The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 1: Ancient Japan

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LINEALISM 517

become emperor, and after Shotoku's death, only members of the

imperial line were considered as possible successors. When Prince

Shirakabe (a direct descendant of Emperor Tenji) occupied the throne

in 770 as Emperor Konin, he issued an edict justifying enthronement

in terms of (1) his selection by Shotoku as her successor (apparently a

falsified claim, but one that he and his advisers felt had to be made)

and (2) his descent from the Sun Goddess.

' Although the edict has

Confucian overtones, no reference is made to Buddhist ideas of sover-

eignty. In 781 Konin was succeeded by his son who occupied the

throne as Emperor Kammu. Thus, as the Nara period came to a close,

the old Japanese conception of divine imperial descent had emerged

unscathed from the authority crisis. And history writing continued to

be shaped and colored by the belief that Japan should always be ruled

by an unending succession of sovereigns descended from the Sun

Goddess.

Belief in Japan's sacred line of imperial descent, lying at the base if

linealism, was also expressed in poems written during and before the

Nara period. Among the more than 4,500 included in the Man'yoshu

(the oldest extant anthology which was compiled in the eighth cen-

tury),

many refer directly to the divine origins and the continuous

blessings of emperors and empresses, as in the following long poem

composed by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro at the time of Crown Prince

Kusakabe's death in 689:

At the beginning of heaven and earth

The eight hundred, the thousand myriads of

gods

[kami],

Assembled in high council

On the shining beach of the Heavenly River,

Consigned the government of the Heavens

Unto the Goddess Hirume, the Heaven-illuminating One,

And the government for all time,

As long as heaven and earth endured,

Of the Rice-abounding Land of Reed Plains

Unto her divine offspring,

Who,

parting the eightfold clouds of the sky,

Made his godly descent upon the earth.

Our noble Prince, child of the Bright One above,

Regarding this - the land over which

The gracious Sovereign reigns as a god. 3°

29 Shoku Nihongi, Hoki l(77o)/io, KT 2.383; Saeki, Zoho rikkoku shi 4.222-4.

30 The Nihon gakujutsu shinkokai translation of The Manyoshu: One Thousand Poems (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 34.

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518 EVOLUTION OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Post-Nara linealism

Approximately twenty years after the capital was moved from Nara -

first to Nagaoka in 787 and then to Heian (now Kyoto) in 794 - a book

(the

Kogoshui)

on past traditions was compiled by the head of the Inbe

clan, Inbe no Hironari. His purpose was to support the clan's de-

mands for a position at court equal to that of the great Nakatomi (later

Fujiwara) clan. But the book did not make its case in terms of Inbe's

landholdings, its military power, its achievements in bureaucratic ex-

pertise, or its Chinese learning. Instead, it attempted to show that (1)

the ancestral kami of the Inbe clan (Futotama no Mikoto) had joined

the ancestral kami of the Nakatomi clan (Koyane no Mikoto) in per-

suading the Sun Goddess to come from behind the Heavenly Rock

Cave in the age of kami; (2) descendants of the Inbe ancestral kami

had loyally supported emperors and empresses ever since the Sun

Goddess dispatched her grandson to earth to place Japan under the

rule of its descendants in the age of man; and (3) the Inbe clan began

to lose its standing at court when, during the reign of Emperor

Shomu, the increasingly powerful Nakatomi arbitrarily and selfishly

altered the official lists of shrines and kami. After detailing the errors

and mistakes, Inbe no Hironari urged Emperor Kammu to restore

ancient ceremonies and (by implication) to appoint members of the

Inbe clan to positions at court as high as those held by the Nakatomi.

The

Kogoshui,

like the

Kojiki

and Nihon

shoki,

is therefore a politically

motivated record of myth and history focused on the sacred and ever-

lengthening imperial line, but with a difference: Whereas the earlier

chronicles were written by court officials to strengthen the position of

the current emperor, the

Kogoshui

was written by a clan head attempt-

ing to strengthen his clan's influence at court. The basic point of

reference in both cases was the position of the current emperor on a

sacred line of

descent.

