A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (11 page)

And it was during the age of Nara that Chinese writing led to the appearance of the first real books produced in Japan, the
Kojiki
and
Nihon Shoki
chronicles of 712 and 720. These were followed shortly
afterwards by the first poetry anthologies, the
Kaif
s
(Fond Recollections of Poetry) of 751 and the
Many
sh
(Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) of 759. Some documents were even printed – another Chinese influence.
²

However, the respect for things Chinese did not lead to indiscriminate imitation. More often than not there were distinctive Japanese modifications to Chinese ‘imports’. For example, the ‘cap rank’ system introduced earlier by Prince Sh
toku was in theory based, as in China, on merit not birth. However, in practice, and particularly during the Nara period, both rank and position in the Japanese bureaucracy quickly became determined by inherited family status rather than by individual merit.
³
That is, the examination-based meritocracy of China’s bureaucratic world was not too palatable to the Japanese. This is ironic in view of the prominence of examinations in present-day Japan, but understandable from the perspective of an established elite wishing to safeguard control and stability.
⁴

The
Kojiki
and particularly the
Many
sh
already show the embryonic development of a distinctly Japanese writing system, albeit based on Chinese characters. The law codes, too, show significant modification, such as the leniency of punishments in morally tolerant Japan relative to those in China.
⁵
The land allotment system also differed, particularly in that women were allotted land in Japan but not at all in T’ang China.

Another very important modification of Chinese practices was that of the ‘mandate of heaven’. In China an emperor ruled with the mandate of heaven only while he acted virtuously. He could be removed if he was felt to have strayed from the path of virtue. This was ‘overlooked’ in Japan, where the Yamato rulers preferred to be legitimised by divine descent rather than the judgement of the people.

The use of the male pronoun above is deliberate, for the Chinese preferred their emperors to be male. This was one thing that was not modified in Japan. Although there were half a dozen reigning empresses in very early Japan, from 770 to the present only two females were to ascend the Japanese throne, both briefly and both in name only.
⁶

Life was not, of course, confined to the courts. For all the great advances of the day, there was much suffering and hunger among the common people. A document of 730, for example, lists no fewer than 412 out of 414 households in Awa (in present-day Chiba Prefecture) as existing at what was considered the bare subsistence level. Similar figures, of 996 out of 1,019, are recorded for households in what is now Fukui Prefecture.
⁷

Only around 1.8 million acres of land was cleared for paddy, so there was simply not enough land for the allotment system to work properly for
very long. And agricultural technology was inefficient, which meant that land clearance and utilisation left much to be desired. Even much of the cleared land soon became barren.
⁸

Peasants suffered too from a heavy tax burden, in no small part thanks to the unusual Buddhist zeal of Emperor Sh
mu (r.724–49). Sh
mu commissioned not only the T
daiji but also a temple in every province, at huge expense. His zeal was partly due to the massive suffering of his people during one of Japan’s worst epidemics, the great smallpox epidemic of 735–7. This virtually exterminated local populations in some areas and reduced Japan’s overall population by around a third.
⁹
Sh
mu felt himself in some way responsible for this and a number of famines and other disasters during his reign, and turned – with what seems to have been genuine piety – to Buddhism.
¹⁰