Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Historian Bruce Batten on Changing Views on Early Medieval Japan: from "Closed" to "Open"

Since the 1980's, a paradigm shift has been gaining critical mass among scholars, both inside and outside of Japan. They hav rejected the postwar view of an historically “closed” Japan in favor of a model of a diverse archipelago connected with the world since ancient times, even through the Tokugawa period (1600-1867), a time period still offered up as proof of Japan's insularity in the popular imagination.

J. F. Oberlin (formerly known in English as Obirin) University historian Bruce Batten describes this shift in the introduction to his 2003 book To the Ends of Japan, which analyzes Japanese history within a global historical perspective:

"My first exposure to Japanese history came during the late 1970's, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Oregon. At that time, Japanese manufactured products were beginning to make rapid inroads into American markets, and the country's economic importance was widely acknowledged both by opinion leaders and by members of the general public. And yet few people, in America at least, had a good understanding of contemporary Japanese society, far less of Japanese history...

"This state of affairs was reflected in the popular and academic literature on Japan -- that is to say, there were not a lot of books to read. Fortunately, the few textbooks by knowledgeable authors presented a view that was relatively consistent and easy to understand. To paraphrase their basic message, the Japanese people were homogenous and group-oriented, and they had a unique language and culture. The emphasis on the group resulted from the historical importance of wet-rice cultivation, which was labor-intensive and demanded the cooperation of all village members. The other distinctive features of Japanese society, meanwhile, stemmed from the country's geographic isolation from the rest of the world -- so the story went.

"These views are evident, for example, in the work of Edwin Reischauer, a 'missionary kid' born and raised in prewar Tokyo, who after the war went on to become a leading American historian and also, during the early 1960's, U.S. ambassador to Japan. Reischauer's first major scholarly work, a translation and study of the diary of a ninth-century Japanese pilgrim to China, emphasized the importance of foreign relations and intercultural contacts in early Japanese history. Somewhat ironically, however, the many survey histories and popular works published by Reischauer in later years all stressed the overriding historical importance of geographic isolation...

Batten goes on to describe the shift in views, attributing much of the domestic momentum of this new view of history and geography to the best-selling work of Amino Yoshihiko, a medieval historian, who has authored or edited more than one hundred books since the late 1970's:

"Amino offers a view of a socially and regionally diverse Japan. In addition to farmers, nobles, warriors, and monks -- the main actors in most traditional histories -- he calls attention to the lives of fishermen, traders, entertainers, gamblers, prostitutes, pirates, and social outcasts. Amino's Japan consists of a dizzying variety of local traditions as well as a rich and vibrant tradition of movement and communication -- not just within the Japanese archipelago but also between it and the outside world. The sea, to Amino, is not a barrier but a connecting force."

Batten also notes growing international scholarship that emphasizes Japan's historical diversity. "Symbolic of this trend is the 1996 publication of Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern, <>a collection of essays by mostly Australian scholars. This book, according to one of the editors, "challenges the conventional approach by arguing that Japan had long been 'multicultural,' and that what is distinctive is the success with which that diversity has been cloaked by the ideology of 'uniqueness' and 'monoculturalism...

"A vast and growing literature in both Japanese and English, for example, is devoted to showing that Japan was not, in fact, a 'closed country' in the early modern, or Edo, period (1600-1867). This literature is a needed corrective to earlier views, but there has been a tendency to lose sight of the forest for the trees: a good case could be made in my opinion, that Edo Japan was a relatively closed country by comparison with earlier or later periods of Japanese history. What is lacking here is the "big picture" -- early modern foreign relations is seen as a topic unto itself, not as part of the larger flow of Japanese – or of world – history...

"Like Reischauer and Amino, but unlike many other historians, I am interested in the 'big questions,' specifically: What is 'Japan"? When did it come to be? How did it change over time? And how does it fit into the larger world?..

"Introducing a study of Japanese-Ainu relations, Tessa Morris-Suzuki once noted that 'the shape of things becomes clearer when one looks at the edge than when one looks at the center.'

I likewise believe we can best discover what 'Japan' is by simultaneously asking what it is not and by examining the nature of the border(s) between the 'Japan' and 'not-Japan." Accordingly, the focus of this study is on Japan's historical frontiers and boundaries -- not just the seas and coastlines emphasized by Reischauer and Amino but also the various land frontiers that formerly existed within the archipelago...

