[snowybeagle]

In AD 607, on behalf regent Prince Shōtoku (聖徳太子), Ono no Imoko (小野妹子) led a Kenzui-shi (遣隋使) from Japan to the Sui Dynasty's Imperial Court (隋朝) in LuòYáng (洛陽/洛阳). The Chinese emperor then was Sui Dynasty's second ruler, Yáng Guăng (楊廣/杨广), posthumously known as Emperor Yáng of Sui (隋煬帝/隋炀帝).

Though the mission was a success in terms establishing diplomatic relationship with China, commencing further exchanges and importing of knowledge from China, it did not have an auspicious start at the Sui's Imperial Court, all because of the letter to Yáng Guăng delivered on behalf of Japan's Empress Suiko (推古天皇 Suiko Tennō).

Apparently, it began with something like "日出國天子致日落國天子無恙" (In Japanese, 日出づる国の天子...日没する国の天子...),
roughly translated to English as "The Son of Heaven from the Country of the Rising Sun greets the Son of Heaven of the Country of the Setting Sun and hopes he is in good health."

Not sure if Yáng Guăng found the notion of the Sui empire being address as Country of the Setting Sun as offensive as being addressed as an equal by a ruler from a faraway overseas country considered as barbaric/uncivilised and insignificant by the mainland Chinese, which called theirs Country of the Rising Sun.

Having been told by his courtiers that these foreigners were from the same country mentioned in the ancient Wu Kingdom records dating back to the Three Kingdoms era, Yáng Guăng was supposedly intrigued by their potential as allies in his campaign against Goguryeo (高句麗).

I am trying to find any records of how things went from there until they smoothed it out. Does any have any references or knowledge of this encounter.

In a Japanese children's book, it showed that the choice was words were deliberately chosen by Prince Shōtoku, and when Ono no Imoko pointed its potential damage to the mission, Prince Shōtoku maintained he wanted to make clear his country was seeking inter-state relationship as an equal (Chinese dynasties must had some reputation even then!).

Not sure if he really meant that; calling anyone's country as Land/Country of the Setting Sun just smacks of intentional chest-thumping.

This post has been edited by snowybeagle: 11 November 2005 - 02:57 AM

[DuncanHead]

snowybeagle, on Nov 11 2005, 07:55 AM, said:

In AD 607, on behalf regent Prince Shōtoku (聖徳太子), Ono no Imoko (小野妹子) led a Kenzui-shi (遣隋使) from Japan to the Sui Dynasty's Imperial Court (隋朝) in LuòYáng (洛陽/洛阳). The Chinese emperor then was Sui Dynasty's second ruler, Yáng Guăng (楊廣/杨广), posthumously known as Emperor Yáng of Sui (隋煬帝/隋炀帝).
...
I am trying to find any records of how things went from there until they smoothed it out. Does any have any references or knowledge of this encounter.

The letter with "Son of Heaven of the Setting Sun" is in Sui shu's chapter on Japan - English translation in Tsunoda, Ryosaku, and L Carrington Goodrich, Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories (P D & Ione Perkins, 1951). No indication here of Japanese motivation. It says the Sui Emperor was "displeased", and ordered that no such letter should ever be brough to his attention again. However a return embassy was sent the next year, and there is no indication in this source that relations were seriously impacted.

Nihon Shoki mentions the embassy, doesn't mention the terms of Shōtoku's letter at all, but has Imoko claiming that the return letter the Sui emperor gave him was confiscated by Paekche officials as he passed through that kingdom. One wonders if that was true, or if Imoko had diplomatically "lost" a Sui reply that was couched in unflattering terms. When the Sui return embassy arrives, Nihon Shoki quotes his reply as saying, "The Emperor greets the Sovereign of Wa". Aston's notes point out, first, that the Sui Emperor calls himself 皇 帝 (I think that's the characters Aston gives; I don't read Chinese, sorry), which Aston translates as Emperor, "But the latter of these characters is omitted in describing the Sovereign of Japan". So the Sui are subtly asserting the higher status of their ruler. Second, the Sui call Japan "Wa", and Aston quotes the later Shaku-nihongi (his spelling, usually Shoku nihongi?) as saying that Imoko had objected to the use of Wa, but the Sui refused to change it to "Nippon", which term was first used by Chinese officialdom under the Tang. Whether this is true or anachronistic I don't know. (See Aston, W G, Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to AD 697, Japan Society, 1896, as 2 volumes; Charles E Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont, 1972; still in print judging from amazon.co.uk.)

In short, a brief exchange of diplomatic one-upmanship, tangible impact on relations: none.

Hope this helps.

[snowybeagle]

DuncanHead, on Nov 11 2005, 11:35 PM, said:

Second, the Sui call Japan "Wa", and Aston quotes the later Shaku-nihongi (his spelling, usually Shoku nihongi?) as saying that Imoko had objected to the use of Wa, but the Sui refused to change it to "Nippon", which term was first used by Chinese officialdom under the Tang.

Interesting. Were the reasons given?

I always thought that they referred to themselves as the Yamato (大和) rather than as Nippon, at least at that time, in Japan itself.
The term Nippon seemed to be created for the purpose of gaining attention of the Sui Imperial Court.

This post has been edited by snowybeagle: 15 November 2005 - 05:28 AM

[DuncanHead]

snowybeagle, on Nov 15 2005, 10:26 AM, said:

Interesting. Were the reasons given?

