The Formation of the centralized
government and rule of law
We often see the emergence of the
Nara Japan illustrated like a quantum move to the state of centralized government
under rule of law, or Ritsuryo State 律令國家, triggered by the influence from
Tang China. If no one has intended to present
it that way, that is the impression the most of us get left with from the popular
narratives on the grand opening of Japan as state that we associate with
Nara.
Here again, we see a lot of fallacies working behind those narratives. To begin with, there is no evidence that the Japanese copied the Chinese law system. More importantly, even if they had done it, the written law is only a part of the social culture. Japan took the very different course of social development from that of China after the seventh century when, according to the Tang-influencers, the immense impact of the Tang culture over the Japanese society began. Something in the vicinity of the Bakufu system and the feudal framework Japanese way that had survived into the modern time never took place in China. The birth of the Samurai class in Japan can never be explained by the Chinese influence while the actual tradition of the power play by the eunuchs in the Chinese courts didn't happen in Japan. The recruitment of government officials through public examination had never been in practice in Japan until the modern time. The Tenno lineage was never once broken in Japan though in formality, while dynasty after dynasty did come and go in China with the average life span of two hundred and, more or less, some years, Tang not being an exception. Country stayed whoever took the power in Japan while country changed with ruler house in China. The fundamental question should be whether there was any significant consequence in the Japanese society after the presumed exposure to the Chinese social system. If ever, in what scale and direction. Here are the macro- and micro-problems the narratives about the Tang influence through the Ritsuryo, or written law and government system, are found carrying:
The first
problem of the Tang-influencer narratives focusing on the Ritsuryo, the written
law and government system, lies in the overstatement of its impact, regardless
whether there was any real benchmarking or not. As for the possible plagiarism first, there is no evidence that
the actual borrowing of contents from the Chinese text took place. The 17 Article Constitution 十七條憲法, believed to have been promulgated
by the Prince Shotoku after the Confucian teachings entering the seventh
century, tends to be denied of its real existence in the academic circle these days, even by Japanese.[]
[] 津田左右吉 Tsuda Sojiki and 森博達 Mori Hiromachi argued that the 17 Article Constitution could be a later-day creation for its Confucian content not clicking with the time in Japan and for using termonologies not used at the time, respectively.
With the text of Taiho Code of the year 701 lost, the story goes that Japanese would have consulted the Tang’s law system promulgated in 653 for the legislature. Yet, the circumstance of the time makes it dubious that the text of the Tang laws could have been available to the Japanese missions whose last visit was made in the year 669 more than 40 years before the Taiho Code promulgation of 701. The international atmosphere surrounding the Peninsula was tense since the war between Sui and Koguryo. Tang was contemplating a war with Baekje and chances are low that it didn't know about the special affinity between Japan and Baekje. The delegates of the Tang mission sent in 659 under Saimei Tenno 齊明天皇 was detained for two years by Tang for the reasons of intelligence security. On top of the scanty evidence for the existence of the real influence, the ground for the Tang influence would get further undermined by the fact that the laws as promulgated in both countries did not work well and much of the stipulations went unenforced due to the ineffectiveness and difficulties in implementation under real situations. So, the argument would be quite off the mark that Tang China influenced the Japanese society through their example of its advanced written law system.
Secondly, the narratives that the Japanese society made a big leap forward into an advanced civilization through the introduction of the Chinese-style centralized government system is denying the long process of social development the Japanese society had been through. Series of written law promulgations in the 7C, starting with the Taika Reform of 645, was the product that the Japanese leadership came up with based on the social experience and knowledge accumulated through trial and error over the timespan of hundreds of years. One of the propelling forces behind the changes was the inflow of the people. Each period represented the wave of migration of people with distinctive culture: Yayoi times by the rice growers of the Uji communities from the southern part of Peninsula with the bronze and earthen pots, Kofun era by the conquerors on the horseback with the iron, and Asuka period by the Buddhist monks and professionals with art and architecture bundled in the package of the Buddhism. The process could be best described as cultural diffusion by way of migration. The source of cultural diffusion to the Archipelago up through the eighth century was exclusively the ancient Korean polity much like England was to America. Yet, it was a multi-layered one. Each wave of the migration had formed a layer that would constitute the stratified structure of the Japanese society. The centralization of government was attempted on the basis of the social structure that reflected the unique path the Japanese society had taken in the course of its development.
