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Making the realm, transforming the people: foreign subjects in seventh- through ninth-century Japan

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Making the realm, transforming the people: foreign subjects in seventh- through ninth-century Japan

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MAKING THE REALM, TRANSFORMING THE PEOPLE: FOREIGN SUBJECTS IN
SEVENTH- THROUGH NINTH-CENTURY JAPAN

by
Nadia Kanagawa

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)

December 2019

Copyright 2019 Nadia Kanagawa

i
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii
Conventions .................................................................................................................................... x
Frequently Cited Primary Sources .................................................................................................. x
List of Tables & Figures ................................................................................................................ xi

Preliminaries ................................................................................................................................... 1
From Kikajin to Toraijin and Back Again .................................................................................. 2
Ethnicity in the Premodern World ............................................................................................ 16
Configuring the Subjects of the Realm – Law codes, Designations, and Genealogy ............... 24

Chapter 1: Submit and Be Transformed: Immigrants and Immigration in the Ritsuryō Codes ... 28
Codified Law on the Continent ................................................................................................. 31
Codified Law in Yamato ........................................................................................................... 34
Places and Peoples of the Ritsuryō Codes ................................................................................ 53
Submit and Be Transformed: Becoming a Subject in the Taihō and Yōrō Codes .................... 67
Arrival ................................................................................................................................... 68
Settlement ............................................................................................................................. 70
New Subjects of the Ritsuryō Realm ........................................................................................ 77
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 89

Chapter 2: What’s in a Name? Becoming a Subject of the Sovereign in the Eighth Century ...... 92
Sources & Approaches .............................................................................................................. 94
The Establishment of the Yamato Designation Systems ........................................................ 105
Designations under Tenji, Tenmu, and Jitō ............................................................................ 114
Designations in the Taihō and Yōrō Administrative Codes ................................................... 131
Designations in the Early Ritsuryō Realm, Monmu to Shōmu ............................................... 134
New Policies on Designations for Foreign Subjects, Shōmu to Kōken .................................. 137
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 169

Chapter 3: Our Customs not Theirs: The Shinsen shōjiroku and the Early Heian Period .......... 174
Genealogy and Early Yamato Rulers ...................................................................................... 176
Tang Court Genealogies ......................................................................................................... 185

ii
The Yamato Record of Lineages c. 763 CE ............................................................................ 188
Kanmu Tennō and the Nara-Heian Court ............................................................................... 192
Compilation of the Shinsen shōjiroku ..................................................................................... 199
Heizei Tennō’s Reign ............................................................................................................. 207
Saga Tennō and the Completion of the Shinsen shōjiroku ..................................................... 210
The Shinsen shōjiroku ............................................................................................................. 217
The Various Foreigners of the Shinsen shōjiroku ................................................................... 227
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 236

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 237

Appendix 1: Timeline of Codified Laws in Yamato .................................................................. 247
Appendix 2: The Commentaries of the Ryō no shūge ................................................................ 248
Appendix 3: Preface to the Newly Compiled Record of Designations ...................................... 256

List of Works Cited ..................................................................................................................... 265

iii
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I am deeply grateful to the members of my committee. My advisor,
Professor Joan Piggott, has taught me by her example. Her ability to read documents from the
Nara period all the way through the Muromachi, her deep and precise knowledge of Japanese
and English scholarship, and her uncompromising standard for excellence have all inspired me.
She has pushed me to develop, expand, and hone how I read and interpret texts, and has also
worked tirelessly to ensure that I have access to all of the resources, scholars, institutions, and
funding that I needed to do my work. I am particularly grateful that she did all this with a sense
of humor, and always with a reminder that I should do some yoga. Professor Bettine Birge’s
seminars on Chinese history were critical to shaping my understanding of the debates about
ethnicity in the premodern world, and to strengthening the comparative aspects of my work. I
knew I could rely on Professor Lori Meeks to always demand that I do excellent work (in the
kindest possible way). Her seminars in Japanese religions and translation were formative
experiences for me. Professor Paul Lerner generously joined the committee at the last second,
and offered a modern perspective that allowed me to more clearly articulate my core
contributions. Each member of the committee has been not only an academic role model and
teacher, but also a compassionate friend and kind supporter in difficult times. I count myself
extremely lucky to have found advisors who held me to high standards, but also recognized that
academia is not the only thing that matters in life.
Also at USC, I feel fortunate to have been in the orbit of two great scholars who think big
and get things done – Duncan Williams and David Kang. Both have gone out of their way to
include me in conferences and publications, and both have greatly enriched my experience at
USC. Across town at UCLA, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to join Torquil Duthie’s

iv
seminars, in which I was introduced to the world of jodai bungaku. I am sad to say I never got to
join a Herman Ooms seminar, but I am deeply grateful for his interest in my work, his
characteristically sharp comments on numerous papers, and his encouragement to read broadly
French and German scholarship.
In Japan, a number of institutions opened their doors, their archives, and their seminars to
me. Dr. Yamaguchi Hideo kindly made arrangements for me to join the Historiographical
Institute at the University of Tokyo, and Dr. Satō Makoto included me in his seminar at the
University of Tokyo, where I not only read the Kōgō shūi but also enjoyed his running oral
history of the great scholars of classical Japanese history. I was very lucky to be able to attend
the ritsuryō study group run by Dr. Ōtsu Tōru, also at the University of Tokyo, where I had the
singular pleasure of being present when Dr. Ikeda On participated in a session. I attended with
Dr. Furuse Natsuko, who took me under her wing in numerous ways and generously allowed me
to join her excellent graduate seminar at Ochanomizu University, where I learned to read the
classical legal codes and commentaries.
At Senshū University, I was warmly welcomed as a member of the premodern East Asian
and East Eurasian research centers by Dr. Araki Toshio, Dr. Ijūin Yōko, and Yamada Kenichirō,
who invited me to numerous talks, events, and dinners and introduced me to everyone there.
Presenting in Dr. Araki’s seminar was terrifying but incredibly rewarding, and I am grateful to
the other members of that seminar for their patience and useful comments. At Meiji University,
Dr. Yoshimura Takehiko, Dr. Sasaki Ken’ichi, and Dr. Katō Tomoyasu provided me with access
to that university’s libraries, invited me to dinners with Meiji University graduate students, and
handed over magical USB drives with digital versions of key primary sources. I would also like

v
to thank Tanaka Fumio, whose work has clearly inspired much of my own, and who has always
encouraged me to value my own perspective.
Funding from the University of Southern California Provost Fellowship and the Japan
Foundation Doctoral Fellowship allowed me to conduct research in the US and Japan that was
integral to completing this dissertation. The USC History Department, ACE-Nikaido Fellowship,
USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religion and Culture, and Korean Studies Institute all
provided generous funding throughout my graduate career, allowing for research trips to Japan,
kambun workshops, and travel to conferences. I would like to give thanks to the USC History
Department staff: Lori Rogers, Sandra Hopwood, Simone Bessant, and Melissa Borek, for their
generous help and kindness. I also want to thank the East Asian Studies Center, the Shinso Ito
Center of Japanese Religions and Culture, and the Korean Studies Institute, especially to Grace
Ryu, Kana Sugita, Shannon Kakushi, and Sarah Shear for their support over the years.
Without an incredible network of friends and supporters, I could never have completed
this dissertation. Talia Andrei, Emi Foulk-Bushelle, and Tori Montrose were my strongest
sources of support throughout my years in graduate school and beyond. Matthieu Felt has been
not only a great friend, but also a generous and careful editor of many of my translations.
Priscilla Leiva and Miriam Kingsburg are both dear friends and the people I turn to when I need
to figure out the next step in the life of an academic. Ryo Ogochi was there during some of the
hardest times, and was always a strong believer in me who encouraged me to believe in myself. I
would also like to thank the following people for their kindness, input, encouragement, support,
and mentorship throughout my time at USC: Dr. Jason Webb, Dr. Brett Sheehan, Dr. Clinton
Godart, Dr. George Sanchez, Christina Yokoyama, Kristina Buhrman, Michelle Damian,
Sachiko Kawaii, Paula Curtis, Chris Bovbjerg, Yuko Dokawa, Dave Harris, Dan Sherer, Kevin

vi
Wilson, Jillian Barndt, Jesse Drian, Emily Warren, Sari Siegel, Angelica Stoddard, Haiwei Liu,
Christian Paiz, Max Felker-Kantor. Friends outside of academia also kept me sane and connected
to the world around me – thanks are particularly due to Matt Lachman, who has made sure that I
have seen every sport there is in Los Angeles, and never turned down an invitation to try a new
restaurant I added to my list.
Above all I am grateful to and for my family – my brother Kenji and my father Osami.
No one makes me laugh harder than Kenji, and his curiosity, determination, and independence
inspire me every day. The same can be said for my father, whose utter lack of interest in prestige
and profit has shaped my deep sense that research is something you do to satisfy your own
curiosity. The example he set is one that I am not sure I can live up to, but I know that he will
only be disappointed in me if I stop pursuing my interests. I am so happy that my mother knew I
would go to graduate school before she passed away, but I wish she could have been here to see
me finish. Her practicality, warmth, and irreverent humor were sorely missed during the times I
struggled. I am grateful that my grandmother, who did not have the chance to complete her high
school education, pushed me to start this journey. I dedicate this dissertation to her.

vii
Abstract

The fall of the Korean kingdoms of Paekche and Koguryŏ in 660 and 668 CE caused
waves of immigration to the Japanese archipelago. Less than two centuries later, an official court
record shows that almost one third of Japanese court lineages described themselves as being of
foreign origin. In recent years, a number of scholars have brought attention to critical
contributions made by immigrants to the formation of the early Japanese realm, but the
fundamental assumption of these studies is still that Yamato rulers and their court consistently
sought to keep immigrants distinct from and under the control of a native elite. One of the initial
goals of this project was to challenge the idea of a clear immigrant-native dichotomy by
identifying the categories that were meaningful to the people of the time. In considering if and
how immigrants and their descendants came to be considered subjects of Yamato, I trace the
series of systems that Yamato sovereigns relied on in configuring their subjects. In doing so, I
offer a new understanding of what it meant to be a Yamato subject and how that status changed
over the course of the seventh through ninth centuries.
My dissertation consists of three chapters, with an introduction, and conclusion. The
introduction establishes the goals of the study, reviews existing scholarship in both English and
Japanese, addresses key terms and methodologies, and presents a brief overview of immigration
to the Japanese archipelago before the formation of the Yamato realm in the seventh century.
Chapter 1, “Submit and Be Transformed: Immigrants and Immigration in the Ritsuryō
Codes,” begins with an overview of codified law on the continent and in Yamato. I emphasize
the ongoing process of developing, expanding, and interpreting the law codes in Yamato, and
show that this process continued well into the Heian period. I then consider the worldview
embedded in the Yamato legal codes and commentaries, with particular attention to the

viii
categories of people the codes created. I argue that the continual implementation of this process,
framed as a “transformation” effected by the civilizing virtue of the ruler, was critical to
Yamato’s self-declared status as a cosmopolitan realm and therefore to the legitimacy of the
ruler. A relatively small handful of clauses in the Yōrō codes define the process of becoming a
Yamato subject – known as the kika process – and I translate and analyze these clauses. Finally, I
consider the implementation of these clauses as reflected in the official histories of the realm and
how the pattern of extending privileges to new subjects reflected the importance of the kika
process in legitimizing Yamato sovereigns’ authority.
In Chapter 2, “What’s in a Name? Becoming a Subject of the Yamato Sovereign in the
Eighth Century,” I use official court records to examine the development of eighth-century court
policy on granting names and titles to immigrants and their descendants. Over the course of the
eighth century, receiving the grant of a Yamato-style name and title from the sovereign became
an important marker of belonging and assimilation. A number of scholars have argued that the
Yamato court attempted to use these titles to systematically exclude immigrants and their
descendants from high rank or office. Drawing on a database of over ten thousand recorded name
and title changes from the period, I demonstrate that this is not the case.
In Chapter 3, “Our Customs not Theirs: The Shinsen shōjiroku and the Early Heian
Period,” I analyze the Shinsen shōjiroku, an official court genealogy completed in the early ninth
century that divided the elite families of the capital and its environs into three categories: royal
lines, deity lines, and various foreigners. I begin by considering the history of genealogies in the
Yamato court, and then examine Tang court genealogies and early Yamato efforts to create
similar comprehensive court genealogies. I then consider the Shinsen shōjiroku in the context of
the reigns of Kanmu, Heizei, and Saga, with attention to how the project changed from Kanmu’s

ix
initial order to the completion of the text under Saga. I discuss the contents of the text, and
evaluate the major theories about why it was created. I acknowledge that the Shinsen shōjiroku
reflects a new official attitude towards foreign people and their potential for transformation, but
also note the range of strategies employed by lineages in the “various foreigners” category to
establish prestigious ancestors and thereby enhance their status at the Yamato court.
The conclusion considers the Heian-period shift in the Yamato court, and examines the
legacy of the ritsuryō realm. In particular, I examine an early ninth-century edict in which the
sovereign and Council of State simultaneously upheld the principle of the kika process while also
signaling a shift away from implementing the process. The edict articulated two new categories
into which all outsiders entering the realm now fell – merchants and shipwrecked people. Both
were understood to be inherently categories of people whose stay in Yamato was temporary, and
this shift reflects a wider change in the Yamato realm’s attitude towards the outside world and
new people arriving in Yamato.

x
Conventions

Translations are mine unless otherwise noted. For romanization, I have used a modified Hepburn
for Japanese, pinyin for Mandarin, and McCune-Reischauer for Korean. I generally tried to
romanize terms in the language of the country in which the texts were composed, but provide
multiple romanizations when necessary for clarification. I also generally follow standard modern
romanizations.

I have converted years to approximate western equivalents, and have erred on the side of
preserving uniformity for a particular era year. For example, Tenpyō 12 is listed as 740 CE
regardless of the particular day and month, even if the exact conversion for certain days in
Tenpyō 12 would actually correspond to 741 CE. In the interest of making it easier to find entries
I reference in the original texts, I did not convert days and months to the Gregorian calendar.

Abbreviations

NHSK Nihon shoki. 2 vols. NKBT 67, 68.
NKBT Nihon koten bungaku taikei. 102 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1958-1969.
SKNG Shoku Nihongi. 6 vols. SNKBT 12-16.
SNKBT Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei. 99 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989~
SNKZ Shin Nihon koten bungaku zenshū.
SZKT Shintei zōhō kokushi taikei. 66 vols. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1929-1967.

Frequently Cited Primary Sources

Engi shiki. SZKT 26.
Kojiki. NKBT 1.
Nihon kōki. SZKT 3.
Nihon shoki shiki. SZKT 8.
Ruiju kokushi. SZKT 6.
Ruijū sandai kyaku. SZKT 25.
Ryō no gige. SZKT 22.
Ryō no shūge. 2 vols. SZKT 23, 24.

xi
List of Tables & Figures

Table 1: Kika Settlement in the Rikkokushi .................................................................................. 84
Table 2: Yamato Designation Types ........................................................................................... 112
Table 3: Tenmu’s Eight Kabane System .................................................................................... 121
Table 4: Other Common Kabane ................................................................................................ 121
Table 5: Shoku Nihongi Jingi 1 (724 CE) 5.13 Designation Grants ........................................... 141
Table 6: Origins of the Various Foreigner Lineages in the Shinsen shōjiroku ........................... 233

1
Preliminaries
The Yamato realm was formed in a period characterized by the movement of people to,
from, and within the Japanese archipelago. The fall of the Korean peninsula kingdoms of
Paekche and Koguryŏ in 660 and 668 CE brought waves of people to the Japanese archipelago.
At the same time, faced with the crushing defeat of its allies Paekche and Koguryŏ to the
combined Tang and Silla forces, Yamato rulers embarked on a process of centralization that
would culminate in the emergence of a new realm, defined by codified laws and centered on a
universal monarch. Over the past half-century, scholars writing in both Japanese and English
have increasingly brought attention to the important contributions made by immigrants and their
descendants to the formation of the early Yamato realm. As a result of this scholarship, much of
the old, simplistic idea of Yamato (and by extension, Japan) as an isolated island realm with a
homogenous population has already been dismantled. However, the fundamental assumption of
many of these studies has still been that Yamato rulers consistently sought to keep immigrants
and their descendants distinct from and under the control of native elites. This dissertation
emerged out of my discomfort with the use of terms like “immigrant” and “native” in discussions
of the early Yamato realm, and a key goal of the project has been to challenge the notion of an
immigrant-native dichotomy by examining the texts produced by Yamato officials to identify the
categories that were meaningful to sovereigns and subjects at the time.
In order to understand if and how a particular group of people – immigrants and their
descendants – became subjects of Yamato over the course of the seventh through ninth centuries,
I had to consider the series of systems that Yamato sovereigns relied on in configuring their
subjects. In its early law codes, the Yamato realm was not defined in terms of citizens and
borders, but in terms of the peoples and places that belonged to the monarch. The subjects of the
realm were those to whom the sovereign’s influence had extended, and non-subjects were the

2
people that the sovereign’s influence had not yet reached. The relationship between the sovereign
and his or her subjects was therefore central to the ongoing process of realm-making. Over the
course of this period, the Yamato realm was made and re-made through continuous negotiation
between the sovereign and subjects. In tracing these negotiations, I am contributing to
scholarship on what Joan Piggott (following Yoshida Takashi) has called the ritsuryō process –
not just the process by which the ritsuryō (penal and administrative ) codes were compiled
and promulgated, but the longer process by which the rulers and officials of the realm worked to
realize the systems and institutions that they inscribed.
1
I focus in particular on the question of
what it meant to be a Yamato subject, and how the definition of a subject changed over the
course of the late seventh to early ninth centuries. In doing so, I present a new understanding
early Yamato sovereigns’ relationship with their subjects, draw attention to the dynamic
development of the ritsuryō realm over the course of the Nara period, and provide a case study of
subjecthood in the premodern world.
From Kikajin to Toraijin and Back Again
This dissertation builds on a body of scholarship on early Yamato that emerged in the
post-war period, when a number of Japanese historians broke with early twentieth-century
narratives about the historical unity of the Japanese people and the unbroken imperial line to
draw attention to the critical role played by immigrants and their descendants in bringing

1
Joan R. Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 168-169.

3
technology, skills, culture, and ideas to the Japanese archipelago.
2
For scholars focused on the
roles played by immigrants and their descendants in Yamato, determining the appropriate
language to use for the subjects of their analysis has been a key issue. The debate over language
has focused on two terms: kikajin ( ) and toraijin ( ).
3
A rough translation into
English will make some of the significant differences between these terms apparent: kikajin can
be translated “a person who has submitted and been transformed,” while toraijin can be
translated “a person who crossed over.” Both are used to refer to immigrants as well as the
descendants of immigrants. Both are also rooted in the language of the ancient texts, although the
use of the term kikajin in historical scholarship is complicated by the fact that it is still used
today to refer to naturalized citizens of the modern Japanese state (i.e. those who have obtained
Japanese citizenship). Below, I will trace the rise of the term kikajin in postwar studies and the
near total shift from using kikajin to using toraijin by the 1990s. Then I will discuss the revival
of the term kikajin in more recent scholarship. Through these debates about terminology,
scholars have considered fundamental questions about what it meant to be and to become a
member of the Yamato realm.

2
While I focus on the postwar scholarship that has most directly informed my research, there is, of course, a longer
history of scholarship on the early Yamato realm and the origins of the Japanese people. A number of recent articles
and chapters address prewar scholarship in greater detail than I will here. Chizuko T. Allen offers a focused look at
scholarship on premodern Korea and Japan from the Tokugawa period to the present in “Early Migrations,
Conquests, and Common Ancestry: Theorizing Japanese Origins in Relation with Korea,” Sungkyun Journal of East
Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (April 2008). Matthieu Felt’s recent dissertation on the reception of the Nihon shoki
throughout Japanese history has several excellent chapters that consider Tokugawa, Meiji, and early twentieth-
century scholarship on the Nihon shoki, much of which was occupied with questions about the origins of Japan and
the Japanese people. See Matthieu Anthony James Felt, “Rewriting the Past: Reception and Commentary of Nihon
shoki, Japan’s First Official History” (Ph.D., Columbia University, 2017), esp. 16. In the second chapter of his book
on the Man’yōshū, Torquil Duthie breaks twentieth-century studies of the early Japanese state into three stages, one
focused on an imperial nation that lasted through the war, the second on a non-imperial cultural nation, and a third
that emphasized a multicultural view of Yamato. See Man’yōshū and the Imperial Imagination in Early Japan
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 57-84.
3
The use of these terms and their translations into English are discussed below.

4
In his landmark 1956 book, Seki Akira set out to prove two over-arching points: first, that
the kikajin were the ancestors of the modern Japanese people, and second, that it was the kikajin
who made the development of the Yamato realm possible and gave Yamato society and culture
their form. Seki tracked the contributions made by those he identified as kikajin from the fourth
century to the early ninth century, and divided them into “old” and “new” kikajin. The “old”
kikajin included lineages like the Aya ( ), Hata ( ), and Fuhito ( ), who arrived in the fourth
and fifth centuries and played critical roles in creating written records, managing finances, and
conducting diplomacy for early Yamato rulers. In Seki’s view, the knowledge and skills that
distinguished these early lineages declined quickly, and he argues that by the late sixth century,
many could no longer make unique contributions to the court. A new wave of kikajin appeared in
Yamato from the end of the sixth century on, bringing Buddhism and knowledge of continental
and peninsular governing institutions, among other things. These new kikajin were joined by the
wave following the fall of Koguryŏ and Paekche in the 660s, and many were learned scholars
and talented officials who went on to serve in the Yamato court. Seki highlighted the key roles
played by kikajin officials, but also argued that over the course of the eighth century, they
gradually lost what had made them distinct. By the early ninth century, Seki argued that the
kikajin had merged into the general Yamato elite.
In the introduction to his book, Seki famously declared: “The kikajin are our ancestors.
The work that they did was not work done for the sake of Japanese people, but work that
Japanese people did.”
4
Seki’s use of the word kikajin was rooted in the term kika ( ), which
appears in the earliest official Yamato chronicle, the Nihon shoki (Chronicle of Japan, ,

4
. Seki Akira, Kikajin: kodai no seiji, keizai, bunka wo kataru (Tokyo: Shibundō, 1956), 4.

5
720 CE). While Seki acknowledged that using the eighth-century Nihon shoki accounts to
understand earlier centuries was problematic, he nevertheless relied heavily on these accounts in
his discussion and did not discuss the use of the term kika in the text. In Seki’s view, “kikajin”
referred not just to all those who came over to Yamato from the Korean peninsula and continent
themselves, but also to generations of their descendants. Seki believed that kikajin remained in
some way distinct from the rest of the Yamato population for the duration of the period he
discusses – the fourth century to the early Heian period – and that after this point they were no
longer distinct and simply became Yamato people.
5
Thus, even as Seki articulated significant
differences between successive waves of immigrants to early Yamato, he still grouped them all
together as kikajin. While Seki’s work catalyzed a new field by demanding recognition for the
contributions of the people he called kikajin, those who followed in his footsteps would apply a
more critical eye to the term itself.
The next major scholar to address the role of immigrants in the early realm was Ueda
Masaaki, who published his volume on kikajin in 1965.
6
Ueda’s book was structured around four
main stages of immigration to Yamato: 1) From the Yayoi period through the third century,
when there was no centralized state, 2) the period before and after the turn of the fifth century, 3)
Yūryaku and Kinmei's reigns in the second half of the fifth century, when he argued there was a
central state, and 4) the second half of the seventh century, when the major wave of people
arrived at Tenji's court after the fall of Paekche and Koguryŏ. As he discussed each of these
waves, Ueda grounded his analysis in a careful examination of the conditions on the Korean
peninsula and continent. Building on the foundation laid by Seki, Ueda pushed his reader to

5
His logic here was somewhat circular – he began by asserting that there were kikajin up to the early Heian period,
and then concluded that they must have been distinct from the rest of the population up to this point. Ibid., 9-15.
6
Ueda Masaaki, Kikajin: kodai kokka no seiritsu wo megutte (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1965).

6
recognize not only the contributions that immigrants and their descendants made to the early
Yamato realm, but also the importance of the connections between Yamato and the other polities
of the China Sea Sphere. As he put it in his introduction: “To be blunt, the formation of the
ancient Japanese realm was deeply connected with the movements of the mother countries [i.e.
polities of the Korean peninsula and continent] of the people who crossed over.”
7

Although he covered similar time periods and topics in his book, Ueda devoted more
attention to the question of language than Seki had. He began with a consideration of the
historical use of the term kika, citing passages from the Nihon shoki that used kika, as well as
compounds like kaki , raiki , and tōka , all of which he argued would all have
been read mauku (“to [humbly] go,” ). Ueda noted that while the term kika appears
repeatedly in the Nihon shoki as well as the Shoku Nihongi (Continued Chronicle of Japan, , 797 CE) and Shinsen shōjiroku (Newly Compiled Record of Designations, ,
815 CE), it does not appear at all in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, , 712 CE).
Instead, both the Kojiki and the Harima no kuni no fudōki (Harima Province Gazetteer, , 715 CE), use words like torai (“to cross over,” ) to describe people arriving in
Yamato. Ueda argued that the Kojiki and fudōki terminology reflected the actual language of
time, while the Nihon shoki represented the worldview of the eighth-century ritsuryō (“penal and
administrative codes,” ) codes and the court they inscribed. Ueda then turned to the 701 CE
Taihō and 718 CE Yōro codes as well as the legal commentaries of the Ryō no shūge ( ,
868 CE) to determine what kika meant. He concluded that the court used the term kika for people
who came to Yamato of their own volition, submitted to the ruler, and were “civilized” by being

7
Ibid., 1.

7
made a part of the realm through an official process. Ueda strongly emphasized that the term
kika expressed the ruler’s perspective, and that its use in early texts did not serve as proof that
immigrants actually saw themselves as submitting to a superior realm or being civilized.
8
Ueda
was concerned by the ongoing discrimination against Koreans that he saw around him, and this
concern informed his understanding that kikajin could not be used to refer to all immigrants and
their descendants.
9

In 1972, the Kim Tal-su published a collection of essays in which he launched a
campaign against the use of the word kikajin in historical scholarship.
10
Kim was a Korean-born
novelist who had moved to Japan at the age of ten, and who once wrote that his impetus to create
fiction was a desire to inform the Japanese about Koreans.
11
He argued passionately for the
importance of precision in language, saying: “If the words are incorrect or wrong, then it goes
without saying that the content of what we say and write is also wrong.”
12
Kim noted the use of
the term kikajin in the titles of both Seki and Ueda’s books, and deplored the careless use of the
term to refer to all immigrants in the ancient period. In his view, the word kikajin represented a
“victor’s view” of history created by the compilers of the Nihon shoki. He also argued that
because it was a historical term that referred to the process of becoming a part of the ritsuryō
realm, it could not be used not refer to people who had come to the Japanese archipelago before
the creation of the ritsuryō codes in the seventh century. For those who came before that point,
he suggested using toraijin, which he saw as a neutral term expressing only physical movement

8
Ibid., 27-34.
9
Ueda believed that using a term like kikajin that implied the superiority of Yamato and encouraged racial
discrimination in the present. Ibid., 2.
10
Kim Tal-su, Kodai bunka to “kikajin” (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1972), 11.
11
Robert J. Del Greco, “Kim Tal-su and early ‘Zainichi’ literature,” (MA., University of Kansas, 2009), 5. In his
recent dissertation, Christopher Donal Scott describes Kim Tal-su as “the father or king” of zainichi Korean
literature. See “Invisible Men: The Zainichi Korean Presence in Postwar Japanese Culture” (Ph.D., Stanford
University, 2006), 9.
12
Kim Tal-su, Kodai bunka to “Kikajin,” (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1972), 8.

8
from one place to another without the hegemonic connotations of the term kikajin. Kim
acknowledged that this was an imperfect solution, but argued that it was better to use a neutral
term than to use one that was obviously biased.
Despite some initial setbacks, the campaign to replace kikajin as the standard term for
immigrants and their descendants in historical scholarship ultimately succeeded well beyond
Kim’s expectations. By 1990, toraijin had replaced kikajin as the term used not only by
historians, but also by the writers of virtually all major national textbooks.
13
In a collection of
essays published in 1990, Kim described his enormous satisfaction upon receiving a book from a
government-sponsored institute in Nara with the word toraijin in its title, an event he took as a
sign of widespread public and official acceptance of the new terminology.
14
Kim's sense of
triumph was understandable – he spent his career fighting against discrimination and for
recognition of Korean experiences Japan. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that while he had
originally argued for the use of toraijin only for those people who crossed over to Japan prior to
the formation of the ritsuryō realm, by 1990 he was celebrating the complete replacement of the
word kikajin.
The historian Hirano Kunio revived the question of the historical meaning and usage of
kikajin in 1993.
15
Hirano argued that because the word kika had a specific, historical meaning
that reflected an important political process in the early court, it could not be replaced by torai.
16

13
See, for example, Nihon kokugo daijiten as an example of a major dictionary that currently lists “ ” as one
of the definitions of the word “ .”
14
Tal-su Kim, Toraijin to torai bunka (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1990).
15
Hirano Kunio, Kikajin to kodai kokka (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1993).
16
Hirano also argued that the term Ueda and Kim read torai ( ) in the Kojiki was an abbreviation of a longer
term and should therefore be read either mōku ( ) or maiwatarikitsu ( ). In his view, the
concept behind these terms in the Kojiki was exactly the same as kika ( ) and its variants , , and
in the Nihon shoki. In other words, he did not support the idea that the term torai was either an older or a more
neutral term in early Yamato texts. Ibid., 2.

9
He defined kika as a process that involved two corresponding sets of actions: 1) People from
outside the sovereign’s civilizing influence (kegai ), longing for the virtuous rule of that
sovereign, submitted of their own volition; and 2) The ruler accepted this action and allowed
these people to become subjects of the civilized realm; through allocating supplies of food and
clothing, installing them in particular provincial districts, and adding them to the registers, they
were methodically included in the laws and rites of the realm.
17
Hirano also situated the term
kika in a wider vocabulary of the movement of people. He highlighted terms like , , ,
and that he argued were used for tribute (including both people and goods) from rulers
of Korean kingdoms to the Yamato kings. He contrasted this non-voluntary movement of people
to the kika process, which assumed people traveled by their own choice. Overall, he claimed that
immigrants who could be termed kikajin far outnumbered those who could not.
Hirano also argued that kika was a political and legal concept that originated on the
continent and was common to East Asia as a region. He saw it as a multi-directional process that
described the movements of people both to and from the Japanese archipelago, and argued that it
was important to understand the motivations of both the side that imposed the kika concept and
the side that accepted it. Hirano's understanding of kika as a political process not limited to Japan
was critical to his broader argument. The concept of kika was rooted in a worldview based on a
single central realm, defined by the “civilizing influence of the ruler” (ōka ) and ordered by
rites and laws. The central realm extended its influence to the surrounding “foreigner and aliens”
( ), transforming them into civilized peoples. Hirano argued that this type of realm had no
concepts of citizens or territory, but was defined by the movement of people into the “civilizing

17
Ibid., 1.

10
influence of the sovereign.”
18
As the region was defined by constant conflict and tension
between the various polities in it, the choices people made about where to go and where to
participate in the kika process became significant. In other words, Hirano’s point was not that the
term kika should be allowed because it was a historical term, but that it must be used because the
kika process was critical to the dynamics of the East Asian region. As such, it absolutely could
not be replaced by a word like toraijin, which merely expressed physical movement from one
place to another.
In his 1997 book, Tanaka Fumio began by acknowledging the history of debate over the
terms kikajin and toraijin, stating that he would use toraijin as a general term for people who
came to Yamato and “kikajin” (the quotation marks are Tanaka’s) for a subset of the toraijin
whose historical place in the Yamato realm had to be considered. He then pivoted away from the
“kikajin” question to frame his analysis around the idea that the toraijin could act as a lens for
understanding the broader relationship between the classical Yamato realm and its people.
19
He
divided his book into two parts – the first focused on the relationship between different toraijin
groups and the classical realm in the eighth century, and the second on the notion of “kika” both
pre-ritsuryō and post-ritsuryō. On the basis of this analysis, Tanaka argued that there were three
major stages in the development of the relationship between the Yamato court and its people.
The first stage was pre-ritsuryō, when Yamato rulers were part of a broader East Asian society
that accommodated people with multiple allegiances. The second stage was marked by the
creation of the ritsuryō realm, in which the flexibility of the earlier period disappeared and was
replaced by the idea of a central ruler who was capable of “transforming” any outsider into a
subject. Tanaka argued that the kika process was key in clarifying the political existence and

18
Ibid., 305-306
19
Tanaka Fumio, Nihon kodai kokka no minzoku shihai to toraijin (Tokyo: Azekura Shobō, 1997).

11
framework of the ritsuryō realm. Finally, in the early Heian period, Tanaka argued that as
Yamato’s relationship with Silla and the rest of the region came to focus on trade, the idea that
people from outside the realm could become subjects disappeared. With this shift, a new sense of
the permanent difference between insiders and outsiders began to emerge, and Yamato lost the
openness that had marked the late seventh and eighth centuries. Tanaka’s key contributions lay
in emphasizing the diversity within the toraijin population of the realm and articulating the
significance of the kika concept to Yamato sovereigns’ efforts to legitimize their authority. He
also clearly demonstrated that the meaning of the term kika was not static, and that the
relationship between the tennō and various toraijin groups was dynamically changing throughout
the Nara period.
Only a handful of scholars have written in English about immigrants and their
descendants in the Nara and early Heian period, and none have engaged directly in these debates
about the terms kikajin and toraijin and the significance of the kika process to the Yamato court.
Most have focused on emphasizing the contributions made by various groups of immigrants and
their descendants, but in doing so, they have also had to make choices about the language that
reflect their underlying assumptions about the operative categories of the Yamato court. One of
the few works to directly address the status of immigrants and their descendants in the seventh-
through ninth-centuries was a short 1969 article by Cornelius Kiley. In the article, Kiley noted
that while officials of foreign origins occupied important positions at the Yamato court, they
rarely reached high court rank. Kiley argued that social status was directly linked to appointment
and promotion of officials in the court bureaucracy, and that kabane titles and surnames were
used to indicate an individual’s social status. He therefore focused on the surnames and titles of
immigrant officials, arguing that immigrant names had a particular orthography, but that this

12
distinguishing orthography was lost during the mid- to late-eighth century.
20
As a result, Kiley
argued, “it became possible for persons of foreign origin to claim kinship with native aristocrats
and thereby improve their prestige position.”
21
The idea that officialdom was divided between
“native” and “non-native” officials, and that the native elites were actively working to maintain
their advantage over non-native officials in the status systems of the time is one that reappears in
much of the English-language scholarship on the early court. The members of the elite and of
Yamato officialdom were, of course, competing with each other for status, rank, and official
appointments, but foreign origin was not the organizing principle for this competition.
Michael Como’s books on the cult of Prince Shōtoku and on immigrant gods in early
Yamato have both highlighted the role of what he called “immigrant kinship groups.” He defined
these groups as “any kinship group that claims as its founding ancestor a figure that was said to
have come to the Japanese islands from across the sea.”
22
One of Como’s major contributions in
his book on Shōtoku was his analysis of the “astonishingly broad and deep influence” exercised
by immigrant kinship groups from Silla and Paekche.
23
Como read the ancestral legends of the
these groups against the corpus of Shōtoku legends, as well as official chronicles, ancient
gazetteers, and temple records, and concluded that immigrant kinship groups “drew upon cultic
resources from the Korean Peninsula to help lay the foundations for much of the Japanese royal
cult and Japanese culture.”
24
In his second book, Como challenged the tendency to see early
Japanese religion in terms of “foreign” Buddhism encountering “native” Shintō. Como
demonstrated that much of what had previously been thought of as “native” in early Japanese

20
Kiley, Cornelius J. “A Note on The Surnames of Immigrant Officials in Nara Japan.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies 29 (January 1, 1969), 181. The basis of Kiley’s argument here is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2.
21
Ibid., 177.
22
Michael Como, Shōtoku: Ethnicity, Ritual, and Violence in the Japanese Buddhist Tradition (Oxford; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 4 and N1.
23
Ibid. 4, 155.
24
Ibid., 7.

13
religion was actually influenced by continental cultic practices imported by immigrant lineage
groups along with medicine, astronomy, sericulture, and metal working.
25
In both texts, Como
challenged established ideas of the “native” by emphasizing the contributions of immigrant
kinship groups, but he did not challenge the idea of the “foreign” or the “immigrant.”
In his 2010 book, Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan, Herman Ooms
examined how symbols were adopted and manipulated in the acquisition of power, status, and
authority in the Tenmu dynasty (~650-800 CE). One chapter of the book was devoted to the
critical contributions of a group of people that Ooms called “allochthons,” his translation of the
term kikajin. Ooms described the allochthons as people whose ancestors originated in “different
soil,” and who could be “aliens, immigrants, refugees, prisoners of war, or their ancestors.” He
argued that the official identity of the allochthons was “consciously maintained by the Yamato
state as separate from that of its autochthonous subjects.”
26
Throughout his analysis, Ooms used
the word allochthon to refer to a wide range of immigrants and their descendants, from the pre-
ritsuryō period Hata and Aya to the seventh- and eighth-century officials who either crossed over
after the fall of Paekche and Koguryŏ themselves or who were descended from people who had.
In other words, Ooms did not use the term allochthon to refer to people the Yamato ruler viewed
as having gone through the official kika process, but in the much broader sense that Seki used the

25
Como, Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2010).
26
Herman Ooms, Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty, 650-800 (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), xviii.

14
term kikajin.
27
Ooms also followed in Kiley’s footsteps by characterizing the relationship
between the Yamato court and the allochthons as antagonistic, with the allochthons seeking
higher status and the court working to both keep them distinct from and under the control of the
existing Yamato elite. He also argued that the mid-eighth-century decision to grant allochthon
name change requests resulted in “obscuring the alien origin of many allochthons,” which in turn
allowed them to penetrate the highest circles of the court and become a threat to the native
nobility.
28
He saw the early Heian-period court as working to stop this “naturalization” by
creating an official court genealogy that would clarify and preserve each lineage’s origins once
and for all.
As each of these scholarly works demonstrate, language is never neutral, and those who
do not choose their words deliberately are at risk of surrendering control of their narratives to
others.
29
With the goal of creating a narrative that would be recognizable to the people of the
time, I have focused on accurately reflecting the terminology of the Nara and early Heian period
court, even when doing so has meant using long and sometimes clumsy phrases like “a person
who submitted and has been transformed” for kikajin. Translation is always a difficult problem,
but the need to translate can also bring analytical advantages. In my second chapter, I focus on

27
Ooms’ use of the term “allochthon” is not common in English, but it might seem quite familiar to someone in the
Netherlands, where the word “allochtoon” (alien or foreigner) was commonly used for certain groups of immigrants
and their descendants, even when the descendants had become Dutch citizens. The similarities in usage between this
word and Seki’s kikajin are indeed striking. Perhaps even more striking is the fact that the Amsterdam city council
announced in 2013 that it would no longer use the word “allochtoon” because it was unevenly applied and therefore
divisive – a third-generation German immigrant was never referred to as an “allochtoon,” while a third generation
Turkish or Moroccan immigrant typically was. See “Amsterdam Dumps the ‘A ’ Word,” DutchNews.Nl, accessed
January 30, 2015, http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2013/02/amsterdam_dumps_the_a_word.php/.
28
Ibid., 103.
29
Luke Roberts demonstrated this point brilliantly in his recent book on the Tokugawa period. He argued that words
such as bakufu , shōgun , and tennō , commonly used by both modern Japanese and English-language
scholars in describing the Tokugawa past, were “either not commonly used in the Edō period or were then used in
very different ways and contexts than in the present.” He goes on: “The victors of the Meiji Restoration who
destroyed the Tokugawa government chose these terms to narrate Tokugawa history, and they have reigned over
modern historical consciousness ever since.” See Luke Roberts, Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and
Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2012), 10.

15
what I call the “designation” system. “Designation” is my translation of the Japanese word sei
( ), which in modern Japanese simply refers to surnames. In the classical period, however, it
can be read kabane, meaning either royally-granted title, or sei, a term with a much broader
meaning that encompassed not only royally-granted titles but also a wide range of other non-
personal names. Japanese scholars have not always been precise in their use or definitions of this
term, in part because they can simply use the character . As a scholar writing in English, it has
been necessary in every case to consider whether the term refers to what I call “designations” or
to the system of royally-granted titles.
30
This may seem a simple thing, but it is one of the ways
in which scholars writing for an English-language audience make significant contributions to the
precision of our understanding of the early texts.
Another contribution I make to the existing scholarship on immigrants and their
descendants is to highlight how the terminology used by early Yamato rulers changed over time.
I have followed in Tanaka Fumio’s footsteps in recognizing that the use of many key terms was
not static during the Nara and Heian periods, but I have also taken cues from scholars like Ōtaka
Hirokazu and Hasebe Masashi in taking an even more carefully diachronic approach. Both have
demonstrated the analytical power of accepting the limitations of the sources of this time period,
and resisting the temptation to draw on later sources to understand a particular term, event, or
process. Where Tanaka is sometimes willing to read tenth century texts like the Engi shiki (Engi
Protocols, ) for hints about early eighth century administrative practice, I have worked to
avoid this tendency. By resisting the temptation to cast a wide net in the sources, I am able to

30
This is absolutely not to suggest that all Japanese scholars have been imprecise in their use of this term. See
Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion.

16
more effectively highlight the series of incremental changes that took place over the course of
this period of roughly 150 years.
Finally, there has been almost no attention to the agency and voices of the immigrants
and their descendants in considering their place in Yamato, and I have worked to address this
gap. Given the nature of the sources, doing so is immensely difficult, but I believe it is critical to
recognize that the Yamato sovereigns were not able to unilaterally impose their will onto their
subjects. They could and did create systems for configuring subjects and granting them status,
but subjects actively responded to these systems by seeking to manipulate (or at least use) them
to their advantage. The critical source I have relied on in capturing this process are the records of
approximately fifty petitions, found in the first three official histories, in which subjects
requested new or different designations from the sovereign. Some of these petitions record
extensive explanations from the subjects about their current designations, their history in
Yamato, and their reasons for wanting new designations and believing that they should receive
them. These petitions offer us relatively little insight into the identity and beliefs of the subjects
that submitted them – they are too heavily mediated by the official process of submission and
subsequent inclusion in the official record. They can, however, offer us some insight into how
these subjects sought to negotiate the systems of status and rank created by Yamato sovereigns.
As this dissertation will show, while immigrants and their descendants were sometimes at a
disadvantage in various Yamato systems of hierarchy and status, these systems were not
designed to keep them at a disadvantage and there were many cases in which immigrants and
their descendants negotiated their distinct status to their advantage.
Ethnicity in the Premodern World

17
One of the major challenges in seeking to understand the relationship between the early
Yamato court and its subjects has been the need to resist modern notions of race, ethnicity,
citizenship, and nationality. Ethnicity in particular has been a hotly debated subject among
scholars of the premodern world. In an influential 1990 essay entitled “Thinking about Ethnicity
in Early Modern China,” Pamela Crossley noted that the concept of ethnicity was a “seminal
issue” of growing significance in historical studies of China, but also deplored some of the ways
the concept was being applied in her field. She argued that scholars cannot assume that using
“ethnicity” is self-evidently appropriate or useful for their analysis, and advocated for a three-
step process for determining whether or not they should use it: 1) define “ethnicity” 2) establish
that “ethnicity” as defined is actually present at a given historical time and place, and 3) establish
that the existence of “ethnicity” at that particular time and place is significant.
31
Many of the
issues Crossley raised are relevant to studies of the premodern world in general, and nearly thirty
years later, a number of the core questions she posed remain unresolved. Foremost among them
is the question of how to define the concept, as scholars have yet to reach a clear consensus on
what exactly “ethnicity” means and how to identify it. Other issues that are particularly relevant
to my own project include the questions of how ethnicity is created, how it relates to the modern
nation-state, and whether or not it can be applied meaningfully to premodern societies.
One of the major scholars who has argued that ethnicity can productively be applied to
premodern societies is Mark Elliott, whose 2001 book, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners
and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China, presented a direct challenge to Crossley’s assertion
that ethnic consciousness and ethnicity were intimately tied to the emergence of the modern
nation-state. He argued that “ethnicity” is a way of constructing identity “whenever and

31
Pamela Kyle Crossley, “Thinking About Ethnicity in Early Modern China,” Late Imperial China 11, no. 1 (1990):
1, 30.

18
wherever human groups come into contact and discover meaning in the differences between each
other.” While Elliott argued that “in its principles the process of ethnicity did not operate all that
differently two hundred years ago than it does today,” he was also careful to state that historians
must “first prove that the categories he [or she] observes were indeed ethnic, and not the
stepchild of modern ethnic consciousness.”
32
While both Crossley and Elliott were working
primarily on the early modern period in Chinese history, other scholars have considered similar
issues in earlier time periods.
A number of scholars working on the Tang dynasty have used the term “ethnicity” and
related terms in their analysis of the famously cosmopolitan empire, but few have clearly defined
it or defended its use. In her work on the legal regulation of frontier territories in the Tang, Irina
Popova claimed that there was an unprecedented “ethnical synthesis” under the Tang, but gave
no sense of what this entailed or how it was specifically “ethnical” as opposed to simply
“cultural” (which she also claims that it was).
33
Jonathan Skaff’s work on the Turko-Mongols
and the Sui and Tang dynasties also exhibits a tendency to assume the existence and significance
of ethnicity and racial identities, even when the evidence does not support this assumption. Skaff
concludes his section on “Legal and Administrative Concepts of Ethnicity” by lamenting that in
the Tang legal and administrative systems, “the general disregard for ethnic or racial difference
has had an unfortunate effect on historiography by obscuring the existence of Turko-Mongols
and other peoples in the empire.”
34
In his book on the Tang, Marc Abramson argued that “a wide

32
Mark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 19.
33
Irina F. Popova, “The Administrative and Legal Regulations of the Tang Emperors for the Frontier Territories,” in
Central Asian Law: An Historical Overview: A Festschrift for the Ninetieth Birthday of Herbert Franke (Topeka,
Kansas: Society for Asian Legal History, the Hall Center for the Humanities, the University of Kansas, 2004), 41.
34
Skaff, 71. To give another example of Skaff’s problematic approach to ethnicity, on page 53 he states that “Sui-
Tang literati generally assumed that the populace of the empire shared a culture or ethnicity,” clearly demonstrating
a failure to distinguish between culture and ethnicity.

19
reading of the Tang sources reveals that ethnic identity and ethnicity mattered very much in the
Tang, penetrating into all corners of discourse.”
35
But at the same time, he noted that “the
concepts of ethnicity and identity themselves do not readily correspond to any of the established
genres or topics of the Sinitic sources.”
36
Abramson insisted that he was analyzing the
“discursive construction of ethnic identity” in the Tang even though he also stated that the
literate elite was “uninterested in explicitly examining the nature of its own ethnic identity.”
37
In
other words, he argued that ethnic identities were important in the Tang empire, whether Tang
people knew it or not. While Abramson clearly demonstrated that people in the Tang period
recognized a range of cultural, physical, political and genealogical differences as being
significant in defining groups of people, he was ultimately unconvincing in his assertion that
these differences defined ethnic identities central to the Tang because he failed to establish that
the identities that he saw in the sources were meaningful to the people of the time.
Japanese scholars have also considered how the concept of ethnicity can be used in
analyses of early Yamato. In articulating his own approach to the issue, Tanaka Fumio noted that
the first historian to make significant use of the “anthropological” theory of ethnicity (
) in studies of early Yamato was Ishigami Eichi. Ishigami relied on the anthropologist Ayabe
Tsuneo for his definition of ethnicity as “[a] group formed by people who, while accumulating
mutual action with other similar sorts of groups in a given cultural system (nation-state), share a
sense of their own identity and traditional culture.”
38
Ishigami argued that because neither
“subjective” nor “objective” criteria could be used to define groups in the early Japanese state,

35
Marc Samuel Abramson, Ethnic Identity in Tang China, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), x.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid., xii.
38
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 12-13.

20
and suggested that the term “pseudo-ethnic groups” ( ) might be more appropriate.
In response, Tanaka pointed out that if these pseudo-ethnic groups were created by the state, they
were not “true” ethnic groups in Ayabe’s sense. I would add that Ishigami’s use of “pseudo” was
ultimately a way of talking about ethnic groups even though the groups in question did not match
the definitions for ethnicity or ethnic groups that he considered. Tanaka proposed calling these
politically-created groups “ethnic categories” ( ), to distinguish them from true ethnic
groups. While Tanaka argued that the sources available for Yamato are too limited to
conclusively identify ethnic groups, it was possible to consider how the state used ethnic
categories, which he noted may or may not have represented on-the-ground realities, to
distinguish who they should control politically.
39

Coming from an anthropological and archaeological perspective, Mark Hudson devoted a
lengthy section of his book, Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands, to
discussing how ethnic groups have historically been defined. He argued that scholars have
shifted from an “objective” etic categorization to a “subjective” emic categorization of groups in
which it is belief rather than actual descent that defines an ethnicity.
40
However, Hudson found
the emic perspective insufficient on its own, and argued for an understanding of ethnicity that
takes other criteria into consideration. As he put it: “the subjective elements of ethnicity are
mediated, to a degree that is itself culturally determined, by reference to more objective
biological, linguistic, and cultural markers.”
41
Building on this understanding, Hudson focused
on what he called “core biological and linguistic populations.” Ultimately, he found no evidence
to support the idea that there was a sense of shared ethnicity in the core Japanese population until

39
Tanaka, 17.
40
Mark Hudson, Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii’i Press,
1999), 8.
41
Ibid., 10

21
the twentieth century.
42
In his analysis of the early Yamato realm in particular, Hudson
concluded that political factors were more important than physiognomy or language in the
formation of identities.
43
While Hudson approached the question from a different disciplinary
perspective than many of the other scholars discussed above, his conclusions are nevertheless
valuable in trying to determine if and how to apply the term “ethnicity” in premodern history.
My own approach has been most directly informed by the work of Naomi Standen and
Erica Brindley, both of whom work on premodern China. In her book on tenth-century Liao
China, Standen declared that the concept of ethnicity was the most significant obstacle she faced
in working to understand the dynamics of the frontier.
44
She agreed with Crossley that the
concept was anachronistic before the nineteenth-century rise of nationalism, and also argued that
the formation of specifically ethnic identities depended on the existence of a state “sufficiently
effective that its institutions, laws, or policies deliberately or unintentionally offer advantages to
the highlighting of one group’s differences from another.”
45
In addition to the presence of such a
state, Standen saw the existence of a clearly defined ethnic Other as a key condition for the
emergence of ethnic identities. Standen strongly emphasized that scholars who set out to
consider ethnic groups will always find that ethnicity is part of the answer, when it should have
been part of the question.
46
For her own purposes, and having made ethnicity part of the
question, Standen focused on the importance of loyalty in defining borders.
Another scholar who made ethnicity part of the question is Erica Brindley, whose 2003
article, “Barbarians or Not? Ethnicity and Changing Conceptions of the Ancient Yue (Viet)

42
Ibid., 243, 11, 13.
43
Ibid., 201.
44
Naomi Standen, Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
2007), 26.
45
Ibid., 29.
46
Ibid., 182.

22
Peoples, ca. 400-50 BC,” considered how “ethnicity” could be applied to even earlier
populations. Brindley argued that the powerful impact of the modern notion of a “Chinese”
ethnic identity has made it difficult to recognize the historical heterogeneity of people and
polities in the south.
47
Brindley also recognized the limitations of her sources, acknowledging
that “the voice that speaks of and depicts the Yue peoples is not the voice of the Yue
themselves.”
48
Rather than trying to recover a sense of Yue self-identity or reconstruct Yue
culture as it actually was, Brindley chose to analyze the referential instability of the term “Yue”
in the writings of educated authors in the Central States. She sought to understand the changing
criteria that Central States authors used to express identity and difference, and then considered
how those criteria compared with current understandings of ethnicity. Brindley defined three
different ways of viewing the “Yue” as other, and concluded that there was no clear consensus
on who the “Yue” people were or how to define the differences between “Yue” (other) and self.
While I am not convinced that it is necessarily anachronistic to apply ethnicity to a
premodern society, I am convinced by Crossley and Standen’s argument that we cannot simply
assume that ethnicity and ethnic groups existed at all times in all places. In focusing on the
changing relationship between the Yamato ruler and the people of the realm, I have found little
evidence that Yamato sovereigns sought to create or maintain groups that were ethnic in nature.
In analyzing law codes and legal commentaries, official histories and court documents, and
official genealogies, I have found that Yamato sovereigns were not seeking to create special
advantages or disadvantages for immigrants and their descendants. As a result, I see this study of

47
Erica Brindley, “Barbarians or Not? Ethnicity and Changing Conceptions of the Ancient Yue (Viet) Peoples, ca.
400-50 BC,” Asia Major 16, no. 1 (January 1, 2003), 10.
48
Ibid., 5

23
immigrants and their descendants in the early Yamato court not as a consideration of premodern
ethnicity, but as a case study in premodern subjecthood.
There is a growing body of scholarship that offers insight into how premodern states and
rulers approached the need to create distinctions between foreigners or aliens, and subjects or
citizens. In the case of early modern France, Peter Sahlins has examined the process by which
foreigners became French citizens from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and what being
a citizen meant in the time before the contemporary nation-state. He argues that the identity of
the French citizen emerged in opposition to what he calls “the ‘anti-privileges’ of foreigners,”
and that the French citizenship revolution was characterized by a movement from the realm of
law to that of politics.
49
His focus on naturalization as a tool of state building, and his use of
letters of naturalization as a critical source have directly influenced my approach here,
particularly in Chapter 2.
Even more directly relevant is Adam Bohnet’s dissertation on migrant and border
subjects in Chosŏn Korea. Bohnet considers how a wide range of migrant and border subjects
(Jurchen, Japanese, and Ming Chinese) were grouped together into the category known as
“submitting foreigners” (hwanghwain, ). Much like the category of kikajin, the Chosŏn
“submitting foreigners” category was based on the notion of a “transformation” into a Chosŏn
subject. It was also a tax category that freed people who had the status from certain kinds of tax
burdens. Bohnet describes the mid-eighteenth century invention of a new category, “imperial
subjects” (hwangjoin, ), that was used only for Ming migrants and that emerged because
of the Chosŏn court’s struggle to reconcile its central claim of legitimacy based on loyalty to the

49
Peter Sahlins, Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 2004), 5 and 11.

24
Ming with the idea of Ming subjects “submitting” to the Chosŏn ruler.
50
Although our projects
are separated by hundreds of years and focus on different realms, even this brief summary makes
it clear that there are significant similarities in the categories that Yamato and Chosŏn rulers used
to configure their subjects. There are, of course, many other East Asian polities that shared the
fundamental worldviews and terminology that shaped both classical Yamato and early modern
Chosŏn. Each would have articulated and implemented these terms and views in different ways,
but there is nevertheless something to be gained from considering them together. I see my work
as joining Bohnet’s in beginning to build a body of case studies that will allow us to define and
track this East Asian model of subjecthood.
Configuring the Subjects of the Realm – Law codes, Designations, and Genealogy
Beginning in the seventh century, Yamato rulers used a combination of continental legal systems
inscribed by the ritsuryō codes, status rank systems connected to designations (including uji or “royally recognized lineages” and kabane , or “noble titles”), and official genealogies to
configure the people of their realm. The gradual integration of the wave of immigrants that
arrived in Yamato in the late seventh century into each of these systems is the focus of this
dissertation. Each chapter focuses on a different system and traces it from the pre-ritsuryō period
into the early Heian period. Although these systems certainly overlapped with each other in
significant ways, I have arranged them in roughly chronological order according to the periods in
which they were the most significant. In this sense, part of my argument is that the court’s focus
in configuring the subjects of the realm shifted from the ritsuryō codes to the designation system
and then to the creation of an official court genealogy.

50
Adam Bohnet, “Migrant and Border Subjects in Late Choson Korea” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2008), 1-
34.

25
In Chapter 1, I begin with a brief history of codified law on the continent and in Yamato.
I then examine the worldview embedded in the Yamato legal codes and commentaries, and argue
that the most important categories defined by these codes were that of subject and non-subject,
those who were within the civilizing influence of the sovereign (kenai ) and those who were
outside of it (kegai ). I use a comparative approach to reconstruct the official process of
moving from one category to the other – the kika process – and trace each step that a new arrival
in Yamato would have gone through in becoming a subject of the realm. I argue that the
continual implementation of this process, framed as a “transformation” effected by the civilizing
virtue of the ruler, was critical to early Japanese sovereigns’ claim to be the ruler of a
cosmopolitan realm and therefore to the legitimacy of the ruler. I also consider the
implementation of these laws as reflected in the official histories, which I argue further support
the conclusion that the Yamato sovereigns relied on the kika process to legitimize their authority.
Chapter 2 focuses on how the designation system – the system of noble titles, royally-
granted lineage names, and other types of names – was used to define and configure the subjects
of the realm. In this chapter, I combine three different approaches to the sources to trace the
process by which receiving the grant of a Yamato designation from the sovereign became a
second step in gaining membership in the realm, and an important marker of belonging for
immigrants and the descendants of immigrants. First, I read the official histories as records of
court policy on designation grants. Second, I use the official histories to create a database of over
ten thousand recorded changes in designations held by immigrants and people descended from
immigrants from the late seventh to the early ninth centuries. Analyzing this data allows me to
consider how eighth-century Yamato sovereigns implemented the policies recorded in the
official histories. Finally, I use close readings of petitions requesting new designations (found in

26
the official histories) to examine the range of strategies employed by subjects of the realm as
they sought to negotiate their place in the status systems of the court. I argue that there is little
evidence that the Yamato rulers used the designation system to keep immigrant officials from
accessing high status and prestigious offices at court.
In Chapter 3, I focus on the use of genealogies as a tool for configuring the people of the
realm and particularly on the Shinsen shōjiroku, the early Heian-period court genealogy that
divided the capital and kinai lineages into three categories: royal lines, deity lines, and lineages
of various foreigners. I begin by examining the earliest instances of using genealogy to express
ties between ruler and ruled, and then discuss the creation and maintenance of genealogical
records by the ritsuryō court. As the court granted thousands of designation changes over the
course of the eighth century, the importance of keeping these records increased. At the same
time, Yamato sovereigns became aware of the Tang court’s compilation of official genealogies,
and began initiating similar projects in Yamato. I discuss the development of the Shinsen
shōjiroku project in the context of the reigns of Kanmu, Heizei, and Saga, with attention to how
the project changed from Kanmu’s initial order to the completion of the text under Saga. I
examine the major theories on the motivations for compiling this text, and conclude that while a
combination of factors contributed to the project, it was not created to prevent officials who were
of foreign descent from achieving higher status at court. Even so, the creation of the “various
foreigner” category in the Shinsen shōjiroku is evidence of an emerging sense of permanent
identities. Where once any person could be “transformed” into a Yamato subject, the Shinsen
shōjiroku made it clear that even people who had already become subjects of the realm could
now be distinguished on the basis of their foreign ancestry.

27
The conclusion introduces the story of Gakkō, a Tang man who arrived in Yamato
expecting to be welcomed and employed as an official, only to be disappointed. His story serves
to introduce the policy changes of the mid-ninth century, when Yamato continued to uphold the
principles of the kika process but moved away from the actual integration of new people into the
realm. From this point on, Yamato sovereigns lost interest in the integration of new and foreign
subjects as a tool for legitimizing their authority. Even though trade and interaction with Silla
and other polities in the region was on the rise, and the records suggest that a significant number
of people were arriving in the realm, there was no wave of new people who went through the
kika process, no new round of designation grants to foreign subjects, and no new version of the
Shinsen shōjiroku. Understanding how Yamato rulers arrived at this point through 150 years of
incremental changes in policy and constant negotiation with their subjects is the central goal of
this dissertation.

28
Chapter 1: Submit and Be Transformed: Immigrants and Immigration in the Ritsuryō
Codes

The promulgation of the first codified laws and the compilation of the first register of the
population in the late seventh century marked an epochal shift in the development of Yamato
rulership. Never before had Yamato’s rulers aspired to create a record of each individual subject.
The creation of new categories of people was only one of the functions of the law codes, but it
was one fundamental to the conception of the realm (i.e. the lands and people belonging to the
ruler). This chapter examines the codified laws and legal commentaries of the seventh through
ninth centuries to identify the categories of people that Yamato rulers sought to create and
maintain, as well as the official process for moving between those categories. By considering
patterns in the implementation of these laws, it also offers insight into how Nara-period Yamato
sovereigns sought to legitimize their authority and strengthen.
The old idea that early Yamato law codes were simply copies of Tang codes that were
never suited to Yamato and therefore never fully applied has been thoroughly debunked.
51
The
combination of an archaeological boom in the latter half of the twentieth century and decades of
active work on the early law codes have allowed major advances in our understanding of how
regulations were applied, as well as the relationship between Yamato codes and earlier
continental and peninsular models. Scholars now recognize that there was no single source for
Yamato laws. Tang texts, including law codes, were important models and references for the
revision of existing codes and the compilation of further types of laws in the eighth and ninth
century, but the first codified laws in Yamato were not based directly on Tang models. Instead,

51
Sir George Sansom is the classic example of the argument that the Chinese codes were “unsuited” to Japan and
therefore of limited impact. See George Bailey Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334 (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1958), 108-109. His arguments about the ritsuryō were most notably refuted by Joan Piggott in
‘Great Kings and Ritsuryō Law,’ the sixth chapter in Emergence, 167-235.

29
the codes of the continental Northern and Southern dynasties, the Sui dynasty codes, and the
institutions of various Korean peninsula kingdoms are now seen as the most important sources
for the first Yamato codes.
52

The new scholarship on early Yamato legal history continues to be strongly comparative
in its approach.
53
By identifying gaps and shifts between continental and Yamato codes over
time, scholars have offered insight into both the differences between societies as well as the
process by which continental institutions and systems were selected and adapted to the needs of
Yamato rulers and society. The best recent work makes it clear that Yamato rulers and their
officials continued the process of active selection and adaptation throughout the Nara and well
into the Heian periods. Even as they increasingly sought to incorporate continental ideas and
institutions, Yamato laws were never simple or straightforward copies of Tang models.
54
As a
result, a comparative approach that takes the broader history of law in East Asia into account
continues to be critical to any analysis of the Yamato codes.
Such analyses have tended to view law codes and legal commentaries primarily as
administrative texts, directly related to the creation and maintenance of authority. As written
texts, law codes had the capacity to order the realm and hold it together by conveying the ruler’s

52
For an excellent overview of recent research on this subject in English, see Enomoto Junʼichi, “Japan’s Ritsuryō
System in the ‘East Asian World,’” Acta Asiatica, 99 (2010): 1–17.
53
The 1999 discovery of a new copy of the T'ien-sheng ling (Northern Song Statutes, ) that appended some
Tang statutes, acted as a catalyst for a new burst of comparative work. In Japanese, Furuse Natsuko has reviewed the
publication of the statutes, “Tōrei kenkyū no shinshiryō shutsugen Tian yi ge cang ming chao ben tian sheng ling
jiao zheng,” Eastern Book Review., no. 319 (September 2007): 20–22. In English, see Ōtsu Tōru, “Introduction:
Studies on the Ritsuryō System of Ancient Japan: In Comparison with the T’ang” and “The History of Research on
the Ancient Ritsuryō System and the Comparative Study of the Ritsuryō System in Recent Years” Acta Asiatica 99
(2010): iii–vi and 94-96; as well as Yoshie Akiko, Yōko Ijūin, and Joan R. Piggott, “Gender in the Administrative
Code, Part 1: Laws on Residence Units,” Teikyo Journal of History 28 (February 2013), 371-375.
54
For an overview of the most important recent work in the field, see the issue of Acta Asiatica edited by Ōtsu Tōru
as well as his edited volume in Japanese, Ritsuryō kenkyū nyūmon (Meicho kankōkai, 2011). For an excellent
example of work that stresses the complex relationship between Yamato codes and institutions and those of the
Tang, see Ōtaka Hirokazu, “Ritsuryō keiju no jidaisei – henkyō bōei taisei kara mita,” in Ritsuryō kenkyū nyūmon,
ed. Ōtsu Tōru (Tokyo: Meicho Kankōkai, 2011), 153–77.

