Sep 16, 2023
This episode we will look at the influences on Japan from thecontinent, starting with what was going on between the archipelagoand the peninsula with tribute--in the form of birds and evenbooks--as well as conflict. We'll start to look at what sortsof knowledge was being passed over to Japan in the form of variousbooks, and hopefully set the stage for changes that we willeventually see in the form of the Yamato government, itself.
For more, check out our blog post at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-94
Rough Transcript
Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles ofJapan. My name isJoshua, and this is Episode 94: Magpies, Buddhism, and the BaekjeSummer Reading Program
This is one of a multi-part series discussingthe late 6th and early 7th centuries during the reign of KashikiyaHime, aka Suiko Tennou. Last episode, Episode 93, I dida very quick overview of just what is going on and some of theplayers involved.This episode I want to start deep diving into some of the topics,and we’re going to start with looking at the relationship betweenYamato and the Continent, primarily, but not exclusively, throughtheir relationships, the gifts and tribute that was going back andforth, and immigration—primarily from Baekje and Silla—and theimportation of new ideas, not just Buddhism. This in turn would wouldeventually lead to a formal change in the way that the Yamato stategoverned itself and how it came to see itself even as an equal tothat of the Sui court, which had unified the various kingdoms ofthe Yangtze and Yellow River Basins in the area of modernChina.
To begin, we’ll go back a bit, because thisdynamic isn’t simply about Kashikiya Hime, Soga no Umako, or anyone, single figure—though that is often how it isportrayed. To startwith, let’s cover some background and what we know about thearchipelago and the continent.
As we went over many, many episodes back, theearly Yayoi period, prior to the Kofun period, saw a growth inmaterial cultural items that were from or quite similar to those onthe Korean peninsula.There had been some similarities previously, during the Jomonperiod, but over the course of what now looks to be 1200 to 1300years, the is evidence of people going regularly back and forthacross the straits.It is quite likely that there were Wa cultural entities on bothsides in the early centuries BCE, and there are numerous groupsmentioned on the Korean peninsula, presumably from differentethno-linguistic backgrounds, though typically only three areas getmuch focus: The Samhan, or three Han, of Mahan, Byeonhan, andJinhan. Later this would shift to three Kingdoms: Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo, andthey would get almostall of the press.Still, we know that there were groups like the Gaya, or Kara,confederacy, and likely other small, eventually isolated groupsthat did not have their stories written down anywhere, other thanmentions in the Chronicles of Japan or of one of the other threemajor Kingdoms of the peninsula.
These groups continued to trade with thecontinent, and as the archipelago entered the period of moundedtombs, they were doing so as part of a larger mounded tomb culturalarea that included both the archipelago and the Korean peninsula:First the funkyubo, which is to say burial mounds, with multipleburials, and then the kofun, the singular tomb mounds for anindividual and possibly their direct relatives. This tradition reached its apexwith the distinct zenpo-koen, or round-keyhole style, kofun, aninnovation that was rooted in continental practice but at the sametime distinctly a part of the archipelago.
Many artifacts came over throughout thisperiod, and a fair number of them came with a new innovation:writing. There isdebate over the earliest forms of “writing” to be found in theislands, with evidence of characters on pottery being questioned asto its authenticity.However, it is hard to question the writing that appeared on theearly bronze mirrors and other such artifacts that showed up.
Early writing on the archipelago is moredecorative or even performative—crude attempts to copy existingcharacters that often demonstrate a lack of understanding, at leastby the artisans that were making various elite goods. Though, based on the fact thateven obvious forgeries with nonsense characters made their way intotombs as grave goods, we can probably assume that most of theelites were not too concerned with writing, either, other than forits decorative, and possibly even talismanic qualities.
