$Unique_ID{how00625} $Pretitle{} $Title{Civilizations Past And Present The Emergence Of Japan} $Subtitle{} $Author{Wallbank;Taylor;Bailkey;Jewsbury;Lewis;Hackett} $Affiliation{} $Subject{japanese chinese century new court japan culture emperors power yamato see pictures see figures } $Date{1992} $Log{See Japan*0062501.scf } Title: Civilizations Past And Present Book: Chapter 8: The Rising Flood Of Asian Culture, 300-1300 Author: Wallbank;Taylor;Bailkey;Jewsbury;Lewis;Hackett Date: 1992 The Emergence Of Japan The rise of Japan after the sixth century was part of a much larger process in which a number of new fringe cultures developed rapidly in the shadows of the old major civilizations. In Europe, Africa, southeast and central Asia, Korea, and Japan, these later "third round" civilizations were able to appropriate the cultural experience of centuries without developing through the much slower process of trial, error, and conditioning. The results, however, were compromises. In its early evolution, for example, Japan borrowed much from China; but this cultural raw material was mingled and reworked into a new Japanese pattern. [See Japan] Geographic, Ethnic, And Historical Backgrounds Much that is distinctive in Japanese culture has resulted from geographic factors, which provided harsh challenges but maximum national security. The inland sea marked by the islands of Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu, with their lush and beautiful sheltered plains, was the center of Japanese civilization until the twelfth century. Yet even this area, along with the other 3000 islands of the archipelago, has frequently experienced earthquakes and typhoons. Location was the most important early factor; approximately 200 miles of water separate the highly populated islands from the mainland. Isolated as they were during their early history, the Japanese were secure enough to experiment with new ways while retaining a deep attachment to their land and its traditional culture. Ethnically, the Japanese are of mixed origins, a result of many prehistoric migrations from the mainland, by way of Korea and Southeast Asia, through the island chain to the south. The resulting common ethnic community was predominantly Mongoloid, though darker and hairier than Asian mainland types. The language was derived from the basic Altaic family of northern Asia, which also produced Mongol and Korean variations. As the Japanese population expanded and moved north, after the second century A.D., it began exterminating and absorbing the Ainu, a people of less developed culture, who had first occupied the area. This process continued into the modern era. In ancient times, the mountainous Japanese islands facilitated the growth of numerous small tribal states, each ruled by a hereditary chieftain who claimed descent from a tribal deity. According to Japanese folklore, one of these chieftains named Jimmu ("Divine Warrior"), a descendent of the sun goddess, began the current line of Japanese emperors in 660 B.C. Historians generally believe that the present imperial family originated with the most powerful ruling group - the Yamato clan - which emerged in Kyushu and whose chieftains, beginning in the first century A.D., led the conquest eastward against the Ainu in Honshu. The religion of the Japanese, known as Shinto, or "Way of the Gods," was a simple worship of natural forces and ancestral spirits, with no organized priesthood or ethical system. The chieftains served as priests as well as war leaders. With the growth of Yamato power, Shinto centered primarily on the sun goddess as the divine ancestress of the Yamato and, eventually, of all the Japanese people. Agriculture was the basis of the economy. The nobles controlled the land, which was worked by peasants and slaves. Clans engaged in constant struggle for land and against the Ainu. Warfare was the order of the day, and the dominant role in society was played by noble families, whose fighting men were equipped with bows and iron swords and rode horses. Unlike China, where scholar-bureaucrats eventually rose to positions of dominance, the warrior class maintained its social prestige and political power through most of Japanese history. But despite this military emphasis, early Japanese society was largely matriarchal, as was evidenced by the prevalence of female deities. Women enjoyed a social status comparable to that of men; children were raised within the wife's family household; and women rulers were common until the eighth century. During the first few centuries A.D., the Yamato clan settled on a plain north of modern Osaka and extended its power in central Japan. Its chieftain began to regard himself as a kind of emperor, while the other clan chieftains, some of whom had better lineage than their Yamato overlord, were attached to his court. Thus the Japanese state emerged as a loose association of clans under the suzerainty of the Yamato. Influences From China And The Taika Reforms After the third century, when the Han dynasty extended its sway over Korea, Chinese culture began to reach Japan. At first the process was very gradual, but in the sixth century, when the Japanese began consciously borrowing Chinese ways, a new age in Japanese history began. Buddhism