Japanese history overview Pt. 1: Jōmon – Nara
Welcome to this overview of Japanese history. I should start off by saying that Japanese history is long. Very long. In fact, the first recorded Japanese history book, the Kojiki, published in 712, would have you believe that Japan was established in the 7th century BC. But it would also have you believe that the first emperor was a direct descendant of the gods who created the country decades before his birth. While Japanese mythology is interesting in its own right, in this blog, I’m only going to be focussing on verifiable history, the first recording of which was found in a Chinese history book in the year 107 AD. However, as archaeological discoveries have gifted us a plethora of information regarding what went on prior to that date, let’s begin our journey in the year 10,000 BC―the beginning of the Jōmon era.
Jōmon era: 10,000 BC – 300 BC
As the world exited an ice age and temperatures began to rise, water levels also rose, cutting off the small strip of land connecting Japan to what is now Korea and China, and leaving the country isolated. This allowed the people occupying the island to develop their own unique culture.
They formed communities and lived in secluded areas of forests in small groups of huts known as pit dwellings, which they built by digging a round hole in the ground, supporting it with timber and covering it with a thatched roof.
Animals at the time were a lot larger than they are now, so hunting needed to be performed in groups. They kept dogs and used them as hunting companions to take down large boars, whose meat they ate alongside their staple diet of nuts. They evidently had strong connections to their dogs, as a number of canine bones were found inside burial urns, suggesting that they saw their pets as members of their families.
But perhaps what the Jōmon period is most famous for is the intricate pottery designs that were discovered throughout the country during archaeological digs. The rope designs that decorate the pottery are where the Jōmon era gets its name: 縄文, the Chinese characters that represent Jōmon, literally read ‘rope design’.
Yayoi era: 300 BC – 250 AD
The Yayoi era is named after the area of Japan where the first evidence of the era was unearthed. Towards the end of the Jōmon era, a new group of people made their way over from the Korean peninsula and settled alongside the Jōmon people. The reason for their arrival isn’t documented, but the most likely explanation is that they came to avoid or escape war.
The Yayoi people, as history records them, brought with them the means for rice production. This was a difficult process that required a great number of people working together for long lengths of time. And so, the Yayoi people taught their methods to the Jōmon people, and the two groups formed large communities for the purpose of producing greater yields of rice.
While this ensured a stable food supply for all involved, it also had the adverse effect of putting an end to the thousands of years of peace that had been enjoyed by the Jōmon people; having lived up till that point in a community where everyone was more or less equal and supplies were shared among communities, now, at long last, they had something to covet: fertile land and advanced tools. Wars broke out between communities and thousands of lives were lost, as evidenced by the fractures found in the bones of skeletons surrounding excavated Yayoi village sites. Chinese history books corroborate this fact, making mention of wars that occurred between the 100 or so ‘kingdoms’ that existed at the time.
These wars were finally put to an end when thirty or so of these small kingdoms banded together to form a large and powerful kingdom that would become known as Yamataikoku. This kingdom was ruled over by a queen named Himiko, whose ability to read people, understand the political climate and even predict the weather convinced Yamataikoku’s citizens that she was a powerful sorceress.
Yamataikoku’s power served to suppress most of the other kingdoms and put an end to the majority of the wars until Himiko’s death, after which time a new king took control of the kingdom and everything descended into anarchy once more. This was resolved by putting Himiko’s niece in charge, and everything was presumably okay after that; I say presumably because, unfortunately, Yamataikoku falls into obscurity after that time, no further mentions being made in Chinese history.
Kofun era: 250 – 538
Relatively little is known about this era. In fact, there’s a 150-year blank where Japan disappears from Chinese history books altogether. Even when it does eventually make a reappearance, it’s only in the form of envoys sent to China from five different kings, which gives us very little to go on. The names of the kings have been cross-referenced with details of emperors listed in the Kojiki and Nihonshoki, leading to a widely-accepted theory as to their identities Other than that, though, all we really have to go on are the thousands of kofun that sprung up around the country during this period.
Kofun―Japanese tombs―already existed in various forms in the Yayoi era. But the kofun that appeared in this era were very distinct: large-scale keyhole-shaped mounds that seem to have some kind of connection to the Yamato court―a mysterious governing body established at some unknown point during the era. The construction methods and designs of the kofun combined with DNA analysis of people currently living in Japan suggests that a number of people of different races flocked to the country during this period. Various theories exist with regard to who came over and when they came over, but none have been proven with any significant degree of certainty.
Asuka era: 538 – 710
This is the first period of Japanese history from which historical records exist that can be used to verify information from the Kojiki and Nihonshoki. Some believe it began in 538, when Buddhism was first introduced to Japan; others date it back to 592, when Empress Suiko took the throne.
