倭人考 1On the Wajin, Part 1

In this article, I intend to unveil the existence known as Wajin [倭人], a concept considered to constitute the ethnic bedrock of the Japanese people in ancient history. However, having drafted a significant portion of this inquiry, I sensed a friction. This insight is so dense that even when articulated in Japanese to a Japanese audience, it invites profound confusion. The risk of misunderstanding inherent in my usual long-form structures is too great. Therefore, I have decided to distill this into a manageable volume and release it in several discrete pieces. Also, to preemptively cordon off misconception, let me suggest at the outset that the existence of Wajin does not designate a specific ethnic proper noun within Japan. It is rather a term that came into natural usage through historical convention after a certain era, a figure that remains nothing more than vague and abstract. Consequently, to say "this person originates from the Wajin" is not merely inappropriate in Japan but an impossibility. Such a recognition fails to reach even the minimum threshold for debate and is rendered completely meaningless. The point of contention is not to focus on the presence or absence of the Wajin, but to deepen our inquiry based on the fundamental question: What, precisely, is the Wajin?

Another crucial fulcrum is to question whether a people called Wajin, or a specific ethnic group that could be positively identified as such, actually existed in the early historical period of Japan. That is to say, we must ask whether the Wajin functioned historically as a rigorous concept indicating a specific ethnicity or tribal collective equal to the name. However, as a practical matter, the examination of the Wajin up to the present day has been egregious. Even now, there is a strong tendency to abuse this abstract and nebulous concept of Wajin, employing it capriciously across various fields. I am weary of this strange situation where everyone speaks of the Wajin while knowing nothing of them, yet one could argue that the historical image of Japan is being distorted by this very phenomenon. Or perhaps, rather than distorted, it is fundamentally flawed from its very standpoint. If historical arguments are developed based on concept formation that ignores these basics, the innumerable ideologies deployed in the modern age will inevitably intervene and ensnare the discourse. Consequently, the outrage of meaninglessly producing ethnic problems is affirmatively manufactured. I, however, will proceed by completely discarding the attitude of those who see only the signifier in history. From a strong stance of refusing to pander to such foolish perspectives, I wish to deepen the consideration of the Wajin, which floats as a phantom full of misunderstandings. The reason is that the Wajin is being exploited for indigenous issues, a problem that does not apply within the context of Japan.

First, the figure of the so-called Wajin ethnicity frequently posited as a premise is narrated as follows. It is a structure of binary opposition in the history of the settlement of the Shogunate forces in Hokkaido around the late Edo period, where the Wajin invaded the land of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido. Indeed, this assertion is always narrated as if it were equal in meaning to the colonial context of Westerners settling in America or Australia. This is fundamentally incorrect. As a major premise, the Ainu themselves are a fabricated, illusory ethnicity built upon extremely crude misunderstandings. I will not touch upon this deeply today, but if one focuses on "at what stage and which ethnic groups were formed in the composition of the Japanese people," the Ainu are in fact the newest ethnicity in the Japanese archipelago. Yet this fact is ignored. Particularly, those who intend to exaggerate colonialist nuances from within Japan to the international stage persist in setting "Ainu = Jomon people" and by citing this, they perceive the Ainu as indigenous people who legitimately inherit the bloodline of Japan's oldest ethnic layer. That this unilateral interpretation is incorrect has been disclosed from various fields, and in recent years it has been proven erroneous even from a genetic perspective. By unilateral interpretation, I refer to the meaninglessness of narrating through the composition of "Ainu = Jomon people." To put it more simply, it is the positioning of the Ainu as the pure descendants of the Jomon people, the oldest indigenous people of Japan. While it is true that the Ainu draw from the Jomon lineage, if we look for people drawing from the Jomon lineage, they exist widely outside the Ainu as well. Rather, the Ainu are positioned as a new ethnicity within the Japanese archipelago, born from very complex intermingling, with their formation occurring around the 13th century.

