Japan, it May Be Called a Period

¶ … Japan, it may be called a period of "Chinese fixation."

Chinese Fixation in Japan

The Japanese were concerned about adopting attitudes brought from China during the country's early years. Prince Shotoku in particular was interested in introducing Chinese ideas into his community because he appreciated the fact that the Chinese were well organized and that their political system was structured so as for it to address the needs of both the people and their leaders. Emperor Kotoku was also concerned about adopting behaviors that would make the Japanese state more similar to the Chinese one and established the Taika reforms in an attempt to promote Confucian thinking and philosophies from China. While some of these reforms were meant to help Japan experience progress in a series of domains, they were generally purposed to restructure the political system in order for a strict hierarchy to dominate the Japanese social order.

Political system and how it relates to Japan as chinese fixation

Prince Shotoku send an emissary in 607 in China with the intention of interacting with the Chinese and devising a cultural relationship with their country. To a certain degree, one can say that this visit represented the first organized foreign study program in the history of the world. "After the first visit of Prince Shotoku's Taishi embassy to China, for more than two centuries, officials, priests and students of Japan were sent to China with the object of studying the Chinese governmental system, prevailing religion, literature and the arts." (Biswas 40) The Japanese rapidly adopted city plans and governmental strategies inspired from the Chinese and China thus came to have a strong influence on the Japanese political system during Prince Shotoku's era.

An interesting thing about the Japanese is that they did not simply imitate ideas they saw in China, as they reinterpreted these respective ideas. The first Japanese constitution was devised in 604 by Prince Shotoku and had clear influences of Confucian ideas of politics. The constitution was written in accordance with the Confucian historical-political plan. "Its primary objective was to define the relations between the sovereign and the state, between the emperor and the subjects." (Yao 127) The Mandate of Heaven, a traditional Chinese philosophical idea meant to emphasize why subjects need to accept being ruled by a particular individual, was introduced with the purpose of rationalizing the rule of the Japanese leader.

Prince Shotoku was succeeded by Emperor Kotoku, a person who was even more interested in Chinese political ideas and who wanted his subjects to concentrate on restructuring the social system in order for it to be in agreement with these respective ideas. "The influence of Chinese cultural elements in Japan reached its highest point when the Taika reform occurred in AD 645, and with this the Japanese rulers instituted far-reaching administrative changes." (Biswas 40) The Taika reforms played an important role in shaping Japanese history and experienced little to no difficulties in being enforced due to many Japanese ideas that were similar to Chinese concepts during the era.

A series of Chinese ideas came to be adopted throughout Japan as its leaders acknowledged the degree to which they could use such thinking with the purpose of assisting their community experience progress. The Nihon Shoki is a manuscript documenting the early history of Japan and is the second-oldest such text. This book has provided the Japanese with the opportunity to gain a more complex understanding of their history. What is intriguing about it is that it has been greatly influenced by Chinese techniques of keeping records and historiography.

The Japanese court issued the Taiho Code in 701 and a minor revision of this code in 718 called the Yoro code. Both of these codes were similar to the Tang Administrative and Penal codes, thus meaning that they too have been severely influenced by Japan's relationship with China (Foot & Robinson 64).

3) Japanese Religious: Japan cosmology and similarities to Chinese culture

Chinese influence in Japan did not only involve political ideas, as the Japanese were also concentrated on promoting Chinese cultural values. "Exchanging poems written in Chinese was considered the highest accomplishment in polite society, and the Chinese poems were also employed to impress upon foreign visitors Japan's cultural advancement at diplomatic receptions." (Lu 22) The first collection of Chinese poems written by Japanese poets, the Kaifuso, was issued in 751 and it directly demonstrated that Chinese cultural values held a special place in the Japanese society.

Nara, the first permanent capital of Japan between 710 and 784, contained wide patterned avenues, worshiping buildings, and pagodas, and was largely similar to the imperial city in Changan. Japanese scholars even turned to Chinese geomancy in an attempt to understand where it was best for them to build the city of Nara. To a certain degree, the Japanese decision to adopt Chinese ideas was rational. Chinese concepts that played an important role in amplifying the power of the imperial court were adopted into Japanese culture without hesitation. The same rule applied in the case of Buddhist elements. Buddhism was actually supported as a religion in Japan because of its political implication rather than because of the spiritual ideas that it put across. "This pragmatic approach and the coalescence of indigenous and alien elements were in large measures responsible for the success of Japan's cultural importation." (Lu 22)

The influence of Chinese elements is visible in a series of concepts present in Japan, but the idea of imperial rule is probable the one that emphasizes this respective influence. This idea is known as Tennoism and it has been associated with notions according to which the imperial house has a divine ancestry. "In modern times, Tennoism has been identified with the claims made for the divine ancestry of the imperial house, its unbroken succession from the Sun Goddess, and the commission of the Divine Grandson's imperial descendants to rule the land." (De Bary 69) This idea and the title demonstrate the similarities between the Japanese and the Chinese states, as Japanese leaders have focused on adopting a series of religious and cosmological notions from the Chinese as they struggled to provide their subjects with the opportunity to rationalize the position of their superiors.

The Japanese filtered information they took from Chinese culture with the purpose of only adopting features that would be beneficial to their culture. Many methods of thinking did not change and a great deal of differences continued to exist between ideas that the two cultures expressed with regard to particular matters. The fact that they were divided by water made it difficult for them to be able to reach common ground in some discussions. The Japanese aristocracy focused on maintaining different perspectives from points-of-view expressed by the Chinese. Even with this, the fact that their background contained a great deal of Chinese-inspired elements meant that they would have to agree to a series of Chinese ideas because they were taught to do so. The new era in Japan required many innovative ideas to be introduced into the country's culture and both political and cultural elements from China seemed to play an essential role when considering progress in the country.

To a certain degree, the fact that the Japanese borrowed elements from Chinese cultural tradition generated much controversy in China. The way that the Japanese related to their leader as the "Child of Heaven in the Land of the Rising Sun" while the Chinese referred to their as the "Child of Heaven in the Land of the Setting Sun" influenced many Chinese to believe that