30
will across time and space. The Yamato law codes certainly were administrative texts in this
sense. In this chapter, however, I take inspiration from Mark Edward Lewis, who has argued that
the most important function of early writing was not administrative but imaginative. As Lewis
puts it in his brilliant study of writing and authority in the Warring States period:
[T]he culminating role of writing in the period, and the key to its importance in imperial
China, was the creation of parallel realities within texts that claimed to depict the entire
world. Such worlds created in writing provided models for the unprecedented enterprise of
founding a world empire, and they underwrote the claims of authority of those who
composed, sponsored, or interpreted them.
55

Lewis argues that after the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 BCE, the textual realm triumphed over
administrative reality, and dynasty after dynasty came and went while the imagined empire
endured. In his recent book on the early Yamato court, Torquil Duthie argues that Yamato rulers
also aspired to this ideal of a universal realm. In his exploration of the “imperial imagination” of
seventh- and eighth-century Yamato rulers, Duthie focuses on the capacity of literary texts to
make what he calls the Yamato imperial order a cultural reality. While the majority of his work
centers on analyses of the Man’yōshū (Collection of Myriad Ages, , late eighth century),
Duthie states that it was the Yamato law codes that defined the ideal form of the realm as a
bureaucracy centered on a universal sovereign, and notes that the law codes were therefore the
“imperial text par excellence.”
56
I agree, and feel the Yamato law codes have been significantly
neglected in English language scholarship. The poetic anthologies and histories certainly
contributed to the project of imagining Yamato as an empire, but it was the law codes that
inscribed the imagined world that the sovereign and their officials sought to make a reality.

55
Mark Edward Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999),
4.
56
See Duthie, Man’yōshū, 1-5 and 107-122.

31
The first section of this chapter provides an overview of the development of codified law
on the continent, and then in Yamato, with attention to the ongoing development of Yamato laws
and legal expertise. The second considers the worldview embedded in the continental penal and
administrative codes, and discusses the categories of people that the codes defined. The next
section presents translations and analyses of clauses in the codes that defined the process of
becoming a Yamato subject. Finally, I consider the evidence for the application of these
regulations, and I argue that the pattern in the implementation reveals that Yamato sovereigns
relied heavily on new subjects to legitimize their authority and realm.
Codified Law on the Continent
Exactly when written laws and law codes first appeared on the continent is a matter of
some debate. In his study of the origins of Chinese law, Yongping Liu argues that the “period of
creativity” that saw the emergence of the basic framework of imperial law and the major legal
institutions began with the Shang (ca. 1600-1044 BCE) and continued through the Han dynasty
(206 BCE-220 CE).
57
The first textual reference to written laws appears in the Zuo zhuan (Zuo
Commentary, ), which describes laws inscribed on bronze vessels as early as 536 BCE.
58

The first reference to what may have been a legal code is the Fajing (Canon of Laws or Classic
of Laws, ), compiled in the fourth century BCE by a tutor to the Marquis Wen of Wei (r.

57
Liu argues that laws and systems of punishment originated in the Shang, while the Qin and Han dynasties laid the
foundations of imperial law and the penal system, and established most major legal institutions. His “period of
creativity” is followed by a “period of continuity” that stretches from the end of Han to the late Qing Dynasty (221-
1898 CE), and a “period of assimilation and change” that stretches from the late Qing to the present. See Yongping
Liu, Origins of Chinese Law: Penal and Administrative Law in Its Early Development (Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 2-3.
58
Herlee Creel has argued that there must have been “bodies of law having some system” from well before the 536
BCE bronze vessels. See Herrlee G. Creel, The Origins of Statecraft in China (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1970), 166.

32
424-387 BCE).
59
These accounts are intriguing in their suggestion of a long tradition of legal
thought on the continent, but given the absence of corroborating texts or artifacts, most scholars
date the emergence of written law codes to the Warring States period (471-221 BCE).
The earliest extant written laws date to the Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE). A cache of
approximately 1100 bamboo slips, discovered during the 1975 excavation of a Qin-period tomb
in Yunmeng county of Hubei Province, contain sections of a law code that scholars believe was
copied by the occupant of the tomb during the period between 240 and 217 BCE.
60
Liu argues
that while most scholars have understood the Qin code as primarily penal, there was an
“invisible line” between distinct penal and administrative sections of the Qin code.
61
Han law is
also primarily known through caches of bamboo and wooden documents that have been
uncovered through excavations beginning in the 1970s, although both the Shiji (Records of the
Grand Historian, ) and Han shu (Book of the Han, ) describe the compilation of legal
codes. Liu argues that there was an “intimately successional relationship” between the laws of
the Qin and Han, and that the Han inherited much of the earlier structures and systems
established by the Qin.
62
Without further documentary evidence, however, detailed comparisons
remain largely out of reach.
The first known set of combined codes and statutes (C. lüling, J. ritsuryō, ) were
compiled in the third century CE.
63
They are known as the Taishi lüling (Taishi Codes and

59
Wallace Johnson notes that this account appears only in the seventh-century History of Qin, and therefore should
be viewed with suspicion. See Wallace Johnson, The Tʻang Code. Volume I: Studies in East Asian Law (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 6-7.
60
These documents are often referred to as the “Yunmeng documents” or “Yunmeng legal documents.”
61
Liu, Origins, 213.
62
Liu is explicitly arguing against those who see the Han as the period in which law became “Confucianized.” See
Liu, Origins, 256. For an example of the “Confucianization” argument, see Charles Holcombe, The Genesis of East
Asia, 221 B.C.-A.D. 907 (Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 35-36.

33
Statutes, ), and were ordered in 268 CE by the ruler of the Western Jin dynasty (265-
318 CE).
64
The foundation of the Sui dynasty (581-618 CE) was marked by the promulgation of
new laws.
65
The most important sets of Sui laws were the 583 CE Kaihuang lü (Kaihuang Code,
) and the 582 CE Kaihuang ling (Kaihuang Statutes, ). According to Arthur
Wright, the Kaihuang lü represented a successful synthesis of northern and southern legal
traditions, using the Northern Qi code as its basis and blending it with elements of Wei, Qin,
Southern Qi, and Liang laws. Although the code and statutes exist only in fragments, Wright
argues that they were the direct model for later Tang legal compilations.
66

During the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), codified laws were understood to be the written
expression of the will of the sovereign, and the promulgation of a new set of laws was a key part
of the foundation of any dynasty.
67
A simplified set of laws, likely based on Han laws, was issued
during the first year of the dynasty. This basic set of laws was quickly revised and expanded, and
in 624 CE the first comprehensive set of codes and statutes of the Tang dynasty was
promulgated.
68
This was also the first set of codified laws to include detailed regulations that
covered the routinization of various official processes and rites, known as ordinances (C. shih
). The promulgation of new or revised sets of laws was an important way for individual rulers

63
Throughout the following discussion of continental laws, I follow the translations of “code,” “statutes,”
“regulations,” and “ordinances” for (lü), (ling), (ko), and (shih), found in Wallace Johnson’s The
T’ang Code. See Johnson, The T’ang Code, 5~9. These translations are relatively standard in English-language
scholarship on Chinese history but differ from the standard translations of the same characters in scholarship on
Japan. The translations commonly used for the same terms in the Japanese are discussed below.
64
Yoshie et al., “Gender in the Administrative Code, Part 1,” 379.
65
As Arthur Wright puts it in his chapter on the Sui dynasty in the Cambridge History of China: “No dynast with
ambitions for permanence of his house came to the throne in China without taking steps towards the re-codification
of the laws and ordinances.” See Arthur F. Wright, “The Sui Dynasty (581–617),” In The Cambridge History of
China: Volume 3, Sui and T’ang China, 589-906 AD, Part One, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979),
103.
66
Wright, “The Sui Dynasty,” 103-105.
67
Mark Edward Lewis, China’ s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2009), 50.
68
See Wright, “The Sui Dynasty,” 178.

34
to assert their legitimacy and solidify their legacies. Tang Taizong (r. 626-649 CE), a ruler that
Howard Wechsler describes as “constantly preoccupied” with penal law and punishments,
ordered a comprehensive revision of all existing laws, and the set of laws he promulgated in 637
CE was the first to include regulations (C. ko ) in addition to the existing code, statutes, and
ordinances.
69
These four types of laws form the classic East Asian legal system. Tang Gaozong
(r. 649-683 CE) also issued a comprehensive revision of the code in 651 CE, known as the Yung-
hui lü (Yung-hui Code, ), and added a detailed legal commentary to the penal code in 653
CE.
70
Each of these versions of the code made significant changes, eliminating irrelevant laws
and incorporating new policies. The last full revision of the legal system took place under Tang
Xuanzong (r. 712-756 CE) and was promulgated in 737 CE. This set of laws is commonly
known by the era year in which it was promulgated, the twenty-fifth year of the Kaiyuan era, and
is considered the fullest expression of Tang law. It is also considered the version of the Tang
legal system that had the greatest impact on later Yamato law.
71

Codified Law in Yamato
We do not have a complete picture of when and how continental codes arrived in
Yamato, nor do we know exactly when the first codified laws were created. The preface of the
Heian-period Kōnin kyaku shiki (Kōnin Regulations and Protocols, , 830 CE) gives the
Seventeen Articles (Jūshichijō, ) issued during Suiko’s reign in 604 CE as the beginning

69
The regulations incorporated legislation that had been issued in over 3000 separate edicts and decrees since 618
CE. See Howard J. Wechsler, “T’ai-Tsung (Reign 626–49) the Consolidator,” in The Cambridge History of China:
Volume 3, 206.
70
The annotated code is known as the Yung-hui lü-shu (Commentary on the Yung-hui Code, ).
71
Lewis gives the year of Taizong’s code as 725 CE, but this must be a mistake in the reference to the Kaiyuan 25
code of 737 CE. See Lewis, 51. The Kaiyuan 25 included a 12-volume code, 30 volumes of statutes, 10 volumes of
regulations, and 10 volumes of regulations, as well as 30 volumes of commentary. See Denis C. Twitchett, “Hsüan-
Tsung (Reign 712–56),” in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 3, 414-415.

35
of codified law in Yamato.
72
While these articles can certainly be seen as the beginning of the
process out of which the first codified laws developed, they were not themselves codified laws.
Joan Piggott calls them “the earliest statement of propriety (li)” in Yamato, and describes how
the articulation of the cosmic, natural, and courtly orders in the articles transformed Suiko’s
court into an exemplary center.
73
Inoue Mitsusada also saw the articles as distinct from later
codified laws, arguing that they were modeled on the 285 CE edict issued by Emperor Wu of the
Jin Dynasty and the 544 CE edict of six articles issued by Emperor Wen of the Western Wei,
rather than later codes.
74
As Piggott notes, the Seventeen Articles were issued just as Yamato was
opening diplomatic relations with the Sui dynasty, and they were an important part of Suiko’s
efforts to be regarded as an equal to the rulers of continental empires.
The first law code listed in the Kōnin preface is the Ōmi ryō (Ōmi Administrative Code,
), said to have been promulgated under Tenji ( , r. 661-671) in 668 CE.
75
Major legal
scholars such as Sakamoto Tarō, Aoki Kazuo, and Inoue Mitsusada have all contributed to the
debate over the reliability of accounts related to the Ōmi administrative code in the Nihon shoki,
with Inoue and Sakamoto arguing that a code likely was compiled around this time, and Aoki
disagreeing. In recent years, Aoki’s argument that the Ōmi code was an invention of Heian-

72
The seventeen articles are commonly referred to as the “Seventeen Article Constitution” but I follow Piggott’s
translation here. These articles are often associated with Prince Umayado, more commonly known as Prince
Shōtoku. For a discussion and translation of the Yamato legal timeline in the Kōnin kyakushiki, see Enomoto
Junʼichi, “Japan’s Ritsuryō System,” 3-4.
73
Piggott, Emergence, 87-92.
74
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 745-752.
75
In the previous section on Tang laws, the term “code” was used to refer to the penal codes (C. lü, ), but in the
following section on Yamato laws, I use penal code, administrative code, regulations, and protocols for (ritsu),
(ryō), (kyaku), and (shiki). References to the “codes” in discussions of Yamato law should be understood to
mean the penal and administrative codes.

36
period Tenji-line sovereigns who wanted to establish his reign as the starting point of the ritsuryō
has become the dominant view.
76

The earliest Yamato legal code for which there is corroborating evidence is the Asuka
kiyomihara ryō (Asuka Kiyomihara Administrative Code, ) of 689 CE. According
to the Nihon shoki, Tenmu ( , r. 673-686) ordered the revision of the laws and creation of
administrative and penal codes in the year 681 CE. The Nihon shoki goes on to record the
distribution of twenty-two chapters of an administrative code – but no penal code – to the
officials of the realm in 689 CE under Jitō ( , r. 690-697).
77
No portion of the Kiyomihara
codes is extant today, and for many years the existence of this code was in dispute. In 2012,
however, a wooden document discovered at the Kokubunji Matsumoto archaeological site in
Fukuoka provided new evidence and strengthened the case for the existence of the Kiyomihara
code. According to the Nihon shoki, one of the key processes established by the code was the
regular creation of registers of the population, and the Kōin-year register (Kōin nenjaku ) of 690 CE, was the first of these registers.
78
Scholars believe a wood document found in
Fukuoka represents corrections to a household register compiled after the Kōin-year register.
79

With this confirmation, scholars have come to generally accept that an administrative code was
compiled and promulgated during the reigns of Tenmu and Jitō.

76
Aoki Kazuo, “Kiyomihara-ryō to kodai kanryōsei” (1954), repr. in id., Nihon ritsuryō kokka ronkō (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1992), 77-86. Inoue Mitsusada outlines the three major views on the Ōmi code in 1976, including
Aoki’s, and makes a case for its existence. See Inoue, Ritsuryō, 756-757. For an accessible overview of the ritsuryō
and the Aoki’s prevailing view of the Ōmi Code, see Ōtsu Tōru, Ritsuryō to wa nanika, (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppan,
2013) 11-12.
77
NHSK II:498-499 [Jitō 3 (689) 6/29]. For English, see Aston, Nihongi, II:393. See Ōtsu’s overview in
Mizubayashi Takeshi et al., eds., Hōshakaishi, 1st ed., Shintaikei Nihonshi 2 (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2001),
21-23.
78
It was the first of the regularly compiled registers, but not the first residence-unit register. The first realm-wide
register was created in 670 CE and is known as the Kōgo-year register (Kōgō nenjaku ).
79
Yoshie et al. “Gender in the Administrative Code, Part I,” 364.

37
New research has changed the narrative on the origins of the early Yamato legal codes. For
many years, scholars argued that the Yamato codes were based on the codes of the Sui and Tang
dynasties, and the focus of their analysis was on identifying which Tang code served as the
model for the early Yamato codes. In a direct challenge to these studies, Enomoto Jun’ichi has
recently argued that a close examination of the institutions of the central government in the
reigns of Tenji and Tenmu reveals almost no evidence of the influence of the Tang codes or
statutes. Noting that there were no recorded envoys to the continent between the years 668 and
702 CE, Enomoto argues that the institutions and processes established by the Kiyomihara codes
reflect a mix of influences from pre-Tang neighbors, including the Korean peninsula polities, the
continental Northern and Southern Dynasties, and the Sui. The picture that Enomoto paints is of
Yamato officials who were able to selectively adopt institutions from a range of polities, and
who were not blindly copying Tang models and applying them clumsily to a society that they
never suited.
80

The first full set of penal and administrative codes in Yamato were those implemented
during Monmu’s reign, in the Taihō era. The compilation of these codes is thought to have begun
around the time of Monmu’s accession to the throne in 697 CE. According to entries in the
official court record known as the Shoku Nihongi, once the eleven chapters of the administrative
code were completed in 700 CE, the compilers moved on to create a six-chapter penal code. In
701 CE, the first year of the Taihō era, rewards were given to the compilers of these codes, and
the names of official posts and ranks were revised per the new codes, suggesting that the
compilation process had come to an end. The codes were distributed to officials of the various

80
Enomoto, “Japan’s Ritsuryō System,” 1–17.

38
provinces the following year, and this act marked the promulgation of the new laws across the
realm.
81

The compilation of a penal code in the Taihō era was made possible by the arrival of a
continental code that could serve as a model, the Yung-hui lü, and the presence of people capable
of compiling a penal code.
82
Fujiwara no Fuhito ( , 659-720 CE) and Prince Osakabe
( , ?-705 CE) led the compilation project, and Shoku Nihongi records indicate that the
compilation team included at least two people – Haji no Oi and Shirai no Hone – who had
recently returned by way of Silla from studying abroad in the Tang empire.
83
In his classic 1976
work, Inoue argued that for the Taihō and earlier codes, those recruited into the compilation
projects were people who had general knowledge of Tang culture because they had come from
abroad or had studied abroad. In contrast, he argued that the recruitment for the team that
compiled the later Yōrō codes in the 720s focused on people who had specialized legal
knowledge.
84

How and why Yamato imported and implemented continental-style codes has recently
been the subject of important new scholarship. In the 1960s, Nishijima Sadao famously argued
that the ritsuryō system was one of four defining elements of the “ancient East Asian world” ( ). This world, according to Nishijima, was structured by an “investiture system”
(sakuhō taisei ) established by the Han monarchs and maintained by later continental

81
SKNG I: 46-49 [Taihō 1 (701) 8/8 and 8/21]. Ōtaka, “Ritsuryō keiju no jidaisei,” 153–177. For an overview of
pre-1976 debates on the timing of the compilation and promulgation of the Taihō codes, see Inoue, Ritsuryō, 752-
767. For the distribution of the codes see SKNG I:60-61 [Taihō 2 (702) 10/14].
82
Enomoto, “Japan’s Ritsuryō System,” 12. It is worth noting that there is no extant copy of the Taihō penal code,
nor is it quoted in any later texts, making it impossible to know what it contained or how it compared to either
continental models or later Yamato codes.
83
For the return of Haji no Oi ( ) and Shirai no Hone ( ) in 684 CE, see NHSK II:467 [Tenmu 13
(686) 12/6]. For English see Aston, Nihongi, II:367. For the order to compile the Taihō codes, see SKNG I:28-29
[Taihō 1 (701) 6/17].
84
The Yōrō codes were not promulgated until 757 CE. Inoue, Ritsuryō, 778-790.

39
dynasties. In the investiture model, the universal sovereign of the central realm (the Han and the
Tang being the primary examples) had the power to recognize and invest kings in various
frontier polities like Yamato, and these relationships facilitated the transfer of knowledge and
skilled individuals around the region. In Nishijima’s model, Yamato acquired continental-style
legal codes and the knowledge of how to implement them through its investiture relationship
with the Tang. Enomoto has now flipped this argument on its head, arguing that it was precisely
because Yamato did not have an investiture relationship with the Tang that it was able to
systematically implement legal codes on the continental model. He points to the example of
Silla, where an investiture relationship with the Tang was in place but the adoption of Tang
institutions remained fragmentary. Enomoto argues that because of the relationship, Silla
required permission from the Tang to implement Tang institutions, while Yamato, which had no
such relationship, could import, adapt, and implement legal codes with impunity.
85
In this sense,
we should see Yamato’s promulgation of administrative and penal law codes as a declaration of
independence from the Tang, rather than a reflection of the intimate relationship between the two
polities.
86

The Taihō penal and administrative codes remained in effect for over 50 years, and thus are
of great significance for understanding the early Yamato realm. Whether they were primarily a
codification of existing practice or an aspirational vision for a new realm remains a point of
debate, but in either case they represented a major step in the adoption and adaptation of
continental systems and institutions for the Yamato realm.
87
Unfortunately, only the

85
Enomoto, “Japan’s Ritsuryō System,” 14.
86
Piggott made the same point, calling these laws “Yamato’s declaration of independence within the China Sea
interaction sphere,” in Emergence, 176.
87
Recent research makes it clear that this process of adapting and implementing Tang systems and institutions was
not limited to the compilation of law codes. For a case study on Tang institutions that were not included in the Taihō
codes but were later adopted in response to new and unexpected circumstances that arose after the compilation of
those codes, see Ōtaka on the eighth-century frontier defense system in “Ritsuryō keiju no jidaisei,” 153–77.

40
administrative code is extant as fragments quoted in a later legal commentary, and thus we know
almost nothing of the penal code and our understanding of the contents of the administrative
code is relatively limited. What we do know is based on reconstructions from these quotations
and inferences from other texts such as the official histories and the later Yōrō penal and
administrative codes.
88
Because we have so little of the Taihō codes, most analysis of early
Yamato laws is based on the Yōrō codes.
The compilation of the Yōrō penal and administrative codes reportedly began in 718 CE,
during the reign of Genshō Tennō ( , r. 715-723 CE), but they were not promulgated until
757 CE, during the reign of Kōken Tennō ( , r. 749-758 CE).
89
Sakamoto Tarō argued that
although there were official reasons for compiling a new code, the compilation of these new
codes was driven by the private interests of Fujiwara no Fuhito, who sought prestige and various
benefits for his family. He went on to say that Fuhito’s death in 720 CE was a major factor in the
late implementation of the Yōrō codes, and that it took until 757 CE for Fuhito’s grandson,
Fujiwara no Nakamaro ( , 706-764 CE), to use his position and influence at court to
get the Yōrō code promulgated. More recent scholars, including Inoue, have criticized
Sakamoto’s approach, arguing that he over-emphasized Fuhito’s role as a private individual and
that Sakamoto did not give sufficient consideration to the position of the Yōrō codes in a longer
history of compiling law codes.
90
In this vein, Rikō Mitsuo has suggested that the creation of the

88
For more detail on the legal commentary used to reconstruct the Taiho codes, known as the Koki commentary, see
below and in Appendix 2.
89
There has been a long debate over the dates for the completion of the Yōrō codes. Some see 718 CE as the year in
which they were completed, but I follow Enomoto Jun’ichi in taking 718 CE as the year during which compilation
began. Enomoto, “Japan’s Ritsuryō System,” 4.
90
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 767-777.

41
Yōrō codes was tied to preparations for the ascension of then Prince Obito, who would take the
throne in 724 CE as Shōmu Tennō ( , r. 724-749 CE).
The Yōrō codes consisted of a ten-chapter penal code and a thirty-chapter administrative
code. Of the ten chapters of the penal code, five are extant in manuscript form or have been
reconstructed from fragments quoted in other texts, and the majority of the thirty chapters of the
administrative code have been reconstructed from later legal commentaries and fragments quoted
in other texts.
91
At the time that Inoue published his authoritative annotated version of the
ritsuryō in 1976, the standard view of the Yōrō codes was that they represented only minor edits
and improvements to the Taihō codes.
92
Takikawa Masajirō tallied seven points of difference
between the Taihō and Yōrō penal codes, and 127 points of difference between the Taihō and
Yōrō administrative codes, and argued that the majority of the changes were corrections to
characters and changes to names, with a few changes that made the Tang systems and institutions
more suitable for Yamato. Rikō Mitsuo similarly argued that the Yōrō compilation process was
focused on cleaning up the Taihō codes, and that there was less difference between the Taihō and
Yōrō codes than there was between the Taihō and the Tang codes.
93
In contrast, Ōtsu Tōru’s
recent survey of ritsuryō scholarship, published in 2011, stresses that there were significant
differences between the Taihō and Yōrō codes. He notes that both the number of chapters and
the order of the chapters differ, which is one clear indication, he argues, that the scope of the
revisions in the Yōrō code was greater than previously suggested.
94

91
The extant chapters are 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8, which contain sections on crime and punishment, state security,
malfeasance, and violent crimes. The Laws on Medical Practices (igaku ryō ) and the Laws on Official
Storehouses (sōko ryō ) are extant only as fragments. The primary legal commentaries from which the Yōrō
code has been reconstructed are the Ryō no Gige and the Ryō no Shūge, both discussed below.
92
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 743-744.
93
These arguments are summarized in Inoue, Ritsuryō, 767-777.
94
Ōtsu, Ritsuryōsei kenkyū nyūmon, 218.

42
The Yōrō codes were the last set of complete penal and administrative codes promulgated
in Yamato, but they by no means marked the end of the process of compiling laws. In 769 CE, a
team led by the Kibi no Makibi ( , 695-775 CE) and Yamato no Sukune Nagaoka ( , 689-769 CE) compiled a set of 24 revisions to the Yōrō codes, commonly known as the
Revised Penal and Administrative Codes (Santei or Sakutei ritsuryō ). The revisions
focused on resolving contradictions and correcting problematic wordings. Yamato no Nagaoka
was an obvious choice for the project, as he had been involved in the compilation of the Yōrō
codes. Kibi no Makibi was not only the Minister of the Right, but also a long-time trusted
advisor of Shōmu’s daughter and successor, who ruled first as Kōken, and later as Shōtoku
Tennō ( , r. 764-770). He had repeatedly traveled as an envoy to the Tang court, where he
had the opportunity to study Tang institutions and to gather a wide range of important texts to
bring back to Yamato. Among the texts he brought back with him were several major manuals of
Tang rites, which became important references in the Heian period.
95
His expertise was thus also
highly relevant to this project. It is not clear exactly what kept the text from being issued for
twenty years, but the records show that Kanmu Tennō ( , r. 781-806 CE) issued an order
implementing them in 791 CE.
96
Ōtsu Tōru has suggested that Kanmu was particularly interested
in law as a source of authority, in part because his reign represented a shift from the Tenmu to
the Tenji line.
97
A similar text known as the Revised Administrative Code and Regulations

95
His first journey was with the monk Genshō in 717 CE, and he returned in 735 CE with a copy of the Tang Rites
(C. Tangli J. Tōrei ) among other texts. In 752 CE, he once again set out for the Tang court, this time returning
in 754 CE with a copy of the Rites of the Great Tang during the Kaiyuan Period (C. Da-Tang kaiyuan li, J. Daitō
kaigen rei ). Ōtsu, Ritsuryō to wa, 60. For more on the volumes Kibi no Makibi brought back with him
and their impact, see Miyata Toshihiko, Kibi no Makibi, 3rd ed. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2013) 33-45.
96
SKNG V: 494-495 [Enryaku 10 (791) 3/6].
97
Ōtsu, “Kyakushiki no seiritsu to sekkanki no hō,” in Hōshakaishi, ed. Mizubayashi Takeshi, et al., (Tokyo:
Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2001), 70 and Ritsuryō to wa, 77.

43
(Santei or Sakutei ryōkyaku ), was reportedly compiled by Prince Miwa ( , 737-
806 CE) and Tachibana no Irii ( , ?-800 CE) and promulgated in 797 CE.
98
These
revisions should be understood as important markers of the sovereign’s ongoing interest in and
commitment to the ritsuryō system, but the records also indicate that the revisions caused more
confusion than they resolved, which is presumably why Saga Tennō ( , r.809-823) issued an
order abolishing the Santei ritsuryō in 812 CE.
99
These were the last revisions made directly to
the Yōrō penal and administrative codes, and from this point, the development of Yamato law
took place largely through the compilation of regulations (kyaku ) and protocols (shiki ), and
through the creation and compilation of legal commentaries.
Early Heian period compilation of compendia of regulations and protocols represented
not only the ongoing development of Yamato law, but also, with their completion, the first time
that Yamato could be said to have created a complete legal system with all of the four types of
laws found in continental models.
100
Regulations – kyaku – were originally issued on an ad hoc
basis as individual orders or decrees that emended or elaborated on existing laws.
101
They could
make significant changes to core ritsuryō institutions. To give one well-known example, the 743
CE order known as the Law on Permanent Private Ownership of Newly Opened Rice Fields
(Konden einen shizai hō ) modified an earlier royal order of 723 CE that had

98
Unfortunately, neither the Santei ritsuryō nor the Santei ryōkyaku are extant. The Santei ryōkyaku is said to have
consisted of 45 clauses. The section of the Nihon kōki that recorded the promulgation of the text is not extant, but the
record of its promulgation is preserved in the Ruiju kokushi. See Ruiju kokushi, SZKT 6:98 [797/6/9].
99
Nihon kōki, SZKT 3:114 [Kōnin 3 (812) 5/26]. There is also a new annotated edition of the Nihon kōki edited by.
See Kuroita Nobuo et al, eds., Nihon kōki, Yakuchū Nihon shiryō (T okyo: Shūeisha, 2003), 610-611.
100
Earlier scholarship tended to see the promulgation of the Taihō and Yōrō codes as the creation of the ritsuryō
system in Yamato, but recent scholarship has shifted to emphasize the ongoing process of developing laws and the
idea that the Yamato system was incomplete until the early Heian period. See Enomoto, “Japan’s Ritsuryō System,”
5.
101
My translations of the names for the four types of law follow those in Yoshie et al., “Gender in the Administrative
Code.” Another common English translation for kyaku is “supplementary legislation.”

44
granted control of newly opened fields for three generations, and made it possible for those who
opened new fields to have permanent ownership of those fields. This change initiated a system of
private land ownership.
102
Later, compilations of regulations were created by collecting orders
and edicts from the various offices of the court, reviewing them, and selecting those that were
relevant and operative for inclusion. On the other hand, protocols codified and routinized the
processes of the government, and generally included more detail than the administrative codes
and regulations. Unlike the regulations, protocols were developed by various court units over
time, making it more difficult to track their development.
Compendia of regulations and protocols were compiled in three different eras – Kōnin
(810-824 CE), Jōgan (859-877 CE), and Engi (901-923 CE). The first project was initiated
during Kanmu’s reign but then seems to have lapsed after his death. Saga Tennō revived the
project, appointing Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu ( , 775-826 CE) to supervise, and the Kōnin
kyaku shiki were completed and presented to the throne in 820 CE. It consisted of ten volumes of
regulations and forty volumes of protocols, which were promulgated in 830 CE. Revisions and
corrections were made to the original text, and they were re-issued in 840 CE.
103
Then, during the
Jōgan era (859-877 CE), Fujiwara no Yoshimi ( , 813-867 CE) and Fujiwara no
Yoshifusa ( , 804-872 CE) proposed the compilation of a new set of regulations and

102
The law specified that new fields had to have new irrigation systems, and the grants had to be approved by
provincial governors. The law particularly encouraged high-ranking courtiers to open new fields by specifying that
those of higher rank could obtain larger amounts of land through this law. Yoshida Takashi’s analysis of the
differences between the different versions of the order in the Shoku Nihongi, Kōnin kyaku, and the Ruijū sandai
kyaku demonstrated that the compilers of collections of regulations omitted sections of the law that were inoperative
at the time of compilation. See Ritsuryō kokka to kodai no shakai, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1983), 239-288.
For a basic and readable overview of the differences between the three different versions of the order, see Lecture 19
in Murakami Kazuhiro et al., eds., Shiryō de yomu Nihon hōshi (Tokyo: Hōritsu bunkasha, 2016), 223-225.
103
Ōtsu, “Kyakushiki no seiritsu,” 70-71. The Kōnin shiki here is not to be confused with a lecture on the Nihon
shoki that was given in the Kōnin era, also known as the Kōnin shiki (“Kōnin private writings” or “Kōnin lecture
notes” ).

45
protocols. The result was the Jōgan kyaku (Jōgan Regulations ), which was presented and
promulgated in 869 CE, and the Jōgan shiki (Jōgan Protocols, ) followed in 871 CE.
104

The final major set of regulations and protocols were those of the Engi era. The Engi kyaku (Engi
Regulations, ) were submitted in 907 CE and promulgated the following year. The
completion of the Engi shiki (Engi Protocols, ) was delayed due to the death of several of
the compilers, but a series of drafts between 923 CE and 931 CE suggests that Daigo Tennō ( , r. 897-930 CE) was actively reviewing the text and giving input. The Engi shiki were
presented to the throne in 927 CE by Fujiwara no Tadahira ( , 880-949 CE), but they
were not promulgated until after the death of Murakami Tennō ( , 946-967 CE) in 967 CE.
105

Of these texts, the Engi shiki is the only text that is extant almost in its entirety. As for the
regulations, our main source is a later eleventh-century text known as the Ruijū sandai kyaku
(Categorized Regulations of the Three Eras, ), which combined the regulations of
the three earlier collections of regulations and reorganized them into thematic categories, making
them more accessible for officials who needed to refer to them.
106

The compilation of the regulations and protocols in Heian times through the tenth century
not only completed the classical ritsuryō legal system in Yamato, but also marked a major new
phase in the development of the Yamato realm. The beginning of this shift can be traced to

104
Ibid, 72.
105
Ibid, 73.
106
Although the Honchō shoseki mokuroku ( ) tells us that there were 30 volumes of the Ruijū sandai
kyaku, the extant versions of the text include manuscripts with 12 volumes and manuscripts with 20 volumes. There
is no extant complete version of the text. For an overview (in French) of the manuscripts and current theories on the
order of volumes in the original text, see the introduction in Francine Hérail, Recueil de Décrets de Trois Eres
Methodiquement Classés, Livres 8 a 20 (Genève: Droz, 2008), 1-10; and “Dans la législation japonaise des VIIIe et
IXe siècles. D’après le Ruijû sandai kyaku (Décrets de trois ères méthodiquement classés),” Ebisu –Études
Japonaises 38, no. 1 (2007): 105–30. There is also an entry in French on the text by Charlotte von Verschuer in the
Dictionary of Sources of Classical Japan (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Japonaises; De
Boccard, 2006) 313-314.

46
Kanmu’s reign, and his decision to abolish the conscription of commoners in 792 CE. Enomoto
states, “Thereafter various institutions such as the system of household organization, the land-
distribution system, and the taxation system made up of the three basic taxes of a tax in grain, tax
in kind, and corvée exemption tax gradually fell into decline…”
107
According to Enomoto, as
these core systems of the Taihō and Yōrō codes became less relevant, successive compilations of
regulations and protocols allowed sovereigns and their officials to clarify and systematize a wide
range of customs and practices that existed outside of the penal and administrative codes. The
regulations and protocols also reflected the increasing incorporation and formalization of Tang-
style rites in Yamato, drawing on the expertise of those who had traveled to the Tang, and on
texts imported by Kibi no Makibi and others. Scholars generally agree in seeing the Jōgan era,
from 859 to 877 CE, as a critical turning point in the relationship between the sovereign and the
law. The preface to the Jōgan Regulations suggests that the regulations would apply to both
sovereign and subjects alike. Up to this point, the Yamato ritsuryō had been marked by the lack
of laws and regulations directly related to the sovereign, but the Jōgan preface hint that the tennō
was understood to be subject to these new laws is confirmed by the inclusion of new regulations
on the tennō’s dress.
108
In short, Ōtsu argues that the later collections of regulations and protocols
reveal new forms of legitimacy and authority taking shape during the early Heian period.
Furthermore, the development of Yamato law was supported by the concurrent
development of the study of law in the official university system. Over the course of the eighth
century, a group of legal specialists who could not only participate in the compilation of law
codes but also advise on the interpretation and the implementation of various laws took shape.
Early references to legal scholars are somewhat sparse – a 728 CE order addressed the number

107
Enomoto, “Japan’s Ritsuryō System,” 16.
108
Ōtsu, “Kyakushiki no seiritsu,” 72-73.

47
and rank of the doctors of penal law (ritsugaku hakase ), specifying that there would be
two such experts supported by three lecturers.
109
By 730 CE it is clear that there was a course for
the study of law at the university that included both doctors of penal law and law students –
literally, students of the “bright” or “civilized” law (myōbō ). In the mid-eighth century,
those who taught law at the university were known as doctors of the law (myōbō hakase ), and the official chronicles suggest that legal literacy was an increasingly essential
qualification for all officials. In a 759 CE order, Junnin Tennō ( r. 758-764) discussed the
proper selection of officials, lambasted minsters who had been negligent in guiding and
instructing the officials they supervise, and stated that all officials must be familiar with the four
types of laws.
110
The study of the law was initially considered to be for those of lower status than
the study of the classics (myōkyō ), but over time, the status of legal studies increased. For
example, an order from 791 CE stipulating the number of fields to be granted to various types of
scholars for their support stated that while the doctors of the law originally received three chō
( ) of rice fields, they would in the future receive four, the same number as scholars of the
classics, literature, and history.
111
From the mid-eighth century onwards, these scholars were
constantly working to clarify and interpret the various Yamato laws.

109
See Ruijū sandai kyaku in SZKT 25:158 [Jinki 5/7/21]. For an annotated translation into French, see Francine
Hérail, Recueil de Décrets de Trois Eres Methodiquement Classés, Livres 1 a 7: Traduction Commentée du Ruiju
Sandai Kyaku (Geneve: Droz, 2011), 350-351.
110
SKNG III:320-323 [Tenpyō hōji 3 (759) 6/22] and Ruijū sandai kyaku in SZKT 25:530-531 [Tenpyō hōji 3 (759)
6/27]. For an annotated translation into French, see Hérail, Livres 8 à 20, 480-482. Ōtsu notes that this policy was
previously understood as being of limited and temporary impact because it was put into place by Fujiwara no
Nakamaro during his period of ascendency (roughly 758-764 CE), which ended only a few years later. However, the
order is included in the Kōnin Regulations, and Denda Ifumi has shown that even after Nakamaro’s fall, it remained
an important and operative policy for ritsuryō officials. See Ōtsu, “Kyakushiki no seiritsu,” 77-78.
111
A chō was a unit used to measure area, and was equal to approximately 2.94 acres. Ruijū sandai kyaku in SZKT
25: 473-481 [Enryaku 10 (791) 2/18]. For the annotated French translation, see Hérail, Livres 8 a 20, 361-369.

48
As a result, over the course of the eighth and ninth centuries, a number of prominent legal
scholars wrote commentaries on the Taihō and Yōrō codes. Many of these commentaries were
collected in a text known as the Ryō no shūge (Collected Commentaries on the Administrative
Code, ). Compiled by Koremune no Ason Naomoto ( , ?-?) during the
Jōgan era and completed in or before 868 CE, the text incorporates decades of debate over the
interpretation and application of both the Taihō and Yōrō codes. The Ryō no Shūge was neither a
court-ordered compilation nor itself a commentary on the administrative codes – the exact
purpose for which it was created is unclear, as the extant text does not include a preface.
Naomoto, who was appointed a doctor of law, carefully studied and selected the work of many
previous legal scholars but did not give any new interpretations of his own.
112
It is not clear
exactly how many volumes were in the original text (later sources refer to as many as fifty), but
thirty-five are extant today.
One of the most important commentaries cited in the Ryō no shūge is an earlier text
known as the Ryō no gige (Commentary on the Administrative Code, ). The Ryō no gige
is unique in that it is the only official commentary on the Yōrō administrative code – its
compilation was ordered by the monarch and the completed commentary was promulgated,
giving its interpretations the force of law. Compilation of the text began in 826 CE, when a
doctor of the law named Nukata no Imatari , ?-? submitted a report saying that there
were many differing interpretations of the Yōrō administrative codes and that it was necessary to
correct any misinterpretations and make decisions on the interpretation and application of
various laws. The compilers of the text included the Minister of the Right, Kiyohara no Natsuno
, 782-837 , doctors of the law like Okihara no Miniku and Sanuki no Naganao, and

112
For a fuller discussion of the Ryō no shūge and its commentaries, see Appendix 2.

49
literary scholars like Sugano no Kiyokimi and Ono no Takamura. The ten-volume commentary,
whose format followed that of the Yōrō administrative code, was completed and presented to the
throne in the twelfth month of 833 CE, and then promulgated in an order dated to the twelfth
month of the following year.
113
There are six extant manuscript versions of the text and two
printed editions; and the text is also extant in quotations in the Ryō no shūge, where it is cited
first in any section of commentary (unless there was no commentary in the Ryō no gige).
114

Scholars generally agree that the definitions and interpretations in the Ryō no gige likely
represent what would have been considered a moderate and measured approach, representative
of the legal knowledge and practices of the early ninth century.
There are six other major commentaries commonly cited in the Ryō no shūge – one on the
Taihō codes, and five on the Yōrō codes. The Koki ( ) is both the oldest legal commentary
and the only known commentary on the Taihō codes.
115
Nearly everything known about the
Taihō administrative code is based on fragments quoted in the Koki. The generally accepted date
of compilation is in or around 738 CE, but there is no clear consensus on who compiled the
text.
116
The Koki tends towards concrete and straightforward interpretations, with a wealth of
specific examples and citations of then-current practice.
The five commentaries on the Yōrō code in the Ryō no Shūge begin with the Ryō shaku
( ), likely compiled between 787 CE and 791 CE, possibly by a member of the Iyobe

113
These orders cannot be found in the official chronicles, but they are extant in Ryō no gige manuscripts. The full
texts of the 826 CE (Tenchō 3.10.5), 833 CE (Tenchō 10.12.15), and 834 CE (Jōwa 1.12.18) orders can be found in
the SZKT edition of the Ryō no gige. See Ryō no gige, SZKT 22:346-350.
114
For more on the manuscript and printed versions of the Ryō no gige, see the introduction to the Ryō no gige in
SZKT 22: 1-6. See also the brief but useful entry in the Kokushi daijiten s.v. “ ” (entry by Hayakawa
Shōhachi), accessed via Japan Knowledge.
115
We know that other commentaries on the Taihō codes existed because the Koki cites alternate theories in its
analysis (marked by the phrase “ ”) but none of these commentaries are extant.
116
For a discussion of the date of the Koki, see Takikawa Masajirō, Nihon hōseishi kenkyū (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1941),
583-584 and Inoue, Ritsuryō, 780.

50
royally-recognized lineage whose members had participated in the compilation of the Taihō
code. The Ryō shaku is marked by references to Chinese classics in its discussion of the
etymology and interpretation of terms. Second, the Atoki ( ) also comments on the entire
Yōrō administrative code. It was likely compiled between 787 CE and 793 CE, sometime after
the Ryō shaku was completed. Scholars have suggested that the title of the text is derived from
the name of the lineage to which the compiler belonged – the Ato lineage, known as active
intellectuals of the time.
117
The Atoki commentary is considered relatively simple and matter-of-
fact. In contrast, the structure, date, and authorship of the Anaki ( ), the third Yōrō
commentary, has long been debated. The leading theory today is that there was an “original”
Anaki complied in the Enryaku era (782-806 CE) to which commentary and citations were added
by members of the Anō lineage, a prominent family known for their legal scholarship. This text
is marked by detailed comments and long, often tedious, debates. The fourth Yōrō commentary,
the Sanki ( ), addresses only parts of the Yōrō code and was likely compiled either by a
doctor of law named Sanuki no Naganao, or by a group of Sanuki legal scholars sometime
between the late eighth century and early ninth. And fifth and finally there are the shuki ( ),
or “notes in vermillion.”
118
These were annotations written in vermillion ink on the manuscripts
of commentaries such as the Atoki and Anaki. The dating and authorship of these notes are
unclear, but they were obviously composed after the texts on which they were written, and it is
thought that they were added after the completion of the Sanki.

117
Here I use “lineage” to refer not to the Ato as a royally-recognized lineage, but to the Ato as a scholarly lineage
which would likely have included fictive kin.
118
It is possible that these notes were an independent commentary, but most scholars today agree that they were
likely notes added to one of the other commentaries in vermillion ink.

51
The Ryō no shūge and Ryō no gige have long been prized as sources for understanding
the law codes and the ways in which they were interpreted and applied in the early Yamato
realm. The experience of reading both texts is shaped by the layout of the commentaries on the
page – the clauses of the Yōrō code are given in full size text with sections of commentary in
half-size text inserted throughout, following the words or phrases on which they comment.
119

Many of the comments are structured as questions and answers, and later commentaries regularly
cite and respond to earlier commentaries. The Ryō no shūge thus gives a reader the feeling of
observing a conversation among a group of legal scholars, and its structure is well suited to its
apparent goal: allowing a legal scholar in the latter half of the ninth century to easily review all
major historical interpretations of a given legal term or phrase. It is less well suited to the present
historian’s task of understanding late seventh- or early eighth-century legal thought. Ritsuryō
scholars have shown a tendency to flatten the various commentaries and to use the Ryō no shūge
as if it were a unified reference work, drawing on all of the commentaries together to inform
their understanding of Nara legal thought even though only a handful of the commentaries were
compiled during the Nara period. Given the scarcity of sources and the elliptical nature of the
codes, it is hardly surprising that legal historians incline towards drawing on all available
resources. Still, there are significant problems with ignoring the diachronic relationship between
the commentaries in the Ryō no shūge.
In a recent article examining the understanding of the terms ban ( ) and i ( ) in the
Taihō codes (discussed in greater detail below), Ōtaka Hirokazu demonstrates the kinds of new
insight that are possible if we are careful to consider each Ryō no shūge commentary separately.

119
This was a common format for texts of the early Yamato court – the Nihon shoki employs a similar format to
present variant texts. For more on the Nihon shoki and the use of half-size notes both in that text and in later
interpretive texts, see Felt, “Rewriting the Past,” 13-38.

52
First, he reads each code and commentary against contemporary official histories, then compares
relevant passages to the corresponding Tang statutes, and then argues persuasively that the use of
the terms he examined is much less consistent and coherent than had previously been thought.
He also defines several distinct periods in early Yamato legal thought. Beginning with the Taihō
codes, he argues that the Koki commentary demonstrates that interpretations and occupations had
shifted from the time the Taihō codes were compiled at the turn of the eighth century. He then
examines the mid-eighth-century Yōrō code and its commentaries, and distinguishes late eighth-
century commentaries like the Ryō shaku from the ninth-century Ryō no gige, which he
understands to be a separate stage. In each of these periods, Ōtaka shows that the interpretations
of key terms differ in significant ways. Taken together, the evidence he presents makes it
abundantly clear that we should be careful about using ninth-century texts to understand eighth-
century worldviews.
120

In the following sections, I take Ōtaka’s methodology as a model. Because the focus is on
the universe and categories of people created and ordered by the late seventh-century and early
eighth-century law codes and legal commentaries, I rely on the Taihō and Yōrō codes, the Koki
commentary, relevant Tang codes, and the Nihon shoki and Shoku Nihongi records, rather than
later legal commentaries like the Ryō shaku, Anaki, and Ryō no gige.
121
Inevitably, such an
approach results in what seems to be a less complete understanding of the terms and categories I
examine, but because it allows us to see how the Yamato worldview changed over the course of
the Nara period, I find its benefits outweigh its costs.

120
Ōtaka Hirokazu, “Taihō ritsuryō no seitei to ‘ban’ ‘i,’” Shigaku zasshi 122.12 (2013) 1984-2019.
121
Even the Taihō code (702 CE), the Koki commentary (737 CE), and the Yōrō code (720 CE and 757 CE) are
separated by decades. Where possible, I will analyze each text separately and compare them, but in many cases the
texts do not allow for such comparison. I recognize that the later commentaries included in the Ryō no shūge are
invaluable sources, and the shifts in worldview and legal thought that they represent are discussed in Chapter 3.

53
Places and Peoples of the Ritsuryō Codes
The realm structured by the promulgation of the law codes in Yamato was based on a
model of the world articulated in the continental Warring States period. Therein, “the universal
authority of heaven (tian) sanctions a universal ruler called “son of heaven” (tianzi) to
rule a universal realm of “all under heaven” (tianzia) with the royal court at its center and
barbarian peoples at its borders.”
122
Through the promulgation of these law codes, Yamato rulers
asserted that they were Heavenly Sovereigns who reigned over a specific ‘all under heaven’
known as the Great Eight Islands (ōyashimaguni ).
123
The realm was centered on the
sovereign, who presided over a sphere of civilization that he or she brought into existence by
creating the center and pacifying various barbarian peoples, thereby transforming them into
civilized subjects. For instance, the Nihon shoki record of the reign of Sujin ( ) offers a clear
articulation of the view of Yamato rulers of the early eighth century, who saw their ancestors as
having expanded the realm through a combination of military conquest and civilizing rulership.
124

In a key passage, Sujin is represented as having issued an edict to his ministers, declaring: “The
basis of guiding the people is in teaching and transforming them (kyōka ).” He went on to
say that he would dispatch ministers to make his will known to “distant wild peoples” ( )
in the four directions who “have not yet learned of our kingly influence” (ōka ).
125
Here we

122
Duthie, Man’yōshū, 19.
123
Piggott, Emergence, 176-177.
124
Sujin’s reign, traditionally dated from 97 to 30 BCE, is covered by the section of the Nihon shoki that must be
categorized as “myth-history.” Although we cannot responsibly read this section of the text as an historical record of
events, we can read it as a record of eighth-century ideas about the foundation of Yamato and its early rulers. For a
useful overview of the varying historicity of Nihon shoki chapters, see Piggott, Emergence, 287-290. Duthie notes
that the Nihon shoki refers to Sujin as “heavenly sovereign, founder of the land,” and the Kojiki refers to him as
“first to rule the land.” See Duthie, Man’yōshū, 82 n. 84.
125
NHSK I:242-243 [Sujin 10/7/25]. I have relied on Duthie’s partial translation of this passage here. See Duthie,
Man’yōshū, 82. For a full English translation, see Aston, Nihongi, I:155-156.

54
see not only that a fundamental part of the sovereign’s role as conceived in the early eighth
century was to transform people through kingly influence, but also that the extent of such kingly
influence defined the extent of the realm.
The notion of a sphere of this transformative influence is indeed deeply embedded in the
framework of the Yamato codes, although the phrases “kingly influence” ( ) and “teach and
transform” ( ) are not used.
126
At the most basic level, the codes divide the universe into
places and peoples that were within the sovereign’s transformative influence, or kenai , and
those that were outside of the sovereign’s transformative influence, kegai . These terms
appear in two clauses in the Laws on Residence Units (Koryō ) of the Taihō and Yōrō
administrative codes, and one clause of the General Principles (Meireiritsu ) in the Yōrō
penal code. None of these clauses offer a direct explanation or definition of the terms, but they
do use them in conjunction with other terms that were part of the Yōrō-code lexicon for places
and people categorized specifically as outside of the realm.
Consider, for instance, Clause 16 in the Laws on Residence Units, which concerns people
from Yamato who were shipwrecked or captured in foreign territory but returned, together with
people from outside the transformative influence – kegai people – who become subjects.
127
Both
sections of the clause address the treatment of people who were outside of their usual spheres –
either people from outside the transformative influence who entered the realm, or people who
were within the transformative influence but left it for foreign territories (referred to as geban
126
The term does appear in the Yōrō Laws on Monks and Nuns, but is used to refer to Buddhist teaching and
transformation rather than that by the ruler. In the codes, Sujin’s ad hoc dispatch of ministers is replaced by a regular
yearly tour of inspection by provincial governors, whom Piggott has described as acting as the “cultural emissaries”
of the tennō. For her translation of the Laws on Residence Units clause that describes the duties of the provincial
governors and the yearly tour, see Emergence, 193-195.
127
This clause is translated in full and discussed in detail in the following section. For the original, see Inoue,
Ritsuryō, 229-230.

55
), and then eventually returned. In this clause, kegai is used for outside people, while geban is
used for outside places.
A related clause in the Laws on Taxes (Buyakuryō ), Clause 15, helps clarify how
the term kegai was used in the codes. The clause deals with taxation for people from Yamato
who were shipwrecked or captured in foreign territory but returned, together with people from
foreign territories people who become subjects. This clause includes regulations for the same two
groups of people that appeared in Clause 16 in the Laws on Residence Units but it replaces the
term “person from outside the transformative influence” (kegai person) with “person from a
foreign territory” (geban person). From this switch we can infer that kegai and geban could both
refer to places and people, and also that they were used interchangeably.
128

In fact, the Yōrō code use of the term kegai mirrors that of the Tang statutes of the twenty-
fifth year of the Kaiyuan era, and Iwami Kiyohiro has argued that kegai and geban were used as
rough equivalents in the Tang statutes. As Iwami points out, these terms were used as
equivalents even though they appear to be fundamentally different in how they divide the world
– geban is a geographical term, referring to a place outside of the realm, while kegai is a rites-
based term, referring to places to which the sovereign’s influence has not yet extended.
129
While
a person’s status was connected to his or her physical location, location was not enough to
establish a person as either a kegai or geban person – people from outside the transformative
influence who entered the realm did not automatically become members of the realm, and people
of the realm could leave it without losing their status as members of the realm.

128
The parallel phrases are in Clause 16 of the Laws on Residence Units and in Clause 15
of the Laws on Taxes. Inoue, Ritsuryō, 229-230 and 255.
129
Iwami Kiyohiro, “Tōdai no kika to shoban,” The Journal of Sinology, December 1988, 15–29.

56
Another Yōrō clause that explicitly references the kegai/kenai framework is Clause 44 in
the Laws on Residence Units, which concerns the treatment of two other types of people from
outside the realm. The first were bound servants from outside the influence (kegai nuhi ) who entered the realm of their own volition. According to this clause, they were to be
granted the status of freeborn people.
130
The second were people from outside the borders of the
realm (kyōgai no hito ) who were mistakenly assigned the status of bound people when
they became members of the realm.
131
The term kegai is used in the same way in the Taihō code,
Yōrō code, and Tang statutes, but the Tang statutes do not include the section on people from
outside the borders.
132
It seems that this addition caused some confusion in Yamato, because
there is a clarification in the Koki commentary: “[A] person from outside the borders is the same
sort as one from outside the influence. There is no difference.”
133
So kyōgai, geban and kegai
could all be used interchangeably, even though two were geographical terms and one was a rites-
based term. From this we can infer that in the early Yamato codes, kenai was the realm and
kenai people were subjects, while kegai referred to places outside the realm and kegai people
were non-subjects.
134

As we have already seen, the Yamato codes used a range of different terms to refer to
places and peoples outside of the realm. If we turn our attention back to the term geban,
translated above as “foreign territory,” we find that it is used in a handful of clauses throughout

130
Clause 44 in the Laws on Residence Units, in Inoue, Ritsuryō, 239. As Kobayashi Takashi has argued, this clause
demonstrates that “freeborn person” (ryōmin ) and “bound person” (senmin ) status cut across the
civilizational boundaries of kenai and kegai. See Kobayashi, “Ritsuryō seika no kenai/kegai ni tsuite,” Atatarashii
rekishigaku no tame ni 212 (December 1993): 1–8.
131
I follow Yoshie, Piggott, and Ijūin in translating nuhi not as “slave,” as it has often been rendered in
English, but as “bound servant.” See Yoshie et al., “Gender in the Administrative Code,” 376.
132
Niida Noboru et al., Tōreishūiho (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1997), 1040-1041.
133
Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23:341.
134
Neither kegai nor kenai is used in the Nihon shoki or the Shoku Nihongi, suggesting that they were not widely
used to describe the Yamato realm outside of the legal sphere.

57
the codes. The related but more general term “foreign” (ban ) is also repeatedly used to
reference both places outside of the realm and people who came from foreign realms and
interacted with the Yamato court.
135
In particular, “foreign guests” (bankyaku ) and “foreign
envoys” (banshi ) appear across a wide range of clauses: hosting foreign guests (i.e.
officials from tribute-rendering realms who carried a diplomatic missive from their monarchs)
was one of the responsibilities of the Dazaifu and the great provinces, ceremonial arms had to be
carried during banquets for foreign guests, and a pair of clauses in the Laws on Barriers,
Markets, and Trade (Genshiryō, ) regulated foreign guests’ movements through barriers
as well as the goods they could carry with them when they left.
136
Also, foreign envoys escorting
prisoners or military goods could receive extra protection, according to a clause in the Laws on
Defense (Gunbōryō, ); and their progress through the realm was regulated by a clause in
the Laws on Miscellaneous Matters (Zōryō, ). The term “foreign envoy” does appear in the
Taihō code, and both terms appear in the Tang statutes, but comparison between these clauses
and the Yōrō code offers little additional insight into how the term “foreign” fit into the larger
category of existing outside the sovereign’s influence. With no discussion in the Koki
commentary, we are left to conclude that these terms were not ambiguous to early eighth-century
officials.
137

135
is most often translated into English as “barbarian.” While I recognize that this is a reasonable translation, and
one that reflects the dichotomy between civilized/subjects and barbarian/non-subjects, I have chosen to use the term
‘foreign’ because I find ‘barbarian’ to have excessively negative connotations. I also wanted to leave some room for
an emerging distinction between and other terms like and , which I translate as ‘alien,’ ‘barbarian,’ and
‘uncivilized,’ depending on context. Translations of these terms will always have to be adjusted for the time period,
place, and context (including the focus and aims of the scholar making decisions about the translation). For one
example, see David L. Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press, 2005), 18.
136
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 190-193, 316, and 442-443.
137
Much of the Ryō no shūge, including the Koki commentary, for the Laws on Barriers and Markets and
Miscellaneous Laws is not extant, so it is possible that there were comments that have been lost.

58
Both foreign envoys and foreign guests were temporary visitors from other realms, but the
regulations for foreign envoys’ movements through the realm indicate that there was a less
temporary population of “foreign people” (banjin ) within the realm. Clause 29 of the Laws
on Miscellaneous Matters reads:
Regarding foreign envoys traveling to and from [the court], foreign people from the same
place [as the envoys] are not to be settled near the great roads,
138
nor shall bound persons
of the same origin [as the envoys] be allowed to gather near the great roads. Furthermore,
they shall not be assigned as relay horse grooms or support staff.
139

Evidently there were foreigners settled within the realm, whose presence was at least permanent
enough that they might be assigned to serve as low-level officials. There are no extant notes from
the Koki commentary on this clause. While it is difficult to reach conclusions based on negative
evidence, this silence at least suggests that the eighth century officials who compiled the Koki
were not confused by this use of the term “foreign people,” even though it differed significantly
from other uses of the term in the law codes.
140
Taken together, these clauses establish that the
term “foreign” typically referred to a person who was acting as the representative of another
realm with which Yamato had diplomatic relations, but that it could be used in a broader sense as
well.
In his examination of the use of the term “foreign” in the Nihon shoki, Ōtaka Hirokazu has
argued that there was a general tendency to use the term for the peoples of the Korean peninsula,
but no absolute rule about its usage. He notes the lack of consistency in the usage of the term,
and argues that we should not assume that the term “foreign” was exclusively used for peoples of

138
“Great roads” here refers to the Sannindō and Saikaidō , or the post-station roads that linked the
Dazaifu, where foreign envoys would arrive, and the capital.
139
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 482.
140
The only other clause in the code that uses the term “foreign person” refers to those who wish to become subjects
of the realm, i.e. people who had recently arrived and were not yet settled in the realm. See Inoue, Ritsuryō, 401-
402.

59
the Korean peninsula in the early or mid-Nara period. The lack of commentary in the Koki on the
various uses of the term “foreign” ( ) supports Ōtaka’s argument, and suggests that eighth-
century officials were not particularly confused by varying uses of the terms “foreign” or
“foreign people.”
In contrast, the term geban, which I translate as “foreign territory,” seems to have been
the source of confusion that required significant analysis and explanation. As noted above, the
term geban is used in Clause 15 of the Yōrō Laws on Taxes (it also appeared in the Taihō clause
and the Tang statute). The Koki commentary on the use of the term “foreign territory” in this
clause reveals uncertainty about whether or not Hayato ( ) or Emishi ( , also read mōjin)
territory qualified as “foreign territory.” Both the Hayato and the Emishi were non-Yamato
populations living within the archipelago. The Hayato were concentrated in the southern part of
Kyushu, while the Emishi lived in the north-eastern part of the archipelago.
141
The specific
question the Koki posed concerned the regulation that people who were captured or shipwrecked
in a foreign territory but returned would be granted tax exemptions. The question was whether or
not people who were taken by the Hayato or Emishi should receive these tax exemptions. The
Koki’s answer was that those taken by the Hayato and Emishi should be granted the tax
exemptions, even though the territories might not have been called “foreign.”
142
Ōtaka argues that
this commentary reveals an emerging hesitation to group the Hayato and Emishi with other
“foreign” places. However, in his view, this hesitation was no match for the awareness of the real

141
Takahashi Tomio notes that the non-Yamato inhabitants of north eastern Japan were originally referred to with a
term found in the continental histories, ‘hairy men’ , but after approximately 645 CE, a term created on the
archipelago, ‘quail barbarians’ , became standard. Both terms can be read ‘Emishi’ and refer to the same group
or groups of people. It is not clear why the Koki uses the older term here. See Takahashi Tomio, “The Classical
Polity and Its Frontier,” interpreted by Karl F. Friday, in Capital and Countryside in Japan, 300-1180: Japanese
Historians in English, ed. Joan R. Piggott (Ithaca NY: East Asia Program Cornell University, 2006), 131-133.
142
Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23: 408-410.

60
possibility that a Yamato subject might be captured in the ongoing fighting with Hayato and
Emishi, and the desire to support Yamato subjects who suffered misfortune in battle.
143
These
concerns resulted in defining Hayato and Emishi territory as “foreign territory” when granting
this type of tax exemption.
In the next section of commentary on the same clause, the Koki notes a similar kind of
confusion about the term “people of a foreign territory” as it relates to Hayato and Emishi
people, but a very different answer. This time, the Koki asks whether Emishi and Hayato people
were included in the category of “people of a foreign territory” who were to receive tax
exemptions when they became subjects of the realm. It answers: “For the Hayato, the court
already has a register of names. Therefore, though they submit, there is no tax exemption.
However, the Emishi are eligible for tax exemptions.”
144
As Takahashi Tomio noted in his classic
article on the frontiers of the early Yamato realm, the Laws on Appointments to Offices and
Posts (Shikiinryō ) detailed the responsibilities of the “Chief of the Hayato” (Hayato no
tsukasa, ), which included making registers of the Hayato as well as managing their
service at the palace and instructing them in song and dance. In other words, the Hayato had
already been effectively absorbed into the Yamato realm, but the Emishi would not be
considered subjects of the realm until the beginning of the ninth century (and even then, not
completely).
145
In this context, the Hayato were not “people of a foreign territory,” but the Emishi
were.
Overall, the commentary here suggests that in the early eighth century, the term “foreign
territory” (geban) – which we should remember was used interchangeably with kegai in some

143
Ōtaka, “Taihō ritsuryō no settei,” 18-19
144
Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23:408-410.
145
Clause 60 of the Laws on Appointments to Offices and Posts deals with the Hayato office. Inoue, Ritsuryō, 186-
187. Takahashi, “The Classical Polity and Its Frontier,” 128–45.