was the main vehicle for transporting Chinese culture to sixth century Japan. In 522, a Korean king presented to the Japanese court an image of the Buddha, some Buddhist texts, and a recommendation of the new faith as "hard to comprehend" but "excellent" and widely adhered to in Korea. Whether or not they were moved by this particular plea, Yamato rulers embraced the new faith, with its accompanying Chinese values, even more fervently than contemporary Germanic tribes in Europe accepted Christianity. Before 600, Buddhism and respect for Chinese culture had spread throughout Japan. In the seventh century the Yamato regime deliberately attempted to establish a centralized absolutism modeled on T'ang China. A group of young Japanese, including students recently returned from China, seized power in 645 and proclaimed the new order, with the Yamato ruler named as Tenno, or "Heavenly Emperor." The resulting Taika (Great Change) reforms asserted the absolute authority of the monarch at the expense of the former clan chieftains. The reformers also established a centralized bureaucracy, a legal code, a tightly controlled provincial system, a standing army, and a land tax similar to that of the T'ang. From the beginning, differences between Japanese and Chinese societies required drastic adjustments. Most positions in the Japanese bureaucracy, held by members of the old clan nobility, quickly became hereditary. Recruitment through an examination system, after the Chinese model, never developed in Japan. The newly asserted power of direct taxation could not be effective at any distance from the court, so the emperors were forced to grant tax-exempt estates to some nobles in return for their services or support. Such estates also tended to become hereditary. The reforms nevertheless exerted a great impact upon Japanese society, not the least being the construction of Japan's first city, Nara, as a capital where the new ways could flourish. Built in the early eighth century, Nara was carefully planned as a miniature version of Ch'ang-an, with broad streets, imposing new palaces, and many Buddhist edifices. Some of these temples and monasteries still survive as among the best remaining examples of T'ang architectural style. Scholars, priests, and artisans from the mainland were welcomed at Nara, and later at Kyoto, the second capital, also copied from Ch'ang-an. Chinese culture-carriers found ready apprentices among the Japanese, including the first Japanese historians, who recorded, in Confucian contexts, myths and legends of the past which supported the emperor's right to his throne as a descendent of the Sun Goddess. A New Japanese Order: The Heian Period, 794-1185 A recreated Japanese cultural and political system, part traditional, part Chinese, part imperial, and primarily feudal, came into being during the Heian period. In 794, a Confucian trained emperor built a new capital at Heian-kyo (now called Kyoto) to free himself from the growing political power of the Buddhist clergy; here the imperial court remained for nearly a thousand years, until 1868. During the next three and a half centuries, "peace and tranquility" (a literal translation of "Heian-kyo") generally characterized Japanese life. The era of Chinese-inspired reforms was over. Imperial authority weakened, and a court aristocracy flourished without much political power. What was left of central government came under domination of the Fujiwara family, while local lords became practially independent in the provinces. By the tenth century, the Fujiwara family was accepted as the source of hereditary regents, who ruled the country for figurehead emperors, a system continued, in varied forms, to the present. Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027), who held dominion over the court for thirty years, was the brother of two empresses and the father of four, the uncle of two emperors, the grandfather of two more, and the great-grandfather of another. Controlled by such a web of family intrigue and influence, the Heian court functioned in accord with its own stately rhythms. The sacred emperor performed his ceremonial duties, some Shinto and some Buddhist. Fujiwara women, as imperial consorts, produced future emperors. Monarchs were pressured to retire to Buddhist monasteries when their male heirs, usually little boys, were old enough to perform the prescribed rituals. As maternal uncles or grandfathers of the child-sovereigns, Fujiwara regents managed affairs until the emperors matured and abdicated in their turns. While the Fujiwara, the puppet emperors, and the effete court nobles played their formal roles at Heian-kyo, political power was shifting toward the provinces, where many local lords were becoming independent governors and military commanders. Some of the strongest and most adventurous lords organized campaigns against the Ainu, seizing and colonizing territories with their followers. A network of feudal relationships, linking land grants with pledges of personal loyalty and service, developed among these provincial nobles and their subordinates, often completely outside imperial authority. The bushi (warrior) lords and their mounted samurai retainers, generated a primitive value system, the code of Bushido, which