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ahorbinskiBibliographic Data: Barnes, Gina L. State Formation in Japan: Emergence of a 4th-Century Ruling Elite. London: Routledge, 2007.
Main Argument: Barnes is attempting to "reposition the discussion of state formation in Japan from an exclusively internal developmental viewpoint to one which takes into account the location and role of Japan with East Asian protohistory" (xv), and her main theme is "the process of social stratification in creating a body of elite rulers throughout the central and western Japanese islands" (xiv), attempting in this book to incorporate the most recent developments in Japanese archaeology.
Historiographical Engagement: Barnes knows the archaeology way better than I ever will; her primary theoretical engagement is with (of all things) Immanuel Wallerstein. One wishes she had read Ken Pomeranz.
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter provides an orientation for the end of the final period before the Kofun period, in which state formation actually occurred. Barnes puts the Japanese islands within what she calls the "Yellow Sea interaction sphere," which encompassed China and the "Pen/Insular" communities of the Japanese archipelago and the Korean peninsula. Barnes notes that this sphere encompasses two different developmental tracks: that of mainland China itself and of the Pen/Insular region, "which developed later, together, and under the influence of Mainland China" (3). These two developmental trajectories had merged by the 8thC CE "to form a sphere of East Asian civilization in which the three main states--Tang on the China Mainland, Silla on the Korean Peninsula and Ritsuryô in the Japanese Islands--shared a common political philosophy (Confucianism), a state religion, (Buddhism) and an administrative system (Ritsuryô) based on that of Tang" (7). The kofun period is subdivided into three periods, the first (250-400) conceptualized as the Miwa Court and identified with the Sujin line of kings in the Nihon Shoki [NS]; the middle (400-475) = Kawachi Court and Ôjin line of kings; and late (475-710) = Asuka Court and Keitai line of kings in NS. Barnes notes that early Japan in fact has two historical traditions: the Chinese and Japanese chronicles, which have radically different perspectives on the same events and which must be used cautiously and critically in conjunction with the archaeological evidence. Barnes concludes that
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter outlines Barnes' theoretical approaches, which attempt to divine how much weight to give to individual actions versus social structures, and where to place agency. Barnes concludes that "far from being a teleological process that was 'cross-culturally predictable' toward state formation, the emergence of the state was very much contingent on historical developments in the region and individual reactions and decisions among the rulership to these developments" (31). Her approach is partly derived from actor network theory, in which the "individual becomes part of network of relationships in which there is 'circulation' of commonly held but individually interpreted tangibilities and intangibilities" (ibid). Archaeologists now focus on "the systemic utility of prestige goods within early states and empires" rather than elite control over resources or tribute in bulk goods (39).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at Yayoi interaction with the continent during the Han Empire, whose expansion "is the seminal context within which the Japanese state ultimately arose" (41). This expansion was driven by trade and defense, with defense being powered by 以夷為夷 and then by a "divide and rule" strategy, the first being exemplified by giving peripheral states military supplies and preparation, and the second by exemplified by the commanders in the Korean peninsula. Concurrently in the Pen/Insular region, polity leaders were accepted into the tribute system and given prestige gifts when they pledged loyalty to the Han state. Sidenote: world historical theorists' definitions of "tribute systems" are completely inapplicable to the Han. Instead on its peripheries, and in general, "prestige-good systems" were "the modus operandi of early centralized societies" (56). In the Yayoi period, the procurement of iron and bronze was central to sociopolitical development, and this was done both by continental and peninsular relationships. Organized polities developed first in North Kyushu and then throughout the western Japanese islands over the three and a half centuries of the Han: "the waxing of dynastic powers provided opportunities for the flow of goods, ideas and information into the insular polities, while their waning disrupted and shifted the course of developments in the various areas" (82).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the question of Yamatai and Yamato, the first attested in the Chinese chronicles and the second in the Japanese. The question is whether they were the same or different, and where they were located. Although North Kyushu = Yamatai = earlier and Kinai = Yamato = later was previously favored, new archaeological evidence has put more weight on the Yamatai = Yamato hypothesis, especially given that it is fairly easy to make an identification between the Queen Himiko of the Chinese chronicles and Princess Yamato of the Japanese chronicles (Sujin's seeress aunt. NB the Japanese chronicles rewriting earlier gender-balanced patterns of rule to fit the new patriarchal Chinese mode during ritsuryô). Unfortunately, the Imperial Household Agency controls the keyhole tomb (Hashihaka) that probably contains Himiko's remains, given that new archaeological evidence has closed the former gap between her reign and the beginning of mounded tomb construction.