61
clauses of the codes – was the subject of active consideration and analysis. While scholars had a
general sense of who and what was “foreign,” the precise boundaries of “foreign territory” were
not yet clear to all officials. Thus it was possible that in one context, both Emishi and Hayato
territory was “foreign territory,” but in another, only the Emishi were “people of a foreign
territory.” The Koki commentary here also makes it clear that officials were not engaged in an
ideological debate, or one in which they sought to clarify the conceptual boundaries of the term
“foreign territory,” but an extremely practical debate about if and how the codes should be
applied to specific groups of people. In pursuing answers to this question, they were both
pragmatic and flexible.
In addition to the notion that the realm was defined by the sphere of the sovereign’s
influence, the codes also described a fundamental division of the peoples of the world into
civilized (kaka ) and barbarian (iteki ) categories. These categories had their roots in
the continental Warring States cultural order, which contrasted the various civilized Xia and Hua
( and ) peoples of the Central States (C. zhongguo ) with the alien Man, Yi, Rong, and
Di ( ) peoples.
146
Although the terms Man, Yi, Rong, and Di were originally references
to specific groups of people, over time they came to be used as generalized terms for “barbarian”
or “alien” places or peoples. They could be applied by any realm that configured itself as a
central state with a polestar monarch. When used together, the terms for “civilized” and
“barbarian” referred to all of the people of the universe. They are used in this sense in the first
clause of the Yōrō Laws on Ceremonial Protocols (Giseiryō ), which lists the titles for the
Yamato sovereign and specified when and how they were to be used. The title “Sovereign

146
Duthie, Man’yōshū, 23.

62
Monarch” (kōtei ), was to be used when addressing “the civilized and the alien” (kai ).
147

The categories of civilized and uncivilized people appear in a handful of other clauses in
the Yamato codes. The responsibilities of the Bureau of Foreign and Buddhist Affairs (Genbaryō
) included arranging appropriate living quarters for “aliens in the capital” (zaikyō iteki ).
148
This phrase was used in both the Taihō and Yōrō codes but does not appear in the
Tang statutes.
149
The combination of the term “foreign” ( ) in the name of the bureau, and the
term “alien” (iteki ) in the description of the bureau’s responsibilities suggests that these two
terms were either interchangeable or at least closely associated through the mid-eighth century.
Furthermore, this clause makes it clear that in addition to the “foreign people” who were not to
be settled near the roads used by foreign envoys, there was also a large enough group of non-
Yamato people living in the capital that they had officials designated to manage and support
them.
Although the Yōrō clause itself does little to define the term “alien,” the Koki
commentary offered the following explanation:
‘Aliens in the capital’ refers to those like the Tara, Shravasti, and Emishi. Another theory
is that it is those who do not bring tribute, including Tang people in the capital. These are
all examples of aliens.
150

147
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 343. In the Tang code, “Son of Heaven” was the title to be used for the ruler of peoples of the
universe, referred to as , a slightly different term than that used in the Yōrō code. Niida Noboru, Tōreishūi, 2nd
ed. (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1983), 469.
148
Clause 18 in the Laws on Appointments to Offices and Posts. Inoue, Ritsuryō, 169-170. For an English overview
of this clause, see the translation of the Laws on Monks and Nuns by Joan Piggott, which can be found on the
Project for Premodern Japan Studies website, http://www.uscppjs.org/.
149
To my knowledge, there is no corresponding Tang clause, and the responsibilities of this Y amato office were
divided among a variety of Tang offices. Niida, Tōreishūiho, 908.
150
Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23: 90-91.

63
Characteristically, the Koki defines the term by listing specific examples. Interpreting the
definition requires an understanding of who the Tara and Shravasti were (the Emishi were
discussed above and are presumably familiar by now). A Nihon shoki entry from the reign of
Saimei Tennō ( , r. 655-661 CE) records two men and two women from Tokhara ( )
and a woman from Shravasti ( ) who were driven to Hyūga in Kyūshū by a storm.
151
A pair
of entries from three years later records a similar group that was blown to Tsukushi. They made
their way to the capital and were entertained at the court.
152
A final set of entries describes a
Tokhara man and his Shravasti wife arriving at the capital. The Nihon shoki notes that the
husband set out for home the following year, leaving his wife behind as an assurance of his
return.
153
He did not return, and an entry from Tenmu’s reign suggests that his wife continued to
live in the capital and participate in various rites.
So what does this list tell us about the category of “alien living in the capital”? Unlike the
Emishi, Tokhāra and Shravasti were not realms with which Yamato was regularly in contact, but
they were similar in that they did not have regular tribute relations with Yamato and therefore
people from these realms were neither official guests (i.e. tribute-bearers) nor official envoys.
154

The Koki confirms and expands on this general principle by saying that “aliens in the capital”
includes all those who did not come bearing tribute from another realm. The commentary goes

151
Tokhara , Tokhara , and Tara are thought to refer to the same place. Where exactly Tokhara
was has been the subject of significant, and inconclusive, debate. Possibilities range from an island off the southern
coast of Kyushu, to what is now Burma, the southern part of Thailand, and the ancient state of Bactria in what is
now Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. A realm known as Tokhara (C. Tuhuoluo ) appears in the Weishu.
Shravasti was a city in India that flourished during the lifetime of the historical Buddha. While scholars have
expressed skepticism about the presence of a Shravasti person in Yamato at this time, the Indian city remains the
most reasonable guess based on this name. See Kokushi daijiten s.v. “ ” (entry by Sakayori Masashi),
accessed via Japan Knowledge.
152
NHSK II:322-323 [Hakuchi 5 (654) 4
th
month] and Aston, Nihongi, II:246.
153
NHSK II:344 [Saimei 6 (660) 7/16] and Aston, Nihongi, II:266. It is likely that these five entries were all about
one group of people, and the division into separate events happened later. See endnote 25.34 in NHSK, II:575-576.
154
Because the Tokhara man returned home, and both groups were described as having been shipwrecked, it is also
clear that they did not arrive with the intention of becoming Yamato subjects.

64
on to note that there was also a theory that the term included Tang people who did not bring
tribute, suggesting that a person could be an “alien” even if they were from a realm with which
Yamato did have official diplomatic relations, so long as they were not a member of an official
diplomatic mission.
155
Here again we find uneasiness in the Koki commentary about the exact
members of a category – in this case the category of “alien” – but no absolute conceptual
boundaries. Where the Emishi were an uneasy fit with the category of “people of foreign
territories,” here it was people from the Tang whose inclusion in the category of “alien” was
somewhat doubtful. Taken together, these sections of the Koki commentary suggest that the
terms “foreign” and “alien” overlapped significantly in their usage and application through the
mid-eighth century.
The most direct discussion of differing treatment for “civilized people and aliens”
appears in Clause 10 of the Laws on Taxes:
Regarding realms on the distant periphery and places where there are various types of
aliens and [the issue of] whether or not they should forward tribute and pay labor tax,
make allowances according to the circumstances. Do not treat them the same as the
civilized people.
156

The clause presents a dichotomy between “civilized” (kaka ) people and “various types of
alien people” (ijin zōrui ), but also challenges that dichotomy in its focus on regulating
places that were neither totally within the realm nor totally outside of it. Here, the Yōrō clause
followed the corresponding Tang statute quite closely, even though there were slight
differences.
157
The Koki once again offers a list, stating that the category of “various types of

155
The Korean kingdoms of Paekche, Koguryŏ, and Silla are somewhat conspicuously left out of this discussion.
156
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 254.
157
The Taihō clause included the phrase “various types of aliens” but it is not clear whether it also included the phrase
“civilized people.” The Tang clause has instead of , instead of , and instead of . Niida,
Tōreishūiho, 1354-1355.

65
aliens” included those like the Emishi, Kuma people ( ), Amami people ( ), and
Hayato.
158
Here, the Koki offers only the list of examples and leaves the reader to extrapolate the
general principles that define the category. The groups listed are all peoples that were located in
the immediate periphery of the realm, which Yamato periodically sought to subdue and
incorporate into the realm. In contrast to the commentary described above, here the Koki makes
no mention of the Tang or any of the Korean peninsula kingdoms, presumably because those
realms were unambiguously outside of the Yamato sovereign’s sphere of control. They might
send missions to submit tribute, but there was no question of them owing taxes to the Yamato
ruler.
A later section of the Koki commentary focuses on the last phrase in the clause, “civilized
people.” The Koki notes that people from outside the influence who became subjects were to be
granted ten years of tax exemptions; and it then asks whether their taxes ought to be managed
like those of the various types of aliens after those ten years passed. The Koki answers
definitively: “No, they are not the same. They are a type of civilized subject.”
159
The clarification
is an important one – the status of “various types of aliens” addressed in the clause was not part
of a transition from kegai to kenai person, but a separate category entirely.
160

What does this all tell us about the worldview defined by the Yamato law codes?
Ishimoda Shō famously proposed that the early Yamato court operated on a “small empire”
(koteikoku ) model established by the Taihō code, in which the outside world (the kegai)

158
Relatively little is known about the Kuma people (kumabito, also read hijin), other than that they were a group of
non-Yamato people living in or near Yamato. Inoue T atsuo states that they likely lived either in the south-western
part of Kyushu or had a connection to the Kuma area of Echigo Province. See Kokushi daijiten s.v. “ ” (entry by
Inoue Tatsuo), accessed via Japan Knowledge.
159
. Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23: 403-404.
160
The status of the Emishi in the Koki commentary is particularly ambiguous – earlier they were quite
clearly included in the group of ‘foreigners’ who could become subjects (while the Hayato were excluded),
but here they appear to be part of a different category excluded from that process.

66
was divided into three categories: the “neighboring realm” (rinkoku ) of the Tang empire,
the “various foreign” (shoban ) realms of the Korean peninsula, and “aliens” (iteki ) or
various unsubdued peoples of the archipelago like the Emishi.
161
One of the major pieces of
evidence on which Ishimoda relied in making this argument was the following Koki comment on
the first clause of the Laws on Official Documentation (Kūshikiryō ):
‘Ruler of All under Heaven, Heavenly Sovereign of Nihon’ is the language to be used in
royal edicts addressed to both neighboring realms and foreign realms. Question: What is
the difference between a neighboring realm and a foreign realm? Answer: The Great
Tang is a neighboring realm. Silla is a foreign realm.
162

As seemingly straightforward as this Koki statement is, several scholars have pointed out that
there is no evidence of a consistent distinction between “neighboring realms” and “foreign
realms” in the extant records – for example, Silla envoys were treated the same way as Tang
envoys.
163
Ōtaka Hirokazu took the challenge to Ishimoda’s argument a step further, examining
all 34 instances of the terms “foreign” (ban ) and “alien” (i ) in the Yamato codes. He
concluded that in the majority of cases, the Taihō and Yōrō codes simply adopted the language of
the Tang codes, and that even the cases in which changes were made, they do not seem to
indicate a deliberate effort to create a distinction between the two terms.
164
As noted above, Ōtaka
recognizes an emerging hesitation to group the Emishi and Hayato with the Korean kingdoms
and Tang empire in the Koki commentary, but he also observes that the Koki did not understand

161
Quoted in Suk Soon Park, “Nihon kodai kokka no tai ‘ban’ ninshiki,” Nihon rekishi 637 (June 2001): 1-15.
162
Ryō no shūge, SZKT 24:773-782.
163
See Ōtaka, “Taihō ritsuryō no settei,” and Park, “Nihon kodai kokka no tai ‘ban’ ninshiki.”
164
Specifically, in comparing the Yōrō code to the Tang code (both the version in the Tōreishūi and the more
recent Tenseirei), he found fourteen cases in which the Yamato codes uses the Tang wording, three cases in
which the Yamato code added the term ‘foreign,’ five cases in which one of the two terms had been changed
from the Tang wording, and twelve cases that are unclear due to a lack of information. See Chart 1 in Ōtaka,
“Taihō ritsuryō no settei,” 10-13.

67
the term “alien” to be a general term that encompasses all of the non-Yamato peoples of the
archipelago (hence its tendency to list groups of people by names).
165
He argues that it was not
until the early ninth-century Ryō no gige commentary that we can find evidence that a clear
distinction was being made between the terms “foreign” and “alien.”
While some elements of the ritsuryō worldview were in flux in the mid-eighth century,
the notion that the realm was defined by the sovereign’s transformative influence had been
clearly established with the Taihō and Yōrō codes. As the above clauses of the code make clear,
there were many people from outside the sovereign’s influence who entered the realm. Some
stayed temporarily, like the foreign guests and envoys; but others made the journey to Yamato
with the intention of becoming subjects of the realm. The process of becoming a subject was also
outlined in the law codes, as we shall see in the following section.
Submit and Be Transformed: Becoming a Subject in the Taihō and Yōrō Codes
Becoming a subject of the Yamato realm involved a series of administrative steps,
regulated by the law codes, that incorporated people into the various systems that the sovereign
used to regulate and control the people of the realm. This process was framed as a
“transformation” brought about by the sovereign’s civilizing influence, and the term used
throughout the codes for becoming a subject was “to submit and be transformed” (kika and
tōka ). Below, I trace this process from a person’s arrival through their settlement in the
realm as subjects. Examining this process allows us not only to understand how outsiders
became subjects of the realm, but also to consider how the status of being a subject of the
Yamato realm was defined.

165
It should be noted that the names that the Yamato court records used were not necessarily the names that these
groups of people would have used for themselves. Furthermore, while the Yamato court labeled all people to the
north and east “Emishi,” it is by no means clear that all of the people living in this area considered themselves to be
part of one group.

68
Arrival
Clause 89 of the Yōrō Laws on Official Documentation regulated the procedure officials
were to follow when a non-Yamato person entered the realm.
Regarding people of different customs who come from far away to enter the realm, the
officials of the place where they arrive should create an image of each of them. They
should depict appearance and clothing, and record the names of the person, the country of
origin, the location of the country of origin, and their ways and manners. Once [these
records are] complete, memorialize the throne.
166

The category of “people of different customs” is not one that appears elsewhere in the codes, and
it is not clear if these regulations applied to all people entering the realm. The Koki commentary
offers no interpretations of this part of the clause, and it is not clear if the phrase was included in
the Taihō codes.
167
Meanwhile, the corresponding Tang statute divides the people to be observed
into official envoys, whose realm of origin is to be reported, and people of differing customs,
whose appearance and clothing are to be depicted. The compilers of the Yōrō code omitted the
reference to official envoys and focused on people of differing customs while expanding the
range of information to be collected. Each person was to be carefully observed and recorded, and
the regulations emphasize the importance of appearance, clothing, and customs (fūzoku ,
translated as “ways and manners” above). Unfortunately, there are no extant examples of these
images or records, although Inoue Mitsusada suggests that they may have been similar to the

166
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 406.
167
The most notable difference between the Taihō and Yōrō versions of this clause is in the term for the officials
who were responsible for the annotated images. The Yōrō term was shozai kanshi , versus the Taihō shoshi
. The Ryō no gige and other later commentaries on the Yōrō code agree that the provincial governor and district
officials of the point of arrival were responsible for the reports, while the Koki indicates that the provincial governor
should first report the arrival and then the Bureau of Alien and Buddhist Affairs was responsible for the reports. It is
not clear if this change in the wording of the clause represented a shift in responsibility from the central Bureau of
Alien and Buddhist Affairs to the provincial and district offices. In either case, there would have been coordination
between local officials on the ground and central offices. Ryō no shūge, SZKT 24: 911-912.

69
annotated images of official envoys created during the Liang and Tang dynasties.
168
The Koki
commentary offered a series of examples of the customs that were to be recorded, which it says
included “making a living as a sailor, or archery and horsemanship, songs and dances and the
like.” Entry into the Yamato realm was thus marked by entry into the written records, which
made each person and their abilities visible to the sovereign.
Once newly arrived people had been reported to the center, both the travelers and the
officials had to wait for a response from central officials. Clause 70 of the Laws on Official
Documentation included regulations restricting the movements of these travelers while they
waited:
Regarding messengers authorized to use the post-station system, if they will memorialize
the throne regarding military and other secret matters, they shall not speak with other
people when traveling to the capital or after arriving. If there are foreigners who wish to
submit and be transformed, install them in an official residence and give them the
necessary provisions. They are not to be allowed to come and go as they please.
169

It is not clear why the regulations on foreigners were added to this clause on post-station
messengers, but in any case, the newly-arrived people were to be provided for but closely
monitored. By providing lodging and other necessary supplies, ritsuryō officials took
responsibility for potential new subjects while simultaneously asserting control over those who
sought to become a part of the realm by restricting their movements and mandating that they

168
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 406. The genre of Portraits of Periodical Offerings (Shokukōzu ) Inoue references
include the Portraits of Periodical Offering of Liang, which is thought to be a sixth-century work that depicts
envoys from twelve places (originally twenty-five), including Wa , with descriptions on the back of the images. It
is currently held by the National Museum of China. The Portraits of Periodical Offering of Tang also depict foreign
envoys bearing tribute. It is extant as a Song dynasty text, currently in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
169
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 401-402. The Koki commentary addresses only the first part of the clause, and we do not know if
these regulations on foreigners were included in the Taihō clause. It seems there was no corresponding Tang statute.
See Niida, Tōreishūiho, 1293.

70
remain in official lodgings until a decision about their status had been reached. People arriving in
Yamato were thus met with both generosity and caution.
Settlement
Once admitted, the process of becoming a Yamato subject involved a number of steps
that were outlined in two key clauses of the Laws on Residence Units and Laws on Taxes.
Clause 16 of the Laws on Residence Units regulated the process by which new subjects were
welcomed, settled, and added to the residence unit registers:
As for those who have been captured or shipwrecked in foreign territory but have
been able to return, as well as people from outside the transformative influence
who wish to submit and be transformed, let the provincial and district officials
provide them with food and clothing. Record their appearance with great care and
dispatch an express messenger to memorialize the throne. People from outside of
the realm should be settled in a plentiful province and be added to the registers
there. If they were captured or shipwrecked, use the former register. If they do not
have a former register, add them to the register of close relatives. Also, forward
provisions to the aforementioned place [i.e. where the person or people will be
settled] and ensure arrival of the goods.
170

The first part of the clause repeats the regulations from the Laws on Official Documentation with
some slight differences. People entering the realm with the intention of staying, whether they
were foreigners seeking to become subjects or subjects who had returned from abroad, were
given food and clothing, and their appearance was recorded and reported to the center. The
messenger to the center is specifically an express messenger, suggesting some urgency in
conveying this report. Next, the clause states that those who wish to become subjects should be
settled in “plentiful provinces” (kankoku ), areas that had sufficient land for cultivation and

170
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 229-230.

71
could therefore accommodate new subjects.
171
Once settled,

they were to be added to the
residence unit registers.
172
This was a critical step. All people of the realm, from members of the
royal family to bound servants, were included in some form of register maintained by central and
provincial officials. Inclusion in the residence unit registers was thus a key marker of being a
subject of the Yamato realm, and being added to the registers marked a major turning point in the
transformation from the category of “person outside of the influence” to “person within the
influence.”
The Koki commentary reveals that in the earlier Taihō code, certain new arrivals were
given greater attention than others. The final line of the Taihō clause was: “If there are any
people with specialized technical or artistic skills, memorialize the throne and receive a royal
edict.”
173
The early Yamato realm’s heavy reliance on people from the Korean peninsula and
continental empires for skills and technologies ranging from ironwork to pottery, sericulture,
weaving, architecture, writing, the creation of calendars, and Buddhism, among many others, has
been well documented. The addition of this line, which was not part of the Tang statutes,
suggests that the sovereign was anxious to identify and recruit people of particular talent or skill
as soon as they entered the realm. It does not mean that only people with special skills or
knowledge would have been allowed to enter the realm. Tanaka Fumio has also argued that this

171
The best explanation for the term “plentiful province” is that it is a reference to the “plentiful areas” (kangō )
defined in Clause 13 of the Laws on Rice Fields, that is, as areas that had sufficient rice fields. See Inoue, Ritsuryō,
242 and 574n13. The only other legal restriction on the settlement of new subjects appears in the clause of the Laws
on Miscellaneous Matters, discussed above, that states that people originally from another realm should not be
settled near the roads that envoys from that realm would use for traveling to and from the capital.
172
The creation of new residence units and the addition of members to existing units were regulated by Clause 14 of
the Laws on Residence Units (chiefly concerned with preventing fraud and double registrations). For an annotated
translation of Clause 14, see Yoshie et al., “Gender in the Administrative Code,” 356-360.
173
. Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23:279-280. In the Nihon shoki the term (saigi) is frequently
associated with people who had come to Yamato from the various Korean peninsula states bringing new
technologies, knowledge, and artistic skills. Examples include groups who specialized in painting, leather working,
ceramics, weaving, and more. See Kokushi daijiten s.v. “ ” (entry by Hirano Kunio), accessed via Japan
Knowledge.

72
Taihō code regulation is evidence that skilled people entering the realm might be called to serve
in the capital, rather than being settled in the various provinces of the realm.
174

Scholars have debated the significance of the omission of this line from the Yōrō code.
The most likely possibility is that recruiting skilled officials from abroad was less important to
mid-eighth-century rulers than it had been in in the late seventh century, leading the compilers of
the Yōrō codes to drop the line.
175
It is also possible that the compilers of the Yōrō code were
focused on bringing the code more closely into line with Tang models and left this clause out
because it was not included in the Tang statutes. A third possibility is that the compilers of the
Yōrō code felt that the line was unnecessary because the Laws on Official Documentation
already mandated the creation of detailed reports on new arrivals that likely included information
about each person’s skills and abilities.
176
These are not mutually exclusive possibilities, so all
three factors may have contributed to the decision. In any case, the removal of this line from the
Taihō code in the subsequent Yōrō code serves as a reminder that compiling the Yōrō codes
entailed significant review and revision.
New subjects continued to receive support from the realm after they had been settled in
appropriate locations. In addition to the initial provisions they received, they were granted tax
exemptions regulated by Clause 14 in the Yōrō Laws on Taxes:
Regarding those who were captured or shipwrecked in foreign territory but were able to
return: if they have been gone more than one year, three years of tax exemption. If they
have been gone more than two years, four years of tax exemption. If they have been gone
more than three years, five years of tax exemption. For people from foreign territories
who submit and are transformed, ten years of tax exemption. If the person is a hereditary

174
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 177-181.
175
Tanaka argues that the question of allegiance to Y amato became increasingly important in the face of the military
threat posed by the Sui and Silla states in the late seventh century, and that this shift may be related to decreasing
concern for people of talent reflected in the Taihō and Yōrō codes. Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 280.
176
This last possibility is not particularly persuasive. Sections of clauses throughout the codes often repeat or
elaborate on general regulations, and there are many redundancies in the administrative codes (the first section of
this clause is a good example).

73
household servant or bound servant who has been released and added to the registers,
three years of tax exemption.
177

The tax exemptions (fuku ) cited here are one of several types of tax exemptions that appear
throughout the administrative codes. The Koki commentary specifies that this type of exemption
included the tax paid in goods (chō ), tax goods paid in place of labor (yō ), and the
miscellaneous labor tax (zōyō ).
178
Thus, for the ten years following their arrival in the
Yamato realm, new subjects did not have to pay these three major forms of tax. As noted above,
the Koki commentary on this clause asks whether the Emishi and Hayato were eligible for these
tax exemptions and answers that the Emishi were eligible, but the Hayato, who were already
included in court registers, were not. Once those ten years had elapsed, new subjects would be
expected to pay the same forms of tax as other Yamato subjects. Also according to the Koki
commentary, at this point they were considered civilized people of the realm ( ) rather
than various types of aliens ( ).
What was the legal status of these new arrivals during the ten years in which they
received tax exemptions? The evidence suggests that they were considered subjects once they
were added to the registers, but for at least the first ten years that they lived in Yamato, officials
would have needed some means of distinguishing them because they were exempt from taxes.
Unfortunately, the available sources offer few clues as to what that system might have been.
There are no regulations in the Yōrō code on how new arrivals were to be recorded in the

177
Inoue, Ritsuryō, p. 255.
178
The Koki commentary asks about the difference between fuku and menkayaku ( ), and states that the first
includes miscellaneous labor tax while the second may or may not include exemption for miscellaneous labor taxes.
See Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23:273-275. Also see the summary of these clauses in Inoue, Ritsuryō, 588n14. In
principle, neither term included rice field taxes (densō ), which were governed by the Laws on Rice Fields,
although there were occasional exceptions.

74
registers, and the extant registers offer no examples of people who were recorded in a way that
would make kika status apparent. There was a general set of terms for tax-exempt residence units
(fukako ) and tax-exempt individuals (fukaku ), but the clause in the Laws on
Residence Units that lists tax-exempt individuals does not mention people who had recently
become subjects.
179
One clue comes from a section of protocols for the Bureau of Accounting
(shukeiryō ) compiled in the Engi shiki, which lists “[people who have] submitted and
been transformed, freeborn people and bound servants who have been freed, and those who leave
a meagre area and settle in a plentiful area” under the heading of people who were eligible for
tax exemptions.
180
Tanaka Fumio argues that this passage is evidence that the residence unit
registers included the annotation “submitted and transformed” ( ) next to the names of those
who were receiving the tax exemption.
181
Because the Engi shiki is a tenth-century text, it is
difficult to know if it represents the practices of the seventh or eighth century. Nevertheless, it
seems fair to assume that newly-admitted subjects would have been identifiable in the registers
for at least their first ten years in Yamato. The only regulation that may have imposed
restrictions on these new subjects is the clause from the Laws on Miscellaneous Matters,
discussed above, that states that “foreign people” were not to be settled near the major roads used
by envoys to travel to and from the capital. Even this clause is primarily a directive for the
officials who would decide where to settle new arrivals, rather than a set of restrictions for the
newly settled people (and it is not clear that it would have applied to immigrants who became
subjects). In short, being a new subject of Yamato was not a highly regulated status, and the

179
Clause 5 in the Laws on Residence Units. Inoue, Ritsuryō, 226. See the translation, explanation of terms, and
analysis of this clause in Yoshie et al. “Gender in the Administrative Code,” 367-370.
180
Engishiki, SZKT 26:639 [Scroll 25, Protocols of the Accounting Bureau, pt. 2 (shukei-ge )].
181
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 158.

75
official distinction between these people and the general population lay primarily in their
eligibility for tax exemptions.
The Yamato system for incorporating new subjects had much in common with the Tang
system, but close comparison demonstrates that the Yamato version had been significantly
simplified. The Yōrō clause on tax exemptions, for example, draws from three separate Tang
statutes and combines two of them into one. In the Tang statutes, the tax exemptions for former
hereditary and bound servants were in a separate clause.
182
The Tang code also include a statute
that stipulated only three years of tax exemption for “newly invited aliens.”
183
Who were these
people and why were they given a dramatically shorter period of tax exemption when joining the
realm? Iwami argues that the distinction between the two groups was not based on their place of
origin (i.e. whether they were “foreigners” or “aliens” ) but whether they entered the realm
of their own initiative or were invited. He cites a fragment from the Tang Regulations of the
Board of Finance from 701 CE that specifies the offices that had to be notified when an official
wished to invite a person from outside the realm, and concludes this was a highly regulated
process in which indiscriminate invitations were strictly prohibited.
184
There can be no doubt that
Yamato legal scholars were aware of the Tang statute because the Ryō no shūge quotes it in
full.
185
Therefore, we have to conclude that Yamato codifiers deliberately omitted both the
invitation process and the status of “invited alien” from the Yōrō code.
Iwami also examines references in various Tang texts to “foreign residence units” ( ),
another category that did not exist in the Yamato codes. He draws on a reconstruction of one of

182
Niida, Tōreishūiho, 1358.
183

184
Iwami, “Tōdai no kika to shoban,” 15-29.
185
The quotation from the Tang statutes follows the Koki commentary in the Ryō no shūge. It is possible that the
statute is quoted in the Koki commentary, but the structure of the Ryō no shūge text makes it difficult to determine.
Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23:408-410.

76
the Ampero fragments (a collection of Turfan documents from the Tang dynasty held by the
Ōtani Collection) by Ōtsu and Enomoto to argue that the Tang notion of “submitting and being
transformed” encompassed two different processes. One was similar to the Yamato process in
which people were admitted, settled, added to the registers, and became full subjects after 10
years of tax exemptions. The other was designed primarily for Sogdian merchants in the western
part of the realm who were admitted and added to “foreign” residence unit registers, but whose
families did not become full subjects until the next generation (i.e. their children became full
subjects and were included in ordinary residence unit registers). Ōtsu argues that because
merchants both in the western parts of the realm and in the capital were primarily engaged in
trade, they did not assimilate as quickly as those who were cultivators, and therefore a separate
process was created for their incorporation.
186
Evidently, Yamato did not have the same issue
with foreign merchants in the capital or peripheries of the realm as did the Tang, and thus the
compilers of the Yamato codes omitted these regulations. Although many parts of the Yamato
process for incorporating new subjects were closely modeled on the Tang processes, there is also
ample evidence that Yamato codifiers were carefully adjusting and adapting Tang institutions for
Yamato circumstances, and that they did not hesitate to eliminate irrelevant regulations or add
those they deemed necessary.
We can conclude that Yamato rulers adopted the kika (or tōka) process because it served
the them in at least two ways. On one hand, the process offered clear and concrete incentives for
people from outside the realm to enter and become subjects. The benefits of attracting talented
people bringing new knowledge, goods, and technologies to the realm are obvious. In addition,
the kika process was an important way in which rulers performed their ability to attract and

186
Ōtsu Tōru et al., “Ōtani tankentai Tōrufan shōrai Ampera bunshōgun no fukugen,” Tōyō shien 28 (January 1987),
cited in Iwami, “Tōdai no kika to shoban.”

77
transform people, and new subjects were symbols of the legitimacy and universality of a
sovereign’s rule. The importance of this process to the realm is highlighted in the penal code,
which lists six special qualifications that entitled people to special treatment, among them
meritorious service (gikō ). It included “those who lead many people to submit and be
transformed, and to quickly settle down once they have crossed over.”
187
The kika process – in
which people from outside of the realm arrived, were reported to the center, settled, and added to
the registers – was a critical means of asserting the existence and extent of the realm (i.e. the
extent of the sovereign’s influence). Examining the relevant clauses of the Taihō and Yōrō codes
together with the Koki commentary establishes that being added to the residence unit registers
was a critical point in the “transformation” from outsider to subject, and that the most basic
definition of a Yamato subject was a person who was included in the residence unit registers and
eligible to pay taxes (even if they were exempt for a period of time). In the next section, I will
consider how the implementation of these laws is reflected in the official histories of the late
seventh and eighth centuries.
New Subjects of the Ritsuryō Realm
Compiling the law codes was critical to the articulation of a new vision of the sovereign,
the court, and the people of the realm. As the above examination of the law codes and legal
commentaries has made clear, a great deal of care and attention went into the selection and
compilation of the laws that defined the kika process. The next question, a critical one, is: did the
Yamato rulers and their officials actually implement these laws? Our ability to evaluate if and
how laws were implemented across the realm is limited by the scarcity of the extant sources, but
the official histories of the seventh through ninth centuries do contain records of thousands of

187
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 19.

78
people entering the realm and being settled in various provinces. These records serve as evidence
that the laws discussed above were actively implemented, and that the rulers and their officials
devoted significant time and energy to the kika process. Examining the patterns in how and
where new subjects were settled has been a key approach for scholars seeking insight into the
significance and purpose of the kika process for Yamato sovereigns. Considering cases of
exceptional treatment, such as grants of lifetime tax exemptions and the creation of new districts
named after foreign polities, offers us even further insight into the motivation various Yamato
rulers had for actively implementing the kika process.
As we have seen above, the Nihon shoki contains records of people “submitting and
being transformed” from long before the compilation of the Yamato law codes established an
official process for becoming a subject of the realm.
188
Tanaka Fumio has argued, however, that
the notion of kika in the Nihon shoki is quite different from that of the later law codes. In the law
codes, the process of becoming a subject was unidirectional and permanent. Once a person
became a subject, it was a great crime to defect from the realm. In contrast, the Nihon shoki
notion of kika seems to have been much less rigid. The case of the Buddhist monk Eji ( , ?-?), who is recorded as having arrived in the third year of Suiko’s reign (595 CE) from the
Korean peninsula realm of Koguryŏ, is an illustrative example. The Nihon shoki describes his
arrival in Yamato as “submitting and being transformed,” and goes on to record his installation at
a prominent temple with the role of tutor to the prince most widely known as Shōtoku.
189
Twenty

188
The earliest record is from the mythical reign of Suinin Tennō, followed by examples from the first and twenty-
sixth years of Kinmei’s reign (540 CE and 565 CE). See NHSK I:260-261 [Suinin 3/3], NHSK II:65-66 [Kinmei
1/2] and 126-127 [Kinmei 26/5]. In contrast to the Nihon shoki, the Kojiki does not use the terms kika or tōka to
describe people entering the realm.
189
The prince appears in the records as Prince Kamitsumiya or Prince Umayado. The best discussion in English on
the relationship between the historical figure and later legends is in Como, 2008, pp. 4-5. For Eji’s arrival, see
NHSK II:175 [Suiko 3/5/10]. For his installation at Hōkōji, now known as Asukadera, see NHSK II:175 [Suiko
4/11].

79
years later, the Nihon shoki states simply: “The Koguryŏ monk Eji returned to his realm.”
190
Eji’s
return is not framed as a defection from Yamato but a return to his home land, suggesting a
version of the kika process that did not result in an exclusive or irreversible affiliation with a
single realm. Throughout the records of Eji’s life and activities in Yamato, the compilers of the
Nihon shoki emphasized his knowledge, service to the rulers of Yamato, and lasting bond with
an individual ruler rather than his transformation into a subject of the realm. Tanaka argues that
this emphasis is characteristic of the pre-ritsuryō period, which was one of relatively fluidity that
allowed for the possibility of allegiance to multiple rulers.
191
Thus, the kika of the pre-ritsuryō
period was not the same as the kika of the law codes. As we shall see, the events of the late
seventh century led to a shift in priorities that was accompanied by the implementation of the
new legally-defined kika process that did not allow for multiple allegiance.
The late seventh century brought massive waves of immigration to Yamato. The rise of
the continental Sui dynasty in 581 CE and its invasion of Koguryŏ in 598 CE plunged the region
into a period of instability. The instability continued after the fall of the Sui and with the rise of
the Tang dynasty in 618 CE. The Tang first invaded Koguryŏ in 643 CE, and warfare continued
intermittently on the Korean peninsula for the next twenty-five years. In 660 CE, the combined
Tang-Silla forces defeated the peninsular realm of Paekche and captured its king. When Yamato
sent a naval force of 400 ships with a Paekche prince to try to reclaim the realm, the entire fleet
was destroyed at the Battle of Paekchon River in 663 CE. The battle was a major blow to
Yamato and the end of any real hopes of restoring the Paekche royalty. From this point, the Tang
and Silla forces turned their attention to Koguryŏ. Fighting dragged on inconclusively for some
time, but the death of the Koguryŏ leader and military commander and a split in the Koguryŏ

190
. NHSK II:200-201 [Suiko 23/11/15].
191
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 177-203.

80
court in 666 CE gave the Tang-Silla forces the opening they needed to finally destroy Koguryŏ
in 668 CE. Yamato official histories record the arrival and settlement of thousands of people
fleeing the conflict and the destruction of their realms in the late seventh century. In one entry
from Tenji’s reign in 666 CE, the Nihon shoki records the settlement of over 2000 men and
women from Paekche in the eastern provinces of the realm. The same entry notes that the group
had all received three years of provisions beginning in 663 CE, the year of the Battle of
Paekchon River.
192
It is not clear where this very large group of people was lodged before being
settled, but supporting and settling groups like this would have demanded significant
administrative coordination and resources. In short, these records suggest that Yamato rulers
were already implementing many elements of what would become the ritsuryō regulations in the
years immediately following the Battle of Paekchon River.
A later entry from Tenmu’s reign offers evidence that the ten-year tax exemptions
specified in the Taihō and Yōrō codes were in place as early as 681 CE, suggesting that they
were included in the Kiyomihara administrative code. A Nihon shoki entry from that year in
Tenmu’s reign reads:
An edict was issued to the various people of the Three Kan which stated: ‘Recently, the
ten-year exemption from taxes paid in goods [chō] ended. In addition [to these expired tax
exemptions], the children and grandchildren who accompanied these people in the initial
year in which they submitted and were transformed shall also be exempted from all taxes.’
.
193

192
The Nihon shoki notes that they were all given these provisions without regard for their status as Buddhist clergy,
implying that this type of support would have typically been granted to clergy. NHSK II:364-364 [Tenji 5 (666),
winter]. For English see Aston, Nihongi II:285.
193
Sankan or samhan ( ) is an ambiguous term that can refer to the proto-three kingdoms polities of Chinhan,
Mahan, and Pyŏnhan, or to the three Korean peninsula states of Koguryō, Silla, and Paekche. In this case, it likely
refers to Koguryō, Silla, and Paekche. I use “Three Kan” rather than “Three Han” to clarify the distinction from the
continental “Han.” NHSK II:448-449 [Tenmu 10 (682) 8/10]. For English, see Aston, Nihongi, II:352.

81
Tenmu’s edict both confirmed that ten-year tax exemptions had been granted to the immigrants
from the Korean peninsula who had arrived in the 660s and also extended them to the children
and grandchildren of those immigrants. Later Nihon shoki entries from Jitō’s reign indicate that
groups of people from the Korean peninsula continued to be settled in various provinces of the
realm. Many of these entries contain the same phrase: “They were allotted fields, given
provisions, and made to pursue their occupations in peace.”
194
These entries from the Nihon shoki
demonstrate both that Tenmu and Jitō put the kika regulations into effect and also that they were
willing and able to expend what must have been quite significant resources on the support and
settlement of large numbers of new subjects.
How significant of an effort was implementing the kika process? One way to consider
this question is to ask how many people the early Yamato realm was absorbing through this
process. It is difficult to get a reliable estimate of the overall number of people who arrived in
Yamato from the Korean peninsula during this period. Taking a macro perspective, Hanihara
Kazurō famously argued that over 1 million people had crossed over from the Korean peninsula
and continent between 300 BCE and 700 CE. His analysis suggested that migrant people made
up between 11% and 25% of the Kofun-period population of the archipelago.
195
In his 1996 book,
Imamura Keiji agreed that there likely was significant migration into Japan during this period,
but took exception with Hanihara’s assertion that it is possible to calculate the scale of that
migration based only on estimates of population increase and an arbitrary (from Imamura’s
perspective) idea of a “reasonable rate” of population growth. Imamura argued that at least some
of the massive increase in population during this time period was actually due to improvements

194
. See NHSK II:488-489 (Jitō 1 (687) 3/15, 3/22, and 4/10). For English, see Aston, Nihongi,
II:385-388.
195
Hanihara Kazurō, “Estimation of the Number of Early Migrants to Japan: A Simulative Study,” The Journal of
Anthropological Society of Nippon 95, no. 3 (1987): 391-403.

82
in the carrying capacity of the economy brought about by the spread of wet-rice agriculture.
196

Neither Hanihara nor Imamura offers a precise estimate of the size of the seventh-century waves
of migration.
Another commonly cited estimate of the scale of new arrivals in the late seventh century
relies on the Shinsen shōjiroku, which records the genealogies of 1182 central lineages and
categorizes over 30% of them as being of “various foreign” origin.
197
While scholars often cite
this statistic to suggest that a large percentage of early Heian officialdom was of foreign origin, it
is difficult to know how representative the lineages in the text were of the general population,
and how representative early Heian officialdom was of early Nara officialdom. Another issue
with using the Shōjiroku to estimate the scale of the migration in the 660s is that the people in
the “various foreign” category were not all descended from late seventh-century immigrants –
some traced their origins back to much earlier figures. Even with only these rough estimates,
there can be little doubt but that the people who crossed over into Yamato from the late seventh
century through the early ninth centuries made up a significant percentage of the population.
Records in the Nihon shoki, Shoku Nihongi, and Nihon kōki (Later Records of Japan, ,
840 CE) of the settlement of new subjects show that a minimum of 9781 people were settled
across the realm between the late seventh- and the mid-ninth century (see Table 1).
198
It is safe to
say that the rulers and their officials were expending considerable time, energy, and resources on

196
Keiji Imamura, Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, 1996), 155-160.
197
The Shinsen shōjiroku is discussed in detail in Chapter 3. Throughout this dissertation I will refer to this text as
both Shinsen shōjiroku and Shōjiroku – both are commonly used in Japanese scholarship.
198
9781 people is a conservative estimate. Two entries in Table 1 refer to a number of residence units ( ) that were
settled, and in these cases I have relied on the conservative average of 20 people per residence unit described in
Yoshie et al. “Gender in the Administrative Code,” 369 and 372. In her article on gender and the ritsuryō system,
Yoshie argued that the extant residence unit register suggest an average of 20-30 members in each . See Yoshie
Akiko, “Gender in Early Classical Japan – Marriage, Leadership, and Political Status in Village and Palace,” trans.
Janet R. Goodwin, Monumenta Nipponica 60, no. 4 (January 1, 2005): 446.

83
the kika process, and that therefore the process must have served an important purpose for early
Yamato sovereigns.
Ōtsu Tōru was the first to examine patterns in kika settlement as a way of understanding
what Yamato sovereigns hoped to gain by allocating such extensive resources to the settlement
of people from the Korean peninsula. For instance, examining the official histories reveals a
clear pattern of settlements located in eastern provinces of the realm – Ōmi, Musashi, Hitachi,
Kai, Shinano, Mino. As we saw above, the Yōrō code stated that people who were part of the
kika process should be settled in “plentiful provinces” ( ), while the same clause in the Tang
code used the term “plentiful counties” ( ). Ōtsu argued that the shift to the character

84
Table 1: Kika Settlement in the Rikkokushi
199

Date Origin # of people Province
Suinin 3.3 Silla 1 Tajima
Kinmei 1.2 Paekche 1 Yamato
Kinmei 26.5 Koguryŏ 1 Yamashiro
612 Paekche 1 --
612 Paekche 1 --
661.11.23 T'ang 3200 Ōmi
665.2 Paekche 400 Ōmi
666 Paekche 2000 Tōgoku
669 -- 700 Ōmi
676.10.16 T'ang 600 Ōmi
685.5.14 Paekche 23 Musashi
687.3.15 Koguryŏ 56 Hitachi
687.3.22 Silla 14 Shimotsuke
687.4.10 Silla 22 Musashi
688.5.8 Paekche 1 Kai
689.4.8 Silla 1 Shimotsuke
690.2.25 Silla 12 Musashi
690.8.11 Silla 1 Shimotsuke
715.7.27 Silla 74 Mino
716.5.16 Koguryŏ 1799 Musashi
758.8.24 Silla 74 Musashi
760.4.28 Silla 131 Musashi
814.8.23 Silla 6 Mino
814.10.24 Silla 26 --
816.10.13 Silla 180 Capital
817.2.15 Silla 43 --
817.4.22 Silla 144 --
822.7.17 Silla 40 --
824.3.8 Silla 165 --
824.5.11 Silla 54 Mutsu
833.4.8 Silla 10 Left Capital

199
Table 1 combines the work of Ōtsu Tōru and Sugasawa Yōko, both of whom have examined the patterns of
settlement of new subjects. See Ōtsu Tōru, Chart 6 in Ritsuryō kokka shihai kōzō no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1993), 97; and
Sugasawa Yoko, Chart 5 in “Kokushi ninyō kara mita shin toraijin to kodai no Nihon,” The Bulletin of Kyoto Human
Rights Research Institute, March 1996, 132.

85
reflected the Yamato ruler’s intention of developing particular provinces, and that the pattern of
settlement in Ōmi and other eastern provinces demonstrates that it was the eastern part of the
realm that they aimed to develop, using the labor and skills of the thousands of people newly
arrived from the Korean peninsula. In his analysis, the grant of ten-year tax exemptions was an
incentive for these people to complete the difficult task of opening new rice fields, which
benefitted the sovereign because it would have increased the overall productive capacity of the
realm.
200
Even though Ōtsu acknowledged that there were no sources to show that the new
subjects were actually engaged in cultivation once they were settled, his argument offers a
plausible explanation for the Yamato realm’s willingness to expend so many resources to support
new subjects, while also accounting for the change in terminology from the Tang to the Yōrō
codes.
In response to Ōtsu’s arguments, however, Tanaka Fumio pointed to a number of issues
with the idea that sovereigns focused all kika settlement in the eastern provinces, and that such
settlement was aimed primarily at opening new lands. First, as noted above in the discussion of
Jitō’s reign, many of the records of kika settlement included the phrase “[t]hey were allotted
fields [and] given provisions” ( ). Tanaka also cites two later examples in which it is
clear that the people being settled received fields that had already been prepared for cultivation,
rather than unopened lands that they were then expected to turn into rice fields. Even if people
were expected to open new land, Tanaka notes that cooperation from local people and officials
would have been critical. Next, Tanaka tackled the idea that kika settlements were restricted to
the eastern provinces. He highlighted records in the official histories that show kika settlements
throughout the central and outer provinces, and also cited the Yōrō code clause on the Bureau of

200
Ōtsu, Ritsuryō kokka shihai kōzō no kenkyū, 94-116

86
Foreign and Buddhist Affairs as evidence that there was kika settlement in the capital as well.
201

Wood documents (mokkan ) found in the Heijō palace also provide evidence that people
originally from Paekche and Silla were living in the capital, and the Man’yōshū contains poems
written by nuns from Silla who had gone through the kika process and then lived in the capital.
202

In short, Tanaka argued that kika settlement was not limited to the eastern provinces, and that its
primary purpose was not to open new land to cultivation.
203

So why did Yamato sovereigns expend so many resources on kika settlement? Even more,
why did they extend and expand the privileges granted to those who had gone through the kika
process? We have already seen that Tenmu extended the ten-year tax exemptions from the adults
who originally crossed over to their children and grandchildren in 681 CE. In 717 CE, Genshō
Tennō issued a similar order extending tax exemptions even further for immigrants from
Paekche and Koguryŏ:
Faced with the chaos of war in their own lands, the armies of the two realms of Koguryŏ
and Paekche [came to Yamato and] submitted to our numinous influence. Out of sympathy
and compassion for these distant lands, we grant them life-long tax exemptions.
204

By this order, the tax exemptions for people who had fled the destruction of Paekche and
Koguryŏ were extended from ten-year to life-long exemptions.
205
By even the most extreme
estimate – assuming a child that was one year old in 681 CE had received the ten-year exemption
beginning in 702 CE when they turned twenty-one – Tenmu’s exemption would have expired in

201
Tanaka cites a number of examples of people settled outside eastern provinces. See Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka,
155. That many of the “various foreign” lineages in the Shinsen shōjiroku were registered in the Left and Right
Capital is further evidence to support Tanaka’s point.
202
All cited in Ibid., 154n13 and 170n14.
203
Ibid., 150-174.
204
SKNG II:34-35 [Yōrō 1 (717) 11/8]. This passage is also quoted in the Koki commentary on Clause 15 of the
Laws on Taxes, cited above.
205
A Council of State order implementing these exemptions is cited in the Ryō no shūge commentary on the Laws on
Taxes. Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23:408-410.

87
712 CE, long before Genshō issued her edict.
206
Well over fifty years had passed since the
destruction of Paekche and the first waves of refugees arrived in Yamato, and it is hard to
imagine that people were having such a hard time establishing themselves that they needed
ongoing tax exemptions. Indeed, nearly all of the 2000 Paekche people who arrived in 663 CE
would have aged out of paying taxes at this point.
207
If the recipients of these exemptions did not
particularly need them, why did they receive them?
Tanaka has convincingly argued that the tax exemptions were extended because doing so
served the political and diplomatic interests of the early eighth-century Yamato rulers. Genshō’s
order was a way to re-emphasize the large number of people who had “submitted to the
numinous influence” of the Yamato sovereign. Doing so allowed them to claim that they had
absorbed these former realms, when in reality it was Silla that had absorbed both the territory
and the majority of the population of Paekche and Koguryŏ. In other words, the main purpose of
Genshō’s order was to highlight these people’s past action of “submitting and being
transformed” by the Yamato sovereign. Even though Genshō was not the sovereign who had
originally made these immigrants into subjects, she benefitted from the association with the
sovereigns who had. By extending the tax exemptions they had granted as part of the kika
process, she could also demonstrate that she was maintaining the proper virtues of a legitimate
ritsuryō ruler.
The creation of a new district in 716 CE suggests another way in which manipulating the
kika process and groups of new subjects benefitted eighth-century rulers. An entry in the Shoku

206
In the Yōrō administrative code, men between the ages of 21 and 60 were termed full tax-payers, while men
between the ages of 17 to 20 were exempt from tax in labor but had to pay a quarter of the taxes imposed on adult
men. For a useful English overview of the tax system, see Yoshie et al. “Gender in the Administrative Code,” 364.
207
Only those who arrived as children under the age of 6 could still have been paying taxes when this order was
issued in 717 CE.

88
Nihongi records the re-settlement of 1799 people originally from Koguryŏ to Musashi province
where they formed a new district named Koguryŏ district (Koma-gun ).
208
In his research
on this and other similar districts, Arai Hideki summarizes four reasons for the creation of the
district from previous scholarship. First, this was a measure designed to isolate and segregate
people of foreign origin. Second, the people from Koguryŏ wished to live in one place and the
creation of the district reflected a policy of hospitality and accommodation. Third, he points to
Ōtsu’s argument that the creation of the district was related to the sovereign’s goal of opening of
new land through the advanced skills and technologies of people from Koguryŏ. In this vein,
Arai also cites work by Takahashi Kazuo that shows that there were many Jōmon ruins in the
area but few from the Yayoi period and almost none from the Kofun period. The sudden increase
in archaeological sites in the Nara period and evidence of wet rice fields suggests that the
settlement of these Koguryŏ people may have actually encouraged development. And fourth,
Musashi province was resistant to central control and therefore the court sought to strengthen its
presence by moving people to the area who would develop land and remain in close touch with
the center.
209
To these four, Arai proposes a fifth possible reason for the creation of Koguryŏ
district in particular: he thinks it was part of a diplomatic strategy. He argues that the existence of
a district named after and made up of people from the former realm of Koguryŏ strengthened the
Yamato sovereign’s claim to having absorbed that realm, and that envoys to the Tang court

208
SKNG II:14-15 [Reiki 2 (716) 5/16].
209
The creation of Koguryŏ district was not the only example of creating new districts or re-locating large groups of
people. The year before, the court had relocated a group of people originally from Silla to create Mushiroda district
in Mino province and moved 1000 residence units from six different provinces to Mutsu.

89
would have likely reported its existence. In other words, these districts were a diplomatic tool
designed to impress neighboring realms.
210

Even this cursory review of the official histories demonstrates how Yamato rulers and
officials put the kika regulations of the law codes into effect, and that it devoted substantial time,
effort, and resources to doing so. The total number of people who went through this process and
became new subjects of Yamato is difficult to determine, but at minimum exceeded 10,000
people. These people were not only welcomed, but also given lands and a variety of resources.
There is little evidence to suggest that this policy was controversial, and it seems from the
sources that local populations and officials were willing to support the large-scale preparations
necessary to accommodate groups as large as 2000 people. Legally, once they had been added to
the registers, they were subjects of the realm with the same status as other subjects. Nonetheless,
the proclamation of a series of orders extending the tax exemptions and other privileges granted
to the people who crossed over from Koguryŏ, Paekche, and Silla after the wars of the seventh
century suggests that these people did not completely merge into the general population, even
after several generations. How this related to actual cultural practices or individual identity is
extremely difficult to determine. What is clear is that the official histories show that the presence
of subjects who had gone through the kika process was seen as an important marker of the
legitimacy of the Yamato sovereign’s authority, and that sovereigns regularly sought to highlight
new subjects in order to bolster their position both domestically and in diplomatic relations.

Conclusion

210
Arai Hideki, “Toraijin (kikajin) no tōgoku ihai to komagun/shiragigun,” Senshū Daigaku kodai higashi yūrajia
sentā nenpō 1 (March 2015): 19–35.

90
As discussed in the introduction, the terms “immigrant” and “people of immigrant
descent” (toraijin or toraikei ) are often used to refer to all people who crossed
over from other realms into Yamato and to their descendants for many hundreds of years.
Through an examination of the law codes in East Asia and Yamato, the worldview and human
categories of the law codes, and the laws on immigration and becoming a subject of Yamato, I
have argued here that “immigrant” was not a relevant category for the seventh- and eighth-
century Yamato realm. While the law codes framed the universe in terms of civilized and
uncivilized – within and outside of the sphere of the sovereign’s influence – the categories of
“foreign” and “alien” overlapped and were not clearly defined, and both the law codes and the
legal commentaries of the time offer evidence that the realm did not use these terms to group all
non-Yamato peoples of the archipelago or all of the peoples of the Korean peninsula.
Furthermore, the extension of tax exemptions to people who had crossed over into Yamato after
the fall of Koguryŏ and Paekche suggests that the realm did not connect the seventh-century
wave of immigration to earlier waves of immigration from the Korean peninsula that had taken
place in the fourth and fifth centuries.
The law codes set forth a vision of a world sphere in which the sovereign continuously
attracted as-yet uncivilized people from outside of the realm to submit to his or her authority and
be transformed into civilized subjects. This chapter has argued that the kika process was of
critical importance for the legitimization of the Yamato sovereigns’ authority, and that over time
the symbolic value of these subjects became more important than the practical advantages they
could offer through their knowledge and skills. Time and again Yamato sovereigns granted
special treatment to new subjects not because these new subjects needed further support but
because making these grants allowed the sovereign to highlight their success in attracting and

91
transforming people from a range of other realms. The question of what happened to the new
subjects after they had been incorporated into the realm is the subject of the next chapter.

92
Chapter 2: What’s in a Name? Becoming a Subject of the Sovereign in the Eighth Century

What happened after an immigrant became a subject of the Yamato realm? As the
previous chapter demonstrated, once they had been settled and added to the population registers,
they held a legal status equivalent to all other free-born subjects of the realm. Even as they
participated in Yamato society, however, new subjects had to contend with a set of interlocking
systems of status and rank, including uji ( ), or royally-recognized lineages, and kabane ( ), or
royally-granted titles, that were used to configure people of the realm.
211
Membership in these
systems was marked by possession of what I call a “designation,” a translation of the Japanese
term sei ( ), defined by Katō Akira as “the part of the name that remains when the personal
name is removed.”
212
These systems were related to, and to some extent governed by, provisions
in the ritsuryō codes; but they also pre-dated the promulgation of the codes and reflected earlier
strategies for configuring elites that had developed under the Yamato Great Kings of the sixth
and seventh centuries. The ultimate arbiter of entry into these systems was the ruler, who alone
could grant or revoke designations. Designations were thus an expression of royal authority and
a key tool for configuring and controlling subjects. In this chapter, I examine the ways in which
immigrants and their descendants were incorporated into the Yamato designation system over the

211
These terms and their translations are discussed below.
212
Katō Akira, “Waga kuni ni okeru sei no seiritsu ni tsuite,” in Shoku
Nihon kodaishi ronshū, ed. Sakamoto Tarō (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1972), 390. In its modern usage, the
Japanese term sei , refers simply to surnames. When it is used for the classical period, however, the character can
confusingly be read kabane (in the narrow sense of royally-granted titles) as well as sei (in Katō’s much broader
sense). I rely on Katō’s definition because it allows me to address the wide range of non-personal names that appear
in early sources without falling into the common trap of conflating uji names with surnames. While Katō’s
definition is the most commonly cited definition in recent scholarship, there is no clear consensus on how to define
or use the terms . Yoshie Akiko, for example, created the term kabane-sei to clarify that kabane were a
subset of the larger sei category. See Yoshie Akiko, “Ritsuryō seika no kōmin no sei chitsujo,” Shigaku Zasshi 84.12
(1975), 1589-1631. In reading Japanese-language work on the uji and kabane systems, it is critical to identify each
scholar’s definition and usage of the character , as well as the related term shisei , which combines the
characters for uji and kabane but most often refers to the broad category I call designations (the part of the name that
remains when the personal or given name is removed). The ambiguity of these terms arises in part from the
inconsistency of their use in classical sources.

93
course of the eighth century, while also considering how changing policy on this issue reflected
the emergence of new notions of what it meant to be a Yamato subject.
Although the ritsuryō codes provided a framework for transforming outsiders into
subjects, there was no codified process for deciding if, when, or how to integrate new subjects
into the designation system. Most immigrants did not immediately receive Yamato designations
upon becoming subjects, and in the early eighth century there was a relatively large population of
people who were subjects but did not have Yamato designations. Over the course of the eighth
century a series of Yamato sovereigns made moves to incorporate all subjects into the
designation system; and at the same time, holding high status designations became increasingly
necessary for gaining access to high court offices and ranks. The official chronicles contain
records of over ten thousand designation changes granted between the late seventh and the early
ninth century, suggesting the scale at which this system functioned and its significance to both
the sovereign and subjects of the realm. It was in this context that a series of edicts and orders
issued by eighth-century rulers brought a new policy on granting Yamato designations to those
who did not have them into focus.
I consider the development of eighth-century Yamato designation policy with attention to
both the context of the promulgation of these orders and their subsequent impact. I argue that
from the late seventh through the first half of the eighth centuries, immigrants who had become
subjects and their descendants often served as officials without Yamato designations, and that the
rulers were more concerned with highlighting the presence of high-ranking immigrants, to whom
they assigned the newly-invented kabane title of “royal” (konikishi ), than they were with
using designations to systematically mark people of immigrant origin. During the early period of
the ritsuryō realm, rulers made grants of designations to various subjects, including some who

94
were of foreign origin, but no new official policies on designations for these subjects were
promulgated until the reign of Shōmu Tennō. Shōmu extended the designation system and began
large-scale grants to incorporate subjects who had been left out. Nevertheless, his focus was not
on subjects who were of foreign descent.
A real shift in policy occurred under Kōken Tennō, however, with a 757 CE edict that
allowed all immigrants who had become subjects and their descendants to request Yamato
designations. According to the logic of this new policy, the transformation from being a kegai
person, or one who was outside of civilization, to being a kenai person, or one who was within
the civilized realm, was only the first step in becoming a full subject of the sovereign, ōmin ( ). The second step was to adopt the ways and manners of the Yamato realm, and receipt of a
Yamato designation was the recognition of having done so. Based on the designation grants that
followed this edict, I argue that this policy was not meant to mandate real cultural assimilation,
but to reframe the grant of designations as the marker of a second stage of transformation,
thereby allowing later Nara-period rulers to continue to draw on performances of their civilizing
influence as a source of legitimacy, even as the number of immigrants entering the realm
dwindled. Furthermore, I draw on analysis of petitions submitted after this edict to argue that this
order did not – as some scholars have suggested – destroy the designation system by allowing
indiscriminate grants. Instead, the evidence demonstrates that Kōken’s edict was only one of a
variety of strategies that Yamato lineages could draw on in requesting new designations.
Sources & Approaches
The analysis in this chapter relies primarily on three of the six official histories of the realm: the
Nihon shoki, Shoku Nihongi and Nihon kōki. Each of these texts was compiled by royal order,
and represented a major court project involving a team of scholar-officials that took years and

95
sometimes decades to complete.
213
The Nihon shoki, which begins with the emergence of heaven
and earth and ends with the abdication of Jitō Tennō in 697 CE, was completed and submitted to
the throne by Prince Toneri ( , 676-735 CE) in 720 CE. Rather than providing a single
unified narrative, the Nihon shoki includes a main narrative accompanied by notes from the
compilers and citations from a range of variant texts that offer differing accounts of the same
events. While the text becomes increasingly reliable as a historical record as it moves later in
time, the entire text must be treated with caution. The forty volumes of the second history, the
Shoku Nihongi, were compiled in stages with repeated rounds of revisions by different teams of
compilers – in the first stage, twenty volumes covering 757 CE to 781 CE were compiled and
presented to the throne by Fujiwara no Tsugutada ( ,727-796 CE). Next, the draft of the
twenty volumes covering the years 697 CE to 757 CE was revised and the submitted to the tennō
in 797 CE.
214
Although it followed the Nihon shoki in the series of official histories, it differed
from the Nihon shoki in its sources, contents, and process of compilation. Because scholars
believe that this text was compiled using archives of public records created by ritsuryō officials,
it is considered a relatively reliable and important source for the eighth-century.
215
The third
history, the Nihon kōki, which covers the years between 792 CE and 833 CE, was compiled by a

213
These official histories were clearly modeled on the histories of the continental dynasties, including the “veritable
record” (C. shilu J. jitsuroku, ) tradition from the Tang dynasty. For a useful overview of the rikkokushi in
English, see John Bronwnlee’s translation of Sakamoto Tarō’s classic work, The Six National Histories of Japan,
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1991). Both Denis Twitchett and David McMullen have examined the writing of official
histories during the Tang dynasty. In particular, see Chapter 7 on veritable records in Denis Crispin Twitchett, The
Writing of Official History under the T’ang (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and
Chapter 5 in David L. McMullen, State and Scholars in T’ang China (Cambridge; New York; New Rochelle;
Melbourne; Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
214
This timeline of compilation is based on two memorials in the Ruiju kokushi on the presentation of the Shoku
Nihongi text. There are some gaps and contradictions between the two memorials, and therefore there is some
uncertainty about the exact process by which the text was compiled. See Kokushi daijiten s.v. “ ” (entry by
Yoshioka Masayuki), accessed August 30, 2019 via Japan Knowledge.
215
Joan Piggott cites Hayakawa Shōhachi’s evaluation of the Shoku Nihongi as representative. Piggott, Emergence),
290.

96
process similar to that of the Shoku Nihongi and submitted in 840 CE by Fujiwara no Otsugu ( , 774-843 CE). Unfortunately only ten of the original forty books of the Nihon kōki are
extant.
216
Throughout the chapter, I also draw on the ritsuryō codes and commentaries, extant
residence unit and tax registers preserved in the Shōsōin monjo (Documents of the Shōsōin, ), and documents from the Nara and Heian periods compiled in the collections of the
Nara ibun (Historical Materials from the Nara Period, ) and Heian ibun (Historical
Materials from the Heian Period, ).
As scarce as the sources admittedly are for this period, I believe that these official
compendia have been neglected in the English language scholarship. Although they are official
records created by and focused on the activities of central elites, they are also complex and
layered texts that incorporate a range of different voices and perspectives. In order to take full
advantage of the complexity of these texts, I combine three different approaches to reading these
sources. The first approach focuses on using the official chronicles as records of official policy,
generally recorded in the form of edicts, orders, or spoken edicts (senmyō ) issued by the
monarch or Council of State. Over the course of the eighth century, Yamato sovereigns grappled
with problems of if and how large numbers of new subjects who still lacked designations should
be incorporated into the Yamato designation system. It was through a series of ad hoc edicts and
orders that they gradually defined a policy on the matter. Close reading of the major policies on
designations with attention to the historical context for each allows exploration of how a series of

216
The sections included in the Shintei zōhō kokushi taikei edition of the Nihon kōki are volumes 5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17,
20, 21, 22, and 24. Excerpts of the Nihon kōki were included in later texts like the Ruiju kokushi and Nihon kiryaku.
The recent Yakuchū Nihon shiryō edition of the Nihon kōki includes the fragments of the text quoted in other later
texts, and therefore it lists all forty volumes in its table of contents. See the Dictionary of Sources of Classical
Japan, 278, 282-283, and 371. For more detail on the Nihon shoki and Shoku Nihongi, see the appendix on sources
in Piggott, Emergence, p. 287-292.

