This episode we take a brief departure from the Japanese archipelago and take a look at what was happening on the continent.  This is the formation of the states we would later come to know as China and Korea, though they aren't nearly so unified just yet.  Over on the mainland, the development of rice and various metal technologies will create changes that will eventually flow over to the archipelago.  We'll take a look at archaeological as well as historical evidence for this period.

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-6

Rough Transcript

(Auto-transcription by listener, Zach)

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 6, Emperor Horse Crupper and Other Continental Developments. Today, we are going to take a trip beyond the archipelago and briefly cover what's been going on with the Asian mainland. Every once in a while it is going to be important to check in on what is going on across the Japan Sea, since despite its nature as an island, Japan was regularly influenced by what was happening over there. Too often we try to take history in isolation of the events going on elsewhere, but that would be a mistake, and by the end of the episode I hope you will understand and see the chain we are building here. Oh, and I would be remiss in not mentioning that, as this is a Japanese history podcast, please don't expect an in-depth discussion of Chinese or Korean history. While I will do my best to provide as accurate an accounting as I can, most of our sources are questionable before the 9th century BCE, and there is still a lot of discussion over just how the various archaeological assemblages from before this period relate to the dynasties that are mentioned in the later histories. Also, we are going to focus on the northeast. You see, despite what it may seem like, China is a highly complex and diverse region, with many cultures, but most of that is out of scope for this discussion. Our goal today is to look at some of the developments that would eventually impact the archipelago and get an introduction to some background for later, as some of our first historical references to the islands would come from the mainland. And that brings up one more thing that we should address here. Just what are our sources, and how much can we rely on them for accurate information? Often when we think about any source touching on history, we tend to view it through a modern lens. Specifically, we tend to view it through our own understanding of what the field of "history" is trying to do. Our assumption is that it is an academic and well-researched attempt to provide us the facts of what happened, and this is something we concern ourselves with a lot. Much of academic debate seems to revolve around whether or not we get our facts right, and we also tend to view this in that very black and white tone. Our facts are right, or they are wrong. That's it. We also tend to take the view that history is somehow "known" to us today, as if there were people constantly chronicling the facts of the human story throughout time, or at least since the start of recorded history, and therefore all we have to do is go back through these documents, find out what happened. Easy peasy. Done. But historical sources are rarely like that. They are rarely complete, or as complete as we'd like them to be. There are linguistic and translation issues that we might find, and then there are cultural and societal norms that we may not fully comprehend today. This is bad enough when we look at the history of our own societies where we assume that our values and norms today must have been our ancestors' values and norms, just in a different context. It gets all kinds of screwy when we start to look outside at not only cultures different from our own, but when we are trying to draw facts from sources from different cultures at the same time. After all, China, Korea, and Japan were constantly in tension. Sometimes they romanticized the other, and sometimes they demonized them. And they almost always lionized their own histories. After all, that was the primary purpose, and that gets to the heart of the matter. You see, most histories, while purporting to give us the facts, are often written from a particular perspective, and it would be better to say that they are offering us the "truth." Or at least, a truth. Typically they are commissioned by a government or dynasty, and they have as their ultimate goal the ideal of making their patrons look good. It's natural. Everyone wants to suck up to the boss, after all. This means that for our purposes, we need to look at them with a skeptic's eye. What are their cultural biases? What was their purpose? And of course, they have another problem too. Most of these histories are written centuries, sometimes millennia, after the events they claim to describe. How can they claim to know what was happening back then? Well, in this area, it depends. In China, who loves to mention their 5,000 years of history, written word has been around for some time. And so most of the histories that are extant today were based off of histories written much closer to the actual time. In some