THE BEST TIME, AND PLACE, TO BE ALIVE: JAPAN, 784-1185AD

The Heian era woos Robert Guest with its devotion to high art, love poetry and casual sex ...
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, November/December 2011
The world of 1,000 years ago was a miserable place: dirty, war-scorched and mostly illiterate. But not in Japan. The Heian era (784-1185) was one of peace. The brutal samurai who beheaded peasants to test their blades were yet to come. Japan was ruled by aristocrats who cared nothing for the art of war but were devoted to poetry, music, calligraphy and romantic love. One Victorian historian described the culture as “foully licentious”. To me, it sounds rather fun.
A typical day for the nobles in Heian Kyo (now Kyoto) might involve sitting beneath the plum blossoms and composing poems about how sad it was that something so beautiful should wither so quickly—a reminder of the transience of life. Then everyone would get drunk or wander off for a tryst in a secluded temple.
Women and men alike were expected to be promiscuous. The only shame was to be insensitive. A doltish love letter would prompt your lover to ditch you. An eloquent one, written with a skilful brush and delivered with a flower that echoed its central metaphor, would win her heart. She would then hold out a hand from behind her screen and pull back her voluminous sleeve an inch or so, indicating that it was time to make love.
It was an era of great joy and great art, from Murasaki Shikibu’s “Tale of Genji” (illustrated above in a 12th-century drawing) to Sei Shonagon’s “Pillow Book”. Life was not so great for the peasants who did all the work, but I’m presumptuously assuming that I’d be a hanger-on at court. I’d soon get used to the Heian ideal of feminine beauty, which demanded blackened teeth, plucked eyebrows, big hair and pale faces. And best of all, the tea ceremony—that most tedious of pastimes—would not be invented for another 500 years.

Robert Guest is the business editor of The Economist. His new book, "Borderless Economics", will be published in December.