China and Japan

by Ezra F. Vogel

  had not yet been introduced in an or ga nized fashion. Nevertheless, Con-

  fucian concepts of morality and re spect for officials, already introduced by

  Koreans, were incorporated in the constitution. People were to seek “har-

  mony,” officials were to follow the directions of the ruler, and children were

  . 8 .

  Chinese Contributions to Japa nese Civilization, 600–838

  to follow the directions of their parents. Rules of propriety were established

  to govern relations among officials of diff er ent ranks. (The Imperial Academy

  with a heavy Confucian content, designed to prepare young people for offi-

  cial examinations, would not be introduced until late in the seventh century.)

  Prince Shotoku arranged for a small number of Chinese and Korean

  individuals to serve as advisers in Japan. The Paekche kingdom, following

  the example of China, had already introduced a bureaucratic system in

  Korea, with six government departments. Empress Suiko and, after her

  death in 628, her successor Emperor Jomei, did not go so far as to establish

  a bureaucratic structure. However, Emperor Jomei did introduce ceremo-

  nial protocols for welcoming foreign visitors that followed the examples of

  China and Paekche. Also, with the help of craftsmen from Paekche, Japan

  began the construction of monasteries and temples that symbolized the cen-

  tralization of power.

  Empress Suiko and Prince Shotoku wanted Japan to be treated with re-

  spect by China. At the time, Chinese officials believed that only the Chi-

  nese emperor should be called the “Child of Heaven” (in Chinese, tianzi;

  Japa nese, tenshi) and that the top leader of Japan or any other tribute- bearing

  group could only be considered a wang (king), a position not as high as the

  Child of Heaven. In 607 Empress Suiko signed a memorial, passed on to

  Chinese emperor Yangdi by her envoy, that read, “The Child of Heaven in

  the land where the sun rises addresses the Child of Heaven in the land where

  the sun sets.” The Chinese emperor was displeased with Empress Suiko for

  presuming to address him as an equal and is reported to have said to a sub-

  ordinate, “If memorials from barbarian states are written by persons who

  lack propriety, do not accept them.”6 Japa nese representatives, however, con-

  cerned that their country should receive proper re spect, began referring to

  their country not as the land of Wa but as Nihon, which in Japanese liter-

  ally means “the origin of the Sun.”

  As in Chinese cosmology, in Japan the emperor came to be seen as part

  of the natu ral order linked to Heaven. There is disagreement as to exactly

  when this change in Japa nese cosmology took place. While Suiko reigned,

  she was referred to as the okimi ( great king), and sometime after her reign

  the Japa nese began to refer to her as tenno (emperor, or heavenly lord). The

  first character of the Japa nese word for emperor, ten (Heaven), is the same

  . 9 .

  china and japan

  character as tian (Heaven, in Chinese), used in reference to the Chinese

  emperor ( tianzi). For the Japa nese, the term tenno indicated equality with

  the Chinese emperor, and within Japan, it also elevated the emperor above

  the clan members who served the emperor. Officials under the Japa nese

  emperor were thereafter known as vassals.

  The Taika Reforms

  In 645, after an internal strug gle within the Yamato, the Soga clan lost power

  to the imperial clan, and Emperor Kotoku of the imperial clan came to

  power. Emperor Kotoku, like the Soga clan leaders before him, wanted to

  centralize power, but he had the advantage of being able to draw on a greater

  number of monks by this time who had returned from China and on the

  comprehensive legal codes that by then had been developed during the

  Tang dynasty. Soon after coming to power Emperor Kotoku undertook

  the Taika ( Great Change) Reforms of 645. Modeled after changes made

  in China during the Tang dynasty, they went much further than changes

  made by the Soga to weaken the clans and to establish central adminis-

  trative control.

  On the first day of 646, Emperor Kotoku issued his Four Article Edict.

  Some Japa nese scholars have compared the role of these Four Articles in

  laying out the aims of the new administration with the Five- Article Charter

  Oath issued when Emperor Meiji came to power in 1868. Article 1 elimi-

  nated the power of the clans and their ability to control the fate of clan mem-

  bers. Article 2 provided for the reor ga ni za tion of geo graph i cal areas that,

  rather than the clans, would be the local administrative units responsible

  to the central leadership. The capital was divided into four districts, and the

  bound aries of more distant regions, to be under direct central control, were

  delineated. Article 3 provided for the rationalization of house hold regis-

  tration for purposes of taxation, labor contributions, and military ser vice.

  Article 4 outlined the taxes that were to be assessed, and the salaries that

  were to be set for administrative officials. The new administrative structure

  was extended to most of the main island of Honshu, in addition to Kyushu

  and Shikoku, and the prefecture system (then called kuni), with the subdi-

  vision of the prefectures into counties ( gun), was made more explicit. With

  this new reform, following the Chinese model Japan ended the capacity of

  . 10 .

