Japanese History · Chronicle II of XI
古墳・飛鳥 · Yamato Japan
Giant tomb-mounds, the coming of Buddhism, Prince Shōtoku and the birth of the Yamato state.
The Kofun PeriodCultural
Powerful chiefs raise enormous keyhole-shaped burial mounds, the kofun that give the age its name.
The largest, attributed to Emperor Nintoku near Osaka, is nearly half a kilometre long — one of the biggest tombs on earth. Ringed by moats and topped with clay haniwa figures of warriors, horses and houses, the kofun proclaimed the power of an emerging elite that would coalesce into the Yamato court.
The Yamato CourtPolitical
The kings of the Yamato plain extend their overlordship across central Japan, tied by trade and war to the kingdoms of Korea.
Ruling through a hierarchy of aristocratic clans, the uji, the Yamato kings drew iron, horses, scribes and craftsmen from allied Baekje. Immigrant families brought writing in Chinese characters, weaving and metallurgy, knitting the young state into the wider civilization of East Asia.
The Coming of BuddhismReligious
A mission from the Korean kingdom of Baekje brings Buddhist images and scriptures to the Yamato court.
The new faith split the court. The Soga clan embraced it while the Mononobe and Nakatomi defended the native gods, the kami. The Soga prevailed, and Buddhism — with its temples, learning and links to the continent — became a pillar of the state, worshipped alongside, not instead of, the older Shintō spirits.
Prince ShōtokuPolitical
Regent Prince Shōtoku issues the Seventeen-Article Constitution, urging harmony, Buddhist virtue and obedience to the throne.
More a set of moral principles than laws, the constitution set out a Chinese-style ideal of centralized, ethical government. Shōtoku sent embassies to Sui China as an equal, patronized Buddhism, and founded the temple of Hōryū-ji, whose wooden halls still stand as the oldest in the world.
The Taika ReformPolitical
After the fall of the overmighty Soga, sweeping reforms remake Japan as a centralized, Chinese-style empire.
In a palace coup, Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Nakatomi no Kamatari destroyed the Soga and launched the Taika ("Great Change") reforms. Land and people were declared the emperor's, provinces and taxes were reorganized on the Tang pattern, and the ruler took the exalted title tennō — heavenly sovereign.
Emperor TenmuPolitical
A war of succession brings Emperor Tenmu to the throne, who exalts the imperial house and its divine descent.
Victorious in the fierce Jinshin War of 672, Tenmu ruled with new authority, strengthening the bureaucracy and ordering the histories that would justify his line. It was in his reign that the ideology of a heaven-descended, unbroken imperial dynasty took firm shape.
The Ritsuryō StatePolitical
The Taihō Code lays down a complete legal system, completing Japan's transformation into a bureaucratic empire.
Modelled closely on Tang law, the Taihō Code organized the government into ministries, defined ranks and taxes, and distributed rice land to the peasantry. This ritsuryō system, however imperfectly it worked in practice, framed the Japanese state for centuries and set the stage for the founding of a permanent capital at Nara.