"In English-language scholarship alone, the past decade has seen exciting new publications by David Howell, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Richard Siddle, Brett Walker, Ronald Toby, Gregory Smits, Mimi Yiengpruksawan, and Mark Hudson. Of these authors, the first five have concentrated on historical developments of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries; the last are concerned with far earlier times.

"Howell, Morris-Suzuki, Siddle, and Walker have all chosen to study the Ainu, the indigenous residents of Japan's northern island, Hokkaido. At the risk of brutal simplification, Howell's work focuses on Ainu ethnicity, on the one hand, and the spread of capitalist labor relations in Hokkaido, on the other. Morris-Suzuki is concerned largely with the construction of Japanese and Ainu identities in the frontier zone. Siddle's research is on the assimilation of the Ainu as an ethnic minority within the Japanese nation-state. And Walker has studied Japan's 'conquest' of Ainu lands from a cultural and ecological perspective.

"Toby and Smits, meanwhile, have produced important studies of another kind of boundary -- that between Japan and overseas countries. Toby, the author of a pathbreaking 1984 study discrediting the sakoku (closed country) thesis, has since turned his attention to how Japanese notions of the world were irrevocably altered by the country's sixteenth-century encounter with the West. Smits' research is not on Japan per se but on the Ryukyu kingdom, its neighbor to the south. Smits shows how Ryukyuan elites of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries managed to construct a distinct cultural and political identity without being overwhelmed by Japan, on the one hand, or China, on the other.

"Art historian Mimi Yiengpruksawan and archaeologist Mark Hudson have gone much further back in time than any of the other authors. Yiengpruksawan has written a vivid portrait of the hybrid culture of Hiraizumi, a border town in northeastern Honshu (Japan's 'main island') during the twelfth century. Hudson, meanwhile, has produced a broad-ranging, theoretical study of ethnogenesis in the Japan islands. Among other things, this contains a detailed analysis of the origins of the Ainu people.

"Many of these studies fit squarely within the emerging mainstream of contemporary border studies...This is most clearly seen, perhaps, in the work of Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Brett Walker. Morris-Suzuki's historical analysis of Japanese-Ainu relations, and more generally her work on identity, owes an obvious debt to postmodernism. Walker, meanwhile, explicitly (and successfully) models his approach on the New Western History of Limerick and White. "

Batten's Gateway to Japan, published in 2006, is one of the most fascinating books in this emerging genre, and it was written for the layperson, as well as for fellow scholars.
His accessible and engaging narrative begins with a description of an archaeological excavation in Kyushu -- the Kokoran -- an ancient government-run guesthouse for travelers from the continent to Japan. (This Japanese Archaeological Association webpage on the Kokoran has great panoramic photos of the archaeological site and findings, including Islamic glass, Tang ceramics, and Silla stoneware). Batten goes on to describe and analyze the intimate, sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, relationships between medieval Japan and its closest East Asian neighbors, the three kingdoms of Korea (Paekche, Silla, and Koguyro) and China. Batten puts a spotlight on the human actors in this history – diplomats, pirates, and traders. His perspectives on how Asian continental history affected the direction of Japanese history shed light on many topics, including early immigration to Japan. For instance, a significant number of the early immigrants were war refugees.

Batten situates Japan's history within its East Asian context, scrutinizing the consequences of the historical interplay between Japan and the three Korean kingdoms and China. Batten argues that the “trend toward centralization" by the nascent Japanese imperial state – which began around 600 and lasted a full century, culminating in the promulgation of the Taiho Code in 702 and the construction of Heijo-kyo (Nara) in 710 – should be understood as the result of competitive emulation between Japan and the various Korean states (especially Silla) in the face of imperial expansion in China.”

Batten describes a major war (which he describes as a world war of its era) between Japan and Silla in 663 CE and concludes that this conflict resulted in the first line drawing between Japan and the mainland. “Until the 660's, there was no clear line between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and traffic between the Korean Peninsula and Kyushu was relatively free (although never tremendously frequent, given the dangers and distances involved). Within a decade after Japan’s defeat…Japan had a fortified border with a single designated gateway. The gateway was Hakata and the gatekeeper was Dazaifu, the command center south of the bay.”