In the fourth and fifth centuries, this beganto change. We havespecialists and teachers coming over to the archipelago, oftenthere as tutors for the royal Baekje princes who were apparentlystaying in Yamato as part of a diplomatic mission. No doubt some Yamato elitesbegan to learn to read and write, but even at this point it seemsto have been more of a novelty, and for several centuries readingand writing would seem to have remained largely the purview ofeducated immigrant communities who came to Yamato and set up shop.Though, along with things like the horse, writing may havenonetheless assisted Yamato in extending its authority, as speechcould now, with a good scribe, be committed to paper or some othermedium and then conveyed great distances without worry aboutsomething begin forgotten.
So, at this point, writing appears to mostlybe utilitarian in purpose. It fills a need. That said, we have discussion ofthe Classics, and as reading and writing grew, exposure to writingson philosophy, religion, and other topics expanded.
After all, reading meant that you were nolonger reliant on simply whom you could bring over from thecontinent. Instead,you could import their thoughts—or even the thoughts of humans longdead—and read them for yourself. In the early 6th century, we seeBaekje sending over libraries worth of books. These are largely focused onBuddhist scriptures, but they also include other works ofphilosophy as well.It is unclear to me how much the evangelical nature of Buddhismcontributed to this spread. Buddhism exhorts believers toshare the Buddha’s teachings with all sentient beings. Even during the Buddha’slifetime, his disciples would go out and teach and then gather backwith their teacher during the rainy season.
Buddhist teachings, coming over in books—thesutras—came alongside of other writings. There were writings aboutphilosophy, about medicine, and about science, including thingsthat we might today consider magical or supernatural. Those who knew how to read andwrite had access to new knowledge, to new ideas, and to new ways ofthinking. We can seehow all of this mixed in the ways that things are described in theChronicles. Forexample, we see that many of the rulers up to this point have beendescribed in continental terms as wise and sage kings. Now, as Buddhism starts to gaina foothold, we see Buddhist terminology entering in to themix. In some ways itis a mishmash of all of the different texts that were coming over,and it seems that things were coming more and more to a head.
In addition, there were things going on overon the continent as well, and this would come to also affect thearchipelago. For onething, this was a period of unification and consolidation of thevarious state polities. Baekje and Silla had beenconsolidating the smaller city-states under their administrationfor some time, and in 589 the Sui dynasty finally achieved what somany had tried since the time of the Jin—they consolidated controlover both the Yangtze and Yellow River basins. They set up their capital, andin so doing they had control of the largest empire up to that pointin the history of East Asia. The Sui dynasty covered not onlythese river basins, but they also had significant control over theWestern Regions, out along the famous Silk Road.
The Sui could really make some claim to beingZhongguo, the Middle Kingdom, with so many of the trade routespassing through their territory. They also controlled the landsthat were the source of so much of the literary tradition—whetherthat was the homelands of sages like Confucius, or else the gatewayto India and the home of Buddhism. It is perfectly understandablethat those states in the Sui’s orbit would enter a period of evenfurther Sinification.For the archipelago this was likely through a lens tinted by theirintermediaries on the Korean peninsula, but even they were clearlylooking to the Sui and adopting some of the tools of statecraftthat had developed over in the lands of the Middle Kingdom.
During the early years of the Sui, Yamato hadbeen involved in their own struggles, and at the end of theprevious reign Yamato had an army in Tsukushi poised to head overand chastise Silla for all that they had done to Nimna, but thenHasebe was assassinated, and it is unclear what actually happenedto that expedition.Yamato started gathering an army in 591, and Kishi no Kana andKishi no Itahiko were sent to Silla and Nimna, respectively, asenvoys, and then we are told that in 595 the generals and their menarrived from Tsukushi. Does that mean that they wentover to the peninsula, fought, and then came back fromTsukushi? It is all alittle murky, and not entirely clear to me.
Rather, we are told that in 597 the King ofBaekje sent Prince Acha to Yamato with so-called “tribute”—thediplomatic gifts that we’ve discussed before, re-affirming Baekjeand Yamato’s alliance. Later that same year, Iwagane noKishi was sent to Silla, so presumably Yamato and Silla relationshad improved. Iwaganeno Kishi returned back some five months later, in 598, and heoffered a gift from the Silla court of two magpies to KashikiyaHime. We are toldthat they were kept in the wood of Naniwa, where they built a nestin a tree and had their young.
