Illustrated Tale of the Heiji Rebellion (Japan)

• An emakimono of chaos and conquest—visually narrating a historical coup through linear velocity and architectural fragmentation.

Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence

The Illustrated Tale of the Heiji Rebellion (Heiji Monogatari Emaki) stages in paint the drama of a 12th-century military conflict: the kidnapping of the emperor and the burning of the imperial Sanjō Palace. But beyond its historical narrative lies a visual discourse of disciplinary violence, ritualized power, and militarized subject-formation, revealing a cultural shift from courtly aesthetics to the emergence of the warrior class’s ethical regime.

Foucault's framework invites us to see this emaki not as passive representation but as a machinery of visibility, where actions are laid bare for the gaze. The scroll acts like a proto-panopticon, arranging architectural interiors (temples, corridors, palaces) and human figures in a line of sequential legibility. Every element—armor, positioning, architectural cutaway—produces knowledge of military power and the codification of masculine heroism.

The artwork thus becomes a technology of subjectivation, crafting the bushi (warrior) not merely as a fighter but as a moralized figure embodying a new mode of government of the self: restraint, loyalty, fearlessness, and violent righteousness. Through aesthetic choices—sweeping diagonals, crowd chaos, spatial disintegration—the emaki disciplines the viewer into recognizing which bodies are to be admired, which actions valorized.

At the same time, the scroll teaches the fragility of political order. The image of the burning palace, flanked by soldiers abducting a puppet-emperor, visualizes the core Foucauldian insight: power is not stable—it is performative, agonistic, and always in play. The emaki reveals the art of government not as rule from above, but as an ensemble of practices enacted in the visible and the visceral.