Yamato Kingship
The was a tribal alliance centered on the Yamato region from the 4th century to the 7th century, and ruled over the alliance of noble families in the central and western parts of the Japanese archipelago. The age lasted from the 3rd to the 7th century, later than the Yamatai Kingdom. After the Taika Reform, the ōkimi as an emperor, at that time, was in power, and the Yamato period ended. The time period is archaeologically known as the Kofun period. Regarding its establishment, due to the relationship between Yamatai and Yamato's succession to the king's power, there are very different views on it.
The Yamato Kingship refers to the regime that emerged in the Nara region since the 4th century. But the term does not imply the origin of Japan, which is disputed in Japanese history. At the same time as the rise of the, there were probably several or even dozens of power centers in the Japanese archipelago. This is an issue that Japanese academia attaches great importance to.
In the course of the development of the tribes from the state of separation to the direction of union between the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the Japanese royal power had become the center of the tribes. In order to establish its position as a united ally, the Japanese royal power attached importance to foreign relations, paid tribute to China's Eastern Jin and Liu Song dynasties, and made every effort to maintain close relations with the countries on the Korean peninsula, monopolizing various technologies imported by foreigners. In the second half of the 5th century, it was able to overwhelm the gentry in the capital and the local clans.
Name
Until the early 1970s, the "Yamato period" was widely used as a time period from the 4th to the 6th century, and the name "Yamato court" was used unambiguously as the political power that ruled the main part of the Japanese archipelago during that period.However, since the 1970s, with the discovery of significant kofuns and excavations, the use of physical and chemical dating and dendrochronology became available. As the accuracy of these methods improved, research on the chronology of kofun tombs progressed remarkably, and the view that it was not necessarily appropriate to use the words "Yamato" and "imperial court" to describe the period emerged, and this view became influential in historical societies in Japan, and thus the term "Yamato period" was replaced by "Kofun period" instead of "Yamato period" has become a common name in Japanese historical research and higher education in Japan. However, dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating have not yet reached a stage where they can actually be called established techniques, and many researchers have pointed out shortcomings and problems with their accuracy and measurement methods of the Kofun period.
In this article, these "Yamato Imperial Court" and "Yamato Kingship" will be explained. In the first half of the Kofun period, terms such as "Yamato Kingship," "Yamato Regime," and "Yamato Government" have also been used in recent years. After the Kofun period, from the Asuka period onward, the Japanese centralized organization led by a great king/emperor is commonly described as the "Imperial Court" both in historical research and in most of the world.
However, Yamato Imperial Court is also used by some researchers. This reflects the fact that various views on the use of the terms "Yamato" and "Imperial Court" exist side by side in the academic community.
As of 2020, "regime" and "kingship" are also used in the media, but "imperial court" is also used and is not unified.
About "Yamato"
In the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, completed in the first half of the eighth century, as well as in other documents, metal and stone writings, and wooden tablets from the seventh century and earlier, the characters 大和 is not used for "Yamato", but 倭 is written. "Wa " was the Chinese name for Japan in ancient times, but the oldest source on its origin is a document written in the 200s by the Wei official Rujun, who argued that Wa was derived from the word "people" who had the custom of "tattooing on the face." This theory is also supported by many Japanese scholars, as the indigenous Ainu people of Japan have the custom of tattooing. Furthermore, Chinese from the Qin and Han dynasties to the Sui and Tang dynasties is known to have a pronunciation close to modern Cantonese, and even in modern Cantonese, the pronunciation of "委奴: Wainu " and "倭奴: Wainu," referring to the "Ainu people," has remained unchanged from ancient times to the present dayIn the third century, the description about Yamataikoku is appeared in the Wajinden, in the Book of Wei. With the enactment of the Taiho Ritsuryō in 701, a name of country was to be written in two characters, and accordingly, the expression of the country was changed to 大倭. After the some change in 737 by Fujiwara no Nakamaro and other reasons, the expression of the country was changed to 大和 in around late 757. Since the expression 大和 was used widely from the enactment of the Yōrō Code, there is an opinion that it is not appropriate to use this kanji name for the political center or power before the seventh century. However, there are the researchers, such as Makoto Takemitsu, who use this name from the late third century.