Thus linealism was as central to the

Kogoshui

it was to the Nara period chronicles.3

Historical tales

(rekishi monogatari)

written in the middle of the

Heian period, especially in the

Eiga monogatari

(Tales of splendor) and

the Okagami (Great mirror), were referred to as succession tales

(yotsugi

monogatari),

for they were consistently focused on lines of

succession.3

But the emphasis of the historical tales was not simply on

31 Genichi Kato and Hikoshiro Hoshino, trans., Kogoshui: Gleanings from Ancient Stories (Lon-

don; Curzon Press, 1972), pp. 15-54.

32 These historical tales have been translated in William H. and Helen Craig McCullough, A

Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristrocratic Life in the Heian

Period,

2 vols.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

LINEALISM 519

the sacred imperial line but also on the subsidiary descent line of the

Fujiwara heads. They showed (1) where an individual stood in the

Fujiwara line of descent and (2) how he or she had been linked, genera-

tion after generation, with the imperial line. Thus the position of every

prominent Fujiwara official of that period was explained and justified

by his maternal relationship to an emperor born in Japan's sacred and

unending descent line. Although the Eiga

monogatari

and Okagami

have literary qualities reflecting the influence of such classics as the

Genji monogatari

(Tale of Genji), the linealism of both is unmistakable.

Still another form of historical writing appeared during the last two

centuries of the Heian period: the military tales

(gunki

monogatari).**

These tales dealt mainly with the activities of the two most powerful

military houses: the Minamoto and the Taira. But the first two tales

(the

Hogen monogatari

and the

Heiji monogatari)

place the stories of the

emperors first, the Fujiwara aristocrats second, and the great Mina-

moto and Taira warriors last. In general, the stories, especially those

about military leaders, reveal the effects of an underlying assumption

that a person could acquire and maintain military or political power

only if he had close familial ties with occupants of the throne. The

most famous military tale, the

Heike

monogatari,

carries a well-known

passage in which the great military hero (Taira no Shigemori) criticizes

his father for opposing Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, stating that

the most important blessings are those received from an emperor. 34

Story after story shows that the authors were affected in deep and

diverse ways by the ancient belief in the divine descent of emperors

from the Sun Goddess.

The Gukansho, written just before the outbreak of the 1221 war

between the imperial court in Kyoto and the new military government

{bakufu)

in Kamakura, was fundamentally different from the earlier

historical and military tales. The Buddhist author, Jien (1155-1225),

sought not to entertain his readers with good stories about well-

connected personnages of the past but to explain how the current crisis

(Stanford,

Calif.:

Stanford University Press, 1980); and Helen Craig McCullough, Okagami,

the Great Mirror: Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027) and His Times (Tokyo: University of Tokyo

Press,

and Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).

33 The three military tales have been translated in William R. Wilson, Hogen

Monogatari:

Tale

Disorder

of Hogen (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1971); Edwin O. Reischauer, "The Heiji

Monogatari,"

Translations

from Early Japanese History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1951); and Hiroshi Kitagawa and Bruce T. Tsuchida, The Tale of Heike: Heike

Monogatari (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1975).

34 Chap. 2, NKBT 32.171-3, translated in Delmer M. Brown, "Pre-Gukansho Historical Writ-

ing," in Delmer M. Brown and Ishida Ichiro, eds., The Future and the Past: A

Translation

and

Study of the Gukansho, an Interpretative History Written in 1219 (Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 1979), pp. 394-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

520 EVOLUTION OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

had come to pass and to explain what could and should be done to

resolve it. And yet the

Gukansho

interpretation was lineal in character:

A statement made early in the first narrative chapter indicates that the

author thought of his historical study as another succession

tale.**

the authors of the Eiga

monogatari

and the

Okagami,

Jien was intent on

depicting the splendor of the Fujiwara heads (especially those of his

own Kujo house) by showing how the Fujiwara

line was

joined, genera-

tion after generation, with the sacred imperial line. Before writing the

narrative chapters of his study, he compiled

chronology that

is a

reign-

by-reign delineation of imperial succession into which he fits Fujiwara

ministers and Tendai abbots

who

were blood relatives of imperial moth-

ers.

