Overview
Samuel Hideo Yamashita
Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History
Pomona College
"Classical Japan" is best understood in three ways, the first of which is through geography. The Japanese archipelago runs along the eastern coast of northeast Asia. Its northernmost island is about 25 miles across the Sôya Strait from Sakhalin Island, just off the Russian coast, and its southwestern coast is 90 miles from the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. The archaeological record reveals that the Japanese islands were once connected to the Asian landmass and thus originally were not islands at all. But as the Ice Age waned and the glaciers began to melt, the sea level on the northeast Asian littoral rose as much as 300 feet, in the process submerging, sometime around 11,000 B.C.E., the land bridges connecting the Japanese archipelago to the mainland.
The first inhabitants of what we now call Japan were indistinguishable from the other Neolithic peoples of northeast Asia. They formed small bands of hunters and gatherers who lived in semi-subterranean dwellings near rivers and streams or the sea. They used similar tools and made pottery marked with the same distinctive herringbone- and cord-marked patterns. Although the language of these first "Japanese" has been lost, in the modern Japanese language can be found vestiges of the archaic tongues of Asia and the South Pacific. In fact, linguists locate Japanese in the Ural-Altaic language family, which includes Korean, Manchurian, Mongolian, Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish. Linguists also detect traces of the Malay-Polynesian languages, which include Indonesian, Mon-Khmer, Tagalog, Melanesian, and Hawaiian. The traces of these languages have led scholars to argue that the Japanese islands were populated by migrations from North Asia, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. The Black Current, or Kuroshio in Japanese, is important in this regard. Running in a clockwise direction around the outer rim of the Pacific Ocean, this powerful current made it relatively easy for populations from Southeast Asia and the South Pacific to reach Japan. That the variety of rice grown in ancient Japan was introduced from South China, probably carried by people who came by sea, is telling evidence of these migrations.
Japan's
relationship with continental Asia is a second way to understand classical
Japan. In 57 C.E., for example, a delegation from Japan appeared at the
court of the Chinese kingdom of Wei, a visit that earned Japan a place
in The History of the Kingdom of Wei, the earliest historical account
in which Japan is mentioned. Other Japanese delegations came as well,
all of which were mentioned by later Chinese historians. These accounts,
together with the archaeological record, offer the following picture of
life in Japan: From the third century B.C.E. Japan was a collection of
small kingdoms, and the basic social unit was the clan (J. uji).
The Japanese practiced sedentary agriculture, growing rice, barley, and
millet and producing surpluses that enabled larger and larger numbers
of people to live together, in the first towns and cities. These surpluses
led to social stratification and the first evidence of class distinctions.
The Chinese accounts also describe the Japanese as animists who discerned
a divine presence in everything in the world around them, such as mountains,
waterfalls, trees, and rocks. They called this divine presence kami and
revered it.
Contact with the mainland continued. As shown by the Chinese-made and
indigenous bronze goods-mainly mirrors, bells, swords, and spearheads-found
throughout Japan, bronze goods and bronze-making technology reached Japan
from China and Korea as early as the third century B.C.E. In addition,
sometime after 400 a new, continental form of tomb building reached Japanese
shores. Unlike earlier Japanese tombs, which were built on hillsides or
mountains, the new tombs were located on flatlands, often surrounded by
a moat, and much bigger. Many have survived to this day. One of them,
Emperor Nintoku's tomb, covers an area
of 80 acres. Their size and the moats around them suggest that the builders
of these tombs had both the technical knowledge to move earth and divert
water flows and the political authority and military power to mobilize
the necessary labor.
The new tombs also hold evidence of a continental military culture and technology. Some of the terra-cotta statuary, called haniwa, found at the new tombs are human figures whose helmets and military accoutrements are unmistakably continental, similar to the dress and weaponry of Chinese soldiers in the Six Dynasties period (316-589). The discovery of haniwa horses and horse riders and equestrian gear led some scholars to argue that in the third century C.E., Japan was invaded by a horse-riding people of continental origin. In one version of this theory, the conquerors were from the state of Puyo, in what we now call Manchuria, and were driven southward by turmoil in north China and Manchuria, down through the Korean peninsula, and across the Korea Strait to Japan. This theory, which is known as the horse rider theory, is accepted by only a few scholars. Other scholars explain the presence of a continental military technology in Japan in another way, observing that a Japanese outpost on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula channeled advanced technologies and culture from the mainland to Japan. But no matter which explanation one accepts, the importance of continental influence is undeniable.
