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China's Japan

Pharyngula 2021-09-13

According to this website of stars with the surname Chu 楚, Sara Chu was born in Japan, China:

Chǔ Jǐn (Sara Chu), shēngrì:  1974 nián 10 yuè 29 rì (xīngqí'èr), chūshēng dì: Zhōngguó Rìběn, xīngzuò: Tiānxiēzuò

楚谨(Sara Chu)，生日：1974年10月29日(星期二)，出生地： 中国日本，星座：天蝎座

Chu Jin (Sara Chu), birthday: October 29, 1974 (Tuesday), place of birth:  Japan, China, constellation: Scorpio

I've never heard of Sara Chu, and I've never heard of a place in China called "Japan", but it's possible that I missed both of them.

The use of the formulation "China's X", where X is a place name, to lay claim to territories, some of which are contested, is ubiquitous.  See the first item in the bibliography below.

A respondent to a question on Quora about whether Korea and Japan were ever part of China, Naoya Yamaguchi, answers as follows:

The third chief General, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, of the Muromachi dynasty, had the status of the king of Japan (日本国王) in foreign affairs, the status of a Chinese regional official subordinate to the Chinese emperor and the status of the general in chief serving the Japanese emperor.

And then there is the famous "King of Na" (I wonder about this — see below for detailed discussion) gold seal:

The King of Na gold seal (Japanese: 漢委奴国王印) is a solid gold seal discovered in the year 1784 on Shikanoshima Island in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The seal is designated as a National Treasure of Japan. The seal is believed to have been cast in China and bestowed by Emperor Guangwu of Han upon a diplomatic official (envoy) visiting from Japan in the year 57 AD. The five Chinese characters appearing on the seal identify it as the seal of the King of Na state of Wa (Japan), vassal state of the Han Dynasty. The seal is currently in the collection of the Fukuoka City Museum in Fukuoka, Japan.

(source)

The seal has been judged to be the one described in the Book of the Later Han, a Chinese chronicle of the history of the Eastern Han Dynasty. According to the chronicle, the Chinese Emperor Guangwu conferred the seal on a diplomatic official visiting from Japan.

Contemporary description of conferral

The following is the original Chinese text from the chronicle:

建武中元二年，倭奴國奉貢朝賀，使人自稱大夫，倭國之極南界也。光武賜以印綬。

This passage can be translated into English as:

"In the 2nd year of the jianwu zhongyuan reign period [AD 57], the Na state of Wa sent an envoy with tribute. The envoy introduced himself as a high official. The state lies in the far south of Wa. [Emperor] Guangwu bestowed on him a seal with a tassel."

During the Han Dynasty, similar seals were bestowed on other regional sovereigns, in an attempt by the dynasty to bring these sovereigns into the Han ruling order.

(source)

I don't think I've ever seen an exacting interpretation of the five characters on the base of the seal, at least not one that is satisfying to me, though there surely must be detailed Sinological and Japanological exegeses.  Here's what Wikipedia has:

The five characters engraved on the seal are (in the order in which they are to be read):

漢委奴國王

The meanings of these characters (in the context of this seal) are: "Han" (referring to the Han Dynasty of China), "Wa" (an ancient name for Japan), "Na" (an ancient kingdom / state within Japan), "state / country", and "ruler". The last two characters, when combined, mean "king / sovereign". Altogether, the meaning of the seal inscription is: "(seal of) the King of the Na state of the Wa [vassal?] of the Han Dynasty".

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That doesn't sound very precise or convincing.  Hoping to elicit a more rigorous reading from Japanese specialists, I will go over the five characters, one at a time, but focusing on the two that are most problematic. The pronunciations immediately following the characters and separated by a slash are respectively Modern Standard Mandarin and Modern Standard Japanese:

漢 Hàn / Kan    name of Chinese dynasty (202 BC–220 AD)

委 wěi / i    commission; appoint; entrust; depute   

Judging from the record in the Book of the Later Han quoted above and in other sources, this would appear to be equivalent to:

倭 Wō / Wa, Yamato    name for early Japan

But the Book of the Later Han dates to the 5th century AD, whereas the gold seal is from the year 57 AD, so we need to take seriously the possibility that 委 in the engraving on the seal has its primary meaning, especially since it constitutes hard, material evidence.

奴 nú / nu    has a number of different pronunciations and meanings in later stages of Japanese, but the early meanings of the Sinitic morpheme that would be relevant for the time of the seal are "servant; slave").  Although most modern sources seem to be taking 奴國 as the name of a country, hence "Na Kingdom, aside from this seal, what other 1st or 2nd century AD source provides evidence for the existence of a "Na kingdom" in Japan?  In the Records of the Wei (Wèi zhì 魏志), ca. 297 AD, there are references to a Núguó 奴國 (lit. "slave country"), J. Nakoku 奴国, and even a Gǒunúguó 狗奴國 (lit. "dog slave country"), Japanese Kunakoku, in the Japanese archipelago.

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Here are relevant early pronunciations:  Old Japanese dwo; Late Han na; Early Middle Sinitic nuo; Late Middle Sinitic ndɔ; Go-on nu; Kan-on do; Nom no, nó; Sino-Vietnamese nô; Sino-Korean now

From John R. Bentley, ABC Dictionary of Ancient Japanese Phonograms (Honolulu:  University of Hawaii Press, 2016), p. 53.  See also Victor H. Mair, ABC Dictionary of Sino-Japanese Readings (Honolulu:  University of Hawaii Press, 2016), p. 108.

國 guó / koku, kuni    country; kingdom

王 wáng / ō    prince; king

Historical context of the "King of Na" gold seal:

The first mention of the Japanese archipelago was in the Chinese historic text Book of Later Han, in the year 57, in which it was noted that the Emperor of the Han dynasty gave a golden seal to Wa (Japan). The King of Na gold seal was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the eighteenth century. From then on Japan was repeatedly recorded in Chinese historical texts, at first sporadically, but eventually continuously as Japan matured into a notable power in the region.

There is a Chinese tradition that the first Chinese Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, sent several hundred people to Japan to search for medicines of immortality. During the third century, Chinese travelers reported that inhabitants of Japan claimed ancestry from Wu Taibo, a king of the Wu state (located in modern Jiangsu and Zhejiang) during the Warring States era. They recorded examples of Wu traditions including ritual teeth-pulling, tattooing and carrying babies on backs. Other records at the time show that Japan already had the same customs recognized today. These include clapping during prayers, eating from wooden trays and eating raw fish (also a traditional custom of Jiangsu and Zhejiang before pollution made this impractical). Kofun era traditions appear in the records as the ancient Japanese built earthen mound tombs.

The first Japanese personage mentioned by the Wei Zhi (Records of Wei) is Himiko, the female shaman leader of a country with hundreds of states called Yamataikoku. Modern historical linguists believe Yamatai was actually pronounced Yamato.

(source)

China's Japan or Japan, China — even less likely than for Vietnam to become part of China, despite the Central Kingdom trying for millennia to make that a reality.

 

Selected readings

 

[Thanks to Tom Davidson]