stressed courage, endurance, discipline, and loyalty unto death. The long-range effect of the Bushido tradition among Japanese men was recognized by many American soldiers in World War II. Culture Of The Heian Period The court at Heian-kyo produced an artificial culture, largely imported from China; but behind this facade of Chinese traditions and aristocratic pretensions, the Japanese by the tenth century had developed a cultural perspective quite distinct from China's. Although also nature lovers, the Japanese were much less scholarly than the Chinese and more moved by intuitional preferences for balance, restraint, delicate precision, and economy. Indeed, "cultivation of the little" has been identified as a characteristic Japanese culture trait, which may have resulted from people living closely together on small secluded islands. Perhaps the most obvious signs of Chinese influence were the temples. Generally, they followed the characteristic T'ang style and were lavishly adorned with both imported and Japanese statues of the Buddha, executed in bronze or wood and showing the typical benign expression of the Gandaran schools. Surviving temples include the Horyuji at Nara and the Phoenix Hall of the Byodoin at Uji, not far from Kyoto. The latter features perfect symmetry extravagant decoration, and striking contrasts of white and bright red colors. Although symbolizing the Buddhist paradise, it also expresses the Japanese appreciation of the harmony between a subject and its natural setting. The hall stands beside a pond, its reflection creating an inverse picture of the building in the water. Painting developed from Chinese models but, like architecture, soon showed a distinctive Japanese flavor. Buddhist themes predominated at first, but later artists chose more secular subjects drawn from everyday life. The new Japanese style, known as Yamato-e, was noted for its use of bright colors and for filling in finely sketched outlines. It was often used in decorating sliding doors and screens, but it was most commonly seen in picture-scroll illustrations for literary works. Heian literature, while reflecting clearly the aristocratic life of its setting, was even more independent of Chinese influence than the other arts. Most Japanese intellectuals were men, trained to write in Chinese characters that could not easily represent Japanese syllables or thought; upper-class Japanese women, on the other hand, were not as well educated in Chinese and therefore wrote in a phonetic script, expressing Japanese sensitivities in charming poems, diaries, and novels. These works contained analyses of personal feeling that had no precedents in Chinese literature. The finest example is undoubtedly The Tale of Genji, a long novel by Lady Murasaki, who depicted her narrow court life with great psychological profundity and aesthetic appreciation for human emotion. As Lady Murasaki explained in the words of her hero, Genji, an author does not only write to tell a story but to express an "emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart" or "let it pass into oblivion." ^3 [Footnote 3: Quoted in Ryusaku Tsunoda et al., eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 181-182.] Well before Lady Murasaki, in the early eighth century, the countryside beyond Heian-kyo had begun producing its own literature. The Manyoshu, a collection of some 4000 poems, reflects a fresh outpouring of the native Japanese spirit in treating the old religion, the brevity of life, love of nature, and appreciation of friends. These short poems have never been surpassed in equating natural phenomena and human emotion, clinching each point in typical Japanese fashion with a twist of thought at the end of a set syllabic sentence. The Kamakura Shogunate Cultural development continued past the thirteenth century in directions set during the Heian era, but the Fujiwara regency broke down much sooner as the result of warfare among the noble clans. In 1185, after a long struggle still celebrated in Japanese literature, movies, and television, a clique dominated by the Minamoto clan emerged victorious. Its leader, an outstanding soldier-statesman named Yoritomo, forced the emperor to grant him the title of shogun (generalissimo) and established a capital at Kamakura. Subsequent shoguns paid utmost respect to the emperors and governed at a discreet distance from the imperial court at Heian-kyo; but the shoguns, not the emperors, were the real rulers of Japan. The resulting Kamakura Shogunate was a superfeudal order, designed to control an earlier one created by the Fujiwara court. It employed constables and stewards in every province but still relied on a complex web of personal obligations among local aristocrats and their common adherence to the code of Bushido. The prevailing values were extended to women, who were now expected to bear hardships with Spartan endurance; to fight, and if necessary, to die beside their husbands. Their lives were much harder, but they could hold the rights of a vassal and inherit property under the code. Kamakura noblewomen were often successful administrators. One of the ablest was Masako, Yorimoto's widow, also known as the "nun-shogun", who was the power behind the shogun, after her husband died.