Aston notes here that magpies are plentiful onthe continent but not in Japan. Indeed, their natural range isnoted across eastern China and up through the Amur river region, aswell as a subspecies up in Kamchatka, and yet it seems like theydidn’t exactly stray far from the coast. In modern Japan, the magpie, isconsidered to be an invasive species, and the current populationslikely were brought over through trade in the late 16th century,suggesting that this initial couple of birds and their offspringdid not exactly work out. Even today magpies are mostlyestablished in Kyushu, with occasional sightings furthernorth—though they have been seen as far north asHokkaido. PerhapsNaniwa just was not quite as hospitable for them. There is also the possibilitythat the term “magpie” was referencing some other, similarbird. That is alwayspossible and hard to say for certain.
That said, it is part of a trend, as fourmonths later, in the autumn of 598, a Silla envoy brought anotherbird: this time apeaco*ck. Not to be outdone, apparently, a year later, in the autumnof 599, Baekje sent a veritable menagerie: a camel, two sheep, and a whitepheasant. Presumablythese were sent alive, though whether or not there was anyone inJapan who knew how to take care of them it is unclear. I can only imagine what it musthave been like to have such animals on board the ship during thetreacherous crossing of the Korea strait—for all we know there wereother exotic gifts that were likewise sent, but these are the onlyones that made it.
And if this sounds far-fetched, we have plentyof evidence of the exotic animal trade. Animals such as ostriches, andpossibly even a giraffe or two, were somehow moved all the way fromAfrica along the silk road to the court in Chang’an.
There were also “tribute” gifts sent fromparts of the archipelago, though I suspect this was quite differentfrom the diplomatic gifts shared between states. For example, there was a whitedeer sent to Kashikiya Hime from the land of Koshi in the winter of598. It was no camelor magpie, but white or albino animals—assuming that wasn’t theirnormal color—were considered auspicious symbols.
Also, in 595 there was a huge log that washedashore in Awaji. Alocal family hauled it up and went to use it as firewood when theynoticed that it gave off a particularly sweet smell. Immediately they put out thefire, as they suddenly realized what they had: it was a log ofaloeswood. Aloeswoodis well known as one of the most highly prized aromatic woods, andit famously does not grow in Japan. In fact, it is a tropical wood,growing in Southeast Asia. For a log to have washed ashoreis almost unbelievable—perhaps it was part of a trade shipment thatsank. It isn’timpossible that a log somehow fell, naturally, into the ocean andfollowed the currents all the way up to Japan, which would havebeen quite the journey.
And so, with such a rare gift, the peopleoffered it up to Kashikiya Hime. This was probably the bestcourse of action.They could use it for themselves, but that likely wouldn’t havedone much other than help perfume the air for a time. Or they could have tried to sellit—but given the rarity, I’m sure there would have beenquestions. In bothcases, I suspect that they would have been at risk of some elitegetting wind and deciding that they should just take it forthemselves. Byoffering it to the court, publicly, they received the credit forit, at least—and it probably put them in favor with the court atleast for a little while.
Logs like this would be treated with immenserespect. Small pieceswould be taken, often ground down and used sparingly. A piece much like this called“Ranjatai” came over as a gift from the Tang dynasty in the 8thcentury, and was later preserved at Todaiji in the 8th century, andis still there as part of the Shosoin collection.
The story of this particular one isinteresting in that knowledge of aloeswood and the tradition ofscent appreciation likely came over from the continent, probablyfrom the Sui and Tang dynasties, as part of the overall culturalpackage that the archipelago was in the midst of absorbing.