The uniformed grain tax was already in place at the Yayoi times. As the Uji communities coalesced into the larger Kuni 國, the labor for civil works and defense needed to have a fair and formalized framework of collection like the grain tax.
Daisenryo Kofun 大仙陵古墳, located in Osaka area, is believed to have been built during 5-6C during late Kofun period. The length of the tomb site is 0.84 kilometers. The entire area of the tomb site is 460,000 square meters (5,000,000 sq ft). The height of the mound is 35 meters.
The process of the Kunis getting under the control of the centralized government throughout the Kofun period should have demanded a lot of public work that entailed the collection of the labor in large scale, not to say of the military service. As the Be 部 system, whereby the earlier royal court had taken the direct control of the production of the key staples, gave way to the centralized bureaucratic government, the tax in the form of specialty products would have been a natural alternative both for the producers and for the party supplied.
The head priest was the king of the secular power at the same time in Japan, at least in the beginning from the times of Himiko, after the Transeurasian tradition of the theocracy. While Tenno held the priestly authority as inheritor of the Heavenly lineage, the secular leadership came to be shared with the people in power. The hierarchy of bureaucrats were required not just for the domestic rule but also for the protocol the foreign affairs called for. They needed a matching hierarchy of officials to deal with thier counterparts from the states in the Peninsula, who had been the sole foreign sources to Japan for hundreds of years, or a millennium. The government system of Japan had evolved to accommodate all these needs, reflecting the unique characteristics of the constitution of the Japanese society.
So, they came up with the government organization faithful to the nature of their society and cultural
background. Under the ultimate authority of the being to be called Tenno later
there were placed two chancellors, the nominal one for the religious affairs 神祇官 and the real-powered one called 太政官for all the secular affairs shared by
seven departments. The difference in the structure of the government from the
Chinese was evident from the start, reflecting the difference in the cultural
background of the two
societies. The governmental framework as stipulated in the Taiho Code has been in work until recently in Japan, only the chancellor now the Prime Minister, some departments
having used the same name until the end of the 20th century, testifying to the fact that the government
organization the Japanese leadership came up with through the seventh century
was something well thought out to fit the realities of the Japanese society.
The third problem seems to come from the fallacy in the common recognition on the two different lineages of culture. By the Chinese character-based name Ritsuryo 律令 people seem to get prone to the thought that it came from China. The Northeastern people had own writing systems. Ancient Korean civilization is believed to have been one of the earliest to come up with the rudimentary forms of ideographs, the ancient Koreans known for their cultural affiliation with the Shang Dynasty, where the first Chinese character system is believed to have been germinated. The Chinese writing system as we know now was only the result of standardization and one should not be misled to think that the civilization diffused to the "barbarian" East Asian countries, as Chinese literature had never failed to describe, along with the propagation of the Chinese writing system. You may call it reverse-Sinicization.
The rule by written law was a tradition that the early Japanese society had come by as inheritor of the Transeurasian culture, not as result of a sudden inspiration from the Chinese. Go-Joseon had been found with the “Eight Articles of Prohibition Law” as early as in 2C BCE, from which the Chinese thought the high ethical standards of the ancient Korean society came. It was a very Chinese way of interpretation. Gojoseon, the first ancient state Koreans believe they came down from, was a legalist society [] wherein the state took care of the law provision and enforcement, leaving the area of self-cultivation and personal wisdom to the realm of the individuals, in contrast to the Confucianist idea whereby the ideal society would be realized through the self-edification by the individual member of the society, thus whereby the engagement of the law enforcement for the social order was thought not graceful and cultured.
[] It should be noteworthy that the representative legalist thinkers of the Warring States Period, such as Han Fei 韓非子 or Li Si 李斯 of Qin, were all of DongYi descent.
