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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Batten, Bruce Loyd. “Foreign Threat and Domestic Reform: The Emergence of the Ritsuryô State.” Monumenta Nipponica 41:2 (Summer 1986): 199-219.
Main Argument: Contra John Whitney Hall, the so-called Taika Reforms took place in three phases: one, during the actual Taika era (645-54, reign of Kôtoku); two, during the 660s; and three, after the end of the Jinshin War in 672 (completed under Jitô in the 690s). The liquidation of the Soga provided the impetus for the first phase, and the victory of Tenmu and Jitô in the Jinshin War provided the same for the third. However, it was anxiety over a possible Tang invasion of Japan after the Japanese defeat at the battle of Paekchon River in 663 (after which Koguryo was conquered by combined Tang/Silla forces; Silla eventually emerged as the unifier of the peninsula after the Tang forces departed) that provided the impetus for the middle phase.
Historiographical Engagement: Ishimoda Shô, lots of mokkan, and Japanese historical linguistic studies of early documents such as the Nihon Shoki.
Argument, Sources, Examples The Taika Reforms consisted of three areas in which central state control was extended and rationalized: the first of these was rank and office (i.e. noble rank and offices in the central government); the second of these was local administration, in which earlier holdings (probably left over from the consolidation of Yamato control) were converted first into districts, and districts were then combined to form the provinces familiar from classical Japan--which, crucially, appear to have had little if any relation to the earlier holdings whose rulers had ceded to Yamato. Kokushi were apparently sent out from the court to implement these policies in the first Taika phase, whereas before they had functioned as a kind of liaison, and in the third, when they are shown calling on the familiar provinces of the classical state. Thus at least the skeleton of the provincial system dates from the second phase. Finally, control of people and land was drastically altered, specifically through the disappearance of be (hereditary labor/tribute groupings) and private landholdings. This process appears to have begun in Taika I and completed under Taika III, when the systematic implementation of ritsuryô population and land polices began. Specifically, the first censuses, conducted in 670 and 690, should be understood in conjunction with the abolition of the be, which were affiliated with specific uji. Yamato's interest in the peninsula, and specifically in fighting with Paekche against Tang/Silla, lay in its apparent ability to play the three kingdoms off one against each other, milking its claim to suzerainty over the Mimana region (aka Kaya) in order to continue its access to peninsular iron and continental culture. Unification of the peninsula under any of the three kingdoms, and in particular under Silla or Koguryo, would end the Yamato privileges, and the court intervened to defend them, unsuccessfully. The resulting anxiety about invasion from the China-occupied peninsula provided the consensus needed for the second major phase of reforms, as well as the construction of a system of forts and signal fires at strategic sites throughout the realm. No invasion came, but the triumph of the political have-nots over the haves in the Jinshin War and the extension of the reforms demonstrated to all elites that reforms were to their favor.
Bibliographic Data: Yoshie Akiko and Janet R. Goodwin. “Gender in Early Classical Japan: Marriage, Leadership, and Political Status in Village and Palace.” Monumenta Nipponica 60.4 (winter 2005): 437-79.
Main Argument: "The discovery that women played a surprisingly powerful role in early classical Japan has not yet been incorporated into our general understanding of the history of the age" (437). Specifically, "women known as toji played a major role in rural society in the management of agricultural enterprises and the supervision of labor. On a higher social level, consorts of the sovereign known as ôtoji, or "grand toji," managed productive enterprises within their own independent residences" (ibid). These extra-codal roles were descended from the even great social power women could wield during the pre-code era, and in a different, attenuated form survived into the middle Heian era, after which the consolidation of a patriarchal family structure and social roles was complete.
Historiographical Engagement: This entire field of inquiry descends from the work of Takamure Itsue; although many of her specific claims have been disproven, her insight that the patriarchal ie emerged after a long process of historical change stands. Yoshie cites many of the Japanese scholars who have both denied the validity of and continued this research since then.
