It was only in the sixth century, at the beginning of the Asuka Period (538–710), that writing was introduced to Japan. Before that nothing was written down so, we assume, there was probably not a great deal of philosophical activity. What there was can hardly be called philosophy: it was an animistic spirituality that centred around the idea that everything in the universe is connected by a spiritual force or energy called musubi, manifestations of which were called kami, a rough translation of which is ‘gods’ but it is more accurate to describe them as spirits. National treasures could be kami, as could awesome natural features like Mt. Fuji and the sun, phenomena like hurricanes, venerated individuals like emperors and great warriors, and supernatural beings like the ‘gods of the earthly realm’, called kunitsukami, or the heavenly deities from the Japanese creation myths, called amatsukami, like Izanagi and Izanami, the (respective) male and female creators of the world. This spiritual, arguably religious, tradition was Shintō, though many don’t like to call it Shintō because they think ‘Shintō as we know it’ didn’t turn up until way later. They acknowledge that Shintō came out of whatever this was, though, and that its core tenets were present from earliest times, so there really is no harm in just calling it Shintō for the sake of simplicity.
It was the introduction of Buddhism in 552, however, that represents the beginning of Japanese intellectual history. As the story goes, King Seong of the Korean Kingdom of Baekje sent a diplomatic mission to the Japanese Emperor Kinmei containing Buddhist artefacts and scriptures, Buddhism having reached the Korean Peninsula from China much earlier. At a similar time, merchants, monks and scholars began to emigrate to Japan from Korea, bringing with them Confucian texts from which the Japanese learnt to read and write. The language of the Japanese court was, therefore, Chinese; it would not be for hundreds of years until the Japanese could write their own language.
The first written document in Japanese history was the Seventeen-Article Constitution written by the pseudo-historical Prince Shōtoku in 604. Though it’s called a constitution (kenpō in Japanese), it is little more than a set of highfalutin moral aphorisms without much practical application. Most of the articles are pretty hollow, when it comes down to it, saying things like “let us cease from wrath, and refrain from angry looks” and “give clear appreciation to merit and demerit”. Many were clearly ignored, like the injunction that “decisions on important matters should not be made by one person alone”. In fact, the only articles that look like constitutional laws are the sixteenth, which mandates corvée labour in the winter months …
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