The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 1: Ancient Japan
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YAMATO DISRUPTION 157
Itsu was given the kabane title of scribe
(fuhito).?
6
Each of these
differences suggests that steps were being taken at that time to in-
crease control over, and income from, an important region by utiliz-
ing imported managerial techniques at the recently established royal
estates.
Households had been registered in earlier times by the northern and
southern courts of China as well as by Paekche. And according to a
Nihon
shoki
report for the year 540 (almost thirty years before Itsu had
been sent off to register farmers of the Shirai royal estate), people of
various Japanese provinces had been registered, including 7,053 Hata
households.^? These early household registrations - important to im-
plementing the great reforms (taika) of later years - were limited to
foreigners like the Hata and Aya. But as indicated by references to
household registrations at the Shirai royal estate in Kibi, this tech-
nique for keeping track of estate farmers was now being extended to
areas outside central Japan, presumably to the populace as a whole.
Yamato's efforts to have the Kibi royal estates managed efficiently
were made by officials (such as Itsu) who could read and write. Except
for the inscriptions on iron swords and bronze mirrors, no sixth-
century written materials have been preserved. But several chronicle
references to persons holding the title of scribe leave little doubt that
their ability to keep records was highly valued. Surely a kingdom
attempting to increase its income from, and control over, distant re-
gions needed accurate records of
several
kinds. And because the Nihon
shoki's and KojikVs coverage of sixth-century events is increasingly
thought to be reliable, it is surmised that the compilers of those chroni-
cles were working from sources that were written down in this last
century of the Yamato period but are no longer extant.
Moves to register all residents and keep written records seem to have
been paralleled by endeavors to strengthen ancient local-government
organs as a means of tightening Yamato control. The first office to
receive such attention was probably that of district supervisor
(agata
nushi),
one that appeared in the Kinai region, long before this last part
of the Yamato period. It was a local office devoted mainly to supplying
the court with goods and services. But by the sixth century both the
districts and their supervisors were subjected to considerable change,
especially those in outlying regions. The change was associated with
and affected by the rise of later-style royal estates, as both districts and
96 Kimmei 30 (569) 1/1 and Kimmei 30/4, NKBT 68.127; Aston, 2.87.
97 Kimmei 1 (540) 8, NKBT 68.65; Aston, 2.38-39.
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158 THE YAMATO KINGDOM
royal estates were now largely administered by local officials acting in
the court's
behalf.
*
8
A district (agata), like a royal estate (miyake), was a piece of terri-
tory. But whereas the latter was characteristically a personal posses-
sion of a Yamato king or clan chieftain, the former had usually been
occupied for many years by a local clan whose hereditary head han-
dled secular affairs and served as the chief priest in the worship of the
local kami. The establishment of a district, or the appointment of a
district supervisor
(agata
nushi),
was therefore usually made by a king
when he was trying to gain control of that particular area. In distant
regions in earlier times, such designations and appointments were
largely nominal. But in and around central Japan, a district supervi-
sor quite early became a local agent under court control, even though
he was usually the hereditary head of an old clan. And with the
extension of Yamato control to outlying regions, district supervisors
were made responsible (like royal estate managers) to provincial gover-
nors.
Such extensions of court control - especially in the Kanto,
Kibi, and Tsukushi regions - produced a two-layered system of local
government (districts below provinces) that undergirded the later bu-
reaucratic
ritsuryo
order. The tasks of administering the later-style
royal estates, and districts headed by district supervisors, must have
greatly increased the demand for scribes who were familiar with im-
ported managerial techniques.
Foreign
affairs
Although the court was now giving most of its attention to internal
affairs, chronicle items for the years after 540 contain numerous refer-
ences to the receipt of articles and artisans from Korean kingdoms,
usually in connection with an exchange of official missions. By 562 the
whole Mimana federation had been taken over by an increasingly
powerful Silla, which had extended its hegemony southward to the
shores of the Yellow Sea and could consequently dispatch diplomatic
missions by sea directly to China's Southern Court. Yamato seems to
have offered little or no military resistance to Silla's advances. In fact,
the chronicles continue to report contacts with Silla (including items
about "tribute" being sent for Mimana districts after 750) and some-
times with Koguryo, including a fascinating Koguryo mission sent
98 These sixth-century institutional changes were analyzed in Inoue, Asuka no
chotei,
pp. 138—
65;
and by Yagi At sum, "Kuni no Miyatsuko sei no kozo," Kodai vol. 2 of Iwanami koza:
Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975), pp. 1—37.
