The Establishment of an Independent Japanese Culture and Its Characteristics
The culture of early Japan was closely intertwined with that of China’s. How did Japan come to form its own unique culture around 1,000 years ago? Read this article and find out.
Another aspect of intermingling of traditional Japanese culture and the imported Chinese culture was religion. Buddhism and Confucianism were two other imports from China. Both of these, and in particular Buddhism, soon found favor among the ruling class and the court culture, which diverged from the masses who still favored and practiced the traditional Shamanistic belief. Here we see a religious clash between the two factions, yet it never evolved into violent hostility such as those of Europe during the Reformation. The Japanese learned to complement these three belief systems and incorporated them together to form a unique Japanese culture. Even today, many, if not most, Japanese people still retain more than one religion. Often one will find a person to be both Buddhist and Shamanist, or being Shamanist and Confucian at the same time. This also came as a result of the influence each religion had on each other within Japan. Shingon, for example, was a mystical sect of Buddhism that was imported from China and took on Shamanistic characteristics later on. Mircea Eliade writes in her book Buddhism in Asia that Shingon may be “characterized as a mixture of highly sophisticated metaphysical ideas and elaborate rituals deeply imbued with magic.” (165) Also during the later Heian period shrine temples were often built as Shinto and Buddhism religious doctrines were also merged and blurred during this period, and this would be trend as it formed Buddhism in a uniquely Japanese fashion and would serve as the precedent for later Buddhism developments in Japan.
The Japan political system also diverged from the China’s system significantly after its initial borrowing. Although the Japanese initially had much in common from China’s in terms of civil administration, it varied significantly in how they were implemented. Indeed, here one witnesses an example in which the traditional Japanese system has overridden the Chinese influence significantly. A major difference emerged as the Japanese system relied on class status, rather than meritocracy, for political advancements. The Japanese never developed a civil examination system in which the most able was able to get a position. This, coupled with the fact that Japan would spend a significant amount of time at war after the peaceful Heian period, meant that a new class of warrior bureaucrats emerged. These were soon to be called the samurais and would come to dominant the political aspects of the Japanese society as well as the military. This was markedly different from the Chinese bureaucrats, who were exclusively scholars and civilian administrators. The samurais nominally served their emperor, yet for most periods in Japanese history this emperor was merely a figurehead. However, this figurehead was seen as divine, which may explains why the Japanese never experienced dynastic changes as so frequently happened in China but had a system in which one family of emperor occupied the supreme seat throughout. This departure from the Chinese system signaled that in cases like these the Japanese were willing to override the Chinese influences with their traditional, pre-Chinese era.
Therefore, despite the close relationship between the Chinese influence on the Japanese culture in the Nara and early Heian period. The Japanese society gradually corroded away its Chinese influences as many aspects of imported Chinese culture were incorporated with the traditional Japanese customs. This, coupled with the retaining of the various aspects of the Japanese customs and culture before it came to contact with China, extended to form a unique Japanese culture that hence developed after it diminished contacts with China.
Bibliographies:
Cortazzi, Hugh. The Japanese Achievement. London: Sigwick and Jackson, 1990.
Eliade, Mircea. Buddhism and Asian History. New York: MacMillan, 1987.
Lu, John, David. Sources of Japanese History: Volume One. New York: Mcgraw-Hill Inc. 1974.
Sansom, George. A History of Japan: To 1334. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.
Liked it