The continent continued to influence classical Japan. In 402, a Chinese scholar known only as Wani brought Confucianism to Japan. In 552 Syong Mong, the ruler of the beleaguered Korean state of Paekche, sent an emissary to ask for Japanese assistance. The emissary also brought a new religion, Buddhism, and the first Buddhist sutras and statuary. Although Syong Mong's state was overrun by its enemies, Buddhism managed to survive in Japan. Beginning in the fourth century C.E., many Chinese and Koreans immigrated to Japan, most of whom were learned or skilled in a craft, and they were assimilated into the Japanese aristocracy. In the sixth century, the Yamato people, a powerful Japanese clan, created a state modeled on two contemporary Chinese states-the Sui (589-607) and the Tang (607-906)-which were the most advanced political institutions in Asia, and perhaps the world, at that time.
It took the Yamato slightly more than a century to recreate a Chinese state on Japanese soil, and the strange fate of these sinitic institutions in succeeding centuries offers a third way to understand classical Japan. Completed by 720, the Chinese-style state brought dramatic changes to Japan. First, it introduced a new theory of kingship represented by an emperor. In the Chinese conception, he was the Son of Heaven, a sobriquet that elevated the head of the Yamato clan, who claimed also to be descended from the sun goddess. Second, a Chinese-style government was created in Japan, with a central government, based first in Heijô (modern-day Nara) (710-794) and then in Heian (modern-day Kyoto) (794-1185), and a provincial administration that encompassed the entire country. Yamato relatives and allies, as well as others from powerful clans, staffed the highest positions in this government, and in their capacity as officials of the new regime, they attended to the tasks of governance, maintaining order and collecting taxes. For the latter, the Japanese adopted the Tang model, which assumed that the emperor owned all the land in the country and then distributed it on a per capita basis to all able-bodied men and women. This distributed land was taxed, and the revenues found their way into government coffers and sustained the state.
A combination of Confucian and Legalist philosophies informed the Chinese states from the Han dynasty (207 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) onward, and this was true of the new Chinese-style state in Japan as well. Confucian rituals filled the calendar of the imperial court. Classical Chinese, the language of the Chinese Confucian canon, was the official language of the government, much as Latin was in medieval Europe. The Japanese adopted not only the Chinese writing system and the Chinese language but also what might be called a sinitic writing culture. In the seventh century Japanese began systematically to keep records and to write history and a century later Japanese noblemen were keeping diaries and writing poetry in classical Chinese.
Every
institution, religion or philosophy, and cultural practice from the continent
that the Japanese adopted in the sixth and seventh centuries was quickly
naturalized. Although this process of naturalization may have been inevitable,
the reasons for it varied. Sometimes the reasons were practical. For example,
the implicit universality of the Confucian-Legalist political and economic
institutions was compromised when the Yamato allowed their relatives,
allies, and other prominent clans to hold their high political offices
on a hereditary basis and to receive their salaries in perpetuity. The
Yamato also never used civil service examinations to select government
officials, as was done in China. Instead, kinship rather than merit determined
who held office. Often the naturalization of Chinese culture was deliberate.
For instance, the Japanese adaptation of the Chinese ideographs, or characters,
led to the creation of a Japanese syllabary called kana, which became
the special province of aristocratic women beginning in the ninth century
and was the favored language for lyric poetry and the expression of a
sensitivity to nature called aware.[1] Lady Murasaki
used this new script to write The Tale of Genji. Adaptation was also accidental,
as Buddhism's easy coexistence with the native Japanese religion, Shintô,
after an initial period of conflict and rivalry, confirms. Indeed, court
life in the Heian period (794-1185) reveals how continental institutions,culture,
and religion were modified to suit Japanese taste and social practices.
In the end, Japanese aristocrats valued kinship more than merit, native
aesthetic values more than Confucian morality, and kami and the indigenous
religion, Shintô, more than Buddhism.
________________
1. One scholar defined aware
as the "emotional quality inherent in objects, people, nature, and
art, and by extension it referred to a person's internal response to emotional
aspects of the external world."
The Teaching about Japan website is
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