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YAMATO DISRUPTION 159
across the Japan Sea in 570. But much more is written about relations
with Paekche, especially after the Paekche capital was moved to Puyo
in 538, the very year in which Paekche is thought to have first sent
Buddhist texts to the Yamato court (see Chapter 7).
Paekche was apparently far more worried than Yamato was about
the expansive tendencies of Silla, and as usual, Paekche-Koguryo
relations were strained. The foreign situation seemed especially dark
for Paekche in 548 when its northern borders were crossed by
Koguryo armies. Messages received from Paekche in the following
year complained of reports that the Japanese were behind attacks
made from the south. But Yamato authorities denied any such complic-
ity, declaring it incredible that the friendly kingdom of Ara "should
have gone so far as to send a secret message to Koguryo."" Four years
later the king of Paekche reported that he was then faced with an
alliance between Silla to the east and Koguryo to the north, and he
humbly requested military assistance. Shortly afterward the chronicle
includes what is commonly referred to as a report of the official intro-
duction of Buddhism to Japan. The theory that the Buddhist gifts
were tied to requests for military assistance is based on two pronounce-
ments by King Kimmei made at about the same time: first, that troops
were being sent to help Paekche and, second, that he wanted to obtain
books on divination, calendars, and drugs of various kinds.
100
The
linkage between the dispatch of military assistance and the receipt of
books and scholars was even clearer in 554 when Kimmei reported in
the first month of that year that he was dispatching one thousand men,
one hundred horses, and forty ships, and when the king of Paekche
sent word one month later that he was presenting Korean replace-
ments for specialists in Confucianism, divination, calendars, herbs,
music, and Buddhism.
101
Such developments suggest that the continental cultural influence
on Japan was beginning, around the middle of the sixth century, to be
colored more by a new interest in learning than by the traditional
preoccupation with advanced techniques of production and construc-
tion. Thenceforth books and scholars in the fields of Buddhism, Con-
fucianism, Taoism, literature, and history were highly prized. But not
a single copy of the sutras or classics brought to Japan before the close
of the sixth century has been preserved, and we have virtually no
information about the influence of such materials on the intellectual
99 Nihon shoki Kimmei 9 (548) 4/3, NKBT 68.96-97; Aston, 2.62-63.
100 Nihon shoki Kimmei 14 (553) 6, NKBT 68.104-5; Aston, 2.68.
101 Nihon shoki Kimmei 15 (554) 1/9 and Kimmei 15 (554) 2, NKBT 68.108-9; Aston, 2.71-72.
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160 THE YAMATO KINGDOM
and religious life of court aristocrats. It is clear, however, that this was
a
time of preparatory development in the
fields
of religion, governmen-
tal administration, and education for the Asuka enlightenment and
later reforms. The Buddhist aspect of the movement will be discussed
in Chapters 3 and 7. The remaining pages of this chapter will therefore
be devoted to a survey of the roles played by two Soga leaders (Iname
who died in 570 and his son Umako who died in 626) in setting the
stage for the century of reform.
The Soga clan
Whereas the most influential clan chieftains at court before the rise of
Iname were military men, the Soga leaders enjoyed wealth and power
that flowed from imported techniques of production and administra-
tion. But only the general outlines of Soga history can be gleaned from
written sources, largely because later chronicles were compiled by men
with an anti-Soga bias.
102
In 623 Soga no Umako asked Empress Suiko to give him permanent
possession of the district of Katsuragi on the grounds that he was
descended from the
gaiseki
(imperial in-law) clan of Katsuragi. Al-
though Empress Suiko - herself a Soga - seemed to accept the valid-
ity of Umako's claim, she did not accede to his request. Katsuragi
descent was also affirmed in 642 when Soga no Emishi (Umako's son)
built an ancestral temple
(sobyo)
named the High Temple of Katsuragi.