The state of Buyeo, another ancient Korean state from which Koguryo and Baekje derived from, had the pre-defined hierarchy of bureaucrats. Koguryo had the written law and government system in place by 4C, while its neighbor Northern Wei, the early Xianbei state, was known for the sophisticated law system they came up with in 5C, which was to be inherited and further accomplished by the later dynasties of Sui and Tang. From the perspective of the time, the rule by written law was not that much of the Chinese thing as the Tang influencers of today would presume it to be.
Looking at the China side, Qin was the legalist society and the first Chinese state identified with the full set of written law system. They are known to have carried the lineage of the northern tribes, most likely that of DongYi. The Han Dynasty is rather known for the brutal punishments in the court in personal retaliation and jealousy than for the rule of law in the area. They started with copying the Go-Joseon's short but rigorus law system. The Song Dynasty that came after Tang, which Chinese claim to be of Han Chinese derivation, did not show much interest in publishing the consolidated code. It was the Yuan Dynasty, of the Mongols, another northern tribe of the Transeurasian lineage, which published the consolidated written law and regulations named 至正條格. The Ming Dynasty, who claimed themselves as of the legitimate Han China lineage, inherited the legacy of the Mongol rule and published the Great Ming Code 大明律, wherein the punishments on the crimes were laid out to countermatch the Confucian nomenclature of ethics, reluctant to give up the Confucian ideal whereby the self-edification should be the base of the social order.
Fourth, the Tang-influencer’s argument on the Chinese influence on the Japanese society by way of the social system disparages the influences from the ancient Korean states. In fact, the leadership of the Japanese society always had the people conversant with those subjects and details in the form of the court counsels that included the scholars from Peninsula during the Kofun period and later the Buddhist monk-scholars in the Asuka Period. As discussed earlier, the Silla Missions were made intensively during the critical period of a half century before the Taiho Code introduction in 701 while the Tang mission was in hiatus.
[新羅帳籍 Silla Survey Report] The last point that needs to be made is the chronic problem of the Sinocentric predispostion on the subject of the cultural influence in the historical narratives on the early Northeast Asia. Tang-influencers presume that it should have been one-sided since the civilization of Tang China was superior to its neighbors. It simply was not true. Yes, Tang China was the biggest in terms of population and territory size and would have been a prosperous center of the international trade and diverse cultures, but that does not mean it had the most advanced in art and social system and was the sole source of the cultural diffusion and interactions. As for the Japanese society it would not be that unfair to say that it was only a secondary source next to the Korean one. The debate may have to be about how close the Chinese influence was to that of Korean sources in terms of the real cultural influence on the Japanese society, which I believe to have been close to nihil or meager at best.
While the Xianbei rulers had been eager for the Sinification of their people and country, the Transeurasian culture was no secondary force in the process of the cultural intermingling in the Chinese society under Tang. It was during this Tang period that the wears of the Transeurasian style 胡服 became the mainstream of the Chinese fashion. The frontal opening became popular in the Chinese fashion during this period, catching up with the other Transeurasian ones in style and seamstry technics. The "barbarian" fashion became mainstream and we see the recently-coined Hanfu 漢服 under the nationalistic campaign among Chinese young generation is being reconstructed based on the styles introduced during this period. What they think as Chinese original came from the northern tribes they used to call Barbarian. In a sense, the Japanese and Korean culture of the time was of the Transeurasian lineage less tainted while the Tang’s was a more Sinificated version of of the Transeurasian lineage. It may not have been a mere coincidence China came to have the first female ruler Wu Zetian 則天武后 in the late seventh century with the adoption of 天, or Heaven, in the official title, like in Japan. One cannot say for sure that the publication of The Six Statutes of the Great Tang 大唐六典, which was completed in 739 after 17 years of work that engaged many top-level scholars of the time, but somehow was never put to use, had not been stimulated by the Taiho Code of 701. I am not necessarily saying here that the Tang's legislation was influenced by the Japanese one of 701. The real problem lies in that no questions have ever been made in that direction.
The cultural interaction between China and Japan was tenuous with no significant human exchanges and contacts, more so when compared to that with the ancient Koreans. Often you see the personal frienship between a Japanese missionary with a Chinese official is given limelight. It is one of typical tricks to deceive the audience. They didn't do that once for the overwhelming cases of such special relationships of respect, admiration and influence with Koreans, many of whom got fossilized as God and in fact were incorporated into the constitution of the Japanese society.