When Buddhism was introduced to Japan from the Korean peninsula, Emperor Kinmei had an important decision to make: allow this new religion to spread throughout the country―thereby strengthening ties with Liang China―or reject it and not risk angering the Shintō gods and alienating the people. His two highest-ranking officials had conflicting opinions.
Soga no Iname believed that Buddhism was good for the country whereas Mononobe no Okoshi believed it would bring nothing but trouble. The two argued for decades, passing the dispute to their sons after their death, at which point the the situation became significantly more volatile; temples and residences were burned down before Soga no Umako decided to put the whole thing to rest once and for all, joining forces with his great-nephew, Umayado no miko, to march an army on Mononobe no Moriya, kill him and destroy his land.
With the matter finally settled, Umako had his niece ascend the throne as Empress Suiko. Umako, Suiko and Umayado no miko went on to rule Japan peacefully for the next 30 years or so.
The three died within five years of each other, awarding Umako’s son and grandson the opportunity to make the following emperors their puppets. This continued until a man by the name of Nakatomi no Kamatari decided to readdress the balance of power. He approached Prince Naka no Ōe, son of the former emperor and the current empress, and convinced him to join his campaign. Together, they plotted to assassinate Soga no Iruka during a court ceremony. Their plan was more than successful; not only did they succeed in killing Iruka, but they attacked his father’s residence and forced him to have to kill himself, effectively ending the Soga family’s chapter in history.
The two went on to conduct Japan’s first political reform: the Taika reform, which aimed to tighten the court’s control over the country and provide every citizen with an amount of land large enough for them to be able to sustain themselves. Prince Naka no Ōe eventually ascended the Chrysanthemum throne, and he awarded Kamatari the ‘Fujiwara’ kabane, thus beginning one of the most successful families in all of Japanese history.
Emperor Tenji(as Prince Naka no Ōe was now known), was a successful and popular ruler. After he died, the throne was passed to his son, Emperor Kōbun. His reign, however, was cut short as his uncle(Tenji’s younger brother) led an army to attack him and usurp his power, thus beginning a short war which resulted in Emperor Kōbun’s death and his uncle’s ascension to the throne as Emperor Tenmu.
Emperor Tenmu was a sensationally successful emperor who made a number of changes to the country, including renaming it ‘Nippon'(日本), meaning ‘origin of the sun’―the name by which Japan is known today. He also arranged the publication of Japan’s first history books: the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki. The Kojiki is a mythological collection of anecdotes detailing Japan’s creation, the establishment of the court and records of the Imperial line up until the middle of the Asuka era―somewhere around the year 630. The Nihonshoki is a similar anthology, but it details events up until the year 697, and it was written in Chinese to appeal to a foreign audience.
As Emperor Tenmu’s eldest son died young, his wife took the throne after his death and held it until his grandson came of age. His grandson, Emperor Monmu decided that Asuka was too small a capital for the growing population and so decided to construct a larger capital in Nara, to the north of Asuka. This new and improved capital, Heijō, was completed in the year 710, marking the end of the Asuka era.
Nara era: 710 – 784
After Emperor Monmu died, his mother and sister took the throne as placeholders until his son came of age in 724 and arose as Emperor Shōmu. Meanwhile, Fujiwara no Kamatari’s son, Fuhito, continued his father’s legacy as the emperor’s right hand man and ensured his family’s continuing power by not only marrying his daughter to emperor Monmu and having her produce Emperor Shōmu, but also by marrying another of his daughters to Emperor Shōmu! (Confusing, right? The Asuka and Nara eras are riddled with this kind of incestuous relationship.)
Fuhito’s four sons worked together to rid the court of their rivals and secure their position, but they all died of a virus brought over from China in the late 730s. Many at the time believed it was the curse of their enemies, some of whom the four had driven to kill themselves. The Fujiwara family wasn’t done for, though; the four brothers’ children still managed to limp on, supported by their aunt, the empress.
With the establishment of the new capital, a new system of government was introduced: the Ritsuryō system, based on the political code of Tang. This created a more detailed hierarchy of ranks among court officials as well as introducing a number of new laws regarding crime and punishment.
The system established in the Taika reform to dish out land to citizens was no longer working; with an increasing population, the amount of available arable land was dwindling, and heavy taxes forced a large number of people to abandon their land and join the priesthood. The court was forced to devise a new plan: anyone who reclaimed a new area of land would be permitted to keep that land for three generations. This encouraged a great deal of wealthy court nobles, temples and shrines, who made use of every resource they had available to reclaim as much land as possible and expand their ‘portfolio’. However, two generations later when it dawned on their grandchildren that their land would have to be returned to the court, people finally began to consider the pitfalls of this system, putting an end to the era of reclamation. Regardless, the court was still desperately in need of new farmable land, and so left with no choice, they decreed that anyone who reclaimed an area of previously unfarmable land would be permitted to keep that land forever! Needless to say, people went crazy; tools flew out of sheds and workers were gathered en masse as the elite of the time set out to the expand their empires, eventually creating the major gap between the rich and the poor that the Taika reform had intended to avoid.