The narrative chapters themselves have a genealogical core not

unlike that of earlier succession tales.

The centrality of linealism to the

Gukansho

treatment of the past is

revealed in Jien's use of the term imperial law

(oho).

In ancient Bud-

dhist writings this word denoted the secular authority of rulers as

distinct from the divine authority of Buddhist law

(buppo).

But for

Japanese writers, imperial law was gradually narrowed to emperors

who were honored as divine descendants of the Sun Goddess and who

had priestly functions. Imperial law and Buddhist law were assigned

divine qualities. So we read that leaders of ability should protect both

and also become "receptacles for the divine blessings of Buddhas and

kami."

Jien does not probe for the religious roots of imperial law, or

even say that it was divine, but by accenting Japan's unbroken line of

emperors descended from the Sun Goddess, he leaves the impression

that he considered imperial law to be a divine truth revealed by ances-

tral kami, just as Buddhist law was a divine truth revealed by Buddha.

Noting the importance of constructive principles (don) created by the

ancestral kami of the imperial house, appreciating the work's empha-

sis on the supremacy of the Sun Goddess over other kami of Japan

(and apparently over the other unseen powers), and sensing the au-

thor's assumption of

divine quality in imperial law, we see that belief

in Japan's sacred imperial line was a powerful determinant in the

Gukansho's

view of history.

Linealism was a prominent characteristic of all historical works

written in Japan's aristocratic age, and it continued to affect Japanese

historical writing in later times. Because medieval and modern studies

lie outside the scope of

this

volume, we shall end this section with the

35 Chap. 3, NKBT 86.129; Brown and Ishida,

The Future

and

the

Past,

p. 20.

36 Chaps. 1 and 2, NKBT 86.41-128; Brown and Ishida,

The Future

and

the

Past,

pp. 245-349.

37 Chap. 6, NKBT 86.317; Brown and Ishida,

The Future

and

the

Past,

p. 198.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

VITALISM 521

comment that until the end of World War II, linealism was manifested

over and over, not only in written expressions of historical conscious-

ness and popular forms of drama and literature, but also in such

unique Japanese "isms" as imperial restorationism (fukko shugi),

revere-the-emperor-ism

(sonno

shugi),

and "state-policy-ism"

(kokutai

shugi).

VITALISM

The second characteristic of early historical consciousness (vitalism)

appears as a polar opposite to the Chinese emphasis on virtue

(toku

Japanese). Because Japan's earliest extant chronicles were compiled at

a time of lively interest in all aspects of Chinese culture, and Confucian-

ism lay at the very core of Chinese cultural values, it is not surprising

to find that all Six National Histories contain numerous quotations

from the Confucian Classics and have a strong Confucian flavor. In-

deed, between the Great Reforms of 645 and the end of the Nara

period in 784, Japan's developing educational program was focused on

the study of the Confucian Classics. Toward the end of that period a

few ambitious aristocrats were able even to rise to inordinately high

governmental posts because of their spectacular achievements in the

study of Confucian literature and Chinese history. Thus the whole of

Nara culture, including history writing, was affected by principles

enunciated in the Confucian Classics, and from early Nara until today,

Japanese historical works have usually born a Confucian stamp.

And yet the effect of Confucianism on Japan's early consciousness of

the passage of time is often overstated. Although Confucian quotations

are numerous and the effect of Confucian ideas can be readily de-

tected, no item in any of

the

Six National Histories carries the implica-

tion that an emperor's lack of virtue (undoubtedly the most basic

Confucian moral principle of all) justified his removal from the throne,

a common and basic view expressed in Chinese dynastic histories when

dealing with emperors whose unfortunate reigns preceded the estab-

lishment of

new dynasty. Moreover, the Japanese interest in Chinese

learning and Confucianism was not associated, as in China, with the

formation of a distinct and powerful literati class. Finally, no national

history was ever written for the purpose of showing that improve-

ments had been made in the conduct of governmental affairs by the

power of Confucian virtue. That being so, what special

belief,

assump-

tion, or value - other than the linealism just discussed - did lie at the

core of Japanese historical thought in these early times?