  Chinese Contributions to Japa nese Civilization, 600–838

  the clans to dominate the government and established an administrative

  state covering a broader geo graph i cal area.

  Although the power of the clans had basically ended, Japan did not go

  as far as China in terms of abolishing the importance of inheritance. From

  the beginning of recorded history until the end of the Tokugawa period

  (1868), Japan used birth, much more than China did, as an impor tant cri-

  terion for one’s hierarchical position. And Japan did not rely as much as

  China on examinations to select its officials. However, Japan attached great

  importance to training. The new leadership under Emperor Kotoku de-

  vised a program for sending many more young officials to China for

  training than the Soga leadership had. Immediately after assuming office,

  Emperor Kotoku arranged for two groups to go to China. One group of

  121 promising young men was sent by ship along the northern route and

  then across Korea. The other group, of similar size, was sent by the southern

  route, directly across the ocean to China. The ship taking the southern

  route encountered a storm and nearly all on board drowned. Those who

  had gone by the northern route reached their destination and studied gov-

  ernment administration in China before returning home some years later.

  Tang China was remarkably cosmopolitan. Not only did it al ow Koreans

  and Japa nese to study but some Koreans and one unusual y talented Japa nese

  official, Abe no Nakamaro, who went on the mission in 717, passed the Chi-

  nese examinations and became Chinese officials. Abe served as an official in

  several Chinese locations from 761 to 767, including in Annam (Vietnam),

  in the position of Ch
inese representative. He was also a poet, best known

  for a nostalgic poem about Nara, and he became friends with China’s

  leading poets of the day. He tried several times to return to Japan, but the

  ships always encountered weather prob lems. He died in China in 770.

  Japan’s Military Lessons from Its Defeat by the Tang

  Before 661, the Japa nese had no experience fighting against military forces

  outside of Japan’s four islands. The Tang dynasty had developed a very strong

  military to unify the country in 618, and it maintained a very strong mili-

  tary throughout the seventh century.

  Because the Korean Peninsula is across a river (the Yalu) from China,

  Korea has always been more vulnerable than Japan to advancing Chinese

  . 11 .

  china and japan

  armies, and it was therefore quicker to learn some military skills from

  China. By the fifth century, Korean military forces were therefore more

  advanced than Japan’s. Japan had developed good relations with the

  Paekche, one of the three kingdoms (along with Silla and Koguryo) on the

  Korean Peninsula.

  In 660 when Tang forces, with their Korean ally the Silla, invaded

  Paekche, the Paekche kingdom appealed to Japan for help. Although

  precise rec ords are lacking and figures may be exaggerated, it was esti-

  mated that Japan sent 5,000 troops in 661, more troops in 662, and 27,000

  troops in 663. But in 663, the Tang and Silla rulers sent in even more troops

  and decimated the Paekche and Japa nese forces in a huge battle. The Japa-

  nese are said to have lost 400 ships and 10,000 men. The Japa nese had al-

  ready learned how to use horses from the Koguryo, and they were also re-

  ported to have lost 1,000 horses.7 Most of the lessons that Japan had

  learned from the Tang came from peaceful visits to the capital of Chang’an,

  but military lessons were also learned from fighting the larger and more

  advanced Chinese forces. The Kojiki explains that the Japa nese were de-

  feated because the Chinese were more numerous, better armed, and en-

  gaged in mass infantry attacks for which the Japa nese were unprepared.

  Thereafter, some Japa nese people began wearing swords and daggers, and

  preparing shields and bows and arrows, to defend against a pos si ble inva-

  sion. After battles in Korea, Japan cultivated horses, and during Japan’s

  672 Civil War, which began as a succession strug gle and then expanded

  beyond the royal family, Japa nese forces engaged in large- scale attacks on

  horse back. In 670, after its experience of losing to the superior Tang forces,

  Japan also began preparing a conscription system like that in China, to

  bring more able- bodied men into the military. The system was consoli-

  dated in the Taiho Code of 701.

  The Taiho Code of 701

  The Taiho Code further centralized the administrative structure in Japan,

  and a census enabled the drafting of peasants into the army or to work on

  construction proj ects. Under the code, the Japa nese also expanded the

  teaching of Confucianism, stressing that lower- level officials should re spect

  . 12 .

  Chinese Contributions to Japa nese Civilization, 600–838

  higher- level officials and children should re spect their parents. The Taiho

  Code was written by some eigh teen Japa nese authors, with the cooperation

  of one specialist from China. The introduction of woodblock printing from

  China late in the eighth century made possible the wider distribution of

  these collections that began in the eleventh century.

