Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan

Abstract

This book offers a new understanding of a formative stage in the development of the Japanese state. The late seventh and eighth centuries were a time of momentous change in Japan, much of it brought about by the short-lived Tenmu Dynasty. Two new capital cities, a bureaucratic state led by an imperial ruler, and Chinese-style law codes were just a few of the innovations instituted by the new regime. This book presents an examination of the power struggles, symbolic manipulations, new mythological constructs, and historical revisions that both defined and propelled these changes. It draws on sinological scholarship in English, German, and French to illuminate the politics and symbolics of the time. The book opens up early Japanese history to considerations of continental influences. Rulers and ritual specialists drew on several religious and ritual idioms, including Daoism, Buddhism, yin-yang hermeneutics, and kami worship, to articulate and justify their innovations. The book gives special attention to the Daoist dimensions of the new political symbolics as well as to the crucial contributions made by successive generations of “immigrants” from the Korean peninsula. The Tenmu Dynasty began and ended in bloodshed and was marked throughout by instability and upheaval. Constant succession struggles between two branches of the royal line and a few outside lineages generated a host of plots, uprisings, murders, and accusations of black magic. This aspect of the period gets full treatment in fascinatingly detailed narratives, which the book alternates with structural analysis.