An Introduction to the History of Japan

by Katsuro Hara

CHAPTER IV

GROWTH OF THE IMPERIAL POWER. GRADUAL CENTRALISATION

It is a privilege of historians to look back. By looking back I do not mean judging the past from the standpoint of the present. Though it is quite obvious that past things should be valued first by the standards of the age contemporaneous with the things to be valued, it would be a great mistake, if we supposed that the duty of historians was fulfilled when they could depict the past as it was seen by its contemporaries. Historians are by no means bound to adhere to the opinions of the ancients in judging of what happened in the past. How a past thing was viewed and valued by its contemporary is in itself an important historical fact, which must be subjected to the criticism of historians. Not only to have a clear idea of the views held by the people of a certain period as regards contemporaneous events, a task which is not hopelessly difficult though not very easy, but also to know why such and such views happened to be held by those people at that time, is a duty far more important and difficult to discharge. Historians ought, besides, to make clear the absolute value of such views and the effects of them on the age in question as well as on the period that followed. However necessary it may be to be acquainted with the thoughts and beliefs of former generations, it is not indeed incumbent upon us to believe blindly what was believed in the past and to think on the same lines as was thought by the ancients. Who would not laugh at our folly, for example, if we should consider the whale of old times to have been a kind of fish, simply because the ancients did not know it to be a species of mammalia, though by such a supposition we might perhaps be very loyal to the old beliefs? As the result of investigations over long years, many things that have been held to be totally different by ancient peoples have been found to be similar to one another, nay, sometimes just the same. On the other hand, there have not been wanting examples in which essential differences, though considerable in reality, have been overlooked or thought to be negligible, and first discerned only after the researches of hundreds of years. In uncivilised times, generally speaking, men were rather quick to observe outward and superficial distinctions, while very slow to discover internal and essential variations. There was a time in the far-off days of yore, both in the East and in the West, when some people held themselves to be unique and chosen, and regarded others, who were apparently not as they were and spoke languages different from their own, to be decidedly inferior in civilisation to themselves, or to be more akin to beasts than to human beings. Were the Japanese then at the beginning of their history different from other peoples at a similar stage of development, or were they unique from the first? To give too definite an answer to such a question is always a mistake. Our forefathers were certainly different from other peoples in certain respects, but they had much in common with others too. To be unique is very interesting to look at, but it does not follow necessarily that what is unique is always worthy of admiration. Uniqueness is an honour to the possessor of that quality only when he is inimitably excellent on that account. On the other hand, to possess much of what is common to many is far from being a disgrace. Among things which are not unique at all may be found those which have universal validity, and are by no means to be despised as commonplace. Our forefathers had not a few precious things which were singular to themselves, but at the same time they had much in common with outsiders too, and by that possession of common valuables, the history of Japan may rank among those of civilised nations, being not only interesting but also instructive.

By the Japanese of later ages it was supposed that all people outside historic Japan were radically different from themselves, thus forgetting that their own ancestors had been of mixed blood. This proves, by the way, how easily the process of amalgamation and assimilation of different races was accomplished in ancient Japan. There was hardly a tinge of racial antipathy among our forefathers of old. Parallel with the sense of discrimination against other people, which must have been founded on the perception of superficial differences and on that account not deep-rooted, there prevailed among them an ardent love for all sorts of things foreign, and they extended a hearty welcome to all the successive immigrants into Japan, from whatever quarter of the world they might come. Far from being maltreated, these immigrants were not only allowed to pursue their favourite occupations of livelihood, but were even entrusted with several important posts in the government and in the Imperial Household. Our forefathers did not hesitate, too, to import sundry foreign, especially Chinese, customs and institutions, with or without alteration. Such spontaneous importation readily accomplished, evidently implies that Japan was considered by the ancient Japanese to have had much in common with China, so that the same ways of living might be followed, and similar legislation might be put into practice here as well as there. More than that. Our ancestors naïvely believed themselves able to see the same effects produced by the same legislation here as in China, like ignorant farmers, who sometimes foolishly expect to be able to reap the same harvests by sowing the same kinds of seed, forgetting the differences in the nature of the soil. So eager were they to transplant everything foreign into Japan. At the present time, there are similarly many who think that things foreign can be planted in this country so as to bear the same fruit as in their original homes, and who therefore would try to import as many as possible. The only difference between them and the ancient Japanese lies in the fact that their preferences are for things European instead of things Chinese. Now-a-days the Japanese are frequently described as a people who entertain an inveterate antagonism to foreigners. Can such an opinion hold ground in the face of the indisputable evidence of Japan's importation of so many foreign things, material as well as spiritual?

Returning to the point, did Japan become a country resembling China, as was wished by the Sinophil Japanese of old times? On the contrary, the uniqueness, which lay at the foundation of the political and social life of our country, was not thereby much impaired. Even now it is clear to everybody that Japan is not behind any other country in possessing what is unique. It must be borne in mind, however, that what the ancient Japanese thought to be sufficient to distinguish themselves from other people was not the same as that which makes the modern Japanese think their country to be unique. At the same time it can be said that ancient Japan, while unique in some respects, was in a similar condition, social and political, as other countries were at a similar stage of their civilisation. What, then, was the state of Japan in the beginning of her history? It is this which I am going to describe.

