Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty, 650-800

5 Liturgies

5 LITURGIES Presents were distributed to all who had provided service at the Ōnie Great Offering: the Nakatomi and Inbe, the people from the Jinkan (Kami Office), the district governors from the two provinces of Harima and Tanba, and all the laborers under them. —673/12/5. Nihon shoki Amaterasu and Takamimusuhi imparted upon Ninigi the magatama jewel, the mirror, and the Kusanagi sword. —712. Kojiki The Heavenly Ancestors presented the Heavenly Grandson with two Sacred Treasures, together with jewels and a spear. —807. Kogoshūi No country can be governed without grains [“millet”]; the essence of government for the ruler, and the fundamentals of life for the people consist only of the task [“duty”] of working the land. —852. Directive of the Council of State Food has played a crucial role in the life not only of individuals, but of political regimes as well in East Asia. Through ritual, people have forever sought to secure its production against the elements, and when states developed, perceiving themselves equally vulnerable to the political consequences of natural disasters, they created public rites or liturgies for the same purpose. China, the first state emerging in East Asia, understood that itssurvivaldependedonsuccesswiththeweather,calledHeaven,anawarenessthattookrootinYamatoconcurrentlywiththeestablishmentofastate there in the late seventh century. We find this understanding succinctly expressed in the above Directive of the Council of State from 852 (see epigraph ) and in a memorial presented to the throne in 914 by Miyoshi Kiyoyuki , adviser to the Heian emperor Daigo. The memorial appropriately opens with a quotation from a Chinese source: 106 | liturgies For the state, the people are the most important, for the people their livelihood is what is most valued. Without people, what would the state rest upon? Without livelihood what would the people build upon? Therefore, the right way to appease the people, and the secret to secure their nourishment consist only in that the fruit of the year ripens without catastrophic flooding or droughts. That is the reason why the Imperial Court celebrates each year on the 4th day of the 2nd month the Toshigoi festival, and on the 11th days of the 6th and 11th months the Tsukinami festival in the Jingikan.1 In China, the emperor was ultimately coresponsible with Heaven for abundant crops through rituals that sought a measured rainfall avoiding the extremes of floods and droughts. As far as the record shows, this performative dimension of royal power developed rather late in Yamato and remained underdeveloped. Great King Kōgyoku constitutes an early, but isolated, example of a successful Chinese-styled rainmaking intervention with Heaven in the middle of a drought in 642. A century and a half later, EmperorKanmuisalsocreditedwithasimilarfeatin788.Inbetweenthese two dates, the record does not present Yamato monarchs directly interceding personally as ritual actors. It was mostly religious specialists who came to be relied upon to prevent and stop natural calamities. In Yamato food and harvest were the focus not only of one, but of all important yearly state rituals (three of them mentioned by Miyoshi), and even of the enthronement ritual. Some of the terminology (“Kinen-sai,” for instance, the original name for Toshigoi) and structure (offerings to the spirits and at royal mausoleums) were adopted from China by Tenmu and Jitō, and the ceremonies were ultimately fixed by law in the Taihō Code of 701. Most likely, these rituals were already part of the Kiyomihara Code, begun drafting in 681 and promulgated eight years later. RitualandFood Half of the yearly state festivals, six out of thirteen, listed in the Jingi-ryō (Law of the Kami of Heaven and Earth) of the Taihō Code dealt with crops (table 2).2 Four of these were major festivals involving the whole realm: the Toshigoi festival (Tenmu’s Kinen-sai, held on 2/4), by far the largest; the Tsukinami festival (duplicating the former and held twice: on 6/11 and 12/11); and the Niiname festival (First Fruit Tasting, held on variable days in the eleventh month).3 During the two additional minor harvest festivals, oblations were sent from the court for celebrating the Kanname festival in Ise and the Ainame festival held at shrines in the Kinai capital area, mainly liturgies | 107 the Yamato and Kii provinces—fourteen by 737, increased to forty-one by 920, but reduced considerably later that century.4 Three peculiar aspects of the four greatest of these festivals are relevant for the discussion that follows. One, curiously perhaps...