In reality, people who have not properly examined the large-scale phenomenon of reflection on Western colonialism in recent years, but merely appropriated it for Japan simply because it is a trend in the West, have asserted this strange composition that the Wajin invaded the Ainu. They did so by facilely employing the arguments without considering the struggle and conflict of colonialist discussions in Western history, such as in the Americas or Australia. I call this a strange composition because not only are they neglecting to investigate the reality of the Ainu, but this Wajin has somehow become equated with the Japanese. Moreover, the notation for Wajin here is rendered as Wajin [和人]. Because the sound is identical, they equate it without investigation to the historical notation Wajin [倭人]. Positioning the Japanese as a single ethnicity based on the premise of the Emperor's unbroken lineage, they established a structure where these Japanese invaded the Ainu, the Jomon lineage indigenous people. In other words, the figure of the Wajin that most people currently imagine is strangely structured to be equal to the Japanese, and a composition is set where the indigenous Ainu existed in a position deviating from this main concept of the Japanese. Even from my perspective as one personally investigating Japan, this is nothing more than a ridiculously ignorant conclusion. It is mere refuse, sloppy to the extreme. However, there is no material more suitable for the examination of the Wajin than this problem. This is because innumerable issues are exposed here.

Firstly, this assertion presupposes a centralized image of Japan, placing a unified nation-state (Japan) and a single ethnicity (Japanese) at the apex. However, as I have disclosed multilaterally through Shitsurae, strictly speaking, the concept of unity and singularity in Japan was only established in the true sense after the defeat of the student protests in the late 1960s. Even around the time of World War II, although it possessed intensity, a strong tension existed between the central authority and the pluralistic world that is the essential dimension of Japan. Thus, it had not reached the power of Japan or the Japanese in the modern sense. Furthermore, to view a unified nation-state of Japan or a single Japanese ethnicity as existing in the Edo period is a lie. Even in the Edo period, a centralized unified state did not exist; the era strongly possessed a pluralistic world. Yet those with motives to raise the Ainu indigenous issue to international debate directly connect this context of Wajin invasion to the Japanese, identifying this aggression as something committed by Japan. I perceive this as a complete error, a demonstration of historical and ideological ignorance, and I posit it as a discussion fabricated upon a fundamentally mistaken point. This phenomenon occurs easily because the Wajin, its reality unprobed, is left as something ambiguous to be exploited and used as one pleases. Therefore, I will unfold an elucidation of the actual state of the Wajin from a unique perspective.

The crucial literature for tracing the origins of the Wajin is the Gishi Wajinden [魏志倭人伝] on the Chinese side, which recorded the earliest appearance of Japan. The Gishi Wajinden is a peripheral text included within the Records of the Three Kingdoms [三国志]. While Gishi Wajinden is its common name, accurately it is the Account of the Wajin [倭人], in the Biographies of the Toi [東夷], in the Book of Wei [魏] of the Records of the Three Kingdoms. I have emphasized "Wei," "Toi," and "Wajin" here for reasons that will become clear below. First, looking at the notation in this document, the designations of Wa [倭] and Wajin [倭人] are already fixed. The notation of “jin" [人] may be taken as ethnicity in this dimension, but the reality is a compound tribe. In other words, it writes of the existence of a people called Wa. What is important here is that the envoys of Wei at the time had already established and understood this mysterious existence called Wajin on a specific ethnic dimension within the Japanese archipelago. The origin of this recognition is significant, so we shall explore it. According to the Gishi Wajinden, the one governing the lands of Japan that had contact with Wei was Queen Himiko, who ascended to the throne under the backing of multiple states. And the lands under Queen Himiko's rule are set as Wakoku [倭国], and the people living in those lands are set as Wajin [倭人]. Put simply, for the dynasties of the ancient Chinese side, the territory implying modern Japan was captured as Wakoku [倭国], and the territory implying the Japanese people as Wajin [倭人]. Please note here that the word Wa [倭] was strongly conscious in the minds of the Chinese bureaucrats.

