Sakaue Y., with K.L. Reeves
Similarly, Inoue Mitsusada asserted that although the Japanese ritsuryō state may appear, at
first glance, to have adopted the same form of governance as the Sui and Tang, the Japanese and
Chinese systems were erected over significantly different support structures. The latter, he main-
tained, involved direct rule through a bureaucracy comprising the emperor and his liegemen;
while the former ought rather to be understood as a dualistic structure fusing the ritsuryō system
into the older system of hereditary clan rule.^35
This argument was subsequently developed by Ishimoda Shō into a theory expounding the
dualistic nature of relationships governing production. Adopting the concept of an “Asian com-
munity,” in which the communal nature of a group is embodied not by an assemblage of com-
moners but by the head or chief of that community, along with the idea that relations of
production in such a community amount to enslavement of the subject population as a whole by
the state, Ishimoda argued that, with regard to the means and bonds of production, the relation-
ship between the state and its subjects was secondary to the one that existed between local
chieftains on the land—exemplified by district magistrates (gunji)—and the people they
governed.^36
The emperor and the aristocracy
Historians have also explored the relationship between the emperor and the aristocracy under the
ritsuryō state. In contrast to efforts to portray the Japanese ritsuryō monarch as an archetypical
oriental despot, Seki Akira identifies the court nobility as a relatively independent political force,
citing the yin rank (on’i) system, under which the sons of officials holding the fifth court rank or
higher began their careers at intermediate (rather than beginning) levels in the hierarchy, and the
tendency for aristocrats of the third rank and higher to come from the same powerful noble
houses that had produced the royal counselors (taifu or maetsukimi) of the pre- Taika polity.^37
Ishio Yoshihisa observed that, unlike the chancellors (zaixiang) of the Chinese court, the
members of the Japanese Council of State (daijōkan) formed a legally-defined deliberative body
that issued directives independently of the emperor, while Ishimoda Shō noted that the Japanese
ritsuryō statutes on documentary forms (kushiki- ryō) described day- to-day directives that the Tang
legal codes classified as royal pronouncements, under the articles detailing petitions issued by the
Council of State.^38 Similarly, Hayakawa Shōhachi pointed out that such petitions included
requests for conferral of the fifth rank and higher, and maintained that although the Japanese
emperor should still be viewed as an autocratic monarch, his power was more significantly cir-
cumscribed by the aristocracy than was that of the Tang emperors.^39
On the other hand, Morita Tei contends that the articles discussing Council of State petitions
were nothing more than illustrative examples, Sakaue Yasutoshi has argued that the clauses on
conferral of fifth rank and higher were merely the product of careless copying of Tang statutes,
and Torao Tatsuya asserts that the Japanese ministerial (sangi) system was premised on the Tang
chancellery.^40
Ultimately, the degree to which members of the aristocracy were able to reject their
emperor’s commands, and the degree to which emperors were bound to entertain the
demands of the aristocracy, are impossible to ascertain from the content of ritsuryō regulations
alone; they must be investigated through actual examples of interaction between emperors
and the nobility.^41 One can, for instance, examine the case of Emperor Shōmu’s (701–756, r.
724–749) attempt to confer the title of Grand Consort (daibunin) on his mother Fujiwara Miyako
(?–754). His efforts met opposition from Prince Nagaya (684?–729), and resulted in a compro-
mise whereby Miyako received instead the lesser title of Dowager Empress (kōtai bunin).^42
One might also debate the significance of the fact that the majority of the noble houses that