The Origins of Japanese Culture 4

Why Kyushu Matters

When overseas visitors think of Japanese history and traditional culture, Kyoto is often the first place that comes to mind.

And for good reason.

Kyoto was Japan’s imperial capital for more than a thousand years. Its temples, shrines, palaces and gardens preserve an extraordinary part of the country’s cultural heritage. The Kyoto Imperial Palace, once the residence of the Emperor, is just one reminder of the city’s long connection with the Imperial Court.

But if we travel further back into the origins of Japan, another part of the country becomes particularly interesting.

Kyushu.

To understand why, it helps to look at a map.

Japan's Gateway to the Asian Continent

Japan lies at the eastern edge of the Eurasian continent. Kyushu is the westernmost of Japan’s four main islands, and northern Kyushu faces the Korean Peninsula across a relatively narrow stretch of sea.

For much of early Japanese history, this made Kyushu one of the country’s most important gateways to the outside world.

Today we tend to think of Japan as an island nation separated from the Asian continent. But the sea did not simply divide Japan from its neighbours. It also connected them.

People, goods, technologies, religious ideas and political information travelled across these waters for centuries.

Long before the Japanese state took the form we recognise today, northern Kyushu was one of the principal places through which influences from the Korean Peninsula and China entered the Japanese islands.

This is one reason Kyushu appears so often when we look into the earliest written history of Japan.

The Rise of the Yamato Court

Between roughly the 3rd and 7th centuries, the Yamato polity gradually emerged as the dominant political power in the Japanese islands.

It would be misleading to imagine Japan at this stage as a fully unified modern country ruled from the beginning by a single central government.

Power was shared and contested among numerous influential clans and regional groups. Over time, the Yamato rulers and the powerful clans around them extended their authority, eventually creating the foundations of a more centralised Japanese state.

During this process, knowledge from outside Japan became extremely important.

China possessed one of the world's most sophisticated civilisations, with developed systems of writing, government, law, philosophy, religion, architecture and technology.

But much of this continental influence did not travel directly from China to Japan.

The Korean Peninsula was divided among several states and political powers, including Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla, as well as the Gaya polities in the south. They played a crucial role in the movement of people, ideas and technologies between the continent and the Japanese islands.

Writing, Buddhism, new forms of architecture and construction, metalworking techniques and many other elements of continental culture reached Japan through these connections.

Kyushu stood at the Japanese end of many of these routes.

At the Other End of Eurasia — Britain

It is interesting to compare this period with what was happening at roughly the same time at the opposite end of the Eurasian continent.

Britain, like Japan, was an island country lying just offshore from a much larger continental landmass.

But its historical experience was very different.

The Roman conquest of Britain began in AD 43, and much of Britain remained part of the Roman Empire for more than three and a half centuries.

Roman rule brought roads, towns, military infrastructure, administration and new forms of economic and cultural life.

By around AD 410, Roman imperial government in Britain had effectively come to an end.

During the following centuries, Angles, Saxons and Jutes migrated to and settled in Britain, particularly in what became England, and a number of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms developed.

So while Britain at the western edge of Eurasia experienced direct Roman conquest and rule, Japan at the eastern edge had a very different relationship with the great continental powers.

China never conquered Japan.

Instead, Japanese rulers selectively imported ideas, institutions and technologies from the continent while attempting to maintain their own political independence.

That difference is important.

Learning from a Superpower Without Becoming Part of It

Early Japanese rulers were well aware of the enormous power and sophistication of China.

Japanese missions were sent to Chinese dynasties at various times, both for diplomacy and to learn from the continent.

We can see this relationship much earlier than the Yamato state itself. Chinese historical records tell us that Queen Himiko sent envoys to the state of Wei in the 3rd century.

Centuries later, during the reign of Empress Suiko, Japan sent missions to the Sui dynasty. In the 7th to 9th centuries, missions to Tang China became an important means of acquiring knowledge about government, Buddhism, scholarship, law, architecture and other aspects of continental civilisation.

Japan was therefore doing something rather interesting.

It was learning from the dominant civilisation of East Asia without simply becoming part of it.

Japan adopted Chinese characters. It studied Chinese political institutions and law. Buddhism reached Japan through the wider cultural world of India, Central Asia, China and the Korean Peninsula. Japanese monks and scholars studied continental learning.

Yet these influences were gradually adapted to Japanese circumstances.

Ideas and institutions that had originated elsewhere were not always simply copied. Over time, many were modified and developed into distinctively Japanese forms.

This pattern — absorbing influences from abroad and then adapting them — would become an important feature of Japanese history.

Kyushu Was Both a Gateway and a Front Line

Being close to the continent brought opportunities, but it also brought risks.

This became dramatically clear in the 7th century.

Japan had close relations with the Korean kingdom of Baekje. When Baekje fell, Japanese forces crossed the sea in an attempt to support its restoration.

In 663, they were decisively defeated by the combined forces of Tang China and Silla at the Battle of Baekgang.

The defeat had a major impact on Japan.

The Yamato court feared that Tang and Silla forces might continue across the sea towards Japan.

Defences were therefore strengthened, particularly in northern Kyushu. The Dazaifu area became strategically important, and defensive works were constructed, including Mizuki and mountain fortifications around the approaches to northern Kyushu.

The feared invasion never came.

But the episode illustrates something fundamental about Kyushu.

It was not only Japan's gateway to continental civilisation. It was also Japan's front line facing the continent.

Ideas, technologies, religion, diplomats and merchants could arrive through Kyushu.

But so could potential military threats.

This combination gave the island a particularly important place in Japanese history.

Kyushu and the Making of Japan

This is why Kyushu is so fascinating for anyone interested in going deeper into Japanese history.

Kyoto allows us to see the extraordinary culture that Japan developed over many centuries.

Kyushu can help us understand some of the processes through which that culture began to take shape.

It was here, at Japan's western gateway, that the Japanese islands interacted closely with the Korean Peninsula and, beyond it, China.

Continental technologies arrived.

Buddhism arrived.

Diplomatic missions departed and returned.

Political ideas travelled.

And when international relations became dangerous, Kyushu became a defensive frontier.

For British readers, there is perhaps a very loose geographical comparison with Dover and the English Channel.

Dover faces continental Europe across one of the narrowest stretches of sea separating Britain from the continent. For centuries, that position made it important for travel, trade, diplomacy and defence.

Northern Kyushu played a somewhat similar geographical role for Japan — although, of course, the historical circumstances were very different.

The sea separated Japan from the continent, but it also connected Japan to it.

Looking Beyond Kyoto

None of this makes Kyoto less important.

Rather, Kyushu gives us another perspective on how Japanese civilisation developed.

If Kyoto shows us some of the magnificent results of Japanese cultural development, Kyushu helps us understand many of the connections, encounters and pressures that contributed to that development in the first place.

And this role did not end in ancient times.

Centuries later, Kyushu would again stand at the centre of Japan's encounters with the outside world — with traders, missionaries and European powers arriving from across the seas.

Eventually, places such as Kagoshima would play an extraordinary role in Japan's transformation from the world of the samurai into a modern state.

So for anyone interested not only in seeing the beauty of Japanese culture, but also in understanding how Japan became Japan, Kyushu is a particularly fascinating place to explore.

It is one of the places where Japan met the outside world — and where influences from abroad were absorbed, challenged and gradually transformed into something Japanese.

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