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The Monarchy, CHAPTER ONE The Monarchy, "66o B.c.",I945 EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE INDICATES that Japan's monarchy originated around the fifth century A.D. The historian Herschel Webb has identified two features of the imperial house that differentiate it from other monar­ chies. First, the Japanese have placed tremendous stress on dynastic legiti­ macy, on the necessity of continuing the bloodline by keeping the throne within one family. Second, since its origin, the monarchy's primary function has been largely ceremonial, with the exception of two short periods in its I,6oo-year history.1 The throne was the sacred aspect of the government. The first exceptional period began in the seventh century, when the monarchy was reformed to give the emperor an important "political" role in the making of governmental policy, in addition to his sacerdotal functions. This reform was based on the Chinese model of government. During this period of direct imperial rule (shinsei), Emperor Temmu (r. 673-86) spon­ sored the compilation of the Kojiki. At a time when the imperial line was still relatively new, this mythical account invented a raoo-year history of impe­ rial rule over Japan that supposedly began with Emperor Jimmu's en­ thronement in 66o B.c. According to the Kojiki (published in 71z) and the Nihon shoki (7zo), Jimmu culminated his eastWard military expedition by founding the Empire ofJapan. The ritsuryo administrative system established early in the eighth century formally vested further political power in the emperor in the Chinese man­ ner. The emperor became the chief administrator in addition to his religious role as officiant in the rice harvest rituals. 2 Direct imperial rule in ancient Ja­ pan proved short-lasting, however. Only a few emperors are thought to have r8 THE MONARCHY, "660 B.c."-1945 actually ruled. By the tenth century, the emperor again was distanced from policymaking, and his role was once again ceremonial. The only exception during the next goo years was the Kemmu Restora­ tion of imperial rule carried out by Emperor Go-Daigo (r. 1318-39), who seized power from the Kamakura shogunate for a few years in the early four­ teenth century before he was himself overthrown by Ashikaga T akauji (1305-58) in 1333· What followed is remembered as one of the most sensitive periods in imperial history. Ashikaga installed a competing line of the impe­ rial house on the throne in Kyoto (the Northern Dynasty). Emperor Go­ Daigo fled to Yoshino, where he and his descendants (the Southern Dynasty) continued to claim the throne. This volatile situation was eventually resolved by compromise in 1392, and today the imperial line is descended from the Northern line.3 After the monarchy lost its political power, emperors continued to per­ form certain ceremonial functions such as granting court ranks and offices. This was the case even during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), when the imperial house was particularly impotent in political matters.4 Although the imperial house always played a role in elite society, it is open to debate whether, before the modern period, peasants had even a vague knowledge of the emperor's existence. In other words, the emperor was either unknown or largely irrelevant to the vast majority of the population before the construc­ tion ofJapanese nationhood after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Although the modern Japanese nation-state is largely a product of the Meiji era (1868-1912), the intellectual foundations of modern nationalism centering on the throne can be traced to the seventeenth century. It was dur­ ing the three centuries ofTokugawa rule that nativist (kokugaku) scholars de­ fined the throne as the distinctive feature of Japanese identity. Aizawa Seishisai (1781-1863) wrote in his New Theses of 1825: "Our Emperors, descendants of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, have acceded to the Imperial Throne in each and every generation, a unique fact that will never change. Our Divine Realm rightly constitutes the head and shoulders of the world and controls all nations."5 The shogunate itself recognized the imperial house's increased stature by such acts as "identifying" Emperor Jimmu's 6 tomb in 1863. T award the end of the T okugawa era, when the shogunate appeared too f~eble to meet the threat of encroaching Western powers, "imperial loyalists" invoked the emperor to challenge the shogunate's legitimacy. The monarchy .
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