The word "Yamato" also means.
- Yamato is also a kun-yomi reading of the national name "Japan".
- Yamato as a province of Japan
- Yamato in the southeastern Nara Basin at the foot of Mount Miwa
Shiraishi further points out that from the Nara and Kyoto basins to the Osaka Plain, the Yodo River system in the north and the Yamato River system in the south have very different types of ancient tombs. Yamato" is rather the area of the Yamato River system, i.e., the combination of the later Yamato and Kawachi.In other words, according to Shiraishi, the katakana notation "Yamato" is used because it can comprehensively handle the meaning of the Yamato River system in addition to 1. to 3.
On the other hand, Kazuhiko Seki states that "Yamato" was used from the 8th century, and before that, it was written as "Yamato" or "Daiwa", so that although "Yamato" or "Daiwa" is appropriate to describe the regime in the 4th and 5th century, "Yamato" is appropriate to prevent confusion between the two.
On the other hand, there are researchers who use the "Yamato" notation, such as Takemitsu mentioned above.
According to Takemitsu, the ancients called the area at the foot of Mt. Miwa "Yamato," a name that distinguished it from other areas in the Nara Basin such as "Asuka" and "Ikaruga," and the current terminology of calling the entire Nara Prefecture "Yamato" did not appear until the 7th century. Takemitsu, who considers Garthrace to be the birthplace of the "Yamato Court," calls the whole area "Yamato," the ancient city.
On the "Royal Court"
The term "Royal court" has its original meaning as a governmental office where the Son of Heaven conducted political affairs such as dynastic government and Ritual, collectively known as dynastic rites. Bureaucracy with a Centralised Government and Emperor as a sovereign title, and that it is inappropriate to use the term "Imperial Court" in a situation where the various governmental systems are not in place. For example, Kazuhiko Seki defines "imperial court" as "the political seat of the emperor" and argues that it is inappropriate to refer to the 4th century and 5th century regimes as the "Yamato Imperial Court" and Kito Kiyoaki also argued in a book for the general public that multiple dynasties could have existed in the Kinki region at the time of the Iwai Rebellion, and that before the Emperor Keitai The term "Yamato Court" should be used only from the 6th century after Emperor Tsugitai, as "there may be cases where the Yamato Court is unrelated to the Emperor Keitai."State" "Government" "Kingship" "Royal Court"
Kazuhiko Seki said that "kingship" is "the political power of the king" as opposed to "the court" which is the "political place of the emperor". "Government" is defined as "ultra-historical political power", and "state" is defined as "the entire power structure that embraces them". As for the inclusion of words, the scheme of imperial court < kingship < government < nation is presented, but in some cases, "royal court" is used to mean "nation". Point out that there is also confusion.About the term "Yamato kingship"
The ancient historian Yukihisa Yamao explains that "Yamato kingship" "refers to the power structure of kings established in the central Kinki region in the 4th and 5th centuries, and is seen in the emperor genealogies of Kojiki and Nihon Shoki as corresponding roughly from Sujin to Yūryaku".In another book, Yamao also defines "kingship" as "an organism of power in which a community of privileged groups assembled as the king's vassals" is "the center of a hierarchical unity" of "a race of subordinates to the king, with the king as their apex authority", which "emerged clearly in the Kofun period. On the other hand, Taiichiro Shiraishi refers to the "coalition of political forces from all over the Japanese archipelago except for the north and south" and the "wide-area political coalition" as the "Yamato government", and states that it is "the leader of the coalition of chiefs of the Kinai and the coalition of political forces from all over the Japanese archipelago. The "Yamato kingship" is the name given to the "Kinai kingship, which was both the leader of the Kinai confederation of chiefs and the ally of the Yamato government, which was a federation of political forces from all over the Japanese archipelago.
Also, according to Yamao.
- 190s-260s The period of the emergence of royal power.
- 270s–370s: Early royal period.
- 370–490 The period of completion of kingship. This is followed by the unification of tribes by kingship, and then the construction of early states.
The term was first used by Ishimoda Tadashi in his Iwanami Koza Nihon Rekishi in 1962. It is also used as a concept of classification, but it is not necessarily strictly defined and there is no common understanding of the use of the word