According to the Gishi Wajinden, the Wei envoys heard in Japan that this country was originally under the rule of a male king, but some 70 to 80 years prior, a disturbance occurred in Wakoku leading to collapse. From there, the various states repeated conflict and war, so the nations together backed a single queen, making Himiko the ruler. It is somewhat complicated; certainly, the governance of male kings existed in the states fundamentally, but this does not mean there were no queens. However, in the dimension of oral tradition heard by the envoys, Wakoku operated with male kings as the axis. Since the envoys' records do not specifically deny the existence of queens, it is possible such a distinction did not exist in the dimension of tradition. Reading this is quite difficult, but if I interpret it from the sensation of having investigated the myths and folklore of various regions on foot, the Wakoku spoken of by the Wei envoys is not in the position of a unified state. In reality, it possesses a sphere of multiple states as its substance. That is to say, Wakoku is not a country name that actually existed in Japanese history, but a designation for the commonality of the states governed by Himiko. Here, the communal illusion comes into view, and its implication is grave. To provide an example for the reader's familiarity: since the Wakoku in ancient Japan was a designation for the sphere of commonality of multiple nations, its form is close to the current EU. Just as the EU places its political center in Brussels, Wakoku also established a base of administration in a specific state, and at its apex existed the King, Himiko. However, as you can see from this example, even if we say EU, it is a collective of multiple nations and complex ethnicities with different roots, and there is nothing that can be determined uniformly. It is synonymous with the fact that while one can say European as a form encompassed by an idea, Europeans do not actually exist. If I say the same applies to the Wajin of Wakoku, my intention might become slightly clearer.

However, the important thing is that the Wei envoys did not perceive it in the sense I have just narrated. They viewed Wakoku as a specific country. The reason for this is obvious. In my personal understanding, because the Chinese side historically had a high degree of civilizational development compared to Japan, they had been involved with various nations from a considerably early stage and furthermore originated from a history where dynasties were repeatedly built and crushed. The Chinese side had to maintain a dynasty in a world vastly open in all directions, so they inevitably had to define the natural enemies of the four quarters as different tribes. Furthermore, the method of arranging and setting nations in dimensions such as alliance, subjugation, and hostility was highly established. Typical of this is Sii [四夷] (The Four Barbarians), representing the existence of different tribes in the east, west, south, and north when thinking with the dynasty in ancient China as the center. These Sii are the Hokuteki [北狄] to the north, the Toi [東夷] to the east, the Nanban [南蛮] to the south, and the Seiju [西戎] to the west. Since the Wei envoys visited Japan in the era of the Three Kingdoms, it was a time when the sense of belonging to the country and ethnic consciousness had risen solidly, especially on the Chinese side. The decisive characteristic of the Gishi Wajinden is that considerations presupposing this recognition were deployed regarding the Japanese side. Just then, I believe the first misrecognition occurred, and I view a fissure arising there involving Wakoku and Wajin with the Japanese side. The Gishi Wajinden perceives that an ethnicity called Wajin formed a country called Wakoku, but this is an extremely Chinese, or rather, continental interpretation. In those days when inter-lingual traffic was difficult, we must naturally assume considerable limitations in the linguistic traffic conducted between the Wei envoys and the local tribes in Japan. They did not possess a common language, so even with interpreters, it is inevitable that gaps would arise. And the key lies in the fact that, amidst these existing limitations, the people living in the sphere of Himiko's influence referred to themselves by a certain common term to the Wei envoys.

That term is Wan. Japan did not possess a written culture for a long time, but on the other hand, as is typical in the currently known Kotodama, it possesses an ethnic character with extremely high sensitivity to the sound of words. However, the Wei envoys, who already possessed high written culture and archival technology, heard the sound of "Wan" emitted by the people of unknown lands repeatedly. Eventually, they applied Kanji to the sound of Wan as the ethnic name and country name of the people living in Himiko's sphere. The prototype is that Wan became Wa [倭] (or [委]) in the Chinese notation at this time. As mentioned before, due to circumstances on the Chinese side, there is the designation of Toi [東夷] indicating the different tribes of the east from ancient times. They identified this designation of the eastern tribes with Wajin [倭人], and identified the country where those different tribes lived as Wakoku [倭国]. However, caution is required: "Toi = Wajin" is not the equation here. Toi is a designation abstracted over a considerably wide range, and depending on the location of the dynasty, it includes ethnicities from the eastern part of the Chinese continent to the Korean peninsula. It is merely a subdivided classification of Wajin within the Toi as a positioning seen from the Wei dynasty of that time. Therefore, it is possible to tentatively position this as the image of Japan for the Wei of that time.