The “PIRATES” chapter is a fantastic account of the informal and unregulated aspects of East Asian historical exchange. Japanese Buddhist monks, desperate to travel to Chinese temples, hid on Chinese junks in Hakata, present-day Fukuoka. Batten quotes from their travelogues, “We lay like big sacks in the bottom of the ship, unable to go out (on deck). There was no way to urinate or defecate, so we restrained from eating and drinking.” Batten describes one raid in which pirates, medieval human traffickers, kidnapped women and children in Tsushima, to be sold into slavery or prostitution.
In his chapter on “TRADE,” Batten describes how, because of faltering centralized power during the twelfth century, no single authority could monopolize border contacts. So, cross-border trade, which had been limited to Hakata during that period, spread to other ports in Japan.

A Chinese settlement of traders rose up within Hakata itself when some of the merchants visiting Japan decided to settle down in Japan, “building houses and eventually, docking facilities, temples, and roads at Hakata." As a result, by the twelfth century, a good portion of Japan’s international trade was being run from “inside” although admittedly, most or all of the principal actors were still ethnically Chinese (and remained so until they were assimilated within the surrounding Japanese community in the late Kamakura period).

During this period, Japan again became “borderless.” “This would have been the first time in many centuries and perhaps the first time ever that ships of foreign nationality were allowed past Hakata into the Japanese interior. But it was not the last time. Following the eclipse of the Taira and the establishment of Japan’s first warrior government in 1185, vessels of foreign registration not only sailed the Inland Sea but also traveled up the Pacific seaboard of Honshu as far as the new capital of Kamakura…And as more and more ports opened their doors to foreign trade, the number of transfrontier contacts increased dramatically…”

His final chapter, "MEDIEVAL HAKATA," brings this history even more alive. Batten explores the development of Hakata from a Chinese diaspora settlement to its later assimilated history. Batten takes the role of tour guide throughout the city, leading the reader on a tour, virtually connecting historical spaces with contemporary development. On my next visit to Hakata, I am taking the book, with its medieval map, to track down the remaining traces of the old city. I knew that the first Japanese Zen priests studied in China and that Chinese Zen priests founded the magnificent Zen temples in Kamakura, but I did not know that Japan's first Zen temples were financially sponsored by diasporan Chinese community in Japan.

"Probably the most famous of these Hakata captains is Xie Guoming, who lived in the thirteenth century. Hailing from southern China, Xie settled in Hakata in the vicinity of Kushida Shrine. He owned an entire island (Oroshima) in Chikuzen and donated part of his wealth to build Jotenji, a Zen temple at the southwest corner of Hakata-hama. And it is to Jotenji that we now turn, walking northeast past Taihaku Boulevard and then southeast to the temple precincts. Jotenji was founded in 1242; its first abbot was Enni, a Japanese priest born in eastern Honshu, who traveled to Song China and studied Rinzai Zen with the master Wu Zhuo. Jotenji itself is still a thriving center of Zen Buddhism, but unlike temples in Kyoto and Kamakura, it is not open to tourists, and there is little for the casual visitor to see. Just to the southeast of the temple grounds, near the Hakata post office, under a huge, but very dead, camphor tree, lies the grave of Xie Guoming.

"At this point we turn around and head back to the northwest, past Jotenji and another important Zen temple, Shofukuji. Shofukuji was founded in either 1195 or 1204, depending on which source you believe. Its first abbot was Eisai, another Japanese priest to have studied Rinzai Zen in China. Shofukuji was in fact Japan's first Zen temple, as a plaque hung in the rafters of its main hall proclaims. (The original of the plaque was supposedly a gift to the temple from Emperor Go-Daigo, who reigned in the early fourteenth century.) Shofukuji, like Jotenji, was built under the patronage of the Chinese merchant community. Both temples were originally equally magnificent, but Shofukuji is by far the larger now. After World War II, when the city of Fukuoka began to rebuild from the ashes, Jotenji cooperated with city planners and gave up about half its land; Shofukuji, meanwhile, refused to give in and as a result retains the scale and appearance of a medieval temple..."

