314 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
Between 607 and 837, 19 formal missions were sent from Japan to China.
These voyages were extremely hazardous, especially when they took the longer
route to the mouth of the Yangzi; masts broke, ships went down, passengers
were washed overboard, sometimes by the dozen. Many of these travelers
stayed on in China for decades before returning home with deep knowledge of
Buddhism, the Chinese classics, and the workings of the Chinese state. The
period spanned two of China’s most glorious epochs, the Sui (581–618) and the
Tang (618–906). During the Tang dynasty China’s frontiers reached westward
as far as lands claimed by Persia, and if one wanted a metropolitan city in those
days, Chang’an was the place to be: “Buddhist monks from India, envoys from
Kashgar, Samarkand, Persia, Annam, Tonkin, Constantinople, chieftains of
nomadic tribes from Siberian plains, officials and students from Korea and, in
now increasing numbers, from Japan” (Sansom 1952:84).
Though Japan was awed by Chinese civilization, they refused to accept a
tribute-state relation to the great empire in the direction of the setting sun.
About the time of the first missions to China, they began calling their country
Nihon, written with the Chinese character for “sun” and “source.” (The name
Japan derives from the Chinese pronunciation of these characters, which is
roughly “Juhben” (Riben) and probably became “Japan” via Portuguese mer-
chants in China.)
The three eras—Asuka, Nara, and Heian—form what is called Japan’s clas-
sical age, when shameless copying of Chinese culture and brilliant adaptations of
it produced a court culture profoundly different from previous periods and also
unlike transformations to come after 1185. We must call this “court culture”
because the aristocratic structure of society combined with the new world of lit-
eracy, learning, and art set it apart as never before from the lives of ordinary peo-
ple—about which very little is known for this period. But the new possibilities for
preserving the lifestyle of the elite provided by the script borrowed from China
(see chapter 2), along with graphic images in painting, sculpture, and bronze
casting, also from China, preserve this life in astonishing detail. We see a society
embracing a new religion rich in emotion and aesthetics while having to mollify
the jealous and still-powerful kami; we see a dangerous court politics of intrigue
and assassination carried out by scheming great families while filling their leisure
moments with social exchanges in a refined cultural idiom of moon viewing,
poetry writing, nuance, and sensuality; and we see a gendered world where men
scheme and carry on a Chinese philosophical discourse while women adapt the
new script to their own lives of refined inactivity and romantic intrigue.Buddhism Comes to Japan
For several hundred years prior to the major embassies to China, Japan
had been receiving predigested chunks of Chinese culture via the Korean states
of Silla and Paekche. From the latter had come in 552 an image of Buddha,
several volumes of sutras, and a recommendation that the Japanese emperor
adopt Buddhism.