後漢洛陽城における皇帝・諸官の政治空間

抄録

This article attempts to elucidate institutions of imperial rule under the Han 漢 dynasty by examining the way in which the Later Han developed the Former Han's political system formed from the reign of Wudi 武帝 onwards and describing the structure of the political system that was created as a result. In order to resolve these issues, the author discusses the spatial relationship between the workplace and living space of the emperor and empress dowager and the workplaces of their officials, while throwing into relief the structure of the political system of the Later Han, in an attempt to present the process behind its formation in visual form. He then goes on to examine the realities of imperial institutions with respect to the three aspects of government organization, political history, and political space. Beginning with Wudi, the emperors of the Former Han attempted to exercise their rule by stationing a group of close aides, known as officials of the Inner Court (neichao guan 内朝官), within the area of the imperial palace where the emperors themselves resided. These officials were entrusted with both policymaking and document-based communications. However, imperial in-laws seized control of these Inner Court officials and began to exercise enormous power, leading eventually to Wang Mang's 王莽 usurpation of the throne. In response to this turn of events, the emperors of the Later Han scaled down and restructured their group of close aides, in order to prevent governance centred upon officials of the Inner Court and thus strengthen their own system of rule. In addition, they transferred responsibility for policymaking and document-based communications to officials whose main place of work was outside the imperial palace (either in their own offices or in the Outer Court (waichao 外朝, i.e., conference halls). These officials included the three dukes (sangong 三公), military generals (jiangjun 将軍 the nine chamberlains (jiuqing 九卿), and the imperial secretariat (shangshutai 尚書台). In light of the above developments, the author suggests that the Later Han was not a dynasty that blindly took over the Former Han's system of imperial rule in situ, but was rather one that reorganized in a major way the political system engineered by its predecessor in a search for new imperial institutions. However, the author recognizes that although the political reorganization described here did have a short-term effect in strengthening the system of imperial rule, it was not necessarily very effective in the long term, since from the very outset the whole system itself already contained within it serious contradictions.