An Introduction to the History of Japan

by Katsuro Hara

The palaces and temples in Nara, as well as the imperial mansions and the abodes of nobles scattered about the country, seem in a great measure to have been solidly and magnificently built, with their roofs covered with tiles as beforementioned. The nobles who had no permanent residence in the city, had as their bounden duty to pay certain duty visits, as it were, to the imperial court, and learn there how to refine their country life by adopting the metropolitan ways of living. Some of the household furniture used by the nobles and members of the imperial family was bought in China. The education of the higher classes enabled them not only to read and write the literary Chinese with ease and fluency, but to behave correctly according to Chinese etiquette, as if they were themselves genuine Chinese. These are the bright aspects of the history of the Nara age. Around the metropolitan city, however, and those aristocratic abodes in the country, swarmed the impoverished people, utterly uneducated, receiving no benefit whatever from the imported Chinese civilisation. Here one might perhaps ask, could not Buddhism give them any solace at all? Not in the least. The shrewd Buddhists, having seen that Shintoism had been strangely tenacious in resisting the propagation of their creed notwithstanding its lack of system and dogma, wisely invented a clever method to keep a firm hold even on the conservative mind by identifying the patron deities of Buddhism with the national gods of our country. It resembles in some ways the device of the early Christian missionaries in northern Europe, who tried to blend Teutonic mythology with Christian legend. The only difference between them is that those missionaries did not go so far as our Buddhist priests did. This device of the Buddhists was crowned with complete success. By this identification Buddhism became a religion which could be embraced without any palpable contradiction to Shintoism, in other words, with no risk of injuring the national traditions. Nay, it came to be considered that Shintoism was not only compatible with Buddhism, but also subservient to its real interests. Thus we find almost everywhere a Shinto shrine standing within the same precincts as a Buddhist temple, the Shinto deity being regarded as the patron of the Buddhist creed and its place of worship. This strange combination continued to be looked upon as a matter of course until the Restoration of Meidji, when the revival of the imperial prerogative was accompanied by a reaction against Buddhism, and the purification of Shintoism from its Buddhistic admixture was enthusiastically undertaken. On account of the dubiosity of their religious character, many finely built temples and images of exquisite art were ruthlessly demolished, much to the regret of art connoisseurs.

In the year 794, the Emperor Kwammu transferred his capital to the province of Yamashiro, and gave it the felicitous appellation of Hei-an, which means peace and tranquility. The place, however, has been commonly designated by the name of Kyoto, which means literally the capital, and continued henceforth to be the centre of Japan for more than one thousand years. There might have been several motives which caused the capital to be removed from Nara. The valley, in which the old capital was situated, might have been too narrow to allow free expansion, or it might have been found inconveniently situated as regards communications. Party strife among the nobles might have been another reason. At any rate the choice of the new site cannot be regarded as a mistake. Kyoto is better connected with Naniwa, Ôsaka of the present day, than Nara was at that time. From Kyoto one was able to reach the port within a few hours, by going down the river Yodo by boat. There is no natural hindrance on the way like the mountain chain which divides the two provinces of Yamato and Settsu. At the same time, Kyoto is quite near to Ohtsu, the gate toward the eastern provinces, and those selfsame provinces were the regions which had for long been engrossing the attention of far-sighted contemporary statesmen.

The energetic Emperor Kwammu undertook the conquest of the Ainu with a renewed vigour. That part of the Ainu country which faced the Sea of Japan was already made a province before the accession of that sovereign. In the Emperor's reign the success of the Japanese arms was carried far into the Ainu land by the victorious general Sakanouye-no-Tamuramaro. The boundary of the province of Mutsu, the region facing the Pacific, was pushed northward into the middle of the present province of Rikuchû. Enterprising Japanese settled in those lands or travelled to and fro in quest of trade. The Ainu, however, was not completely subjugated, nor was he easily driven away out of the main island. Beyond Shirakawa, the place which had for a long time been considered the northernmost limit of civilised Japan, numerous hordes of half-domesticated Ainu continued to reside as before. As the result of the constant contact with the Japanese, they were slowly influenced by the civilisation which the latter had already acquired. They could consolidate their forces under the leadership of some valiant chiefs, and frequently dared to rise against oppressive governors sent from Kyoto. In short, they proved to be intractable as ever, so that more than three centuries were still necessary to put their land in the same status as the ordinary Japanese province. The interminable wars and skirmishes waged thenceforth between the two races were one of the principal causes of the financial embarrassment of the government at Kyoto, and finally undermined its power.