97
rulers articulated new visions of the function of designations and the significance of designation
grants to foreign subjects.
The second approach I take to the official chronicles focuses on the records of designation
grants made from the late seventh to the early ninth centuries. Approximately ten thousand
people received new designations over this period of time, and these grants were recorded in 471
entries in the Nihon shoki, Shoku Nihongi, and Nihon kōki. Compiling these grants into a
database allowed me to consider how policies issued over the course of the eighth century were
actually applied, while also providing a sense of the scale and broader contours of the
designation system as it developed during this time. The sheer number of people who received
new designations leaves little doubt that this was a dynamic system in which both rulers and
ruled had an interest. Rulers occasionally made unilateral grants, but researchers believe that
most grants were made in response to petitions from subjects. In either case, each new
designation was a point of direct contact between the ruler and a subject, or a group of subjects.
Some entries describe designation grants that directly correspond to the implementation of a
specific policy, but these cases are relatively rare. As a result, the database offers a sense of the
temporal, geographic, and social trends in designation grants. It also allows examination of a
range of unspoken rules and common practices that were neither codified in the ritsuryō nor
promulgated as official edicts or orders of the tennō, but nonetheless regulated the granting of
new designations.
The level of detail included in entries recording designation grants varies widely, from
short entries that simply identify an individual or group and the new designation, to entries that
include lengthy petitions elaborating requests for changes. For each entry, I captured as much
information as possible, noting rank, official post, the province and district of residence, the

98
previous and newly granted designations (broken down into lineage names and titles), and
whether the grant was to an individual or group. Capturing the number of people who received
each designation is difficult because the sources are often vague. Grants are often recorded with
a representative individual’s name followed by the character to indicate that others affiliated
with that person also received the designation. When there is a number following this character, I
have assumed that this number includes the representative person.
217
When the record does not
give a number and no number is apparent from context, I have counted the entry as one person.
There are also cases in which the number of people is unclear, as in an entry from 722 CE that
grants new designations to people of 71 residence units (ko ). In this case, I have used Yoshie
Akiko’s conservative estimate of 20 people per residence unit to estimate the number of people
who received designations, but the actual number of people may well have differed quite
significantly.
218
Finally, some people received multiple designation grants over the course of their
lives, and in this sense are counted multiple times – in other words, the number of grants does
not represent the number of people who received grants.
219
By my count, the first three official
histories contain 10,936 instances of changed designations, but the real number of people who
received new designations is without doubt far higher.
A significant challenge in creating this database lay in consistently identifying immigrants
and their descendants. The most straightforward cases are those in which the record explicitly
associates an individual or group with a foreign realm, but entries that reference specific foreign
realms in describing the people receiving designations are relatively rare: of 471 entries that

217
For example, I counted “Ki no Omi Ryumaro et al 18 people” as 18 people total. SKNG
II:54-55 [Yōrō 3 (719) 5/15].
218
SKNG II:112-113 [Yōrō 6 (722) 3/10]. Y oshie gives the range of 20-30 people per residence unit. See “Gender in
Early Classical Japan,” 446.
219
For example, Takakura no Fukushin received at least three designation changes over the course of his career:
Sena no Konikishi, Koma no Ason, and finally Takakura no Ason. SKNG V:444-447 [Enryaku 8 (789) 10/17].

99
record designation changes, only 24 give explicit places of origin.
220
Entries that reference
explicit places of origin also appear almost entirely in the latter half of the eighth century – for
instance, the first entries to give states of origin appear in 733 CE and 734 CE, but the next such
entry does not appear until 758 CE.
221
In addition to explicit references, there are also cases in
which it is possible to determine an individual or group’s association with another polity through
other entries in the chronicles. When there is neither an explicit reference to a realm nor
additional information in the official chronicles, researchers rely on the Shinsen shōjiroku,
because it records the genealogies of over 1200 Yamato lineages and gives the origins of those
who fall into the category of “various foreigners” (shoban ). While it is both an invaluable
source and one that we have little alternative to using, the Shōjiroku must be used with caution.
As an early-Heian period text, it reflects the attitudes and understandings of its time. Strictly
speaking, what it records are early ninth-century narratives of the origins of royally-recognized
lineages, that is, the uji. These records are not always easy to reconcile with earlier official
chronicles like the Shoku Nihongi.
Considering a specific example helps to illustrate the kind of challenges one encounters in
relying on the Shinsen shōjiroku. In 724 CE, an official described as senior eighth rank upper Kō
no Shōshō ( ) received a new designation from Shōmu Tennō. His new designation was
Mikasa no Muraji ( ). The Shoku Nihongi entry gives him no explicit place of origin, nor
does Shōshō appear in any other entry in the six official histories. Turning to the Shinsen

220
Tanaka Fumio has analyzed the various phrases used to describe affiliation with a foreign realm. Using the
example of Paekche, these phrases include: “person of Paekche” , “person of the Paekche realm” ,
“originally a person of the Paekche realm” , and “previously a person of the Paekche realm.” As he
notes, these terms refer both to people who immigrated and to their descendants, extending at least two generations
but likely even further. Nihon kodai kokka, 110-113.
221
SKNG II:270-271 [Tenpyō 5 (733) 6/2], SKNG II:282-283 [Tenypō 6 (734) 9/10], and SKNG III:250-251
[Tenpyō hōji 2 (758) 4/28].

100
shōjiroku, however, we find that the section on the “various foreigners” of the Left Capital
includes a lineage with the designation Mikasa no Muraji ( ). The characters used to write
the designation differ, but changes in orthography were not uncommon. That the Shōjiroku
identifies junior fifth rank lower Kō no Shōshi ( ), from Koguryŏ, as the ancestor of this
lineage is even more difficult to interpret. What relationship, if any, was there between Kō no
Shōshō and Kō no Shōshi? The similarity in the personal names might suggest that these are
slightly differing records of the same person, but the significant difference in their official rank
makes it harder to accept such an idea. In the end, it is reasonable to suspect that Kō no Shōshō
was descended from Koguryŏ immigrants, but we should be aware that this is no more than a
reasonable guess.
222
In other words, while we have no choice but to use the Shinsen shōjiroku as
a reference, it is critical that we do so with an awareness of its limitations.
223

Scholars also rely on a range of other indications to determine the likelihood that a given
individual was an immigrant or of immigrant descent. Holding titles or official ranks associated
with another realm is generally seen as a reliable marker of affiliation with that realm. Examples
that appear in the official chronicles include the official ranks nasol ( ) and talsol ( ) of
Paekche and the five bō (J. be ) titles of Paekche.
224
In the absence of other information,
scholars use such titles and ranks to argue that a given individual or group was of foreign

222
It should also be noted that even a perfect designation match in the Shinsen shōjiroku is not a guarantee that a
given individual is part of a given lineage listed in the text, as there are many designations that appear in multiple
locations. For example, the designation Tokoyo no Muraji ( ) is listed in the Left Capital, Right Capital, and
Kawachi province. Without additional information, it is difficult to determine where an individual in the Shoku
Nihongi with this designation belonged.
223
The compilation and contents of the Shinsen shōjiroku are discussed at length in Chapter 3.
224
For the structure and dating of Paekche bureaucracy, see Jonathan Best, A History of the Early Korean Kingdom
of Paekche: Together with an Annotated Translation of the Paekche Annals of the Samguk Sagi (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 41-51. For an example of the bō ( ) titles see SKNG III:376-377 [Tenpyō
hōji 5 (761) 3/15] in which people explicitly said to be of Koguryŏ descent are recorded with the original
designations , , and .

101
origin.
225
While this is a reasonable approach, it is important to be aware that titles and ranks
were not always straightforward markers of exclusive affiliation with a particular realm. There
are, for example, early records in the Nihon shoki of officials with ambiguous combinations of
Yamato designations and Paekche ranks and titles, as well as instances in which envoys from
other realms were granted Yamato titles.
226

In a similar vein, modern scholars also routinely rely on foreign designations (bansei )
as indications of foreign origin. What exactly a “foreign designation” was and the degree to
which such a designation reliably marked foreign origin is one of the core questions of this
chapter and will be discussed at greater length below. For now, suffice it to say that some
surnames – Kō ( ), Komu ( ), and Ō ( ) are common examples – repeatedly appear in the
record as part of the designations of people who can be identified as immigrants or of immigrant
descent (that they are one-character names adds to the impression that they are continental or
peninsular surnames rather than Yamato-style royally-recognized lineage names). As a result,
people with these surnames are regularly identified as the descendants of immigrants, even when
there is no other concrete evidence to support such a conclusion.
227
Even if we accept that certain

225
For example, an entry in the Shoku Nihongi from the sixth month of 789 CE records four people residing in Kai
province as having received the grant of new surnames. There is no explicit statement of their origin, and their
designations do not appear in the Shinsen shōjiroku; but two of the people have names that appear to be related to
the bō titles of Koguryŏ – Yōbō ( ) and Kikubō ( ). Because they hold these titles and because there are
records of Paekche immigrants being settled in Kai Province, the editors of the Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei
edition of the Shoku Nihongi conclude that these people were the descendants of Paekche immigrants. SKNG V:436-
437 [Enryaku 8 (789) 6/9]. Ishigami Eiichi edited this section of the Shoku Nihongi text and Satō Makoto supervised
the notes, but all editors participated in review. SKNG V:436-437, n7-n15 and endnote 40.23.
226
See for example, entries on Ki no Omi Nasol in Kinmei’s reign. NHSK II:72 [Kinmei 2/7]. For English see
Aston, Nihongi, II:45-47.
227
The notes on the Enryaku 8 entry mentioned above repeatedly reference the idea that the designations are foreign
as evidence to support the conclusion that the people are foreign: “Yōbō is a Paekche-line immigrant designation.
The designation is likely based on the name of a Paekche bō.” . If we start with the assumption that the designation was from Paekche, it is hard to reach any conclusion that
does not identify Yōbō as descended from Paekche immigrants. This note is not a unique instance of such logic,
which is found throughout. SKNG V:436.

102
designations were more likely than others to belong to immigrants and their descendants, there
was no absolute correlation between surnames and places of origin; and we should be aware that
using surnames to track people’s origins is not (and was never) an exact science. In compiling
the database of designation changes, each of these methods of identifying foreign origin was
tracked separately – explicit origin, references in the Shinsen shōjiroku, and foreign rank, title, or
designation. Consistently tracking designation changes for immigrants and their descendants
alongside those of other Yamato subjects allowed me to consider how foreign subjects differed
from non-foreign subjects and how these differences changed over the course of the eighth
century.
The final approach I take to the sources turns away from the sovereign who defined
designation policy and the officials who implemented it – “the court” – towards the people who
participated in and were subject to the designation system. Although scholars believe that the
majority of eighth-century grants were made in response to petitions from subjects, only a
handful of these petitions – about fifty in all – were included in the three official chronicles
surveyed here. It is in these petitions, mediated though they are by layers of official bureaucracy
and later editorial selection, that we can hear the faint voices of Yamato subjects who sought to
navigate the designation system to their advantage.
228
The thousands of designation changes
recorded in the official histories are evidence of the sovereign’s power to shape social realities
for the people of the realm. At the same time, these petitions are proof that Yamato subjects who
were active participants in the designation system were able to exert some influence on how the
royal authorities saw and understood them. The justifications they gave for requesting new

228
This section was inspired by Peter Sahlins’s approach to reading letters of naturalization submitted by foreign
subjects in Old Regime France in “The Use and Abuse of Naturalization,” the third chapter of Unnaturally French,
108-132.

103
designations reveal their interpretations of and responses to official policy, as well as the
underlying assumptions they had about how the designation system worked. They allow us to
consider how these subjects could assert their own understanding of what their designations did
or should mean, and give us some insight into the range of rhetorical options available to them in
making their appeals.
As for process, petitions to the sovereign were part of a broader official process for
granting and implementing designation changes. There is no extant set of protocols or rules for
granting designations, and most of the hundreds of entries in the official chronicles that record
designation changes only give the result of the process. Nevertheless, the recorded designation
changes can generally be grouped into two categories – those made unilaterally by the ruler and
those granted in response to a petition.
229
Early grants, particularly those recorded in the Nihon
shoki, were mostly unilateral, while the majority of eighth-century and later grants were in made
response to petitions.
230⁠ Then again, the best records of the process for unilateral designation
grants are from the Heian period, when rulers sought to limit the number of royal family
members by granting some royals designations and making them ‘civilian’ subjects. For
instance, a Council of State order from 921 CE captures the process by which Saga Tennō
granted seven members of the royal family the designation Minamoto no Ason ( ).
231

Several months after the initial grant was made, an order specifying the location and new head of
the residence unit for these former royals was directed to the Ministry of Popular Affairs. That

229
As editors of this section of the Shoku nihongi, Inoue Mitsusada and Hayakawa Shōhachi distinguished between
these two types of grants based on whether they were made by royal order (mikotonori or choku ) or not,
taking the use of an order as a sign of the tennō’s unilateral decision to make a grant. See SKNG I:261-263, endnote
1.66. However, as Une Toshinori has pointed out, approval of a petition was in some cases followed by an order
granting the new designation, and thus the use of a royal order cannot be used to distinguish the two types of grants.
Une focuses instead on whether the tennō made the grant actively (of his or her own volition), or passively
(approving changes that had been requested). See “Shisei ni kansuru kōsatsu,” Shigaku kenkyū 239 (2003): 1-17.
230
It is often difficult to be certain about the type of grant involved in a designation change.
231
See Chapter 3 for a discussion of this grant and its relationship to the compilation of the Shinsen shōjiroku.

104
ministry was directed, in turn, to forward the order to the ministries of Residential Palace Affairs,
Personnel, the Treasury, and the Royal Household. Another case from 758 CE involving a lower-
ranking official suggests that the process could be abbreviated. Because the official, Nukatabe
Kawata no Muraji, was granted both a promotion in rank and a new designation, his designation
change was simply added to his certification of rank (iki ), one of which was created for
every rank promotion.
232
In either case, it is clear that careful records were kept and forwarded to
relevant court offices.
233

The results of grants made in response to petitions were also carefully recorded, but we
know relatively little about how petitions were written, submitted, and reviewed.
The records indicate that grants were made to people of all levels of Yamato society, from newly
released bound servants to members of the royal family. There is no clear pattern that explains
why some petitions were included in the records and others were left out.
234
Some petitions from
high-ranking individuals seem to have been made directly to the ruler,
235
but the vast majority of
subjects would not have had this level of access to the tennō and would have had to submit their

232
SKNG III:256-257 [Tenpyō hōji 2 (758) 2/7]. Later petitions suggest that this was a relatively common practice
and that certifications of rank could serve as persuasive evidence that a designation change had been granted. For
example, in a petition from 791 CE, a group complained that they had lost the title of ason through a mistake in
registration, and they requested that officials review the residence-unit registers and certifications of rank to confirm
their claims. The officials evidently did so, and the group was able to regain the ason title. See SKNG V:508-509
[Enryaku 10 (791) 9/20].
233
Because there was often a gap of months or years between the tennō’s order and the orders that implemented the
change, there are some discrepancies in the official records. For example, some officials appear with their original
designations after receiving grants, and at least one grant is recorded twice. For a detailed discussion of such errors
and an analysis of how they relate to the process of compiling the Shoku Nihongi, see Nakanishi Yasuhiro, “Shoku
Nihongi no kaishisei kiji ni tsuite,” Kansai gakuin shigaku 24 (1997), 16-34.
234
Nakanishi argued that the inclusion of a greater number of petitions in the second half of the text reflects the rush
to complete the Shoku Nihongi and consequent lack of concern for creating uniform entries on each designation
grant. He also argues that the later petitions included in the Shoku Nihongi were closer to the actual documents
submitted to the court. See “Shoku Nihongi no kaishisei kiji ni tsuite.”
235
One well-known example is that of Prince Katsuraki and Prince Sai, who petitioned Shōmu Tennō in 736 CE for
permission to leave the royal family, become subjects, and receive their mother’s designation, Tachibana no Sukune.
The entry for the following day records Shōmu’s rationale for accepting their request, and the royal edict granting
them the new designation. SKNG II:308-309 [Tenpyō 8 (736) 11/17].

105
petitions via the appropriate district, provincial, or capital offices. A petition from 764 CE
included in the Shoku Nihongi demonstrates that provincial officials were responsible for both
submitting petitions and reviewing claims made in them. In the petition, the governor of Harima
province quoted the explanation of a low-ranking official for how he got his current designation,
why it was mistaken, and what designation he wanted instead. The governor’s conclusion, “I
have investigated, and what he says is the truth,” suggests that he was responsible not just for
forwarding requests but also for vetting them.
236
A Heian-period report issued by the Sanuki
provincial governor in 867 CE indicates that petitioners first had to submit their request and a list
of names to the officials of the districts in which they were registered. These officials then
forwarded the request to provincial officials, who sent it on to the Council of State. Once the
Council of State obtained an order from the sovereign, it communicated the result to the Ministry
of Popular Affairs, which dispatched its own directives to relevant offices and to the province.
237

Even as these petitions moved through layer after layer of the bureaucracy, they preserved a
surprising range of strategies employed by Yamato subjects who sought new designations,
making them a valuable source for considering the limitations of the sovereign’s policy and
ideology.
The Establishment of the Yamato Designation Systems
Before considering designations for immigrants and their descendants in the eighth century,
it is important to get a sense of the pre-ritsuryō Yamato designation systems. Scholars have long
argued that the establishment of Yamato designations was closely linked to the Yamato Great
Kings’ consolidation of power over the course of the fifth through seventh centuries. The current
consensus is that royally-recognized lineages and royally-granted titles emerged sometime

236
. SKNG IV:82-85 [Tenypō hōji 8 (764) 5/20].
237
Heian ibun, Vol.1, Doc. 152, 126-128 [Jōgan 9 (867) 2/16]. This document is also discussed in Chapter 3.

106
between the mid-fifth to mid-sixth centuries.
238
Studies of these status systems and the dates at
which they emerged have relied on evidence from two primary bodies of sources – official
Yamato texts like the Nihon shoki and Kojiki, and stone and metal inscriptions such as those on
the Sakitama-Inariyama sword, Eta-Funayama sword, and Suda Hachiman shrine mirror. These
sources have been exhaustively debated by generations of Japanese scholars. In addition,
Nakamura Tomokazu has recently argued that these studies focus too much on the domestic
context for the emergence of these designations – he makes the case that it is only by putting
them in an East Asian regional context that we can grasp both the impetus for and the
significance of the establishment of royally-recognized lineages and royally-granted titles. By
comparing Wa and Yamato designations with those that appear in continental texts like the Han
shu, Wei shu (Book of Wei, ), and Sui shu (Book of Sui, ), Nakamura was able to
establish that the Yamato status systems emerged during a period in which no official envoys
were sent to the continent. He argued too that it was precisely the lack of official contact that was
the impetus for establishing such systems. In his view, Yamato designations served as a kind of
non-material prestige good that rulers used to bring local power holders into their sphere of
influence.
239
Nakamura’s regional perspective is in line with recent trends in classical Japanese
historiography, and his argument about the early function of these designations is persuasive.
Nakamura’s argument offers not only an explanation for the timing of the emergence of the
Yamato system of designations, but also for the divergence of Yamato designations from
continental and peninsular naming systems. In continental usage, the character (C. xing, J. sei)
referred to surnames (also often translated ‘family names’) and did not include titles or other

238
For an excellent overview of the historiography on the emergence of uji and kabane, see Nakamura Tomokazu,
“Nihon kodai ‘shisei’ no seiritsu to sono keiki,” Rekishigaku kenkyū 827 (May 2007), 1-14. In English, see Piggott,
Emergence, p. 55 and 328.
239
Nakamura, “Nihon kodai ‘shisei’ no seiritsu.”

107
kinds of designations. Continental surnames were typically written with one-character, although
multi-character surnames existed, and they were closely linked to patrilineal kinship groups. As
Patricia Ebrey noted in her study of surnames and Han identity: “There are of course many other
patrilineal societies, but few if any in which patrilineality was so closely tied to name from so
early a period.”
240
Aside from the Chinese practice of surname exogamy (i.e. that one could not
marry a person of the same surname), Nakamura argues that there is little evidence that
continental surnames were closely managed by the government, or that rulers created any
significant policy around them.
241

In contrast, the character in Yamato represented a range of designations including
royally-recognized lineage group names, royally-granted titles, surnames, and other designations
(discussed below). Yamato designations were not as closely or clearly tied to patrilineal kinship
groups as continental surnames. Records suggest that Yamato designations were inherited
through both the matriline and patriline, though it is also clear that inheritance through the
patriline was more common, and, over time, increasingly considered to be the proper line of
inheritance, at least at the official level.
242
Furthermore, as this chapter will demonstrate, Yamato
designations were closely managed by the tennō and his or her officials. The large number of
designation changes recorded in the official chronicles serves as evidence of the importance of
this system for both rulers and people of the Yamato realm.

240
“Surnames and Han Chinese Identity,” in Patricia Buckley Ebrey ed., Women and the Family in Chinese History
(London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 21.
241
Nakamura, “Nihon kodai ‘shisei’ no seiritsu,” 10-11. Tang rulers’ use of genealogical texts to configure the elites
of their court into a hierarchy and assert the superiority of their own lineages is discussed in Chapter 3.
242
The official chronicles contain a number of petitions that cite having received a mother’s designation by mistake
as grounds for a designation change. See for example, SKNG V:192-193 [Ten’ō 1 (781) 5/29], in which the
petitioner successfully argues that he was mistakenly recorded with their mother’s designation in the Kōgo register.

108
Another major point of distinction between continental surnames and Yamato designations
was that on the continent, both subjects and sovereign had surnames. The Tang ruling family, for
example, had the surname Li , which they somewhat dubiously traced to Laozi.
243
That Tang
sovereigns used court genealogies to position their own lineage at the top of the hierarchy serves
as evidence that they saw their lineage as one among many powerful lineages that made up their
court. Yamato sovereigns, on the other hand, had no designations.
244
They were the ultimate
arbiters of the designation system – the “apical ordinators” in Piggott’s parlance – and were not
subject to it. In Yamato, granting designations was an act of creation by which the sovereign was
understood to have brought a particular political group into existence while exercising his or her
control over the subjects of the realm. Unlike continental surnames, which primarily represented
kinship relations, a critical function of Yamato designations was to represent a relationship of
service to the ruler, who alone could grant or revoke them. That Yamato designations were less
closely tied to descent groups, patrilineal or otherwise, was a result of this function.
Yamato designations encompassed several different systems for naming and ranking
groups of subjects. Among these, the question of how to understand and translate the key term,
uji, has been extensively debated in both Japanese and English-language scholarship without a
clear resolution. While a translation that captures the full range of its uses is not possible, I
believe that both “royally-recognized lineage” and “royally-recognized clan” are reasonable (if
not particularly elegant) glosses for uji in the seventh through ninth centuries. I will primarily use

243
Abramson, Ethnic Identity in Tang China, 151.
244
The names we know early rulers by are posthumous Sinitic-style names adopted in the late eighth century.

109
the term “royally-recognized lineage.”
245
These groups were once thought of as the primary unit
of social organization in Yamato, but the work of a series of scholars – Tsuda Sōkichi, Naoki
Kōjiro, and Yoshie Akiko in particular – has made it clear that they are better understood as
fundamentally political structures. Lineage names granted by the ruler served as markers of a
service relationship between subjects and the sovereign.
246

While all royally-recognized lineages were organized around descent groups, not all
descent groups were royally-recognized lineages. In fact, the majority of descent groups were
not: membership in royally-recognized lineages was limited to the Yamato elite, both pre- and
post-ritsuryō. Rulers created these groups by granting them recognition in the form of a lineage
name, and the Nihon shoki and other early Yamato texts are full of examples of these types of
grants. Most royally-recognized lineage names were related either to a place, like the Soga and
Kose, or to a specialized occupation in which they served, like the Nakatomi (court ritualists) or
the Haji (specialists in royal burials). Once granted, possession of a lineage name and
membership in the group passed from parent to child, and over the course of successive
generations, each status lineage tended to expand into a large collection of loosely-organized

245
I understand lineages to be a type of descent group that can clearly trace their descent to a founding ancestor,
while clans are larger social entities whose members share a belief in descent from a common ancestor, often a
mythological or remote historical figure. The term uji is used to refer to a wide range of groups, some of which more
closely resemble lineages (for example, the Kudara no Konikishi), and others that are better described as conical
clans or status lineages made up of loose clusters of many lineages (for example, the Aya, Mononobe, and Fujiwara).
Other possible translations suggested by previous scholars include conical clan, ramage, and gens. I have found the
discussion of status lineages (conical clans) and the downward mobility of all but the top-ranking members in a
lineage in Yamilette Chacon’s 2014 dissertation particularly relevant and useful for understanding the internal
dynamics of these groups and their inherent instability. She describes status lineages as having main lines and junior
lines that are ranked in a hierarchy, with more distant lines constantly tending towards lower status. She proposes
that it is in seeking solutions to the inherent instability in status lineage structure that more complex structures, such
as the state, emerge. See “The Contribution of Status Lineages in the Rise of the State: A New Theory of State
Formation,” (PhD diss. University of South Carolina-Columbia, 2014) 23-27.
246
For an example of the old understanding of uji as the basic social unit of early Yamato society in English, see
John Whitney Hall, Government and Local Power in Japan, 500 to 1700: A Study Based on Bizen Province
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 45. More recent work in English reflects the updated view. See, for
example, Gina L. Barnes, “The Role of the Be in the Formation of the Yamato State,” in Specialization, Exchange,
and Complex Societies, ed. Elizabeth Brumfiel and Timothy Kearle (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1987).

110
lineages with many junior lines whose relationship to the main line became increasingly difficult
to track.
The problems caused by such lineage sprawl are evident even in the earliest records of
Yamato. In a series of entries in the Ingyō chapter of the Nihon shoki, for example, the ruler
laments the disorder that has arisen in the designations of the realm. In particular, Ingyō
lamented: “[M]any aeons have passed [since the people of heaven and earth were divided], such
that single royally-recognized lineages have greatly multiplied and become myriad designations,
the truth of which is hard to know.”
247
According to his complaints, some people were
improperly losing designations they had a rightful claim to, while others were using high-status
lineage names to which they had no true claim. In response, Ingyō is said to have commanded all
subjects who held designations to undergo trials by ordeal that involved plunging their hands into
pots of boiling water to prove that they were not falsely representing their designations. The
episode concludes with the Nihon shoki stating that all those who would have failed the test fled,
and that thereafter “designations were spontaneously ordered, and there were none who
committed fraud.”
248
The episode is usually cited as evidence that royally-recognized lineages
and titles may have emerged as early as the mid-fifth-century, and to highlight the importance of
these systems to the authority of the Great Kings.
249
It establishes too that even the early records
of designations reflect an understanding that early rulers faced significant difficulties in
maintaining order in the designation system.

247
. NHSK I:437-439 [Ingyō 4/9/9]; Aston, Nihongi, I:316.
248
. Ibid.
249
See for example Nakamura’s discussion of this episode in the Nihon shoki and Kojiki as well as his summary of
the arguments made by Yoshimura Takehiko and Maenosono Ryōichi, in “Nihon kodai ‘shisei’ no seiritsu,” p. 4.

111
Kabane, or royally-granted titles, were bestowed by the Yamato Great Kings as rewards
for meritorious service.
250
Like the names granted by the sovereign to recognize lineages, they
marked a direct relationship between the subject receiving the title and the ruler granting it.
These titles were often received in conjunction with royal recognition as a lineage, and
Yoshimura Takehiko has argued that their function was only to express the relative status of a
given lineage – there could be, he thinks, no real function for these titles until royally-recognized
lineages were established. Meanwhile, Nakamura disputes the idea that the only function of titles
was to express the rank of royally-recognized lineages, but he concedes that the establishment of
the royally-recognized lineage system was a pre-requisite for the creation and use of titles, which
had an ancillary function.
251

Rulers granted a range of different titles. Some, such as omi ( ), muraji ( ), fumi ( ),
kimi ( ), and atai ( ), are widely recognized as kabane and appear frequently in the sources.
252

In addition to these well-established and widely recognized titles, there were a number of more
ambiguous designations that may or may not have functioned as titles. Determining whether or
not a given designation functioned as a title is often complicated by the considerable variation in
the ways that they were recorded.
253
In all, it is estimated that there were as many as 30 different

250
I will generally refer to kabane as “titles” below.
251
Nakamura, “Nihon kodai ‘shisei’ no seiritsu,” 2. There are also cases in which groups appear to have had kabane
but no uji name. Katō Akira cites examples in SKNG IV:394-395 [Hōki 3 (772) 12/6] and SKNG V:32-33 [Hōki 8
(777) 3/10]. See “Waga kuni ni okeru sei,” 421.
252
I will not go so far as to follow Basil Hall Chamberlain’s example from his translation of the Kojiki, in which he
offered translations for the titles: ason as “court noble," kimi as “duke," omi as “grandee," muraji as “chief,"
miyatsuko as “ruler,” atahi as “suzerain,” and sukune as “noble.” For the full list of translations and Chamberlain’s
discussion of the challenges of translating names, see: The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters (Rutland: C.E. Tuttle
Co., 1981) p. xvii-xxi.
253
Katō Kenkichi has recently used late seventh-century mokkan from the Nishigawara Morinouchi archaeological
site in Shiga Prefecture to establish that the designation recorded with the characters , which would usually be
read hakase and associated with a graduate of the official university, could also be used to represent the kabane of
fumi, more commonly written with the character . Katō, “Mokkan ga kataru toraijin no katsudō,” Sinica 11.9
(September 2000): 78-79.

112
titles in use at various points in the early history of the Yamato polity (see Tables 3 and 4, below,
for examples of titles used in the Nara period).
254
Once granted, titles could extend to the lineage
group of the person who received them, and were inherited by following generations.
Another common type of designation in the early sources are those based on affiliation
with a be ( ), or specialized worker group. Unlike royally-recognized lineage names and titles,
these designations were held by lower-ranking groups of people. Specialized worker groups were
typically affiliated with and managed by higher-ranking title-holding groups such as the kuni no
miyatsuko (alt. kokuzō, ), or country chieftains, and tomo no miyatsuko ( ), or royal
managers. The practice of creating such groups and referring to them with the character is
thought to have been adopted from Paekche, and these groups served Yamato rulers in a variety
of capacities including as guards, cultivators, cobblers, weavers, and more.
255
Members of
specialized worker groups typically had either the name of the office or occupation to which they
belonged to (such as the Yamabe , literally the “mountain worker group”), or the name of
the leader or originator of their group (such as the Sogabe ( ), associated with the Soga (

Table 2: Yamato Designation Types
Type of Designation Example
kabane Fujiwara no Ason
uji name Tachibana
be Ōtomobe
zoku Kanimori no Muraji-zoku
hito Kawachi tebito
surname Ōi
foreign Komu, Kō
(none) -- --

254
Kokushi daijiten, s.v. “ ,” accessed May 17, 2017 via JapanKnowledge.
255
See Piggott, Emergence, p. 345, n.11.

113
) lineage). There were also less common designations characterized by the incorporation
ofeither the (zoku) character, which is thought to have marked junior lines of important
royally-recognized lineages, and the (hito) character, which is ambiguous but generally
thought to have marked lower status groups.
256

One of the major and enduring sources of instability for Yamato designations was their
dual function as markers of both political and kinship groups. These two functions were often in
tension or even incompatible. One of the famous so-called Taika Reform edicts reportedly issued
in 646 CE gives a sense of the kind of problems that could arise from the dual character of
Yamato designations. The situation outlined in the edict was that elites to whom specialized
worker groups had been assigned had divided them into various name (na ) groups based on
their occupations but then allowed them to live together and intermarry. The result was families
in which each member had a different designation – if each family member had a different
occupation and therefore a different designation, the father might be Yamabe, the mother
Sogabe, and their children Inbe, Hajibe, and Amabe. The Nihon shoki describes the situation as a
disaster, saying “contentious disputes and claims fill the land and the court” and that “the
confusion grows worse and worse.”
257
The ruler’s response was to issue an order abolishing the
specialized worker groups. Later entries in the Nihon shoki and subsequent official chronicles
reveal, however, that many subjects continued to use designations based on their occupations
(including the specialized worker groups), and that they were in fact expected to serve in the

256
Yoshie’s article is the major work to examine these systems both pre- and post-ritsuryō: “Ritsuryō seika no
kōmin,” 1589-1631.
257
NHSK II:298-301 [Taika 2 (646) 8/14]; Aston, Nihongi, II:223-224. This edict is part of a series of edicts known
as the Taika reforms. Piggott discusses the context of the Taika edicts and the debated historicity of the Nihon shoki
account of this epochal period. See Emergence, p. 102-126.

114
capacities that their designations reflected.
258
In any case, abolishing the specialized worker
groups would not have solved the wider problem. The ruler could grant new designations at will,
and each grant would disrupt an existing designation’s function as the marker of membership in
a descent group. The more a designation functioned to mark a political group created by a
particular ruler, the less it marked a kinship group; and the more it defined a kinship group, the
less it reflected a relationship with the ruler. Genealogical records were obviously one means of
dealing with this problem, but they were not exempt from the problems of fraud and
manipulation. Even assuming diligent management of records, the inherent instability and
contradictions of the designation system made it difficult to maintain while they also allowed for
powerful groups to resist the sovereign’s efforts at control.
259

Over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries the Yamato designation system developed
into a powerful tool for rulers who sought to consolidate their authority over the people of their
realm. At the same time, fundamental issues and contradictions in the system became apparent,
and rulers struggled to effectively regulate and maintain it.
Designations under Tenji, Tenmu, and Jitō
Until the latter half of the seventh century, the possession of Yamato designations was
generally limited to central ruling elites and local power holders with ties to the center. This
began to change with the creation of the first realm-wide residence unit registers in 670 CE,

258
See Nakamura Tomokazu, “Ritsuryō seika ni okeru shiseisei,” Engishiki kenkyū, 23 (2007): 29–66. Nakamura
clearly demonstrates that such designations were still functioning in the mid-eighth century. In his 2005 book,
Yoshimura Takehiko has argued that the goal of this edict was to move towards a unified system of control of the
populace. In other words, he argued that the goal was to move away from the occupational group system towards a
system in which all free-born people were subjects of the ruler. Yoshimura acknowledged that there have been
significant doubts about the historicity of the Taika reform edicts, but argued that there is sufficient evidence to
support the conclusion that edicts making major changes to Yamato rulership and governance were issued at this
time. See Part II, section 5 in Yoshimura Takehiko, Kodaishi no kiso chishiki (Tokyo: Kadokawa sensho, 2005).
Yoshimura also has a 2018 book on the Taika Reforms in which he expands on these arguments. See Taika kakushin
o kangaeru (Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 2018).
259
The use of genealogical records in Yamato is discussed extensively in Chapter 3.

115
which expanded the designation system to all subjects of the realm.
260
Creation of these
population registers was part of a broader set of changes instituted by the monarchs Tenji,
Tenmu, and Jitō over the course of the late seventh century. Their reigns brought epochal change
to the Yamato polity and laid the foundations of the classical realm. The Nihon shoki records
many of the mid-seventh-century innovations in a series of entries beginning in 646 CE that
summarize edicts on the registration of land and people, taxation, new systems of measurement,
a system of official ranks, oversight of Buddhist institutions, and more. At the same time that
they extended the reach of the central government to the level of the individual subject, they also
asserted control over elites by reconfiguring royally-recognized lineages and the system of
royally-granted titles. The effect of these innovations was to vastly extend royal authority and
wealth, and to begin to establish the new infrastructure of ritsuryō rule.
The immediate catalyst for these changes was the 645 CE assassination of the powerful
minister Soga no Iruka ( , ?-645 CE), orchestrated by then Prince Naka (later, the
monarch known as Tenji) and carried out in the presence of the ruler Kōgyōku ( , 642-645
CE). However, as Joan Piggott and Bruce Batten have both argued, the coup and the changes that
followed must be considered in their wider historical and regional contexts. The ability of the
rulers to make radical changes was related, in particular, to a sense of crisis inspired by events on
the Korean peninsula: the 641 CE massacre of Koguryŏ nobility by a military dictator, the
subsequent attack on Koguryŏ by the Tang in 644 CE (signaling a general rise in Tang power
and aggression), and increasing tension and competition with Silla throughout the 640s. As
Piggott puts it, “The exigencies of foreign affairs clearly provided the best excuse for elaboration

260
The 670 CE register is known as the Kōgo register (Kōgo nenjaku ). The process of creating registers
once every six years, as mandated in the ritsuryō codes, began with the 690 CE register, known as the Kōin register
(Kōin nenjaku ).

116
of royal authority.”
261
There can be little doubt but that the threat of foreign invasion was a major
catalyst for the formation of the ritsuryō realm in Yamato, and that it allowed these three
monarchs to achieve an unprecedented degree of centralized authority.
Foreign threats may have created a pretext for centralizing authority, but the waves of
immigrants that followed the fall of Paekche and then Koguryŏ (in 660 CE and 668 CE) also
presented a massive challenge to the new ritsuryō realm. How would it incorporate the large
numbers of new people entering the realm? Beyond simply finding places to settle groups of
people and making them into subjects of the realm, there was the question of what roles they
might play and what impact their inclusion might have on existing Yamato status systems and
the court hierarchy. The few scholars who have directly addressed this topic in English have
argued that even as Tenji, Tenmu, and Jitō actively recruited and relied on skilled immigrants to
help build the new ritsuryō realm, they also systematically relegated immigrants and their
descendants to lower-level designations, thereby preventing them from achieving high rank and
lasting status at court.
262
I disagree. In my view, these rulers did not have a concerted policy
designed to keep immigrants and their descendants out of the Yamato elite. The record reflects a
range of different responses to different groups of immigrants and their descendants, as well as a
willingness to include new immigrants at the highest levels of the rank and official systems if it
served the interests of the rulers. In short, while Tenji, Tenmu, and Jitō had to take the interests
of existing power-holders into account, they were ultimately more concerned with recruiting
talented people and projecting strength in the region than they were with limiting the rise of
immigrants and their descendants at court.

261
Piggott, Emergence, 111. Bruce Batten has made a similar point in “Foreign Threat and Domestic Reform: The
Emergence of the Ritsuryō State,” Monumenta Nipponica 41.2 (1986): 199-219. Yoshimura makes many of the
same points in Part 2 of Kodaishi no kiso chishiki.
262
In English see Kiley, “A Note on the Surnames,” 177; and Ooms, Imperial Politics, 103.

117
Following the 645 CE assassination of Soga no Iruka, Kōgyoku abdicated and her
younger brother took the throne as Kōtoku ( r. 645-654 CE), while Prince Naka was named
Crown Prince. The following years were marked by escalating efforts to assert royal control over
central and local elites by incorporating more people into official rank systems, making
appointments to new offices, and controlling assignments of prebends. In 646 CE, the new ruling
group implemented a new twenty-six-level cap-rank system as well as a new policy for royally-
recognized lineages. A royal edict divided the existing royally-recognized lineages into great
lineages ( ), who were to receive long swords, lesser lineages ( ), who were to receive
short swords, and managers (tomo no miyatsuko) who received bows, arrows, and shields. These
items were to be granted to the head of each royally-recognized lineage – that head was to be
determined by the group but had to be confirmed by ruler.
263
Through the grants of these prestige
goods, Kōtoku re-performed the sovereign’s recognition of each of these groups while also
imposing a newly official structure and hierarchy on them. It is not clear how successful this
project was. Later entries in the Nihon shoki indicate that determining the official head of each
royally-recognized lineage group continued to be an issue for decades after this order.
Nevertheless, 646 CE marked the beginning of a trend towards increasing efforts to control the
hierarchy and internal structure of groups of Yamato power-holders.
After Kōtoku’s death in 654 CE, Prince Naka once again decided against taking the
throne, preferring to continue to exercise power as the crown prince while Kōgyoku retook the
throne as Saimei ( , r. 654-660 CE). He continued in this capacity even after her death in 660
CE, ultimately taking the throne only in 668 CE. It was during the period in which he controlled
the government as crown prince that the Korean peninsula kingdoms of Paekche and Koguryŏ

263
NHSK II:360-361 [Tenji 3 (646) 2/9]. Aston, Nihongi II:280-281.

118
fell, and the first groups of refugees began arriving in Yamato. Even as we consider how Prince
Naka/Tenji and later rulers dealt with the waves of new immigrants, it is important to remember
that there was already a significant population of people in the Yamato realm whose origin could
be traced to immigrants that had crossed over in the fourth and fifth centuries. The sprawling
Aya and Hata descent groups are particularly prominent examples of such groups.
264
Notably, as
far as the record shows, Prince Naka did not grant designations to any of these immigrants or
their descendants, but he did incorporate them into the official hierarchy by making grants of
Yamato rank to them. In 665 CE, for example, he granted Yamato rank to a Paekche official who
had arrived with a large group of people from Paekche seeking refuge. Significantly, he granted
the Yamato rank only after considering the official’s service to a particular Paekche minister and
the rank he had held in Paekche.
265
The concern with recognizing the status of immigrant
officials is also apparent in a later record dated 671 CE, in which Tenji granted different Yamato
ranks to over sixty newly-arrived Paekche officials. The edict notes the offices that each
individual held in Paekche, as well as the specific knowledge and skills each one possessed,
ranging from military training to medical skills and training in the Five Classics.
266
In short,
Tenji’s approach to incorporating immigrants with significant skills was to grant individual
officials rank according to skill and original status. There was as yet no question of incorporating
new immigrants into the system of royally-recognized lineages or titles.

264
In German, see Bruno Lewin, Aya und Hata: Bevölkerungsgruppen Altjapans kontinentaler Herkunft
(Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1962). Some of the major works in Japanese on these earlier immigrant groups
include Seki, Kikajin; Ueda, Kikajin; Hirano, Kikajin; and Katō Kenkichi, Hata-shi to sono tami: Toraikei shizoku
no jitsuzō (Hakusuisha, 1998).
265
NHSK II:362-363 [Tenji 3 (664), 2]; Aston, Nihongi, II:283.
266
NHSK II: 374-377 [Tenmu 10 (682) 1]; Aston, Nihongi, II:295-296.

119
Tenji’s death in 671 CE was followed by a violent struggle for control of the realm,
known as the Jinshin Rebellion.
267
In the Nihon shoki account, Tenji had offered the throne to his
brother, Prince Ōama, but Ōama declined. Before leaving to practice Buddhism in Yoshino,
Ōama advocated for Prince Ōtomo, Tenji’s son, to be made the heir. After Tenji’s death,
however, Ōama learned that Ōtomo was planning to attack him, so Ōama gathered forces to
fight. Within a month, Ōtomo’s forces had been defeated and he had committed suicide, leaving
Ōama to claim the throne with unprecedented power won, unusually for Yamato, on the
battlefield. He promptly executed or banished the senior members of Ōtomo’s court, pardoned
everyone else, and began the process of radically re-shaping Yamato kingship.
The reigns of Tenmu (as Ōama was posthumously known) and his consort-successor Jitō
saw the promulgation of the first ritsuryō codes, continuing registration of land and people, the
construction of the first Chinese-style capital at Fujiwara, and the establishment of a model of
fully-divine kingship. Over the course of his reign, Tenmu completely reconfigured the hierarchy
of Yamato elites to reward those who had been loyal to him during the Jinshin Rebellion, and to
reflect his supreme authority. Piggott has described the four-year period between 680 and 684
CE, in which Tenmu issued a range of orders on the royally-recognized lineages and royally-
granted titles, as witnessing “the broadest application of symbolic violence in the entire history
of Great Kingship.”
268

267
More precisely, the Rebellion of the Jinshin Year . I use Torquil Duthie’s translation of the term,
which follows the sources in avoiding more neutral words like “war” or “disturbance.” For an analysis of the
historiographical politics of the varying accounts of the conflict in the Nihon shoki, Kaifūsō, and Manyōshū, see
Duthie, Man’yōshū, 122-159. For a brief description in English of the tactics, weapons, and military strategy
employed in the Jinshin Rebellion, see William Wayne Farris, Heavenly Warriors: The Evolution of Japan’ s
Military, 500-1300 (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University: Distributed by the
Harvard University Press, 1992), 41-45.
268
Piggott, Emergence, 138.

120
Beginning in 681 CE, the Nihon shoki records a series of Tenmu’s edicts that regulated
royally-recognized lineages. Each group was required to designate a head and submit the name
for approval. They were also to clarify their lineage membership, taking care not to irresponsibly
include any who did not belong; and lineages with many members were to divide themselves
into smaller lineages, each of which was to select a head. These changes were all to be submitted
to the proper officials for approval.
269
These edicts further routinized the subordination of
royally-recognized lineages to the ruler while also suggesting some ongoing problems in the
system: large lineage groups were difficult to control, membership in royally-recognized lineages
was difficult to track, and membership fraud continued to plague the system. Like Tenji, Tenmu
struggled to effectively implement these measures, issuing repeated calls for those royally-
recognized lineages who had not yet submitted nominations for their leaders to do so.
In 680 CE, Tenmu also began issuing grants of new titles. In particular, large numbers of
people were granted the high-ranking muraji title in 681 CE as rewards for their service during
the conflict. These grants certainly increased the number of Tenmu loyalists who held high titles,
but they did not challenge the title or status order itself. Far more significant was Tenmu’s 684
CE order creating a new system of eight titles (known as the yakusa no kabane , see
Table 3).
270
By creating four new titles – mahito ( ), ason ( ), sukune ( ), and imiki
( ) – and placing them above the existing titles of muraji and omi in his ranking, Tenmu

269
These edicts did not clarify how the royally-recognized lineages would report the members of their lineage, nor
did they specify how large lineages were to divide themselves. NHSK II:448-449 [Tenmu 10 (682) 9/8] and NHSK
II:458-459 [Tenmu 11 (683) 12/3]; Aston, Nihongi, II:352 and II:358.
270
NHSK II:464-465 [Tenmu 13 (685) 10/1]; Aston, Nihongi, II:364-365. While six of these eight titles appear
regularly in the sources, there is no record of either michinoshi or inaki being granted. It is worth noting that I have
translated the term zokusei here as “title” even I have generally argued that the character cannot
automatically be read kabane, and instead that it should be read as the more general term “designation.” Here, it is
clear that Tenmu is creating the eight-type kabane or “royally-granted title” system. The combination of the
character sei with zoku suggests a title held by a kinship group.

121
effectively demoted every member of the court and cleared the way for a new hierarchy that he
would determine (see Table 4 for other common kabane). Over the next four years, he made 126
grants of the four top-ranking titles to the same number of royally-recognized lineages,
configuring a new order in which groups that had close kinship ties to recent rulers were ranked
Table 3: Tenmu’s Eight Kabane System
mahito
(new)
ason
(new)
sukune
(new)
imiki (new)
michinoshi

omi
(old elite title)
muraji
(old elite title)
inagi

Table 4: Other Common Kabane
konikishi
miyatsuko

kimi

atai

obito

fuhito, fumi

agatanushi
suguri

kusushi

highest, followed by those who were descended from more distant rulers, then powerful groups
that claimed descent from various Yamato deities, and finally local power-holders.
271

271
In English, see Richard Miller, Ancient Japanese Nobility: The Kabane Ranking System (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974), 52-58. The classic argument in Japanese scholarship about the pattern in making these
grants is Takeuchi Rizō’s. He argued that mahito grants were reserved for groups that were related to rulers after
Keitai and who had held the title of kimi ; that ason grants were for groups that were related to rulers before
Keikō; that sukune was for groups that claimed descent from various deities; and that imiki was for groups that held
the title of atai and other power-holders. See Takeuchi Rizō, Ritsuryōsei to kizoku seiken (Tokyo: Ochanomizu
shobō, 1957), 85-104.

122
How did immigrants and their descendants fit into this new configuration? Eleven lineage
groups whose descent could be traced to an immigrant had fought with Tenmu during the Jinshin
Rebellion, and the had been rewarded with the title of muraji prior to the creation of the eight
title system.
272
Of those eleven, four were promoted to the title of imiki after the creation of the
new system. No individuals or groups that were immigrants or of immigrant origin received the
top three titles of mahito, ason, or sukune. As noted in the introduction, Cornelius Kiley’s take
on these grants has become the standard interpretation for scholars writing in English. He argued
that the lack of access to the highest titles “sufficed to bar them from the inner circle of the
elite.”
273
Indeed, Tenmu’s reconfiguration of the title system was designed to promote the royal
line and those powerful lineages that were closest to it, and in this sense, Tenmu’s grants of the
new titles undoubtedly did relegate immigrants and their descendants to the outer circles of the
elite. At the same time, it is not clear that the intent behind Tenmu’s grants was to prevent these
groups from attaining high status. Neither Tenmu nor any subsequent ruler explicitly limited
immigrants and their descendants to the imiki title, nor was the imiki title exclusively granted to
people of immigrant descent.
274
Itō Chinami has noted that none of the four groups of immigrant
origin that received the imiki title were seventh-century immigrants. According to the record, all
four groups had long roots in Yamato, dating back to the reign of the (probably mythical)
sovereign most commonly known as Ōjin Tennō.
275
We can conclude that Tenmu rewarded

272
The 11 uji are: the Nishigori no Miyatsuko ( ), Ōkoma no Miyatsuko ( ), Fumi no Atai ( ),
Yamato no A ya no Atai ( ), Kawachi no Aya no Atai ( ), Hata no Miyatsuko ( ), Fumi no Obito
( ), Fune no Fubito ( ), Iki no Fubito ( ) , Sarara Uamakai no Miyatsuko ( ), and Achiki
no Fubito ( ). See Itō Chinami, “Ritsuryō seika no toraijin shisei,” Nihon rekishi 442 (March 1985): 23–38.
273
Kiley, “A Note on the Surnames,” 177. Herman Ooms cites Kiley in making the same point in his recent work on
the Tenmu dynasty. See Imperial Politics, 103. Richard Miller argued that while imiki was not originally limited to
immigrant lineages, by the early ninth century it was primarily granted to those of immigrant origin.
274
The argument that this was the only title available to immigrants came from later scholars’ analyses of the
patterns in the titles actually granted.
275
The groups were the Naniwa no Muraji ( ), Yamato no Aya no Muraji ( ), Kawachi no Aya no
Muraji ( ), and Hata no Muraji ( ).

123
groups that had been in Yamato long enough to establish significant power bases, had a history
of service, and had ties to Tenmu himself. Even though immigrants and their descendants had a
limited place in Tenmu’s eight-title system, there is little evidence that the system was designed
to keep them out of the elite.
As Tenmu made grants of middling designations to a handful of lineages with long
histories in Yamato that traced their origins to immigrants, he also followed Tenji’s pattern of
making grants of Yamato rank to more recent immigrants. In 685 CE, for instance, he granted
various ranks to a total of 147 people from the Tang empire, Paekche, and Koguryŏ.
276
Those
with specific skills and knowledge were singled out for recognition and rewards, as in the 686
CE case of a Paekche official who served as Tenmu’s physician and to whom Tenmu granted
official rank and 100 residence units as a benefice.
277
In this case, notably, Tenmu departed from
Tenji’s example in not only granting Yamato rank; he also claimed the authority to grant
Paekche ranks. In this regard, early in his reign, the Nihon shoki records the death of a Paekche
official whose passing is said to have shocked Tenmu. In recognition of the official’s merit,
Tenmu granted him both a Yamato rank and the highest official rank of his original country of
Paekche.
278
Given that Paekche no longer existed, granting this rank might seem nonsensical. If
we consider it in terms of both domestic Yamato politics and the regional dynamic, however, it
can be seen as a way for Tenmu to declare his authority over the remnants of Paekche
officialdom in Yamato. Rather than recognizing this former Paekche official as a refugee from a
fallen allied realm, Tenmu portrayed him as an official of a kingdom that had submitted to

276
NHSK II:469-469 [Tenmu 14 (686) 2/4]. Aston, Nihongi, II:368.
277
NHSK II:476-477 [Shuchō 1 (686) 5/9]. Aston, Nihongi, II:376.
278
NHSK II:446-447 [Tenmu 1 (673) 6/6]. Aston, Nihongi, II:323.

124
Yamato and become part of Tenmu’s own realm.
279
In this sense, Tenmu was not only concerned
with ensuring that new immigrants were granted appropriate Yamato ranks; he also made the
performance of granting high ranks to foreign officials an expression of his authority and
legitimacy as a cosmopolitan ritsuryō ruler.
Of greater relevance to the majority of recent immigrants during Tenmu’s reign were a
series of policies that monarch issued concerning the recruitment, evaluation, and promotion of
officials. Even as he rewarded those who had fought with him during the Jinshin Rebellion,
Tenmu sought to draw new people into his service.
280
In an edict of 676 CE, for instance, Tenmu
established that the children of existing elites would be automatically eligible for office by virtue
of their inherited status, but he also included a provision allowing exceptionally talented
commoners to serve if they wished to do so.
281
The first part of the edict served to reassure both
central and local power-holders that their status and privileged access to the sovereign and to
official positions would be preserved in future generations. The existing elites whose status it
protected were those who held the four titles of omi, muraji, kuni no miyatsuko, and tomo no
miyatsuko – in other words, people who belonged to descent groups already recognized by the
sovereign through grants of titles. The second part of the edict introduced the principle of merit-
based recruitment, allowing commoners (shomin , i.e. freeborn people without rank or
status) to serve if they could demonstrate sufficient talent or skill. There is nothing in the
wording of the policy that connects these regulations to immigrants or their descendants, but it
would have affected them nonetheless. Recent immigrants would not have automatically

279
It is noteworthy that Tenmu only granted Paekche ranks. Both Silla and the Tang empire not only continued to
exist but also were the major perceived threats to Yamato at this time. Koguryŏ had fallen not long after Paekche,
but a successor state known as Parhae (J. Bokkai ) soon took its place.
280
Piggott, Emergence, 131-132. For an overview of Tenmu and Jitō’s policies on evaluating and recruiting officials,
see Satō Toshio, “Jodai kakyū kanjin no kaishisei ni tsuite – 1” (Tōyō Daigaku Bungakubu kiyo, 1981), 49-55.
281
NHSK II:422-423 [Tenmu 5 (677) 7/14]; Aston, Nihongi, II:331.

125
qualified for court service because they lacked the inherited status marked by Yamato
designations, but they could qualify as exceptionally talented commoners. The tension between
lineage (or inherited status) and individual merit as standards for appointing, evaluating, and
promoting officials was one of the defining tensions of the Yamato ritsuryō realm, and each
order issued to negotiate this tension had implications for the growing population of recent
immigrants.
Tenmu’s edicts create an inconsistent record on how these two standards affected the
evaluation and promotion of officials. An edict in 678 CE, for example, made no mention of
status, rank, or lineage, and stipulated only that officials must have “been impartial and worked
diligently” to earn their evaluations.
282
Five years later, Tenmu changed his mind and made
possession of a title a requirement for all officials seeking evaluation and promotion: “Even if
their conduct, talent, and ability are remarkable, if their title [zoku sei ] is not set, they are
not of the sort to receive evaluation for promotion.”
283
With this change, Tenmu seemed to
restore the primacy of inherited status as the determining factor for official advancement. Strict
application of this second order would have meant that recent immigrants serving at the court
who had not received a designation from the sovereign could not undergo the evaluations
necessary for promotion.
284
There is, however, little evidence that this second order of 682 was
strictly applied, and thus its intent seems to have been primarily to signal to existing power-
holders across the realm that their status was not threatened. In the end, the record from Tenmu’s

282
The Board of Controllers was created under Tenmu and acted as a liaison unit between various ministries and the
Council of State. NHSK II:430-433 [Tenmu 6 (678) 10/26]; Aston, Nihongi, II:339.
283
NHSK II:454-455 [Tenmu 11 (683) 8/22]; Aston, Nihongi, II:357. As noted above, the term zokusei is
difficult to interpret. It does not appear in either the Taihō or the Yōrō codes. Because Tenmu used it to refer to the
eight-type title system, I have translated it as “title” rather than “designation” here.
284
Of course, those who already had designations, including the groups that had received the imiki title, would not
have had this problem and were eligible to receive evaluation and promotion.

126
reign is mixed. He both reassured existing elites with policies that ostensibly protected their
status against the rise of new-comers, and he also radically re-ordered Yamato elites, allowing
himself openings to recruit skilled officials wherever he might find them.
If Tenji and Tenmu began the process of transforming the Yamato court into what would
become the ritsuryō realm, it was actually Jitō (r. 690-697) who fully established many of the
ritsuryō institutions and made the changes last.
285
Even though she made far fewer grants of new
titles than Tenmu, Jitō continued to shape both the structures of officialdom and the function of
the Yamato designation system.
286
Like Tenji and Tenmu, she used grants of Yamato rank, as
well as land, money, and other goods to reward and encourage the efforts of skilled and talented
officials, many of them recent immigrants.
287
At the same time, she issued policies that made
inherited status one of the core criteria for the evaluation of officials. During the fourth year of
her reign (690 CE), for example, she issued an edict on the evaluation and promotion of officials.
In it, she set the period for review and ordered that three standards be used in considering
whether a given official should receive a promotion in rank: whether they had good character
and had performed well in their role, whether they had special talent or remarkable
accomplishments, and the status of their designation ( ).
288
The inclusion of lineage, in

285
Jitō’s critical role has begun to be recognized in English-language scholarship. Piggott was one of the first
scholars writing in English to draw attention to Jitō. See chapters 5 and 6 in Emergence; and “Chieftain Pairs and
Corulers: Female Sovereignty in Early Japan,” in Women and Class in Japanese History (Ann Arbor: The Center for
Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1999), 17–52. In more recent work, scholars have tended to see Tenmu
and Jitō as the joint creators of the foundations of the ritsuryō realm. See, for example, “Chapter 1: Bricolage” in
Ooms, Imperial Politics, 1-27; and Duthie’s discussion of the narrative of the Jinshin rebellion in Chapter 4 and of
Jitō’s Yoshino praise poems in Chapter 7 of Man’yōshū, 123-160 and 243-274.
286
The only designation grant recorded in the Nihon shoki during Jitō’s reign was in 696 CE, when she granted Hata
no Miyatsuko Tsunate the posthumous kabane of imiki. NHSK II:530-531 [Jitō 10 (696) 5/3]; Aston, Nihongi,
II:420.
287
For example, see NHSK II:508-509 [Jitō 5 (691) 4/1]; Aston, Nihongi, II:402; NHSK II:508-509 [Jitō 5 (691)
5/21]; Aston, Nihongi, II:403; and NHSK II:518-519 [Jitō 6 (692) 12/14]; Aston Nihongi, II:410.
288
NHSK II:502-503 [Jitō 4 (690) 4/14]; Aston, Nihongi, II:397-398. Abe Takehiko argued that this edict reflected
the policy of the Asuka Kiyomihara code, promulgated in 689 CE but no longer extant today. See Shisei (Tokyo:
Shibundo, 1960), 75.

127
the form of an individual’s designation, as one of the criteria for receiving promotions was a
major departure from the continental model of officialdom. This policy set by Jitō seemed to
reaffirm the handicap for both commoners and recent immigrants serving at court, who might be
talented and perform well in their offices but who would not have had Yamato designations.
289

Another major development during Jitō’s reign was the creation and grant of a new title
given to the descendants of the king of the fallen Korean kingdom of Paekche. In this regard, in
643 CE the Nihon shoki records the arrival of Yo Hōshō ( , ?-?), the son of the Paekche
King Ŭija ( , r. 641-660 CE), and his younger brother Zenkō ( , ?-?). Later, Yo Hōshō
traveled back to the Korean peninsula to fight the Tang and Silla forces, but Zenkō remained in
Yamato as a guest of the court throughout the fighting and the fall of Paekche 660 CE.
According to Tanaka Fumio, the lineage began to be “officialized” in 691 CE, when they were
granted various gifts along with the members of the Council of State. From this point on, Zenkō
and his family moved away from the status of visiting foreigners and towards a new status as
members of the Yamato realm. When Zenkō died in 693 CE, the title of konikishi ( ) was
granted to them along with the royally-recognized lineage name of Kudara, making them the
Kudara no Konikishi ( ).
290
The title konikishi is written with the character used for the
word “king” or “prince,” and Kudara is the Japanese reading of the characters used for Paekche,
so scholars often interpret this designation as a reference to the former royals of the fallen
kingdom of Paekche, and translate it “Prince of Paekche.”
291
This reading ignores Jitō’s
innovation in creating a new Yamato title that proclaimed to the polities of the region – Silla and

289
It is worth noting that these policies would not have handicapped groups like the Aya and Hata who were
understood to be of immigrant descent but who had Yamato designations.
290
NHSK II:246-247 [Kōgyoku 2 (643) 4/7]; Aston, Nihongi, I:179; NHSK II:507 [Jitō 5 (691) 1/7]; Aston,
Nihongi, II:401; and NHSK II:519 [Jitō 7 (693) 1/15]; Aston, Nihongi, II:411.
291
Aston does so throughout his translation of the Nihon shoki.

128
the Tang empire in particular – that her imperial realm had absorbed the former kingdom of
Paekche and that the royalty of that former kingdom now served in her court and held the title of
“royalty” at her pleasure.
292
Moreover, the new title was not part of Tenmu’s system of eight
titles, but members of the Kudara no Konikishi would go on to achieve high rank and hold
positions in a range of important ministries and offices. The konikishi title both explicitly marked
this group as being of foreign origin and also granted them access to high status and positions in
officialdom. The Kudara no Konikishi are often acknowledged as an exception to the general
rule of excluding immigrant groups from high status, and they certainly were not the norm.
293

Nevertheless, I believe that they should not be seen as an exception that proves a rule, but as a
case that suggests that our understanding of Tenmu and Jitō’s approach to incorporating various
kinds of immigrants needs revision. Jitō went several steps further than Tenmu had with his grant
of Paekche official rank, but both were willing to include a group of recent immigrants in the
inner circle of the elite when it served to bolster their authority and legitimacy in the face of
foreign threats.
Taking a step back, Jitō’s reign also saw the beginning of the regular creation of realm-
wide residence unit registers in 690 CE. It was at this point that all freeborn subjects of the realm
were expected to have a designation other than their personal name by which they were recorded
in the registers.
294
This did not necessarily mean that all subjects of the realm were now part of
royally-recognized lineages or that they all received titles. Many were recorded with be, zoku, or
hito designations, and still others had designations that were similar to the surnames of the

292
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 40-45. Tanaka also argues that Tenmu’s earlier grant of Paekche ranks to a person of
Paekche origin served a similar purpose – to show the world that Tenmu’s court had absorbed the Paekche royalty
and also that he now had the authority to grant both Yamato and Paekche ranks.
293
They are not unique either – three groups received the konikishi title during the seventh and eighth centuries: the
Kudara no Konikishi, the Koma no Konikishi, and the Sena no Konikishi.
294
The exemptions were the royal family and bound people (senmin ), both outside the hierarchy of general
subjects. Exactly how the designations of commoners were decided is not clear.

129
continent. The extension of the system was far from complete or perfectly executed – records
from the next hundred years offer ample evidence that there were gaps and errors in the records –
but regular creation of residence unit registers and tax records clearly represented a new effort on
the part of the sovereign to extend royal authority and control beyond central elites and local
power holders to the level of individual subjects of the realm.
295

Recent immigrants occupied an ambiguous place in this system. The vast majority of the
people who had crossed over after the fall of Paekche and Koguryŏ did not have Yamato
designations. As noted in the Methods section above, when these people appear in the sources,
they are recorded with their personal names, other identifiers like the rank, title, or office that
they held in their place of origin, or their foreign designations. The term “foreign designation”
( ) is a historical term that first appeared in a 799 CE petition recorded in the Nihon kōki, in
which a group of petitioners complain that even though their ancestors became Yamato subjects
long ago, they still hold an unrevised foreign designation. This gives us some grounds for using
the term “foreign designation” to describe late eighth-century designations, but we should be
careful about projecting its use back to the late seventh century through the mid-eighth century.
Modern scholars have used the term “foreign designation” in a number of different ways,
but all have tended to apply it broadly to the classical period. Hirano Kunio, for instance,
declared that a foreign designation was one that would allow a person or group to be identified as
being of foreign origin “at a glance.”
296
This definition is problematic in a number of ways, not

295
Tanaka Fumio puts this shift in the context of rising regional tension. He argues that earlier rulers in the Nihon
shoki were more concerned with recruiting talented individuals to serve in their realm than with ensuring their
exclusive or permanent affiliation. Later rulers, faced with growing threats from regional rivals, became increasingly
concerned with exclusive affiliation, making it impossible to move back and forth between regional courts. See
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 175-209.
296
. Hirano Kunio, Taika zendai shakai soshiki no kenkyū (Yoshikawa kōbunkan,
1978), 356. Kiley drew on Hirano’s definition when he argued that: “…the foreign origin of a person could be
determined on the basis of surname alone.” See “A Note on the Surnames, 177.