Bruce Batten, married to a Japanese woman and now a permanent resident and long-term university professor in Japan, has become part of Japan's ongoing intercultural history, contributing not only to changing scholarship and awareness about "Japan," but also by directly interfacing with Japanese students. As with many other international teachers in Japan, his presence in itself has an opening and broadening effect on the society. His Japanese students speak highly of him as a person, as well as a professor. And, readers of his books can sense his thoughtful and humane personality by the tone and nuance in his books. He's now working on a third book on the environmental history of Japan.

Batten recently answered a few questions about his work as an historian and changing takes on Japanese history:

1. Historian James Lewis, who shifted from the study of Japanese to Korean history, writes that he was fascinated with eighth-century Nara (an extremely cosmopolitan period of Japanese history), and that he had no idea of the connections between Korean and Japanese history until he visited Seoul and saw in the display cases of the National Museum, “the very same material remains I had been studying in connection with early Japan, only these were ‘Korean’ relics. Everyone deserves an epiphany, however small, and I guess that I had mine that cold morning in the museum. Suddenly Japan had a context for me.“

Was there an “a-ha” moment when you realized that the dominant narrative of a “closed” and "homogenous" Japan did not resonate with what you were personally observing and studying as a student of Japanese history?

I’m afraid not – or if there was such a moment, it was so long ago that I can’t remember. The major experience that shaped my view of Japan was simply living in the country for so long. Altogether I’ve been in Japan for 25 years, which is longer than I have lived in the U.S.! Over the years it just became apparent to me that not all Japanese people fit the stereotypes, and that it is best to deal with individuals as individuals, not as representatives of some sort of Japanese archetype.

2. It seems as if many of the early immigrants from the mainland to Japan were not only brought over as intellectual, artistic, and technical advisors but also came as war or political refugees. What were the major East Asian historical events that impacted Japan?

Well, there are a lot, but in the time frame covered by the book, the most important event was the Korean Unification Wars of the mid-seventh century. These hostilities took place on the Korean Peninsula, of course, but they also involved troops from Tang China and Japan. As a direct result of the wars, many Korean refugees made their way to the Japanese islands, some of them taking up important positions in government or in other ways contributing to Japan’s political and cultural development. Also, more generally, Japan’s 663 defeat at the hands of Silla and Tang helped to accelerate the general trend toward political centralization in Japan – and also, I believe, to crystallize a nascent sense of Japanese “identity,” at least among elite members of society. Of course, this is just one, and others could be cited from different periods of history – the Mongol Invasions of the late thirteenth century being a case in point.

3. It seems as if both the actual and conceptual borders of “Japan” have opened and closed throughout its history, contracting and expanding. I think this is similar to other nations. Any comment?

Of course this is true. One of the major points I make in this book (and, even more strongly, in my previous work, To the Ends of Japan [University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003]) is that, even in an island country like Japan, there is really no such thing as a “natural” border. Borders (or frontiers, or boundaries) are social phenomena, and therefore their location and nature depends on where people live and how they perceive themselves and their environment, including other people. In the eighth century A.D., people living in the Tohoku region of northeast Honshu were not “Japanese” by any definition – now, of course, they are.

4. As a historian, how did you feel when the Tsukushi Lodge, the state-run guesthouse for overseas visitors, was discovered under the Heiwadai baseball Stadium? What did this discovery do in terms of scholarship of the history of overseas contacts between Japan and the mainland?

For me personally, this was one of the most exciting discoveries ever because it directly impacted my own research and it took place in a city (Fukuoka) that I love and where I had lived for a number of years.

As for scholarship, ever since the 1980s, Japanese historians have paid more and more attention to the regional or global context of their country’s history, and while this trend largely reflects current concerns about “globalization,” archaeological discoveries at the Tsukushi Lodge and elsewhere have also played a part. Certainly the excavation of the lodge led to the publication of many important articles and books (in Japanese) on the early history of Kyushu. It also helped to promote collaborative research among historians, archaeologists, and even earth scientists within the Japanese scholarly community (particularly at Kyushu University), as well as cooperative research between Japanese and foreign (mostly Korean and Chinese) scholars. I should also note that the discovery had not only academic but also ideological and policy ramifications. As noted in my book, the Fukuoka municipal government has used the Tsukushi Lodge as a rallying point for Fukuoka’s current, self-assumed (but also largely true) identity as Japan’s “first international city.”

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