Kuge

The kuge were the Japanese aristocratic class that dominated the imperial court in Kyoto. Leaders and patrons of the arts in the Heian period, from the late 8th century, they were eclipsed by the warrior class, the bushi, with the rise of the Kamakura shogunate in the 12th century, but kept a weak court around the emperor. Only the higher dōjō, about 130 families in the Edo period, could hold the highest court offices, and the regents came from the Fujiwara. Having lost most of their income after the Sengoku period, they lived partly by teaching arts such as waka poetry and the biwa. In 1869 they merged with the daimyō into the kazoku peerage, abolished by the 1947 constitution.