130
least of which is that it does not provide any criteria for determining whether a given designation
was foreign or not. Yoshie, Itō, and Tanaka have defined the term more effectively as a
designation held by a person who had gone through the kika process but who had yet to receive a
new designation from the Yamato sovereign. In practice, many of the designations that Hirano
saw as foreign designations would fall into this category, but if we consider the case of the
Kudara no Konikishi, it is immediately apparent that it was a foreign designation by Hirano’s
definition because it marked the group as being of foreign origin; but it was granted by the
Yamato sovereign and was therefore what Yoshie calls a “Yamato-style” (or “Nihon-style” ) designation.
297
The representative examples of Yamato-style designations were those based
on Yamato place names, as they suggested ties to a place in Yamato. The Kudara no Konikishi
example suggests, however, that receiving a Yamato-style designation did not necessarily make a
group indistinguishable from existing Yamato subjects.
Much has been made of how foreign designations set immigrants and their descendants
apart even after they had become Yamato subjects. While I acknowledge that Tenji, Tenmu, and
Jitō’s policies on the recruitment, evaluation, and promotion of officials had the effect of
disadvantaging new immigrants because they privileged those who were already established as
royally-recognized lineages with royally-granted titles, I also argue that they did not create these
policies for the purpose of keeping immigrants and their descendants out of the elite. Indeed, the
sources suggest that all three rulers actively sought to recruit recent immigrants who had
significant skills or knowledge that could be put to use in the royal service. These people were

297
Itō Chinami divides these two groups into “immigrants with foreign designations” (bansei toraijin )
who crossed over but retained the designation they held in their original realm; and “Yamato people of immigrant
descent” (toraikei wazokusha ), whose ancestors had crossed over to Yamato from somewhere else
but who had received Yamato-style designations before Tenmu’s reign. See “Ritsuryō seika,” p. 24.

131
awarded both positions in officialdom and Yamato rank commensurate with the status they had
held in their polity of origin. Even more significantly, the creation of the konikishi title
demonstrates that these rulers were more occupied with projecting strength and legitimacy both
domestically and beyond their realms than they were with limiting the rise of recent immigrant
lineages in rank or office. The compilation and promulgation of the ritsuryō codes presented a
new challenge – how would rulers reconcile critical status systems with new ritsuryō
institutions?
Designations in the Taihō and Yōrō Administrative Codes
The promulgation of the Taihō penal and administrative codes in 701 CE was a major
turning point for the early Yamato governance. While these and the later Yōrō codes (compiled
from 720 CE and promulgated in 757 CE) did not explicitly regulate if, when, and how subjects
were to receive new designations, they did contain a variety of provisions that regulated other
aspects of the royally recognized lineages and titles. A brief overview of these provisions will
provide context for exploring eighth-century designation policy, and how they reflect the
incomplete reconciliation of ritsuryō models and the Yamato status systems. Taken together,
these codal provisions suggest that even as the codes created what appeared to be a merit-based
system of officialdom based on individual rank (first) and appointment to office (second), the uji
and related groups were too fundamental to the operation of the Yamato realm to be abandoned.
A number of different ministries and offices were tasked with managing designations and
registration of various segments of the population. Among the responsibilities of the Minister of
Civil Administration (Jibukyō ), for instance, were the records of people’s “true

132
designations” (honsei ).
298
The Minister of Popular Affairs (Minbukyō ) was
responsible for residence unit registers and tax rolls, as well as lists of the hereditary household
servants and bound servants of the realm.
299
The Minister of Justice (Kyōbukyō ) managed
a register of freeborn and bound people for use in cases when such status was disputed.
300

Finally, an office within the Ministry of the Royal Household known as the Royal Family Office
(Ōkimi no tsukasa ) managed lists of those who were considered princes and princesses
of the royal blood.
301
Through the work of these various ministries, the ritsuryō realm recorded
and tracked its subjects and their designations.
The ritsuryō government – the court and its offices – also took a particular interest in
managing high status designations through its laws on inheritance, succession, and funeral rites.
The second clause in the Laws on Inheritance, for instance, deals primarily with regulating the
succession and inheritance of officials of fourth rank and above. Nakamura argues that the often-
cited last line of this clause, which states that the head of a royally-recognized lineages was to be
determined by the order of the tennō,
302
represents an act of inscribing the sovereign’s ultimate
authority over these lineages into the administrative code.
303
Meanwhile, a clause in the Laws on

298
The characters used here for “true designations” are honsei . The commentaries of the Ryō no shūge offer a
variety of definitions for this term. The Ryō no Gige states that is the equivalent to the term (which I have
translated “designation” in this dissertation), and that the addition of the character reflects the idea that
designations represent people’s true roots (konpon ). See Ryō no shūge SZKT 24:85-86; and Inoue, Ritsuryō,
167-168. For English, see George Sansom, “Early Japanese Law and Administration – Part I,” 84-85.
299
The twenty-second clause in the Laws on Residence Units addressed the creation and maintenance of residence
unit registers, which were to be compiled once every six years. The same clause states that the Kōgo-era register of
670 CE were to be permanently maintained, while all subsequent registers would eventually be discarded (only the
five most recent registers were to be kept). Inoue, Ritsuryō, 170-171. For English, see Sansom, “Early Japanese Law
– I,” 87.
300
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 174-175. For English, see Sansom, “Early Japanese Law – I,” 90.
301
The number of generations included in this category varied between four and five generations over the course of
the eighth century. Inoue, Ritsuryō, 181-182. Sansom, “Early Japanese Law – I,” 95.
302
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 281-282.
303
Nakamura Tomokazu, “Ritsuryō seika ni okeru shiseisei,” 29-66.

133
Funerary Practices and Mourning (Sōsōryō ) limited burials in tombs to those of the third
rank or higher, those who were the heads of royally-recognized lineages, or founding figures of
new lineages.
304
This raises the question of what marked the creation of a new lineage as far as
the ritsuryō codes were concerned. In this regard, the mid-eighth-century Koki commentary
states that the sovereign’s grant of a new designation was understood to mark the creation of new
descent group ( ). Granting new designations included the creation of entirely new
designations, as in the case of Fujiwara no Kamatari ( , 614-669 CE) and Tachibana no
Moroe ( , 684-757 CE); as well as designations added on to an existing designation, as in
the case of the Takaoka no Muraji; and the new designations granted when one of the five types
of bound people were released from bound status. Although the clauses of the administrative
code did not regulate the royally-recognized lineages or titles, the ruler continued to assert the
right to determine the hierarchy within the uji – by confirming uji heads – as well as each
group’s founding figure.
Even as the promulgation of the penal and administrative codes created new institutions
and processes that intervened in the lives of subjects of the realm to an unprecedented degree, the
codes also acknowledged and incorporated existing status groups and protected privileged access
to rank and offices. Ritsuryō officials recorded and tracked the designations of all subjects, but
the tennō retained final authority over the system. The assumption in the codes was that all
designations had been set with the creation of the Kōgo registration process in 670 CE so there
were no regulations that defined how the tennō would make designation grants to new subjects

304
The key phrase is: . See Inoue, Ritsuryō, 437. The Ryō no shūge commentaries on this phrase offer a
rare view into what legal experts of the eighth and ninth century viewed as the creation of a new royally-recognized
lineage group or descent group. See Ryō no shūge. SZKT 24:967-968. For an analysis of this passage of the legal
commentary in English, see Kiley, “A Note on The Surnames,” 177–89.

134
or what standards would guide such decisions. Thus, eighth-century rulers had no laws and few
precedents on which they could rely for deciding how to handle people who did not already have
Yamato designations.
Designations in the Early Ritsuryō Realm, Monmu to Shōmu
Over the course of the first two decades of the eighth century, the institutions established
by the newly-promulgated Taihō ritsuryō codes began operating. During the reigns of the
sovereigns known as Monmu ( , r. 697-706 CE), Genmei ( , r. 707-715), and Genshō,
305

no major new policies on designations for immigrants and their descendants were issued, but
grants of new and revised designations began to appear in the record. These three rulers of early
Nara times made far fewer grants than did the rulers of the later half of the eighth century, but
their grants established the standard reasons for granting designations. The proportion of these
grants that were made to immigrants and descendants of immigrants was relatively small, but not
insignificant. These early eighth-century sovereigns did not deviate greatly from the path
established by Tenmu and Jitō – none of the grants to people with foreign designations included
titles ranked higher than imiki. In other words, the early ritsuryō period was one in which
ritsuryō institutions were stabilized and the patterns set by earlier rulers were extended.
Specifically, under Monmu, at least twenty-five people received new designations, five of
whom were immigrants or of immigrant descent. One of the significant patterns to emerge
during Monmu’s reign was the granting of designations to monks laicized because their skills
and knowledge were deemed necessary to the government. Specifically, in 701 CE, Monmu
laicized three monks, Eyō, Shinjō, and Tōrō, returning them to their original designations as

305
Notably, Genmei and Genshō were female rulers – Monmu’s mother and sister, respectively.

135
Roku Emaro ( ), Kō Komuzō ( ), and Ō Chūmon ( ).
306
All three went on
to serve as officials of the court, making use of their knowledge of yin-yang (onmyō ).
307

Two of these former monks receive designations that were characteristically foreign – Kō and Ō
– and both appear in the Shinsen shōjiroku as members or originators of lineages that were traced
to Koguryŏ. Theirs is an unusual case in that they received designations through an order of the
sovereign, but because the grant involved reinstating their original designations, they arguably
did not receive Yamato designations. The same pattern can be seen in the grant of the
designation Komu Takara ( ) to the monk Rōkan, of Silla origin.
308
In these grants, it is
evident that there was no sense that a Yamato designation was necessary for someone in service
as an official. Even though Monmu’s clear intention was to employ these former monks as
officials, he did not grant them new Yamato-style designations.
Monmu also extended Jitō’s innovative use of the konikishi title. In 703 CE he granted it
to an individual named Koma no Jakkō, making him Koma no Konikishi Jakkō ( ). In
666 CE, an individual with the name Genmu Jakkō ( ) had arrived in Yamato as one of
a group of envoys from Koguryŏ.
309
Arai Hideki has argued that this is the same Jakkō who
received the konikishi title from Monmu. By the time he received the new title from Monmu,
Jakkō had decided to remain in Yamato, become a subject and official, and achieved the official
Yamato junior fifth rank lower. It is not clear why Monmu chose someone who appears to be an

306
SKNG I:44-45 [Taihō 1 (701) 8/2].
307
Kristina Buhrman describes practitioners of onmyō as “a group of specialists in divination, exorcism, and
apotropaic ritual.” See “The Stars and the State: Astronomy, Astrology, and the Politics of Natural Knowledge in
Early Medieval Japan,” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2012), ix. Ooms notes that Tenmu’s Yin-yang
Bureau (Onmyōryō, ) had offices for astronomical observations, prognostication and divination, calendar
making, and timekeeping. See Imperial Symbolics, 91-92.
308
SKNG I:72-73 [Taihō 3 (703) 10/16]. See also notes 24 and 25 on the same page, and endnote 2.134 on page 339.
309
NHSK II:364-365 [Tenji 5 (666) 10/26]. Aston, Nihongi, II:285.

136
ordinary official of middling rank for the grant of the konikishi title, and the Shoku Nihongi
makes no assertions about Jakkō’s connections to any specific members of the Koguryŏ royal
family.
310
In any case, the designation followed the pattern of the Kudara no Konikishi – “Koma”
was a common abbreviation for the kingdom of Koguryŏ, and the presence of people at the
Yamato court with the designation Koma no Konikishi implied that Koguryŏ and its royals had
submitted to the Yamato sovereign. As in the earlier case, Koma no Konikishi was both
unambiguously a Yamato designation and a designation that explicitly marked foreign origin.
Thus, by the early eighth century, Yamato sovereigns had established a pattern of using
designation grants – specifically the grant of the konikishi title – to present themselves both to
their own subjects and to the region as rulers of a regional empire that had absorbed numerous
other polities.
During the reigns of Genmei and Genshō, a total of 368 people received new
designations, nineteen of whom were immigrants or of immigrant descent. It was at this time that
a number of patterns emerged that would recur throughout the eighth century. Under Genmei, at
least one group successfully petitioned for a new designation by referencing a mistake in the 670
CE Kōin register.
311
Later records and petitions also confirm that mistakes in the registers were
not uncommon, and that they were often recognized as appropriate grounds for granting a new or
revised designation. Under Genshō as well, several groups with zoku and hito designations
received new designations that no longer included those characters,
312
and at least one person
who had been of bound status received a new designation upon his release from that status.

310
Arai suggests that he was either a member of a collateral branch of the Koguryŏ royal house or that he was
chosen simply because he was the only envoy who decided to stay in Yamato. There is currently no way to confirm
or disprove these hypotheses. See Arai Hideki, “Toraijin (kikajin) no tōgoku ihai,” 19–35.
311
SKNG I:170-171 [Wadō 4 (711) 8/4].
312
Yoshie argues that these were both relatively low-status designations and that they were gradually phased out
over the course of the eighth century. See “Ritsuryō seika no kōmin.”

137
Change in status was a common reason for either requesting or receiving a change in
designation. Of the sixteen people with foreign designations who received designations under
Genshō, fifteen were members of lineages that claimed continental origins (per the Shinsen
shōjiroku), and all fifteen were granted the imiki title. This pattern suggests the possibility that
Genshō prioritized people of continental origin by granting them the relatively high-ranking
imiki title; but the Shoku Nihongi records make no reference to these fifteen people’s place of
origin, so it is hard to conclude that their origin was the critical factor in their receiving the new
title.
Overall, Monmu, Genmei, and Genshō worked to stabilize and moderately expand the
institutions and patterns established by Tenji, Tenmu, and Jitō. The records of designation grants
in this period demonstrate that people at all levels of Yamato society were actively advocating to
receive designations – whether titles, royally-recognized lineage names, or other kinds of
designations. We have relatively little sense of what these designations meant to the people who
held them, but it is clear that they saw them as important enough to petition the authorities to get
them. Some immigrants and people of immigrant descent received new designations and the use
of the konikishi to highlight the presence of subjugated “royals” continued, but there is little
evidence of a concerted policy on foreign designations in general.
New Policies on Designations for Foreign Subjects, Shōmu to Kōken
It was during the reigns of Shōmu and Kōken that major policies on designations for
immigrants and their descendants were promulgated. In her landmark work on Japanese
kingship, Joan Piggott argued that Shōmu’s reign represented the zenith of ritsuryō kinship and
officialdom. She also saw the period during which Shōmu and Kōken ruled – roughly the 720s to
the 770s – as the third phase of the implementation of the ritsuryō codes, during which the

138
institutions and processes of the codes spread throughout the realm and reached its frontiers.
313

Indeed, in examining the record of designation grants, this was a period in which the royally-
recognized lineage and title systems were extended, and gaps and oversights in the designations
of all Yamato subjects were addressed. Three edicts issued under these rulers have been
interpreted by a series of Japanese scholars as having directly addressed the issue of designations
for immigrants and their descendants. In the following section, I examine each of these edicts
with attention to both their historical context and their implementation. I also consider what they
tell us about the changing status of foreign subjects in Yamato, and how the meaning of being a
Yamato subject itself developed over this period.
Shōmu’s journey to the throne was a long and uncertain one. He was the son of Monmu
by a Fujiwara consort – a non-royal woman – and he was still an infant known as Prince Obito
when Monmu fell ill and died in 706 CE. After Monmu’s death, two royal women, Genmei and
Genshō, took the throne and governed until Obito could come of age in an effort to preserve the
dual principles of patrilineal and adult succession. Nonetheless, Prince Obito had a variety of
rivals as candidates for the throne, several of whom claimed precedence based on their status as
bilineal royals. Nonetheless, Genshō was able to outmaneuver these other contenders and to
secure the support of major court figures for giving the throne to Obito.
314

Shortly after he took the throne in 724 CE, Shōmu Tennō issued a spoken edict (senmyō
) in which he praised the preceding reigns of Genshō and Genmei, accepted the
responsibility of rule, declared a new era name, awarded military merit rank to the relevant

313
Piggott, Emergence, 168 and 236; Piggott, “The Last Classical Female Sovereign: Kōken-Shōtoku Tennō,” in
Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan, ed. Dorothy Ko et al. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003).
314
For a fuller discussion in English of the succession disputes and maneuverings surrounding Shōmu’s succession,
see Piggott, Emergence, 228-230 and 239-241.

139
officials of the realm, and proclaimed an amnesty.
315
Near the end of the edict, Shōmu also
granted designations to foreign people serving in various offices of the realm:
…Furthermore, foreigners serving in various offices shall each be granted designations as
appropriate to their service.
… 316

Although it is only a small part of a lengthy edict, this order has long been the subject of
debate among Japanese scholars.
317
On its own, Shōmu’s order is quite difficult to interpret. Who
exactly were the “foreigners” (karahitodomo ) that it referenced? What kind of
designations were they going to receive? What does the edict tell us about the status of foreign
officials at Shōmu’s court? Since the edict does not answer these questions, scholars have turned
to a later Shoku Nihongi entry for clues as to how it should be understood. The entry, from the
thirteenth day of the fifth month of the same year, is considered the primary example of the
implementation of Shōmu’s order. It records grants of royally-recognized lineage names and
titles to twenty-four people (see Table 5).
318

315
Piggott argues that senmyō or “spoken edicts” particularly reveal how a given tennō presented him or herself to
the subjects of the realm, and that they were prime opportunities for articulating authority and power. See
Emergence, 226-227. In his discussion of the distinctive mix of logographs and phonographs in writing senmyō,
David Lurie argues that senmyō were likely quite close to the edicts actually read out loud to assembled officials, but
also that they should be understood primarily as constructed representations of vocal performances rather than
records of pre-existing orality. See Lurie, Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, Harvard East
Asian Monographs 335 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 250-253. Ross Bender has recently
translated the senmyō from Kōken Tennō’s reign. He gives a useful overview of senmyō and major scholarly debates
about royal edicts. See Bender, The Edicts of the Last Empress, 749-770: A Translation from Shoku Nihongi
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), 10-19. The first scholarly work on the senmyō in English was
George Bailey Sansom’s “The Imperial Edicts in the Shoku-Nihongi (700-790 A.D.)” in the Transactions of the
Asiatic Society in Japan, 2
nd
series, V ol. 1 (1924). A partial English translation of the senmyō in the Shoku Nihongi
can be found in John Kenneth Linn, “The Imperial Edicts of the Shoku-Nihongi: An Annotated Translation of
Edicts” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1950). Herbert Zachert has translated all of the Shoku Nihongi senmyō into
German. See Zachert, Semmyō: Die Kaiserlichen Erlasse des Shoku-Nihongi, Deutsche Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin Institut für Orientforschung, V eröffentlichung 4 (Berlin: Akademie V erlag, 1950).
316
SKNG II:139-145 [Jinki 1 (724) 2/4].
317
Although this 724 CE order is cited frequently in Japanese-language scholarship concerning designations and
foreign subjects, scholars writing in English, including Ooms and Kiley, have not addressed it.
318
This is the first designation grant made by Shōmu Tennō. Although his senmyō was issued in the second month,
designation grants were made in response to petitions from people who wished to receive new designations and it is
therefore not surprising that the first evidence of the order being implemented does not appear until several months
later.

140
Based on this list, scholars have interpreted karahitodomo as a broad term that included
those whose ancestors could be traced to the continent, including the peninsular kingdoms of
Paekche, Koguryŏ, and Silla (hence the translation “foreigners” above).
319
The entry itself
contains no explicit reference to these other polities, but many of the people listed can be
connected to a foreign realm either through other entries in the official chronicles or through the
Shinsen shōjiroku. Five people on the list do not appear elsewhere, making their connections
extremely difficult to determine. Nevertheless, scholars have generally agreed that the evidence
as a whole suggests that this is a list of people of non-Yamato descent.
320
Moreover, the grouping
of the names on the list tends to support this conclusion. Officials in a Shoku Nihongi entry
would normally be listed in rank order, but the people named here are not. Instead, they appear to
be aggregated in four sets, within which people are listed in rank order. The grouping is not
perfect, but each set seems to be composed primarily of people who traced their origin to the
same places: Koguryŏ, Paekche, Silla, or the continent.
Shōmu’s 724 CE order focused on people serving him as officials, but it does not note the
appointments held by those receiving new designations. Their ranks are noted, however, making

319
SKNG II:143, n21. It is also possible to read as karahitobe, and there was, in fact, a royally-recognized
lineage with the name Karahito that had a specialized worker group (be ) associated with it, making it the
karahitobe . However, there is no reason to believe that Shōmu would single out this particular working
group to receive new designations, and scholars agree that the following fifth-month entry represents the intended
target of the order.
320
The idea that everyone on this list must be of immigrant origin because many of the people on the list are of
immigrant origin is obviously flawed, and while there is some basis to use this as a working hypothesis, it is
important to note that the origin of at least five people on the list is not verifiable in any of the extant sources.

141

Table 5: Shoku Nihongi Jingi 1 (724 CE) 5.13 Designation Grants
321

Official Rank Old Designation New Designation
Junior Fifth Rank Upper Satsu no Myōkan* Kawakami no Imiki
Junior Seventh Rank Lower Ō no Kichishō Nihiki no Muraji
Senior Eighth Rank Upper Kō no Shōshō Mikasa no Muraji
Junior Eighth Rank Upper Kō no Yakushin Ofusa no Muraji

Junior Fifth Rank Upper Kichi no Yoroshi* Kichita no Muraji
Junior Fifth Rank Lower Kichi no Chishu*

Kichita no Muraji
Junior Fifth Rank Lower Roku no Emaro Urimu no Muraji
Senior Sixth Rank Lower Kajukun Kanzaki no Muraji
Senior Sixth Rank Lower Sazanami no Kawachi* Takaoka no Muraji
Senior Seventh Rank Upper Shii no Chūyō Shiino no Muraji
Senior Seventh Rank Upper Kei no Kimu Kaguyama no Muraji

Junior Sixth Rank Upper Komu Takurō Kunimi no Muraji
Junior Sixth Rank Upper Komu Gankichi Kunimi no Muraji
Senior Seventh Rank Lower Kō no Shōmu Uestuki no Muraji
Junior Seventh Rank Upper Ō no Tahō Mikasayama no Muraji
Military Merit, 12
th
Grade Kō no Rokutoku Kiyomihara no Muraji
No rank Koma no Keo Riwaku Kosu no Muraji

Junior Fifth Rank Lower Goshuku Komei* Mitachi no Muraji
Senior Sixth Rank Upper Monobe no Yōzen Mononbe no Iso no Muraji
Senior Sixth Rank Upper Kume no Naomaro Kume no Muraji
Senior Sixth Rank sLower Hina no Ohotari Nagaoka no Muraji
Senior Sixth Rank Lower Kō Komo* Kinoe no Muraji
Junior Sixth Rank Lower Kokuna Kōju* Naniwa no Muraji
Senior Eighth Rank Upper Taho no Yasu Asada no Muraji

321
SKNG II:150~151. I have generally relied on the readings in the Aoki edition of the Shoku Nihongi, but where there was an entry in the Nihon jinmei daijiten
for an individual (marked with an asterisk above), I have adopted that reading as they tend to reflect the readings used in more recent scholarship.

142
it clear that they were members of ritsuryō officialdom. The highest rank held by a member of
the group is junior fifth rank upper, and the lowest is junior eighth rank upper, with one
individual holding no rank. Those who can be traced in the official histories occupied a range of
positions at the court. The highest ranking person was Satsu no Myōkan, who had been active as
a court lady (myōbu ) during Genshō’s reign – she was also a poet whose poems appear in
the Man’yōshū.
322
Sasanami no Kawachi first appears in the record as the Harima province senior
fourth-level manager in 712 CE. He later served in the Crown Prince’s household, and then went
on to be appointed director of the university in 751 CE – he would thus have been a scholar.
Because of his position in Harima in 712 CE, he is thought to have been the compiler of the
Harima Fudoki, a gazetteer. Three other people on the list were well known for their skill in the
medical arts. And Kichi no Yoroshi is credited with several poems in the Man’yōshū, and went
on to serve as head of the library and head of the Office of Medicines.
323
Roku no Emaro and
Kokuna Kōju were known as a specialist and professor of yin-yang, respectively.
324
Finally, Taho
no Yasu served as an official in the Dazaifu. These were without doubt highly skilled people
whose knowledge was valued by the sovereign. Many of them had already received the kinds of
recognitions that were common in Tenmu and Jitō’s reigns: four of the people on the list had
been presented with silk and other gifts in recognition of their outstanding scholarship in the first
month of 721 CE.
325
In this sense, Shōmu’s 724 CE order marks the beginning of a new pattern

322
Satsu no Myōkan is an intriguing figure. While a number of commentaries on the Man’yōshu identify her as a
Buddhist nun of immigrant origin, her Nihon kodai shizoku jinmei jiten entry describes her as a court lady (myōbu , a term for women at court of fifth rank and above) active during the reign of Genshō Tennō. See Nihon kodai
shizoku jinmei jiten, s.v. “ .” For further discussion of her background, see Kawakami Tomiyoshi, “Satsu no
Myōkan denkō,” Annual Report, Faculty of Literature, Otsuma Women’s University 11 (1979): 1–9.
323
See SKNG II:150 n16, SKNG II:151 n29, and SKNG II:152 n33.
324
Roku no Emaro is thought to be the same person as the monk who received this designation under Monmu, and
his inclusion in this list confirms the idea that Monmu had not actually granted the former monks Yamato
designations. SKNG II:151 n18 and n34.
325
SKNG II:85-89 [Yōrō 5 (721) 1/27].

143
of using designation grants as rewards for the service of officials who were immigrants or of
immigrant descent.
Each of the people listed in the fifth-month entry received both titles and royally-
recognized lineage names (ex. Kawakami no Imiki), and as a result, scholars have argued that
this was the intended purpose of Shōmu’s earlier order. As for the types of titles granted, Satsu
no Myōkan was the only person to receive imiki, while all of the other people listed received
muraji. Hirano Kunio has noted that the choice of these two titles was consistent with Tenmu’s
earlier grants to people of foreign origin, suggesting the intent to preserve the existing order.
326

The new royally-recognized lineage names were place names (Kawakami, Mikasa),
combinations of place names and characters from the old surname (Kichita, Takaoka), or the
original name with new orthography (Kunimi).
327
All are at least two characters, and thus a
departure from the typical one-character surnames of the continent and Korean peninsula. How
these names were chosen is difficult to determine, although most places names were likely based
on the place of residence of the group who received them.
And what should we make of Shōmu’s order that the designations granted be appropriate to
the service of the foreign officials? Given that the lineage names do not seem to be based on the
specific functions or offices these officials held, it is possible that Shōmu simply meant that they
should be granted titles appropriate to their status, but there is no way to confirm that this was or
was not the case. What is certain is that the designations granted here made this group of officials

326
Hirano, Taika zendai shakai, 351-355.
327
On this point, see Kiley, “On the Surnames.” Kiley specifically refers to the change from (Komu) to
(Kunimi). He argues that this represents a change to a Japanese orthography in which the uji name contains two
characters read in “Japanese fashion,” and furthermore that this change made it possible to pair this name with the
title of muraji.

144
full members of the Yamato status system by designating them founders of royally-recognized
lineages and by assigning them a relative status through their new titles.
What does this order reveal about foreign subjects and the Yamato designation system at
the beginning of Shōmu’s reign? First, it indicates the existence of a category of karahitodomo,
or “foreigners,” that was understood to extend beyond people who had been born in foreign lands
to at least their first-generation descendants. The people on the list whose background can be
traced are likely the children of people who had crossed over fifty or more years before in the
major waves of immigration that followed the fall of Paekche and Koguryŏ in the 660s.
328
We
know very little about when the remaining people on the list came to Yamato, and it is unclear
how many of them were born outside of Yamato or how many belonged to families that had been
in Yamato for generations. What is clear is that the category of karahitodomo included people
who had already become subjects and officials of Yamato. There was thus some notion of
difference that lingered and could be used to categorize people even after they had officially
affiliated themselves with the Yamato realm. Shōmu may have wanted to close this gap, but
there is no evidence that his goal was to ensure that all Yamato officials, including those who
were immigrants or of immigrant descent, belonged to royally-recognized lineages with royally-
granted titles that reflected their status. Nor does it seem that Shōmu’s order established a
principle that was widely applied. Other than the entry of 724 CE that we examined in detail
above, there are only a handful of grants over the next twenty years in which the recipient is an
immigrant or of immigrant descent, and a rank or office holder. There are no other petitions in
this period that use the word karahitodomo. Perhaps the 724 CE edict was intended not to
establish a new policy but was simply meant as a limited reward to a group of officials serving

328
Even these identifications are uncertain. See notes 107 and 109 above, as well as Hirano Kunio and Sakamoto
Taro, eds., Nihon kodai shizoku jinmei jiten (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 2010), 10-11, 331.

145
Shōmu. It is worth noting that the edict was issued in the year of Shōmu’s accession – a time for
beneficence. In either case, making such a grant upon taking the throne allowed Shōmu to assert
his authority over the designation system while simultaneously highlighting the talented and able
individuals from all under heaven that his court employed.
In 728 CE, four years after Shōmu took the throne, the Council of State submitted a
report that reconfigured the official rank system by tying it explicitly to designations and lineage
status.
329
While the report did not specifically address immigrants or foreign subjects, the policy
it established affected all officials and dramatically contributed to a new configuration of elites in
the realm. A brief analysis of the change offers insight into the evolving significance and
function of designations in the eighth century, and helps us to understand what motivated large
numbers of subjects (foreign or not) to seek new designations.
Before discussing this change, it is important to note that a system of thirty inner ranks
and twenty outer ranks, which overlapped at the fifth rank such that there were both inner and
outer fifth-rank officials was established in the Taihō era.
330
The outer ranks were granted to
lower-level officials assigned to particular posts: district officials, colonels, professors of the
realm, instructors of medicine, retainers, and servants.
331
Most officials posted in central offices
held the inner fifth rank. While there was a clear division between the inner and outer ranks,

329
Ruijū sandai kyaku, SZKT 25:228-230 [Jingi 5 (728) 3/28]. For an excellent translation and analysis in French,
see Francine Hérail, Livres 1 a 7, 485-491.
330
SKNG I: 34-39 [Taihō 1 (701) 3.21]. The outer ranks were capped at senior fifth rank upper – there was no outer
fourth rank. The system was related to similar systems in the continental Sui, Tang, Qi, and Northern Wei dynasties.
For a detailed analysis, see Nomura Tadao, Ritsuryō kanjinsei no kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1967), 308-
355.
331
Inner and outer ranks were not strictly used to distinguish between capital and outer offices. As Nomura points
out, provincial governor positions were outer offices but the holders of these posts received inner ranks. Retainers
(chōdai ) were posted in the capital, but they held outer ranks. See Nomura, Ritsuryō kanjinsei, 310; Kokushi
daijiten, s.v. “ ,” accessed May 22, 2017 via JapanKnowledge. The translation of the term gunki is from
Karl Friday via the Shiryō hensanjo online glossary (http://wwwap.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ships/shipscontroller).

146
there were no significant differences in the treatment and privileges assigned to inner and outer
fifth rank officials.
That changed in 728 CE, when the sphere of the outer ranks was extended to some
central officials, and a new standard for entry into the inner ranks was created. Promotion into
the inner ranks now explicitly depended on the status of the official’s designation ( ) and
the status of his or her house ( ). Only two types of people would be automatically
promoted to the inner ranks: those who were the descendants of long-standing noble lineages,
and those whose talent and ability was such that they could contribute to the government as a
great Confucian scholar (taiju ).
332
The new system also established a wider gap in the
privileges and treatment of inner and outer fifth rank officials. Outer officials would now receive
only half the allotment of fields of inner officials, they were assigned fewer attendants, could use
fewer post horses, and their “shadow privileges” of passing rank on to their children and
authority to commute punishments for crimes were reduced, among other changes.
333

In his classic late 1960s study of ritsuryō officialdom, Nomura Tadao argued that this
policy created an inner track of royally-recognized lineages whose members were promoted
directly to the inner ranks, and an outer track of royally-recognized lineages whose members
were promoted to the outer fifth rank.
334
Nomura noted that only an extremely small number of
royally-recognized lineages were always on the inner track – the Tajihi no Mahito, Fujiwara no

332
The new policy allowed for entry into the inner ranks based on merit, and preserved the authority of the tennō to
override these standards via a direct edict or order.
333
Ruijū sandai kyaku, SZKT 25:228-230 [Jingi 5 (728) 3/28]. For the annotated French, see Hérail, Livres 1 a 7,
485-491.
334
The terms he uses are perhaps more accurately translated “inner-level track” (naikai kōsu ) and “outer-
level track” (gekai kōsu ). Piggott translates Nomura’s terms as inner and outer “streams.” Emergence,
249. Nomura further divided the outer track into three groups, which he labeled A, B, and C. The A course officials
were promoted from outer junior fifth rank lower to inner junior fifth rank lower. The B course officials ended their
careers at the outer fifth rank. The C course officials were promoted within the outer ranks before either being
promoted to inner fifth rank or ending their career in the outer ranks.

147
Ason, Ishikawa no Ason, Tachibana no Sukune, and Kudara no Konikishi. Another small group
of royally-recognized lineages moved between inner and outer ranks, with individual members
occasionally achieving promotions, but the vast majority of royally-recognized lineages whose
members served as officials were stuck in the outer ranks. Nomura argued that the Taihō code,
with its continentally-inspired emphasis on merit and individual rank, had only papered over the
true organizing principle of the Yamato ritsuryō realm, which was maintenance of the hereditary
nobility. I disagree. There was, without doubt, an ongoing clash between merit and hereditary
status as core principles of ritsuryō officialdom, but neither was the “true” principle. If anything,
this order shows that the tension between the two principles continued to simmer in royal
government through the eighth century.
As with earlier orders issued under Tenmu and Jitō, Shōmu’s edict concerning inner and
outer ranks certainly had implications for immigrants and their descendants who had become
Yamato officials (or who wished to do so), but it did not explicitly target immigrants. The central
goal was clearly to protect the position of existing elites, and to increase the separation between
inner and outer ranks in the face of a rising tide of lower-level officials who had, over time, risen
to the fifth rank and were on the verge of breaking into higher ranks. Shōmu’s earlier order
reveals that there were a number of people serving as Yamato officials who had yet to be
included in the Yamato designation system, and these people would certainly have been among
those handicapped by this order. However, it is important to emphasize that one of the extremely
small group of royally-recognized lineages that were consistently on Nomura’s inner track were
the Kudara no Konikishi. The Kudara no Konikishi clearly had received a Yamato designation,
but the designation they received was chosen because Yamato sovereigns had an ongoing interest
in portraying them as foreign, and that fact did nothing to limit their status. Whether or not the

148
Kudara no Konikishi were considered or considered themselves foreign in the sense of the
karahitodomo of Shōmu’s order, there were people of immigrant descent on both sides of the
inner/outer track line. The Kudara no Konikishi had the same interest in maintaining their
position as the Fujiwara or Tachibana – they sought to protect their position against newcomers.
Overall, the 728 CE order raised the stakes for all Yamato subjects who sought new designations.
The 730s and 740s in Yamato were marked by a series of disastrous droughts, epidemics,
and rebellions. According to William Farris, the smallpox epidemic of 735 to 737 CE killed
between 15% and 45% of the population.
335
While this estimation has been questioned – most
notably by Charlotte von Verschuer and Joan Piggott – it is clear that the epidemic was
disastrous for both ordinary people and elites.
336
Famously, all four sons of Fujiwara no Fuhito
died in the epidemic, clearing the way for the rise of Tachibana no Moroe and other non-
Fujiwara figures on the Council of State. Nonetheless, Shōmu made the unprecedented decision
to name his daughter, Princess Abe, heir to the throne in 738 CE. This was a major victory for
the Fujiwara, in particular for Queen-Consort Kōmyō (Princess Abe’s mother) and her confidant,
the minister Fujiwara no Nakamaro. And yet, victory for one lineage of the Fujiwara did not
mean victory for all, and Fujiwara resentment about the promotion of other figures to high status
positions led to a major crisis in the early 740s. In 739, Fujiwara no Hirotsugu ( , ?-740
CE), a grandson of Fuhito and a member of the Ceremonial House line of the Fujiwara, was
appointed to a lower-level position in the Dazaifu (an appointment considered equivalent to

335
William Farris, Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient Japan (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, The
University of Michigan, 2009) 52. Farris also cites the work of Fukutaro Eitarō, who estimated that the epidemic
killed 39.1% of the elites listed in the Shoku Nihongi and 40-50% of the population. See Daily Life, 39 n1. In his
2018 book on Shōmu Tennō, Yoshikawa Shinji states that Farris stands by his estimate of 25-35% mortality in this
epidemic. See Yoshikawa Shinji, Shōmu Tennō to butto Heijōkyō, Tennō no rekishi 2 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2011), 124.
336
Charlotte von Verschuer, “Demographic Estimates and the Issue of Staple Food in Early Japan,” Monumenta
Nipponica 64.2 (2009): 337–62. Piggott gives his estimate as 25-35% mortality and says that she “remain[s] critical”
of his estimate, in particular because ‘the monumental construction program of the 740s and 750s could never have
been accomplished were it correct.’ See Emergence, 252.

149
being exiled). The following year, after unsuccessfully demanding that Shōmu dismiss
“unworthy” advisors, he assembled an army of over ten thousand men and rebelled against the
court. While Hirotsugu’s rebellion was put down relatively quickly by a large army sent from the
capital, it was nonetheless an extremely traumatic incident for Shōmu and his court.
337

In the midst of this upheaval, Shōmu continued to extend the reach of the ritsuryō realm
and its institutions. In particular, he issued an order in 745 CE that extended designation grants to
a large group of people:
The ground shook. The Golden Light Sutra shall be read at various temples in the capital
by the seventeenth day. Grant people without designations in the seven provinces of
Chikuzen, Chikugo, Buzen, Bungo, Hizen, Higo, and Hyūga, the designations they
request.
338

The order targets people without designations living in seven of the nine provinces on the
Saikaidō, or Western Sea Circuit, in what is now Kyushu. Given that designations for all free-
born subjects had theoretically been set seventy-five years earlier in the 670 Kōgo register, it is
puzzling to find a significant population of free-born but designation-less people. As with
Shōmu’s 724 CE senmyō, the order leaves many questions to be answered: Who were these
people without designations? Why did they lack designations? What kinds of designations were
they to receive?
Murao Jirō and Hirano Kunio have argued that the designation-less people in Shōmu’s
edict were not ordinary freeborn subjects of the realm but rather people of foreign origin who
had yet to receive designations. They saw this edict as a follow-up to the 724 CE order, and they
have argued that it extended the earlier grant by adding non-elite foreign subjects to the group

337
SKNG II:336-337 [Tenpyō 10 (738) 1/13] and SKNG II:370-375 [Tenpyō 12 (740) 9/12]. For more on Shōmu’s
reaction and attempts to move the capital from Nara to Kuni, see Piggott, Emergence, 253-255.
338
SKNG III:8-9 [Tenpyō 17 (745) 5/2].

150
eligible for new designations. The unspoken basis for their argument is likely the location of the
population targeted.
339
There can be little doubt that there were immigrants and people of
immigrant descent living in the Saikaidō provinces, which had a long history of interaction and
exchange with the peoples of the Korean peninsula and continent.
340
Late eighth-century records
include complaints from Dazaifu officials who reported large numbers of people from Silla who
had settled in the region without officially being incorporated into the realm.
341
It is thus
conceivable that there were people earlier in the eighth century who had come from abroad to
settle in Yamato and had been left out of the designation system, either because they did not go
through the official kika process, or because they arrived after the Kōgo register was created and
were then recorded in later registers with only their personal names. At the same time, there is
nothing in the wording of Shōmu’s order that indicates that he intended it to apply only or
particularly to foreign subjects. Given that the 724 CE order had been explicit about granting
designations to foreign officials in particular, it is hard to understand why Shōmu would have
failed to be specific here. Hirano’s research on cultivators who remained without designations
well after the Kōgo era also makes it clear that people from foreign realms were not the only
subjects who lacked designations in the eighth century.
342

339
Murao Jirō, “Shisei hōkai ni arawaretaru kikajin dōka no ichi keisō – Shinsen shōjiroku hensan ni itaru made,”
Shigaku zasshi 52.8 (1941). Hirano, Taika zendai, 345-354. Neither Murao nor Hirano offers specific evidence to
support the idea that the designation-less people in the edict were of foreign descent.
340
These provinces, and in particular, the Dazaifu, also played a critical role in the administration of the Yamato
maritime frontier, such as receiving diplomatic missions at the Tsukushi Lodge, supervising trade with foreign
merchants, and organizing defenses. See Bruce L. Batten, Gateway to Japan: Hakata in War and Peace, 500-1300
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 38-41.
341
SKNG IV:422-423 [Hōki 5 (774) 5/17] and Ruijū sandai kyaku in SZKT 25:569-570 [Hōki 5 (774) 5/17]. For an
annotated translation into French, see Hérail, Livres 8 a 20, 566-567. See the conclusion for a discussion of the
court’s evolving policy on new arrivals from Silla.
342
Hirano offers four possible explanations for the people without designations: that they were new subjects who
had gone through the kika process; that they were koshiro or groups that had previously served the Great
Kings directly; that they were cultivators who were controlled by kuni no miyatsuko; and that they were former be
groups that had reported to kuni no miyatsuko. See Hirano, Taika zendai, 329-344.

151
Parts of the Saikaidō residence unit registers from 702 CE are extant in the Shōsōin monjo,
making it possible to gain some insight into the situation Shōmu’s order sought to address.
343

They contain a surprisingly large number of people without designations (i.e. people who are
recorded with only their personal names). There are also a number of examples in these registers
of an unusual pattern: individuals who are recorded with only their personal names, but whose
fathers are recorded with designations. How designations could be lost between generations is
not clear. Perhaps these omissions were simply mistakes, although the number of examples
makes it difficult to believe that these were random errors. Extant 702 CE registers contain no
notations to indicate that the people without designations were of foreign origin, and people
without designations appear to be part of lineages that had typical Yamato designations.
344
In the
end, the evidence that this 745 CE order was specific to foreign subjects is insufficient, and it
makes more sense to see the order as part of the ongoing effort to incorporate all subjects into the
Yamato designation system.
Finally, Shōmu’s order of 745 CE reveals that while he sought to extend designations to
subjects who did not yet have them, he did not regulate the designations they received. The order
says simply that people were to be granted designations per their requests. Given that there are
no later entries in the Shoku Nihongi that record grants made to people in the Saikaidō provinces,
we have little means of determining how this order was implemented.
345
If we rely on the 702 CE
register, the people in these provinces who lacked designations were not officials or rank-holders
who would have been eligible for titles, but simply freeborn subjects. Assuming they were the

343
Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, ed. Dai Nihon komonjo: hennen monjo, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1901-1940), 96-218.
344
As discussed in the previous chapter, we do not have direct evidence of how people who went through the kika
process were recorded in the residence-unit registers, but as noted in Chapter 1, Tanaka Fumio has argued that the
word “kika” would have been recorded next to their names. See Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 158-160.
345
While there are designation grants recorded in the Shoku Nihongi throughout Shōmu’s reign, none seem to be to
people in the Saikaidō provinces.

152
target of the order, what they received was the right to choose a new surname, or to receive
official recognition for their existing surname.
346
There is no evidence that the tennō or officials
of the realm systematically chose or assigned designations to freeborn subjects when the first 670
CE register was made, so perhaps this later grant followed the same procedure. District and
provincial offices as well as several central ministries were responsible for tracking people’s
designations and creating the population registers, and they may have played a role in monitoring
the designations chosen (although we have no records of such oversight). Shōmu was neither
concerned that granting whatever designations were requested would undermine the designation
system nor did he show particular interest in using designations to create or maintain any
particular divisions among his subjects.
Over the course of his reign, Shōmu granted designations to over 2500 people, 132 of
whom were immigrants or of immigrant origin. Nearly all of those 132 received the title of imiki
or a lower title. The one significant exception was the Sena no Konikishi ( ) designation,
which Shōmu established in 747 CE. Sugasawa Yoko analyzed the diplomatic relations between
Yamato and Parhae at the time and argued that the creation of the Sena no Konikishi was, like
the Kudara and Koma no Konikishi, intended to represent the subordination of another kingdom
(in this case, Parhae) to the Yamato realm. Because Parhae still existed, the designation did not
incorporate the polity’s name.
347
Other than this case, Shōmu’s grants to immigrants and people
of immigrant descent largely maintained the patterns that had been established by earlier

346
In this sense, Shōmu’s edict is proof that the character should not always be read “kabane,” and that it often
was used to refer to non-kabane designations. The question of uji names remains. Whether or not to consider the
surnames of ordinary subjects in eighth-century as uji names is the subject of ongoing debate. I follow Katō and
Yoshie in arguing that there was a category of designations that are best referred to simply as “surnames” (the term
in Japanese is bōsei ). See Katō “Waga kuni ni okeru sei,” 401; and Yoshie, “Ritsuryō seika no kōmin,” 1594-
1595.
347
Sugasawa Yōko, “Kodai Nihon ni okeru koma no zanzō – Bokkai/Sena no konikishi uji wo tsushite,” Shisō, no. 47
(1990): 107–14.

153
sovereigns. His reign was marked by efforts to significantly expand the reach of the monarch’s
realm by incorporating large groups of people that had been left out of the designation system.
In 749 CE, Shōmu’s daughter took the throne as Kōken Tennō. It was a tense time for the
court. Tachibana no Moroe was the leading minister, but the Fujiwara retained three of fifteen
seats on the Council of State, and Fujiwara no Nakamaro’s alliance with Queen Consort Kōmyō
(his aunt and Kōken’s mother) gave him access to and influence over the new sovereign. Kōmyō
and Nakamaro cleverly circumvented resistance in the Council of State by creating a new extra-
codal Queen Consort's Household Agency (Shibichūdai ) with Nakamaro as its head,
which allowed Kōken to rule directly by issuing edicts. Under Nakamaro’s leadership, the staff
of this office grew to over a 1000 people who worked with the existing network of ritsuryō
officials across the realm to transmit and carry out royal commands.
348
Although they were able
to create an effective mechanism for governing, Kōken and her advisors continued to face many
challenges. A continual source of instability in Kōken’s reign was the question of who her heir
would be, as she was unmarried and without children. Likely in an effort to settle the issue,
Shōmu named Prince Funado as her successor when he was on his deathbed in 756 CE, breaking
the line of strict patrilineal succession in choosing a cousin and overriding the objections of both
Kōmyō and Nakamaro. Both were unhappy with the choice of a prince who had no close
connections to them by blood or marriage.
349
Kōken’s response to her father’s decision marked an
important turning point in her reign.
Specifically, in the fourth month of 757 CE, Kōken Tennō called her officials together to
consult on the selection of a new Crown Prince to replace Prince Funado, whom she accused of

348
Piggott, Emergence, p. 269-270. The earlier half of Kōken’s reign is often referred to as “the Nakamaro regime”
(Nakamaro seiken ) because of the dominant role he played in the court.
349
Piggott discusses this choice in both Emergence, 252-253; and in “The Last Classical Female Sovereign,” 56-57.

154
being unfilial and behaving improperly during the period of mourning for Shōmu. In a lengthy
spoken edict, Kōken discussed Funado’s transgressions, proclaimed that he would be set aside,
and named a new Crown Prince: Prince Ōi, a grandson of Tenmu and son-in-law to Nakamaro
who had long lived in Nakamaro’s residence. Analyzing Kōken’s justifications for replacing
Funado, Piggott has argued that this edict “reflects a new synthesis of the Sun-line myth, strong
belief in Buddhist realm protection, and emphasis on the Chinese classical discourse.”
350

In addition to proclaiming Ōi the new Crown Prince, Kōken issued an amnesty and granted
rewards for various meritorious deeds. Near the end of the edict, she also included the following
order:
Regarding the people from Koguryŏ, Paekche, and Silla who long ago came here
yearning for the numinous influence [of the monarch] and who have adopted our
manners, all requests to be granted a designation shall be approved. Regarding residence
unit registers that record [people with] the zoku character or no designation, they are not
in accord with reason. Revise and correct them.
351

With this order, Kōken not only granted designations to people from Koguryŏ, Paekche, and
Silla descent, but also laid out a new framework for making grants to immigrants and people of
immigrant descent. They were to receive designations not simply because they had long been
subjects of the realm, but specifically because they had adopted “our manners” (wa zoku ).
The idea that a sovereign transforms the ways and manners (fūzoku , also translated
“customs” below) of the people through his or her charismatic and civilizing influence appears
frequently in classical texts. Of particular relevance is the appearance of the term in the Classic

350
Piggott, “The Last Classical Female Sovereign,” 56-57.
351
SKNG III:176-185 [Tenpyō hōji 1 (757) 4/26]. The translation here is my own. Piggott translates parts of the
spoken edict (not including this section) in “The Last Classical Female Sovereign,” 56; and Ross Bender has a full
translation in his Nara Japan, 749-757, 192-201.

155
of Filial Piety (J. Kōkyō, C. Xiaojing, ): “For changing their ways and altering their
manners, there is nothing better than music.”
352
Tanaka has argued that this edict reveals the
pervasive influence of a continental “changing ways and altering manners” doctrine in the
eighth-century court at Nara.
353
There can be no doubt that Kōken was familiar with this text and
considered it important – the same order that named Prince Ōi heir and granted designations also
proclaimed that a copy of the Classic of Filial Piety should be placed in every household in the
realm.
Similar concepts appear in key passages of early Yamato texts. The Nihon shoki describes
Sujin, “heavenly founder of the land” ( ), as a ruler who taught and transformed his
people, spreading laws and using his kingly influence (ōka ) to pacify their wild manners
( ).
354
With the compilation of the ryō administrative codes, these ideals were incorporated
into the administration of the realm in clauses that regulated official attention to customs. The
head of the Board of Censors (Danjōdai ), an organization tasked with policing all
officialdom on behalf of the tennō, was responsible for “the purification of customs.”
355

Provincial governors had to conduct annual tours of inspection, during which their first duty was
to “observe [local] customs.”
356
Provincial governors and district chieftains conveyed information
about the provinces and districts to the center and acted as the emissaries of the tennō in teaching
and guiding the people. Finally, the codes mandated that when a person of unusual customs

352
, . For English translations of the Classic of Filial Piety, see James Legge, The Hsiao King, or
Classic of Filial Piety (Whitefish, Mt: Kessinger, 2004); and Henry Rosemont Jr. and Roger T. Ames, The Chinese
Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (University of Hawaii Press, 2009).
353
. See Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 132-149.
354
NHSK I:248-249 [Sujin 12/3/11]; Aston, Nihongi, I:160. For a discussion of the significance of this passage to
the “imperial imagination” of the early Yamato court, see Duthie, Man’yōshū, 96-98.
355
The exact phrase is: . Inoue, Ritsuryō, 185-186.
356
. Inoue, Ritsuryō, 192-193. English translations by both George Sansom and Joan Piggott can be found on
the Project for Premodern Japan Studies website, http://www.uscppjs.org/.

156
entered the realm, an image depicting their appearance and clothing as well as a record that
included their name, place of origin, and a description of their customs was to be prepared and
submitted to the tennō.
357
All people in the realm were thus subject to the process of “changing
ways and altering manners.” Officials were to be monitored by the Board of Censors; ordinary
subjects were monitored by provincial governors, and outsiders were overseen by officials at
their point of arrival.
While the significance of ways and manners was well established, the connection between
adopting certain customs and receiving a Yamato designation was new. Earlier edicts on the
designation system showed no trace of this connection. The criterion for receiving a designation
under Shōmu’s 724 CE edict was service as an official, while the only criteria that had to be met
under the 745 order were residence in the Saikaidō provinces and not having a designation
already. Furthermore, while there are petitions in the records that cite adoption of customs as
grounds for receiving a designation after 757 CE, no such petitions appear before this order.
Kōken’s edict thus defined the distinction between people who had become subjects but still had
foreign designations, and people who had become subjects and received new designations
because they had adopted the customs of the realm.
What customs did people have to adopt in order to qualify for a new designation? The
order itself offers no answer, and references to “customs” in the Nihon shoki and Shoku Nihongi
are limited. The term “customs” appears most often in entries dealing with foreign languages or
local dialects, funerary practices, song and dance, appearance and clothing, and agricultural
practices. Fortunately, the Koki commentary offers some insight into how scholars of the time

357
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 406-407. This clause is also discussed at length in Chapter 1.

157
interpreted the term “customs.”
358
In its discussion of the Board of Censors clause, the Koki
commentary quotes two classical Chinese texts at length: the Liuzi (Master Liu, ), and the
“Treatise on Geography” in the Han shu.
359
The passages establish connections between place,
the transformative influence of a ruler, and the character and characteristic practices of a people.
Both include clear expressions of the “changing ways and altering manners” doctrine that
Tanaka argued was at work in Kōken’s policy. In addition to these fairly abstract definitions, the
Koki also offers more concrete interpretations. The Koki comment on the Board of Censors
concludes somewhat abruptly by saying that “purification of customs” simply meant ensuring
that laws and procedures were properly established. In its commentary on the clause on foreign
people arriving in the realm, the Koki simply states: “‘Customs’ refers to making a living with a
ship, as well as things like archery and horsemanship, songs and dances.”
360
The Koki gives the
sense that while scholars of the mid-eighth-century recognized the classical roots of this concept
and its importance to the ruling ideology, they also struggled with translating it into
administrative practice.
Kōken’s edict does not specify the customs that had to be adopted. Instead, her order
stresses the length of time that people had spent in Yamato. Later petitions for new designations

358
The Koki commentary, which as noted earlier, discusses the earlier Taihō administrative code, is only extant as a
text quoted in the Ryō no shūge. According to Inoue Mitsusada, the Koki commentary was likely compiled in or
around 738 CE. All other commentaries in the Ryō no shūge are thought to date from 787 or later. Inoue, “Nihon
ritsuryō no seiritsu to sono chūshaku sho,” in Ritsuryō, ed. Inoue, 743-802.
359
The Koki commentary on the “Board of Censors” clause concludes by saying that “purification of customs”
refers only to correctly implementing the laws and procedures of the court, and righting any wrongs that had been
wrought by incorrect implementation. See Ryō no Shūge, SZKT 24:137. The estimated compilation dates of the
Liuzi range from the Han to the Tang periods, and various versions are extant today, but the authorship of the text is
unclear. Shorter versions of the same passage in the Liuzi are also quoted in the Ryō shaku, Atoki, and Ryō no Gige
commentaries on “customs.”
360
Ryō no shūge, SZKT 25:911-912. It is difficult to say why one
Koki definition is so extensive and draws so heavily from Chinese texts while the other is so concrete and terse.
Perhaps the author felt there was no need to repeat the passages included earlier, particularly given that they were
ultimately deemed irrelevant. In any case, we can at least conclude that the authors of the Koki commentary were
fully aware of Chinese precedents and sources and were thus making deliberate choices to give shorter, more
pragmatic interpretations of the codes.

158
followed this pattern. Rather than arguing that they have begun to speak a different language,
taken up the performance of Yamato song and dance, or changed their funerary practices,
petitioners stressed that they had been in Yamato for a long time. Whether or not the behavior
and cultural practices of the people from Paekche, Silla, and Koguryŏ actually changed was
beside the point. What mattered was that these people had long been living under the
transformative influence of the Yamato sovereign, and grants of designations would be marks of
the transformation brought about by that influence. Suk-Soon Park has noted that the concept of
“transformation” ( ) via the influence of the ruler was common to both the process of becoming
a subject ( ), and to the process he calls “becoming a subject of the sovereign” (ōminka ), which now resulted in receiving a new designation.
361
Immigration to Yamato had
dramatically decreased since the late seventh century, and as a result, rulers lost much of their
ability to demonstrate their transformative influence through incorporating new subjects. With
this edict, Kōken addressed a long-standing gap in the designation system and also made
granting designations to foreign subjects a way to perform her transformative influence.
The 750s in Yamato marked the beginning of a new era of what Piggott has called
“Tangification,” a process in which Yamato rulers sought to bring their institutions and
governing practices into line with those of the Tang empire. Piggott has argued that this era was
characterized by “dynamic emulation and institutionalization of Tang ways in government and at
court.”
362
In what ways was Kōken’s order of 757 CE an example of this process? In his study on
ethnicity in the Tang empire, Marc Abramson noted that Tang people generally saw non-Han
people as inherently lacking surnames, and that a key step in assimilation for new members of

361
Suk Soon Park, “Nihon kodai kokka ni okeru ‘ka’ no gainen: omo ni hasseiki ni tsuite,” Shigaku zasshi 105.12
(December 1996): 13–27.
362
Dorothy Ko, Joan Piggott, Jahyun Kim Haboush, eds. Introduction to Women and Confucian Cultures, 12.

159
the Tang realm was to acquire a clan name. These clan names were usually transliterations,
sometimes abbreviated, of the group or individual’s original surname into two or more Chinese
characters. He argues that in the Northern Wei dynasty, there was a defined multi-step process
that began with the acquisition of such a surname as a first step, followed by the abbreviation of
the multi-character surname to a one-character surname as a second step, and sometimes
extended to a third step when the group received a new surname of unimpeachable Han
provenance.
By the Tang dynasty, however, Abramson argues that this process had become
“abbreviated and opaque.” The Tang ruling house adopted a policy of making mass grants of
their own Li surname to recently submitted people as a way of reinforcing their integration into
the realm and creating political bonds through fictive kinship relationships.
363
On one hand,
Kōken’s association of designations with multi-step process of assimilation into the realm seems
to bear a striking resemblance to the Tang practice; but on the other, it would have been both
unthinkable and quite literally impossible to grant the designation of the ruling house to new
subjects in Yamato – there was no such surname. In the end, the policy was likely influenced by
Tang precedents, but had to be adjusted to account for the differences between Tang surnames
and the Yamato system of designations.
Many interpretations of this order focus not on Kōken but on her minister, Fujiwara no
Nakamaro. Nakamaro was known for his affinity for continental forms and institutions and a
number of scholars have argued that the 757 CE edict strongly reflects Nakamaro’s interest in
Tang precedents.
364
Working with Queen Consort Kōmyō, Nakamaro was an extremely powerful
and influential minister during this period, which is often referred to as the time of the

363
Abramson, Ethnic Identity in Tang China, 151-155.
364
Itō “Ritsuryō seika,” 28-29. In English, see Cornelius Kiley, “A Note on the Surnames,” 185.

160
“Nakamaro regime.” While Nakamaro certainly had a hand in shaping the policies of the era,
Kōken was by no means a weak ruler. She was an active participant in the “Tangification”
process, having been tutored before taking the throne by the great scholar-official Kibi no Ason
Makibi. Makibi had famously studied in the Tang empire for nearly twenty years before bringing
back a large number of important texts, and his influence is evident throughout Kōken’s order.
365

However influential Nakamaro may have been at this time, Kōken was the sovereign and her
initiative and authority should not be discounted. In the end, both leaders were fully capable of
pushing this policy, which was in keeping with a broader general trend towards adopting Tang
institutions and models.
Debate about the impact of the 757 CE order began in 1941, when Murao Jirō argued that
the limited designation grants of Shōmu’s 724 CE and 745 CE orders were greatly expanded by
Kōken’s 757 CE order to all people of foreign descent. In his analysis, the “unlimited” grant of
new designations to immigrants and their descendants that followed this order, particularly of
high-level titles like ason and sukune which they had not previously held, was what led to the
collapse of Tenmu’s designation system in the subsequent Enryaku period.
366
Subsequent
scholarship has focused on responding to Murao’s argument. Hirano Kunio presented a major
challenge to Murao by taking a closer look at the designations actually granted after 757 CE, and
he concluded that the edict introduced no fundamentally new patterns in the granting of
designations.
367
Writing in English, Cornelius Kiley argued that the edict loosened control over

365
Ko et al., Women and Confucian Cultures, 12-18. Piggott’s chapter on Kōken in the same volume also discusses
“Tangification” and the roles that Kōken, Nakamaro, and Kibi no Makibi played in it, 47-74.
366
Murao Jirō, “Shisei hōkai.” Abe Takehiko reached much the same conclusion as did Murao. See Abe’s major
study of the uji and kabane system. See Shisei, 80-81.
367
Hirano, Taika zendai, 345-354 Itō Chinami also argued that Kōken’s edict did not fundamentally disrupt the
designation order, and that it showed an interest in incorporating people with foreign designations into the Yamato
system. Itō, “Ritsuryō seika no torajijin shisei.” Yoshie argued that the 757 CE edict was an attempt to integrate
these people with foreign designations into a tripartite Yamato designation order made up of title designations,
surnames, and be designations. See Yoshie, “Ritsuryō seika.”

161
the designation system and made it possible for people of foreign origin to claim kinship with
native groups, thereby improving their status.
368
Similarly, Herman Ooms has recently argued
that Kōken’s order led to large scale designation grants that “resulted in obscuring the alien
origin of many allochthons.” As evidence of its significant impact, Ooms cited the fact that
nearly 2000 people were absorbed into fifty royally-recognized lineages over the four years
following Kōken’s edict.
369
In order to evaluate these claims, I will consider both specific grants
and the broad trends of designation grants during Kōken, Junnin, and Shōtoku’s reigns. I will
also use close readings of petitions submitted during their reigns to evaluate both the apparent
impact of the order and the various arguments that have been made about it.
Looking at Kōken’s reign as a whole, it is immediately apparent that she incorporated far
larger numbers of immigrants and their descendants into the Yamato designation system than
any previous sovereign. Of a total of 1623 people who received designations from her, 1315
people, over 80%, were of foreign origin. However, the vast majority of these people received
the relatively low-status titles of muraji and miyatsuko. Kōken did set a new precedent by
granting the second highest of Tenmu’s eight titles, ason, to two groups that were of immigrant
descent. The first to receive it were members of the Sena no Konikishi group established under
Shōmu. Six members of this group received the designation Koma no Ason ( ) in 750
CE.
370
Tanaka Fumio has analyzed the activity of the Koma no Ason and noted that it was only
those who held the new designation (not the remaining Sena no Konikishi) who were
subsequently employed as diplomatic envoys – even as Yamato sought to present itself as having
absorbed other realms in the region, court leaders were aware that the konikishi title would not be

368
Kiley, “A Note on the Surnames,” 177-178.
369
Ooms, Imperial Politics, 103. Ooms cites SKNG III:184, n 14. As noted in the introduction, “allochthon” is
Ooms’ word for immigrants and their descendants.
370
SKNG III:102-103 [Tenpyō shōhō 2 (750) 1/27].