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the Hashihaka tomb (said to be the grave of Princess Yamato) and the beginning of the mounded tomb culture (MTC) in the archipelago, which "did not signify the emergence of local rulers," which had already happened in Late Yayoi (104). Rather, "it embodied the creation of a new, supra-regional elite grouping, tying such local rulers together in a socio-cultural network of peer polities" (ibid). At the Yayoi-Kofun transition, however, "there was a qualitative jump in the nature of mound-building which needs explanation" (105). Rather than other scholars' bizarre assertions that Himiko's polity was weak economically, "monumental tomb construction is exactly an expression of extensive economic control over or access to the resources of land, labour and skilled craftspeople, the last making the grave goods that we would expect of an elite group" (126). Himiko's ability to send embassies to Daifang, and receive prestige goods (bronze mirrors) in return, is also an expression of economic prosperity, and her ability to secure a new supply of bronze mirrors was unquestionably part of the reason for the elevation of the Makimuku leaders as paramount over the rest of the polities in the archipelago, which led to "rapid centralization and hierarchization of regional societies beyond Kyushu" (130).
Chapter 6: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at early Kofun polities and the influence of Chinese political unrest on their development. The elite network expanded in the late third century; "most significantly, the core area of old Ito-koku now also joined the MTC, completing the amalgamation of Western and Eastern Seto into one political realm, the Seto axis" (133). Within that axis, judging by tomb size distribution, the Kinai, the northern shore of the Harima sea, the Tsuyama Basin, and northeastern Kyushu were the most important areas politically. Judging by grave goods, the elites as a whole reoriented themselves from the continent to the peninsula in this period, but it is important to note that polities were territorially heterogeneous--even the Miwa Court did not control the entire Miwa basin until the end of the early Kofun period, which supports "the idea that the Early Kofun political organization was characterized by elite networking across the landscape in a dendritic structure with large unincorporated areas in-between centers" (159). The Miwa sovereign was something of a primus inter pares, and elites traveled both to Miwa and outward from Miwa.
Chapter 7: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at prestige goods and class identity (mid-3rd to mid-4thC), and argues that the Early Kofun prestige good system "can be viewed as a 'reformulation' of the earlier Middle Yayoi-period system with new actors, a different geographical context and different socio-political setting" (162). [Is that really a "reformulation"?] Barnes argues that "the Early Kofun Mounded Tomb Culture was thus the material manifestation of a supra-regional elite class that integrated previously balkanized Late Yayoi chiefdoms by drawing local rulers into an interacting group of superior status" through grave goods and burial rituals (169). "By the mid-4thC in the Japanese archipelago…we can speak of an elite ruling class that entailed not only the regional paramounts but sub-chiefs, certain militarists and all their families and relatives as well" (177).
Chapter 8: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the Miwa Court and argues that the Miwa paramountcy was sustained by a "quasi-religious" cult centered first around Himiko and then around her successors, which Barnes posits was identified with the Daoist figure of the Queen Mother of the West. This is all highly speculative, though it does seem reasonable to conclude that some kind of religious/ritual significance must have accrued to Miwa to sustain its ascendancy over the rest of the Seto axis. Possible early shrine buildings have been excavated at the Makimuku site proximate to the Hashihaka tomb. After the collapse of the Western Jin dynasty in 316, Japanese elites developed domestically produced elite goods of new types and range, even as peer polity relations reoriented to the Korean peninsula.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Barnes concludes that the Miwa polity ≠ Yamato, but was its local antecedent; instead, the Kawachi Court, not yet identified archaeologically, became what we know as Yamato.
Critical assessment: This is, I think, a fine book. Barnes is up to date on all the latest archaeological findings and has a coherent theoretical viewpoint, which are very welcome, as is her desire to use critically all available forms of evidence. The details of her Miwa Court cult hypothesis seem a little strained, but it is only a hypothesis, and the rest of the book is a wealth of information as well.
Meta notes: NB: hime/hiko seems to have been the titles for the female/male pair rulers of early Japan.
Main Argument: Barnes is attempting to "reposition the discussion of state formation in Japan from an exclusively internal developmental viewpoint to one which takes into account the location and role of Japan with East Asian protohistory" (xv), and her main theme is "the process of social stratification in creating a body of elite rulers throughout the central and western Japanese islands" (xiv), attempting in this book to incorporate the most recent developments in Japanese archaeology.
