ABSTRACT
The socio-political context that made the regency possible can only be properly understood when examined from the very pinnacle of the imperial state: the throne itself and the succession to it. In medieval Europe, it was common practice that the first-born son inherit the throne, although there were both exceptions and challenges to that principle. By the late eleventh century, domination of the imperial court at the hands of the Fujiwara came to an end when their chieftain Yorimichi (992–1074) ran out of options to put male descendants on the throne. In the 1960s, the Japanese historian Kuroda Toshio (1926–1993) began advocating that Japan's ruling structures from the late eleventh through the fifteenth centuries were characterized by a sharing of power among several elite groups known as kenmon. Ultimately, both the concept of a royal-court state and a collaborative rule by "gates of power" are tied to historians' understanding of change over time and periodization.