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

522 EVOLUTION OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Scholars of intellectual and cultural history are beginning to see

that although the Japanese were strongly attracted to Confucianism

and other manifestations of Chinese learning after about A.D. 590,

Japanese attitudes toward the process of change in human life were

firmly anchored in their ancient kami

belief.

Taking advantage of the

work of scholars who have used new archaeological and anthro-

pological evidence to clarify the connections between kami worship

(Shintoism) and community life in ancient Japan (see the Introduc-

tion),

a few intellectual historians now see that Japanese assumptions

and ideas concerning the passage of time have been influenced since

early times by a deep and pervasive belief that the kami were wor-

shiped, above all, for their mysterious power to create, enrich, or

prolong any form of physical life.*

Although genealogical concerns

motivated officials to compile historical works, the widespread belief

in the life-giving power of the kami deeply colored what they wrote,

accounting for the characteristic of historical consciousness referred

to here as vitalism.

Pre-Nara

roots

The most common outward forms of kami worship emerged early in

the Yayoi period and were intimately associated with the introduction

and spread of wet-rice agriculture, but the belief in mysterious life-

giving powers seem to have had even earlier roots. In the Jomon sites

scattered throughout the Japanese islands, archaeologists have found

two types of religious artifacts symbolizing mysterious procreative

power: clay figurines

(dogu)

and phallic stone rods

(sekibo)

(see Chap-

ter 1). The figurines, often representing pregnant women, are some-

times found in enclosures that were probably places set aside for reli-

gious ritual. We do not know what rites were performed there, but it is

assumed that the figurines were used for capturing a mysterious force

(possibly the force of a kamilike deity) that could create, protect, or

improve some form of

life.

That assumption is reinforced by archaeo-

logical reports on the nature and distribution of phallic stone rods

found in numerous Jomon sites. Like the figurines, some have been

found at places suitable for religious rites. Their association with cre-

ation or procreation is equally clear. Most historians doubt that either

clay figurines or phallic rods were themselves objects of worship, but

they generally agree that both were used ritually for the improvement

38 For

thoughtful study of early kami worship, see Yuasa, Kodaijin

no seishin

sekai, pp. 14-102.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

VITALISM 523

of human, plant, or animal life. It is now felt that agricultural produc-

tion had appeared in the closing years of the Jomon period. The

figurines and phallic rods may well have been used in prayers for good

harvests.

Archaeological evidence for the later Yayoi period (roughly 250 B.C.

A.D.

250) indicates that agricultural rites were then becoming institu-

tionalized and routinized in rice-growing communities in several re-

gions.

Considering Yayoi finds in the light of religious practices in

present-day villages where life seems not to have greatly changed since

Yayoi times, Harada Toshiaki reasons that most agricultural communi-

ties of

the

Yayoi period were growing rice on contiguous pieces of land

with common supplies of water and that each village worshiped a kami

for its power to make rice grow in the

fields

of that particular village.

Harada and others are inclined to think that by the last two centuries of

the Yayoi period, a rice-growing village

was

worshiping its life-creating

kami through one particular person who, chosen by some form of

divine lottery, conducted rites in behalf of his or her village from the

beginning of one rice growing season to the next. Rites were apparently

grounded then in the belief that kami resided in a nearby mountain

(the source of water) during the winter and moved - or could be

moved - to some place near the village's rice

fields

at the beginning of

the growing season. Thus the rice-agriculture character of worship,

clearly detected in most Shinto rituals of today, appears to have

emerged with, and taken on its basic forms during, the Yayoi period

spread of paddy field rice production. Every kami was then, and still

is,

worshiped for its mysterious power to create and enrich life, espe-

cially the life of rice plants.

The Chinese history of the Later Han period

(A.D.

