Recent Japanese Scholarship on the Multi-State Order in East Eurasia from the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries

A conspicuous divergence exists in the pre-1990s and post-1990s Japanophone scholarship on Song China. While earlier generations of scholars perceived historical China as a culturally homogeneous polity that constituted the sole center of a multi-state order in pre-modern East Asia, recent research has attempted to contextualize Song China within a much broader East Eurasian history in terms of both its relations with neighboring states as well as its status as a culturally and socially diverse empire. By the 1990s, to a large extent, Nishijima Sadao's 西嶋定生 (1919–1998) interpretation of the "East Asian tributary system" (higashi Ajia sakuhō taisei 東アジア冊封体制), in which the Chinese emperor stood at the pinnacle of an East Asian multi-state order comprised of multiple tributary relationships with monarchs of the (mostly nominally) vassalized neighboring states, was the prevalent model within Japanese academia. Yet, as Nishijima plainly admitted, with the powerful Khitan Liao, Tangut Xi Xia, and Jurchen Jin militarily overmatching the Song dynasty, his explanation of a "tributary system" is not applicable to the era between the tenth and thirteenth centuries.¹ Failing to offer an alternative perspective, pre-1990s Japanophone scholarship of Song history remained dormant in exploring the East Asian multi-state order.

Benefiting from and stimulated by the publication of new sources, both printed and epigraphic, as well as the emergence of Mongol Yuan studies since the mid-1990s, the new generation of Japanese scholars of Song, Liao, and Jin history has challenged and greatly changed the course of Chinese historiography in Japan. This essay aims to trace the trajectory of the major Japanese-language discussions, from the 1990s through April 2018, of the multistate order in East Eurasia from the tenth century to the thirteenth century.

Changing Geographical Settings:From East Asia to East Eurasia

To circumvent unwieldy explanations, it is convenient to begin with a definition of a new geographical setting for inter-state diplomacy, East Eurasia (tōbu Yūrashia 東部ユーラシア or Yūrashia tōbu/tōhō ユーラシア東部/ 東方), and the scholarly background of its emergence. It was not a mere coincidence that the term East Eurasia emerged in Japanophone scholarship almost simultaneously with Anglophone and other scholarship that was relativizing Eurocentric viewpoints in an effort to construct a genuinely global history. In the field of Japanese scholarship on Asian history (tōyōshi 東洋 史), where a clear and nearly insurmountable demarcation had customarily been drawn between East Asian history (higashi Ajia shi 東アジア史, that is, mostly Chinese history) and Inner Asian history (nairiku Ajia shi 内陸アジ ア史), these vocabulary choices also reflected an unmistakable intention to rectify a Sinocentric perspective. It was also during the 1990s that scholars of Mongol Eurasian history in Japan began vigorously advocating the argument that Chinese history should be perceived as an integral part of Eurasian history and that historical China should be treated as simply one of a number of coexisting East Eurasian states. The works of one of the preeminent figures in this academic movement, Sugiyama Masa'aki 杉山正明, have played a decisive role in promoting a "Central Eurasian" perspective on Chinese history. Stimulated by this movement, since the beginning of this century, a group of scholars have sought to divest Song China of its status as primus inter pares within conventional Japanophone historical narratives of Asian history.² The rise of Sogdian studies also had a remarkable impact on Japanophone Song scholarship after the 1990s. Shedding light on the migrations of Sogdian traders, soldiers, and diplomats across the Eurasian continent from the sixth to the tenth century, scholars inevitably questioned the discursive boundaries that had been drawn between Tang China and other states in the accepted historical narrative.³

The new geographic setting of East Eurasia also enables scholars to bridge the gaps amongsr Tang, Five Dynasties, and Song histories with a practical awareness of the spatial changes that "China" underwent. By blurring the boundaries of "Chinese" history, the majority of the books and articles included in this essay, to various degrees, take a stance against postulating a "Tang-Song transition," a...