cases, histories were recorded verbatim in later historical works, and so while we may not have the original, we at least have the text. It still leaves us a question. What would the historian do if they found something in the history that contradicted the "truth" they were writing about? Would you leave in a part from a previous historian that said the father of your dynasty's founder was a scum-sucking rebel to the throne and executed as a traitor? Or do you conveniently leave that out in favor of the narrative that your founder's father was a stalwart and upright leader who resisted the despotic and tyrannical rule of a former dynasty whose time has come? And even where it isn't so directly obvious, for instance, the way the chronicles treat the Japanese archipelago, we may see a contemporary historian incorporate an older accounting and then update it from a contemporary viewpoint. And so we take all of these histories with a grain of salt. Sometimes that salt is obvious. I think we all tend to raise an eyebrow when we hear about inconceivably long reigns, with sovereigns being on the throne and ruling for a hundred years or more, let alone a fifteen hundred year reign. However, it gets tricky when things are more plausible. We have to take a closer look and ideally correlate facts from different sources. There is even a trend in some modern research to refer to periods as "proto-historical" when the only histories we have come from other cultures or time periods and we don't have histories from the individuals themselves. Then there is the problem of dating. You see, in most of East Asia, they don't use a single dating system that tells you what year it is. Most histories tell their stories in terms of the regnal date, what year it was of a given sovereign's reign. Therefore, to match up to a common era date format, we have to go back and count up all the years, which can get tricky, especially during a regime change. When a king dies to the first year of the new reign, start the next year, or the same year as the last year of the previous reign, what if there is a gap between one king dying or stepping down and then another one stepping up? Usually that is explained, but sometimes those details get lost. Fortunately for us, the Chinese chronicles tended to include events of astronomical significance (eclipses, comets, etc.) Since these are things that we can look at and generally calculate today, they give us anchor points in the chronicles and help us determine where our chronology appears to be good, regardless of the reliability of the narrator in terms of the characterization of events. In China, it looks like we have reasonably reliable dates, at least from about 841 BCE, based on the astronomical phenomenon described in the records, so that's something. Before that, it is assumed that previous records were lost in wars or other disasters, and historians were probably drawing from less reliable sources, either fragmentary writings, oral traditions, or possibly just making it up based on their own memory and assumptions. At that point, we look to the archaeological record to see what we can find there. As time goes on, records tend to get better, or, well, at least there are more of them that survive and so we get more than just a single account of any given episode. This in turn allows us to build more of a narrative around what was happening. So please stick with me through this as we very briefly try to cover what was happening in China and Korea during the first couple millennia BCE, and remember, our sources for China are not really that solid until about the 9th century, and Korean histories are still questionable for most of this period, but it's what we have for now. Fair enough? Alright, so our story begins in the Yellow River Basin area. You see, while Japan was making its way through the Jomon period, across the waters, people were dabbling in agriculture and state formation and a new technology that had come on the scene. Bronze. Fueled by these developments, the culture we identify as the Erlitou culture arose from about the second millennium BCE or so. This is the culture that some people connect to the Sha Dynasty of the Chinese histories, though the scholarship is still being looked at. Now to hear the Chinese chronicles tell it, the Sha was the start of all civilization. Long thought to be as mythical as the sage kings themselves, archaeological research has indicated a culture around the Yellow River Basin that seems to fit the description of the Sha as we know it, including early inscriptions in oracle bones, turtle shells, and scapula used for an early form of divination, which are the earliest forms of Chinese characters. Chinese scholarship has identified these early archaeological signs as the Sha, but they are more widely known as evidence of the Erlitou culture. It is quite possible that there never was any Sha Dynasty, and that name may be a creation by Zhou and later historians to help fill in some of the backstory and provide legitimacy to their own ruling houses. Now according to the chronicles, the Sha were followed by the Shang Dynasty around 1600 BCE. Evidence