Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty, 650–800 (review)

Somewhat improbably, the last few years have seen the appearance of a number of English-language books on ancient Japan, many of them from the University of Hawai'i Press. Herman Ooms's ambitious new work provides a welcome addition to this growing list of publications.

As the title indicates, Imperial Politics is about political ideology in the Nara period. This represents quite a leap backward in time for the author, whose previous books focused on the Tokugawa period. That said, the general approach remains similar, with borrowings from critical theory and elaborate structural analysis. Even readers whose historical tastes are more empirical will be impressed by Ooms's erudition and the quality of his scholarship. They will also be impressed, or perhaps intimidated, by his attention to detail. Although generally well written (and even, upon occasion, humorous, as in its use of section titles such as "Revenge of the Living Dead," p. 224), Imperial Politics is nonetheless a dense work that demands a lot from readers. But it also rewards careful study, and those who finish it will undoubtedly do so with a new and better understanding of ancient Japan.

The tendency among many historians, both in the West and in Japan, is to view the Nara period as a kind of golden age, representing at once the culmination of the centralizing impulses of the seventh century and the origin of much that we think of today as "Japanese," from the Japanese state itself to icons of classical culture such as the Asura sculpture from Kōfukuji on display in 2009 at the Tokyo National Museum. While Ooms does not deny the importance of the Nara period (and a good thing, for to do so would call into question the need for this book), he does attempt to reframe it by focusing on contingencies and discontinuities rather than the more commonly noted long-term trends and continuities. As a result, the Nara polity comes across looking more like an ad hoc cut-and-paste job than the monolithic, well-crafted entity envisioned by many scholars.¹

The basic argument of Imperial Politics, reflected in the book's subtitle, can be summarized crudely as follows: Nara Japan was ruled by a "Tenmu dynasty," which made various efforts to legitimize itself before being replaced by a "Tenji dynasty" at the end of the eighth century. The idea of a Tenmu dynasty, of course, is not unique to Ooms but has been floating around in Japanese historiography for years. Some of the tools of legitimization described by the author will also be familiar to specialists: the conscious attempt to construct (more accurately, fabricate) a royal line originating in Tenmu (chapter 1); the elaboration of appropriate founding myths and ideas of state or realm (chapter 2); the portrayal of the founder Tenmu as a divine, otherworldly being (chapter 3); the adroit use of immigrants and their descendants for their specialized knowledge and skills (chapter 4); and the creation of a country-wide liturgical community through regularly scheduled ritual events, many of them centered on the ripening and harvesting of rice (chapter 5).

One of the major contributions of the book (again, one that is not completely original) is Ooms's emphasis on the importance of Daoist elements in ancient Japanese court symbolism (chapter 6). In sort of a religious zero-sum game, Daoism takes on many of the roles traditionally assigned to Shintō, which Ooms historicizes as a much later invention (chapter 7). (Rather surprisingly in a book on political ideology, there is no discussion of Confucianism.) Attention is also given to the many political intrigues and plots during the Nara period (chapter 8) and to the role played by, or attributed to, vengeful spirits in these and subsequent events (chapter 9). Lastly, the author analyzes Tenmu's appropriation of the (also largely Daoist) concept of "purity" to symbolize and fortify his...