The Establishment of an Independent Japanese Culture and Its Characteristics

The early cultural history of Japan was one that was closely intertwined with the rest of East Asia. Ever since the first contact made between the Japanese and the Chinese Kingdom of Wei in the 3rd century AD had the Japanese borrowed many aspects of the Chinese culture and integrated it into its own society. Yet, the Japanese was never an exact mirror image of China. Certain aspects of its own pre-Chinese influence culture, coupled with its refinement and remodeling of the Chinese culture that adhered to the Japanese values, gradually corroded the Chinese influence away in Japan and slowly solidified a unique Japanese culture that began to take roots in the later Heian period and continued to this day.

            Although the Japanese first had contact with China through Queen Himiko in the 3rd century, it wasn’t until the 6th century that the Japanese started absorbing the Chinese culture in earnest. The marking point of a few centuries of sinicization on the part of the Japanese was the introduction of Buddhism from mainland Asia to Japan in the year 552. Throughout the next three centuries or so the Japanese borrowed religious ideas, writing system, civil administration management, as well as even garden designs and theatric achievements from China, during this period many expeditions were made by Japanese scholars to China to learn and bring back the Chinese culture. The most famous of these was Ono no Imoko in 607 A.D., in which Hugh Cortazzi described in his book The Japanese Achievement as one that carried extraordinary significance not only because Imoko brought back an intense understanding of Chinese and Buddhist culture, but also because he maintained Japan’s political independence from China despite tightening cultural ties between the two states. (24) During this time China was prosperous and stable. Being the cosmopolitan center of the world, China’s culture was very appealing to its neighbors. However, as time passed by the Japanese expedition to China waned as the political environment in China became increasingly unstable. The Tang Dynasty was constantly embroiled in civil wars starting from the Anshi Rebellion in 753 A.D. and trips to China often ended up with Japanese scholars being killed or stranded in China. For these political reasons the Chinese influence in Japan inevitably and gradually diminished. It was during this time that the Japanese culture slowly found its own identity as a result, found its way into mainstream culture and gained recognition from the elites in a gradual and unguided manner. This is supported by George Sansom in his book a History of Japan to 1334, in which he states that the desinicization was “rather a natural and inevitable reassertion of Japanese traditional thought and sentiment, which became stronger and stronger as the leaders of Japan gained confidence in their own capacity to conduct their own affairs with the help of the new knowledge and the material benefits which they had obtained through intercourse with China.” (132) By the end of the 9th century the expeditions to China was ceased altogether due to the mounting civil war in China, contacts diminished into trading purposes only as the Tang Dynasty waited its demise. Ensuing contact with China continued to be non-existent from 907 until 960, when the Song Dynasty was established.