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Introduction
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
I n t r o d u c t i o n T he central contention of this book is that the rich archaeological discoveries of the past few decades have enabled historians to develop much more satisfactory interpretations of ancient Japan than was possible when scholars depended mostly on written sources. This truth is evidenced in four areas of inquiry: the hoary question of Yamatai; Japan-Korea relations; the creation of Chinese-type capital cities; and the appropriation of Chinese governing arrangements. These topics illustrate the broad process of historical evolution from a simple to a complex society, a process that in Japan’s case is best viewed as occurring in two stages. H i s t o r i o g r a p h i c O v e r v i e w Japan’s philosophers and statesmen have long sought inspiration and legitimacy from the written record of their ancient past. The shaping of bygone eras to contemporary agendas began at least by the late seventh century, when members of the ruling elite compiled first A Record of Ancient Matters (Kojiki) and then The Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki). These books describe how a dynasty unbroken for ages had come to rule over divinely chosen islands. That interpretation survived over the next millennium despite the political decline and impoverishment of the imperial family. Historical studies reached a new level of sophistication after 1700, when scholars of National Learning (kokugaku) performed philological and literary exegeses of ancient texts. Several writers envisioned a pure and innocent age of unique Japanese virtues before Chinese influence poisoned people’s hearts 1 in the era after 700.1 Modern oligarchs recreated the imperial institution after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, but A Record and The Chronicles served as the classical origins for many ideas expressed in the debate over the new ideology.2 During the 1930s, a fundamentalist approach to these histories bolstered belief in the divine imperial throne and, by extension, Japan’s war effort. Not everyone agreed with the version of Japan’s ancient period put forward in the court-sponsored histories. As early as the eighteenth century, Neo-Confucian rationalist Arai Hakuseki composed a radical critique of Japan’s first chronicles.3 After 1868, scholars avidly borrowed European historiographic techniques to interpret their distant past in light of findings elsewhere. These endeavors produced modern skeptics who claimed that the revered texts were contradictory and poorly substantiated, but until 1945 these critical scholars were a minority subject to harassment and even jail terms. In the postwar period, historians analyzed and reinterpreted the ancient period as never before. With the imperial family no longer sacrosanct, scholars had more freedom to think and write about A Record and The Chronicles and to critique them using contemporary Chinese and Korean annals. They soon realized that the eighth century, when the formerly sacred texts had been compiled, really marked the beginning of Japanese written history, as it was the first century that could grant full scope to a historian’s skills. That period produced an abundance of literary sources: law codes, poetry collections, detailed court chronicles, Buddhist stories, administrative documents. The age before 700, by contrast, was uncertain territory for textual experts. By the late 1970s, historians faced a crisis because they had virtually exhausted the plausible interpretations that could be gleaned from documents extant for the era until 800. As Japanese historians depleted the written record, however, their colleagues in archaeology were hard at work. By the mid-1960s they had initiated an “archaeology boom” that continues today. A tide of hitherto unimagined original sources flooded the field, rejuvenating debates that had become arid and meaningless. Thanks to the efforts of innumerable archaeologists, scholars have never been so close to recreating the lives of long-vanished inhabitants of the archipelago, whether Yayoi peasants, Nara princes, or merchants outside Osaka Castle. Like history, postwar archaeology had premodern roots but was influenced to a greater degree by European techniques.4 The discovery of cultural artifacts dated back to the 600s, but men of learning did not make use of them until the eighteenth century. The American biologist E. S. Morse introduced modern archaeology to Japan in 1877 when he conducted the first scientific 2 s a c r e d t e x t s a n d b u r i e d t r e a s u r e s [44.192.247.185] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19...