Despite the apparently good relationsindicated by gifts like magpies or peaco*cks, it is clear there werestill some contentions with Silla, especially given that nobody hadforgotten their takeover of Nimna, and it didn’t help that in 600,we are told that Silla and Nimna went to war with eachother--again. Itisn’t clear just how involved Yamato was in this, if at all—by allaccounts, Nimna has already been under Silla control. Was this a localrebellion? An attemptby Yamato and Baekje to split it off? Or something else? Or is it just a fabrication tojustify the next bit, where we are told that Kashikiya Hime sent anarmy of 10,000 soldiers under the command of Sakahibe no Omi asTaishogun and Hozumi no Omi as his assistant, thef*ckushogun? Theycrossed the waters over to Silla and laid siege to five of Silla’sfortresses, forcing Silla to raise the white flag. The Nihon Shoki claims thatSilla then ceded six fortified places: Tatara, Sonara, Pulchikwi,Witha, South Kara, and Ara.
Since Silla submitted, the Yamato troopsstopped their assault and Kashikiya Hime sent Naniwa no Kishi noMiwa to Silla and Naniwa no Kishi no Itahiko to Nimna to helpbroker some sort of peace. Interestingly, this seems quitesimilar to the account of 591, when they sent “Kishi no Itahiko”,with no mention of Naniwa. Presumably it is the sameindividual, and I have to wonder if it isn’t the same event, justrelocated and duplicated for some reason.
A peace was brokered, and the Yamato troopsdeparted, but it seems that Silla was dealing in something otherthan good faith: no sooner had the Yamato troops gotten back intheir boats than Silla once again invaded Nimna, again.
I’d like to stress that there is no evidenceof this at all that I could find in the Samguk Sagi, and it ispossible that some of this is in the wrong section, possibly tosimply prop up this period, in general. However, it is equally as likelythat the Samguk Sagi simply did not record a loss toYamato—especially one that they quickly overturned, setting thingsback to the status quo. As such, the best we can say isthat Silla and Yamato around this time were less than buddybuddy.
With Silla going back on their word, Yamatoreached out to Goguryeo and Baekje in 601. Ohotomo no Muraji no Kurafu wentto Goguryeo, while Sakamoto no Omi no Nukade traveled toBaekje. Silla was notjust waiting around, however, and we are told that Silla sent a spyto Yamato, but they were arrested and found out inTsushima. Theyarrested him and sent him as tribute to the Yamato court.
We are told that the spy’s name was “Kamata”,and he was banished to Kamitsukenu—aka the land of Kenu nearer tothe capital, later known as Kouzuke. And there are a few things aboutthis story that I think we should pull on.
First off, that name: Kamata. That feels very much like a Waname, more than one from the peninsula. We aren’t told their ethnicity,only whom they were working for, so it may have been someone fromWa, or possibly that is just the name by which they were known tothe archipelago.There likely were Wa who were living on the peninsula, just likethere were people from Baekje, Silla, and Koguryeo living in thearchipelago, so that’s not out of the question. Furthermore, it would makesense, if you wanted to send someone to spy on Yamato, to usesomeone who looked and sounded the part.
The punishment is alsointeresting. Theydidn’t put him to death. And neither did they imprisonhim. In fact, I’m notsure that there would have been anywhere to imprison him, as therewasn’t really a concept of a “prison” where you just lock peopleup. There may havebeen some form of incarceration to hold people until they could befound guilty and punished, but incarceration as a punishment justdoesn’t really come up. Instead, if you wanted to removesomeone, banishment seems to have been the case—sending them offsomewhere far away, presumably under the care of some localofficial who would make sure that they didn’t run off. Islands, like Sado Island, wereextremely useful for such purposes, but there are plenty ofexamples where other locations were used as well.
They probably could have levied a fine, aswell, but that seems almost pointless, as he would have been freeto continue to spy on Yamato. Instead they sent him about asfar away from Silla and Silla support as they could send him.
This also speaks to the range of Yamato’sauthority. It wouldseem that Tsushima was at least nominally reporting to Yamato,though given that he was sent as “tribute” to the court, that mayindicate that they still had some level of autonomy. And then there must have beensomeone in Kamitsukenu in order to banish someone all the way outthere, as well.