Argument, Sources, Examples Rather than marking the introduction of or even the occurrence of Chinese patriarchal norms, the vocabulary and forms that ritsuryô codes use was simply adapted from China without corresponding social change on the ground in classical Japan. Thus, the codes cannot be taken at face value any more than the ancient chronicles can and must be read through, particularly using mokkan and setsuwa tale collections. "Marriage" was a very fluid relationship in early classical times; the family structure was a mother and children, and descent was reckoned both through the male and female lines. There is no consensus about where couples resided as a social norm (i.e. uxorilocal or duo local); it may be that, since the household (ie) and the site of production (yake) were not necessarily colocated and because women maintained their own independent yake even after marriage, there was no set pattern. Furthermore, women known as toji played significant economic roles in the production of goods for taxation and in the management of labor, although the only people recorded as providing tax goods (mostly textiles and foodstuffs) are men due, again, to the need to preserve the artificial fictions of the codes. Indeed, it appears that the administrative divisions of ritsuryô were also artificial at least below the level of gun (district). These social roles were inherited from the parts women played in ancient Japan, in which female chieftains as military, economic, and political leaders abounded. Sovereign's consorts, or grand toji, also exercised similar levels of influence in their domains, although it is not a coincidence that the power of consorts began to decline after the last female sovereign had departed the throne. Still, in the Heian era women continued to exercise powerful political influence as mothers of the sovereign (consorts would remain behind with their sons in the palace when their imperial spouses retired), until the early medieval period when the suturing of patriarchal legal norms to social reality was complete.
Critical assessment: I'm not sure I've encountered a better illustration of the principles discussed in Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing than the historiography of ancient and early classical Japan. Yoshie does a beautiful job of exploding sexist assumptions and arguments with evidence from a variety of sources.
Meta notes: Always historicize. Especially your sexist assumptions.
Main Argument: Contra John Whitney Hall, the so-called Taika Reforms took place in three phases: one, during the actual Taika era (645-54, reign of Kôtoku); two, during the 660s; and three, after the end of the Jinshin War in 672 (completed under Jitô in the 690s). The liquidation of the Soga provided the impetus for the first phase, and the victory of Tenmu and Jitô in the Jinshin War provided the same for the third. However, it was anxiety over a possible Tang invasion of Japan after the Japanese defeat at the battle of Paekchon River in 663 (after which Koguryo was conquered by combined Tang/Silla forces; Silla eventually emerged as the unifier of the peninsula after the Tang forces departed) that provided the impetus for the middle phase.
Historiographical Engagement: Ishimoda Shô, lots of mokkan, and Japanese historical linguistic studies of early documents such as the Nihon Shoki.
Argument, Sources, Examples The Taika Reforms consisted of three areas in which central state control was extended and rationalized: the first of these was rank and office (i.e. noble rank and offices in the central government); the second of these was local administration, in which earlier holdings (probably left over from the consolidation of Yamato control) were converted first into districts, and districts were then combined to form the provinces familiar from classical Japan--which, crucially, appear to have had little if any relation to the earlier holdings whose rulers had ceded to Yamato. Kokushi were apparently sent out from the court to implement these policies in the first Taika phase, whereas before they had functioned as a kind of liaison, and in the third, when they are shown calling on the familiar provinces of the classical state. Thus at least the skeleton of the provincial system dates from the second phase. Finally, control of people and land was drastically altered, specifically through the disappearance of be (hereditary labor/tribute groupings) and private landholdings. This process appears to have begun in Taika I and completed under Taika III, when the systematic implementation of ritsuryô population and land polices began. Specifically, the first censuses, conducted in 670 and 690, should be understood in conjunction with the abolition of the be, which were affiliated with specific uji. Yamato's interest in the peninsula, and specifically in fighting with Paekche against Tang/Silla, lay in its apparent ability to play the three kingdoms off one against each other, milking its claim to suzerainty over the Mimana region (aka Kaya) in order to continue its access to peninsular iron and continental culture. Unification of the peninsula under any of the three kingdoms, and in particular under Silla or Koguryo, would end the Yamato privileges, and the court intervened to defend them, unsuccessfully. The resulting anxiety about invasion from the China-occupied peninsula provided the consensus needed for the second major phase of reforms, as well as the construction of a system of forts and signal fires at strategic sites throughout the realm. No invasion came, but the triumph of the political have-nots over the haves in the Jinshin War and the extension of the reforms demonstrated to all elites that reforms were to their favor.
