Did Japanese Culture Come from China? A Layered View
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis: the claim is partly true, but as a whole not true at all. What came from China from the Kofun period was received almost only at court, on ground over ten thousand years old, and judged by the spirit in its sound.
Partly true, and not true at all
The idea that most of Japanese culture came from China is surprisingly pervasive, even within Japan. When we examine actual history, however, while this holds true from a certain era onward, before that threshold lies a complexity that defies such simple assertions.
Kimono, tatami, painting, and countless other aspects of our culture trace their origins to China, yet it was Japan that developed them in its own singular way. At the root of this art of remixing foreign cultures lies a cultural formation spanning more than ten thousand years that is rarely discussed—and because so many commentators overlook this deep foundation, the true picture remains obscured.
Personally, I believe the conventional view that the majority of Japanese culture originated in China possesses a deeper complexity: it is partially true, but taken as a whole, it is not true at all.
Received at court
The primary actors shaping this era were the toraijin (渡来人)—migrants from continental East Asia who arrived between roughly 3,000 and 1,700 years ago. Their roots lay across East Asia, and many naturalized and settled permanently in the archipelago. In this process, a substantial body of culture originating in China was introduced, but its reception was almost exclusively confined to the imperial court. This is a crucial point to understand: at the time, what could be called "Japan" effectively designated little more than the southern part of present-day Nara Prefecture.
Ten thousand years before
From this perspective, contemporary Japanese culture certainly owes a great deal to China. Yet we must not overlook the fact that the span from the Asuka period down to the present is, after all, merely 1,300 to 1,400 years. Before the influx of East Asian toraijin and the consolidation of that culture, Japan's prehistoric epoch—spanning the Jomon and Yayoi periods—extended for more than ten thousand years.
A realistic historical view, then, reveals a foundational stage of Japanese culture lasting over ten thousand years, against which the movements of accepting and rejecting Chinese culture since the Kofun period constitute a subsequent chapter of roughly fifteen centuries.
Received as sound
Yet when Buddhism reached Japan, the people of the archipelago took a path quite different from that struggle over translation. Instead, they did something remarkable: they read the Chinese-language scriptures aloud straight from the characters as sound, and enshrined them on the spot.
At the time, the language of the Japanese archipelago had no script of its own. More than that, however, this points to a deep-seated tradition that placed the highest weight on sound.
To put it bluntly, so long as the sound was right, that was enough. And whether a sound was right or not was a matter not of musicality, but of the spirituality dwelling within it. Whether that which arrived from elsewhere carried spirituality or not was the criterion by which it was received.
When we look back over Japanese history with this measure in hand, it becomes clear just how wide of the mark the stock image of Japan as a passive receiver of foreign cultures truly is.
Brush and ink
In contrast to this Chinese tradition, which placed the brush at the center of a culture structured around the subject, Japan felt far more naturally drawn to a predicate-oriented culture that prized ink. This divergence would become a decisive factor in the unique evolution of Japanese ink painting, quietly underpinned in later centuries by the spirit of Zen.
Two currents in East Asia
I keep thinking about this under the heading "a Japan that does not need advanced technology to govern its people," and I see the key to its strange governance in spirit. Put another way, the way a large society is held together grew into different forms according to a country's scale and the layering of its history. China chose to keep its vast state system running with advanced technology; Japan has kept order through the spirit that flows inside society. Seen as a Japan that does not need technology to govern its people and a China that does, two great currents have branched in East Asia. The difference is whether the force that supports governance lives in the spirit or in technology, and that is the point I want to think through.
Essays to read
- Borrowed culture, older ground — Did Japanese culture come from China? A borrowed culture rests on ground older than the borrowing, Takahiro Mitsui holds: what arrived from China, who received it at court, and what Japan did with it.
- Receiving the other without explaining it — How should we accept what is foreign? Takahiro Mitsui shows Japan receiving Buddhism as sound, enshrining it before explaining it — the spirituality dwelling in the sound was the criterion.
- Subject culture, predicate culture (I) — In China the brush serves a culture of the subject, in Japan ink serves a culture of the predicate, Takahiro Mitsui argues of the two traditions.
- Why a declining country does not revolt — Why doesn't a declining country revolt? Takahiro Mitsui argues a firm system of rule inherited from an earlier order keeps people quiet: the Neo-Confucian mutual surveillance of Edo's five-household groups, still keeping Japan orderly today — Takahiro Mitsui's answer to whether Japan is still Confucian.