The power of the puissant family met a temporary check under the Emperor Uda (893-898), who selected Sugawara-no-Michizane as minister. Michizane was a descendant of Nomi-no-Sukune, and did not belong to the Fujiwara family. Reputed for high literary, calligraphic, and artistic skill, he also possessed a profound knowledge of politics. It was his fortune to manage all administrative affairs jointly with the young and keen Tokihira, son of Fujiwara Mototsune. The Emperor Uda, who took the tonsure soon afterward, left instructions to his successor Daigo, then a boy of thirteen, to consult Michizane in all important affairs of the state. Tokihira filled the office of minister of the left (the highest administrative post after that of chief minister of state then vacant), and Michizane was minister of the right. With the exception of Michizane and Kibi-no-Makibi, no man of the middle class had ever held such an important office. The ex-emperor would have had Michizane raised still higher, and urged the reigning sovereign in that sense. But this design precipitated Tokihira's resolve to contrive the downfall of a man whose great reputation with the nation and marked favor at court dimmed the prestige of the Fujiwara family. Michizane was also an object of keen jealousy to Minamoto-no-Hikaru, a son of the Emperor Nimmyō, who held the office of _dainagon_ (vice-minister), as well as to Fujiwara-no-Sadakuni, who like Hikaru, was incomparably superior to Michizane in lineage, but inferior to him in official position. These men conspired against Michizane, and conveyed to the sovereign a false charge that the minister of the right was plotting to depose him and place his younger brother, Michizane's son-in-law, Prince Tokiyo, on the throne. Daigo believed the accusation, and reduced Michizane to the head of the Kiushū local government, a position which it had become customary to fill with disgraced officials of the imperial court. The order amounted in effect to a sentence of exile. The ex-emperor did everything in his power to save Michizane, but in vain. Hikaru succeeded to the office of minister of the right. In all this affair the members of the Fujiwara family left nothing undone to sweep away every obstacle to their own supremacy. Treating as opponents all that did not take active part with them, they contrived to have them involved in the disgrace of Michizane. The exiled minister died after two years of banishment. His popularity had been so great that the nation was filled with grief for his unmerited sufferings, and when, after his decease, the partisans of Tokihira died one after another, and a series of calamities occurred in the capital, people did not hesitate to regard these evils as retribution inflicted by Heaven for the injustice that had been wrought. Subsequently Michizane received the posthumous honor of the first class of the first rank and the post of chief minister of state, and posterity