Of course, given all of this, it is hardlysurprising that Yamato was back to discussing the possibility ofmaking war with Silla again. And so, in the second month of602, Prince Kume was appointed for the invasion of Silla, and hewas granted the various “Be” of the service of the kami—possiblymeaning groups like the Imbe and the Nakatomi, along with the Kunino Miyatsuko, the Tomo no Miyatsuko, and an army of 25,000men. And they wereready to go quickly—only two months later they were in Tsukushi, inthe district of Shima, gathering ships to ferry the army over tothe peninsula.
Unfortunately, two months later, things fellapart. On the onehand, Ohotomo no Muraji no Kurafu and Sakamoto no Omi no Nukadereturned back from Baekje, where they likely had been working withYamato’s allies.Kurafu had been on a mission to Goguryeo and Nukade had been sentto Baekje the previous year. However, at the same time,Prince Kume fell ill, and he was unable to carry out theinvasion.
In fact, the invasion was stalled at leastthrough the next year, when, in about the 2nd month of 603, almosta year after Prince Kume had been sent out, a mounted courierbrought news to Kashikiya Hime that he had succumbed to hisillness. Sheimmediately consulted with her uncle, Soga no Umako, and the CrownPrince, Umayado, and asked them for their counsel. Ultimately, she had Kume’s bodytaken to Saba in Suwo, out at the western end of the Seto InlandSea side of western Honshu, modern Yamaguchi Prefecture, where theprince was temporarily interred, with Hashi no Muraji no Wite,possibly a local official, overseeing the ceremony. Later, Wite’s descendants in theregion were called the Saba no Muraji. Kume was finally buried atop Mt.Hanifu in Kawachi.
A quick note here about time. It is sometimes difficult tofigure out just what happened when. This is all noted for the fourthday of the second month of 603. Clearly it didn’t all happen inone day, so what actually happened on that day? Remember, Kume fell ill inthe 6th month of 602, and we are now in the 2nd month of thefollowing year. Sodid he fall ill and then was wasting away for 8 months before hepassed away? Or isthis the date when the court learned of his death? Or is it the date when his bodywas finally buried?There is a lot going on, and they don’t exactly provide aday-to-day. Mygeneral take is that this is when the news arrived at the court,which is when there would have been a court record, while the restwas likely commentary added for context, even if it happened muchlater.
In addition, this whole thing holds somequestions for me, not the least the name of thisprince:Kume. Presumably,Kume was a full brother to none other than the Crown Prince, PrinceUmayado. He was alsoa son of Princess Anahobe and the sovereign, Tachibana no Toyohi,and we have seen then name “Kume” before as a name, or at least asobriquet, for someone in the royal family. However, it also means “army”,which seems surprisingly on the nose, given that all we are givenabout him is that he was supposed to lead an army. It makes me wonder if thiswasn’t one of those half-remembered stories that the Chroniclersincluded without all of the information. Then again, maybe Kume reallywas his name, and this is all just a coincidence.
I also would note that it was not typical tohave a royal prince leading an expedition like this. Typically, the taishogun wouldbe someone from an influential family, but not a member of theroyal family, themselves. That this army was being led bya royal prince also seems to speak to how this was seen assignificant. Perhapsthat is why, when Kume passed away, they chose as his replacementhis older brother:Tahema. [Look up more on Tahema and if I can find out abouthim]
Tahema was selected to take over for hisyounger brother on the first day of the 4th month of 603, and 3months later, on the 3rd day of the 7th month, he was leaving outof Naniwa. He didn’tget very far, however. Tahema embarked on thisadventure along with his own wife, Princess Toneri. We’ve seen this in pastepisodes, where women were in the camp alongside their husbands,directly supporting the campaigns. Unfortunately, in this case,Princess Toneri died shortly into their journey, atAkashi. This isrecorded as only three days after they had departed, which likelymeans it happened quickly. They buried her at Higasa Hill,but Tahema, likely grieving his loss, returned, and never carriedout the invasion.