25 to 220) reports

that a Japanese state was ruled by a queen "who occupied herself with

magic and sorcery."

Although we are supplied with no information

about the nature of her "magic and sorcery," the reference suggests

that the priestly rulers of emerging states were successors of those who

had been originally chosen by an agricultural community (or by its

kami) to conduct worship services during the four seasons of a year

but who now held their positions for life as a hereditary right. Heredi-

tary rulers were henceforth concerned with the control and manage-

39 Harada Toshiaki, Kodai Nihon no skinko to shakai (Tokyo: Shoko shoin, 1948); and Harada

Toshiaki, "Kodai shukyo ron," Kodai, vol. 2 of Iwanami koza Nihon rekishi (Tokyo: Iwanami

shoten, 1962), pp. 279-313.

40 Hou Han shu 115: i6b-i9a; Tsunoda and Goodrich, Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories,

524 EVOLUTION OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

ment of regions containing many agricultural villages, and they were

even involved in exchanging missions with the Chinese imperial court,

but they were still essentially conductors of rites honoring the life-

creating and life-enriching kami of their particular regions.

The centrality of belief in the vitalistic power of the kami is clearly

reflected in Japan's earliest recorded myths as well as in its early

prayers

(norito)

and festivals

(matsuri).

But probably the most signifi-

cant Yayoi period evidence was provided by archaeologists who have

discovered that the most sacred object (the

shintai

or kami body) of the

earliest shrines was usually a nearby mountain peak from which

flowed the streams that supplied water for rice fields in the valley or

plain below. The most famous old shrine of that type is the Miwa

Shrine, where Mt. Miwa is the shrine's shintai. But the ancient

Futarasan Shrine at Nikko is especially significant, as its

shintai

is a

phallic-shaped mountain called Mt. Nantai (man body). Not only do

streams flow from this mountain to the fields below, but its shape is

that of the phallic stone rods found in preagricultural Jomon sites.

In the later Burial Mound period, when the old interest in produc-

ing a good rice crop was joined with - if not overshadowed by - a new

interest in social and political control, the forms of kami worship were

greatly altered. Priestly rulers were no longer limited to clan heads

who served as priests for the worship of a clan kami but included

Yamato kings who conducted ceremonies for the worship of their

house's ancestral kami and the worship of the ancestral kami of subject

clans.

Rites, myths, and symbols were constantly revised in order that

they might more accurately reflect, and more impressively sanctify,

current socioreligious relationships. Understanding such changes is

complicated by the fact that they were gradual and uneven and by the

absence of contemporary records. But it is clear that every kami was

worshiped then, as in earlier and later periods of

history,

for its power

to create and enrich physical life of any type. At the base of the belief

structure was the old faith in a kami's mysterious power to make rice

grow, but at a higher level of this structure was a new faith that the

hereditary ruler was strong because he or she was a sacred descendant

life-giving kami with a special power to enrich the clan.

The life-oriented agricultural character of kami worship during the

Burial Mound period has been clouded somewhat by the prominence

that archaeological and mythological evidence gives to the relationship

of the priestly rulers to the burial mounds. Because the mounds are so

numerous and large, historical studies of rulership tend to be centered

VITALISM 525

on evidence obtained from mounds rather than from shrines, which

were less imposing and had origins and development that are not so

easily traced. Moreover, early reflections on the mounds have led

many scholars to deduce that they were places for worshiping the

souls of deceased rulers, thus confusing the function of mounds with

that of shrines. Support for the ancestor-worship theory has been

obtained from early myths, particularly those recorded in the Kojiki

and Nihon

shoki.