The imperial family and the nobles lived their lives at Kyoto, largely as they were wont to do at the old capital of Nara. The family of the Fujiwara was ever as ascendant as before. Abundant court intrigues were now not the outcome of the antagonism between the different great families, but of the internal quarrels within the single family of the Fujiwara, not infrequently intermingled with disputes concerning the imperial succession. All the high and lucrative offices were monopolised by the members of that able and ambitious family. Most of the empresses of the successive sovereigns were their daughters. The regency became the hereditary function of the family, and they filled the office one after another without any regard to the age or health conditions of the reigning emperor. It was very rare indeed for members of families other than the Fujiwara to be promoted to one of the three great ministerships. Even scions of the imperial family had to yield to them in power and position.

Their literary attainments were generally high, being but little inferior to those of the professional literati, who formed a class of secondary courtiers, and proceeded generally from the families of the Sugawara, Kiyowara, and so forth. Ships with ambassadors, students, and priests were sent by them to China of the T'ang as before. For they still burned with an ardent desire to get more and more knowledge about things Chinese. Their Sinicomania was carried indeed to such an excess that the physiognomical type of the Chinese came to be regarded as the finest ideal of mankind, and any Japanese who was of that type was adored as having the ideal features.

The despatch of the official ships continued as in the days of Nara, not at regular intervals, but generally once during the reign of every Japanese emperor. The impetuous imitation of Chinese legislation slackened in fact, for in that respect we had already borrowed enough. The connection of our country with China began to take the form of ordinary international intercourse, with due reciprocation of courtesies. There remained, however, some need of keeping pace with the political changes in China, and we could not make up our minds to refrain altogether from peeping into the land which we held to be far above our country in civilisation. The last of such an embassy was that sent in the year 843. Half a century afterwards another squadron was ordered to be despatched, and Sugawara-no-Michizane was appointed ambassador. But the squadron was never really sent. For at that time the long dynasty of the T'ang was just drawing near to its end, and the civil war of a century's duration was beginning. There was no more any stable government in China with which we could communicate. Moreover, there was danger to be feared that we might be somehow embroiled in the anarchical disturbances in the Middle Kingdom. The ambassador, Michizane himself, was also of the opinion that little was to be gained by the despatch of the intended squadron, and dissuaded the government from sending it.

Japan now entered into the stage of the assimilation of the alien culture already imported in full. Hitherto we had been too busy to make discrimination among those things Chinese which we had engulfed at random. Now we had to make clear which of them was suited, and how others were to be modified in order to make them useful to our country. In short, we had to digest; or to speak by the book, we had to ruminate on what we had already taken. After all it must have been a wise policy to put a stop to the state of national nervousness caused by the incessant introduction of foreign laws, manners, customs, things. The infiltration, however superficial it might have been, left an ineradicable influence owing to the continual process of several centuries. The spirit of the culture of the dominant class became essentially Chinese. Though the saying, "Japanese spirit and Chinese erudition" was henceforth fondly spoken of, the Japanese spirit itself was not yet clearly defined, and did not enter into the full consciousness of the nation. What the ruling nobles, who had imbibed the Chinese spirit already too deeply, could do was only to discard things which became superannuated and untenable.