But if we are to unravel the reality, complex problems lurk there. After all, this designation is merely a bureaucratic term of the Chinese state, given by taking the sound Wan by which certain limited people on the Japanese side at the time called themselves. It does not mean that a unique ethnicity called Wajin existed. It is nothing more than national bureaucratic terminology for the Chinese side to understand the circumstances of the Sii [四夷]. Simultaneously, this implies that a country called Wakoku did not exist. However, there is another troublesome circumstance here. In fact, the term Wa [倭] crowned on this Wakoku [倭国] was not invented by the Wei (220–265); there is a high possibility it was used on the Chinese side from before that. What indicates this is not literature, but material evidence. That material evidence is the Gold Seal of the King of Na, designated as a National Treasure of Japan. This seal is engraved with the characters [漢委奴国王] (Kan no Wa no Na no Kokuo). It is a gold seal granted to the King of the Na State [奴国] of Wa [倭] by Emperor Guangwu of the Later Han on the Chinese side in 57 AD. What is important is that the problematic designation Wakoku [倭国] is not used here. If Wakoku had existed, the notation would be [委国王]. But in reality, it is [委奴国王]. This means it was gifted from Han [漢] (Guangwu) to the King [王] of the Na State [奴国] of Wa [委（倭）]. In short, Wa derives from an old designation for a sphere of commonality of multiple states. In a sense, for the ancient Chinese dynasties, it was nothing more than a recognition like a region where different ethnic groups positioned in the furthest east lived. Since the one who constituted one of those states and was close to Emperor Guangwu at the time was the King governing the Na State, this King of Na stood in a governing position in the sphere of the commonality of Wa in Japan prior to the appearance of Himiko. In fact, this Na State also appears later in the Gishi Wajinden.

The complexity and fascination of ancient history start here. The reign of Emperor Guangwu of the Later Han (25–220) was 25–57 AD, and the turmoil of the Three Kingdoms was roughly around 180–280 AD. Thus, at the very least, this engraving on the gold seal can be said to be crucial material evidence showing the existence of Wa [倭] in the earliest phase. However, literarily, while the compilation and establishment of the Records of the Three Kingdoms was roughly in the latter half of the 3rd century, the Book of the Later Han [後漢書] was compiled and established in the first half of the 5th century. There is a Treatise on the Wa [倭伝] in this Book of the Later Han as well, but since it is thought to quote heavily from the Records of the Three Kingdoms established earlier, the reality cannot be grasped. In other words, this torsion in the historical compilation and establishment of the Later Han and Wei strongly affects the reading of the ancient layers on the Japanese side. I do not have the power to cover investigations into the Chinese side, so I will keep it to a minimum here. The Treatise on the Wa in the Book of the Later Han presents an overview of Wa [倭] at the beginning, but the notation there is not Wakoku [倭国]. It is only after writing about the customs of the people living in Wa [倭] at the time, from around where political descriptions begin, that the term Wakoku [倭国] is used in the materials. Here, discussing Wa [倭] and Wakoku [倭国] is meaningless for elucidating the reality, but please note only the point that in the history books of the Chinese side, the sound of Wan uttered on the Japanese side was established in Kanji as Wa [倭] (or [委]) and treated in bureaucratic documents. Seen from the Chinese dynasty, it is placed as the Wa within the massive territory of the Toi [東夷]. From the Japanese side, one could say this Wa is the largest commonality, but please also note that this is in the form of reverse importing the premise of the gaze of the Chinese dynasties. Against the real image of Wajin and Wakoku constructed from this reverse direction, a historical reaction of Japan begins. Eventually, this designation comes to be regarded as a derogatory term from the Chinese side, and an era arrives where the establishment of the Emperor system rises, aiming for a renovation of the country's name. Thus, what is established as the country name is the current Nippon [日本].

In other words, as shown here, these are also problems of the psyche.

I will stop here for this time, but the problem of Wa [倭] deployed here is actually the origin of the flow that connects to Nippon via the problem of Yamato. Next time, based on the content of this discussion, I will elucidate the figure of the country said to have been governed by Himiko in the Gishi Wajinden.