As in the other cultural areas, the popular narratives on the Chinese influence on the early Japan in the area of social systems have been gravely tainted with exaggerations, unevidenced predispositions, omissions and concealments. Many desceptive tricks are mobilized to feed the lies. The few personal friendships are being given constant flood light, while the images of the artifacts they use in the chapters are the ones from Asuka when Tang didn't even exist. They keep talking about a twig while to distract the people from looking at the whole tree and forest. Now, let's go back to the Asuka Period for further probes into the cultural influence in the area of art and architecture. At least, they are tangible and visible.
Asuka Period and Baekje
The business entity with the longest history in the whole human history is known to be 金剛組 Kon Kogumi , still in business in Japan, established in 578 CE by the architects from Baekje [] and it was around this time that Japan began to use the corner stone for the pillars of the wooden edifice that enabled the construction of the big wooden structures. Kon-Kogumi finished the first state temple, Asuka-Tera 飛鳥寺 (or Hoko-ji法興寺) Kyoto in 593 and the series of the earliest Buddhist temples were built in Nara and Kyoto areas in the matter of a couple decades since then.
We do not know what was the exact nature of the affinity the two courts
of Japan and Baekje had between them. The first records of their unusual
relationship would go back to 4C, but here we will focus on the cultural
exchanges between them during the Asuka period since we are talking about the
validity of the ‘Tang influence’. The incidents that manifested their unusual affinity
abound in the records, from the naming of the palace by the Bidatsu Tenno after
Baekje (Kudara) in 572, to the scene of the opening of the Asuka Temple in 592
CE, [] to the response of collective distress in the Japanese court at the news
of the fall of Baekje in 660 CE, [] followed by the huge-scale military expedition
to the Peninsula to reverse the fall of Baekje in 663.
[](推古)元年正月，蘇我大臣馬子宿禰依合戰願，於飛鳥地建。立刹柱日，嶋大臣井百餘人，皆著百濟服，觀者悉悅。以佛舍利籠置刹柱礎中。In the first month of Suiko (593CE), to watch more
than one hundred officials, including the prime minister Soga Umano, in the
Baekje attires at the ceremony of dedicating the Buddha’s reliquary box for the
opening of the Hoko-Ji Temple was quite spectacular. - 扶桑略記 *Hoko-ji
was the first temple that Kon-kogumi 金剛組 built.
[](天智2年)九月辛亥朔丁巳、百濟州柔城、始降於唐。是時、國人相謂之曰「州柔降矣、事无奈何。百濟之名絶于今日、丘墓之所、豈能復往。…」 In the nineth month of Tenji(663CE), the Juyu castle of Baekje fell. Then the state people (國人)* said to each other,” Juyu has fallen and nothing can be done!! Now with the name of Baekje gone, how can we visit the place where the mound tombs (of ancestors) are?...” -日本書記
* It is probable that "國人", translated here as State People, was the transliteration of "나라사람" or "Nara Saram" in Modern Korean, or "Nara Sama" in modern Japanese.
It was under this atmosphere that the propagation of the Buddhism by Koreans was made to Japan. It was made in the whole package, not just the Buddhist faith, but with the art, architecture and technologies, even the language and its accompanying cultures through the massive inflow of the people that affected the constitution and social fabric of the early Japanese society. That roughly defines the Asuka period. []
Understanding the early Buddhism in Northeast Asia
The Chinese records say that the Buddhism was propagated to Korea in around 5C CE from the 前秦(351-394) and Eastern Jin東晉 (317-420), but there are also some literature with the contradictory story that the Buddhism in China came from the ancient Korea. []
[] The record on the Chinese side is in Shanhai Jing『山海經』 第18 海內經. 東海之內 北海之隅 有國名曰 朝鮮天毒 其人水居 偎人愛之 [朝鮮 今樂浪郡也. 天毒卽天竺國 貴道德 有文書金銀錢貨 浮屠出此國中也] In the East Sea and in the corner of North Sea is located Joseon. People live by water and they respect and love each other. [ Joseon is now the 浪郡 (Lolang in Chinese, Nara in Korean) area. They take ethics preciously, they have script, books, gold, silver, coins and paper bills. Buddhism came from this country.] * […….] part is the footnote part put down by 郭璞, a renowned Han scholar.