162
acceptable to other realms. Thus, Kōken changed the designation for those who would be going
abroad on diplomatic missions.
371
In 758 CE, four people were granted the designation Kudara
no Ason ( ). They are described in the Shinsen shōjiroku as the descendants of the King
Hye ( , r. 598–599 CE) of Paekche,
372
and in their purported connections to foreign royalty
they resemble the groups that were given the konikishi title. In both the Koma no Ason and
Kudara no Ason cases, the recipients of the new designations gained greater access to rank and
offices. It is important to note, however, that they did not gain access to rank and office by
obscuring their foreign origin – their designations were deliberately selected to highlight their
connections to foreign realms.
The changes Kōken made were significant, but they were also in many ways similar to
Shōmu’s efforts to extend designations to Yamato subjects who did not have them. During her
reign, large numbers of non-central and low-ranking people who were Yamato subjects were
incorporated into the Yamato designation system. Her grants of high-level titles to a small
number of elite groups that could claim descent from foreign royalty marked a shift from the use
of the konikishi title, but those grants were still very limited in scope. Ultimately, there is little
evidence to support the idea that her policies allowed large numbers of people to conceal their
foreign origins.
Kōken’s order set off a dramatic coup, led by Tachibana no Naramaro (son of Moroe),
who had been angered over Prince Funado being set aside in favor of Prince Ōi. Kōken, Kōmyō,
and Nakamaro triumphed, however, and Prince Ōi took the throne as Junnin Tennō in 758 CE.
Because Junnin’s reign followed so closely on the heels of Kōken’s order, it is important to take

371
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 62.
372
SKNG III:252-253 [Tenpyō hōji 2 (758) 6/4]. See also SSJR: Left Capital, Shoban in Saeki Arikiyo, Shinsen
shōjiroku no kenkyū: honbun hen (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1981), 286.

163
the grants he made into consideration. Of 875 total grantees, Junnin granted new designations to
687 people of immigrant origins. None of these people received titles higher than imiki,
suggesting that the precedent Kōken set did not immediately result in additional grants of high-
level titles to people of foreign origin.
On the other hand, the first large-scale designation grant that has been considered a direct
result of Kōken’s order was made in 761 CE, when 188 people associated with Paekche, Silla,
Koguryŏ and the continent were granted new royally-recognized lineage names and titles. Each
group is explicitly identified by realm of origin: 131 people were of Paekche descent, 29 of
Koguryŏ, 20 of Silla, and 8 from the continent. No ranks or official appointments are given for
any of the people on the list. The first group listed received the title Kudara no Kimi ( ),
and shared a surname (Yu ) with the group that had received the title Kudara no Ason in 758
CE.
373
Much like the Kudara no Ason, the Kudara no Kimi received a relatively high-status title
and their new lineage name was the name of their place of origin.
374
The rest received the titles of
muraji and miyatsuko, which Itō has persuasively argued were granted with attention to
preserving the existing hierarchy.
375
The majority of the royally-recognized lineage names appear
to be two-character place names, making them typical “Yamato-style” designations.
Examining the overall patterns in designation grants and the major example of the
application of Kōken’s edict offers one view of the impact of the order, but these approaches
gives us little sense of how people at the time understood and responded to the order. One way to

373
Kimi ( or ) was a relatively high ranking title that pre-dated Tenmu’s system but continued to be used well
into the ritsuryō period.
374
is read “Paekche” in Korean and “Kudara” in Japanese. I have generally used the Korean reading for the
place name, and the Japanese when that place name is used as a lineage name.
375
Itō, “Ritsuryō seika no toraijin shisei,” 29.

164
consider the impact of the order is to examine the petitions for designation changes that were
submitted shortly after it was promulgated.
In the tenth month of 758 CE, shortly after Junnin took the throne, a pair of officials from
Mino province submitted the following petition:
Senior District Chieftain, Kohito, holding the outer seventh rank upper, and Middle
Imperial Guard without rank Goshi of Mushiroda District in Mino Province request: “Our
sixth-generation ancestor Oruwashichi came here from Kaya yearning for transformation.
At the time, he was not yet practiced in the [Yamato] ways and customs, and he was not
given a designation. We wish to be granted a designation according to the name of our
country.” They were granted the designation Kaya no Miyatsuko.
376

Echoes of the 757 CE order are apparent throughout the petition – the writers reference their
ancestor’s longing for transformation in coming to Yamato, state that Oruwashichi did not
receive a new designation because he had yet to adopt Yamato ways and customs, and note that
six generations had passed since that ancestor’s arrival. The petition contains no mention of
specific ways and customs that the lineage had adopted. Instead, it emphasizes the amount of
time that had passed since their ancestor arrived. Having established that they qualified under the
terms of Kōken’s edict, they requested and were granted a new designation. Curiously, the two
people who appear in the edict seem to have had only personal names in spite of holding official
appointments; and in Kohito’s case, official rank. Evidently it was possible to become an official
without any designation at all. The designation they requested included the name of their
kingdom of origin, as well as the relatively low-ranking title of miyatsuko. This petition reveals
that even low-ranking officials were aware of Kōken’s order and able to cite it to their own
advantage less than a year after it was promulgated. It also demonstrates that the descendants of

376
SKNG III:292-295 [Tenpyō hōji 2 (758) 10/28].

165
immigrants were not necessarily using the edict to request designations that concealed their
foreign origin.
In contrast, a slightly earlier petition from the same year gives a sense of how petitioners to
whom the 757 CE order might seem relevant could simply talk past the official narrative:
Second-level manager of the Office of Court Medicine and Izumo Province Supplementary
Third-Level Manager Senior Sixth Rank Upper Naniwa no Kusushi Nara and eleven others
said, “The great ancestor of Nara was originally a person of Koguryŏ who submitted to
Paekche. In the past, at the time of the Hatsuse no Asakura Palace [Yūryaku’s reign],
Paekche was sent a Yamato royal order requesting people of talent. Thereupon, Tokurai
was sent as tribute to His Majesty (the Great King). Tokurai’s fifth generation descendant,
Enichi, was dispatched to the Great Tang during the time of the Oharida court [Suiko’s
reign], where he was able to study the healing arts. Thus he was called Kusushi, which then
became his designation. Now, his feeble-minded descendants, both men and woman, all
bear the designation of Kusushi. Secretly they fear causing disorder and confusion with
their names. They humbly request to have the characters ‘kusushi’ revised and to hold [the
designation] Naniwa no Muraji.” This was permitted.
377

The petition argues that Enichi received the title of kusushi ( , “master of medicine”)
because of his knowledge of the healing arts, but that his descendants no longer possess such
skills and thus should not bear the same title. They also cite fear of causing confusion and
disorder in the designation system, which, given their success, was apparently an effective way
to appeal to the ruler’s interests. The petitioning official, Naniwa no Kusushi Nara, was serving
in the Office of Court Medicine when he submitted this petition, so the claim of being “feeble-
minded” should be viewed with considerable skepticism. The kusushi title was not one of
Tenmu’s eight titles and may thus have been considered less desirable than muraji. It is also
possible that bearing a title so closely associated with a particular type of knowledge had

377
SKNG III:150-153 [Tenpyō hōji 2 (758) 4/28].

166
restricted the group’s eligibility for appointment to other positions, and they were seeking a way
to evade ongoing service as medical experts. In any case, they seem to have had no issue with
their royally-recognized lineage name, as they sought and received only a change of title.
While the petitioners devote significant space to detailing their foreign origin, they make
no reference whatsoever to adopting ways or manners. Rather than relying on Kōken’s order and
stating that they had not received a designation because their ancestors had yet to adopt the
customs of the Yamato realm, they constructed an entirely different narrative. They stressed the
knowledge and skills that their ancestors had brought to Yamato from Paekche, Koguryŏ, and the
Tang empire. They describe how Yamato rulers sought experts from Paekche and how they were
selected and sent in response, and they make a point of mentioning that a later ancestor was
selected by the Yamato sovereign to study abroad in the Tang empire, again bringing new
knowledge and skills back with him. Whether or not they wished to continue serving as medical
experts, this group of people was evidently not willing to describe themselves as people who
were in need of transformation when they arrived in their new home. Instead, they chose to
present themselves as the agents of the transformation of Yamato.
378

These are but two examples of petitions in which descendants of immigrants made their
cases to the throne, justifying their requests for the new designations that they wanted. The first
shows that people quickly recognized the possibilities created by Kōken’s 757 CE edict, while
the second demonstrates that its principles were not always relevant to them. Kōken’s order was
not the “unlimited” grant that it has been made out to be – people of the time seem to have
appealed to it in a relatively limited way, and only when they deemed it useful.

378
Another possible consideration is that this group already had a designation granted by a Yamato sovereign.
Perhaps they concluded that they did not qualify for new designations under Kōken’s order, and thus drew on a
series of other principles of designations to make their case.

167
Kōken abdicated in favor of Junnin in 758 CE, but after the death of her mother Kōmyo in
762 CE, Kōken’s relationship with Fujiwara no Nakamaro reportedly deteriorated. In the same
year, Kōken recovered from a serious illness with the help of the Buddhist monk Dōkyō ( ,
700-772 CE), and then went on to issue a remarkable edict stating that Junnin would continue to
handle “small matters” but that she was re-taking control of “matters of importance.”
379
The
conflict created by this order eventually erupted into a rebellion with Nakamaro leading the
forces who sought to keep Junnin in power (ultimately without the monarch’s cooperation). He
was defeated, in large part due to the strategic military leadership of Kōken’s former tutor, Kibi
no Makibi. Kōken re-took the throne as Shōtoku Tennō. She re-organized the court into two lines
of command, one directed by the Council of State and dealing with non-Buddhist matters and
one headed by Dōkyō that dealt primarily with Buddhist affairs. In 764 CE, Dōkyō was famously
made “Prince of the Law” (Hōō ), an unprecedented title that represented a new level of
authority for Buddhism in the government.
It is notable that the overall trend for designation grants under Shōtoku differed
significantly from that during her earlier reign as Kōken. Shōtoku granted designations to 1716
people, of whom 390 were immigrants or of immigrant descent (approximately 20% as Shōtoku
compared to 80% as Kōken). Shōtoku also made aggressive use of designations to both reward
and promote those loyal to her (many of them relatives or associates of Dōkyō’s), and to
denigrate and punish those who challenged her. Shōtoku also made a particularly high number of
grants that included the top-ranking titles of mahito, ason, and sukune, although only a small
number of these were to people of immigrant descent. Three people of immigrant descent
received the sukune title, which set a new precedent. Each of these three lineages already held

379
Piggott, “The Last Classical Female Sovereign,” 56-57.

168
Yamato designations that included the title muraji, so these grants did not reflect the inclusion of
new people into the designation system but rather the promotion of people already in it. In all,
while it is fair to say that over the course of her two reigns Kōken-Shōtoku established a new
precedent of granting the ason and sukune titles to people of immigrant descent, she by no means
abandoned control of the designation system or exhibited indifference to maintaining order in
it.
380

In conclusion, Kōken introduced a policy on designation grants for foreign subjects that
reframed grants of Yamato designations as a marker of the completed transformation of those
subjects into true subjects of the Yamato sovereign. As many scholars have suggested, the edict
did allow people of immigrant descent to request new designations – the petitions that followed
are evidence that its contents were known to people around the realm who could cite it to their
advantage in requesting new designations. At the same time, the order was neither the only nor
necessarily the most effective justification for people of foreign origin requesting new
designations.
Meanwhile, a handful of individuals and groups of foreign origin also received high-
ranking titles like ason and sukune, allowing them greater access to official appointments and
high ranks, but these grants were very limited in scope. Thousands of subjects of immigrant
descent were incorporated into the Yamato designation system under Kōken, Junnin, and
Shōtoku, but the majority of these people were either commoners or low-ranking officials living
in the provinces, and they received relatively low-ranking titles. Many also received designations
based on their places of residence within the Yamato realm, a long-established principle for

380
There were problems with people taking strange and inappropriate designations, about which Shōtoku expressed
concern in an edict issued in 768 CE. The order focused on violations of taboo names, giving children the names of
sages or Buddhas, and taking royally-granted titles as personal names, among other problems. See SKNG IV:201
[Jingo keiun 2 (768) 5/3].

169
selecting designations, whether for foreign subjects or not. These new names certainly affect our
ability as modern scholars to recognize an individual or group’s origin in the record, but there is
little evidence that this was a significant concern for officials of the time. In the end, the most
significant aspect of Kōken’s order of 757 CE is its assumption that it was possible to adopt
Yamato customs and thereby become a full Yamato subject.
Conclusion
Examining a pair of similar petitions submitted nearly eighty years apart offers an
opportunity to consider both the development of attitudes towards foreign designations over the
course of the eighth century and the range of arguments petitioners drew on to make their cases.
Both petitions involved descendants of officials who had served as envoys to foreign realms and
been granted designations that included the names of those realms. The first petition appears in
711 CE:
Junior Fifth Rank Lower Koma no Ason Akimaro said: “Our original designation was Abe,
but my ancestor of two ages ago, Hitoko no Omi, was sent to Koguryŏ as an envoy in the
reign of the sovereign who ruled all under heaven from the Iware no Ikenobeya Palace
[Yōmei Tennō, r. 585-587 CE], and thus he came to be called Koma. This was not his true
designation. I request to be returned to our original designation.” This was permitted.
381

The second petition, which appears in 790 CE, seems at first glance to be quite similar, although
it is more detailed:
Outer Junior Fifth Rank Lower Karakuni no Muraji Minamoto et al. said, “We are the
descendants of Mononobe no Ō-Muraji. The Mononobe no Muraji was split into 180
royally-recognized lineages according to their place of residence and function. As a
result, our ancestor Shioko was given the name of the realm that received his father as an
envoy. Thus, [his designation] Mononobe no Muraji was revised, and Karakuni no
Muraji was granted. However, the descendants of the Ō-Muraji are ancient subjects of
Yamato. Now we are called Karakuni as if we were newly arrived from the Three Kan in
order to submit. When we explain, all are astonished. Granting names based on places is

381
SKNG I:176-177 [Wadō 4 (711) 12/20].

170
a timeless principle. We humbly request that the two characters “kara” and “kuni” be
revised and that we be granted Takahara [as our designation].” This was permitted as per
the request.
382

Both of the petitioners have designations that incorporate the names of foreign realms. The
designation Hitoko no Omi acquired was Koma no Ason, written with a character often used to
write the place name Koguryŏ.
383
The designation Shioko received was Karakuni, either a
reference to the Kara polity within the Kaya region or a general term for polities of the Korean
peninsula.
384
Granting designations based on service to the ruler was a long-standing and
common practice, and as these two petitions demonstrate, it was not surprising for envoys to
receive such designations. At the same time, the majority of those who had the name of a foreign
realm as their designation were the descendants of immigrants, not envoys. The second petition
explicitly makes this connection when Minamoto states that even though they are “ancient
subjects of Nihon,” the designation Karakuni no Muraji makes him and the members of his
lineage seem as if they were newly arrived immigrants, a situation he clearly expects will be
deemed improper and corrected. Because the nature of the designations in these two petitions are
so similar, it is tempting to read the two petitions together and take them both as evidence that
names of foreign realms and the association with immigrant origins that they contained were

382
SKNG V:480-481 [Enryaku 9 (790) 11/10].
383
Koguryŏ was often referred to as Koma, using either the character , as in this designation, or . This Koma
no Ason group is not the same as that of the later Koma no Ason , discussed above, who were descendants
of immigrants. Hitoko no Omi does not appear in the Nihon shoki, and there is no record of a diplomatic mission to
Koguryŏ during Yōmei’s reign.
384
Dennis Lee identifies the Kaya region as the area including and surrounding the Naktong River basin. Kara,
generally written , was one of the polities in this region. See Lee, “Keyhole-Shaped Tombs and Unspoken
Frontiers Exploring the Borderlands of Early Korean-Japanese Relations in the 5
th
– 6th Centuries” (PhD diss.
University of California, Los Angeles, 2014) 19, n5.

171
highly undesirable throughout the eighth century. But a closer examination of the context and
contents of these two petitions suggests that doing so would be a mistake.
In the first petition, Akimaro makes no reference to the potential associations his
designation might have. Instead, his argument is that Koma no Ason was not his ancestor’s
“true” designation. By requesting to return to his ancestor’s original designation, which was
“Abe,” Akimaro stresses that he is not asking for a new designation but wants to regain the old,
proper one his ancestor held. The idea that divided lineages should be able to return to their
original designation appears in other petitions as well. In particular, a petition from 715 CE sheds
light both on the type of argument Akimaro was making and his motivation for making it. The
petition was submitted by Abe no Ason Sukunamaro (?-720 CE). In it, he listed six people with
the designations Hiketa, Kuno, and Osata who he described as “true descendants of the Abe
royally recognized lineage.” He noted that they had been divided into separate royally-
recognized lineages through the grant of new designations based on their places of residence and
declared: “Considering what is just, this is truly lamentable.”
385
Like Akimaro, Sukunamaro
argued that this particular change of designation was improper, even though it was common
practice to divide royally-recognized lineages and to grant place-based designations and
completely within the sovereign’s authority to do so. The Abe royally-recognized lineage had a
long and impressive history of service in Yamato officialdom, including a member who served
as Minister of the Left in the mid-seventh century. The lineage is said to have been divided into
the Fuse, Hiketa, Kuno, Osata, and Koma around the time of the 645 CE coup; but it was only
when Sukunamaro rose to prominence that they sought to reunite under a single designation.
386

Even as he argued that his royally-recognized lineage should not have been divided, Sukunamaro

385
SKNG I:188-189 [Reiki 1 (715) 11/20].
386
Nihon kodai shizoku jinmei jiten, s.v. “ .”

172
was careful to reference the “heavenly favor” and “heavenly grace” of receiving designations.
The petition thus represents a balancing act between Sukunamaro’s interest in consolidating
these junior lines under a single prestigious designation, and the need to recognize the authority
of the ruler who alone could grant the change. Sukunamaro’s successful petition not only shows
that the Abe no Ason designation was particularly attractive, but it also suggests that Akimaro’s
petition was part of pattern of similar efforts to recombine royally-recognized lineages that had
been divided.
On the other hand, Minamoto’s argument in the later petition differs significantly from
the earlier ones. To start, he did not challenge the validity of the process by which the Mononobe
were divided into 180 new royally-recognized lineages through grants of designations based on
place names and service to the court. Instead, his argument was that the association between
realm-based designations and foreign origin was now so strong that his designation would
inevitably lead to misunderstanding – hence his reference to “astonishment” when people were
informed of the situation. In short, rather than arguing that his designation was incorrect, he
argued that it caused confusion and that this confusion should be corrected. Furthermore,
Minamoto suggested that the way to resolve the problem was to grant him a new designation
based on his current place of residence, a principle he refers to as “timeless.” Unlike Abe no
Ason, the designation Takahara no Muraji was not an existing designation.
387
Minamoto could
not expect to gain any particular advantage from the new designation other than the clearly stated
benefit of distancing himself from one strongly associated with people of immigrant origin.
In conclusion, despite the superficial similarities between these two petitions, the distaste
for foreign designations evident in Minamoto’s 791 petition should not be read back into

387
In fact, this group appears in the Shinsen shōjiroku as the Karakuni no Muraji lineage, not the Takahara. See
SSJR: Izumi Province, Shinbetsu in Saeki, Honbun hen, 270-271.

173
Akimaro’s petition from 711 CE. Instead, we should ask how we got from the relative
indifference to foreign origin of the early eighth century to an increasing interest in determining
whether people were Yamato or not Yamato, categories that were no longer permeable or
flexible. Kōken’s order did not create disorder and lead to the decline in the designation system.
Rather, it gave designations new significance and changed the idea of what it meant to be a
Yamato subject. Where before a Yamato subject was any person who had submitted to the ruler
and been recorded in the population registers, Kōken’s edict stressed transformation and
adopting the customs of the realm, with designations a marker of having done so. By the early
Heian period, however, the sense that it was possible to undergo such a transformation and to
become a person of Yamato was disappearing. The emergence of the worldview in which people
were permanently either “Yamato” or “not Yamato” is the subject of the following chapter.

174
Chapter 3: Our Customs not Theirs: The Shinsen shōjiroku and the Early Heian Period

In 815 CE the final version of an official court genealogy known as the Shinsen shōjiroku
was presented to Saga Tennō. The text included the genealogies of 1182 royally-recognized
lineages from the capital and the five central provinces. These lineages were divided into three
categories: royal lines (kōbetsu ), deity lines (shinbetsu ), and lineages of various
foreigners (shoban ). The preface of the text presents a history of designations in Yamato,
and ends with the compilers lamenting how disordered they had become in recent years. The text
is thus presented as a way of addressing this disorder once and for all.
The Shinsen shōjiroku is a critical source for the early Heian-period, and scholars have
long debated both the purpose of the text and its ultimate significance. Much of that analysis has
focused on a few lines in the preface of the text, in which the compilers emphasize that it was no
longer possibly to distinguish those who had “Yamato customs” ( ) from those who had
“foreign customs” ( ), and that there were even foreign people who were falsely claiming to
be the descendants of Yamato deities.
388
Because of this apparent emphasis on clarifying and
preserving distinctions between foreign and non-foreign lineages in the preface and categories of
the text, some scholars have argued that the Shōjiroku reflects the emergence of a “native”
identity, or that it is related to a later “nativist movement” in Japan.
389
Other scholars have seized
on the Shōjiroku as a way of countering the notion of Japan as an ethnically homogenous state,
arguing that the inclusion of over 300 foreign lineages in a text meant to record the composition

388
See Appendix 3 for a full translation of the preface, which is also discussed in detail below.
389
The clearest example of such an argument is in Como, Weaving and Binding (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 2010), 8.

175
of the Yamato elite demonstrates that the early Japanese realm was characterized by ethnic
diversity.
390
Both of these approaches fail to engage with the text on its own terms.
This chapter considers the context in which the Shōjiroku was compiled, with attention to
the history of genealogy in Yamato, the continental models on which the text was based, and
how those models were adapted to address specific Yamato concerns. It also examines the
lineages in the “various foreigners” category and argues that even as the Shōjiroku distinguished
between lineages based on foreign and non-foreign origin, its purpose was not to denigrate the
foreign or valorize the native. While the text does mark a turning point in the court’s attitude
towards foreign subjects, it also reflects and upholds the ritsuryō model of a cosmopolitan realm
with a universal sovereign who was capable of transforming outsiders into new subjects. The
ongoing commitment to these principles meant that the presence of foreign subjects in Yamato
was an advantage, rather than a liability.
Considering the foreign lineages in the Shinsen shōjiroku reveals a range of strategies at
work in the genealogies of the “various foreigners.” Even as the text shows that the court had
moved away from the idea that it was possible to become (or be transformed into) a Yamato
person, the genealogies in the Shōjiroku show that these lineages had not simply accepted the
status of uncivilized others. Rather, they chose from a range of genealogical strategies: some
claimed descent from legendary continental rulers, others claimed descent from more recent
rulers of the Korean peninsula, and still others simply listed the positions their recent ancestors
had held in Tang officialdom. In each case, the record of the presences of these lineages in
Yamato was a valuable asset to Yamato sovereigns because it was evidence that they had
“transformed” elite people from around the region into their subjects.

390
Torquil Duthie notes that this is a vast improvement on the idea of a homogenous folk community, but stresses
that it was lineage rather than any notion of ethnic identity that mattered to the early court. See Man’yōshū, 77-78.

176
While highlighting these lineages may have been primarily an effort to elevate their own
status in the region, it had other consequences. Up to this point, there had been no clear sense
that the descendants of fourth- and fifth-century immigrants – the Aya and Hata, for example –
could be meaningfully grouped into a single category with the seventh-century immigrants from
Paekche and Koguryŏ, or even more recent immigrants from Silla and the Tang empire. With the
compilation of the Shōjiroku and its focus on origins, however, Yamato saw the emergence of a
new sense that people of foreign origin – regardless of how distant that origin was or of how long
they had been in Yamato – were part of one category, the “various foreigners.”
Genealogy and Early Yamato Rulers
Artifacts like the Sakitama-Inariyama sword provide evidence for the creation and use of
genealogies by Yamato rulers and their subjects in the fifth century.
391
The Sakitama-Inariyama
sword, discovered in 1978 and usually dated to 471 CE, is an iron sword with a gold inlaid
inscription of 115 characters.
392
The inscription states that it was commissioned by a man named
Wowake, the subject of a monarch identified as Great King Wakatakeru. Wakatakeru is
generally associated with the semi-legendary fifth-century ruler Yūryaku in the Nihon shoki, as
well as the ruler identified as King Wu (or Bu) of Wa in the continental dynastic history known
as the Song shu (Book of Song, ). The sword inscription gives only a simple description of
Wowake’s service to the Great King, but it traces his genealogy back seven generations,

391
In his English-language introduction to the subject, Suzuki Masanobu describes the discovery of the Sakitama-
Inariyama sword as a key catalyst in the development of the historical study of genealogies in Japan. Suzuki
Masanobu, Clans and Genealogy in Ancient Japan: Legends of Ancestor Worship, Routledge-WIAS
Interdisciplinary Studies 6 (New York: Routledge, 2017), 8.
392
Kishi Toshio’s theory that the sword dates to 471 CE has been accepted by most scholars, but there are still some
who advocate for a 531 CE date. For details on the debate, see Wakou Anazawa and Jun’ichi Manome, “Two
Inscribed Swords from Japanese Tumuli: Discoveries and Research on the Finds from the Sakitama-Inariyama and
Eta-Funayama Tumuli,” in Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory, ed. Richard J.
Pearson, Gina Lee Barnes, and Karl L. Hutterer (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, University of
Michigan, 1986), 383-384.

177
portraying him as a member of a long lineage of service.
393
Although the text of the inscription
suggests that Wowake took the initiative in ordering the production of this sword, David Lurie
has argued that viewing it in combination with other similar artifacts like the King’s Bestowal
Sword and the Eta-Funayama sword suggests that it was more likely a creation of the central
court, albeit a creation that reflects a negotiation between the sovereign’s authority and
Wowake’s personal interests.
394
If this is the case, the Sakitama-Inariyama sword is not only the
oldest extant genealogy in Japan, but also the earliest extant evidence of Yamato rulers using
genealogical records to define their relationships with important subjects.
Both the Nihon shoki and the Kojiki are structured around the genealogy of the Yamato
ruling house, and both work to define and legitimize Yamato royal authority. Torquil Duthie has
recently argued that in addition to these two texts, which act as “narratives of the mythical
foundations and imperial genealogies of the realm of Yamato,” the first two volumes of the
Man’yōshū poetry anthology are also arranged to represent a history of royal succession.
395
In
this sense, the three earliest extant texts of the Yamato court all revolve around genealogy to
some extent. The Nihon shoki is distinct from the other two texts in that it was recognized as an
official court history. In spite of its official status, the records of the compilation and submission
of the Nihon shoki are sparse – we have neither a preface nor a memorial on the submission of

393
Torquil Duthie translated the full inscription: “[FRONT] Recorded in the seventh month of a younger metal boar
year [471?]. Subject Wowake, whose high ancestor’s name was Ohohiko, whose son was Takari Sukune, whose
son’s name was Teyokariwake, whose son’s name was Takahasiwake, whose son’s name was Tasakiwake, whose
son’s name was Hatehi, [BACK] whose son’s name was Kasahayo, whose son’s name was subject Wowake, for
generation after generation [we] have served as sword bearers up to the present. When Great King Wakatakiru was
at the Shiki Palace, I assisted in the ruling of all under heaven. I ordered the making of this sharp well-crafted sword
on which I record the lineage of my service.” Man’yōshū, 33n39. David Lurie also includes a discussion of the
sword and its inscription in Realms of Literacy, 92-96.
394
Lurie also notes that Hirakawa Minami has argued that the Sakitama-Inariyama sword was an independent
project of a local lord, suggesting that the use of writing was not monopolized by the Yamato court at this time.
Realms of Literacy, 98.
395
Duthie, Man’yōshū, 111-120.

178
the text. A 720 CE entry from the Shoku Nihongi notes that Prince Toneri submitted the text to
the sovereign in thirty volumes with one additional genealogical volume (keizu ).
396
The lack
of contextualizing records makes it difficult to know how the committee that compiled the Nihon
shoki understood its purpose. It was meant to trace the sovereign’s line from the age of the gods
through the present, but was it also intended to fix the genealogies of major court lineages? The
Nihon shoki certainly contains many entries in which the founding deities or ancestors of various
lineages are recorded, and Matthieu Felt has argued that by the early Heian period, the primary
function of the Nihon shoki was to serve as “a record of imperial and major clan lineages.”
397

Even so, evidence that the text eventually came to be seen as a repository of critical information
on Yamato lineages is not evidence that it was originally meant to be used in this way; and with
so little evidence, it is difficult to reach definitive conclusions about how the compilation of the
Nihon shoki reflects the Yamato court’s approach to regulating the genealogies of court lineages.
While the Nihon shoki’s central focus was on the genealogy of the sovereign, there is also
evidence that the compilers of that text relied on genealogical records from other lineages in
compiling the text. The first explicit written record an order for the submission of such records
appears in a Nihon shoki entry from 691 CE, the fifth year of Jitō’s reign:
A royal order was issued to 18 royally recognized lineages (the Ōmiwa, Sazakibe,
Isonokami, Fujiwara, Ishikawa, Kose, Kashiwade, Kasuga, Kamitsukeno, Ōtomo, Ki,
Heguri, Hata, Abe, Saeki, Uneme, Hozumi, and Azumi) stating that they should present
the tomb records of their ancestors.
398

The Nihon shoki does not give any indication as to how these 18 royally-recognized lineages

396
SKNG II:72-73 [Yōrō 4 (720) 5/21].
397
Felt, “Rewriting the Past,” 16.
398
NHSK II:510-511 [Jitō 5 (691) 8/13]; Aston, Nihongi, II:403.

179
were chosen. All 18 were prominent lineages with the title of either ason or sukune. What
exactly the “tomb records” consisted of is unclear, as there is no further reference in the Nihon
shoki or elsewhere that describes their contents or confirms their submission. Based on a
preceding entry in the Nihon shoki in which courtiers traveled to the site of Tenmu’s temporary
internment and gave eulogies detailing their ancestors’ service to the throne, scholars have
argued that these tomb records were probably written descriptions of the service to the throne
and the notable deeds of each royally-recognized lineage’s ancestors.
399
Sakamoto Tarō was the
first to show that distinctive narratives regarding the members of six of these royally-recognized
lineages are included the Nihon shoki. He argued that the inclusion of these narratives likely
meant that the tomb records were one of the bodies of sources that compilers drew from in
creating the Nihon shoki.
400
Even if these tomb records were not official court genealogies in the
sense that they were created and maintained by the court, Jitō’s order and the subsequent reliance
on these texts in compiling the Nihon shoki suggest that the genealogical records kept by major
court lineages could attain a kind of semi-official status and that doing so helped to preserve the
status of the lineages that created them.
With the promulgation of the penal and administrative codes in the late seventh and early
eighth centuries, the Yamato rulers dramatically expanded the number and detail of the records
they kept on their subjects. The nature of these records and the level of detail included in them

399
Saeki Arikiyo notes that this is the first appearance of the term “tomb record” in the Nihon shoki or any Japanese
record, making it difficult to interpret. Kokushi daijiten s.v. “ ” (entry by Saeki Arikiyo), accessed via Japan
Knowledge.
400
See Sakamoto Tarō, Kojiki to Nihon shoki (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1988) 127-150. More recent
scholarship has supported and expanded on Sakamoto’s conclusions. See Katō Kenkichi “Nihon shoki to sono
genshiryō – nanaseiki no hensan jigyō wo chūshin toshite,” Journal of Japanese History, no. 498 (February 2004):
43-51; Sugasawa Yoko, “‘Shinsen shōjiroku’ ni okeru kabane ishiki to toraikei shizoku,” Shisō 58 (February 1, 2001)
212-213; Nakamura Tomokazu, Nihon kodai no shiseisei (Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 2009) 128. For a brief discussion in
English with sources cited in Japanese, see Suzuki, Clans and Religion in Ancient Japan: The Mythology of Mt.
Miwa (Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2016), 28.

180
varied significantly according to the status of the people recorded. The responsibility for creating
and maintaining population registers, tax rolls, and other records was divided across several
ministries and offices. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Ministry of Popular Affairs (Minbushō ) was responsible for residence unit and tax registers for all ordinary (i.e. unranked)
subjects, as well as lists of hereditary household servants and bound servants.
401
According to
Clause 19 of the Laws on Residence Units, registers were to be compiled every six years. Clause
22 established that only the first register (the Kōgo register of 670 CE) and the five most recent
registers were to be kept. Clearly, the court did not intend to use the residence or tax registers to
create continuous genealogical records for its subjects. That said, the Koki, Ryō shaku, and Ryō
no gige commentaries on Clause 22 suggest that keeping the residence unit and tax registers was
related to keeping order in the designations of the realm. All three commentaries connect the
need to keep the original Kōgō-year register with a Nihon shoki episode from Ingyō’s reign in
which the court resorted to using a boiling water trial to resolve disputes over designations.
402

Even so, ritsuryō census-taking was not designed to allow the sovereign to create or maintain
genealogical records for all Yamato subjects.
Another office held primary responsibility for managing “true designations” ( ) – the
Ministry of Civil Administration (Jibushō ). The legal commentaries on the term “true
designations” state that the minister had broad responsibility for the designations of all people in

401
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 170-171. For English, see Sansom, “Early Japanese Law I,” 87. As noted in Chapter 1, a separate
Hayato Office (Hayatoshi ) was responsible for creating a list of all Hayato people in the realm. Inoue,
Ritsuryō, 186-187.
402
This episode was also discussed in Chapter 2. For the law and commentaries, see Inoue, Ritsuryō, 230-232; and
Ryō no Shūge, SZKT 23:287. Exactly how the court could have used the Kōgo register to resolve such disputes is
unclear – presumably there would have been a growing gap between that register and the most recent five registers
on record, making it difficult to connect a current designation to one in the Kōgo register.

181
the realm.
403
The Ministry of Civil Administration was also responsible for keeping records of
inheritance, succession, and marriages for those of the fifth rank and above.
404
The need to keep
detailed records on these matters for higher-ranked officials was related to the “shadow rank”
(on’i ) system, by which the children and sometimes grandchildren of these officials did not
have to begin at the bottom of the official rank system, but rather were granted higher rank
according to the rank of their father or grandfather.
405
In order to ensure that the children of these
high-ranking officials were granted appropriate ranks, the Ministry of Civil Administration
would have needed records of each official’s descendants. That ministry worked closely with the
Ministry of Personnel (Shikibushō ), which was charged with keeping lists of all officials
and administering official rank.
406
Another type of privilege outlined in a later clause in the Laws
on Funerary Practices and Mourning was the right to be buried in a tomb. This right was limited
to people who were of the third rank or higher, who were head of royally-recognized lineages, or
who were the founders of new royally-recognized lineages (via the grant of a new designation
from the sovereign).
407
Enforcing these regulations would also have depended on the Ministry of
Civil Administration’s oversight of designations.

403
The term “true designation” was also discussed in Chapter 2. In clarifying the term, the Ryō shaku commentary
says this means “the various lineages of all-under-heaven” , while the Koki commentary says that it refers
to the “designations of the various people” . Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23: 85-88.
404
The full responsibilities of the minister also included “omens, funeral rites, grants and gifts to those already
deceased, realm-wide days of mourning, taboos, and matters related to foreigners at court.” Inoue, Ritsuryō, 167-
168. For English, see Sansom, “Early Japanese Law I,” 84-85.
405
See Clause 38 in the Laws on Promotion (Senjoryō ) in Inoue, Ritsuryō, 280.
406
Sansom translates the Shikibushō as “Ministry of Ceremonial,” but I have followed Piggott’s more recent
translation, as it more accurately reflects the function of the office. See the glossary in Joan R. Piggott, Teishinkōki:
The Year 939 in the Journal of Regent Fujiwara no Tadahira (Ithaca: East Asia Program Cornell University, 2008).
407
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 437.

182
The Ministry of Civil Administration employed four senior and six junior investigators
who were responsible for adjudicating disputes over genealogy (fudai ).
408
The term fudai is
most often associated with the system in which district officials in the ritsuryō realm were able to
pass on their offices and perquisites to their heirs.
409
Making these posts hereditary was a critical
element of the Yamato ruler’s negotiated settlement with local and regional powerholders across
the realm. Maintaining this system for appointing district officials would also have required both
genealogical records and cooperation between the Ministry of Civil Administration and the
Ministry of Personnel, which oversaw the appointment, evaluation, and promotions of all
officials. In the clause on the Ministry of Civil Administration, however, the legal commentaries
indicate that the term fudai was being used to refer to disputes over genealogy and succession in
general, rather than disputes over the system of genealogical transmission for district officials in
particular. In either case, the proper administration of ritsuryō officialdom clearly required the
creation and maintenance of genealogical records, and later legal scholars evidently believed that
the court maintained these records for all of its subjects.
410

Given how important genealogical records were to the proper functioning of ritsuryō
officialdom, there is surprisingly little discussion in the codes of how records were to be
submitted and what they were to contain. There are, however, scattered references in other
sources that confirm the existence and submission of these records. First, the Shoku Nihongi

408
The investigators (tokibe ) were officials posted in the Ministry of Civil Administration (Shikibushō )
and in the Ministry of Justice (Kyōbushō ). Sansom calls them “examiners” in “Early Japanese Law I,” 85.
409
When referring to the district official system, the term fudai is also written . Joan Piggott has persuasively
argued that the system of genealogical transmission for district officials was not “anti-ritsuryō,” as some previous
scholars had argued, but actually a mirror to the “shadow-rank” system for those of fifth rank and above. Piggott
gives a useful overview of district officials’ selection, responsibilities, and challenges in the ritsuryō system in
Emergence, 199-206.
410
In this vein, there is an interesting point of contention in the commentaries – the Ryō shaku notes that there are
people who have designations but lack documentation for them, while the Atoki commentary that follows the Ryō
shaku in the Ryō no shūge text dismisses the idea and declares: “There should always be documentation.” Ryō no
shūge, SZKT 23: 85-88.

183
records a petition submitted and approved in 751 CE, thus offering evidence that the Ministry of
Civil Administration was maintaining genealogical records. In the petition, an official named
Sazakibe no Ason Mahito states that his ancestor, Sazakibe no Ason Wohito, served as a senior
minister (ō-omi ) during the reign of Great King Keitai but that this ancestor was mistakenly
recorded as Kose no Ason Wohito.
411
Lamenting his position as a “subject without a source,” he
appealed to the sovereign to grant a revision to the record. His account was corroborated by Kose
no Ason Nademaro who was both the senior member of the Kose-no-Ason lineage and an
extremely high-ranking member of the court.
412
With his backing, the revision was approved and
an order sent to the Ministry of Civil Administration to make the change to the records. While
this episode demonstrates that the Ministry of Civil Administration was actively involved in
updating records as disputes about genealogy were resolved, it also suggests that there could be
quite significant errors in the records, or that it was possible to make quite major changes to the
records with the proper backing.
An Izumo Province tax register submitted in 734 CE and preserved in the Shōsōin monjo
also contains a reference to genealogical records, this time for district officials. It states that
during the eighth month of the preceding year, four volumes and two sheets of official
documents were submitted, among which was a one-volume genealogical record (fudaichō
411
SKNG III:112-113 [Tenpyō shōhō 3 (751) 2/26]. During the later sixth century, the position of senior minister
was one of the most prestigious positions at the Yamato court, and it is thus understandable that Mahito was anxious
to ensure that his lineage’s records reflected this service. Sazakibe no Ason Mahito was likely the head of his
royally-recognized lineage (the ujigami ), which is why he is the one submitting the petition. The Nihon shoki
includes accounts of a person named Kose no Wohito who served as senior minister during Keitai’s reign. See
NHSK II:19-20 [Keitai 1/1/4]; Aston, Nihongi, II:2. Here it appears that Sazakibe no Ason Mahito is claiming that
while the Kose no Ason and Sazakibe no Ason have the same ancestor, their lines split before Keitai’s reign and that
it was actually the Sazakibe and not the Kose who served as senior minister at that time.
412
Kose no Ason Nademaro held the second rank and would have been one of fewer than a dozen people who held
ranks that high.

184
) of officers in charge of the ritsuryō provincial regiments.
413
This brief note seems to
correspond to another later reference in the early-tenth century Engi shiki section on the Ministry
of Military Affairs (Hyōbushō ). It states that appointments for these officers should be
made after carefully considering the “genealogical charts and missives” (fuzu fuchō ),
forwarding them to the Ministry of Personnel, and then waiting for a response.
414
Exactly what
was in these genealogical materials is difficult to say, but Hasebe Masashi has recently
reconstructed an outline of the system. He argues that district official-level lineages maintained
their own records, which they used to create and submit official genealogical records to the
provincial governors. The provincial governor, in turn, used those documents to create
genealogical charts listing all of the people who had historically held each district-level office.
These charts were then submitted to the court at the beginning of each new reign.
415
Assuming
Hasebe is correct, the ministries of the court would have had a set of genealogical records as well
as charts of the succession to district-office posts for each reign.
Finally, the preface to one of the private lectures on the Nihon shoki held in the early
Heian period, known as the Kōnin shiki (Kōnin lecture notes, ), states that up until the
Tenpyō shōhō era (749-757 CE), all subjects in the realm submitted lineage records once per
generation.
416
It goes on to say that these records were preserved secretly in the Bureau of the
Library (Zushoryō ), from which they could not be removed.
417
Hasebe points out that

413
. Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, ed. Dai Nihon komonjo: hennen monjo, vol. 1 (Tokyo:
Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1901-1940), 600.
414
Engishiki, SZKT 26:704
415
Hasebe Masashi, “‘Shinsen shōjiroku’ hensan ni okeru kigai shizoku,” En marge de l’histoire, no. 54 (March
2007): 24-26.
416
Again, as noted in Chapter 1, it is important to distinguish this Kōnin shiki ( ) from the legal text also
known as Kōnin shiki ( ). Hasebe interprets “once per generation” to mean that they submitted the records
each time a new reign began. Ibid., 24-26.
417
Kōnin shiki, in SZKT 8:3-13. Matthieu Felt discusses the private lectures on the Nihon shoki, including the Kōnin
shiki, and translates sections of the preface in his dissertation, “Rewriting the Past,” 13-38.

185
although most scholars focus on the central and provincial elites in considering this passage, the
text actually emphasizes the universality of the submission of these records with the phrase “the
various people of all under heaven” ( ). Although this passage seems to make a clear
statement on the regular submission of genealogical texts by all Yamato subjects, it is worth
noting that neither the ritsuryō clause nor the legal commentaries on the Bureau of the Library
mention genealogical texts at all.
418
Whether or not the eighth-century Yamato court actually
maintained genealogical records for all of its subjects regardless of status, it is clear that it had to
have some way to track the descent of those who served as central, provincial, and district-level
officials.
The system of record-keeping established by the codes seems to have served the court
reasonably well until the latter half of the eighth century, when the dramatic increase in the
number of designation-change petitions submitted and approved made it increasingly difficult to
keep clear and accurate records.
419
One of the official responses to this difficult situation was to
order the compilation of a new kind of genealogical text, the Shizokushi (Record of Lineages ). Before examining the Yamato efforts to create a comprehensive official genealogical text,
it is worth spending some time considering the Tang court’s genealogical texts that served as
inspiration.
Tang Court Genealogies
The top tier of the Tang dynasty elite was made up of four regionally-based groups. First
were the four great Hebei lineages who tended to marry among themselves and who looked

418
See Clause 6 in the Laws on Appointments to Offices and Posts for the Bureau of the Library. Inoue, Ritsuryō,
162-163.
419
See the discussion of designation changes and designation change petitions in Chapter 2. The preface of the
Shinsen shōjiroku connects the increase in confusion to Kōken’s edict of 758 CE granting new designations to
foreign subjects.

186
down on the ruling Li lineage as both upstarts and imperfect representatives of true Han cultural
traditions. The second group was made up of the Guanzhong lineages, who had risen to power in
the fifth and sixth centuries and intermarried with non-Han rulers and nobility. The ruling Li
family belonged to this second group. These two groups occupied the majority of the highest
offices in the Tang. Third were the great lineages of Shanxi, and fourth were the lineages of the
Yangzi valley who had been particularly powerful during the Southern Dynasties. Below this top
tier of elites, there was another tier of several thousand lineages that held power and status in
more peripheral areas, such as the provinces or commanderies. These lineages did not have
access to the highest offices in the realm, but they did have access to some offices through the
examination system, as well as to extra-bureaucratic positions such as those in the salt and iron
monopolies.
420

Denis Twitchett describes the Tang period was one in which the compilation of family
records, genealogies, lists of eminent lineages, and other rankings of lineages was widespread.
Private genealogical works during this period were typically designed to preserve or enhance the
social standing of elite lineages, while the court worked to check these claims through the
creation of its own genealogical texts.
421
There were three major Tang court genealogies. The
first was created when Tang Taizong ( , r. 626-649 CE) appointed a committee of high-
ranking officials to compile a comprehensive genealogical text including all of the great lineages
of the realm. The text was to be based on genealogical information collected from across the

420
On Tang elites, see Mark Edward Lewis’s brief and very useful overview in China’s Cosmopolitan Empire, 48-
50.
421
Denis Twitchett, “The Composition of the T’ang Ruling Class: New Evidence From Tun-Huang,” in
Perspectives on the T’ang, ed. Denis Twitchett, and Arthur F. Wright (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1973), 62. Lewis also describes a “a veritable fever of genealogical activity” in the early eighth-century Tang
court. Cosmopolitan Empire, 50.

187
realm, which would then be investigated and confirmed using other historical records.
422
The text
was known as the Zhenguan shizuzhi (Record of Lineages from the Zhenguan Reign, ), and was submitted in 638 CE. It included 293 surnames and 1651 lineages graded into nine
degrees of social status. In its initial draft form, the text included both the top tier elite lineages
as well as regionally and locally important lineages, and it listed the four great Hebei lineages
first.
423
Taizong rejected this first draft of the text and demanded that the compilers reduce the
status of the four Hebei lineages and list his own Li lineage first. In this sense, the Zhenguan
shizhuzhi was both “an imperial ratification of the generally recognized social hierarchy,” and a
tool for a Tang sovereign who used it to assert the primacy of his own lineage.
424

In 659 CE, Emperor Gaozong ( , r. 649-683 CE) replaced the Zhenguan genealogy
with a new official genealogy.
425
It was known as the Xingshilu (Record of Lineages ),
and was even more comprehensive than the earlier text, including 245 surnames and 2287
lineages in 200 volumes. Significantly, this new text ranked the lineages not by their generally
accepted social standing, but according to the highest official rank or noble title achieved by a
lineage head during the Tang dynasty. It also restricted family status to direct descendants of
office holders, excluding junior lines and distant relatives. In doing so, the compilers of this text
further reduced the status and position (at least in the text) of the older elite lineages and
promoted those who had directly served the Tang court.

422
Twitchett, “Composition of the T’ang Ruling Class,” 62-63.
423
Unfortunately, none of the Tang court genealogies are extant in their original forms. What we know about the
texts has been reconstructed from fragmentary quotations and descriptions of the texts included in other Tang and
later texts, as well as a few genealogical texts from this time discovered at Dunhuang. Ikeda On gives a thorough
discussion of the extant fragments and references to all three major Tang works, as well as an assessment of the
Dunhuang documents and their significance in “Tōchō shizokuzhi no ichi kōsatsu: iwayuru tonkō meizokushi
zankan wo megutte,” Hokkaido University Annual Reports on Cultural Science 13, no. 2 (March 1965): 1-64. Much
of Twitchett’s discussion in his chapter draws from Ikeda’s article.
424
Lewis, Cosmopolitan Empire, 50.
425
Among other issues, the text did not include the lineage of Wu Zetian (also known as “Empress Wu,” Wu Zhao).

188
Following the collapse of the female monarch Wu Zetian’s rule in 705 CE, a high-
ranking official named Liu Chong submitted a memorial to the court stressing the importance of
genealogical texts in preceding dynasties, and proposing the compilation of a new genealogical
text for the Tang.
426
His proposal was approved, and he went on to become the head of the third
and final major Tang genealogical project. The first draft of this 200-volume work, known as the
Da Tang xingzu xilu (Genealogical Record of the Clan Surnames of the Great Tang ), was completed in 713 CE under Tang Xuanzong ( , r. 713-756 CE). It then underwent
some minor revisions and corrections, and the final text was submitted in 714 CE. The compilers
based the Xingzu xilu on Taizong’s Zhenguan text rather than Gaozong’s genealogy, and the
order of the entries reflects a return to rankings based on lineage prestige rather than offices held
during the Tang. In other words, there were limits to the Tang rulers’ ability to impose new
hierarchies on the elites of the realm. While this was the last major genealogical work in the
Tang period, there were a handful of other smaller projects, including a supplement to the Xingzu
xilu created between 723 and 726 CE, and two short lists of lineages submitted to the court in
749 CE.
427
After the catastrophic An Lushan Rebellion of 755 CE, work on scholarly genealogies
in the Tang dynasty declined significantly, and the ninth-century court produced only long,
unranked lists of prominent lineages rather than comprehensive and ranked genealogical texts.
428

The Yamato Record of Lineages c. 763 CE
As Tang court genealogical projects declined in the second half of the eighth century,
knowledge of the Tang texts reached Yamato where they served as inspiration and models for

426
For the full text of the memorial and analysis, see Ikeda, “Tōchō shizokuzhi.”
427
Twitchett, “Composition of the T’ang Ruling Class,” 62-63.
428
Twitchett cites the Yuanhe xingzuan ( ), a 10-volume work by Lin Bao ( ) and submitted in 812 CE
as the last attempt at an official genealogy of all prominent lineages. The lineages in this text were not listed in
social or political order but according to phonetic/rhyme order. Ibid., 67.

189
Yamato rulers. The title of the first attempt at an official Yamato genealogy, the Shizokushi ( ), seems to have been borrowed directly from the earliest Tang text. As noted earlier,
emulation of Tang models was a theme that became increasingly important over the course of the
Nara period and then continued well into the Heian period.
429
The reign of Junnin Tennō in
particular was marked by a number of other efforts to emulate the Tang, including a 758 CE
order that all court ministries be renamed after their Tang counterparts.
430
Exactly how and when
the Tang genealogical texts were transmitted to Yamato is difficult to say, but there were
numerous missions to the Tang court in the mid-700s, and envoys often returned with many texts
– to give one example, the famous scholar and official Kibi no Makibi was said to have returned
from one mission to the Tang court in 735 CE with 130 texts.
431
Whether or not the Yamato
court actually had copies of all of the Tang genealogical texts, the title of the Yamato project
strongly suggests that Yamato officials were at least aware of earlier Tang projects.
We know relatively little about the mid-eighth-century project as it was never completed
and is only mentioned in a handful of later texts. For instance, the preface of the Shinsen
shōjiroku describes Kōken’s edict allowing all foreign subjects to request new designations, and

429
Piggott describes three stages of the Wa-Kan dialectic, or “the process of interaction and reception whereby
elements of Yamato ways on the archipelago and those of China interacted over the long term.” The first
included Nara’s founding in 710 CE, the second began with the return of Kibi no Makibi and the monk Genbō in
735 CE, and third before the 750s. The Shizokushi project falls squarely in the third stage, which she notes was
marked by more frequent embassies to the Tang court. Joan R. Piggott, “Tracking the Wa-Kan Dialectic at Nara,” in
China and Beyond in the Medieval Period: Cultural Crossings and Inter-Regional Connections, ed. Dorothy C.
Wong, and Gustav Heldt (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2014), 243–59. For the major work on “emulation of
the Tang” in the Heian period, see Furuse Natsuko, Nihon kodai ōken to gishiki (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan,
2013).
430
SKNG III:283-287 [Tenpyō hōji 2 (758) 8/25].
431
SKNG II:288-289 [Tenpyō 7 (735) 4/26]. Tang envoys returned to Yamato in 735 CE and 753 CE. See Miyata,
Kibi no Makibi, 33-45.

190
it notes that disputes over designations became more frequent at the end of the Hōji era (i.e. the
Tenpyō hōji era, 757-765 CE).
432
It continues:
As a result, eminent scholars were gathered and made to compile the Records of
Lineages. Before their draft was half completed, however, time passed, and they met with
difficult times. The various scholars were disbanded, and they stopped without
completing the work.

433

The preface gives no additional details about the people who were involved in the project or its
scope, but what it describes seems to be a relatively large-scale genealogical project ordered by
the throne. A reference in the Nakatomi-shi keizu (Genealogy of the Nakatomi Lineage , 906 CE) to the submission of lineage records in 761 CE helps corroborate the Shinsen
shōjiroku account: it says that the lineage submitted its records in response to a royal order
creating a Shizokushi Compilation Office.
434
Saeki Arikiyo also points out that between the
second month of 761 CE and the eighth month of 763 CE (a period of 1 year and 8 months),
there are no records of any designation changes granted by the court. Saeki argues that this gap
was related to the creation of the Shizokushi office and its collection of records – allowing
changes to designations while the office sought to collect accurate lineage records would have
made the task much more difficult.
435

In short, there is evidence that Yamato rulers and their ministers launched a genealogical
project in the early 760s and collected lineage records from at least some of their subjects, but
then abandoned the project before it was completed. The phrase “difficult times” in the Shinsen

432
It is worth noting that this claim resonates with the Kōnin shiki’s claim that lineage records had been submitted
up to the Tenpyō shōhō era (749-757 CE).
433
Saeki Arikiyo, Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: Kōshō hen, V ol. 1 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1981), 146-147.
434
It is worth noting that the term used here for lineage records is honkeichō , a term that would later be used
in Kanmu’s edict ordering the submission of records for the Shinsen shōjiroku project. Also, this is the earliest
reference to the term being used. See the Nakatomi-shi keizu in Gunshō ruiju, V ol. 62, Keizu-bu, p. 93.
435
Saeki, Kōshō hen 1:146-147.

191
shōjiroku preface likely refers to Fujiwara no Nakamaro’s rebellion in which Nakamaro
forcefully resisted Kōken’s move to re-gain full control of the court and fled Nara with the royal
seal and seal of the Council of State.
436
The sitting monarch, Junnin Tennō, declined to join
Nakamaro, and Nakamaro’s forces were defeated relatively quickly by a coalition of troops led
by Kibi no Makibi. Kōken retook the throne as Shōtoku Tennō and exiled Junnin and
Nakamaro.
437
With Nakamaro out of power, the Shizokushi project was never revived. It is
important to emphasize that although Shōtoku Tennō did not continue this project, she was not
indifferent to the problems in the designation system. She continued to actively engage in
designation grants while also expressing dismay at the problems in the system. For example, in
making one designation granting 768 CE, Shōtoku Tennō lamented the strange and disrespectful
names that her subjects were choosing:
I have heard that when one enters a state, one should ask about the names to be avoided.
All the more reason to ask how those who follow the laws could fail to avoid [taboo
names]! Recently, in examining the registers of names submitted by various officials, [I
have found that] some use names like ‘Master of the Realm’ and ‘Inheritor of the Realm’
when facing the court and memorializing the throne. One cannot help but shudder. Others
make mahito and ason into personal names or use lineage names as personal names. This
is tantamount to an attack on the royally-recognized lineages and royally granted titles.
Even worse, there are those who use the names of the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, and the
sages. Every time I see and hear such things, my heart is uneasy. There shall be no more
instances like these in the future. In the past, there was a village called “Vanquished
Mother,” and Zengzi ( ) refused to enter. This is similar. Those who already have
unusual [designations] – make changes immediately and strive to follow the proper rules
of propriety. Outer Senior Eighth Rank Lower, Shirai no Omi Akihito and four others
from Mimasaka Province Ōniwa District are granted the designation Ōniwa no Omi.”

436
The rebellion is also known as the rebellion of Emi Oshikatsu ( ) because Junnin Tennō had granted
Fujiwara no Nakamaro the designation Fujiwara Emi no Ason Oshikatsu in 758 CE. SKNG III:283-287 [Tenpyō
hōji 2 (758) 8/25].
437
This episode is also briefly discussed in Chapter 2. SKNG IV:43 [Tenpyō hōji 8 (764) 10/9]. See Piggott, “The
Last Classical Female Sovereign,” 57~59.

192
438

Nevertheless, with other significant difficulties to manage, Shōtoku did not try to solve the
problems in the system through the creation of realm-wide genealogical text and thus the project
was abandoned.
Kanmu Tennō and the Nara-Heian Court
Kanmu Tennō, who revived the Yamato court’s efforts to create a comprehensive realm-
wide genealogy, was never supposed to come to the throne.
439
In order to understand why he
pursued the project, it is important to get a sense of the broader circumstances in which he
became Crown Prince, and the major projects he pursued once he took the throne. When Shōtoku
Tennō died in 770 CE without officially proclaiming an heir, there was a contentious debate at
court about who would succeed her. The Tenmu-line of the royal house had been in control of
the throne since Monmu’s reign, but there was no clear Tenmu-line candidate after Shōtoku’s
death. Ultimately the court ministers selected Prince Shirakabe, a great-grandson of Tenji, and he
took the throne as Kōnin Tennō ( , r. 770-781) in 770. He was 62 years old when he took the
throne. He was most likely selected because he had a son, Prince Osabe ( , 761-775), whose
mother was descended from the Tenmu-line and who would therefore bring the Tenmu and Tenji
lines together if he took the throne. Although many at court no doubt expected Prince Osabe to
succeed his father, he did not. In 772 CE, his mother Princess Inoue ( , 717-775) was
accused of cursing her husband, and both she and her son were stripped of their titles and

438
SKNG IV:200-201 [Jingo keiun 2 (768) 5/3].
439
The most thorough English-language discussion of Kanmu’s rise and rule is in Ellen Van Goethem’s book
Nagaoka: Japan’ s Forgotten Capital (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008). In Japanese, major works on Kanmu include
Murao Jirō, Kanmu Tennō (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1963); and Nishimoto Masahiro, Kanmu Tennō: zōto to
seii o shukumei zukerareta teiō (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2013).

193
eventually exiled. They died on the same day in 785 CE, suggesting that they were murdered to
prevent any possibility of their return to power.
440

The son who ultimately succeeded Kōnin was known as Prince Yamabe ( ). He was
an experienced ritsuryō official who, despite a relatively late start in the official rank system, had
risen through the ranks and served as Director of the University (daigaku no kami ) and
Minister of Central Affairs (nakatsukasa no kami ).
441
Throughout his career, there had
been no expectation that Yamabe would ever take the throne, in part because he was the son of a
relatively low-ranking woman named Takano no Niigasa ( , ?-790). Nevertheless, after
Princess Inoue and Prince Osabe’s sudden fall, Prince Yamabe was named Crown Prince in 773,
and took the throne in 781 as Kanmu Tennō.
442

Much has been made of the fact that Kanmu’s mother, Takano no Niigasa, was a woman
of foreign descent in the back palace. Prince Yamabe was not expected to succeed his father, and
many have argued that his mother’s foreign descent would have been a major obstacle to his
succession, and contributed to his weak position even once he had taken the throne. If simply
being of partially foreign descent was a major disadvantage at court, we might expect Kanmu to
have avoided discussing his maternal relatives. Instead, the record indicates that he went out of

440
SKNG IV:372-373 [Hōki 3 (772) 3/2]; SKNG IV:382-383 [Hōki 3 (772) 5/27]; and SKNG IV:450-451 [Hōki 6
(775) 4/27].
441
Given his father’s rank, Prince Yamabe should have entered the rank system when he turned twenty-one, but he
did not receive court rank until he was in his late twenties, in 764 CE, with the junior fifth rank ower. Murao notes
that this promotion was likely linked to Yamabe’s actions in Fujiwara Nakamaro’s rebellion. By 766 CE he had
been promoted in rank again and appointed head of the university. When Shikarabe took the throne in 770 CE, he
was promoted again, and then promoted to the princely ranks. SKNG IV:38-39 [Tenpyō hōji 8 (764) 9/12]; SKNG
IV:142-143 [Tenpyō jingo 2 (766) 11/5]; SKNG IV:322-323 [Hōki 1 (770) 11/6]. For an overview of Yamabe’s
career as an official, see Murao, Kanmu Tennō, 18-26. Piggott also discusses Kanmu’s career briefly in “The Last
Female Sovereign,” 64-65.
442
A much later twelfth-century text known as the Mizu kagami (Water Mirror, ) says that Kōnin Tennō
proposed making his daughter Princess Sakahito his heir. Because she was also the daughter of Princess Inoue, she
would have merged the Tenmu and Tenji lines as effectively as Prince Osabe. However, given the centuries that
separate the Mizu kagami from the events, it does not seem wise to rely on this account.

194
his way to draw attention to them. In 790 CE, Kanmu even issued a royal decree in which he
granted ranks to a number of people, including several members of the Kudara no Konikishi
lineage, which claimed descent from Paekche royalty. By way of explanation, he declared: “The
Kudara no Konikishi are my maternal relatives. Therefore, several of them have been selected to
receive exceptional ranks.”
443
Over the course of his reign, Kanmu repeatedly singled out the
Kudara no Konikishi lineage for special appointments, promotions, and rewards, even granting
them exceptional lifelong tax exemptions in 797.
444
Clearly, he had no reservations about
associating himself with a lineage that claimed foreign descent. I take from this that his mother’s
foreign descent was not as great of an impediment as has been suggested. On the other hand, that
conclusion is complicated by the fact that Kanmu’s maternal grandfather was not a member of
the Kudara no Konikishi lineage, but was rather a man named Yamato no Otsugu ( ) who
belonged to the Yamato no Fuhito lineage ( ).
This prompts the question: what was the relationship between the Kudara no Konikishi
and the Yamato no Fuhito, and why would Kanmu have claimed one lineage as his relatives but
not the other? Later records show that both lineages claimed descent from Paekche royalty –
King Ŭija ( , r. 641-660) for the Kudara no Konikishi, and King Muryǒng ( , r.
501-523) for the Yamato no Ason.
445
Were this true, then Kanmu could logically have claimed to
be related to both royal lineages. But there is reason to be skeptical about the Yamato no Fuhito’s
claims. In examining Kanmu’s connection to the Kudara no Konikishi, Tanaka Fumio has argued
persuasively that the Yamato no Fuhito were a relatively small and weak lineage that had been

443
SKNG V:452-457 [Enryaku 9 (790) 2/27].
444
Ruijū sandai kyaku in SZKT 25:516 [Enryaku 16 (797) 5/28]. For an annotated translation into French, see
Hérail, Livres 8 a 20, 445-446. The same edict is also quoted in Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23:273-275.
445
Saeki, Kōshō hen, 5:185-190 and 5:15-22.

195
involved in sutra copying at the Shōsōin.
446
According to Takano no Niigasa’s obituary in the
Shoku Nihongi, she received the designation “Takano no Ason” ( ) during the Hōki era
(770-781).
447
The rest of her lineage did not receive a comparable promotion in designation –
from fuhito to the highest-ranking title of ason – until 783, two years after Kanmu had taken the
throne.
448
Tanaka argues that designation grants singling out individuals were extremely rare, and
that the delay in promoting the Yamato no Fuhito as a kin group reveals that they were so low-
ranking that they could not immediately be granted the title of ason even though a member of the
lineage had become the mother of the Crown Prince. Furthermore, just before Takano no
Niigasa’s death, a courtier completed the compilation of a genealogy of the Yamato no Fuhito
lineage, and the Nihon kōki notes that Kanmu took particular interest in that project.
449
Tanaka
argues that Kanmu used this genealogy and Takano no Niigasa’s obituary to establish the (new)
genealogical connection between the Yamato no Fuhito and the rulers of Paekche; and that
Kanmu’s declaration the following year about the Kudara no Konikishi was a way to shore up
that claim. Because the Kudara no Konikishi were already firmly established as the descendants
of Paekche royalty at the Yamato court, their endorsement significantly strengthened the Yamato
no Fuhito’s similar claim.
450
In short, Kanmu’s primary concern about his maternal relatives was
not their foreign descent, but their relatively low status.

