Chapter 8 Japan 313Ten days after sokui rei, Emperor Akihito performed daijosai in the ancient
manner. A more ancient ceremony surviving into the twentieth century can
hardly be imagined. A whole agricultural cycle is caught up in this ceremony.
It begins in the preceding New Year, when a divination hut is built in the Impe-
rial Precinct. Two ancient kami are summoned. The priest builds a fire, then
performs a divination by holding a shell above the flames until cracks appear;
it is interpreted and the answer written down and put in a box. The informa-
tion from the kami names two prefectures where the special rice for daijosai will
be grown.
Every step of rice production in the two sacred fields is accompanied by rit-
ual, until its ceremonial harvesting by virgins (now by rice farmers). During
daijosai the emperor repeats the pattern of Amaterasu, who was herself per-
forming daijosai before being interrupted by her brother and hiding in the cave.
The emperor must be purified and protected against the wandering of his spir-
its; nine kami are summoned for his protection the night before daijosai. A
priest claps while a priestess, waving bells and a vine-draped spear, performs a
dance like the dance performed for Amaterasu outside her cave. Knots are tied
in a silk rope to keep his soul from wandering; meanwhile an identical rope is
put across Amaterasu’s actual cave in Kyushu.
Then there is a totally private communal meal of rice between the emperor
and the kami of rice. Black and white sake (rice wine) and boiled rice and millet
are offered to the kami and then eaten by the emperor. Only the occasional
entry of a serving priest witnesses the event. These are the first fruits of the
year’s harvest; they are offered to the kami and to the emperor in whose body
now reposes the rice-souls, which must be carried over to the next season; for
every year during the winter, when the sun retreats, the rice dies but must be
safeguarded until spring when it will, with the help of the kami, grow again.
This is the emperor’s sacred office for the people of Japan.The China Connection:
Asuka, Nara, and Heian Periods
Beyond a few stepping-stone islands and the Korean peninsula lay a civiliza-
tion vastly different from Japan and viewed with awe by the Japanese. By the
end of the sixth century, the Asuka court (named for its new location) had
become far more sophisticated. There were people at court who could read and
speak Chinese (though most of them were Koreans or Chinese); Chinese books
had been known for a century; and China itself was emerging from the disorder
of the Six Dynasties period. It was time to approach China directly. The first
official Japanese mission was dispatched to China in 607, and it didn’t start well.
The letter from Prince Shotoku was addressed with elegant symmetry from “the
emperor of the sunrise country” to the “emperor of the sunset country.” The Sui
emperor was not charmed; insulted to be addressed as an equal by the ruler of a
small and uncultured barbarian state, he refused to accept the letter.