Five years later, things may have improvedwith Silla, as there were a number of immigrants—we are only toldthat they were “many persons”—came to settle in Japan. What isn’t noted is whether ornot this was of their own volition. What forces drove them acrossfrom the peninsula?Did they realize that there were opportunities to come and providethe Yamato elites with their continental knowledge andskills? Were theyprisoners of war? Ifso, where was the war? Or were they fleeing conflict onthe peninsula?Perhaps political refugees? It isn’t exactly clear.
While things were rocky with Silla, relationsseem to have been much better with the Baekje andGoguryeo. Whileexotic animals may have been the gift of choice in the early partof the period, by 602, Baekje and Goguryeo were both sending giftsof a different sort.These were more focused on spiritual and intellectualpursuits. And so, in602, a Baekje priest named Kwalleuk—or Kanroku, in the Japanesepronunciation—arrived bringing books on a number of differentsubjects, which three or four members of the court were assigned tostudy. We don’t knowexactly what the contents of each book was, but based on what wegenerally know about later theories, we can probably make someeducated guesses that much of this was probably based on conceptsof yin and yang energies. Yin and yang, were consideredprimal energies, and at some point I will need to do a full episodejust on this, but during the Han dynasty, many differentcosmological theories came together and were often explained interms of yin and yang. So elemental theory is explainedas each element has some different portion of yin and yang, andsimilarly different directions, different times of day, anddifferent times of the year were all explained as differentproportions of yin and yang energies, which then contributed towhether certain actions would be easier or more difficult—or evenoutright dangerous.
The book on calendar-making, or ”koyomi”, wasassigned to Ohochin, whose name suggests that he may have been froma family from the continent, and he was the ancestor of the Yako noFumibito.Calendar-making was considered one of the more important roles incontinental sciences, although it never quite took off to the samedegree in Yamato.Still, it described the movement of the stars and how to line upthe lunar days with various celestial phenomena. It also was important forunderstanding auspicious and inauspicious days, directions, andmore—arts like divination, geomancy, and straight up magic wouldoften provide instructions that required an understanding of theproper flow of yin and yang energies, as represented by theelements, and expressed on the calendar in terms of the elementalbranch and stem system, with each day being related to a givenelement in an either greater or lesser capacity, usually related asthe elder or younger brother. Events might be scheduled totake place, for instance, on the first rat day of the first month,and so the calendar maker would be the one to help determine whenthat would be. Also,since the solar and lunar calendars were not in synch, there wouldoccasionally be a need for a “leap month”, often known as anextra-calendrical month, which would typically just repeat theprevious month. Thiswould happen, literally, “once in a blue moon”, an Englishexpression referring to a solar month with two fullmoons. In fact, wejust had one of those last month, in August of 2023.
This isn’t to say that the archipelago didn’thave a system of keeping track of seasons, etc. Clearly they were successfullyplanting and harvesting rice, so they had knowledge of roughly whattime it was in the year, though there are some thoughts that a“year” was originally based on a single growing period, leading totwo or three “years” each solar year. Either way, farmers and othersno doubt knew at least local conditions and what to look forregarding when to plant, and when to perform local ceremonies, butthis was clearly a quote-unquote, “scientific” approach, based oncomplex and authoritative sounding descriptions of yin and yangenergies.
Closely related to the calendar-makingstudies, another book that the Baekje priest Kwalleuk brought overwas one on Astronomy, or “Tenmon”, a study of the heavens, whichwas studied by Ohotomo no Suguri no Kousou. For perhaps obvious reasons,astronomy and calendar-making were closely aligned, since thechange in the stars over the course of the year would often haveimpacts on the calendar. However, this was also likelyvery closely aligned with something akin to astrology, as well,following the celestial paths of various entities, many of thosebeing things like planets. If you aren’t aware, planets,though they often appear in the sky as “stars”, have apparentlyerratic movements across the heavens. The stars generally remainfixed, and from our perspective appear to “move” togetherthroughout the year.Planets, however, take funky loop-de-loop paths through our sky, asthey, like the earth, are also orbiting the sun. Furthermore, different planetsorbit at different speeds. All of this leads to someapparently strange movements, especially if you envision the sky asa round dome over a flat earth. There are also other phenomenon,from regular meteor showers to comets, and even eclipses, all ofwhich were thought to have their own reasons. Some of these were considerednatural—neither auspicious nor inauspicious—while others werethought to impact the flow of yin yang energy on the earth, thuspotentially affecting our day-to-day lives.
