Emperor Shirakawa abdicates: the beginning of cloistered rule

For generations the northern Fujiwara had governed through the marriages of their daughters to emperors and the offices of regent and chancellor. In 1068 Emperor Go-Sanjō, the first emperor in almost two hundred years without close family ties to the regents' house, began to rule in person and issued a decree regulating private estates (shōen). He abdicated in favour of his son Shirakawa, who succeeded him in January 1073, and wanted the throne to pass next to Shirakawa's half-brothers Sanehito and Sukehito. Shirakawa, too, tried to rule directly. When Sanehito died in 1085, Shirakawa named his own son Taruhito, born in 1079, crown prince and on the same day — 3 January 1087 — abdicated in his favour, so that the throne would not pass to Sukehito. That day was the 26th of the 11th month of the third year of Ōtoku, an era year that falls mostly in 1086, which is why the beginning of cloistered rule is usually dated to 1086.

As retired emperor (daijō tennō) Shirakawa supervised the child emperor, at first in close cooperation with the regent Fujiwara no Morozane; Japanese historians note that in its early years his rule differed little from the old regency politics. When Horikawa grew up, he governed for a time together with the chancellor Fujiwara no Moromichi. Shirakawa took Buddhist vows in 1096, becoming a ‘cloistered emperor’ (hōō), and after Horikawa's death in 1107 ruled through his grandson Toba and then his great-grandson Sutoku until he died in 1129. The retired emperor's household office (in no chō), its edicts (inzen) and its own guards, the ‘warriors of the northern quarter’, became instruments of government, and service in the guards helped warrior families such as the Taira to rise.

Cloistered rule outlasted Shirakawa: retired emperors such as Toba and Go-Shirakawa dominated the 12th-century court, open conflict between a reigning and a retired emperor led to the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156, and the system survived in weakened form under the Kamakura shogunate.