  By the time the Taiho Code was enacted, great advances had been made

  in the study of the Chinese system. Japan reduced the number of students

  it sent to China and established its own advanced training institute for of-

  ficials. The focus of study at the institute, as in China, was Confucianism,

  but the curriculum also included mathe matics and Chinese lit er a ture. And

  since all students were expected to be able to write in Chinese, training in

  Chinese language was central. Chinese lit er a ture was the most popu lar

  course, and poems by Bai Juyi, expressing feelings about everyday life in clear

  everyday language, were especially popu lar among the students.

  In line with Japan’s stress on family lineage, children of Japa nese aristo-

  crats could become high officials even if they did not study at the institute

  or pass examinations, so many did not bother attending the training insti-

  tute. Most students at the institute were children of lower- ranking officials,

  especially children of regional officials. Those students who did well on the

  examinations had a chance of rising somewhat within the hierarchy, but

  lineage background remained more impor tant than the examinations in de-

  termining one’s position as an official.

  At the time of the Taiho Code of 701 and then the Yoro Code of 718,

  officials were concerned about the collection of land taxes. As the model

  for rural organ ization, Japan introduced the Chinese “well- field” system,

  wherein eight families on their own private plots were settled to form a

  square around one field of common land. Japan’s local government admin-

  istrators were able to collect taxes from private landowners near the cap-

  ital, but they had difficulty collecting taxes from lands that were at a great

  distance from the capital. Furthermore, Japan allowed some people who

  were well connected to high officials to set up their own estates without

  paying taxes. Buddhist monasteries were also not required to pay taxes.

  These exemptions and collection difficulties placed a heavy burden on the

  small landholders closer to the capital, who both paid taxes and supplied

  young men for construction proj ects and military ser vice.

  . 13 .

  china and japan

  The Nara Period, 710–794

  A new milestone in urban development was reached in 710 when, after two

  years of construction, the Japa nese government occupied the newly built

  capital city of Nara. Nara was far larger than the previous capitals at Na-

  niwa, Asuka, and Fujiwara. Nara was laid out in the same rectangular pat-

  tern as Chang’an, with the palace in the north, the main thoroughfare

  running north to south, and side streets running east to west, although the

  area of the Nara administrative center was smaller, just three miles by two

  and two- thirds miles, compared with Chang’an’s six by five miles. Before the

  Nara period, each Japa nese ruler had governed from his own location, so

  the location of the capital changed with each change of rule. In the two and

  a half centuries before the capital’s relocation to Nara, there had been

  twenty- three rulers in the region of the Yamato plains and thirty- one dif-

  fer ent capitals. Nara, like Chang’an, was expected to remain the capital for

  a long time. Indeed, it was the capital for almost a century.

  Kyoto, the Heian Capital, 794–1185

  In 794 a strong emperor, Kammu, founded the Heian period and located

  the center of government in Kyoto. Some Japa nese leaders had become con-

  cerned about the growing power of the Shinto shrines and Buddhist mon-

  asteries in Nara and wanted a new capit
al free of Buddhist pressures.

  Kyoto, larger than Nara, covered an area mea sur ing three by three and

  one- third miles. It proved to be an enduring capital, lasting more than

  one thousand years. Unlike the Chinese cities that were surrounded by walls

  to ward off horseback- riding warriors who might swoop down from out-

  side, Kyoto, which then had no such worries, did not have city walls. The

  Heian period was relatively peaceful, although during its later years, because

  of turmoil in the surrounding areas, some cities built castles to defend them-

  selves from outside attacks. Like Chang’an and Nara, Kyoto was laid out

  with the capital buildings in the north, the main street running north and

  south, and numbered cross streets. Even today Kyoto retains the same basic

  grid structure that was introduced in 794, based on what the city planners

  had learned from Chang’an.

  . 14 .

  Chinese Contributions to Japa nese Civilization, 600–838

  Although monks during the Heian period did not go to China in such

  great numbers as they had in the last half of the seventh century, some con-

  tinued to travel to China and to provide information about Tang China to

  Japa nese government officials. Among those monks sent to China were

  some outstanding intellectuals of the day, such as Kukai (known posthu-

  mously as Kobo Daishi), who was in China from 804 to 806 and returned

  to Japan to establish the Shingon sect, and the monk Saicho (767–822),

  known by his posthumous name Dengyo Daishi, who introduced the Tendai

  sect in Japan. Ennin, who was in China from 838 to 846, left a detailed diary,

  translated by Edwin O. Reischauer and authenticated by others who, in re-

  cent de cades, have retraced the routes of his travels. Ennin’s diary provides

  the most reliable and complete account of a mission to China and of the

  situation in China at the time. It has even been used by Chinese scholars

  to describe China of the time. By the time Ennin returned to Japan, the Chi-

  nese had placed strict limits on Buddhist activities. During the following

  century, Japa nese monks had difficulty traveling to China.

  Language, Lit er a ture, and Music

  Until the sixth century Japan had no written language, and before the sev-

  enth century even Japa nese priests and po liti cal leaders were illiterate. But

  during the fifth and sixth centuries Chinese written characters began to ap-