Kousou was apparently trying to get thespecial bonus for the summer reading program, because he alsostudied another book that came over from Baekje on a subject thatAston translates as “Invisibility”, or “tonkou”. This is a little less obvious anexplanation. I don’tthink that they were literally studying, ninja-style, how to not tobe seen. Indiscussions of kami we’ve talked in the past about visible kamiand, thus, conversely, invisible kami. It appears to be based on a typeof divination to help better understand auspicious and inauspicioussigns, and is based on a blend of various theories, again connectedto a large yin-yang theory.
Finally, there was another volume that wasstudied by Yamashiro no Omi no Hinamitsu that Aston translates asstraight up “magic”, or “houjutsu”. Of course, in the worldview atthe time, Magic was just another science that we didn’tunderstand. Byunderstanding the flow of yin and yang, one can affect variousthings, from helping cure disease and heal the sick to causingcalamity, even to the point of possibly learning the secrets ofimmortality.
Much of this would fall into the terms“onmyoudou”, the way of Yin and Yang, and there had been some workon that introduced earlier. That it was being introduced bya Buddhist priest demonstrates what I was saying earlier about justhow interconnected it all was.
Other Buddhist gifts were much morestraightforward. In605, for instance, the king of Goguryeo sent 300 Ryou of what theycall “yellow metal”, possibly an admixture of gold and copper, fora Buddhist image.Five years later they sent two priests. One of them, Tamchi, is said tohave known the Five Classics, that is the Confucian classics, aswell as how to prepare different colored paints, paper, andink.
All of this is interesting, but it is theusual suspects.Yamato had been siphoning off culture and philosophy from thestates and kingdoms of the Korean peninsula for some time, and inthat time, they began to adopt various continentalpractices. In latercenturies, much of this would be attributed to the work of ShotokuTaishi, aka Prince Umayado, especially the transmission of Buddhistthought, although for the most part we haven’t actually seen a lotof that in the Chronicles themselves, which we’ll get to.
However, later stories paint him as one of themain forces pushing for reform in the court, especially when theywould eventually push for a new, 17 article constitution, based onprinciples pulled from a variety of sources—both Buddhist and Hanphilosophical foundations. Along with that constitution,the court also instituted a 12 rank system for courtministers. Thisranking system would remain in place, eventually replacing entirelythe kabane system that ranked individuals based on their family infavor of ranking one for their individual achievements.
Furthermore, it wasn’t just a statussymbol. Rank wouldcome into play in all aspects of courtly life, from the parts ofthe palace you were allowed to be in, the kinds of jobs you coulddo, and even the amount that you were paid for your service, makingthe families of the land part of and dependent on thebureaucracy.
And with such a system in place, there wasonly one natural thing for it: The Yamato court would reach outbeyond the Korean peninsula and go directly to thesource. They wouldsend envoys to the court of the Sui Emperor himself and establishrelations with the Middle Kingdom directly, leading to one of themost famous diplomatic incidents in all of the early Japanesehistory.
And that is where I’m going to have to leaveit for now, because once we get into that rabbit hole we are goingto have a whole other episode. And so now we are fully groundedin our foundation. Wecan see Yamato importing people and also ideas from the continent,through the peninsula, and those ideas are taking root. They are causing changes, atleast at the Yamato court, but those changes would eventually makethere way throughout society, and forever change Japan and even howthey see themselves.The lens of what is commonly seen as Buddhist and Confucian thoughtwould be a powerful tool that would shape the ideas to come.
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