The emergence of Japanese kingship
Editorial STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Espanya peninsular
- Editorial STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
- ISBN13 9780804728324
- ISBN10 0804728321
- Tipus LLIBRE
- Pàgines 434
- Any Edició 1996
- Encuadernació Rústica
Matèries
Història Antiga UniversalThe emergence of Japanese kingship
Editorial STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Espanya peninsular
Detalls del llibre
This is the first comprehensive study of the sources and nature of classical Japanese kingship and state formation. To draw new insights from the rich body of extant documents and artifacts from early Japan, the author employs the analytical tools of recent Western historiography and anthropology, constructing an "archaeology of kingship" that begins by exposing the roots of Japanese monarchy in third-century chieftaincy. The book then traces sovereignty and polity through a series of temporal cross sections, analogous to an archaeologist's trenches, to reveal artifacts from seven historical epochs, including an array of chieftains, kings, and sovereigns variously styled as Son of Heaven, Polestar Monarch, and Heavenly Sovereign. These sacral and increasingly courtly rulers (both men and women) first presided over confederate chieftaincies, then expansive coalescent polities, and eventually the archipelago's earliest state formation, Nihon. The book culminates in an account of the reign of the mid-eighth-century monarch Shomu, who represented the zenith of classical Japanese kingship and was supported by a bureaucracy of more than 7,000 people.