In Korea there is the evidence for direct inflow of the Buddhism from India at a much earlier time through the marine route. According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Garak (Gaya) States 三國遺事 駕洛國記, the Buddhism and the first Buddhist monk arrived with the queen in 48 AD on the ship to see the first king Kim Suro of 金官伽倻 Geumgwan Gaya. A small pagoda 婆娑石塔 that she is said to have brought from her place, made of a stone only found in India, is still standing in Kimhae near Busan as we are talking about it. Tens of temples that claim to have been built by the monk who accompanied her are scattered around in the southern part of the peninsula. And all of them share a two-fish pattern as ornament on the gates, identical with the one used in a part of India during the period.
While the route the Buddhism was introduced might suggest the marine element of the ancient Korean culture, the development of the faith in the Korean societies as popular belief also took a course distinct from the Chinese society.
Firstly, the acceptance of the Buddhism as the state religion was not with that much of conflict as In China. In China, Buddhism was seen as secular teachings competing with the Confucianism, with the discussion focusing on which one is more effective in making people and society better, while in Korea and in the countries with the same cultural lineage, the intermingling with the existing belief of the pantheistic nature did not produce much conflict in thought. The conflict in the early stage in Japan was more of a political nature, than of the clash of faith.
Secondly, the early Korean states had
enough social and intellectual resources to send the pilgrims to India and to
open the schools of their own as early as in the first half of the sixth
century. The Baekje
Monk, Gyeom-Ik 謙益, went to India and studied there for five years
(526–531) according to 彌勒佛光寺事蹟. Coming
back to Korea, he and his companions from India translated directly from the
Sanskrit scripts and established 律宗 Li
Zong ( Ritsu or Risshu りっしゅうin
Japanese) in Baekje, one hundred years earlier than in China.
Thirdly, the Korean Buddhism produced many high monks of international renown in the early stage of the Buddhism in the Northeast Asia. Among many, Wonhyo 元曉 (617-686) from Silla made the huge contribution in the interpretations of the key scripts and his name was known even to India, with his work published and circulated in Sanskrit. His works made the pivotal impact in the development of the North Asian Buddhism, and his humble life and practice as Buddhist evangelist, walking into the populace and presenting Buddhism as spiritual relief to the agony of '' this world '', setting the example for many to follow. Yet, his was a married life with children.
We need to recognize the distinctive courses of development that Buddhism took in the three East Asian countries, depending on the route of the introduction of the religion and on the constitution and fabric of the society, each country contributing to the formation of the popular Buddhism in the East Asian region. It is only when we comprehend the uniqueness of the Buddhism in each country that we come to appreciate the distinctive taste and trend in the Buddhist artworks in each country.
The Buddhist art of the Asuka period
The evaluation on the aesthetical accomplishment of the art pieces should be better left to the individuals, but since here we are engaged in the discourse about the cultural influence of Tang or China on the early Japan, we would need to look at the artworks with the timeline in mind. Actions speak louder than the words. Artifacts should speak louder than the printed claim you have been tamed to.
The Buddhist sculptures below are examples of the exquisite and accomplished art pieces that represent the early Japanese civilization ih Asuka period, free from the argument for Tang influence simply because Tang simply did not exist at the time of these artifacts that represent the exquisite quality of the Japanese civilization at its beginning.
Let’s look into the “Pensive Maitreya” from the three countries. Some were heard saying the Buddhist art of the early Japan prior to the time of Tang in China had been influenced by Northern Wei (386-534). When we juxtapose the artworks of the Pensive Maitreya from the three countries, it would take not a professional expertise to note that the Korean artwork has a clearly distinctive style from the Northern Wei ones and the Japanese pieces have no trace of the Northern Wei influence in terms of skills, material and aesthetics.
[] Maitreya means ‘future Bodhissatva’ and its being represents the profound universe of the Buddhist philosophy. The “Pensive Maitreya” statue is one of the most transcendent and purest forms of Buddhist art in the sense that it was not meant for the temple service or for the personal tutelary. The form started in Kushan Dynasty, located in the today’s Pakistan, around 2C CE and was popular in Northern Wei and Korea around 5C to 6C CE.
