But
while the aristocracy did in fact lose its predominant political power,
its refined world in fact never disappeared, for it was preserved forever
in the Tale of Genji and in the scroll which illustrates it. The
exquisite aesthetic taste and intense concern for human emotions that characterized
this world have been perpetuated to this day, and have for all Japanese
come to signify that which is most purely Japanese. Despite their very
different class interests samurai and then later common Japanese would
come to emulate the aesthetics of the Heian nobility. In this ironic fashion,
a dying aristocracy managed to create a national identity.