Although the chronicles do not provide much support for the Soga
claim of Katsuragi descent, there does seem to be some basis for the
view that Soga chieftains were descendants of Ishikawa Sukune, an
official who was called on to deal with a disrespectful envoy from
Paekche.
We are not certain that Ishikawa Sukune ever lived or that, if he did,
the Soga leaders were his descendants. But the Soga name was linked
often and quite early with Ishikawa individuals and places. There is,
moreover, an Ishikawa area of Kawachi that is drained by the Ishikawa
River, an area consisting of four districts made suitable for wet-rice
agriculture by the ambitious irrigation project discussed earlier. This,
then, may have been where the Soga first emerged as a powerful clan.
After Soga no Iname reached the position of great royal chieftain,
102 Details of following summary are found in the Bidatsu, Yomei, and Sushun chapters of the
Nihon shoki, NKBT 68.133-71; Aston, 2.90-120; and summarized in Inoue, Asuka no
chotei, pp. 182-92. Dynastic questions of the times are analyzed in Kiley, "State and
Dynasty," pp. 40-48.
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YAMATO DISRUPTION l6l
emerged on the winning side of the policy debate in 540, and made
important contributions to strengthening court control over the Kibi
region, he managed to have two daughters married to King Kimmei.
But Iname died before Kimmei's successor had been selected. More-
over, Kimmei was not succeeded by a royal son born of a Soga woman
but by the son of a non-Soga woman, who ascended the throne as King
Bidatsu and reigned for fourteen years. At the beginning of Bidatsu's
reign, Soga no Umako replaced his father in the post of great royal
chieftain, though he seems not to have made much progress toward
gaining recognition as Japan's leading in-law
{gaiseki)
clan. This was a
time of general opposition to Buddhism, when Bidatsu actually issued
a ban against the practice of this foreign faith. In addition, Bidatsu's
highest-ranking queen was not a Soga. Yet after the death of this non-
Soga queen, Bidatsu made one of Iname's daughters his favorite
queen. And she was the woman who was enthroned in 593 as Empress
Suiko.
Bidatsu's death in 585 was followed by a stormy succession dispute
among the supporters of three candidates for the throne: (1) Prince
Oshisaka, the son of Bidatsu by his first queen and apparently the son
who had been named crown prince by Bidatsu; (2) Prince Takeda, the
son of Bidatsu by his second queen (the Soga woman who later became
Empress Suiko), and (3) Prince Anahobe, the fourth son of Kimmei
by the youngest of his two Soga queens (another Iname daughter).
The dispute centered on the chieftains of two powerful clans: Mono-
nobe no Moriya and Soga no Umako. After an exchange of insults at
the temporary interment
(mogari)
for the deceased Bidatsu, these
chief-
tains turned to the use of military force, and Umako emerged victori-
ous.
His candidate for the throne as Bidatsu's successor, Prince
Anahobe, was thus enthroned as King Yomei in 587, placing Umako
in firm control of court affairs. Yomei's queen, another Iname daugh-
ter, gave birth to four imperial sons, the first of which was the famous
Prince Shotoku (574-622). Now the Soga had definitely achieved the
status of
gaiseki
clan.
Still, Umako had not yet eliminated all opposition. As soon as
Yomei became ill, the old struggle with Mononobe resurfaced. Once
more, Umako and Moriya marshaled their forces for a showdown and
once again Umako, allied with the chieftains of other great clans, won.
Another Kimmei son by a Soga mother
was
enthroned as King Sushun
in 588. He was thus the second successive occupant of the throne to
have a Soga mother, strengthening the Soga's
gaiseki
position. New
policies were then adopted: Buddhism was openly supported, and
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162 THE YAMATO KINGDOM
plans were made to send
a
military expedition against Silla. But in the
fifth year of Sushun's reign, Umako began to hear rumors that the
king himself (Umako's nephew) was resentful and was planning a
coup.
Reportedly reasoning that he would be killed if he did not take
decisive action, Umako arranged to have Sushun assassinated. At this
point Suiko was placed on the throne in 593 as the reigning empress.
Thus Soga no Umako was now in full control of court affairs, and the
Asuka enlightenment had begun.
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CHAPTER 3
THE CENTURY OF REFORM
Japan's history has been deeply marked by reforms adopted during
two long but widely separated periods of contact with expansive for-
eign cultures. The first began around
A.D.