Put aside the assessment on the aesthetics and technics, yet we see the Northern Wei Buddhist figures not fully free from the Gandhara style in its facial features and overall style. Until the early Tang period, the Gandhara tint remained as you can see in the main Buddha of Longmen Cave near Luyang, which is said to have been made after the image of Wu Zetian 則天武后 in the beginning of 8th century. It was only into the nineth century that the Chinese Buddha statues came free of the Gandhara smack and wore the Asiatic face. It produces a good contrast with the Buddhist artworks of Korea and Japan. It is hard to find the Buddhist artfacts with direct Gandhara influence in Korea and Japan even in the earlier works than the 6C or 7C ones presented here. They not only appear free of the Gandhara, but were manifesting the artistic confidence in the overall contour down to detail lines and in the facial expression (i.e. the subtle evanescent smile reminds of Monalisa) with the very North Asian countenance. The Maitreya figures of Korea and Japan also evinces the minimalist tradition of their art.
[Close-up of the facial
expressions of the Buddhas] Basically, all the three countries that produced the above three art pieces belonged to the larger Transeurasian cultural lineage, yet it would be a sheer nonsense to say that the art of early Japan was influenced by Northern Wei when no human exchange and technical transfer could have taken place between the two, especially under the presence of the Korean Buddhist art that had arrived in Japan with its own artistic originality and advanced technics, that had clearly differentiated itself from the Northern Wei’s. []
[] Dr. Jon Carter Covell called the allusion to the influence of Northern Wei on the early Japan Buddhist
art "cultural leap-frogging" in her publication Korean Impact
on Japanese Culture. Jon Carter Covell (1910-1996) was the first Westerner to
obtain a doctorate in Oriental art history, which she completed at Columbia
University. Later she taught at California State University at Long Beach, the
University of California at Riverside and at the University of Hawaii.
All in all, we need to understand that ancient Korea of the time was not a mere medium of propagation to Japan, but the active contributor in the formation of the East Asian Buddhist culture both in thought and in art. The ancient Korean states were leaders in many fields of the Buddhist thoughts and art. As in the case of the Missions, we might be here again face-to-face with the preemptive postulation of the ‘Tang influence’ that has been hampering the history students from getting to the balanced view on the development of the early Japanese Buddhist art and eventually the whole sound picture of the Buddhist art in the Northeast Asia of the time.
The cross-section of the Japanese society in the mid-eighth century seen through the construction of Todai-Ji Temple
Now,
let’s get out of the Asuka period and go to the mid-eighth century at the height of the Nara Period straddling
the opening of Todai Temple. More than
two hundred years have passed since the Buddhism arrived in Japan and three
generations had passed since the fall of Baekje and Koguryo. Now the grandchildren of the refugee
immigrants from the bygone states were in their prime and were incorporated
into the Japanese society, yet their family status from their state of origin
was being recognized officially, defining their social status backed by the power of the
settler communities with their advanced knowledge and skills. The process of the
construction of the monumental temple well betrays the dimension of the
contributions that those newly naturalized Japanese people and communities made
to the Japanese society of the time.
Opening in the year 753, the new temple would stay as the largest wooden structure of the world for more than twelve centuries until the end of the second millennia.[] While its physical immensity manifests the ambition the Japanese leadership held for their new state vis-a-vis its neighbors, the successful completion of the huge project testifies to the total power and ability the Japanese society had reached at the time of early eighth century. The population of Japan at the time is estimated to have been slightly over five million. A look into the people involved in the huge construction project will surely provide a most transparent cross-sectional peep into the Japanese society of the time.
for the names of the people who were directly involved in the construction of the great temple,
go to "Tang's Influence"-True or false, why it matters (3/3)
end of 2/3 of the article "Tang's Influence"-True or false, why it matters
"Tang's Influence"-True or false, why it matters (3/3)
major contents
- The history of Korea-erasing practise in Japan
- The birth of the shoddy lie ‘Tang's Influence’
- Closing remark
