Background
Fujiwara no Yorimichi was born in Japan in 992. He was the eldest son of Fujiwara no Michinaga.
藤原 頼通
court official politician statesman
Fujiwara no Yorimichi was born in Japan in 992. He was the eldest son of Fujiwara no Michinaga.
He was awarded high court rank and office at an early age. In 1017 his father turned over to him the post of sessho, regent, and in 1019, when his father retired from official life to become a Buddhist monk, Yorimichi was made kampaku.
The ruler at the time, Emperor Goichijo, was Yorimichi’s nephew and a boy of eleven, and as a result all matters of government were disposed according to the wishes of Yorimichi.
In 1045, when Emperor Gosuzaku abdicated to make way for Emperor Goreizei, Prince Takahito, the future Emperor Gosanjo, was named hem apparent. Yorimichi opposed the selection because Prince Takahito was unrelated to the Fujiwara family, but since his daughter, Fujiwara no Kanshi, the empress of Emperor Goreizei, had given birth only to daughters, there was nothing he could do to block it.
On the April 17, 1068, two days before the death of Emperor Goreizei, Yorimichi gave up all government offices and retired to the Byodo-in to live. In 1070 he built the Ikedono, the Pond Hall, close by the Byodd-in and took up residence in it, and it was there that he died on February 2, 1074. It has long been a custom in the Fujiwara family to perform Buddhist memorial services each year on the anniversary of his death.
The year 1052, believed to be the 2001st anniversary of the death of the Buddha, ushered in the era known in Buddhist thought as Mappo, or the End of the Law, a time when it was believed that Buddhism would decline and the world would be filled with evil and disaster. Acceptance of this belief was widespread in Heian society, and Yorimichi, no exception, in this year converted his country home in Uji into a temple, calling it the Byodb-in. The temple is still in existence and is constructed in such a way as to symbolize the Western Paradise, where souls of the faithful dwell after death.
Because his father was a high minister, Yorimichi was able to succeed to high office without engaging in any protracted struggle for power. Perhaps as a result, he seems to have been a rather mild and simple-hearted man, though at the same time he was often short tempered and selfish.
In 1025 a son was at last born to him, a boy named Michifusa in whom his father placed great hope, but he died in 1044, grieving Yorimichi so that he fell ill.