124
Deviant by Design
development of Japanese Buddhism. Thus, even exceptional figures do
little that would tie Japan to a larger regional political reality.
That said, worldly political borders are not entirely erased. Two no-
table counterexamples exist in
The Water Mirror
: the arrival of emissar-
ies from Silla during the reign of Empress Genmei (661–721) and Minis-
ter Kibi’s (695–775) trip to China during the reign of Emperor Sh
ō
mu.
The first is the most difficult to explain. There is no obvious reason for
providing an account of the emissaries’ presence in Japan, their unprece-
dented meeting with a minister, or their subsequent trip to the capital,
although it was a “boundlessly happy and awe-inspiring matter.”
90
As
though to justify this digression, the immortal narrator chimes in at the
close of the incident with the observation that “Princes and Ministers
must, in keeping with the times, receive such visitors. Nowadays, I bet I
could chastise them for not meeting with a single foreigner face-to-face.”
91
With this inconclusive remark, the Korean peninsula again recedes be-
yond the boundaries of
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