446
Based on an analysis of the shrines at which Takano no Niigasa was said to have worshipped, Tanaka also argues
that the Yamato no Fuhito were likely related to the Imaki no Ayahito ( ). See Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka,
78-80.
447
The same Shoku Nihongi entry claims that she was descended from King Muryǒng. SKNG V:450-453 [Enryaku
8 (789) 12th month].
448
35 members of the Yamato no Fuhito were granted the designation Yamato no Ason. SKNG V:268-269 [Enryaku
2 (783) 4/20].
449
The compilation of the Yamato no Fuhito genealogy ( ) is mentioned in the obituary of Wake no Kiymaro
( ). It is worth noting that at least one member of the Kudara no Konikishi family served as an official
under Wake no Kiyomaro. Nihon kōki, SZKT 3:19 [Enryaku 18 (799) 2/21] and Yakuchū Nihon shiryō, 156-157.
450
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 40-103.

196
Kanmu Tennō is best remembered for having two signature projects that he pursued over
the course of his relatively long reign. The first was moving the capital from Heijō (Nara) to
Nagaoka in 784 CE and then again, from Nagaoka to Heian, in 794 CE. The theory that Kanmu
moved the capital to escape from the oppressive influence of the Buddhist institutions in Nara is
now long out of date, and most recent scholarship emphasizes instead Kanmu’s belief that he
was the founder of a new dynasty and so needed a new royal city. In her recent book on the
Nagaoka capital, Ellen van Goethem also argues that the choice of the Nagaoka cite was guided
not by the influence of the Haji and Hata families, as previous scholars had argued, but by its
proximity to the homeland of the Kudara no Konikishi in Katano, where Kanmu twice conducted
the “suburban round altar sacrifice” (J. kōshi, C. jiaosi ), a rite imported from the Tang court
that centered on legitimizing a Son of Heaven.
451

Kanmu’s second major project was his frontier war against the peoples living in the
northern and eastern parts of the archipelago, whom the court referred to collectively as the
Emishi. Major campaigns aimed at expanding the Yamato court’s territory in the northeast were
launched against the Emishi in 789, 794, and 801. None led to decisive victories for the court, in
spite of the massive manpower and resources devoted to them (the 789 campaign was said to
have involved over 50,000 combatants). In 805 CE, after a court debate over the cost of these

451
Van Goethem, Nagaoka, 55-68. Tanaka Fumio also stresses the importance of the Katano rites conducted in
discussing Kanmu Tennō’s relationship with the Kudara no Konikishi family. Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 89-97.

197
campaigns, Kanmu declared an end to the expeditions.
452
Both of these projects required huge
outflows of money, while declining tax revenue was also an increasing problem.
453

There was also, however, a third major project that characterized Kanmu’s reign:
administrative reforms in both the center and periphery designed to revise and restore the
ritsuryō structures that framed his own governance as tennō. In particular, Kanmu made changes
to the overall numbers and composition of the court elite. Although the ritsuryō codes had
defined only 84 positions for officials of the junior fifth rank or higher, Ellen Van Goethem has
argued that there were on average 230 officials of this rank from the mid-eighth century on, and
that Kanmu was quite successful in reducing these numbers. From 785 to 791, she states that the
number of officials who held the fifth rank or higher were diminished from 180 to 150.
454

Looking at the Kugyō bunin (a register of appointments to the Council of State, ), we
find that, on average, during Kōnin’s reign there were eighteen people listed for each year, of
whom eleven were of the third rank or higher. Under Kanmu, these numbers dropped
significantly – on average, ten people were listed each year, of whom six were of the third rank
or higher. Most significantly, the number of officials who held the third rank or higher dropped
precipitously, from as many as twenty under Kōnin to as few as three under Kanmu.
455
These

452
For a very useful English-language overview of the history of conflict and interaction between the Emishi and the
Yamato court, see Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi: Buddhist Art and Regional Politics in Twelfth-Century
Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998), 12-27.
453
In 723, the court issued the “Law of Three Generations or One Lifetime” (sansei isshin hō ),
allowing people who opened new land to keep that land for three generations. See SKNG II:130-135 [Yōrō 7 (723)
4/17]. In 743, the court issued the “Law on Permanent Private Ownership of Newly Opened Rice Fields” (konden
einen shizai hō ) which allowed people to permanently keep newly opened lands. SKNG II:424-
427 [Tenpyō 15 (743) 5/27]. For a concise and accessible overview of these policies, see Lecture 18 in Murakami
Kazuhiro et al., eds., Shiryō de yomu Nihon hōshi. In 801 CE, the allotment of land in the Kinai region was changed
to once every 12 years (the ritsuryō system had been to allot lands once every six years), while regular allotment in
the provinces ceased. Donations of land to temples were another way that people sought to escape taxes imposed by
the court. For more on the early shōen (shoki shōen) see chapter 1 in Nagahara Keiji, Shōen, Nihon Rekishi Sōsho
57 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1998).
454
Van Goethem, Nagaoka, 291-236.
455
Kugyō bun’in in SZKT 53: 45-81 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2000).

198
changes not only reduced the financial burden on royal government, but also increased Kanmu’s
personal power.
At the same time, Kanmu also made changes to the composition of the court elite.
Fujiwara domination of the Council of State had become a significant issue in the latter half of
the eighth century, and well over half of the Council of State members were Fujiwara when
Kanmu took the throne (eight of fifteen members). As Ellen Van Goethem has emphasized,
Kanmu’s court was marked not only by a decrease in Fujiwara control of the court, but also by
the appearance of a number of new lineages in the court elites. All but one of the lineages
making their debut in the Council of State claimed foreign ancestry. Kanmu appointed a member
of his mother’s lineage, Yamato no Iemaro ( ), to the Council of State in 796 CE, and
added Akishino no Yasuhito ( ), Sugano no Mamichi ( ), and Sakanoue no
Tamuramaro ( ) in 805 CE.
456
The Yamato and Sugano lineages both claimed
descent from Paekche, while the Sakanoue claimed to be descended from Emperor Ling ( )
of the Later Han. The grant of the Yamato no Ason designation was discussed above, but they
were not alone in having received a new designation. Kanmu granted the new lineage name
Akishino to the Haji no Sukune ( ) in 782, the new designation Sugano no Ason to the
Tsu no Muraji ( ) in 790, and the new title of sukune to the Sakanoue no Ōimiki (
456
Nihon kōki, SZKT 3:4 [Enryaku 15 (796) 7/28] and Yakuchū Nihon shiryō, 78-79; SZKT 3:38 [Enryaku 24 (805)
1/14] and Yakuchū Nihon shiryō, 286-287; and SZKT 3:43 [Enryaku 24 (805) 6/23] and Yakuchū Nihon shiryō,
306-307.

199
) in 785.
457
During the same period, there was also a marked increase in the number of women
in the back palace from lineages that claimed foreign ancestry.
458

Moreover, Kanmu’s transformation of the court elite extended beyond these exceptional
cases – he promulgated new rules that changed the standards for granting the highest kabane
titles. In a study of the second highest royally-granted title of ason, Une Toshinori charted nearly
300 examples of the grant of the ason title from the late seventh century to the late ninth. Une
showed that over the course of the eighth century, nearly all grants of the ason title were to
lineages that could claim ties to existing ason groups. This changed under Kanmu, however. He
emphasized merit over heredity, and granted the ason title without regard for connections to
existing ason lineages. Une argued that Kanmu deliberately made rules for changes between the
four highest kabane titles of mahito, ason, sukune, and imiki more flexible and more applicable
to new lineages, thereby clearing the path for them to rise in the ritsuryō system of
officialdom.
459
In sum, Kanmu’s reign was one in which major changes were made in the
designation system, and lineages that claimed foreign descent received new designations and
gained access to the highest positions at court.
Compilation of the Shinsen shōjiroku

457
SKNG V:238-239 [Enryaku 1 (782) 5/21], V:468-473 [Enryaku 9 (790) 7/17], and V:330-333 [Enryaku 4 (785)
6/10]. It is worth emphasizing that these represent a range of different types of designation grants – one lineage
received only a new kabane title, one received only a new uji name, and another received both.
458
Kudara no Konikishi Myōshin ( ), who served as director of the Office of Female Chamberlains
(naishi ) under Kanmu, facilitated the entry of eight other Kudara no Konikishi women to the back palace (four
as officials, four as consorts). Ijūin Yōko’s recent book on female officials in the ritsuryō system is an excellent
resource for understanding how female officials were able to improve the rank and standing of their lineages at
court. See Ijūin Yōko, Kodai no josei kanryō: nyokan no shussei/kekkon/intai, Rekishi bunka raiburarii 390 (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2014). For her discussion of Kudara no Myōshin in particular, see 181-182 and 193-194.
459
Une identified three types of grants: 1) grants in which the uji name after receiving the ason title was that of an
existing ason lineage; 2) grants in which the uji name after receiving the ason title was a variant of an existing ason
lineage, or resembled an existing ason lineage name; and 3) grants in which the uji name after receiving the ason
title was a completely new lineage name. Une Toshinori, “Ritsuryō seika ni okeru kaishisei ni tsuite: ason shisei wo
chūshin toshite” Shigaku kenkyū 147 (April 1980): 1–21.

200
Returning to the subject of genealogies, it was Kanmu Tennō who revived the idea of a
realm-wide genealogical project, and the project he initiated eventually became the Shinsen
shōjiroku. There has been a long history of scholarly debate about the Shinsen shōjiroku, much
of which has centered on the questions of why the text was compiled, or of what problem the text
was meant to solve. As noted above, scholars have often turned to the preface of the text and the
memorial that accompanied its final submission to the court in their search for answers to these
questions. Analyzing these documents makes perfect sense if the goal is to understand the
purpose and significance of the text to the people who ultimately completed it in 814 and 815,
but as Hasebe has recently argued, it is a much less reliable strategy for understanding why
Kanmu Tennō ordered the text in 799. Hasebe not only demonstrated that the project’s scope and
contents changed between Kanmu’s reign and Saga’s, but also that the narrative in the preface
actively works to erase the differences between Kanmu and Saga (leaving Kanmu’s successor,
Heizei Tennō, entirely out of the picture).
460
In order to understand both the original intention
behind the project and its development over time, we have to be wary of relying on the sequence
of events narrated in the Shōjiroku preface while taking care to consider Kanmu’s project in its
own context.
A directive from the Council of State issued in 798 CE gives some indication of the kind
of problems that Kanmu’s court had been encountering with the designation system:
A directive from the Council of State
Name changes for subjects of the realm must not be easily permitted
Regarding the above, we received an announcement from Senior Counselor Junior Third
Rank Prince Miwa saying that he had received the royal decree: “Names speak the truth.
They should not be changed lightly. I have heard that in recent years there are many who
change their names. Their aims are complex and varied. Some seek to avoid taxes by

460
Hasebe, “Shinsen shōjiroku’ no hensan ni okeru kigai shizoku.”

201
entering the category of those who do not owe taxes.
461
Some abandon a name that offers
no special protections and attach themselves to those that have special protections.
462
The
wickedness of these types of people is prodigious. If name changes are not permitted,
there will be no reason to commit such wickedness. From now on, easy changes are not
to be allowed. If there are officials of fourth-level manager status and above who
absolutely must have their name changed because of an issue with a taboo, then the
appropriate officials should investigate and submit a report.
463
Once they have established
the truth of the matter, the change should be permitted. Indiscriminate changes and
reckless fraud shall not be allowed.
Enryaku 17 (798 CE), second month, eighth day

464

The problem Kanmu highlights here – that of people committing what was essentially
“designation fraud” in order to gain tax exemptions and protections they were not entitled to –
was likely an additional financial burden for a court that was already struggling with the massive
costs of moving the capital and the military campaigns in the north. Designation fraud of this
kind would also have hindered Kanmu’s efforts to reduce the number of people in the elite ranks,
because it would have increased the number of people claiming shadow rank privileges and
thereby gaining easier access to higher ranks earlier in their careers. Allowing unnecessary and

461
A number of different groups that were eligible for tax exemptions are defined in the ritsuryō codes, but the most
relevant here were likely the exemptions for official rank holders, defined in Clause 19 of the Laws on Taxes. Inoue,
Ritsuryō, 256. There were also foreign subjects, like the Kudara no Konikishi, that had been granted exceptional tax
exemptions in perpetuity.
462
The “protections” afforded those of higher status included participation in the shadow rank system, the ability to
make inquiries into the circumstances of a crime when accused of committing one, the right to petition the ruler for a
commutation of a sentence, and eligibility to receive reduced punishments or pay reparations when convicted of a
crime. See n15 above on shadow rank.
463
Fourth-level manager, or sakan, was the lowest of the four standard administrative officials in ritsuryō offices.
Limiting changes to those with this status or higher meant that only officials could receive them. The personal
names of previous rulers became taboo after their deaths, and those whose names overlapped with the taboos would
need to change them.
464
Ruijū sandai kyaku, SZKT 25:514 [Enryaku 17 (798) 2/8]. For an annotated French translation, see Hérail, Livres
8 à 20, 440-441.

202
fraudulent designation changes thus undermined several of the core goals that Kanmu pursued
throughout his reign and it seems only natural that he would do what he could to address the
problem.
One slightly curious aspect of Kanmu’s order is its focus on the supposed ease with
which changes were being obtained as the central problem. Indeed, the Shoku Nihongi and Nihon
kōki record shows that hundreds of people received new designations in grants made throughout
both Kōnin and Kanmu’s reign. While various officials of the realm were responsible for vetting
and passing along requests for designation changes, the ultimate arbiter of designations in
Yamato was the sovereign. In other words – Kanmu and his officials were the ones was granting
the name changes he was complaining about. Kanmu’s solution was to order his officials to
assume that name changes should not be granted, with one exception for officials who needed to
avoid taboos such as the posthumous names of rulers.
Examining the record, however, it is difficult to find evidence that Kanmu’s court
implemented this policy. Comparing Kōnin, who granted designations to at least 666 people, and
Kanmu, who granted designations to at least 684, reveals roughly equal total numbers.
465
Kanmu
ruled for more than twice as long as Kōnin, so the numbers for Kanmu actually seem rather low,
but the discrepancy is likely a result of major gaps in the extant official chronicles. Specifically,
the first ten years of Kanmu’s reign are recorded in the Shoku Nihongi: and in these years,
Kanmu gave grants of new designations to an average of thirty people per year. The following
years are much more difficult to track because only ten out of an original forty volumes of the
Nihon kōki (the official chronicle for the second part of Kanmu’s reign) are extant. Between 792

465
Roughly half of the people receiving grants in both Kanmu and Kōnin’s reigns were from lineages that claimed
descent from foreign figures. These numbers draw from the databse of designation changes described in Chapter 2
and are based on records of designation changes in the Shoku Nihongi and Nihon kōki.

203
and 806, there are only three years of Kanmu’s reign for which we have the full Nihon kōki
record (799, 804 and 805). Considering only those years, Kanmu averaged grants to 108 people
per year. If we average the grants for all years fully recorded in an official chronicle, Kanmu
gave an average of forty-four people new designations per year. Extrapolating from this number
suggests that he would have granted roughly 1100 people new designations over his twenty-five-
year reign. That number would be even higher if we assumed that the Nihon kōki average
reflected an increase in grants in the latter part of Kanmu’s reign. Applying the Nihon kōki
average of 108 per year to the years covered in the Nihon kōki, Kanmu would have given a total
of 1848 people new designations.
466
Using these estimates, Kanmu’s rate of designation grants is
still roughly comparable to Kōnin’s, and shows no sign of efforts to decrease grants.
467
It is, of
course, possible that Kanmu made very few or even no grants in the years for which the Nihon
kōki record is lost, but the more reasonable assumption based on the extant record is that Kanmu
and his officials did not significantly decrease designation grants either before or after this order.
Moreover, if we focus on Kanmu’s grants to foreign subjects, the record suggests that
Kōken-Shōtoku’s policy of granting new designations to those who requested them was still in
place, even though Kanmu omitted any reference to it in his order. Kanmu’s grants to his
maternal relatives and several other exceptionally high-ranking officials have already been
discussed above, but these grants should be seen as part of a wider pattern of grants to foreign
subjects. Just over 50% of the designation grants Kanmu made were to people who claimed
descent from foreign figures, or had themselves immigrated to Yamato. If we put Kanmu’s

466
These are very rough estimates, especially given that they are based on only three years from the Nihon kōki in
which the total number of people receiving grants ranged from 5 to 210. The estimates are offered here not to
suggest that these are the actual number of grants that Kanmu made, but simply to illustrate the contrast between
Kanmu’s order and his recorded actions.
467
Kōnin averaged 64 people per year, while Kanmu’s averages based on these estimates ranged from 44 per year to
74 per year.

204
pattern of grants in the context of the preceding reigns, we find the following percentages of
grants made to foreign subjects: Kōken 81%, Junnin 78%, Shōtoku 23%, Kōnin 46% (Kōken-
Shōtoku’s combined average over the course of her two reigns was 52%). Kanmu’s record was
thus roughly in line with that of his father, and there is little evidence to suggest that his order put
an end to the earlier policy of Kōken’s day granting designations to foreign subjects. Overall,
while Kanmu’s order indicates that there were serious administrative problems with the
designation system and that he wanted his officials to address them, the record of designation
grants during his reign does not reflect any major changes to the patterns established by earlier
rulers.
The Nihon kōki of 799 CE records the edict Kanmu issued to launch the compilation of a
realm-wide genealogical project:
Bojutsu [twenty-ninth day]. An edict was issued: “The lineages of the people of the realm
are exceedingly numerous. Some with the same origin are now divided. Others with
differing ancestors have the same designations. We want to rely on the genealogical
records, but they have gone through many revisions. This led us to investigating the
residence-unit and tax registers, but it was difficult to judge root from branch. Let an
announcement be made to the realm that true lineage records must be submitted.
468
The
various foreigners and people of the Three Kan [must do] the same. Let the names of all
apical ancestors and ancestors of junior lines be recorded, but do not include lists of the
names of branch lines and heirs. For those who originated in a split from a noble
lineage,
469
get the signature of the lineage head and then submit [your records]. With
these lineages, there is generally a great deal of confusion. We must have certainty and
clarity, and fraudulent claims shall not be permitted. Complete your submissions before
the thirtieth day of the eighth month of next year. As [the submissions] are compiled and
entered into the record, if there are any differences with earlier records or if people miss
the deadline, investigate the heart of the matter and deal with it appropriately. [Any
errors] should not be entered into the record for long. Those who owe labor taxes should

468
These were records of the various lineages of the realm. The Kōnin shiki ( ) preface states that before
the Tenypō hōji era (749-757 CE) lineages would submit these records once per generation, and that these records
would be preserved in the Bureau of the Library. The lineage chart of the Nakatomi (Nakatomi uji keizu
) states that they submitted a lineage record in 761 CE – this reference is the first appearance of the term
“honkeichō.”
469
Here the term kizoku for “noble” indicates lineages of the third rank and above. See Clause 7 of the General
Principles of Penal Law in Inoue, Ritsuryō, 19-20.

205
be gathered and made into a volume. Those who wear official caps [i.e. noble lineages]
can be in a separate scroll.”

―

470

Kanmu had served as the director of the Bureau of the Library before he was appointed Crown
Prince, and thus would likely have had personal experience with the kinds of problems that
frequent designation changes created for those who were tasked with maintaining official
records. Even with the benefit of that experience, Kanmu’s officials had been unable to sort out
the confusion of the court’s genealogical records, so here all of the subjects of the realm were
ordered to create and submit new lineage records.
The court’s tendency to rely on lineage heads to police the designation system is clearly
evident here – those that claimed to be junior lines of the main line of a status lineage were
required to seek the signature of the lineage head to demonstrate that their claims had been
recognized and accepted.
471
As with petitions for designation changes, which often indicated the
sponsorship of a lineage head or other powerful and high-ranking official, the court’s instructions
for these new lineage records gave central lineage heads the authority to approve or reject claims
of common descent made by lesser lineages. The adoption of this approach indicates that the
court’s primary concern was not necessarily creating a completely accurate record of each
subject’s descent.
472
Instead, the goal seems to have been to create reasonably reliable

470
Nihon kōki, SZKT 3:27 [Enryaku 18 (799 CE), 12/29] and Yakuchū Nihon shiryō, 194-197.
471
This reliance on lineage heads is similar to the ritsuryō reliance on residence unit heads ( ), who were
responsible for registering all members, overseeing field distribution, collecting and sending taxes, and assembling
men for military duty. See Yoshie et al., “Gender in the Administrative Code,” 369.
472
Which is not to say that they did not care about accuracy at all – they clearly did, as the edict states.

206
genealogical records that had the endorsement of key stakeholders in the court elite. Once all of
the subjects of the realm had submitted these records, the royal government would have the
certainty it sought, and would be able to use those records to prevent further fraudulent claims.
The edict clearly describes a realm-wide project in which all subjects were expected to
participate. So why did Kanmu feel the need to specifically state that the “various foreigners and
people of the Three Kan” ( ) had to submit lineage records? It seems unlikely that
Kanmu was referring to foreign guests or envoys here – as temporary visitors to the court, there
would be no reason to include them in a Yamato genealogical project. He might have been
referring to people who had arrived in Yamato but who had not yet gone through the kika
process, but it seems unlikely that there was a large enough group of people waiting to become
Yamato subjects to warrant this instruction. Most likely, Kanmu was speaking to Yamato
subjects who traced their descent from foreign figures.
473
Perhaps Kanmu emphasized their
participation because they did not trace their descent from Yamato rulers or deities and many
were not included in the 670 register that had marked the beginning of the ritsuryō designation
system. Or perhaps this edict is an early indication that the court was moving away from the idea
that outsiders could and should be “transformed” by the ruler first into foreign subjects and then
into full Yamato subjects.
474
Whatever the exact significance of this phrase was, Kanmu’s history
of making numerous designations grants to foreign subjects, promoting new lineages that
claimed foreign descent, and favoring both his real and fictive maternal relatives make it quite

473
I am interpreting the phrase “various foreigners and the Three Kan” to mean essentially all foreign subjects in the
realm, but it is curious that Kanmu left out any reference to the continent (China).
474
Tanaka Fumio’s argument that the Shinsen shōjiroku was intended to fix a cosmopolitan population in the realm
at a time when the realm was become increasingly closed to outsiders relates to this possibility and will be discussed
in greater detail below.

207
unlikely that he saw his new genealogical project as a way to restore or preserve distinctions
between foreign subjects and non-foreign subjects.
The Nihon kōki volumes for the four years following this edict are not extant, and records
of progress made with the work of collecting genealogies are sparse. The report, mentioned in
chapters 1 and 2, from the Sanuki provincial governor submitted in 867 offers one piece of
evidence that the lineages of the realm actually did submit their records. The report details the
results of a successful petition for a designation change submitted by the Inagi no Obito lineage.
In explaining and giving context to their request, the Inagi no Obito state that they submitted
their true lineage records following Kanmu’s order in 799 CE. The records had been signed by
the lineage head of the Iyowake no Kimi, who confirmed the Inagi no Obito’s status as their
junior line.
475
In any event, even if the various lineages of the realm had, like the Inagi no Obito,
met Kanmu’s deadline for submitting their records by the end of the eighth month of the year
following his edict, the final text had not been completed by Kanmu’s death in 806 CE.
Heizei Tennō’s Reign
Kanmu’s eldest son succeeded him in 806 as Heizei Tennō ( , r.806-809). Curiously,
Heizei’s reign is often left out of discussions of the early Heian period. His erasure is at least
partly a product of the lack of sources for his reign – the Nihon kōki entries are partially or totally
lost for every year of his reign. In spite of this significant handicap, a recent work on Heizei by
Haruna Hiroaki sheds new light on Heizei’s reign and his relationship both to Kanmu and to his
brother and successor, Saga Tennō ( , r.809-823). Haruna focuses on three major areas of

475
Heian ibun, V ol.1, Doc. 152, 126-128 [Jōgan 9 (867) 2/16]. This document was also discussed in Chapter 2.
Suzuki Masanobu argues that the lineage name Iyowake-no-kimi ( ) was not a separate lineage but an
abbreviation of Iyo-no-Mimurawake-no-Kimi ( ), but I have given the designation that appears in the
Heian ibun text. Clans and Genealogy, 48-89.

208
activity in Heizei’s reign: his creation of regional inspectors (kansatsushi ), extra-codal
officials who surveyed the provinces and reported directly to the tennō; his reforms of various
offices and officials that served the tennō closely; and his large-scale reforms of ritsuryō
officialdom. The creation of regional inspectors was particularly notable in that they by-passed
the Council of State and reported directly to the tennō on conditions of the provinces. His
reforms of the ritsuryō system suggest that Heizei was working to reduce and reorganize offices,
and that he was empowering lower level officials to increase his own control over the
administration. Overall, Haruna argues that these efforts by Heizei laid the foundation for the
better known reforms of Saga’s reign – his creation of the Royal Secretariat (kurōdo-dokoro ) and the Royal Police (kebiishi ) in particular – even though Saga viewed many
of Heizei’s approaches to reforming ritsuryō officialdom as unrealistic and canceled them when
he took the throne.
476

The preface of the Shinsen shōjiroku skips Heizei’s reign in its narrative of the
compilation of the text, making it seem that the project lapsed after Kanmu’s death. In light of
the tensions between these two brothers and Heizei’s attempt to disestablish Saga in 810 CE,
Hasebe argues that this is a deliberate erasure of Heizei’s contributions to the project.
477
It is
difficult to say how Heizei approached the designation system and the confusion of the
genealogical records. The Nihon kōki records from Heizei’s reign contain references to only
seven people who received new designations from Heizei, none of them foreign subjects or
recent arrivals. Nonetheless, there is one much later source that suggests that Heizei was actually
continuing with the work on the realm-wide genealogical project: in the same Sanuki provincial

476
Haruna Hiroaki, Heizei Tennō, Jinbutsu Sōsho 256 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2009), 114-195.
477
Hasebe, “Shinsen shōjiroku’ no hensan ni okeru kigai shizoku,” 16-18.

209
governor’s report mentioned above, the Inagi no Obito recorded that after they submitted their
original lineage records in 800, they also responded to a Council of State order issued in 807.
That order, quoted in the report, reiterated many of the problems highlighted in Kanmu’s initial
order, and added that ongoing designation changes would cause difficulties for the compilers of
the text, so all lineages who wished to petition for designation changes had to do so within the
year.
478
In other words, the collection of lineage records was either complete or ongoing, and
compilers were preparing to begin the task of combining those records into one comprehensive
text. It seems, therefore, that Heizei was actively supporting the project begun by Kanmu.
In the fourth month of 809, Heizei Tennō fell ill and abdicated, and his younger brother
came to the throne as Saga Tennō. Heizei recovered from his illness and continued to direct
projects and command resources as the Retired Sovereign (jōkō ). One of the projects he
directed was the building of a new palace in the old capital of Heijō, and his move to that new
palace along with half of the Council of State brought him into direct conflict with Saga. The old
narrative of this conflict focused on Fujiwara no Kusuko ( ), a consort of Kanmu’s who
had become the director of the Office of Female Chamberlains and a favorite Heizei’s after his
father’s death. Kusuko reportedly plotted with her younger brother Nakanari, of the Shikike
(“Ceremonials House” ) Fujiwara, to return Heizei to the power by moving the capital and
retaking the throne. They led an attempt to seize the government in the tenth month of 810 CE
but were defeated by Saga’s forces. Because Kusuko was said to have played a central role in
these events, the incident was called “the Kusuko Incident” (Kusuko no hen ).
479

478
The Inagi no Obito reported that they did submit a petition following this order, but it was denied. See Suzuki,
Clans and Genealogy, 61.
479
For an example of this narrative and an indication of how standard it was, see Kokushi daijiten s.v. “ ”
(entry by Ōtsuka Tokurō), accessed via Japan Knowledge.

210
Haruna, however, argues, as others have before him, that the conflict was not a rebellion by
Heizei against Saga, but a successful coup d’état by Saga that overthrew the retired sovereign
Heizei. He argues that Heizei’s ongoing control of the court after his abdication was a forerunner
of the later Heian rule by regents and retired sovereigns, and thus that it was really Saga and his
supporters, like Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu, who rebelled.
480
Haruna’s argument provides useful
context for understanding why court officials submitting a text to Saga might have chosen to
eliminate any references to Heizei’s reign or contribution to the project. However we construe
these events, they concluded with Nakanari dying after being shot by an arrow, Kusuko taking
poison, and Heizei taking the tonsure and withdrawing from court life.
Saga Tennō and the Completion of the Shinsen shōjiroku
By late 810 CE, Saga Tennō had asserted his control over the court. Saga was every bit as
ambitious as his father and brother, and his reign was marked by a number of major reforms to
the structures and rituals of court life. Katō Tomoyasu has argued, for instance, that the early
ninth century marked a transition period between the ritsuryō system and a new form of court
government that would only fully emerge in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In particular, he
points to two offices created by Saga as representative of a new kind of office that was based on
different principles than the ritsuryō system. Both were extra-codal offices, that is, they were
created by royal edicts for specific royal needs.
481
The first was the Royal Secretariat (Kurōdo
dokoro), created when Saga appointed Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu and Kose no Notari ( ,
749-817) as the first two royal secretaries (Kurōdo). Initially designed to support Saga in his
fight with Heizei, the office would go on to become the key liaison between the sovereign and

480
For more detail on the incident and Haruna’s argument, see chapter four of his book. Heizei, 196-245.
481
Katō Tomoyasu, ed., Sekkanke seiji to ōchō bunka, Nihon no jidaishi 6 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2002), 37-
40.

211
other branches of the government, while also absorbing the functions of many of the residential
palace offices that had managed provisioning and other arrangements. The second was the Royal
Police Office, which was created in 816 to control “oddities” in the capital, and which eventually
absorbed the duties of the Ministry of Justice, the Board of Censors, and the Left and Right
Capital Offices.
482
In both cases, Saga moved to establish offices that expanded royal control
over the palace and capital.
483

Saga also made changes to the calendar of yearly court rites (nenchū gyōji ),
both reviving rites that Heizei had canceled and adding new ones. Jason Webb has argued that
one of the things that distinguished Saga’s reign and set him apart from other sovereigns was
“his supreme achievement in marshaling together the entire panoply of cultic activities into the
service of the tennō.” Webb stresses that Saga was not the first to understand or draw on kami-
worship, Confucianism, Five Phases, and Buddhism to legitimate and strengthen his position as
the sovereign, but that he did so with “newly systematic rigor.”
484
In that vein, Saga ordered the
compilation of a three-volume manual containing the procedures and precedents for these rites
known as the Dairishiki (Protocols of the Residential Palace, , 821 CE). In 818 CE, Saga
also initiated a range of reforms – renaming palaces and city gates, modifying court dress,
introducing new court etiquette – that carried forward earlier efforts at “emulating the Tang”
(tōfūka ).

482
For an accessible overview of the Royal Police and their involvement in trials, see Lecture 1 in Murakami, Shiryō
de yomu Nihon hōshi.
483
Even as he created extra-codal offices, Saga also continued the work of compiling the ritsuryō codes. His revival
of Kanmu’s effort to compile regulations and protocols and the compilation of the Kōnin kyaku and shiki, were
discussed in Chapter 1.
484
Jason P. W ebb, “In Good Order: Poetry , Reception, and Authority in the Nara and Early Heian Courts” (PhD.,
Princeton University, 2005), 163.

212
Writing, in many shapes and forms, had a special place at Saga’s court. As Webb notes, it
was during Saga’s reign that the phrase "writing is the grand enterprise in ordering the state"
became a kind of official slogan for royal rule.
485
Much of the English-language scholarship on
Saga’s reign has focused on the writing of poetry at court.
486
Saga himself was an accomplished
poet and his reign was marked by extensive sponsorship of poetry and the creation of new
opportunities to compose poetry at court. Three royal command anthologies were compiled
during Saga’s lifetime – the Ryōun shinshū (814 CE), Bunka shūrei shū
(818 CE), and Keikoku shuū (827 CE).
487
Saga was also an energetic sponsor of other
kinds of writing, including legal texts, ceremonial manuals (mentioned above), and an official
chronicle – he initiated the compilation of the Nihon kōki in 819 CE, appointing Fujiwara no
Fuyutsugu to head the project.
488

That Saga should be interested in pushing for completion of the realm-wide genealogical
project begun by Kanmu Tennō is therefore consistent with many objectives of Saga’s reign,
including his emulation of the Tang, sponsorship of major court-centered texts, and portrayal of
himself as the direct heir to his father Kanmu’s legacy. It was also connected to a marked rise in
interest in genealogical narratives of the major court lineages, as reflected by an 812 CE lecture

485
(C. wenzhang jingguo zhi daye). The phrase is from the Lunwen (“Discourse on Writing” )
by Cao Pi ( ) a third-century Wei ruler. For an excellent discussion of the reception of this phrase in Saga’s
court, see Webb’s article on the significance of writing in Saga’s court: “The Big Business of Writing: Monjō
Keikoku in the Early Heian Court of Saga Tennō,” Sino-Japanese Studies 21 (January 16, 2014).
486
The major examples include Webb, “In Good Order;” Gustav Heldt, The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power
in Early Heian Japan (Ithaca N.Y .: East Asia Program Cornell University, 2008); and Kristopher L. Reeves, “Of
Poetry, Patronage, and Politics: From Saga to Michizane, Sinitic Poetry in the Early Heian Court” (PhD diss.,
Columbia University, 2018).
487
Saga himself ordered the first two, while the third was ordered by his successor Junna Tennō ( , r. 823-833
CE). Webb argues that the third anthology was also strongly influenced by Saga, so I have followed his lead in
including it here.
488
Three other officials were also appointed to the Nihon kōki project: Fujiwara no Otsugu (774-843),
Fujiwara no Sadatsugu (759-824), and Yoshimine no Yasuyo (785-830). Only Otsugu would
live long enough to see the Nihon kōki completed in 840.

213
on the Nihon shoki.
489
We should note too that the 812 CE lecture was part of a series of lectures
on the Nihon shoki that took place over the course of the early Heian period.
490
Each lecture
involved reading the text aloud over several months or years; and there was always a concluding
banquet at which poetry on characters in the text was composed. The preface to the Kōnin
lecture focuses on the problem of the disorganization of lineages at the court, tracing a narrative
from the Kojiki through the Nihon shoki to other contemporary texts like the Shinsen shōjiroku,
and ultimately portraying the Nihon shoki as the most authoritative account of the Yamato
lineages.
491
That the preface took aim at a version of the Shinsen shōjiroku before a draft of the
full text was complete suggests the degree of interest and tension surrounding genealogies of the
court elite at the time.
At last, the first version of the Shinsen shōjiroku was submitted to Saga in 814 by Prince
Manda ( , 788-830) and Fujiwara no Ason Sonohito ( , 756-819).
492

Notably, sometime between Kanmu’s initial order for a realm-wide genealogical project and the
submission of this first draft, the scope of the project had changed significantly. Rather than
including all of the lineages of the realm, the text submitted to Saga included only lineages
whose registrations were in the capital and central kinai provinces. As Hasebe has emphasized,

489
The lecture notes are generally known the Kōnin shiki, because the lecture took place in the Kōnin era.
490
The lecture is recorded in the Nihon kōki, SZKT 3:114 [Kōnin 3 (812) 6/2] and Yakuchū Nihon shiryō, 612-613.
491
See Felt, “Rewriting the Past,” 13-38.
492
The text is referred to as a “royally-ordered record of designations” (chokusen shōjiroku ). See the
Nihon kōki fragment quoted in the Nihon kiryaku [Kōnin 5 (814) 6/1] in Nihon kōki Yakuchū Nihon shiryo 670-671.

214
this was a major departure from Kanmu’s original intention.
493
As noted above, the project in
draft divided the lineages into three categories: the deity lines (shinbetsu ), the royal lines
(kōbetsu ), and various foreigners (shoban ).
494
Its preface defines each of these
categories as follows: the “royal lines” were those descended from Yamato sovereigns, as well as
princes and princesses of the royal blood; the “deity lines” were descendants of the heavenly and
earthly deities of Yamato; and the “various foreigners” included lineages from the “Great Han
and Three Kan” (i.e. the continent and Korean peninsula).
The text was re-submitted in the seventh month of the following year (815 CE) with
several significant changes.
495
First, the text now included a new designation created by Saga
Tennō the month before – the Minamoto no Ason. This designation had been given to thirty-two
of Saga’s fifty children when he removed them from the royal line and made them into
subjects.
496
He did so because the large number of royal children, each of whom were entitled to
lands and other support, had put an immense financial strain on court coffers. Once created, this
new set of royal lineages had to be included in the court genealogy, and compilers of the text
confirmed this addition in their text. A second major change concerned the order of the
categories in the text: in place of the original order which put the deity lines first, the new

493
Hasebe traces the changes in policy for making district-level appointments over the course of Kanmu, Heizei, and
Saga’s reigns, and he argues that one explanation for the change from a realm-wide project to a much more limited
project could have been the difference in the genealogical records the court was receiving from district-official level
lineages. Under Kanmu, the court had shifted to emphasize ability over heredity in making district official
appointments, and therefore did not require the regular submission of the fudai genealogical records. As a result,
Kanmu included everyone in his realm-wide genealogical project. Under Saga, the court returned to the old fudai-
based principle of favoring heirs in district appointments, submission of genealogical records for district-level
officials recommenced, and it was therefore less important to include these people in the Shinsen shōjiroku project.
See Hasebe, “Shinsen shōjiroku’ no hensan ni okeru kigai shizoku,” 24-26.
494
A fourth grouping was not an official category – the “undecided” lineages (mitei zōshiki ).
495
The memorial submitted with the text is dated Kōnin 6 (815) 7/20. Saeki, Honbun hen, 141-143.
496
Kanmu Tennō had done the same with one of his sons whose personal name was Yasuyo ( ), who was given
the designation Yoshimine no Ason ( ). Yasuyo served as an official of the court and was involved in many
important projects. The Yoshimine no Ason designation was also added to the Shinsen shōjiroku between the first
and second submissions.

215
version of the text listed the royal lines first, followed by the deity lines, and then the lines of
various foreigners.
In its final form, the Shinsen shōjiroku included a memorial to Saga Tennō by the
compilers, a preface, the genealogical records in thirty volumes, and an additional volume
containing an index. Volumes one through ten contained 335 royal lineages, volumes eleven
through twenty recorded 404 deity-line lineages, and volumes twenty-one to twenty-nine
included 326 lineages of various foreign origin. The thirtieth volume recorded the genealogies of
117 lineages of indeterminate status, with a total of 1182 lineages in all volumes. Within each
category, lineages were listed in geographical order beginning with those of the Left and Right
Capital, and continuing through the five central provinces (Yamashiro, Settsu, Yamato, Kawachi,
and Izumi). In addition to being divided into three categories based on origin, the lineages were
also divided into three types of genealogies – those with a clearly recorded apical ancestor were
“original” ( ) lineages; those with established connections to one of the apical ancestors were
“descendants of the same ancestor” ( ) lines; and those whose connection to an ancestor
could not be clearly established, or who stated that their origin was not in the records were
simply referred to as “descendant” ( ) lines.
497

The full Shinsen shōjiroku text submitted to the court has been lost. What we have today
is an abridged version of the original text. The authoritative modern version of the text was
compiled by Saeki Arikiyo in the early 1960s, on the basis of an exhaustive review of all

497
The structure described here seems very close to the status lineages (or conical clans, she says anthropologists
use the terms interchangeably) that Yamilette Chacon describes in her dissertation, cited above. The “original”
category seems to correspond to the main line of the status lineage and the “descendants of the same ancestor”
appear to be similar to the junior lines of the status lineage. The “descendant” lines are less clear, as they seem to be
lineages whose genealogies are ambiguous or not connected to a known main line. In any case, rather than trying to
impose my own understanding of what each of these categories actually contained through my translation of these
terms, I have attempted to reflect the language of the Shōjiroku compilers, inelegant as it may be.

216
available manuscript versions of the text.
498
There are two major manuscript lines of the Shinsen
shōjiroku: the Enbun 5 (1360) manuscripts, of which there are nine; and the Kenmu 2 (1335)
manuscripts, of which there are three. There are also six manuscripts that combine these two
manuscript traditions, while a number of others do not clearly relate to either. Saeki considered
all of them in painstaking detail, comparing, among other things, how the tennō’s names were
written, how the origins of the various foreign lineages were recorded, and the numbering of
each section of the text. He concluded that one of the Enbun 5 manuscripts, dated to 1649 and
known as the Mikanagi Kiyonao manuscript ( ) after the national studies scholar who
compiled it, was the oldest extant text. He thus made the Mikanagi Kiyonao manuscript the base
text for his version, but he also meticulously annotated the text with references to all of the other
manuscript versions.
499
As Hirano Kunio noted in his review of Saeki’s work, the Shinsen
shōjiroku had long been viewed with hesitation and ambivalence by historians of the early
classical era. Not only was the original based on seemingly unverified lineage records submitted
by people who had strong incentives to manipulate their genealogies, but also there was no
reliable modern version of the text. Saeki was a pioneer in both making the case for the Shinsen

498
Prior to Saeki’s publication, the only version of the Shinsen shōjiroku available to most scholars were the version
included in the Gunshō ruiju and Kurita Hiroshi’s Shinsen shōjiroku kōshō, 21 vols, (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan,
1900-1909). Neither of these versions were based on a thorough review of the available manuscripts. There is also a
more recent version of the text compiled by Tanaka Takashi, and while it received some positive reviews, Saeki’s
version remains the primary source for modern scholarship. See Tanaka Takashi, Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū
(Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1996).
499
When there are differences between the base text and the other manuscripts, Saeki includes headnotes with the
variants. When he believes the base text is incorrect, he includes a headnote to that effect along with an explanation
for his reasoning.

217
shōjiroku as important historical source, and also making the text accessible to scholars through
his highly reliable version of the text.
500

The Shinsen shōjiroku
Saeki’s publication of an authoritative version of the text not only catalyzed the use of the
Shinsen shōjiroku in historical research, but also contributed to an ongoing debate about the
nature and purpose of the text. As noted above, in asking why the text was compiled and what
problems it sought to solve, many scholars in the prewar period focused on the preface, so it is
worth beginning with a brief overview of it.
The Shinsen shōjiroku preface begins with Ninigi’s descent to Yamato, and then traces
high and low points in the development of the designation system largely up to the present day.
Key rulers mentioned include Suinin, Ingyō, Kōgyoku, and Tenji, with the creation of the
residence unit registers in 670 presented as the point at which each subject had a designation
appropriate to them. After that point, the preface states that various sovereigns made changes and
corrections according to the needs of their times, with Kōken’s 757 CE edict granting foreign
subjects new designations a major example of such changes. The preface then describes a series
of resulting problems:
In the Kōgo year [670 CE], residence unit registers were compiled and the designation of
each subject was perfectly suited to them. From this time on without interruption,
succeeding sovereigns made changes and corrections according to the [needs of the]
times. During the Shōhō era [749-757 CE], foreign subjects received an edict granting
them [the designations] they requested due to the deep love and affection of the sovereign
[Kōken Tennō]. In the end, the way that old designations and new designations were
written became indistinguishable, and whether these lineages followed foreign customs
or Yamato customs was in doubt. Common people everywhere connected themselves to

500
Hirano Kunio, review of Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: honbun hen, kenkyū hen, by Saeki Arikiyo, Rekishigaku
kenkyū, March 1965, 35-41. Hirano was by no means the only scholar to offer high praise for Saeki’s work – even
those who disagreed with him, like Seki Akira, acknowledge his edition of the text as a monumental
accomplishment. Seki Akira, review of Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: honbun hen, kenkyū hen by Saeki Arikiyo,
Rekishi, March 1963. Other reviews by major scholars include Abe Takehiko in Nihon rekishi, November 1962, 96-
98; Tōma Seita in Rekishi Hyōron, January 1964, 48-55; Yoshie Akiko in Nihon rekishi, no. 650 (July 2002): 97–99.

218
branches of the nobility, and foreign guests from the Three Kan called themselves the
descendants of Yamato deities.

501

The preface then describes the Shizokushi project and Kanmu’s order to begin collecting and
compiling records. Saga is portrayed as the immediate successor to Kanmu’s work, and the ruler
who finally completed it. The preface concludes with a description of the compilers, their
methods, the challenges they faced, and the results of their work.
Pre-war scholarship exhibited a strong tendency to accept the narrative of the preface at
face value, and generally emphasized that the Shinsen shōjiroku was, in fact, designed to correct
the disorder of the designations and clarify the origin of each lineage.
502
The first major challenge
to this approach came in the post-war period with a 1951 article by Seki Akira in Shigaku zasshi,
the major history journal in Japan. Seki made two key observations: first, that examining the
contents of the text clearly demonstrates that the compilers were not checking the origins of each
lineage; and second, that the compilers did not resolve conflicting claims in the records they
received from the various lineages. Based on these two observations, Seki concluded that the
primary objective of the Shinsen shōjiroku could not have been confirming the origins of the
lineages or clarifying the genealogical records. Instead, he argued, the Shinsen shōjiroku was
closely modeled on Tang genealogical texts, particularly the text ordered by Taizong, since the
Shinsen shōjiroku sought to establish a new order of court elites. Seki emphasized that the first
version of the text presented to Saga had put the deity lines first, and that the order to revise the

501
My translation of the preface relies on Saeki’s annotated version of the text in Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū:
Kenkyū hen, (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1963), 121-171.
502
Seki notes that this had been the essentially unchanged general view from Hirata Atsutane and Kurita Hiroshi’s
time. See Seki Akira, “Shinsen shōjiroku no senshū mokuteki ni tsuite,” Shigaku Zasshi 60, no. 3 (March 1951): 1–
18.

219
text and put the royal lines first was very similar to Taizong’s order to revise the first version of
his genealogical text, to put his own line before the four great Hebei lineages. Seki argued that
the new order of the Shinsen shōjiroku was meant to reflect each lineage’s degree of distance
from the ruler, thereby fixing the royal family and its affines in higher positions.
503

Seki’s argument had a major impact in part because it was well supported by evidence
from both the preface and the core of the text. In the preface, the compilers devote significant
space to describing the many confounding challenges they faced in their task, complaining that
reconciling one contradiction only led to creating a new one, and blaming their slow progress on
the extreme confusion of the records. They state frankly that there are errors in the text (in
particular, differences in the order of ancestors or in the number of generations), but say that they
have eliminated all major errors. Similarly, they state that they used some records in spite of the
contradictions in and among them because “the texts exist and are still able to convey meaning.”
They conclude by saying that they had not yet received all of the new lineage records, but
decided to omit those not yet submitted because "to investigate all of these at once would be
difficult.” In short, the preface does more to preempt criticism by acknowledging potential
errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies than it does to inspire confidence in the clarity or
accuracy of the text. Examining the contents of the Shinsen shōjiroku reveals not only the types
of errors acknowledged in the preface, but also cases of lineages or lineage groups that cross the
deity, royal, and various foreign categories. To give but one example, Hirano Kunio points to the
Karakuni no Muraji ( ) who were listed as a deity line registered in Izumi province in spite
of what he argues is clear evidence of that lineage’s foreign origin.
504

503
Ibid.

220
Seki’s emphasis on the connection between the Shinsen shōjiroku and the Tang
genealogical texts was also well founded. The similarities between the titles and texts had been
noted as early as the mid-eighteenth century in a commentary on the Nihon shoki by Tanikawa
Kotosuga ( , 1709-1776).
505
The Tang genealogies almost certainly served as models for
the Yamato court genealogical projects, but this does not mean there were no important
differences between them. The most obvious difference is that the three-part royal line/deity
line/various foreigner categorization was unique to the Shinsen shōjiroku. Yamato designations
were also fundamentally different from Tang surnames. Where Tang surnames were closely tied
to patrilineal kinship relations and did not include titles, Yamato designations included kabane
titles, uji names, and other surnames, each of which reflected both political ties to the ruler and
kinship relations.
506
Furthermore, while Tang sovereigns had a surname (Li ), Yamato
sovereigns had no designation. As a result, while the Tang genealogy created under Taizong
explicitly elevated the status of the ruling Li lineage by placing it at the beginning of the text, the
Yamato royal family itself could not be included in the Shinsen shōjiroku – the “royal” lines in
the texts were descendants of royals who had received designations and thereby become non-
royal subjects of the realm. These fundamental differences meant that however much the Yamato
court was inspired by Tang models, the genealogical texts it produced were methodologically
and structurally their own.

504
The petition in which this lineage requested their new designation is translated and discussed in the conclusion of
Chapter 2. See Hirano Kunio, Taika zendai shakai, 360. In his review of Saeki’s annotated Shinsen shōjiroku text,
Hirano also notes that the entry for the Miyake no Muraji ( ) says that they are descended from Ame no
Hiboko who crossed over from Silla, but also that they have the same ancestors as a deity line (the Shigeno no
Sukune, ). Saeki has edited this confusion of deity lines and various foreign lines out and Hirano found
this choice problematic.
505
The Nihon shoki tsūshō ( ) published in 1748. In the prewar period, work by Murao Jirō and Niida
Noboru had also noted the likely connections between the texts. Saeki gives a useful overview of this scholarship
and Seki’s argument in Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: Shūi hen, (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2001), 10-19.
506
See the discussion in Chapter 2 for details.

221
Saeki Arikiyo later presented a major critique of Seki’s argument, in the research volume
of his landmark work, Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū. He argued that Seki had both misconstrued
the core purpose of the Tang genealogical texts, and also mistaken the central goal of the Shinsen
shōjiroku. Saeki pointed out that Taizong’s order to place the Li lineage first came only after the
submission of the first draft of the text, and therefore could not have been the core motivation for
producing the text in the first place. In his view, the true purpose of the Tang text was to regulate
marriage practices among Tang elites. He also argued that the three categories in the Shinsen
shōjiroku were not new, but had actually existed from the time of Tenmu’s creation of the eight
kabane in 684. Where Seki argued that the deity lines had traditionally been ranked higher than
the royal lines, Saeki disagreed, citing work by Abe Takehiko and Tsuda Sōkichi to support the
idea that prioritizing the deity lines did not take hold until the early Heian period. Therefore, the
Shinsen shōjiroku was not created to overturn this order. In the end, Saeki concludes that
ordering the lineages of the realm could not have been the primary purpose of the Shinsen
shōjiroku.
507

In place of Seki’s explanation, Saeki offered one of his own, now commonly known as
the “false name false shadow” (bōmei bōon ) theory. He argued that in the ninth
century, the practice of fraudulently taking designations was flourishing, and that through taking
fake names and thereby falsely claiming shadow rank or privileges, people from outside the
capital and central provinces were able to enter the capital and escape paying taxes. Kanmu’s
799 edict provided an important point of evidence for this theory, as it addressed exactly this
kind of fraud. Saeki focused on ordinary subjects, often of foreign descent, who came from the

507
Saeki Arikiyo, Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: Kenkyū hen, (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1963), 73-84. Saeki
reviewed and reiterated many of the same points in his more recent work. Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: Shūi hen,
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2001), 39-58.

222
provinces and traveled to the capital to take advantage of the many special skilled residence units
(zakko ) and specialized artisan worker groups (tomobe ) that had died out. These
designations still existed and were attached to privileges like tax exemptions in the ritsuryō
codes, and could be fraudulently used. This practice, he argued, was creating disorder and
confusion that could only be corrected by creating a reliable record against which claims could
be checked. In his view, the Shinsen shōjiroku was created primarily to address this significant
economic concern. Saeki stressed that the purpose of the text was to serve as a reference for
court offices when faced with claims and requests for new designations, which was why
compilers focused on the lineages of the capital and central provinces (the most likely targets of
designation fraud).
508
For many years, Saeki’s theory was the most widely accepted theory on the
purpose of the Shōjiroku, and it continues to appear in reference works and recent scholarship.
So, where does that leave us today? Although Saeki’s theory has merit in that it
highlights what was clearly an ongoing problem for court government, it is difficult to believe
that the Shōjiroku was primarily compiled to stop low-level tax fraud, especially given the
admitted errors and inconsistencies in the Shōjiroku text. Also, as Hirano Kunio pointed out in
his review of Saeki’s work, both Saeki and Seki largely overlooked the significance of the
“various foreigners” section of the Shōjiroku. In Hirano’s view, the preface presented Kōken’s
757 CE grant of designations to all foreign subjects as the origin of the confusion between old
and new designations, and foreign and Yamato customs.
Most English-language scholarship has focused on this point as well, and on the passage
from the preface quoted above, first discussed and translated by Cornelius Kiley for his 1969

508
Saeki, Kenkyū hen, 141-180.

223
article “A Note on the Surnames of Immigrant Officials in Nara Japan.”
509
Kiley’s translation of
these lines from the preface was influential enough to be worth quoting in full:
During the Shōhō era [749-757] there were from time to time edicts permitting the
several immigrants to be granted [surnames] in accordance with their wishes. And so it
came about that the characters for the older [Japanese?] surnames and the newer
surnames [granted to the immigrants] became thus alike; whether a family was immigrant
or Japanese became doubtful; lowly families everywhere numbered themselves among
the offshoots of the nobles; and foreign residents from Korea claimed descent from the
gods of Japan.
510

In Kiley’s interpretation of the passage, the edicts of the Shōhō era (i.e. Kōken’s 757 edict)
erased an important distinction between Japanese and foreign surnames, making it difficult for
the court to tell who was “Japanese” and who was an immigrant. In his book on the Tenmu
dynasty, Herman Ooms also noted that Kōken’s 757 policy resulted in “obscuring the alien
origin of many allochthons” in a way that allowed them to penetrate the highest circles of the
court and become a threat to the nobility.
511
He saw Kanmu’s order to compile the Shinsen
shōjiroku as an effort to stop the naturalization of “alien” people by clarifying and recording the
origins of all lineages. Similarly, in Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female
Immortals in Ancient Japan, Michael Como quoted Kiley’s translation of these lines from the
preface and argued that the compilers of the Shinsen shōjiroku were “seeking to set clear
parameters for establishing native bona fides in both political and religious discourse.”
512

Common to Como, Ooms, and Kiley’s arguments is the suggestion that the Shinsen
shōjiroku was created not just to clarify peoples’ origins, but also to prevent immigrants from
continuing to enter and confuse the higher levels of the court hierarchy and bureaucracy. And yet

509
Kiley’s article was discussed in the introduction.
510
Kiley, “A Note on the Surnames,” 178.
511
Ooms, Imperial Politics, 103.
512
Michael Como, Weaving and Binding, 8.

224
as the discussion on designation policy in Chapter 2 and the overview of Kanmu’s background
and designation grants in this chapter have established, the Yamato court did not have a long-
standing practice of maintaining official or legal distinctions between “native” subjects and
“immigrants,” nor was Kanmu working to prevent foreign subjects or subjects who were of
foreign descent from becoming high-ranking officials. If anything, the opposite was true of
Kanmu’s reign. That said, Kiley’s suggestion that the Shinsen shōjiroku represented a larger shift
in the way that foreign subjects were conceptualized by the court was a valid one, and it was on
the nature and significance of this shift that Tanaka Fumio has focused his work on the Shinsen
shōjiroku.
In his 1997 book, Tanaka compared the language of Kōken’s 757 edict and with that of
the Shinsen shōjiroku preface and argued that the differences revealed a major change in the
court’s approach to its foreign subjects. The 757 edict is based on the understanding that through
submission to the Yamato ruler, people from outside the realm (kegai) would be transformed into
subjects of the realm (kenai). They would then come to adopt the customs of Yamato, again
because of the transformative influence of the sovereign, and receive a new designation to mark
this second transformation. He describes this approach as “uni-directional versatility” ( ). In the Shōjiroku preface, he argues that this versatility itself was challenged. The preface
no longer recognizes the possibility of transformation, and instead sees Yamato customs and
foreign customs as traits that were fixed based on origin. Tanaka concludes that as actual
immigration to Yamato had sharply dropped off in the late eighth and early ninth century, anti-
foreign sentiment was emerging, and the realm was becoming increasingly closed to outsiders.
513

513
The decline of the Tang after the An Lushan Rebellion in 755, and Yamato’s increasingly contentious relations
with Silla, likely did not improve attitudes of elites at court towards people from outside the realm.

225
At the same time, Tanaka stresses that the court continued to be invested in the ritsuryō
worldview in which a legitimate ruler was a cosmopolitan ruler, and thus the presence of
“various foreigners” in the realm was critical. There is clear evidence to support Tanaka’s point
even within the preface of the Shōjiroku. The compilers highlight Suinin as the first Yamato ruler
to accept both gifts and new subjects (from Silla and Imna), and as a ruler whose virtue was
known and appealing to all of the foreign peoples of the world. The preface goes on to say that
“granting designations out of affection for those from far away was a hallmark of this time.”
There can be little doubt but that attracting outsiders through one’s virtue and granting them
designations as a mark of affection were being presented positive aspects of Suinin’s reign. And
in describing Kōken’s grant of designations to foreign subjects, the preface states that this order
as well was “due to the deep love and affection of the sovereign.” Pairing this description with
that of Suinin’s virtue, it is quite clear that the Shōjiroku compilers were not criticizing Kōken
for her edict but rather, praising her. Her action was consistent with a long-standing idea that
Yamato sovereigns should attract outsiders through their virtue and then grant them designations
as a sign of benevolent concern for the new subjects.
Although the act of granting new designations to subjects was itself consistent with an
established Yamato notion of a legitimate ritsuryō ruler, the Shōjiroku preface also stresses that
such grants created problems for managing designations and keeping clear records. Furthermore,
as Tanaka pointed out, the realm had become increasingly closed to outsiders, and there were
fewer and fewer people who could be transformed into subjects. He argues that early Heian
sovereigns therefore must have struggled with this change, and presents the Shinsen shōjiroku as
the court’s permanent solution. By recording the genealogies of lineages who traced their descent
to foreign figures, it created a fixed foreign population and allowed the Yamato court to see itself

226
as cosmopolitan whether or not it integrated new outsiders.
514
Given that the Shinsen shōjiroku
represents the elite of the Yamato court as being nearly 30% of foreign descent, Tanaka’s
argument that this was a desirable and advantageous quality is persuasive.
515
His argument also
fits in with the long history of Yamato rulers using designation grants to immigrants and foreign
subjects to bolster their own legitimacy as Heavenly Sovereigns of all under heaven.
One final recent take on the Shinsen shōjiroku comes from Nakamura Tomokazu, whose
work on the designation system was discussed extensively in Chapter 2. Nakamura focused on
the links between groups of lineages that claim the same ancestors (“same-ancestor same-family”
relationships). Nakamura argued that royally-recognized lineages in Yamato were
political groups that tended to form conglomerates of lineages converging on the lineage with the
greatest power and influence at court. He argued that from the time of Great King Suiko on, the
court managed lower-level junior lines indirectly through the heads of the main lineages (the uji
gami ), a tendency clearly visible in the designation-change petitions. With this in mind, he
argued that the Shinsen shōjiroku’s goal was to first reconfirm the main or “original” lineages,
and then to clarify the extent of lineage conglomerates with the help of lineage heads.
516
In other
words, the primary goal of the text was to create consensus about the hierarchy and membership
of each group of lineages.
It is unlikely that scholars will reach a final consensus on the single most important
reason for compiling the Shinsen shōjiroku. The various explanations reviewed above are not

514
Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 110-148.
515
I remain skeptical of the idea that either Kanmu or Saga consciously sought to solve the problem of no longer
being able to “transform” people into Yamato subjects by creating the Shinsen shōjiroku, but Tanaka’s attention to
how the text connected to both attitudes towards foreign subjects and the history of designation policy in Yamato
remains valuable.
516
Junior lines had to receive confirmation from the lineage head in the form of a signature for their lineage records
before submitting them to the court. Nakamura, Nihon kodai no shiseisei, 255-271.

227
mutually exclusive, and each of them adds to our understanding of the nature of the text, its
influences, the concerns it addressed, and how it reflected the dynamically changing royal
government and its administration in the early Heian period. Given that the compilation of the
Shōjiroku stretched over three reigns, and that the scope of the project changed significantly
during that time, the project had to achieve more than one goal and address more than one
concern to be worth completing. If we take the preface seriously, we have to recognize too that
the final text was an imperfect and at least partially incomplete version of what the compilers had
originally set out to create. Even so, the text tells us a great deal about how the sovereign’s
relationship to the subjects of the realm was changing. In order to more fully explore Tanaka’s
point about the new attitude towards foreign subjects in the preface of the text, the next section
considers what the contents of the “various foreigners” section tells us about how attitudes at
court were changing and how the various lineages that claimed foreign origin were adjusting to
these new realities.
The Various Foreigners of the Shinsen shōjiroku
The third category in the Shinsen shōjiroku contains the records of 326 lineages who
traced their origins to places outside of Yamato. In addition to listing these lineages according to
the geographic location of their registration in Yamato, the text also groups them according to
their places of origin, which were divided into five broad categories: “Han” ( ) for all of the
continental lineages, Paekche, Koguryŏ, Silla, and Imna (J. Mimana). The majority, 163
lineages, traced their descent from the continent, followed by 104 Paekche lineages, 41 from
Koguryŏ, and 9 each from Silla and Imna. The lineages included in this various foreigners
section range from those like the Hata ( ) and Aya ( ), whose arrival in Yamato hundreds of
years earlier was recorded in the Nihon shoki, to those who had crossed over to Yamato after the

228
fall of Paekche and Koguryŏ. It even included recent arrivals from the Tang court who had been
granted designations under Kanmu Tennō. The “various foreigners” section of the Shinsen
shōjiroku cannot be understood as a factual record of all of the lineages in the Yamato realm who
claimed foreign descent. Instead, it must be read as a political document that represents a
compromise between the agendas of the sovereign and the lineages of the realm. Its structure and
contents (both what was included and what was left out) also allow us to consider how the
Yamato court’s worldview and approach to its subjects was changing.
To begin, categorizing lineages that were unambiguously made up of subjects of the
Yamato realm (i.e. included in the registers, in possession of Yamato designations) as “various
foreigners” surely marks a departure from the use of the term “foreign” in the law codes and
early legal commentaries discussed in Chapter 1. Several clauses of the administrative codes do
refer to the presence of “foreign people” ( ) living in the realm who were neither foreign
envoys nor new Yamato subjects, but the Koki commentary quite explicitly states that once
people had gone through the kika process, they became “civilized subjects” ( ).
517
In
other words, the nature of the kika process was that it transformed someone from a foreign or
barbarian person into a non-foreign person or a civilized subject. Put another way, a subject of
Yamato was by definition a person who was within the sovereign’s transformative influence
(kenai) and not a “foreign” or “barbarian” person – using those terms would have implied the
sovereign’s failure to transform a new subject. Of course, becoming a subject did not necessarily
mean immediately losing all association with one’s former state. In his work on designations,
Tanaka demonstrated that while new subjects who had recently gone through the kika process
were often referred to in the eighth-century official chronicles as “a person of X” or “formerly of

517
See discussion in Chapter 1. Ryō no shūge, SZKT 23: 403-404.

229
X,” where “X” was a place like Paekche or the Tang empire. However, those who had been born
in Yamato and received Yamato designations were not associated with their place of origin in
this way. The Shinsen shōjiroku thus reflects a new emphasis on origins as a way of categorizing
the subjects of the realm, and also a new sense that people within the realm who had gone
through the kika process and become subjects were nonetheless permanently “foreign” in some
way.
Another way to consider the significance of the “various foreigners” category is to note
that the simple inclusion of all continental, Paekche, Koguryŏ, Silla and Imna lineages in the
single category of “various foreigners” also marked a shift in the Yamato court’s lexicon.
518

Chapter 1 noted that while there were several distinct but generally interchangeable terms (kegai,
kyōgai, geban) that referred to outsiders or non-subjects, the Koki commentary’s tendency to list
groups of people by name suggested that these were not yet established as catch-all terms that
referred to foreign peoples collectively. In the Shinsen shōjiroku, we can see that with the
emergence of the emphasis on genealogy and tracing descent from an apical ancestor came the
idea that all people who were descended from a foreign apical ancestor, no matter how long ago
or which foreign place that ancestors was from, could be meaningfully grouped into a single
category.
Just as important as noting all of the groups that were included in the “various foreigners”
category is noting those that were excluded. In particular, none of the lineages in this section of
the Shinsen shōjiroku claimed descent from Emishi or Hayato ancestors, although we know that
there were such lineages in the realm. The questions of if and how these groups fit into the

518
Kiley noted the same shift, saying that the Shinsen shōjiroku “reflects an attitude whereby all persons of
acknowledged foreign origin, however thoroughly naturalized in the cultural sense, are equally alien.” “A Note on
Surnames,” 185.