for the Shang appears not only in the chronicles, but also in inscriptions in the bronzes from this time, though we have no evidence that they actually called themselves the Shang as that name derives entirely from later histories. While we have no extant written histories, the nobles of the time would often commemorate special events with the commission of bronze ritual vessels, which would often contain names and details of the special occasion. Through these fragments, along with other archaeological records, we are able to piece together some of the story, though there are still plenty of gaps and questionable history, especially as the inscriptions did not get overly elaborate until the Zhou and later periods. Still, the spread of the Shang influence can be seen in the expansion of Shang era artifacts across much of northeast China through the 11th century. By this time, the people of the Yellow River Basin were thriving. Through agriculture, they had been able to grow a sizable population, involving a complex society with the technical know-how to combine separate metals together to make bronze, and building large walled cities. They seemed to be doing pretty well for themselves, in a material sense. Of course, this came at the cost of systemic inequality, authoritarian power structures, and massive warfare. You see, based on the histories and various inscriptions from this time, the Shang dynasty ruled through a form of absolute authoritarianism. Demands came down from the head of state and were expected to be followed by the masses. This was likely enforced through the ruling class's monopoly on bronze weapons, chariots, and more. While the elite had bronze, most of the people were still living in the Stone Age, working with simple wood and stone tools. Bronze weapons provided the Shang armies an immeasurable leg up on their competition in any armed conflict, and they made sure to defend that advantage. The Zhou state is said to have been situated on the western borders of the Shang empire, which had grown more and more despotic. The Shang ruler, Di Xin, apparently loved the luxury of his position, and so he did what despots throughout history have done. He raised taxes and increased corporal punishments in order to enrich himself and repress discontent. During this time, he imprisoned one Ji Chang, the Count of Zhou, who had grown quite popular and was seen by Di Xin as a potential rival to his reign. Eventually the state of Zhou was able to ransom back their lord with gifts to the Shang ruler, but they and other Shang vassal rulers remained discontent, unable to trust the central Shang authority. After Ji Chang passed away, his son, Ji Fa, came to preside over the state of Zhou, and the discontent among the various lords only worsened. Ji Fa conspired with the other lords and eventually led a rebellion against the Shang dynasty. When they finally overthrew their overlords, Ji Fa had amassed enough support to be installed in their place, beginning his own dynasty, known as the Zhou, in roughly 1050 BCE, although that date is still somewhat questionable. In later histories likely influenced by Confucian scholars, Ji Chang was posthumously named King Wen, referring to his cultured nature, and his son, Ji Fa, had been named King Wu for his martial prowess. Despite the fact that Ji Chang had died before his son's revolution, he is still revered as the titular founder of the dynasty. Oh, and the Shang ruler, Di Xin, was later given the posthumous name, King Zhou. No, this isn't a reference to the succeeding dynasty though, there is a tonal difference that I don't think I can quite get out, but Zhou in this case refers to a horse-cropper. Yes, that's the part of the harness that goes under the horse's tail and, well, it's most likely to be soiled by the horse. It's clear that his biographers were hardly sympathetic. Now Kings Wen and Wu are considered the founders of the Zhou dynasty, though King Wu only lived for two short years after toppling the Shang. So the final form of the Zhou is attributed to King Wu's brother, Ji Dan, who is more popularly known to history as the Duke of Zhou, having been granted the ancestral territory of Zhou within the larger empire. To establish their own credibility, the Zhou sovereigns established the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. This is an idea that a dynasty could only rule for as long as Heaven was pleased, and if the emperor was ever unjust, then it would be reflected by disorder and chaos, both human and natural, throughout the kingdom. And I'm sure that won't ever come back to have repercussions of any kind on future generations. The Zhou parceled out land to relatives and loyal vassals, creating a system of entwined social and familial ties and obligations. The Zhou dynasty created 71 fiefs, parceling out 55 of them to members of the Zhou royal clan. This created a tremendous amount of loyalty and control in the first couple of generations, but it also left the central authority without significant resources other than family bonds to keep the peace. In addition, all of these fiefdoms effectively now had some claim, however