587 when Soga no Umako
seized control of Japan's central government, made an extensive use of
Chinese techniques for expanding state power, and supported the intro-
duction and spread of Chinese learning. The second came after the
Meiji Restoration of
1868
when new leaders moved the country toward
industrialization and Western ways.
Japanese life was greatly altered by Chinese culture long before the
Soga seizure of power in
587
and long after the closing
years
of the ninth
century when a decision was made to stop sending official missions to
China. But during the intervening three centuries Japanese aristocrats
were understandably fascinated by the power and achievements of
China under the great
Sui (589
to
618)
and T'ang
(618
to
907)
dynasties,
giving rise to action and thought that gave Japanese life of those days a
strongly Chinese tone, especially at the upper reaches of society. The
first of the three centuries of remarkable Chinese influence - roughly
the seventh century and the subject of this chapter - was a time of
reform along Chinese lines. The second - the eighth century, which is
covered in Chapter 4 - is known as the Nara period, when Japan was
ruled from a capital patterned after the Chinese capital at Ch'ang-an.
And the third was
a
time when almost every aristocrat
was
immersed in
one aspect of Chinese learning or another.
Throughout the century of reform there flowed two broad and deep
currents of change: one arising from a strong and persistent urge to
build a powerful Chinese-style state and the other coming from an
increasing openness to diverse expressions of Chinese art and learning.
When tracing these movements through this century of reform, one
soon notices that they were accelerated and turned in new directions
not only by an ever-greater familiarity with Chinese achievements but
also by three political upheavals within Japan: (1) the Soga seizure of
control over state affairs in 587, which ushered in what has been called
163
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164 THE CENTURY OF REFORM
the Asuka enlightenment; (2) the coup of 645 followed by the adoption
of the Great Reforms; and (3) the civil war of 672 (the
jinshin
no ran)
after which new leaders were remarkably successful in making Japan a
strong and despotic state.
THE ASUKA ENLIGHTENMENT
Historians have tended to think of the Asuka enlightenment as begin-
ning with the 587 seizure of power by Soga no Umako or with the 593
enthronement of Empress Suiko, but the Chinese character of the
enlightenment suggests that the reunification of China in 589 may be
the most significant starting point, even though Japan did not send an
official mission to the Sui court until 600. Before considering the
political and cultural history of these early years of Japan's century of
reform, let us look at the question of how the rise of this new Chinese
empire affected Japan's channels of contact with the continent.
The
Sui
empire
After the collapse of the Western Chin in
A.D.
317, north China was
overrun by non-Chinese people and torn by internal strife. For the
next 250 years or more, the country was divided by a succession of
regional states and kingdoms. Then in 578 a Northern Chou emperor
united most of north China, and in 581 a well-connected Northern
Chou general (the famous Yang Chien who is known as Emperor
Wen-ti) founded the Sui dynasty. In 589 he conquered the powerful
Southern Court of Ch'en and brought the whole of China under one
rule.
The rise of the new empire was followed by the reestablishment
of tributary relationships with neighboring states and kingdoms
throughout most of east Asia. Visitors from such foreign lands as
Japan were impressed by China's massive building projects, which
included a walled palace-city about six miles long and five miles wide
and an empirewide canal system. The foreigners' attention was also
drawn to other achievements: a complex and effective bureaucracy
that reached local communities in distant regions, an extensive reve-
nue system, a huge military organization, and detailed codifications
of law. Foreign observers interested in state building could also see
that China's imperial rule had been reinforced by an ideology in
which Confucian rites honored its emperors as Sons of Heaven, Con-
fucian ethics valued obedience to heads of state, Buddhist texts de-
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THE ASUKA ENLIGHTENMENT 165
picted rulers as agents of universal law, and Taoist teachings added
legitimacy to imperial control.
1
The Korean kingdoms located near the China border (Koguryo and
Paekche) were affected earlier and more deeply by the new Chinese
empire than were states located farther away, that is, Silla and Japan.
Koguryo (the closest) reacted first by mobilizing troops to prevent a
possible Chinese advance to the north; Paekche quickly established
relations with the Sui court but did not feel seriously threatened; Silla
allowed three years to pass before sending a mission; and Japan made
no official contact until 600. Because Chinese influence on Japan was
affected by a rapidly shifting pattern of relations among the Korean
kingdoms, and between those kingdoms and China, an overview of
these relationships will help show how contacts with the continent
influenced Japan's Asuka enlightenment.
