Japanese Historiography and the Gold Seal of 57 C.E.: Relic, Text, Object, Fake by Joshua A. Fogel (review)

As the title suggests, this book is a historiography—an analytical history of historical writings. Its topic is a gold seal found on Shikanoshima (an island that is part of modern-day Fukuoka prefecture) in 1784. Author Joshua Fogel’s playful invocation near the end of his introduction—“Let the games begin” (p. 11)—is an apt lead-in to his review of a prolonged scholarly contest that even today is not quite over. The first half of the game is a face-off between Neo-Confucianists and nativists. Philologists then perform at half time, and the game continues in the second half between scientists (given short shrift, actually) and scholars who denigrate science; the latter are characterized as nihilists and social constructivists (see pages 5–6). And the football? It’s an inch-square, half-inch-tall block of gold topped with a curled snake and inscribed with five Chinese characters on its base: 漢委奴国王, which are today generally understood to mean “[seal awarded to] the ruler of the state[let] of Na within Wa under the Han” (p. 20). The seal is transformed over the course of the game from secular relic, to text, to object.

The gold seal was found intentionally buried under a large rock nestled between three smaller rocks—that is, a dolmen-like structure—at a site overlooking Hakata Bay in northern Kyushu, not far from where the Yayoi-period country (kuni) of Na was ostensibly located. The seal has been linked with a passage in the Hou han shu (the official history of the later Han dynasty) stating that in 57 c.e. Emperor Guangwu gave a gold seal and ribbon to an emissary from Na. From the time of its discovery in the late eighteenth century, the seal was heralded as a historic relic, but fifty years later it was decried as an ingenious forgery. And the debate continues.

Fogel has translated many passages from the scholarly writings he discusses, and he included in appendices his own translations of three seminal essays that he describes as “paradigm-shifting” (p. 3) in how the gold seal has been treated and interpreted. Appendix A is philologist Miyake Yonekichi’s erudite and definitive interpretation of the discovery (published in 1892), while appendix B contains an essay describing the seal as a forgery (written by Matsuura Michisuke in 1836 but published by Miyake in 1898). Appendix C, by archaeologist Okazaki Takashi, presents a scientific argument for the authenticity of the seal and was published in 1968.

The book is divided into three parts, which do not exactly replicate the game structure described above. Following the introduction, which provides a very enlightening discussion of historiographical methods, part 1 deals with the historical context of late Han and the Japanese archipelago; the seal’s discovery; and the multitude of interpretations that arose in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, culminating in Miyake’s 1892 “breakthrough” interpretation (p. 117). Part 2 deals with the emerging scientific consensus and residual problems thereof. Part 3 airs the anti-science viewpoint on the one hand, and, on the other, showcases all the stakeholders on the pro-authenticity team: museums, the heritage and tourism industries, and archaeologists. Fogel’s insights in these areas are truly arresting and thought provoking. He is adamant that his personal conclusions about whether the seal is real or fake are irrelevant to the phenomenon at hand—which is the “afterlife” (p. 2) of the gold seal (although he does reveal what he thinks). Readers are encouraged to weigh the merits of the arguments, but it would be a mistake to do this before reading the entire book and knowing the whole story.

One niggling problem throughout is that Fogel frequently uses the verb “to forge” when referring to the seal’s manufacture. Forging is an ironworking term that requires beating the remaining slag out of...