tenuous, on the Zhou lineage. How could something like that ever go wrong? Now it's hard to fully understand this time, because although it is technically considered historical, much of the writing on this period has been exaggerated and romanticized by later Chinese scholars. But I'll try my best to describe what we know, since there is a lot of thought here that influenced later Chinese, and thus Japanese, intellectual thought. Just be aware that a lot of this stuff may not have happened quite as the histories tell us. Now first of all, the Zhou created, or at least formalized, a system of four classes. The warrior-gentleman, the farmer, the laborer, and the merchant. This system would later be codified further by Confucius and his disciples, and we would eventually see it come over to Japan with some modifications a couple millennia later. The Zhou also instituted a system of dynastic inheritance that went from father to son. This was distinct from the way the Shang did things, where brothers would often inherit over direct offspring. It should also be noted that the rulers of this time were buried in large mounded tombs, often with their retinue. That's right, if you're the favorite servant of the king and he bites the dust, you were expected to follow him and serve him in the next life, which meant being buried along with him. Man, it sucks to be you. In addition, the Zhou sovereigns were known as the Sons of Tian, or Sons of Heaven. A large part of the sovereign's responsibilities was conducting the proper ceremonies that would properly keep heaven and earth in order. These are all ideas and concepts that we will eventually see on the Japanese archipelago in one form or another. Most important to us in the current narrative though, is the decentralized nature of their administration. As I mentioned above, the central Zhou authority did not directly control a lot of territory themselves, and it's unclear how firm their grasp was on their so-called vassal states, even at the very beginning. It may have been quite tight and organized, or it may have been more of a loose confederacy. Over the next 200 years, the Zhou dynasty continued, but its grasp on provinces weakened, and what at one time may have been strong family ties, were diluted with time and distance. In 841 BCE, the 10th king of Zhou was driven out of the capital by his own people, and there was a period of about 13 years with no ruler at all on the throne. The Zhou kings were able to re-establish themselves, but they faced another rebellion only 70 years later in about 770 BCE. This was when barbarians allied themselves with rebel principalities to destroy the capital city. In many instances the principalities didn't even help the barbarians, they just refused to stand in their way. After this rebellion, the Zhou moved east to Lo Yi, but were never again the hegemons of a united China, eventually being fully extinguished some 500 years later. Oh, and I should mention, China in this case is not even China as you think of it. It is really just an area up in the northern section of China. Now from 771 BCE until 221 BCE, there would be no single ruler over the Chinese people, and instead ruled devolved into 170 so effectively independent city states, led by former Zhou vassals. This was the general state of northeast China during the first millennium BCE. We will next want to look more specifically at the area around the Bohai Sea on the edge of Chinese administered territory, and down the Korean peninsula. So when the Zhou originally established their dynasty, in the northeast of Zhou territories they created the states of Yan and Qi. Both states were situated along the coast of the Bohai Sea. The Yan state was bordered on the west by the modern day province of Liaoning at the head of the Korean peninsula, while the Qi state was across the Bohai Sea, encompassing the Shandong peninsula. Now according to Chinese sources, the people of the Korean peninsula were "barbarians", which generally means anyone who was outside the Han Chinese cultural sphere. Genetic and linguistic evidence points to a connection between the early Koreans and other northern peoples, suggesting that these early people had arrived at the peninsula from the eastern steppes. The early cultures on the Korean peninsula were still working with largely stone age technology, similar to the Japanese archipelago at this time. Shortly after the Zhou dynasty ousted the Shang and took power, in about the 11th century, we see their neighbors on the peninsula starting to work with bronze tools. Presumably they received the technology from their Chinese neighbors. It may be that they received rice cultivation around this same time, though there is some archaeological evidence that rice on the Korean peninsula could go back as far as the 3rd millennium. The first extant historical record we have about the peninsula comes from the Guangzi, written during the Han dynasty, roughly between the 2nd centuries BCE and CE, and it claims to be relating details from around the 6th and 7th centuries BCE, so it was written some 500 years or so after the fact. It is in this Guangzi that we