The characteristics of the age of rumination may be discerned in the history of our literature from the latter half of the ninth century to the beginning of the eleventh. At first, while literary works were still being written almost exclusively in Chinese, we begin to find in their style traces of Japanisation, becoming more and more marked as time goes on. Along with works in Chinese, those in our own language began to appear, though very sparsely at first. Then gradually these attempts in the vernacular increased, so that eventually the end of the tenth century became the culminating period of the classical Japanese literature. Religious and scholastic works were written in Chinese as before. August and ceremonial documents continued to be composed in the same language. Chinese poetry was as much in vogue among the courtiers as ever. At the same time, however, numerous works in Japanese now appeared in the form of chronicles, diaries, short stories, novels, satirical sketches, and poems. What was most remarkable, however, is that the greater part of those works was written not by men, but by court ladies. Among the ladies, who by their wit and literary genius brightened the court of the Emperor Ichijô, stood at the forefront Murasaki-shikibu, the author of the Genji-monogatari, and Sei-Shônagon, the author of Makura-no-sôshi.

That these intelligent and talented court ladies were versed in Chinese literature can be perceived in what they wrote in Japanese. In other words, the culture, essentially Chinese, of the high circles of society was not monopolised by the men only, but shared by the women. And these court ladies were fairly emancipated, and far from being subject to the caprices of men. It is often argued that the progress of a country can be measured rightly by the social status of the women in it. If that be true, Japan at the beginning of the eleventh century must have been very highly civilised. And it was really so in a certain sense. This civilised Japan, however, was confined to the very narrow circle in Kyoto, and for that very circle the Chinese enlightenment penetrated too deep. The great nobles of the Fujiwara family were too refined, too effeminate for holders of the helm of the state, the young state in which there was still much to be done vigorously.

The Ainu on the north were menacing as ever. For though they had lost in extent of territory, they had gained in civilisation. The demand of the state was for energetic ministers as well as for valiant warriors. The high-class nobles became unfitted for both, and especially for the rough life of the latter. As generals, therefore, not to speak of officers, were employed men of comparatively low rank among the courtiers. In this way military affairs became the hereditary profession of certain families which happened to be engaged in them most frequently, and were at last monopolised by them. As the government, however, could not and did not care to provide these generals with a sufficiency of soldiers, provisions, and armaments, they were obliged to help themselves to those necessaries, just like the leaders of the landsknechts in Europe. The intimate relation of vassalage, not legally recognised of course, thus arose between those generals and their private soldiers, and as this condition lasted for a considerable time, the relationship became hereditary. Needless to say that such a condition of affairs was naturally set up in the provinces, where the Ainu was still powerful enough to raise frequent disturbances. On account of the fact that these generals and their relatives were often appointed to the governorship of distant provinces, where the influence of the Kyoto government was too weak to check their arbitrary conduct, the same connection of vassalage was formed there also between them and the provincials who were in need of their protection. Not only did they thus become masters of bands of strong and warlike people, but they also appropriated to themselves by sundry means vast tracts of land, and fattened their purses thereby. That they did not venture at once to overthrow the political régime upheld by the nobles of the Fujiwara family may be accounted for by the time-honoured prestige of the latter. For a long while those warriors went even so far as to do homage to this or that noble of the Fujiwara as his vassals, and served as tools to this or that party in court intrigues. The courtiers, who employed them as their instruments, had no apprehension that those military men, subservient for the moment to their needs, would one day turn into rivals, powerful enough in the long run to overturn them, and flattered themselves that they would remain as their cat's-paws forever. An exact analogy of this in the history of Rome may be found in the shortsightedness of the senate, which complacently believed that the Scipios and the Caesars would for ever remain obedient to their order. It would be a fatal mistake to think that a cat's-paw would always remain docile and faithful to its employer. Especially when it is frequently used and abused it becomes conscious of its own usefulness and real strength; and self-assertion is born. The next step for it must be the sounding of the strength of its master, then the desire awakens to take the place of the master, when it is found that he is not so strong as he looks to be.