity of his own tenure of power by the overwhelming share that
his posterity enjoyed in the administration of the empire.

But Seiwa was undoubtedly a good man as well as a zealous sovereign.
One episode in his career deserves attention as illustrating the
customs of the era. Mention has already been made of Ariwara no
Narihira, a grandson of the Emperor Heijo and one of the most
renowned among Japanese poets. He was a man of singular beauty, and
his literary attainments, combined with the melancholy that marked
his life of ignored rights, made him a specially interesting figure.
He won the love of Taka, younger sister of Fujiwara Mototsune and
niece of Yoshifusa. Their liaison was not hidden. But Yoshifusa, in
default of a child of his own, was just then seeking some Fujiwara
maiden suitable to be the consort of the young Emperor, Seiwa, in
pursuance of the newly conceived policy of building the Fujiwara
power on the influence of the ladies' apartments in the palace. Taka
possessed all the necessary qualifications. In another age the
obstacle of her blemished purity must have proved fatal. Yoshifusa's
audacity, however, was as limitless as his authority. He ordered the
poet prince to cut his hair and go eastward in expiation of the crime
of seeking to win Taka's affections, and having thus officially
rehabilitated her reputation, he introduced her into the household of
the Empress Dowager, his own daughter, through whose connivance the
lady soon found her way to the young Emperor's chamber and became the
mother of his successor, Yozei.

Nor was this all. Though only a Fujiwara, and a soiled Fujiwara at
that, Taka was subsequently raised to the rank of Empress.
Ultimately, when Empress Dowager, her name was coupled with that of
the priest Zenyu of Toko