learn of the culture we know as the Zhou-Sun, trading with the state of Qi on the Shandong peninsula. Now these days we refer to this early Zhou-Sun dynasty as the Go-Zhou-Sun dynasty, or Old Zhou-Sun, to distinguish it from the later dynasty that assumed the same name about 3000 years later. There is another work that purports to tell the history of the Korean peninsula, the Samguk Yusa. This is considered Korea's oldest extant history, originally compiled in the 13th century BCE, but claiming to report facts from older histories, many no longer extant, and surviving only as fragments thanks to wars and successive dynasties. In particular the Samguk Yusa likely filled in historical gaps with knowledge derived from oral traditions. We'll see something not too dissimilar when we get to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Japan's own early chronicles. According to the Samguk Yusa, the Go-Zhou-Sun was founded in 2333 BCE by the mythical figure Dan-Gun Wang-Gom around the same time as the mythical Chinese Emperor Yao, one of the mythical Chinese sage kings who supposedly predated the Sha dynasty. This date of 2333 BCE is almost certainly a fabrication meant to provide the Korean court with a sense of antiquity, similar to China's, especially when you consider that the text then has King Dan-Gun ruling for, oh, 1500 years. The next major figure is Gija, also known in China as Ji-Zi. In Chinese documents Ji-Zi was a sage and relative of Di-Xin, aka King Horse Crupper, the last Shang ruler. According to Chinese sources, many of them compiled well after the fact, Ji-Zi provided advice to King Wu of Zhou and brought agriculture and other innovations to the Korean peninsula. The Samguk Yusa agrees, claiming that Gija, as he is known in the Korean histories, was sent by King Wu of Zhou to sit on the Go-Zhou-Sun throne. This latter history certainly seems to coincide with some of the archaeological evidence from this time, so whether or not there was an actual sage named Gija, there was definitely a dispersion of knowledge and technology to the Korean peninsula. Moreover, Go-Zhou-Sun, or whatever culture was there in the Liaoning area, played at least an intermediary role in trade with all of the peninsular groups, as there were other people on the peninsula who do not appear to have been under the direct sway of the Go-Zhou-Sun hegemony. From an archaeological point of view, we know that there was a Bronze Age culture in the Liaoning area with bronze, loot-shaped daggers from at least 800 BCE. Chinese histories tell us that by the 4th or 3rd centuries BCE, as Zhou authority waned, Yuan and other states formally broke away from the Zhou empire, renouncing even the lip service they had previously been granting their former sovereigns. The ruler of Yan took the title of Wang, or King, and it is recorded that the ruler of Go-Zhou-Sun took the same title at the same time, with the implication being that it was something of a competition between the neighboring states. There was a constant tension between these two, Yan and Go-Zhou-Sun, for the next several centuries. It was also about the time that the Korean peninsula entered its iron age, having acquired the technology from their Chinese neighbors by at least 400 BCE. We also see a new bronze tradition creating a new kind of thin narrow dagger around 300 BCE. Further down south on the Korean peninsula, we aren't entirely sure of the political situation, but it appears there were still tribes and settlements who were also benefiting from the technological advancements of the Go-Zhou-Sun, and were likely passing it along to their own neighbors across the sea. For most of the period, this area is simply known through its pottery. By the first millennium BCE, we are finding a plain, unmarked, or "mumon" style of pottery that marks this period. Along with the pottery, they have agriculture, including rice. There are some theories that this initial agriculture was brought over from the Shandong peninsula, possibly with other cultural traits, though this connection has not been proven. By 850 BCE, there was a culture identified by remains at Songguk-ri that spread from the central plain of Korea to the southern end of the peninsula, and it thrived until about 300 BCE. Around the end of the Songguk-ri culture period, there is believed to have been a culture that is known to history as the Jin state, though whether or not it was actually a state is pretty questionable. It may have been more of a confederation of loose settlements and city-states. This name appears in the history of three successor states mentioned in the Chinese chronicles, the Jinhan, the Mahan, and the Byonhan, called the Samhan or Three Hans for what should be obvious reasons. By the way, the Han used here is the Han of Hanguk or Korea, not the Han of Han China. We will talk a little bit more about these when we get into the Chinese chronicles. There does appear to be native iron production on the peninsula by at least 200 BCE during the Samhan period, as Byonhan was well known for the quality of their local production. And now to turn our attention back to the Japanese archipelago, which