In a foregoing chapter I stated that the Japanese, whatever ethnological interpretation be given to them, can hardly be considered as autochthons. Most probably the greater part of them was descended from immigrants; in other words, their forefathers were the conquerors of the land. What then was the chief occupation of these conquerors? To this question various answers have been already given by different historians. Some hold that agriculture was the main occupation to which our ancestors looked for a living, while others maintain that they chiefly depended for subsistence on more unsettled sorts of occupation, that is, on hunting or fishing. All that can be ascertained is that the forefathers of the Japanese did not lead, at least in this country, a nomadic life, so that both cattle and horses were rare or almost unheard of in very ancient times. It is very probable, too, that in whatever occupation the original Japanese might have been chiefly engaged, they must have been also acquainted with the elements of agriculture at the same time. No reliable evidence, however, can be found to answer this question. In this respect the certitude of the early history of Japan falls far short of that of the German tribes, which, though not civilised enough to have left records of their own, were yet fortunate enough to be described by writers of more civilised races, especially by the Romans. Early Japan seems not to have had as intimate an intercourse with China as the early Germans had with Rome, so that we have great difficulty in ascertaining any details about social and political conditions as well as the modes of life of the ancient Japanese, in the same way as that in which we are acquainted with the early land-system of the Germans, their methods of fighting, and so forth. As to the land-system of early Japan, almost nothing is known about it until the introduction of the Chinese land-distribution procedure in the first half of the seventh century. We cannot ascertain whether there was anything which might be compared with the early land-system of the Teutons. The introduction of the elaborate organisation of the T'ang dynasty into our country may be interpreted in two ways. It may be assumed that a land-distribution similar to that of the Chinese had already existed in Japan, and that this facilitated the introduction of the foreign methods, which were of the same type but more highly developed, or we may deny the previous existence of any such arrangement in our country, reasoning from the fact that the newly introduced foreign system could not take deep root in our country on account of its incompatibility with native traditions. What, however, we can state with some degree of certainty concerning the early history of Japan, prior to the introduction of Chinese institutions, is that the people, or rather groups of people, figured in the social system as objects of possession quite as much as did landed property.

The land of Japan, so far as it had been conquered and explored by our forefathers up to the Revolution of the Taikwa era in the first half of the seventh century, consisted of the imperial domains and the private properties held by subjects by the same right as that by which the emperor held his domains. In other words, the relation of the emperor with his subjects was not through lands granted to the latter by the former, but was a personal relation. The idea of vassalage due to the holding of crown lands seems not to have been entertained by the early Japanese. From the point of view of the free rights of the landholders, ancient Japan resembles early German society. Only the way which the tenant took possession of his land can not be ascertained so definitely as in the case of allod-holding in Europe. There is no doubt, however, that not only land but persons also formed the most important private properties. Needless to say, people who dwelt on private land were ipso facto the property of the landowner. Without any regard to land a seigneur of early Japan could own a certain number of persons, and in that case the land inhabited by them naturally became the property of their master.

The Emperor, who was the greatest seigneur as the owner of vast domains and of a large number of persons, ruled at the same time over many other seigneurs, the big freeholders of land and serf. It may be supposed also that there might have been many minor freemen besides, who were not rich enough to possess sufficient serfs to cultivate their grounds for them and, therefore, were obliged to support themselves by their own toil. Nothing positive is known, however, about them, if they ever really existed. The right of a seigneur over his clients was almost absolute, even the lives and chattels of his clients being at his disposal, though the seigneur himself lay under the jurisdiction of the Emperor. Some of the seigneurs were men of the same race as the imperial family, their ancestors having helped in the conquest of the country. Others were scions of the imperial family itself. It is very probable, nevertheless, that no insignificant portion of this seigneur class was of a blood different from that of the imperial family, having sprung from the aboriginal race, or from immigrants other than the stock to which the imperial family belonged.

The extent of the land over which a seigneur held sway, was in general not very great, so that it cannot be fairly compared with any modern Japanese province or kuni. Side by side with these seigneurs who were lords of their lands, there was another class of seigneurs, who were conspicuous, not, strictly speaking, on account of the land which they de facto possessed, but on account of their being chieftains of certain groups of people. Some of these groups were formed by men pursuing the same occupation. Groups thus formed were those of fletchers, shield-makers, jewellers, mirror-makers, potters, and so forth. Performers of religious rites, fighting-men, and scribes, too, were grouped in this class. It must be especially noticed that groups of men-at-arms and of scribes contained a good many foreign elements, far more distinctly than other groups. Scribes, though their profession as a craft was of a higher and more important nature than others, were, as was explained in the last chapter, exclusively of foreign blood. On account of this there was more than one set of such immigrants, and we had in Japan several groups of scribes. As to soldiers or men-at-arms, those who served in the first stage of the conquest of this country must have been of the same stock as the conquering race. Later on, however, quite a number of men who were not properly to be called Japanese, as, for example, the Ainu and the Haito, began to be enlisted into the service of the Emperor, and notwithstanding their difference in blood from that of the predominant stock, their fidelity to the Emperor was almost incomparable, and furnished many subjects for our old martial poems.