This land problem also had a huge effect on religion: as I mentioned before, a large number of people ran to the priesthood to avoid paying exuberant taxes. As there were no qualifications required to become a priest, it was the perfect escape. However, it meant an increasing number of uneducated, uninterested priests occupying temples, causing Buddhism to stagnate. To solve this problem, Emperor Shōmu had a famous priest from Tang by the name of Ganjin come to Japan to introduce China’s kairitsu system, whereby a trainee priest would have to swear a series of oaths in the presence of someone sufficiently qualified in order to become a fully-fledged priest. This weeded out the tax evaders and eventually rebalanced the religion.
In 740, the epidemic that killed the Fujiwara brothers coincided with a minor rebellion in the far west of Japan. It was all a little too much for Emperor Shōmu, who decided to take a sabbatical and tour the country a little. He ended up moving the capital three times during the following five-year period before finally realising that Heijō was the best option. (Imagine how much manpower this must have involved!) After returning to Heijō, he decided that every region in the country should have a Kokubunji―a state-supported provincial temple. In the capital, he decided that this temple should be Tōdaiji, a whopping 121ft tall building housing a 48ft tall statue of the Vairochana Buddha. Both the temple and the statue were completed in 752. Although they later burned down twice, they were rebuilt on a slightly smaller scale each time, and the temple remains today as the largest wooden structure in the country. (As it’s close to where I live, I’ve been there many times. I definitely recommend it for anyone visiting Nara!)
As Emperor Shōmu didn’t have a son, his daughter took the throne after his death in 749. However, as it was imperative that the Imperial line continued via a male descendant of the first emperor, it was understood that his daughter, Empress Kōken, would only take the chrysanthemum throne as a placeholder for the next emperor. As such, in order to avoid future succession disputes, she was forbidden from marrying or bearing a child. This forced her into a fairly lonely life―a problem which became exacerbated when her mother took ill in 760. She had a priest named Dōkyō brought in to tend to her mother and pray for her until she passed away. During this time, Kōken developed feelings for Dōkyō―feelings which she expressed by awarding him progressively higher ranks among first the religious hierarchy and later the court. By this point, Kōken had already passed the throne on to the next emperor, who, needless to say, wasn’t pleased with her actions. He joined up with a high-ranking court official by the name of Fujiwara no Nakamaro(a grandson of Fujiwara no Fuhito), and the two led a rebellion. Kōken’s army put a swift end to this, killing Nakamaro and exiling the emperor before reinstating herself under the new name of Empress Shōtoku.
Once the dust of the rebellion had settled, there was a short-lived period of peace in Heijō. However, the Dōkyō problem persisted, and rumours that he was going to be declared the next emperor began to spread around the court. As he was in no way related to any member of the Imperial Family, under normal circumstances, this would have been out of the question. But having put down a rebellion, was there anyone in the court brave enough to tap Empress Shōtoku on the shoulder and tell her she was taking things a bit too far? A brief period of debate and bribery of prophets delayed the Imperial proclamation long enough for Shōtoku to die in 770, after which time Dōkyō was exiled to the other side of the country. Problem solved. Done and dusted!
After Shōtoku’s death, the Imperial line returned to Emperor Tenji’s branch, with his grandson ascending as Emperor Kōnin. He was already over 60 years old at this point―a very ripe age for someone of that time―so he ruled for a mere 11 years before passing the throne to his son, Emperor Kanmu. Kanmu went on to have a number of family feuds, resulting in death and exile for several family members, including his brother. After taking some time to calm down and realise that he’d perhaps taken things a bit too far, he started to became paranoid that his deceased brother would place a curse on him. So he took a number of religious steps to remove this presumed curse. Naturally, this did nothing to alleviate him of his guilt. Additionally, due to the Dōkyō situation, many in the court were starting to worry that certain Buddhist sects were becoming too powerful. And so, for these reasons and more, Kanmu decided to scrap Heijō and start afresh in a new capital, abandoning all his problems and moving north to Kyōto, where he created the Heian capital, ushering in a new era in Japanese history.
Summary
And so we come to the end of the first of this series of brief summaries of Japanese history. Digging deeper into each of the events outlined in this article and learning about them in more detail is the fun of studying history, which is why I aim to provide more in-depth articles on a number of them in the future. Brief as I tried to make this overview, though, I still ended up writing a fair bit more than I’d originally intended. So I’m going to cut it off here and continue in part two. Anyone who wishes to learn about the Heian era, click on the link. I’ll see you there!