230
category of “foreign,” and what the distinction between the terms “foreign” and “barbarian” (
and ) should be, were discussed in Chapter 1. In the early Koki commentary, we found a
debate about whether or not the Emishi and Hayato were from foreign lands ( ) who could
go through the kika process. The text concluded that the Hayato were not “foreigners” for tax
purposes, because they were already included in registers maintained by the court, but that the
Emishi were and could receive the tax exemptions.
519
In other words, Emishi could go through
the kika process just like people from the Korean peninsula. The absence of Emishi lineages
from the Shinsen shōjiroku suggests that this understanding had shifted, and that the Emishi were
now seen as distinct from lineages from the Korean peninsula and continent, and no longer
included in the category of “foreign.” This conclusion is in line with Ōtaka’s arguments about
the increasingly clear distinction between the terms “foreign” and “barbarian” in the mid- to late-
eighth century.
The particular places of origin claimed by lineages in the “various foreigners” category
are also worth examining because they offer hints at the hierarchies operating within the broader
category. It is not particularly surprising to find that many of the lineages claimed descent from
Paekche and Koguryŏ, given the waves of people who had crossed over to Yamato in the late
seventh century.
520
It is somewhat surprising, however, to find that by far the largest group within
this category were the “Han” or continental lineages, given that there was no comparable large
wave of migration from the continent. Part of the reason for the seeming over-representation of
continental lineages may have been that many of the oldest lineages in the text claimed descent

519
It is worth emphasizing here that the Koki’s concern was less ideological than practical – the question was really
about who should receive the tax exemptions that were granted as part of participating in the kika process, not about
the nature of the category of “foreigners.”
520
Paekche and Koguryŏ made up 44% of the lineages in this category.

231
from the continent. The longer a given lineage had existed in Yamato, the more likely it was to
have numerous junior lines. The first lineage listed, the Uzumasa no Kimi no Sukune ( ), was one of the oldest lineages in the text and also the main line of one of the largest lineage
groups.
521
But there were also more recent status lineages with large groups of junior lines, so
lineage sprawl cannot completely explain the high proportion of lineages that claimed
continental descent.
522
Another possibility is that some of the lineages that claimed ultimate
descent from continental rulers were actually lineages that had arrived in Yamato via one of the
Korean kingdoms, and indeed quite a few records mention both an apical ancestor and an
intermediate ancestor.
523
Even so, these lineages chose to emphasize their descent from the
continent rather than from a more recent ancestor.
Here it is useful to remember Ishimoda Shō’s idea of Yamato as a “small empire” that
distinguished between the “neighboring realm” (Tang), “various foreign” realms (the Korean
peninsula polities), and “aliens” (Emishi and Hayato). While the inclusion of the Tang and the
Korean peninsula lineages in one category is not a perfect match for Ishimoda’s model, the
hierarchy that he outlines is still relevant. The placement of the “various foreigners” section
within the Shinsen shōjiroku makes it clear that the court sought to rank these lineages lower
than both the royal and deity lines in the Yamato. Among the various foreigners, continental
lineages are not only the most numerous, but also are listed first in each geographical section.

521
The Uzumasa no Kimi no Sukune were originally the Hata, but they had been granted new designations. Twelve
other lineages were listed as junior lines of the Uzumasa no Kimi no Sukune, and all therefore joined them in
claiming to ultimately be descended from the First Emperor of the Qin (Qin Shi Huangdi ). The twelve
other lineages were the Hata no Nagakura no Muraji ( ), the Hatahito ( ), the Ōsato no Obito ( ),
and nine different lineages with the Hata no Imiki ( ) designation.
522
For example, the Sugano no Ason ( ), who claimed descent from Paekche, had seven junior lines.
523
In a recent sweeping comparison of surnames in Korean and Japanese history, Guanglin Jin argued that
premodern Korean lineages often claimed descent from continental figures. “A Comparison of the Korean and
Japanese Approaches to Foreign Family Names,” Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia 5 (March 2014): 15–
43.

232
They are followed by Paekche and Koguryŏ lineages, with Silla and Imna lineages following
(and trailing far behind numerically). While there is no clear statement in the memorial or
preface of the text establishing a hierarchy among these places of origin, the consistent ordering
of the lineages and dramatic difference in the numbers of lineages nevertheless suggests a fairly
clear hierarchy.
Delving into the first group of lineages, we find that the “Han” heading did not refer
strictly to the Han dynasty. It was actually a general heading that encompassed a long list of
more specific continental dynasties and territories, ranging from the Zhou dynasty states of Lu
and Yan, to the Qin, Wei, Former and Later Han, Sui, and Tang, among others (see Table 6 for a
list of all of the places of origin cited in the section).
524
The entries under this heading thus reflect
a range of different kinds of genealogies. One group of nine lineages in the Left Capital simply
stated that they were descended from Tang officials, with only one lineage giving the name of
their specific Tang ancestor, a person who had arrived in Yamato in the 760s.
525
In contrast to
this rather minimalist approach, many other lineages followed the pattern of the Uzumasa no
Kimi no Sukune in tracing long lines of descent from various famous and infamous rulers of
continental dynasties. Twenty-five lineages traced their descent from the First Emperor of the
Qin, twenty-two from Emperor Ling of the Han, fifteen from Emperor Wu of Wei ( , also
known as Cao Cao), and fourteen from Emperor Gaozu ( ), the founder of the Han
dynasty.
526
How was it that the descendants of so many illustrious continental rulers had found
their way to Yamato?

524
In contrast, the Paekche, Koguryŏ, Silla, and Imna headings all simply referred to people from those polities,
with some slight variation in the characters.
525
The name of their ancestor was Shin Igaku ( ). The other eight lineages simply said that they were
contemporaries of Shin Igaku without giving the names of the people they were descended from.
526
Emperor Guangwu ( ), who founded the Later Han, was claimed as the ancestor of seven lineages.

233
In his 2008 book on ethnicity in the Tang empire, Marc Abramson discusses the various
strategies employed by people of non-Han ethnicity to transcend limitations based on their
origins, in order to achieve status in Tang society.
527
One key strategy for those who traced their
genealogies to a non-Han ancestor from outside the Tang empire was to claim that their
Table 6: Origins of the Various Foreigner Lineages in the Shinsen shōjiroku
Place of origin Place of origin # of lineages
Paekche 101
Koguryŏ

44
Later Han 33
Qin

30
Wei

24
Han

23
T'ang

13
Wu

12
Imna

9
Silla

6
Zhou

4
Lu

4
-- -- 3
Chang'an

3
Kara

3
Sui

3
Yan

3
Former Han

2
Guangling

2
*Han

1
Chen 1
Hanseong

1
Northern Qi 1

527
Abramson, Ethnic Identity in Tang China, 150.

234
ancestors were royalty or otherwise prominent in their homeland.
528
Abramson also notes that
non-Han people tended to claim descent from the Northern Wei or similar royal lineages because
Sui and Tang historians classified the Northern Wei as a legitimate dynasty. He argues that the
most ambitious non-Han lineages would claim descent from “culture heroes of antiquity” like the
Yellow Emperor. He adds that many of these lineages were models of assimilation, but that this
assimilation did not prevent them from maintaining public identities as non-Han and promoting
the memory of their non-Han origins.
The strategy Abramson describes seems to be strikingly similar to the strategy employed
by Yamato lineages with non-Yamato ancestors both in their petitions for designation changes
and in the genealogies of the Shinsen shōjiroku.
529
While this tendency was particularly
pronounced for the continental lineages, it is also visible throughout the “various foreigners”
section. Rulers of Paekche, Koguryŏ, and even Silla are all cited as ancestors for numerous
lineages. Fifteen lineages, for example, claimed to be descended from King Dongmyeong ( ), the legendary founder of Koguryŏ and ancestor of the founders of Paekche. In this sense,
even as the lineages in this section of the Shinsen shōjiroku were relegated to what was clearly a
lower-ranking category at the court, they actively worked to raise their profiles and establish
genealogies that could potentially boost their status at court. It is also worth noting that claiming
descent from famous rulers and the founders of foreign realms was not only advantageous for the
lineages that sought to secure or improve their status at court, but also for the Yamato court,
which could claim even greater legitimacy by virtue of having incorporated the descendants of
royalty from across the region.

528
Ibid., 153.
529
There are some aberrations – it seems unlikely that a Tang lineage would claim the First Emperor of the Qin as an
ancestor given that he was portrayed as a brutal dictator in the historiography of the time.

235
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we find a large number of “various foreigners”
lineages who claimed ancestors that appear in no other records, either in Yamato or across the
region. Some of these independent lineages are like the Tang lineages mentioned above, who
were perhaps able to rely on the prestige of having recent associations with the Tang and
therefore did not make efforts to submit long or illustrious lineages for the Shinsen shōjiroku
project. Others were lineages that had no established connection to other lineages, suggesting
that they may have been relatively weak lineages that had not (yet) succeeded in participating in
the important political strategy of linking themselves to other, more powerful, groups.
A final group whose position and appearance in the section is indicative of ongoing
changes in the early Heian period are the lineages that claimed Silla as their place of origin. The
extremely low number of lineages that fell into this category – only nine of more than three
hundred – is suspicious, especially given that the official chronicles record numerous groups of
Silla people arriving in Yamato and being settled in various places in the realm. Although
diplomatic relations had long been strained between Yamato and Silla, trade and interaction with
Silla was increasing in the early Heian period. The low number and the placement of the Silla
lineages after the Han, Paekche, and Koguryŏ lineages in the Shinsen shōjiroku suggest that the
status of Yamato subjects of Silla origin was quite low. Part of the reason for this low status may
have been that while the Yamato court could plausibly claim to have absorbed the former royalty
of Paekche and Koguryŏ, doing the same with immigrants from an existing state like Silla was
much more difficult. This pattern reaffirms the idea that the “various foreigners” section of the
Shinsen shōjiroku was designed to emphasize the presence of prestigious foreign lineages that
had submitted to the Yamato sovereign, not to objectively record the existing lineages of the
realm.

236
Conclusion
The Shinsen shōjiroku represents a snapshot of the dynamically changing structures and
administration of the Yamato realm, and in particular, its approach to the many subjects of the
realm who traced their descent to foreign places. That approach had changed dramatically over
the course of the Nara period; and by the early Heian period, the flexibility and permeability of
the borders of the realm was disappearing. Where it had once been clearly possible to go through
the kika process and become a full-fledged subject of Yamato, the Shinsen shōjiroku
demonstrates that there was a new sense that becoming a legal subject of the Yamato realm and
even receiving a Yamato designation were not the same thing as being a Yamato person. What
this chapter has demonstrated is that this shift was less the result of a conscious effort to separate
and denigrate foreign people in Yamato than the result of a long series of incremental policies in
the context of changing domestic and international trends. Finally, while the Shinsen shōjiroku
certainly reflects a new attitude towards foreign subjects, doing so was not the purpose for which
the text was conceived or completed.

237
Conclusion

In 847 CE, a man named Gakkō ( , ?-?) left the Tang empire in direct violation of the
law, and made the dangerous journey to Yamato in hopes of starting a new and better life.
530
He
joined a party of forty-four men traveling with the Buddhist monk Ennin ( , 794‐864), who
was on his return journey after spending almost ten years on the continent. Upon arrival, the
party was welcomed and given accommodations at the official lodge for foreign guests at the
Dazaifu. A month after their arrival, Ennin and five others were summoned and left for the
capital. Although they were given provisions, Gakkō and the rest of the party were otherwise left
to languish in the Dazaifu. Gakkō eventually decided to take matters in his own hands. To
demonstrate his abilities, he wrote an account of Ennin’s journey and submitted it to the court,
strategically appending a description of his family background, education, motivation for writing
the text, and hopes of finding a better life in Japan.
531

Gakkō is not mentioned by name anywhere in Ennin’s famous account of his own
journey, the Record of a Pilgrimage ( ), nor does he appear in any of the
official chronicles or records of the time.
532
His text is thus a rare glimpse at what one “ordinary”
man who came to Yamato was hoping to find. In it, he wrote that although he had loved his
studies from a young age, he was unable to pass the civil service examinations of the Tang court
and therefore struggled to make a living. He added that he traveled to Yamato even though it
meant breaking the laws of his own realm and thus putting himself in significant danger, all

530
Yen Ju-hui, “Jikaku Daishi nyūtō ōhen denki no naka ni mieru tōjin: Gakkō,” paper presented in Furuse
Natsuko’s graduate seminar, Ochanomizu University, July 2014.
531
The full text of Gakkō’s appeal is included in Yen’s recent dissertation (in Chinese): Ju-Hui Yen, “An Exploratory
Study of Sino-Japanese Cultural Communication During the 8th and 9th Centuries: Focus on Bilateral Exchanges of
Personnel, and the Effects on Etiquette and Legislation.” (Ph.D., National Chung Hsing University, 2015), 101-102.
532
Edwin Reischauer translated Ennin’s text into English. See Ennin’s Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China
in Search of the Law, trans. Edwin O. Reischauer (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1955).

238
because he thought he and his talents might be valued there. While Gakkō did not specifically
say that he had come to “submit and be transformed,” it is clear that he thought it possible that he
would be welcomed as a subject and also as an official of the ruler of Nihon. We do not know
what became of Gakkō, although we can guess from his absence in the records that he did not go
on to great fame or fortune. That he felt it necessary to appeal directly to the court makes it clear
that his reception in Yamato did not live up to his hopes and expectations.
The first two chapters of this dissertation established that Gakkō’s expectations were
rooted in historical reality. Chapter 1 examined the worldview embedded in the Japanese legal
codes and commentaries. There I used a comparative approach to reconstruct the official process
of becoming a subject of the Japanese realm. I argued too that the continual implementation of
this process, framed as a “transformation” brought about by the civilizing virtue of the ruler, was
critical to early Japanese sovereigns’ claim to be the ruler of a cosmopolitan realm, and therefore
critical to their legitimacy as well. Chapter 2 used official histories and the Shōsōin monjo to
examine how receiving the grant of a Yamato-style designation from the sovereign came to be an
important marker of belonging for immigrants and their descendants. By tracing the policies
issued by a series of eighth-century rulers, I showed how those monarchs used the process of
granting designations to immigrants and their descendants to legitimize their rule. From the late
seventh through the late eighth centuries, many immigrants to Yamato were able to become both
subjects and officials of the realm; and over time, they came to be integrated into the Yamato
designation system. From his account, it seems likely that Gakkō expected to be able to
participate in the kika process and also thought he had a better chance of making his mark as an
official in Yamato than in Tang officialdom. However, as Chapter 3 argued, things had changed
by the early Heian period. Although the Shinsen shōjiroku was not created in order to contain or

239
suppress lineages that claimed foreign origin, it did reflect an emerging notion that lineages that
claimed foreign descent were permanently distinct from other Yamato lineages.
Gakkō and his fellow travelers were welcomed and given accommodations and
provisions at the official lodge, but they were not (as far as we know) settled into plentiful
provinces and given tax exemptions. His experience – support and accommodations, but no
permanent settlement – was likely characteristic of the time. Over the later eighth and early ninth
centuries, the Yamato court’s policies on how to treat Silla people who arrived in Yamato had
created new categories of outsiders and redefined its approach to outsiders entering the realm.
These changes in policy were shaped by the changing dynamics of the East Asian region, and
particularly by official and unofficial interactions between the two polities of Nihon and Silla.
One of the changes that drove policy changes was simply that there were more people
from Silla entering Yamato in the latter half of the eighth century. A 760 CE entry in the Shoku
Nihongi notes that large numbers of people were arriving from Silla and participating in the kika
process.
533
There is some evidence to support this record – in the fourth month of 761 CE, a
group of 141 people from Silla were settled in Musashi Province, seemingly in accordance with
the ritsuryō regulations.
534
But the evidence for Silla people being settled in the realm dries up
after 761 CE, and Tanaka Fumio argues that many of the Silla people who were arriving were
simply staying in the area around the Dazaifu without going through the kika process.
535

In 774 CE the court issued an edict that on how to treat Silla people entering the realm.
The following is the version of the edict recorded in the Shoku Nihongi:

533
A Shoku Nihongi edict from 760 says that there were many people from Silla going through the kika process in
recent years. SKNG III:327-329 [Tenpyō hōji 3 (760) 9.4].
534
SKNG III:350-351 [Tenpyō hōji 4 (761) 4.28].
535
He notes the use of silver in the region as a sign that there were people participating in regional trade (silver was
no longer used as a currency in Yamato, but it was still used across the East Asia). Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 219-
231.

240
A royal decree was issued to the Dazaifu, saying: “In recent years, foreign people from
Silla are frequently arriving. When asked why, many did not come to submit and be
transformed. They were carried here by the winds, and had no means to go home. [So]
they stay and become our people. What can their true leader [the ruler of Silla] think of
this? From now on, such people shall all be released and sent home with great
compassion. If there are those whose ships have been destroyed and whose provisions
have run out, officials shall investigate the matter and make arrangements for their return.

536

The edict states that many of the Silla people arriving in Yamato had arrived by accident and that
they ended up staying only because they did not have the means to return home. In itself, this is a
somewhat surprising departure from the long Yamato history of using the kika process to
legitimize the sovereign. Here, the edict bluntly acknowledges that the Yamato sovereign’s
virtue and civilizing influence had nothing to do with the arrival of these Silla people, and that
they had no particular interest in becoming subjects of the realm. At the same time, the edict is
carefully worded to maintain the idea that the Yamato sovereign was compassionate and
virtuous. The edict presents the court as having recognized a new category of people in the realm
– shipwrecked people (ryūrai ) – whose misfortune had to be acknowledged and addressed
through compassionate treatment.
537
That treatment included receiving lodgings and provisions,
as well as support in leaving Yamato and returning home.
While parts of the edict are designed to portray this new policy as benevolent, the
reference to Silla people who had ended up becoming “our people” ( ) but whose
relationship with their “true leader” ( ) was in question is telling. This passage suggests that

536
SKNG IV:432-33 [Hōki 5 (774) 5/17].
537
Tanaka Fumio was the first to argue that “shipwrecked people” and “merchants and the like” (discussed below)
were new categories created by the early Heian court. For his full argument, which also international trade in
Chikuzen and the types of Silla people who participated in the trade, see Tanaka, Nihon kodai kokka, 210-255.

241
the real issue was not that there was a previously unrecognized group of Silla people who were
longing to return home, but that there were people from Silla living in Yamato who had not
clearly transferred their allegiance from the ruler of Silla to the Yamato sovereign. Those who
had transferred their allegiance by going through the kika process were not an issue. The
emphasis on the ongoing importance of the kika process is more clearly articulated in the other
extant version of the same 774 CE edict, recorded in the Ruijū sandai kyaku:
A Council of State Directive
The Dazaifu should send shipwrecked Silla people home
Regarding the above, we have received a transmission from the Inner Palace Minister
[Fujiwara no Yoshitsugu] of the tennō’s command: “I have heard that people from Silla
have been arriving, some to submit and be transformed, and some because they were
shipwrecked. Those who were shipwrecked did not come of their own volition. Each time
such people arrive, they should be treated with generosity and sent home. If their ships
have suffered damage, or if they have exhausted their provisions, [the situation] should
be evaluated, repairs made, and provisions for their departure provided. However, if they
are here to submit and be transformed, follow the precedents and inform the appropriate
authorities. From now on, this rule shall stand.
Hōki 5th year, 5th month, 17th day

―

{ }

538

This version of the edict is much more neutral in its articulation of the two tracks for Silla people
in Yamato – one in which they became subjects of the state, and one in which they stayed in
Yamato only temporarily and received support in returning home – but even so, both edicts
clearly outline a category of “shipwrecked people,” which joins other categories like “foreign

538
Ruijū sandai kyaku in SZKT 25:569 [Hōki 5 (774) 5/17]. For an annotated translation into French, see Hérail,
Livres 8 a 20, 566-567.

242
envoys” and “foreign guests,” as a group of people who are given lodging and provisions during
temporary stays in Yamato.
Two incidents in the early Heian period highlight the confusion and misunderstandings
that arose in some subsequent Yamato-Silla interactions. The first incident took place in 811,
when officials on Tsushima reported that three Silla ships carrying “pirates” had arrived, and that
they (the officials) had taken it upon themselves to attack and kill five of the people from the
ships. In the second incident in 813, five ships from Silla arrived in Okija Island. When the
Yamato and Silla people were unable to communicate with each other, violence broke out and it
was only after nine Silla people were killed and over a hundred captured that the Yamato
officials were able to determine that these Silla people had hoped to settle in Yamato. They then
followed the procedure laid out in the 774 edicts and offered the people on the ships the option of
either becoming subjects or returning home.
539
These incidents reflect the uncertainty and distrust
in both official and unofficial Yamato-Silla relations at the time.
Against this background of misunderstanding and conflict, there are also records of
increasing trade with Silla. The first official record of Silla merchants arriving in Yamato
appears in an entry of 814 CE in the Nihon kōki,
540
although it is hard to believe that these were
actually the first merchants from Silla to enter Yamato. In any case, the early Heian period was
marked by an increase in trade between Yamato and Silla even as diplomatic relations were
suspended after the Silla embassy that left Yamato in 780 CE. Batten argues that records of
violent incidents disappear in the 820s because the commercial networks in the region came
under the control of Chang Pogo ( , 787-846). He was originally commissioned by the

539
See Bruce L. Batten’s summary of these incidents in his larger discussion of Yamato-Silla relations, in Gateway
to Japan, 83-84.
540
The entry describes the arrival of thirty-one Silla merchants ( ). See Nihon kōki SZKT 3:128 [Kōnin 5
(814) 10/13] and Nihon kōki, Yakuchū Nihon shiryō, 682-683.

243
Silla ruler to eliminate slavers along the Silla coasts, but then went on to establish a trading
empire in the region. During his life, Chang exercised a measure of control over merchants in the
region and stabilized merchant activity in Yamato, but his assassination in 841 CE triggered a
crisis as groups of his followers clashed with his assassins in Kyushu. Both groups appealed to
the Yamato sovereign for support, and officials struggled to determine the best course of
action.
541

It was in this context, with a clear awareness of the threats posed by ongoing and
unregulated trade with merchants from Silla, that the sovereign, Ninmyō Tennō ( , r. 833-
850 CE), issued another edict on how to manage new arrivals from Silla. His edict of 842 CE
records both the petition from Fujiwara no Mamoru, a Dazaifu official, and the tennō’s response:
A Council of State Directive
Silla people who enter our borders should be sent home.
Regarding the above, Second-level Manager of the Dazaifu, Junior Fourth Rank Upper,
Fujiwara no Ason Mamoru, has memorialized the throne as follows: “Silla has presented
tribute for a long time. However, from the time of Shōmu’s reign [724-749 CE] to the
present reign, the ancient precedents are no longer observed – they constantly harbor
wicked thoughts, offer no gifts, and gather information on our country under the guise of
commerce. I humbly request that their entering our borders be completely
forbidden.” The Minister of the Right [Minamoto no Tokiwa] reported that he had
received the decree of the tennō: “The grace of the sovereign’s virtue extends far and
wide, and [people from] foreign lands submit and are transformed [by it]. To completely
forbid them from entering our borders suggests a lack of humanity. Those who are
shipwrecked should be given provisions and sent home. Merchants and the like who
arrive here with the wind in their sails shall be allowed to sell the goods they have
brought to our subjects and to make a profit. Once they are done, they shall be dismissed
[i.e. sent home]. However, they shall not be installed in the Foreign Envoy's Quarters and
they shall not be allowed to receive provisions.”
Jōwa 9.8.15

541
Batten, Gateway to Japan, 85-87.

244

542

Mamoru describes people from Silla as threats and Silla merchants as undercover spies, so it is
no surprise that he proposes the extreme measure of banning all Silla people from entering the
realm. The Minister of the Right relayed the tennō’s response, which began by reiterating the
basic principles of the kika process. The edict reaffirms the notion that the virtue of the sovereign
extended to faraway lands and brought people to the realm who wished to submit and be
transformed by it. Mamoru is rebuked for suggesting that such people should not be allowed to
enter the realm – his suggestion is said to resemble a “lack in humanity” ( ), quite a serious
accusation in the classics-inflected worldview of the time. The edict went on to outline the policy
for dealing with Silla people arriving in Japan. Shipwrecked people would be sent home with the
appropriate provisions, as the earlier 774 CE edict commanded. Merchants would be allowed to
sell their goods to the population and make a profit, and then they too would be sent home.
Merchants, however, were not to be given accommodations at the official lodge, nor were they
entitled to official provisions of clothing or food.
In this edict, even as the court explicitly upholds the principles of the kika process, it
acknowledges only two categories of Silla people arriving in Japan: the already established
category of “shipwrecked people” and a new category of “merchants and the like” (shōko no
tomogara ). Like the earlier category created in 774 CE, this new category was a
response to changing circumstances, specifically the increase in commercial activity in the
region. Evidently, the court recognized that the number of Silla merchants arriving in the realm

542
Ruijū sandai kyaku in SZKT 25:570 [Jōwa 9 (842) 8/15]. For an annotated translation into French, see Hérail,
Livres 8 a 20, 568-570.

245
meant that it needed to establish a policy for how they should be treated. In doing so, the court
again rejected Mamoru’s approach (perhaps he was something of a straw man in this edict), and
instead stated that merchants were allowed to come to Yamato and sell their goods, but no
support for merchants was to be provided. Both shipwrecked people and merchants were to be
sent home once they had either recovered or concluded their business. The edict of 842 makes no
mention of Silla people who had come to Yamato in order to become Yamato subjects. In other
words, even as the edict upholds the idea that the sovereign had the capacity to attract and
transform new people into subjects, it does not recognize any arriving Silla people as being
eligible to participate in this process.
While this edict focused on people from Silla, Gakkō’s story of 847 CE suggests that the
court’s loss of interest in incorporating new subjects by then extended even to people from the
Tang empire who arrived with the explicit hope of becoming a Yamato subject. By this point,
Yamato had no official relationship with Silla or the Tang empire (which had been in decline for
decades and would collapse in less than a decade); and its only official diplomatic relationship
was with Parhae (J. Bokkai, ). Over the course of the Heian-period, the Yamato court
continued to adjust to changing realities, both domestic and across the region, but the flexibility
it had exhibited in the seventh and eighth centuries in its understanding of who was and who
could become a Yamato subject disappeared. As Yamato sovereigns sought and found new ways
of legitimizing their rule, and as power shifted from sovereigns to regents, retired sovereigns,
and eventually warrior commanders, the kika process lost its potency as a tool to legitimate
rulers. In this dissertation, I have repeatedly argued that Yamato sovereigns did not seek to create
or maintain distinctions between foreign and non-foreign subjects to limit the access that foreign
subjects had to status, rank, and official appointments. Their approach to integrating outsiders

246
was not the result of particularly open-mindedness or altruism, but stemmed from their belief
that the kika process, the grant of Yamato-style designations, and the recording of “various
foreigners” genealogies worked to legitimize their authority. This project will serve as a starting
point for future studies that can engage with the new wave of archaeological work on immigrants
and immigrant communities, and also for studies that will advance this analysis into the mid- and
late-Heian period.

247
Appendix 1: Timeline of Codified Laws in Yamato

604 CE Seventeen Articles issued
645 CE Taika reforms (Nihon shoki record disputed)
668 CE Compilation of the Ōmi Administrative Code (Nihon shoki record disputed)
670 CE Kōgo-year residence unit register compiled
681 CE Compilation of the Asuka Kiyomihara Administrative Code begins
689 CE Asuka Kiyomihara Administrative Code promulgated
690 CE Kōin-year residence unit register compiled
~ 697 CE Compilation of the Taihō Penal and Administrative Codes begins
702 CE Taihō Penal and Administrative Codes promulgated
718 CE Compilation of the Yōrō Penal and Administrative Codes begins
~ 728 CE Order specifying rank of two Doctors of Penal Law in the university
~ 730 CE Law course established in the university
~ 738 CE Koki commentary on the Taihō Administrative Code compiled
757 CE Yōrō Penal and Administrative Codes promulgated
769 CE Compilation of the Revised Penal and Administrative Codes begins
782~806 CE Compilation of the “original” Anaki commentary
787~791 CE Compilation of the Ryō shaku commentary on the Yōrō Administrative codes
787~793 CE Compilation of the Atoki commentary begins (following completion of the Ryō
shaku)
791 CE Revised Penal and Administrative Codes promulgated
797 CE Revised Administrative Code and Regulations compiled and promulgated
812 CE Revised Administrative Code and Regulations abolished
810~824 CE Revision of the Anaki commentary, addition of later interpretations
820 CE Kōnin Regulations and Protocols completed
824~848 CE Sanki commentary compiled
826 CE Compilation of the Ryō no gige official commentary begins
830 CE Kōnin Regulations and Protocols promulgated
834 CE Ryō no gige promulgated
840 CE Kōnin Regulations and Protocols revised and re-promulgated
859~868 CE Ryō no shūge compiled by Koremune no Ason Naomoto
869 CE Jōgan Regulations compiled and promulgated
871 CE Jōgan Protocols compiled and promulgated
908 CE Engi Regulations promulgated
927 CE Engi Protocols completed, submitted to court
967 CE Engi Protocols promulgated

248
Appendix 2: The Commentaries of the Ryō no shūge

The Ryō no shūge , or Collected Commentaries on the Administrative Code, is a
private collection of legal commentaries that were written between the mid-eighth century and
the mid-ninth century. Compiled by Koremune no Ason Naomoto during the
Jōgan period and completed in or before 868 CE (Jōgan 10), the text represents the culmination
of decades of debate over the interpretation and application of both the Taihō and Yōrō codes.
543

While it was a monumental work of legal scholarship, it is important to note that the Ryō no
Shūge is not itself a commentary. Naomoto carefully studied and collected the work of many
previous legal scholars but did not give any new interpretations of his own. It is not clear exactly
how many volumes were in the original text (later sources refer to as many as 50), but 35 are
extant today.
544

Reading Ryō no shūge
The text is organized around the Yōrō administrative code, the full text of which is given
in large font. The collected commentaries follow the word or phrase in the clause on which they
comment and are given in half-size font. Where there is a comment in the Ryō no gige ,

543
The Kamakura-period Honchō shoseki mokuroku lists the Ryō no shūge as 30 scrolls, compiled by
a Naomoto , generally believed to be Koremune no Naomoto. Naomoto had a long career in which he served
under five sovereigns: Seiwa, Yōzei, Kōkō, Uda and Daigo. His original name and title were Hata no Kimi . In
877 CE he moved his registration from Kagawa district in Sanuki Province to the Sixth Avenue area of the Right
Capital. In 883 CE, he and 19 other members of his family were granted the new name and title Koremune no Ason.
See Inoue Mitsusada, Ritsuryō, (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1976), 793.
544
Of these thirty-five volumes, three were not part of the original Ryō no Shūge: volume 1, Laws on Posts and
Ranks; volume 23, number 3, Laws on the Evaluation of Officials; and volume 35, number 5, Laws on Official
Documentation. These sections are known as the Ishitsu ryō no shūge , and are thought to have been
drawn from a separate Heian-period commentary. See Ōtsu Tōru, “Ryō no Shūge to ritsuryō kenkyū,” in Nihon
kodaishi o manabu tame no kambun nyūmon, ed. Ikeda On (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2006), 47-48. Ōtsu’s
chapter in this volume is an excellent introduction to how the Ryō no Shūge is read today.

249
or Commentary on the Administrative Code (discussed below), it is cited first. Citations from
private legal commentaries such as the Koki, Ryō shaku, Atoki, Anaki, Sanki, and more follow.
545

The Ryō no Shūge is an invaluable source in a number of different ways. First and
foremost, it is through the quotations of the original text in the Ryō no Shūge and Ryō no Gige
that scholars have been able to reconstruct both the Yōrō and Taihō codes. Second, the Ryō no
Shūge is an indispensable reference for any scholar working with the early Yamato laws because
it offers clarification and elaboration on the often vague and elliptical terms of the codes. Much
of the collected commentaries focus on defining and discussing particular terms, making the Ryō
no Shūge a kind of dictionary for the Nara and Heian ritsuryō system. Given that the ritsuryō
codes were adapted from continental models, this kind of commentary offers critical insight into
how terms common to both sets of codes were understood and applied in the Yamato context.
The definitions in the commentaries ranges widely from concrete and specific definitions that
clarify laws for officials attempting to apply them effectively, to abstract and conceptual
definitions that draw on Chinese classics to establish general principles (and display the learning
of the commenter, no doubt). The Ryō no Shūge is also an important source for the readings of
many terms and phrases – to give one important example, the Koki commentary on the Laws on
Laws on Funerary Practices and Mourning is the basis for reading the characters as
sumeramikoto.
546

545
Citations of the Ryō no Gige begin with read … and citations from the other commentaries
generally follow the format: read … .
546
The vernacular (zoku ) reading given in the text is . See Ryō no Shūge, “Giseiryō” Shintei zōhō
kokushi taikei (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1974), page 971. Torquil Duthie’s discussion of the adoption of “an entire
vocabulary of sovereignty” by early Yamato rulers repeatedly references the Ryō no Shūge for readings and
definitions. Torquil Duthie, Man’yōshū and the Imperial Imagination in Early Japan (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2014) 89-92.

250
Beyond providing definitions for terms, the Ryō no Shūge also offers insight into how the
clauses of the administrative code were (or were not) applied, and which aspects of the code
were particularly problematic and important to the officials and scholars of the time. Both the
volume and the type of commentary varies widely from clause to clause. As with the definition
of terms, some comments are specific and concrete, adding logistical details, giving case studies,
attempting to reconcile contradictions between clauses, defining how laws could be extended to
cases not included in the original text, and describing the actual practice of the time ( or
). Other comments are concerned with general principles, the theory of law, and
establishing precedents in classical texts.
Commentaries in Ryō no shūge
The Koki is both the oldest commentary on the codes and the only confirmed
commentary on the Taihō codes.
547
The Koki is a particularly precious source in that it allows the
partial reconstruction of the otherwise lost Taihō codes through its quotations of the original text.
The generally accepted date of compilation is in or around 738 CE (Tenpyō 10).
548
There is no
clear consensus on who compiled the text, although several plausible theories have been put
forward. Takikawa Masajirō suggested Yamato no Nagaoka and Yamada no
Shirogane as possible compilers because they were legal scholars known to have been
active around the estimated date of compilation.
549
Aoki Kazuo suggested Hata no Ōmaro may have compiled the text, arguing that the dramatic decrease in the edicts cited by the Koki

547
We know that other commentaries on the Taihō codes existed because the Koki cites alternate theories in its
analysis (marked by the phrase “ ”) but none of these commentaries are extant.
548
For a discussion of the date of the Koki, see Takikawa Masajirō, Nihon hōseishi kenkyū (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1941),
583-584 and Inoue, Ritsuryō, 780.
549
Takikawa, 584-585.

251
in the post-Tenpyō era corresponds to the time that Hata no Ōmaro spent studying abroad in the
Tang empire. In his classic introduction to the commentary, Takikawa outlined four major
characteristics that distinguish the Koki: 1) It is focused on reality and the everyday – 38 of 90
entries in the Ryō no Shūge that cite “current practice” or the “practice of our time” appear in the
Koki, 2) many of its interpretations focus on specific case studies, making it rich in the customs
and language of the time 3) it is “Nihon-style” in that it uses the history and language of the
archipelago as opposed to the continent, and 4) Its language is unpolished and it has a
straightforward style of argumentation.
550
Inoue Mitsusada generally agrees with Takikawa’s
evaluation, but adds that the Koki is a text with “the scent of a classic,” which for Inoue means
that it tends towards the balanced, universal, and objective in its style.
551

The Ryō shaku is the oldest commentary on the Yōrō code. Again, there are various
theories on the exact date of compilation based primarily on analyses of the supplementary
legislation cited in the text. Based on analysis of the supplementary legislation reflected in the
commentary, Mayuzumi Hiromichi argued that the text must have been begun after the sixth
month of 787 CE (Enryaku 6), and completed before the eighth month of 793 CE (Enryaku
14).
552
Inoue Tatsuo refined the estimate by demonstrating that the Ryō shaku was created during
the period before the Settsu Office (Settsu shiki ) was eliminated by an 791 CE Council of
State directive, and that therefore the compilation must have been complete before this time.
553

The Honchō hōke monjo mokuroku , a Heian-period catalogue of legal texts,

550
Takikawa, 585-589.
551
Inoue, Ritsuryō, 781.
552
Mayuzumi Hiromichi, “Ryō shaku no seiritsu nendai ni tsuite,” in Ryō no Shūge shiki no kenkyū, ed. Yoshiyuki
Ibaraki (Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 1997) 329. Inoue Mitsusada put the date of compilation between Enryaku 6 and 12
(787 CE and 791 CE). Inoue, Ritsuryō, 781-782.
553
Inoue Tatsuo, “Ryō shaku wo meguru ni, san no mondai,” in Ryō no Shūge shiki no kenkyū, ed. Yoshiyuki Ibaraki
(Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 1997) 110-112.

252
lists the Ryō shaku as having seven volumes and thirty chapters.
554
Based on references to two
important commentaries on the Spring and Autumn annals brought over from the Tang by Iyobe
no Iemori , Inoue Tatsuo argued that Iyobe was the compiler of the text. Iyobe was
also the relative of one of the compilers of the Taihō code and the father of Yoshimichi no
Sanesada , who received a title as a reward for participating in the compilation of the
Ryō no Gige.
555
While the Ryō shaku was not an official commentary with the force of law like
the later court-ordered Ryō no Gige, it was an authoritative text that provided the basis for many
of the interpretations in the Ryō no Gige. According to Inoue Mitsusada, the major distinguishing
characteristic of this commentary is its tendency to reference Chinese classics as sources for the
etymology and interpretations of various terms.
The Atoki commentary also covers the entire Yōrō codes. While the exact date of
compilation is not known, it is generally thought to have been compiled between 787 CE and
793 CE (Enryaku 6 to 12). Because the Atoki quotes the Ryō shaku but is not quoted by it,
scholars generally assume that the Atoki was compiled after the Ryō shaku was complete. Inoue
argues that the compilation of both commentaries was linked to the Revised Penal and
Administrative Codes implemented in 791 CE and Revised Administrative Code and
Regulations, implemented in 797 CE.
556
Satō Jōjitsu argues that the “ato” in the title of the
commentary indicated the name of the royally recognized lineage to which the compiler

554
The original is: “ ,” followed by a list of the contents of the seven volumes. See Wada
Hidematsu, Honchō shoseki mokuroku kōshō (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1943) 223.
555
Iyobe no Iemori’s obituary detailing his stay in the Tang from Hōki 8 (777 CE) to Hōki 9 (779 CE), can be found
in the Nihon kiryaku, Enryaku 19.10.15.
556
Inoue, 783.

253
belonged: the Ato (or ).
557
In comparison to the Ryō shaku, the Atoki commentary is
simple and practical.
The nature, date, and authorship of the Anaki , another commentary on the Yōrō
code, has been debated for many years. There are two major sides to the debate over this
commentary: those who put its compilation in the Enryaku era, and those who put it in the
Kōnin-Tenchō eras. There is also a divide between scholars who view it as a single text compiled
in either the Enryaku or the Kōnin era, and those who see it as a layered text compiled over a
longer time span. Nakajima Hiroko, whose article on the Anaki is widely considered
authoritative, supports the theory that there was an earlier text – the “original Anaki” (gen Anaki
) – compiled in the Enryaku era, and that commentary and citations were added to this
original before it was cited in the Ryō no shūge.
558
While many scholars have argued that one
person, Anō no Uchihito , compiled the original and later added to his own work,
Nakajima argues that the author of the final text was actually a later member of the Anō
lineage.
559
This is a persuasive argument, given that the Anō lineage produced a number of
prominent legal scholars over several generations, and that a section of the Anaki commentary on
the Laws on Residence Units cites both the Anaki and an Ana doctor ( ), with each citation
giving essentially the same interpretation. Nakajima argues that if both texts were written by the

557
Inoue notes that a number of members of the Ato lineage were active intellectuals of the time: the lay name of the
Kōfukuji monk Zenshu was Ato no Muraji, Kūkai’s mother was from the Ato lineage and Kūkai studied with Ato no
Sukune Ōtari before entering the university, and an Ato no Sukune became a lecturer at
the university in Hōki 3 (772CE) and Enryaku 1 (782 CE). See Inoue, 783.
558
See Nakajima’s article for a full historiography of this debate. Nakajima also outlines the major methods for
determining the dates of these commentaries: analyzing vocabulary for official posts (changes over time were
recorded in the chronicles), references to revised and eliminated kyaku, quotation in other commentaries, and
considerations of the likely authors. See Nakajima Hiroko, “Ryō no Shūge ‘Anaki’ no seiritsu nendai o megutte,”
Shintō Shūkyō 153 (December 1993): 46–69.
559
Nakajima points to an Anaki commentary on a section of the Laws on Residence Units in which both the Anaki
and an Ana doctor ( ) are cited, with each citation giving essentially the same interpretation. She argues that if
both texts were written by the same person, there would be no need to cite the same opinion twice.

254
same person, there would be no need to cite the same opinion twice. Inoue Mitsusada describes
the style and content of the Anaki as “much more tedious, trivial, and excessively detailed than
other commentaries.”
560

The Sanki is also cited frequently in the Ryō no Shūge and was likely compiled
between the Tenchō to Jōwa eras (824 CE – 848 CE). The majority of the citations from the
Sanki concern the Laws on Appointments to Offices and Posts, Laws on Residence Units, and
Laws on the Evaluation of Officials, and it seems that this commentary did not address the entire
Yōrō code. The format of the citations from the Sanki in the Ryō no Shūge are more varied than
for other commentaries, which suggests the possibility of multiple “San” texts or authors.
561

Sanuki Province (Sanuki no kuni ) was known for producing the scholars who dominated
the legal world of the early Heian period – the compiler of the Ryō no shūge, Koremune no Ason
Naomoto, was originally from Sanuki. Although Inoue Mitsusada favored the idea that a single
scholar, Sanuki no Naganao , had compiled the Sanki, later scholars have argued that a
group of Sanuki legal scholars, likely led by Naganao, compiled the text. The Sanki is cited
directly, in quotations from the text, and indirectly, as embedded quotes in citations of other
commentaries. In style, the Sanki is closest to the Anaki, with a tendency to be long-winded and
to refer to the penal codes. Inoue argues that the Sanki is clearly the work of a legal scholar
rather than a practical official, and also that it represents a trend towards commentaries that were
more concerned with academic legal debates than applying laws.

560
Inoue, 784.
561
Citations range from the usual “according to the San[ki]” to “the Sanki says” , “according to the
San[ki] theory” , or “according to the San[ki] suggestion” , and “according to the San professor” .

255
Another frequent citation in the Ryō no shūge are the shuki or “notes in
vermillion.”
562
These were annotations written in vermillion ink on the manuscripts of
commentaries such as the Atoki and Anaki. The dating and authorship of these notes are unclear,
but they were obviously composed after the texts on which they were written, and it is thought
that they were added after the completion of the Sanki.
The Ryō no gige is unique in that it is the only official commentary on the Yōrō
administrative code, as well as the only commentary to have the force of law once promulgated.
Ordered by Seiwa Tennō in Tenchō 3 (826 CE), the text was meant to address confusion about
the laws. The Minister of the Right, Kiyohara no Natsuno , led the committee of
compilers which included both legal scholars such as Okihara no Miniku and Sanuki
no Naganao , and well-known literature scholars such as Sugawara Kiyokimi and Ono no Takamura .
563
The ten-volume commentary was completed and presented
to the throne in the twelfth month of 833 CE and promulgated in the twelfth month of the
following year.
564
Unlike the other Ryō no shūge commentaries, which often give interpretations
in a question-answer form, the Ryō no gige tends to give definitive definitions and
interpretations. Inoue argues that while the Ryō no gige was a major accomplishment in that it
unified a variety of conflicting interpretations, it also revealed a growing distance between legal
commentaries and social reality.

562
Some earlier scholars argued that these might have been an independent commentary, but most scholars today
agree that they were likely notes added to one of the other commentaries in vermillion ink.
563
There were a total of twelve members of the committee at the time of completion.
564
Unfortunately, of the original ten volumes only seven are extant.

256

Appendix 3: Preface to the Newly Compiled Record of Designations
565

This is the preface to volume one. It is not included with the index held by the
Council of State, and so has been included with this volume. Also, the text of the
Record of Designations has been excerpted and annotated in this volume. This text
was created unofficially in order to make things extremely easy for everyone.

I have heard that the peak of the Age of the Gods was when the Heavenly Grandson descended
to So and extended his influence to the west, but the written records tell us nothing.
566
In the year
that Jinmu began his reign and undertook the eastern campaign, the people had gradually
multiplied and chieftains had risen among them. But when the heavenly sword was granted [to
Jinmu] and the divine bird flew down,
567
the [opposing] leaders scattered their troops like the
stars and the rebels vanished like the mist. Accepting the heavenly decree, he gloriously ruled the
central lands. The ruler, ministers, and people were all aligned, and there was peace in the
realm.
568
[Jinmu] cultivated virtue and considered merit in issuing orders about which lineages
would receive land. It was at this time that the provincial chieftains (kuni no miyatsuko) and the
county chiefs (agata nushi) first took their names. Suinin reigned through ever-renewed favors
and impartial behavior, as the designations were gradually clarified. Also at this time, Imna [J.

565
Throughout this translation, I have relied on the notes and analysis in Saeki Arikiyo’s annotated version of the
text. Saeki Arikiyo, Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: Kōshōhen I (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1981), 121-171. For
Saeki’s version of the original text with notes on the differences in characters used in various manuscripts see
Shinsen shōjiroku no kenkyū: Honbunhen (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1981), 144-148.
566
The Heavenly Grandson is Ninigi, whose descent from heaven to the peak of Takachiho in So in Hiuga is
recorded in the Nihon shoki. The record tells us nothing in the sense that there was no year-by-year record of his
reign.
567
These episodes are mentioned in both the Nihon shoki and the Kojiki. NHSK I:194-197 [Jinmu Bogo (55
th
year of
the sexagenary cycle) 6/23]; Aston, Nihongi, I:114-117; and NHSK I:208-211 [Jinmu Bogo (55
th
year of the
sexagenary cycle) 12/4]; Aston, Nihongi, I:126-128. Kojiki SNKZ 1:16-17 and Gustav Heldt, trans. The Kojiki: An
Account of Ancient Matters, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 1.
568
The original phrase draws a parallel between the ruler, ministers, and people of the realm and three stars of the
Big Dipper (santai).

257
Mimana] approached [and submitted] and Silla sent gifts. After that, there were no foreigners
that did not revere his virtue and wish to approach [his realm]. Granting designations out of
affection for those from far away was a hallmark of this time. During Ingyo’s reign, the myriad
designations were in disarray. A royal order was issued saying that people would have to swear
divine oaths that would be tested with [trials by] boiling water.
569
Those who spoke the truth
would be unaffected, and those who dared to lie would be injured. From that time on, the
designations were naturally decided, there were no more imposters, and the flow of the Wei and
Jin rivers was distinct.
570
During the time that Kōgyoku held the mirror, the provincial records
were all burned.
571
The young and weak were lost in proving their origins, while the cunning and
powerful redoubled their lies. When Tenji Tennō was the Crown Prince, Fune no Fubito Esaka
presented the charred remains of the records. In the Kōgo year [670 CE], residence unit registers
were compiled and the designation of each subject was perfectly suited to them.
572
From this time
on without interruption, succeeding sovereigns made changes and corrections according to the
[needs of the] times. During the Shōhō era [749-757 CE], foreign subjects received an edict
granting them [the designations] they requested due to the deep love and affection of the
sovereign [Kōken Tennō]. In the end, the way that old designations and new designations were
written became indistinguishable, and whether these lineages followed foreign customs or
Yamato customs was in doubt. Common people everywhere connected themselves to branches

569
This episode in Ingyō’s reign was discussed in Chapter 2. See NHSK I:437-439 [Ingyō 4/9/9]; Aston, Nihongi,
I:316.
570
In other words, the rivers ran in their proper courses. The Wei River is the largest tributary of the Yellow River,
and the Jing River is one of its tributaries.
571
The so-called Isshi Incident (isshi no hen ) in which Nakatomi no Kamatari and Prince Naka no Ōe
assassinated Soga no Iruka and Soga no Emishi burned a number of records before being executed. See NHSK
II:263-266 [Kōgyoku 4 (645) 6/12]; Aston, Nihongi, II:191-194.
572
You could also read this sentence as saying more specifically that the royally-recognized lineage (uji) and
royally-granted title (kabane) of each subject suited them perfectly, but given that only elite subjects of the realm
held these types of designations, I have chosen the broader interpretation of the term that includes all subjects.

258
of the nobility, and foreign guests from the Korean peninsula [lit. the Three Kan] called
themselves the descendants of Yamato deities. As time passes and people have passed on, those
who can speak knowledgeably [of these matters] are rare. At the end of the [Tenpyō] Shōhō era
[757-765 CE],
573
these disputes became even more frequent. As a result, eminent scholars were
gathered and made to compile a record of lineages. Before their draft was half completed, they
met with difficult times.
574
The various scholars were disbanded, and they stopped without
completing the work. Bright Sage and successor to the line of living deities, Iyaterasu [i.e.
Kanmu Tennō], was extremely wise from birth.
575
His character was naturally benevolent, his
majesty extended to the horizon, and his virtue shone to the edges of the new moon. He put an
end to the smoke signals, abolished the barriers, and unified the realm.
576
His careful
consideration extended to all the various things, and he was zealous in rectifying names. He
handed down an order and caused the lineage records to be examined and compiled. However,
while the draft was not yet complete,
577
the phoenix litter ascended into the distance [i.e. Kanmu
Tennō died]. The Heavenly Court [of the current sovereign, Saga Tennō], of unsurpassed
wisdom, has inherited and carried on the work from before. Being of great knowledge and
wisdom, he assumed the throne and conveyed his affection through his care for the future. He
issued a royal edict to Prince Manda, who is Minister of Central Affairs and of the fourth

573
The text simply says “at the end of the Shōhō era” but Saeki gives a more specific year – Tenpyō shōhō 5 (761
CE) – based on a corroborating entry in the Nakatomi-shi keizu. See Saeki, Kōshōhen I:146-147.
574
Specifically, Fujiwara no Nakamaro’s revolt and the dethronement of Junnin Tennō.
575
Saeki notes that Kanmu Tennō is referred to as ‘Akitsu hitsugi iyaterasu no sumeramikoto’ in the Nihon kōki. See
Saeki, Kōshōhen I:147-150.
576
Literally “axles and characters were made one.” According to Saeki, this phrase is a reference to a passage in the
Zhongyong (The Doctrine of the Mean ), one of the famous “Four Books” of Confucianism. The original reads:
“In the present realm, carriages have the same axle-widths [and] documents are written with the same characters”
( ). English from Charles Muller, “The Doctrine of the Mean,” on his official website, accessed
June 15, 2019, http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/docofmean.html.
577
The term used here is “yellow-cover,” according to Saeki a reference to a particular type of volume covered in
light yellow cloth also referenced in the Book of Sui. See Saeki, Kōshōhen I:147-150.

259
princely rank, as well as the Minister of the Right, junior second rank cum Mentor to the Crown
Prince (posted below his rank),
578
Fujiwara no Ason Sonohito, Council of State Advisor, senior
fourth rank lower, cum Commander of the Right Gate Guards (PBR) and Governor of Ōmi,
Fujiwara no Ason Otsugu, senior fifth rank lower Director of the Bureau of Yinyang (PBR), Abe
no Ason Sanekatsu,
579
junior fifth rank upper Governor of Owari (PBR) Minamoto no Ason
Otohira, and junior fifth rank upper Senior Secretary of the Council of State (PBR) cum Second-
level Manager of Inaba Province, Kamitsuke no Ason Hidehito to cherish the intentions of the
past by expanding this text, opening the carefully stored works in the archives, and investigating
the documents of the various royally recognized lineages fully. They investigated all of the
ancient records, and expertly reviewed the old histories. Upon investigating, they found that the
sentences contradicted [each other] and the words were unclear [lit. walked with no sound], and
characters used semantically and phonetically were mixed together. Even if they reconciled one
thing, it would only lead to a new contradiction. If they put both the old and new together, they
clashed. Many of the newly submitted lineage records differ from past records or they entangle
two royally recognized lineages and merge them under one ancestor. There are those who claim
not to know their origin and make absurd mistakes in their genealogy, and those who lost [track]
of their own ancestors and mistakenly insert themselves into another royally recognized lineage.
Others cunningly insert themselves into royally recognized lineages by taking that ancestor for
their own. New and old are in disarray and it is not easy to sort things out [lit. subdue the
barbarians]. The various mistake cannot even be counted. As a result, even though they wished
to complete the task quickly, it has now taken a long time and they have yet to finish half of the

578
As this phrase is quite cumbersome, I will abbreviate it to “PBR” for “posted below rank” in the following
section.
579
Saeki reads this name Sanekatsu ( ) but it could also be read Manekatsu or Makatsu.

260
lineage records of the region around the capital.
580
They are taking those that have been
submitted and sorting them. The three categories are based on origins and the three types are
based on following the traces of the lineages as they divide. The descendants of the heavenly and
earthly deities are called “deity lines” (shinbetsu ), while those of the tennō and princes and
princesses of the royal blood are called “royal lines” (kōbetsu ), and the clans of the
continent and the Korean peninsula are called “various foreigners” (shoban ).
581
The three
categories [of lineages] are the result of dividing similar and different and putting older and
newer in order. Lineages that have an apical ancestor, whether they have many branches or
founded an independent line, are called “origin lines.” Those [whose connection to an apical
ancestor] is recorded and appears in both the ancient records and the lineage records, as well as
those [whose connection to an apical ancestor] is in the ancient records but omitted from the
lineage records, and those [whose connection to an apical ancestor] is in the lineage records but
missing from the ancient records are called “descendants of the same ancestor.” Those who say
their lineage of origin is omitted from the ancient records and who correctly identify an ancestor
but cannot overcome the uncertainties about the circumstances are called “descendant lines.” The
three types [of entries] are the result of distinguishing between near and far and representing
close and distant relationships. They say nothing is perfect – even a one-sun jewel can have a
blemish and a one-shaku tree trunk can have knots.
582
How much more is this the case in trying to
know any part of the past! As a result, even if the order of the ancestors does not match up and

580
The original says they wished to finish in a “few days” but that it has now taken “ten years.” Finishing in a few
days would hardly have been possible, and it is not exactly clear what they could mean by “ten years” – it had been
more than ten years since Kanmu’s initial order, and less than ten years since Saga revived the project. Therefore, I
have translated the phrase simply as “a long time.”
581
Literally, the “Great Han and the Three Kan” ( ).
582
Sun and shaku are both units of measurement – the point here is that even small jewels and small trees can have
flaws or be imperfect. A modern sun is approximately 3 cm, a modern shaku approximately 30 cm.

261
the number of generations is occasionally mistaken, they have debated and made corrections
such that there are no major errors. The mahito are the highest of the royal lines.
583
Those from
the capital region were gathered and made into one volume, beginning with the head of the royal
lines [i.e. the mahito lineages are listed first]. The “undecided” are the various royally recognized
lineages that are not yet clear. They are all gathered in one volume and attached to the end of the
index of the various foreigners. Furthermore, if there are designations left out of the lineage
records that appear in the ancient records, the ancient record should be copied and attached [to
the lineage record]. When the lineage record differs from the ancient record, the ancient record
was used as the basis for revisions. Among the current drafts [i.e. the submitted lineage records]
there are those that cite ancient records as proof. Even if there were contradictions in these texts,
they have not all been revised. This is because the texts exist and are still able to convey
meaning.
584
The royally recognized lineages of the capital region include most of the royally
recognized lineages of the various provinces, but not necessarily all of them. We received the
royal order and have humbly applied ourselves to the investigation, gathering the statements of
many people and sifting the pebbles to find the gold. We have cut the troublesome disorder out
of the old records, and adopted the core parts that are consistent with our revisions. We have left
the hearsay out of the new, and used those parts that blend in with what has been passed down
from the past. This text is simple and concise, as easy to know as the back of your hand – it will
serve as a model of clarity. Beginning with Jinmu, it ends with Kōnin. We have sought the old
and taken note of the new and our task is nearly complete. Altogether, there are 1182 royally

583
Mahito was the highest of the eight royally-granted titles (kabane) established by Tenmu Tennō. Saeki argues that
this included the descendants of Ōjin’s son (known as the Okinaga no Mahito) as well as royal descendants of rulers
from Keitai on. See Saeki, Kōshōhen I:160.
584
Here the compilers are referencing a passage in the Analects in which Confucius is quoted as saying, “It is
enough that the language one uses gets the point across” ( ). English from D.C. Lau, trans. The Analects
(Penguin Books, 1979), 137.

262
recognized lineages. They make up a total of thirty volumes and have been divided into three
sections. The text has been given the title “The Newly Compiled Record of Designations.”
Though it is not a text for pleasure reading and cannot be enjoyed like texts carved into
gemstones,
585
it is truly concerned with the core of human relationships, making it a tool for
correcting the realm.
586
However, there are still unsubmitted [lineage records] from the capital
region, as well as [lineage records] that have been submitted from various provinces. To
investigate all of these at once would be difficult so they have been omitted. The index of the
various designations [recorded here] is attached as a separate volume.

585
In other words, it is not for pleasure, nor is it a decorative object.
586
The term used here is inkatsu, a reference to a type of tool called a tamegi that was used to straighten wood or
bamboo. The curved piece of wood or bamboo is first heated and then placed in the device.

263

587

587
The original text given here is based on Saeki’s, but some characters are given in more modern forms based on
Saeki’s notes. The kaeriten here are Saeki’s as well.

264

265
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract The fall of the Korean kingdoms of Paekche and Koguryŏ in 660 and 668 CE caused waves of immigration to the Japanese archipelago. Less than two centuries later, an official court record shows that almost one third of Japanese court lineages described themselves as being of foreign origin. In recent years, a number of scholars have brought attention to critical contributions made by immigrants to the formation of the early Japanese realm, but the fundamental assumption of these studies is still that Yamato rulers and their court consistently sought to keep immigrants distinct from and under the control of a native elite. One of the initial goals of this project was to challenge the idea of a clear immigrant-native dichotomy by identifying the categories that were meaningful to the people of the time. In considering if and how immigrants and their descendants came to be considered subjects of Yamato, I trace the series of systems that Yamato sovereigns relied on in configuring their subjects. In doing so, I offer a new understanding of what it meant to be a Yamato subject and how that status changed over the course of the seventh through ninth centuries. ❧ My dissertation consists of three chapters, with an introduction, and conclusion. The introduction establishes the goals of the study, reviews existing scholarship in both English and Japanese, addresses key terms and methodologies, and presents a brief overview of immigration to the Japanese archipelago before the formation of the Yamato realm in the seventh century. ❧ Chapter 1, “Submit and Be Transformed: Immigrants and Immigration in the Ritsuryō Codes,” begins with an overview of codified law on the continent and in Yamato. I emphasize the ongoing process of developing, expanding, and interpreting the law codes in Yamato, and show that this process continued well into the Heian period. I then consider the worldview embedded in the Yamato legal codes and commentaries, with particular attention to the categories of people the codes created. I argue that the continual implementation of this process, framed as a “transformation” effected by the civilizing virtue of the ruler, was critical to Yamato’s self-declared status as a cosmopolitan realm and therefore to the legitimacy of the ruler. A relatively small handful of clauses in the Yōrō codes define the process of becoming a Yamato subject—known as the kika process—and I translate and analyze these clauses. Finally, I consider the implementation of these clauses as reflected in the official histories of the realm and how the pattern of extending privileges to new subjects reflected the importance of the kika process in legitimizing Yamato sovereigns’ authority. ❧ In Chapter 2, “What’s in a Name? Becoming a Subject of the Yamato Sovereign in the Eighth Century,” I use official court records to examine the development of eighth-century court policy on granting names and titles to immigrants and their descendants. Over the course of the eighth century, receiving the grant of a Yamato-style name and title from the sovereign became an important marker of belonging and assimilation. A number of scholars have argued that the Yamato court attempted to use these titles to systematically exclude immigrants and their descendants from high rank or office. Drawing on a database of over ten thousand recorded name and title changes from the period, I demonstrate that this is not the case. ❧ In Chapter 3, “Our Customs not Theirs: The Shinsen shōjiroku and the Early Heian Period,” I analyze the Shinsen shōjiroku, an official court genealogy completed in the early ninth century that divided the elite families of the capital and its environs into three categories: royal lines, deity lines, and various foreigners. I begin by considering the history of genealogies in the Yamato court, and then examine Tang court genealogies and early Yamato efforts to create similar comprehensive court genealogies. I then consider the Shinsen shōjiroku in the context of the reigns of Kanmu, Heizei, and Saga, with attention to how the project changed from Kanmu’s initial order to the completion of the text under Saga. I discuss the contents of the text, and evaluate the major theories about why it was created. I acknowledge that the Shinsen shōjiroku reflects a new official attitude towards foreign people and their potential for transformation, but also note the range of strategies employed by lineages in the “various foreigners” category to establish prestigious ancestors and thereby enhance their status at the Yamato court. ❧ The conclusion considers the Heian-period shift in the Yamato court, and examines the legacy of the ritsuryō realm. In particular, I examine an early ninth-century edict in which the sovereign and Council of State simultaneously upheld the principle of the kika process while also signaling a shift away from implementing the process. The edict articulated two new categories into which all outsiders entering the realm now fell—merchants and shipwrecked people. Both were understood to be inherently categories of people whose stay in Yamato was temporary, and this shift reflects a wider change in the Yamato realm’s attitude towards the outside world and new people arriving in Yamato.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kanagawa, Nadia (author)

Core Title Making the realm, transforming the people: foreign subjects in seventh- through ninth-century Japan

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publication Date 12/06/2019

Defense Date 09/09/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag designation,Genealogy,Heian,Immigrants,Japan,Kanmu,Kōken-Shōtoku,Law,Nara,OAI-PMH Harvest,ritsuryō,Shōmu

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Piggott, Joan (committee chair), Birge, Bettine (committee member), Meeks, Lori (committee member)

Creator Email nadia.kanagawa@gmail.com,nkanagaw@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-246416

Unique identifier UC11673427

Identifier etd-KanagawaNa-8015.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-246416 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-KanagawaNa-8015.pdf

Dmrecord 246416

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Kanagawa, Nadia

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA