The Continent as Object of Knowledge
139
Kara kagami
(The China Mirror)
Author:
Fujiwara no Shigenori
Date:
1250s or 1260s
Language:
wabun
with
semiregular insertion of
kanbun
style
Preface:
yes
Setting:
Anrakuji Temple (Dazaifu)
Time covered:
the reign of Emperor Fuxi (traditionally
twenty-ninth or
twenty-eighth centuries BCE)–presumably the Song (960–1276); the first
six of an
original ten scrolls survive
Although the Japanese had witnessed the fall of the Northern Song in
1127 and were aware of the Southern Song’s (1127–1279) ongoing chal-
lenges, mastery of things Chinese garnered cultural capital like little else
in thirteenth-century Japan. Long the domain of the court nobility, ac-
quisition of such knowledge had more recently become an objective of
members of the new eastern warrior elite in their quest for legitimacy.
As Tonomura Hisae has shown, “the correct inheritance of Japanese cul-
ture” was indispensable for a warrior authority looking “to position itself
vis-
à
-vis the Kyoto court and nobility and establish a new governmental
authority that included the same.”
1
This included, as Tonomura points
out, familiarity with Chinese history.
2
In such an environment, few gestures encapsulated the ideal of the
culturally sophisticated warrior more successfully than Taira no Kiyomo-
ri’s presentation of the
Taiping yulan
(Imperial Readings of the Taiping
Era, written circa 983) at the palace on Jish
ō
3 (1179).2.13, on the eve of
the war that would lead to the founding of the Kamakura
bakufu
.
3
Nor
was the significance of this donation lost on the audience of the time, as
is visible in the recording of the event (the only noteworthy occurrence
of the day) by the courtier Nakayama Tadachika in his journal: “Profes-
sor of Mathematics [Miyoshi] Yukihira [dates unknown] came and told
1. Tonomura, “Kamakura bushi to Chūgoku koji,” 107; see also 103–6. For a similar
depiction of warriors’ desire for knowledge, see Ogawa Takeo, “Fujiwara no Shigenori-
den no kōsatsu,” 36.
2. Tonomura, “Kamakura bushi to Chūgoku koji,” 107.
3. Moreover, as Ivo Smits points out, foreign sales of the
Taiping yulan
were forbid-
den, and Kiyomori’s copy was incomplete (“China as Classic Text,” 196–97). David
Bialock also notes this acquisition in passing in a larger discussion of Kiyomori’s trade
activities (
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