once again enters the story. As listeners may remember, when we talked about the late Jomon period in Kyushu, we discussed the trade that was going on. There are similar fishhooks, harpoons, and pottery found in coastal regions of Kyushu and the southern Korean peninsula, indicating that the two had some interchange, though we don't know the full extent. To briefly review, agriculture and bronze technology had both evolved in the Yellow River Basin by the second millennium, giving rise to cultures known to us as the Sha and eventually the Shang. The Shang were overthrown in the 11th century BCE and the Zhou dynasty was established. At about the same time, we see agriculture and bronze technology dispersed beyond the boundaries of the Chinese cultural sphere and out to the Korean peninsula. There, the Gojoseon kingdom was going strong in the north, at the head of the peninsula, while to the south there appear to have been loose tribes and confederations, but we have little historical information about the political organizations here. Nevertheless, we do see the diffusion of agriculture and bronze down the peninsula. And then we start to see something we call the Yayoi culture across the Korean straits. The material culture, as well as human remains, point directly to immigrants from the peninsula coming to Japan. Initially arriving as outsiders, they share their knowledge, bringing both agriculture and metal tools, eventually metalworking, to the Japanese islands, and over time the Yayoi culture takes over most of Japan. Early finds and hypotheses suggested that this influx from the mainland was a result of the Warring States period, which began about the 4th century BCE as states like Yan and Qi began to declare themselves independent kingdoms, and these kingdoms began fighting amongst themselves. The traditional narrative has been that waves of refugees fled to outlying areas, including the Korean peninsula, and from there the population pressures pushed people off the peninsula and onto the Japanese islands. This may still have been the case at that time, but in the past decade, new research has challenged this idea and suggested that the Yayoi started much earlier. In fact, carbon dating on food remains inside some of the earliest Yayoi pots have provided a date closer to the 10th century BCE, about the time that the Zhou had overthrown the Shang and when the sage Gija is said to have traveled to Gojosun. Other scholars have challenged this dating and they suggest that the Yayoi culture didn't arrive quite that early, suggesting sometime after the 10th but before the 5th century BCE, probably between the 9th and 8th centuries. Personally, it makes sense to me that with the central authority changing, Chinese states and individuals may have used the historical moment to break out of old ways of thinking, which may have spurred on travel and greater trade links with their neighbors. As agriculture and metalworking swept down the Korean peninsula, it is understandable that it might cross the Japan Sea. Perhaps these first immigrants were still refugees, but from conflicts other than those that sparked by the Warring States period. We still don't know nearly enough about the Jin in the southern Korean peninsula, but we do know that there were constant struggles across the mainland. The city-states of both China and Korea clearly had the capacity for war and likely exercised it outside of that single period. Whatever took place, a new culture would begin to arise, one we've just barely touched on, the Yayoi culture. It would develop in Kyushu and come to displace the Jomon culture in all but the most northern regions of the islands. For now, that concludes our overview of continental history. Thank you so much for listening. Next episode, we'll return to Japan and look at this so-called Yayoi culture and what it means for our story. Unfortunately, most of this is still based on archaeological evidence. Though the Japanese chronicles purport to go back to 660 BCE, that date was likely chosen more for its relationship to the 60-year zodiac cycles mimicking Chinese histories, and the text is not quite reliable until we get closer to the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries CE. Furthermore, the earliest Chinese sources with any serious information appear to be the Wei Chronicles from about 280 CE. There are later histories that have information purported to come from older sources, but even they don't provide much until 57 CE. Once there, we should be able to really start examining individual lives and activities much more closely. So until next time, feel free to rate us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, we have information about our Ko-Fi site over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/podcast, where we'll also have some photos of various artifacts that we've discussed, as well as references and other material used for this episode. Questions or comments? Feel free to tweet us at @SengokuPodcast or reach out to our SengokuDaimyo Facebook page. That's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on SengokuDaimyo's Chronicles of Japan.