Historiographical Engagement: Barnes knows the archaeology way better than I ever will; her primary theoretical engagement is with (of all things) Immanuel Wallerstein. One wishes she had read Ken Pomeranz.
Chapter 1: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter provides an orientation for the end of the final period before the Kofun period, in which state formation actually occurred. Barnes puts the Japanese islands within what she calls the "Yellow Sea interaction sphere," which encompassed China and the "Pen/Insular" communities of the Japanese archipelago and the Korean peninsula. Barnes notes that this sphere encompasses two different developmental tracks: that of mainland China itself and of the Pen/Insular region, "which developed later, together, and under the influence of Mainland China" (3). These two developmental trajectories had merged by the 8thC CE "to form a sphere of East Asian civilization in which the three main states--Tang on the China Mainland, Silla on the Korean Peninsula and Ritsuryô in the Japanese Islands--shared a common political philosophy (Confucianism), a state religion, (Buddhism) and an administrative system (Ritsuryô) based on that of Tang" (7). The kofun period is subdivided into three periods, the first (250-400) conceptualized as the Miwa Court and identified with the Sujin line of kings in the Nihon Shoki [NS]; the middle (400-475) = Kawachi Court and Ôjin line of kings; and late (475-710) = Asuka Court and Keitai line of kings in NS. Barnes notes that early Japan in fact has two historical traditions: the Chinese and Japanese chronicles, which have radically different perspectives on the same events and which must be used cautiously and critically in conjunction with the archaeological evidence. Barnes concludes that
In over-all indebtedness, the Early Kofun period's century of fluorescence can be characterized as positioned at the Edge of Empire. Hierarchical relationships with China dominated the Early Kofun polities' external interaction, while the predominant internal relationships were those of peer interaction. (26).
Chapter 2: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter outlines Barnes' theoretical approaches, which attempt to divine how much weight to give to individual actions versus social structures, and where to place agency. Barnes concludes that "far from being a teleological process that was 'cross-culturally predictable' toward state formation, the emergence of the state was very much contingent on historical developments in the region and individual reactions and decisions among the rulership to these developments" (31). Her approach is partly derived from actor network theory, in which the "individual becomes part of network of relationships in which there is 'circulation' of commonly held but individually interpreted tangibilities and intangibilities" (ibid). Archaeologists now focus on "the systemic utility of prestige goods within early states and empires" rather than elite control over resources or tribute in bulk goods (39).
Chapter 3: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at Yayoi interaction with the continent during the Han Empire, whose expansion "is the seminal context within which the Japanese state ultimately arose" (41). This expansion was driven by trade and defense, with defense being powered by 以夷為夷 and then by a "divide and rule" strategy, the first being exemplified by giving peripheral states military supplies and preparation, and the second by exemplified by the commanders in the Korean peninsula. Concurrently in the Pen/Insular region, polity leaders were accepted into the tribute system and given prestige gifts when they pledged loyalty to the Han state. Sidenote: world historical theorists' definitions of "tribute systems" are completely inapplicable to the Han. Instead on its peripheries, and in general, "prestige-good systems" were "the modus operandi of early centralized societies" (56). In the Yayoi period, the procurement of iron and bronze was central to sociopolitical development, and this was done both by continental and peninsular relationships. Organized polities developed first in North Kyushu and then throughout the western Japanese islands over the three and a half centuries of the Han: "the waxing of dynastic powers provided opportunities for the flow of goods, ideas and information into the insular polities, while their waning disrupted and shifted the course of developments in the various areas" (82).
Chapter 4: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the question of Yamatai and Yamato, the first attested in the Chinese chronicles and the second in the Japanese. The question is whether they were the same or different, and where they were located. Although North Kyushu = Yamatai = earlier and Kinai = Yamato = later was previously favored, new archaeological evidence has put more weight on the Yamatai = Yamato hypothesis, especially given that it is fairly easy to make an identification between the Queen Himiko of the Chinese chronicles and Princess Yamato of the Japanese chronicles (Sujin's seeress aunt. NB the Japanese chronicles rewriting earlier gender-balanced patterns of rule to fit the new patriarchal Chinese mode during ritsuryô). Unfortunately, the Imperial Household Agency controls the keyhole tomb (Hashihaka) that probably contains Himiko's remains, given that new archaeological evidence has closed the former gap between her reign and the beginning of mounded tomb construction.
Chapter 5: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the Hashihaka tomb (said to be the grave of Princess Yamato) and the beginning of the mounded tomb culture (MTC) in the archipelago, which "did not signify the emergence of local rulers," which had already happened in Late Yayoi (104). Rather, "it embodied the creation of a new, supra-regional elite grouping, tying such local rulers together in a socio-cultural network of peer polities" (ibid). At the Yayoi-Kofun transition, however, "there was a qualitative jump in the nature of mound-building which needs explanation" (105). Rather than other scholars' bizarre assertions that Himiko's polity was weak economically, "monumental tomb construction is exactly an expression of extensive economic control over or access to the resources of land, labour and skilled craftspeople, the last making the grave goods that we would expect of an elite group" (126). Himiko's ability to send embassies to Daifang, and receive prestige goods (bronze mirrors) in return, is also an expression of economic prosperity, and her ability to secure a new supply of bronze mirrors was unquestionably part of the reason for the elevation of the Makimuku leaders as paramount over the rest of the polities in the archipelago, which led to "rapid centralization and hierarchization of regional societies beyond Kyushu" (130).
Chapter 6: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at early Kofun polities and the influence of Chinese political unrest on their development. The elite network expanded in the late third century; "most significantly, the core area of old Ito-koku now also joined the MTC, completing the amalgamation of Western and Eastern Seto into one political realm, the Seto axis" (133). Within that axis, judging by tomb size distribution, the Kinai, the northern shore of the Harima sea, the Tsuyama Basin, and northeastern Kyushu were the most important areas politically. Judging by grave goods, the elites as a whole reoriented themselves from the continent to the peninsula in this period, but it is important to note that polities were territorially heterogeneous--even the Miwa Court did not control the entire Miwa basin until the end of the early Kofun period, which supports "the idea that the Early Kofun political organization was characterized by elite networking across the landscape in a dendritic structure with large unincorporated areas in-between centers" (159). The Miwa sovereign was something of a primus inter pares, and elites traveled both to Miwa and outward from Miwa.
Chapter 7: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at prestige goods and class identity (mid-3rd to mid-4thC), and argues that the Early Kofun prestige good system "can be viewed as a 'reformulation' of the earlier Middle Yayoi-period system with new actors, a different geographical context and different socio-political setting" (162). [Is that really a "reformulation"?] Barnes argues that "the Early Kofun Mounded Tomb Culture was thus the material manifestation of a supra-regional elite class that integrated previously balkanized Late Yayoi chiefdoms by drawing local rulers into an interacting group of superior status" through grave goods and burial rituals (169). "By the mid-4thC in the Japanese archipelago…we can speak of an elite ruling class that entailed not only the regional paramounts but sub-chiefs, certain militarists and all their families and relatives as well" (177).
Chapter 8: Argument, Sources, Examples This chapter looks at the Miwa Court and argues that the Miwa paramountcy was sustained by a "quasi-religious" cult centered first around Himiko and then around her successors, which Barnes posits was identified with the Daoist figure of the Queen Mother of the West. This is all highly speculative, though it does seem reasonable to conclude that some kind of religious/ritual significance must have accrued to Miwa to sustain its ascendancy over the rest of the Seto axis. Possible early shrine buildings have been excavated at the Makimuku site proximate to the Hashihaka tomb. After the collapse of the Western Jin dynasty in 316, Japanese elites developed domestically produced elite goods of new types and range, even as peer polity relations reoriented to the Korean peninsula.
Conclusion: Argument, Sources, Examples Barnes concludes that the Miwa polity ≠ Yamato, but was its local antecedent; instead, the Kawachi Court, not yet identified archaeologically, became what we know as Yamato.
Critical assessment: This is, I think, a fine book. Barnes is up to date on all the latest archaeological findings and has a coherent theoretical viewpoint, which are very welcome, as is her desire to use critically all available forms of evidence. The details of her Miwa Court cult hypothesis seem a little strained, but it is only a hypothesis, and the rest of the book is a wealth of information as well.
Meta notes: NB: hime/hiko seems to have been the titles for the female/male pair rulers of early Japan.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-14 16:25 (UTC)hime/hiko seems to have been the titles for the female/male pair rulers of early Japan
!!
*lightbulb*
---L.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-14 23:08 (UTC)