Heian - My Favourite Historical Period

Back in the olden days my teacher of Old Japanese wouldn't make us memorise ancient verses or multi-level tables of verbs conjugation. Instead, she could make us feel as if we lived in the period.

She was a zany bohemian divorced from a renown Buddhist priest, addicted to sake and short strong cigarettes. Her deliciously dilapidated wooden house in Nara, Japan's original capital, was exposed to all the world's winds - just the way it was supposed to be to satisfy traditional aesthetics. Every day she would travell 3 hours one way to come to tell us about the beauty of Japanese black lacquerware, the advantages of eating with chopsticks over Western cutlery, or her clandestine (and imaginary of course) affair with the author of Tsurezuregusa. She would back up her views with citations from ancient poets while puffing away smelly Gauloises.

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Heian aristocracy chose the colours of their clothing according to the season, travelled around in bull carts, believed in free marriage and 10 thousands gods and didn't form families. Bisexuality was a norm (among the elite, at any rate) and Heian criteria of female beauty were long hair and verse-writing skills. Women took steam baths and blackened their teeth with pine tar. To keep their elaborate hairdos intact they would sleep on a wooden chip as a pillow. The Japanese character for pillow still has the "wood"radical in it.

After a night of love, it was customary to exchange self-written poems dealing with the the encounter as the theme. The poems were evaluated on the style, content and calligraphy. There had to be an allusion to the season and an allegorical reference to the encounter itself, all expressed in a strictly defined number of syllables. Not a mean feat after a night of steamy love-making. Clumsy poets stood lesser chance to get laid afterwards.


There was hardly any furniture in their minimalist palaces and no animal meat on their tables - recently converted Buddhists they were careful about not spoiling their karma for future re-births. First Japanese literature classics - Makura No Soushi, Tsurezuregusa and Kagero Nikki - date back from that period as well as the most recognizable classic Japanese graphic concept - yamato-e. Heian emperors were continuously engaged in fighting for living space with the mysterious Emishi people - the indigenous pre-Japanese inhabitants of the islands.

Yes, and they had no idea about Europe, which at the time was dragging a miserable existence through the Dark Ages.