<研究ノート>古代日本における唐風化政策と祥瑞思想の受容

Abstract

The aim of this article is to grasp the significance of auspicious omens (shozui) in the context of the policy of Tang-style Sinification and clarify the reception of Chinese conception of auspicious omens in ancient Japan. Two periods when records of auspicious omens were particularly rare are the object of my analysis: these are the Tenpyo Hoji era under the regime of Fujiwara no Nakamaro and the early Heian period from the Konin to the Kasho era during the reigns of the emperors Saga, Junna, and Ninmyo. In the first section, I indicate that there were cases of auspicious omens not being recorded due to the humility of the emperor during the Latter Han dynasty. The fact that there was a tendency to denigrate auspicious omens and emphasize practical politics during the Tang has been pointed out in earlier studies, but when considering attitudes toward auspicious omens in Japan from the 9th century onward, the Latter Han attitude toward auspicious omens is important. Moreover, on the relationship between auspicious omens and calamities, previous scholarship has argued there was a direct correlation between the two, but on reexamination of the relationship, I have clarified that there was a tendency for the number of auspicious omens to decline as the number of calamities increased. Behind this was the fact that the two had different characters; auspicious omens were mental phenomena and the calamities were physical realities. In the second section, I consider the relationship of the small number of auspicious omens in the early Heian period and the policy of Tang-style Sinification. I compare in particular the Shoku Nihonkoki for Jowa 1.1 (834) and the imperial edict of the ninth month of Zhenguan 2 (628) in the Tang da zhaoling ji, and judging from the similarity of the language of the two, indicate that the edict of the first year of the Jowa era reflected that of Emperor Taizong of the Tang. Therefore, the small number of auspicious omens from this period can be understood as a result of the fact that the Japanese court knew that the Tang emperor had not favored auspicious omens and that they would not be recognized without reserve. Moreover, it should be noted that as a result of the humility of the Japanese emperors of the ninth century, there were many cases when auspicious omens were not accepted, and this logic was closer to the Latter Han example rather than the Tang, From this, auspicious omens in the early Heian period should be understood as the reception of not only Tang but also Latter Han thought. In the third section I focus on the auspicious characters that were a special characteristic of the regime of Fujiwara no Nakamaro and attempt to demonstrate the Sinification of auspicious omens. Auspicious characters are a variety of auspicious omen that was seldom if ever seen in Japan, but there were examples in China and the political policy as regards auspicious characters by Empress Wu Zetian, which is thought to have had influence at the time on Japan, can be seen in historical sources. Based on these facts, it can be said that auspicious characters had a particularly Chinese quality and we can conclude that the auspicious omens were Sinified through the Tang-style Sinification policy of Nakamaro. In the era of Fujiwara no Nakamaro the Chinese theory of accepting the will of heaven was already known, and auspicious characters were Rot simply a matter of a superficial copying of the achievements of Wu Zetian, and this indicates the influence of a profound understanding of the entirety of Chinese culture. Considering their limited relationship to auspicious omens and the policy of Tang-style Sinification that I elucidated in the second section, the fact that auspicious omens were not seen under the regime of Fujiwara no Nakamaro, which did use Chinese auspicious characters, can probably be explained in the same manner. Moreover, using auspicious omens to rule politically and then the trend to distain auspicious omens itself can also be seen in China. Furthermore, as calamities were frequently seen in this period, this too seems to have been a cause for the paucity of auspicious omens. In the fourth section, I address the trend towards the disappearance of auspicious omens from the Six Dynasties onward. In regard to the elimination of auspicious omens, I state my view that it would surely be necessary to consider the change in the character of the monarchical regime that was profoundly related to auspicious omens rather than the problem of the state of extant historical sources. In conclusion, as evidenced in sections two and three, the decrease in the number of records of auspicious omens can be explained as the reception of the Chinese influence within the policy of Tang-style Sinification. In this article I demonstrated factual evidence of the relationship between auspicious omens and the policy of Tang-style Sinification through examination of records of auspicious omens themselves. Moreover, it can be surmised that the Japanese court was conscious of the historical dynasties such as the Five Emperors and Latter Han rather than the contemporary Tang dynasty in regard to the Sinification of auspicious omens. In this article, I posit the image of "multiple Chinas" as a concept that would include multiple Chinese dynasties. It may be said that during the period that was strongly influenced by the Tang, the reception of the concept of auspicious omens occurred with this conception of "multiple Chinas" as its source.