Japan prides herself on enjoying twenty-six centuries of continuous national existence under the same dynasty. To outsiders, too, there may be in hoary age itself something alluring to the imagination. If so, I am sorry to disillusion them somewhat, but I shall do so at the outset of my discourse. It seems that our earliest historiographers, in adopting the Chinese system of chronological computation in the eighth century, made a miscalculation by some ten sexagenary cycles, thereby pushing back the beginning of our history as many as six hundred years. It is well known that such an error is a common frailty of early chroniclers everywhere. ... Perhaps our countrymen had more temptation than the Romans or the Chinese to prolong the dates of successive reigns, as they dealt with sovereigns of the same family. It must have been a glorious satisfaction for the fubito, the recorders, to mete out by a stroke of their pens many happy years to their sovereigns !
Deducting then six centuries from our early history, we bring the foundation of our Empire to 60 b.c. — some historians assign the date to 20 or 25 b.c. — instead of 660 as usually accepted, making the first ruler, Jimmu Tenno (Tenno meaning Emperor), contemporary with Julius Caesar. Though the details of his life are mixed with more or less fabulous stories and are by no means as well substantiated as the lives of his Roman contemporaries, there is no valid ground for doubting the main events of his career. Where his family first came from, we do not know. For that matter, we cannot tell whence the Japanese race migrated. That we are the autocthons of the land which we now inhabit is more doubtful than that the the Suevi or the Goths were created in Sweden. All the legends point to the so-called " High Plains of Heaven " (Taka-ama-ga-hara) as the cradle of our race; but its location is more obscure than that of Atlantis, and we have no poets or archaeologists to trace its whereabouts.
Japanese Traits and Foreign Influences
ReplyDeleteby Inazo Nitobe
http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=EVYVAAAAIAAJ
The Moral Basis of the Japanese Monarchy
I
Japan prides herself on enjoying twenty-six centuries of continuous national existence under the same dynasty. To outsiders, too, there may be in hoary age itself something alluring to the imagination. If so, I am sorry to disillusion them somewhat, but I shall do so at the outset of my discourse. It seems that our earliest historiographers, in adopting the Chinese system of chronological computation in the eighth century, made a miscalculation by some ten sexagenary cycles, thereby pushing back the beginning of our history as many as six hundred years. It is well known that such an error is a common frailty of early chroniclers everywhere. We see it in the Roman historians before Verro. We see it in our Chinese model, in which the chronology prior to the ninth century B.C. is lacking in scientific precision. What reliance do the Swedes, I wonder, put on the chronological accuracy of the Swedish royal genealogy given in the Ynglingatal ? Perhaps our countrymen had more temptation than the Romans or the Chinese to prolong the dates of successive reigns, as they dealt with sovereigns of the same family. It must have been a glorious satisfaction for the fubito, the recorders, to mete out by a stroke of their pens many happy years to their sovereigns !
Deducting then six centuries from our early history, we bring the foundation of our Empire to 60 b.c. — some historians assign the date to 20 or 25 b.c. — instead of 660 as usually accepted, making the first ruler, Jimmu Tenno (Tenno meaning Emperor), contemporary with Julius Caesar. Though the details of his life are mixed with more or less fabulous stories and are by no means as well substantiated as the lives of his Roman contemporaries, there is no valid ground for doubting the main events of his career. Where his family first came from, we do not know. For that matter, we cannot tell whence the Japanese race migrated. That we are the autocthons of the land which we now inhabit is more doubtful than that the the Suevi or the Goths were created in Sweden. All the legends point to the so-called ” High Plains of Heaven ” (Taka-ama-ga-hara) as the cradle of our race; but its location is more obscure than that of Atlantis, and we have no poets or archaeologists to trace its whereabouts.
Whatever the geographical origin of our royal house or of our people, we seem to have started an organised community in the southern part of Japan about the Christian era, when we had, perhaps, just emerged from the Bronze Age. From the meagre legends and traditions relating to those early years, we can infer that the government of that community was originally due to patriarchal authority with the consent, tacit and sometimes even expressed, of the governed.
As the Islands were then inhabited by various wild races and tribes, the first task of Jimmu Tenno was their pacification. It took him some six years to unite under his sway the lower half of what constitutes present Japan. It is the day of his coronation, 1987 years ago, that we observe on the 11th of February.
If it is solely or mainly the antiquity and the continuity of our State life that have attracted the curiosity of the West, may I draw its attention to the more important question of spiritual significance involved in its diuturnity ? A most cursory glance at the world’s annals since the time of Julius Caesar reveals a long list of kingdoms and empires that rose and fell, not only in Europe, but in Asia, and our thought is directed by sheer contrast to the query, ” What imparts length of days to a nation ?”
新渡戸稲造
ReplyDelete本邦最初期の歴史編纂者たちは、八世紀におこなわれていた中国風の年代計算法を採用したがために、干支の六十年周期をおよそ一〇回分数えまちがった、と思われる。このため、本邦の歴史の始まりは六〇〇年ほどさかのぼらされた。……本邦初期の歴史から六世紀を差し引くなら、日本帝国の創建は、通常受け入れられている前六六〇年ではなくして……前六〇年ということになる。こうすれば、神武天皇はジュリアス・シーザーと同時代人ということになる。