Nevertheless, more recent archaeological investiga-

tions at shrines as well as mounds, and further study of the character

and evolution of myths, suggest that during the Burial Mound period,

as well as before and after, beliefs about a life-giving kami at a shrine

were fundamentally different from those about the soul of a leader

buried in a mound.*' The two were consistently kept apart: A shrine

was not considered suitable for burials, and a burial mound not suit-

able for worshiping a kami. Old shrines established in that period are

still places for active religious institutions, but not a single one has

ever been associated, as far as is known, with a burial mound. Ar-

chaeological findings on the island

shintai

of the Munakata Shrine in

Kyushu include, for example, thousands of bronze mirrors, bronze

swords, magatama, iron tools, and other treasures deposited there

during the Burial Mound period. But the island has no burial sites.*

A study of mounds in various parts of Japan discloses, on the other

hand, no known case of an early shrine's having been built over a

mound. And investigations of the contents and surroundings of the

mounds produce no evidence that offerings continued to be made

after burial services were completed. Clear distinctions were made,

then as later, between worshiping life-giving kami and honoring de-

ceased rulers: Every kami was and still is relied on mainly for its

mysterious power to create or enrich any form of life.

Even after the sixth century when clan leaders built Buddhist tem-

ples to honor their ancestors and to enhance their own authority,

Buddhism was clearly distinguished from Shintoism, even though a

clan's principal ancestors (the souls of which were honored at temples)

had served as high priests for the worship of clan kami and considered

themselves descendants of ancestral kami (honored at shrines). To be

sure,

the native deities were worshiped in various ways by the follow-

41 Ishida Ichiro, "Shinwa to rekishi: uji-sei ritsuryo kokka to ie-sei rikken kokka no rinen,"

Nihon bunka kenkyu (Tokyo: Shinchosha, i960), vol. 8, pp. 6-10.

42 Munakata jinja shi, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Munakata jinja fukko kiseikai, 1961, 1966, 1971); and

Munakata Okinoshima, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Munakata jinja fukko kiseikai, 1958 and 1961).

526 EVOLUTION OF HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

ers of the imported Buddhist faith. Buddhist deities took on kamilike

qualities, and much Buddhist worship was directed to the enrichment

of life in kamilike fashion. But even after Buddhism came to be sup-

ported by powerful clans, the enshrinement of clan kami at shrines

was kept separate from the worship of Buddha at temples: Kami

continued to be thought of as sources of life-restoring benefits for the

living, whereas a Buddha was identified with a mysterious power that

could console and please souls of the dead. Both kami shrines and

Buddhist temples supported the position of priestly rulers, but every-

one assumed that a kami would be repelled as much by a temple as by

a burial. Even the mention of Buddhist words in a kami rite was

taboo.

Although careful attention was given to a ruler's descent, the

highest-ranking ancestral kami of all (the Sun Goddess) was still

thought of as a deity that would never die, making it inappropriate

that she should be linked with any temple or burial. Not until after the

ninth century was the soul of

deceased emperor ever worshiped as a

kami, and that was at a shrine, not at a mound or temple.

Although no written historical accounts come down to us from pre-

Nara times and we have no evidence of what persons (rulers or com-

moners) were then thinking about the progression of

time,

we are sure

that everyone worshiped kami and that the heads of all groups (vil-

lages,

clans, or the Yamato state) were conductors of kami worship.

We assume, therefore, that a person's deepest concerns - including

his or her thoughts about the passing of time - were influenced by the

core characteristic of kami worship: belief in the power of a kami to

create or enrich any form of life, here and now.

Nara period vitalism

As we noted earlier, Emperor Temmu's edict of 687 pointed to two

types of sources to be used for compiling the

Kojiki:

imperial genealo-

gies (teikt) and accounts of origin (honji). The Kojiki's linealism is

mirrored in its genealogies, and vitalism can be found in its myth of

kami creation. But there was interaction between the historicity of the

43 Legal procedures (the compilation of which was completed in 927) list seven taboo Buddhist

words: Buddha, sutra, pagoda, temple, monk, nun, and Buddhist meal; see Engi shiki, bk. 5

of Shiniei zoho kokushi laikei (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobun kan, 1966) vols. 8-10, translated by

Felicia Gressitt Bock, Engi-Shiki: Procedures of the Engi Era [Books l-s] (Tokyo: Sophia

University Press, 1970), pp. 152-3.

44 King Ojin 's soul was enshrined at the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine which, like the Ise

Shrine, was highly honored by the imperial clan.