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86 Mediterraneans
the religious influences from the mainland became exceptionally
strong as Buddhism gained a hold in Japan during the early
Middle Ages, coexisting fairly easily with native beliefs and
rituals, though one of the major effects of the Buddhist implantation
was the creation of large monastic estates with all that
implied for the organization of Japanese society. The Japanese
Mediterranean was thus a channel by which Japan was brought
deeper into the cultures of East Asia. The appetite in aristocratic
circles for Chinese goods was almost insatiable, though
the finest silks from China were kept for rare occasions, and the
Japanese developed their own very fine traditions of silk production.
The meeting of cultures is well represented in the extraordinary
collections of palace artefacts and works of art preserved at
the Shoso-in repository attached to the Todai-ji temple in Nara;
here influences from lands to the west can be traced both in
designs imitated from Persian, Indian, and Chinese models (for
example in painted screens that recall T’ang iconography), and
in actual objects brought across the seas (for example lapis lazuli
belt ornaments from Afghanistan). Even Chinese tea bowls
were in massive demand, at a time when tea drinking had not
actually taken off in Japan; in fact, the Japanese, despite a very
long ceramic tradition, found it hard to imitate the superb
celadon wares which were imported in vast quantities in the
twelfth century. During the excavation of the metro at Fukoaka,
the city on Kyushu which incorporates the medieval port of
Hakata, 35,000 fragments of native and Chinese pottery were
found, the latter coming mainly from centres of production on
the Chinese coasts. The white pottery of Yue zhou was known
sometimes under the name hisoku or ‘forbidden object’ because
it was originally reserved to the imperial family alone. Particularly
prized were Chinese books, including Buddhist religious
texts such as the Lotus Sutra and collections of T’ang poetry; in
the early eleventh century the regent Fujiwara no Michinaga
was given the T’ang anthology three times, and in 1010 he gave
a printed copy, with commentary, to the emperor. Although the
Japanese sent back to China ornamented boxes and fine cloths
of silk and canvas, only a few of the islands’ products had
particular renown across the sea: one was Japanese paper,
which was manufactured from different plants and by slightly