Five regent houses

Who is Five regent houses?

The Five regent houses is a collective term for five families of Fujiwara clan. The leaders of these families monopolizedthe position of Sekkan in the Japanese Imperial Court of Kyoto between 12th and 19th century. The five houses are Konoe, Takatsukasa, Kujō, Ichijō, and Nijō.

The Fujiwara clan had also other families, but traditionally only these five were eligible for regentship. They were the most politically powerful families among the kuge.

As the imperial clan claimed to descent from the goddess Amaterasu, in the Fujiwara tradition the clan descended from another ancient kami, Ame-no-Koyane. Apparently, only these two clans were left in the modern era to claim kami descent.

Partly based on that kami descent, tradition required that emperors may marry only from Fujiwara and imperial family itself - the view was that an empress must descend from gods, too. Thus, with the exception of Tokugawa Masako, wife of the Emperor Mizunoo, all Empresses of that long period were of the clans that formed the Sekke or from branches of the imperial family itself.