Holding a key position among Korean kingdoms paying tribute to
north China courts, Koguryo had traditionally sent tribute to one
northern court after another. And as soon as the Northern Chou was
replaced by the Sui in 581, Koguryo immediately sent tribute. But
when word reached the king of Koguryo in 589 that Northern Chou
forces had destroyed the southern Ch'en court and resurrected the
unified Chinese empire, he and his advisers assumed that Emperor
Wen-ti would soon send armies against Koguryo in an attempt to
reestablish the Chinese colonial system that had existed in Korea dur-
ing Han times. The Sui court probably did have such ambitions, as in
the following year Wen-ti condemned Koguryo for not sending a tribu-
tary mission and demanded an apology. For a few years the new
Koguryo king (Yongyang) dealt with the Sui court in the traditional
fashion (sending tribute and accepting appointments), and their rela-
tions remained amicable.
But in 598 Yongyang suddenly mobilized 10,000 horsemen and
attacked territory located on the Chinese side of the border. Emperor
Wen-ti immediately called up 300,000 troops, ordered an invasion of
Kogury6, and stripped the Koguryo king of his offices and titles.
Thereupon Yongyang apologized and accepted Sui appointments and
awards. The emperor's troops were then withdrawn, but they had
suffered heavy losses. For a time Sui-Koguryo relationships gravi-
tated toward normalcy, but reports recorded in the Sui shu indicate
1 Arthur
F.
Wright, "The Sui Dynasty, 581-617," in Denis Twitchett, ed., Sui
ad
Tang
China,
$89-906, Pan I, vol.
3
of
The Cambridge History
of
China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,
1979), pp. 148-9.
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166 THE CENTURY OF REFORM
that the position of Chinese court officials who favored another cam-
paign against Koguryo was becoming stronger. Afraid that a power-
ful and independent Koguryo might trigger resistance from other
peoples in northern regions, Wen-ti's successor (Emperor Yang-ti,
who reigned between 605 and 617) organized three campaigns against
this Korean kingdom between 612 and 614, after condemning it for
"nefarious collusion with the Khitan and Malgal and for violating Sui
territory." But not one of the three campaigns was successful. In-
deed, the cumulative expense and failure invited widespread disorder
and hastened the fall of the Sui dynasty in 618. Scholars have ex-
plained the Sui's military failures in different ways, but clearly
Koguryo was then strong enough to defend itself against massive
attacks by the great Chinese empire.
2
Paekche, to the south and west of Koguryo, had long occupied a key
position among those kingdoms (including Yamato of
Japan)
that paid
tribute to south China courts. Paekche's response to the rise of
a
new
Chinese empire, therefore, was quite different from that of Koguryo,
and more directly related to the nature and extent of Chinese influence
on Japan's Asuka enlightenment. Having paid tribute to the Ch'en
court of south China, Paekche's sympathies were with the south at the
time of the 589 war, from which the Sui emerged victorious and a new
Chinese empire was born. And yet, as soon as Paekche heard of the
Sui victory, it sent a congratulatory message to Wen-ti and made the
friendly gesture of returning a Chinese war vessel that had become
stranded on an island in the East China Sea. Wen-ti was delighted to
receive friendly overtures from Paekche and justified his liberal treat-
ment of that Korean kingdom by pointing out that its envoys had
come by sea from a distant land.
Silla, the third major Korean kingdom and the one farthest from
China, did not immediately send tribute to the Sui court and, more-
over, set out to strengthen its military defenses, apparently sharing
some of Koguryo's fear that Wen-ti would soon move to restore Chi-
nese control over the entire Korean peninsula. By responding to the
rebirth of China's empire in somewhat the same way as Koguryo did,
Silla was continuing to act like a member of the old northern alliance
(in which Koguryo's tributary relationship to the dominant north
China court had been a major factor), just as Yamato continued to
think of Paekche (the central state in the southern alignment) as the
principal supporter of, and Silla the major obstacle to, its effort to
2 Ibid., pp. 143-7-
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