Bibliographic Data: Yoshie Akiko and Janet R. Goodwin. “Gender in Early Classical Japan: Marriage, Leadership, and Political Status in Village and Palace.” Monumenta Nipponica 60.4 (winter 2005): 437-79.
Main Argument: "The discovery that women played a surprisingly powerful role in early classical Japan has not yet been incorporated into our general understanding of the history of the age" (437). Specifically, "women known as toji played a major role in rural society in the management of agricultural enterprises and the supervision of labor. On a higher social level, consorts of the sovereign known as ôtoji, or "grand toji," managed productive enterprises within their own independent residences" (ibid). These extra-codal roles were descended from the even great social power women could wield during the pre-code era, and in a different, attenuated form survived into the middle Heian era, after which the consolidation of a patriarchal family structure and social roles was complete.
Historiographical Engagement: This entire field of inquiry descends from the work of Takamure Itsue; although many of her specific claims have been disproven, her insight that the patriarchal ie emerged after a long process of historical change stands. Yoshie cites many of the Japanese scholars who have both denied the validity of and continued this research since then.
Argument, Sources, Examples Rather than marking the introduction of or even the occurrence of Chinese patriarchal norms, the vocabulary and forms that ritsuryô codes use was simply adapted from China without corresponding social change on the ground in classical Japan. Thus, the codes cannot be taken at face value any more than the ancient chronicles can and must be read through, particularly using mokkan and setsuwa tale collections. "Marriage" was a very fluid relationship in early classical times; the family structure was a mother and children, and descent was reckoned both through the male and female lines. There is no consensus about where couples resided as a social norm (i.e. uxorilocal or duo local); it may be that, since the household (ie) and the site of production (yake) were not necessarily colocated and because women maintained their own independent yake even after marriage, there was no set pattern. Furthermore, women known as toji played significant economic roles in the production of goods for taxation and in the management of labor, although the only people recorded as providing tax goods (mostly textiles and foodstuffs) are men due, again, to the need to preserve the artificial fictions of the codes. Indeed, it appears that the administrative divisions of ritsuryô were also artificial at least below the level of gun (district). These social roles were inherited from the parts women played in ancient Japan, in which female chieftains as military, economic, and political leaders abounded. Sovereign's consorts, or grand toji, also exercised similar levels of influence in their domains, although it is not a coincidence that the power of consorts began to decline after the last female sovereign had departed the throne. Still, in the Heian era women continued to exercise powerful political influence as mothers of the sovereign (consorts would remain behind with their sons in the palace when their imperial spouses retired), until the early medieval period when the suturing of patriarchal legal norms to social reality was complete.
Critical assessment: I'm not sure I've encountered a better illustration of the principles discussed in Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing than the historiography of ancient and early classical Japan. Yoshie does a beautiful job of exploding sexist assumptions and arguments with evidence from a variety of sources.
Meta notes: Always historicize. Especially your sexist assumptions.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-13 02:13 (UTC)For the purposes of the second article, what's the time of "early classical Japan"? Does the author indicate how long toji continued to be common?
---L.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-13 20:17 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-14 22:20 (UTC)---L.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-14 22:25 (UTC)Yeah, that was basically my assumption as well... I haven't seen Yoshie as a family name and it turned up largely as a given name when I Googled, but the "-ko" ending seemed even more given-name-ish.