No. Aston just says:

Quote

Wa was the ordinary name for Japan, both in China and Corea, and in the latter country it is used to this day. The Japanese object to it, and have never called their country by this name. The "Shaku-nihongi" says :- "Wono no Imoko, the Envoy who visited China, (proposed to) alter this term into Nippon, but the Sui Emperor ignored his reasons and would not allow it. The term Nippon was first used in the period Wu-Teh, under the Thang Dynasty (618-626)." Another Chinese authority gives 670 as the date when Nippon began to be officially used in China. The "Tong-kam" gives the same date as that in which the Japanese officially notified the term to the Corean Government as the proper appellation of their country.

However, reading on in Aston, I see that in my first post I only gave part of the sequence of events. Nihongi actually has:

Suiko 15th year (AD 607), 7th month 3rd day: Imoko is sent as envoy to China.
Suiko 16th year (AD 608), 4th month: Imoko returns. Chinese envoy P'ei Shih-ch'ing arrives with him.
6th month 15th day: Imoko has audience with Empress Suiko and claims the Sui letter was taken by Paekche.
8th month 12th day: Chinese envoys received at the capital, present the "Sovereign of Wa" letter.
9th month 11th day: The Chinese envoys depart, and Imoko is sent with them for a second embassy. Now, he is sent with a letter that says "The Emperor (天皇) of the East greets the Emperor (皇帝) of the West".
17th year (AD 609), 9th month: Imoko returns again. No mention of the outcome of his mission.

So Nihongi suggests that either the "two emperors" letter was a response to the Sui assertion of status, rather than being the first assertion in the exchange; or that there were two such letters, and in the second the Japanese court stuck to their guns on rank, but used a more polite term than "setting sun". While Sui shu mention a second Japanese delegation being sent back with Pei, it does not say anything about letters carried by that second embassy.

snowybeagle, on Nov 15 2005, 10:26 AM, said:

I always thought that they referred to themselves as the Yamato (大和) rather than as Nippon, at least at that time, in Japan itself.
The term Nippon seemed to be created for the purpose of gaining attention of the Sui Imperial Court.

Yamato may be the original indigenous name. Aston, in the introduction to Nihongi, says "I have little doubt that Nihon, as a name for Japan, was first used by the Corean scholars who came over in numbers during the early part of the seventh century. Perhaps the earliest genuine use of the term occurs in the lament for the death of Shotoku Daishi by a Corean Buddhist priest in AD 620" - which would suggest that he suspects the usage in the context of 608 to be anachronistic.

[TMPikachu]

Is it safe to say that during Sui/Tang Japanese in general had respect for China? Like... they sent many emmissaries to bring back Chinese culture (modern Japanese culture has many roots in Tang from my opinion)

this is a bit off topic... but if what I think is correct, when exactly did Japan lose respect for China? I would think around the time when they began modernizing as european powers carved into the mainland, but then Japanese already tried to invade China 100's of years before that.

[Yun]

Wang Zhenping, a scholar at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, has a theory on this incident. He believes the Japanese were trying to assert themselves as equals of the Sui court, and continued trying to do so in the Tang dynasty. I quote here from a review I wrote of his recent book Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005):

"... the title used by the Japanese Empress Suiko in her state letter of 600 was Okimi Ametarashihiko, meaning ‘Heavenly Emperor’, and not the later Tenno that was borrowed from the Tang imperial title Tianhuang only around 689. [Note: 'Tianhuang' was the new title adopted by Tang Gaozong in place of 'huangdi', under the influence of Empress Wu] Indeed, this forms the starting point of the argument first made in his 1994 article: Japan in 600 asserted its “newly acquired sense of independence” through Suiko’s use of her title and not her name in a letter to the Sui emperor, violating the protocol required of a vassal ruler; however, the Chinese court made the “diplomatic blunder” of mistaking “Amei Duolisibigu” (its transliteration of Ametarashihiko) as the name of the Japanese ruler – as a result, the “bold signs of Japan’s withdrawal from the Chinese world order” were essentially ‘lost in transliteration’. It was only in 608, when the Japanese ruler’s letter referred to both herself and the Sui emperor as “Son of Heaven”, that the Sui emperor took offense and sent an envoy over to put the Japanese in their place.

In Chapter 7, Wang has expanded on the 1994 article to cover diplomatic correspondence between the Tang court and Japan, and it clearly forms the strongest part of his study – the back cover of the book justifiably praises it as a “masterful analysis of the role of language manipulation” in the complex ‘tributary’ relationship between China and Japan. The key concept here is kundoku, the process by which a Chinese character was transformed into Japanese kanji by giving it both a new pronunciation and a meaning rather different from the original. Wang argues that kundoku allowed the Japanese to “dilute” the sinocentric connotations of Da Tang (Great Tang) and Da Guo (the Greater Country) in Tang state letters into the neutral geographic term morokoshi, while fanguo (vassal country) in reference to Japan was diluted into tonari no kuni, which could also mean ‘neighbouring country’. The Tang emperor’s title of huangdi was rendered as kimi, which placed him lower than the Japanese emperor who alone could use the title okimi. The problem of having to transliterate a word it could not translate continued to haunt the Chinese court: Tang officials were now fooled into thinking that sumeramikoto, another Japanese word for ‘Heavenly Emperor’, was the Japanese emperor’s name, and addressed state letters to him accordingly, thus paying another unintended courtesy. Even more revealing was the fact that the Japanese court’s own documents began referring to Tang China and the Korean states as ban (i.e. fan, ‘vassal’, with the added connotation of ‘barbarian’), to the Tang emperor merely as “king of Tang” (to’o), and to Japan itself as Chugoku, the Central Country (borrowed directly from China’s name Zhongguo). Wang calls this the development of a “Japan-centered ideology” by which Japan aimed at asserting superiority over the Korean states without making an “open challenge to China’s suzerainty” (p. 137), but he declines the opportunity to assess this ideology’s long-term impact on Japanese culture and East Asian politics."