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Yamato Japan (about 300–700 C.E.)

East Asian Civilization · Unit 2 · Civilization Packet

1. At a glance

Unit 2's big question: how do you hold a big thing together? The Yamato answer: marriage, titles, and a sacred family line. Nobody could take the title away, so everybody wanted to control it.

2. The story: from many clans to one family

Many clans, no country

• After the Jōmon came the Kofun period, named after the kofun: huge mounds of earth where rulers were buried. Kofun means "old mound".
• Japan was not one country with one king. Power was held by many uji. An uji was a clan: a large group of families who believed they shared one ancestor.
• Each uji had its own lands, its own warriors, and its own kami. None of them ruled the whole country. Japan was divided.

One clan rises, without a war

• One uji slowly grew stronger than the rest: the Yamato, from the Kansai region of Honshu.
• The Yamato did not conquer everybody. They united central Japan in two ways:
  1. Marriage alliances with competing uji. An alliance is an agreement between two groups to help each other.
  2. Titles for subordinate clans: clans that accepted Yamato leadership.
• A clan that has married into your family, and holds a title you gave it, has less reason to fight you. By the start of the 7th century C.E. (about 600), the Yamato were the strongest uji in Japan.

Looking outward: the Asuka period

• In the Asuka period, the Yamato formed alliances with Korean states across the sea.
• Through Korea came the culture and technology of China: Chinese characters, Buddhism, new tools, new ways of building.
• The ideas were Chinese. But they reached Japan by way of Korea.

3. SPICE-T: Yamato Japan

SPICE-T = Social, Political, Interactions, Cultural, Economic, Technology.

S — Social

• Society was organized into uji (clans). Each believed it shared one ancestor.
• Marriage joined clans together. Marrying into a powerful family was a way to gain power.
• Building one great kofun took thousands of workers, moving earth by hand, for years.

P — Political

• From many clans to one. The Yamato rose by alliances and titles, not by conquest.
• Legitimacy means the accepted right to rule. Ruling is not the same as having the right to rule.
• The Yamato's legitimacy came from descent: the family line you are born from. They said they were descended from Amaterasu the Sun Goddess.
• That right came from birth. It could not be earned, and it could not be taken away. You either had the blood of the Sun Goddess, or you did not.
• So a rival could not replace the emperor. Instead he tried to control him: he married into the family, advised the emperor, and ruled in the emperor's name.
• Over the centuries the emperors lost their real power. Other families, and later warriors, ran the government. But nobody ended the line. The same family holds the title in Japan today.

I — Interactions

• With China: envoys from Wa crossed the sea carrying gifts to the Chinese court. Chinese officials wrote down what they were told.
• With Korea: the Yamato formed alliances with Korean states. Korea was the bridge that carried Chinese ideas to Japan.

C — Cultural

• Shinto, the old religion of Japan, has many kami. The most important is Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess.
• Buddhism arrived from Korea. (It began in India. Remember Ashoka's missionaries: what travels, changes.)
• The Kojiki (712 C.E.) told the family's own story: Amaterasu sent her grandson down from heaven with a mirror, a jewel and a sword, and said his children should rule forever.

E — Economic

• Only a wealthy and powerful ruler could feed and organize the thousands of workers who built a kofun.
• Rulers were buried with valuable goods: iron weapons, bronze mirrors, treasure.

T — Technology

• The kofun themselves: some are keyhole-shaped, and the largest is longer than four football fields. The size of the mound is an argument: it tells us the power of the king, even though it never tells us his name.
• Writing arrived from China, by way of Korea. Early Japan had no writing system of its own. The first writing found in Japan uses Chinese characters.
• New tools and new ways of building came from China through Korea.

4. Big ideas

1. United without a war. The Yamato rose by marriage alliances and titles, not by conquest.
2. Legitimacy by birth. The Yamato's right to rule came from descent from Amaterasu. It could not be earned, and it could not be taken away.
3. Not the throne, the hand on it. A rival could not replace the emperor, so he tried to control him. The emperors lost their power but kept their title.
4. The title was valuable, not worthless. The emperor's name was the one thing that made a government look legal. So everyone had a reason to protect the line, and nobody had a reason to end it.
5. Chinese ideas, Korean road. Writing, Buddhism and new technology came from China, by way of Korea.

5. Key sources: how do we know what we know?

The Yamato evidence problem is different. Look at every problem we have met this year:

Two records, one country. The Chinese wrote that the people of Wa agreed upon a woman as ruler, after years of war. The Kojiki, written centuries later by the family itself, says the rulers came from the Sun Goddess and ruled from the beginning. The two stories do not fit together. Ask: who wrote each one, when, and why?

6. Timeline and vocabulary

7. Connections

Before: Early Japan (Unit 1)

You met the Jōmon, the first kofun, and Shinto in the Early Japan packet. This packet asks the next question: who built the mounds, and how did one clan come to rule?

Across Asia: China's Mandate of Heaven

Two countries. Same problem: who gets to rule. Two opposite machines.

See the Zhou packet for the Mandate of Heaven.

Across Asia: the Mauryan Empire

Ashoka carved his edicts in India in the 200s B.C.E. Centuries later, Buddhism reached Japan, by way of China and Korea. See the Mauryan packet.

8. Where students lose marks on this topic

Self-check

Cover the answers. Can you answer these in complete sentences?

1. What were the uji, and which uji became the strongest by about 600 C.E.?
2. Identify the two ways the Yamato united central Japan without a war.
3. Describe what reached Japan by way of Korea.
4. Describe one problem with using Chinese records to study early Japan.
5. Explain how the Yamato's claim to legitimacy was different from China's Mandate of Heaven.
6. The later emperors had no real power. Explain why the title still mattered.