Tag Archives: Prince Shotoku

BETWEEN THE ninth and twelfth centuries, Japan developed at a slower pace. It was as if the people knew that they needed time to digest what they had learned. After 838, the government sent no more official missions to China. The Japanese continued to value Chinese civilization as highly as ever, but they went about things in their own way. Slowly, Japan became thoroughly Japanese. Prince Shotoku’s dream of a strong central government had come true. In time, however, the same evils that plagued Chinese dynasties in their later stages began to plague Japan. Thanks to their high positions at court, the noble landowners did not have to pay taxes. As a result, they grew richer and were able to buy more land. Although more Japanese land was being farmed all the time, less and less of it could be taxed. The government’s income fell while its expenses rose. Naturally, the government tried to make the landowners pay taxes. This move was bound to fail, for the officials who were supposed to carry out the order were the very men who profited most from not having to pay taxes. It was like asking them to pick their own pockets. Failing in this attempt, the government raised the taxes of landowning peasants instead. To escape paying these taxes, some peasants put themselves under the protection of the nearest great landowners, while the more adventurous headed north for the thinly settled Ainu country of North Honshu. Either way, their taxes were lost to the government, which became weaker and weaker. In China, a foreign invader or a rebel leader would have overthrown the sickly government and made himself ruler. In Japan, nothing of the sort happened. For one thing, there was no enemy at Japan’s borders, only miles and miles of empty …

PRINCE SHOTOKU was pleased to see his fellow aristocrats take to his chosen faith so enthusiastically. He wanted them to adopt other ways of living from China, too. Having seen how the Sui emperors had reunified China after three and a half centuries of disorder, he was particularly eager for Japan to copy their strong central government. In 603 and 604, Shotoku adopted the Chinese calendar, issued a constitution and set up a new civil service system. In the constitution, he left no room for doubt as to the emperor’s supreme position. “A country does not have two lords,” he wrote, “and the people do not have two masters.” His civil service plan, or “court rank system,” was revolutionary. It did away with the government posts held by noblemen who had inherited them from their fathers. In their place it set up twelve ranks of officials to be appointed by the emperor from among the most worthy noblemen he could find. Each rank was named after one of the virtues which Confucius had praised: harmony, sincerity, diligence, and so on. To make his countrymen thoroughly familiar with Chinese ways, the prince sent missions to the Sui court in 607, 608 and 614. The first group carried a message from “the Son of Heaven in the the land where the sun rises” to “the Son of Heaven in the land where the sun sets.” The next group bore greetings from “the Emperor of the East” to “the Emperor of the West.” Such language struck the Sui emperors as highly impudent, coming from a race of “dwarfs.” Their successors, the T’ang emperors, felt the same way, but the Japanese kept sending missions. Although Prince Shotoku died in 622, thirteen more missions went to China between 630 and 838. Most of the missions …

DRAWING ON nature for inspiration, the Japanese invented a number of gods and goddesses. They took it for granted that their islands and their ancestors had been created by gods. Many different stories were told about how these things had happened. The official account of how Japan got started was finally laid down in 720, in a book called Nikon Shoki, or The History of Japan. This book, written on the orders of the emperor, was a hodge-podge of myths and family trees, with a little recent history thrown in. Its authors were trying to please their imperial master. T o give Japan a long, respectable past like China’s, they claimed that it had been founded nearly fourteen hundred years before, by a god named Jimmu. They traced the descent of the emperor all the way back to this god. Nihon Shoki was not a very reliable source of facts. Almost to the present, most Japanese people have believed everything it said. For this reason it is the most important book in their history. According to its authors, everything began with the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami, who lived in heaven. They came down to the earth, where Izanami gave birth to the Japanese islands. Then the couple had other children, all gods and goddesses. Izanami died while bearing the fire god and sank down to the lower world. There, Izanagi visited her. Izanami’s flesh had begun to rot; rather than let Izanagi see her in such a state, she sent him away. In his grief, Izanagi shed his garments, each of which turned into a god or goddess. Then, to purify himself after his meeting with Izanami, he washed. As he did, every part of his body became a god or a goddess. MIRROR, SWORD AND JEWEL Among …