Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

172 JAPAN. 1,45
presents of more than ten pieces of copper (bronze) ware of most delicate
workmanship. The Emperor T'ai-tsung gave orders that he should have an
audience and that he should be lodged at the T'ai-p'ing-hing-kuo temple (^
2p j^ ig ^); he bestowed on him a purple priest's robe and treated him
with great kindness. On hearing from him that their kings formed an unin- 5
terrupted line of rulers, all of the same family name, and that the high offices
in the country were hereditary, the Emperor sighed, and said to his ministers
Sung K'i (^ ^) and Li Fang (^ \t^) ^: «These are merely island barbarians,
and they have a line of monarchs for such a long time, and even their
officials form an uninterrupted hereditary succession; this is indeed the "Way lo
of the Ancients»!
Thus it came about that the barbarians of a single island caused the
Emperor T'ai-tsung to sigh. Cannot these customs be a survival of the spirit
inherited from T'ai Po, who «used the doctrines of our Great Land to change
barbarians))? ^^
Notes.
1) The name Wo—in Japanese Wa, or perhaps Wani, was probably the name of the ruling
tribe or family from which the sovereigns of Japan were at one time taken. Wani appears not
unfrequently, as a proper name in the Kojiki and Nihongi. W. G. Aston, Early Japanese History,
40, 41. The Arabs of the ninth century appear to have known of Japan under the name of 20
Waqwaq, transcribing the Japanese words Wa Tcdku ((kingdom of Wa» Van der Lith & Devic
Livre des merveilles de I'Inde, 295 et seqq.; also Ibn Khordadbeh, 50. According to T'ang-shu,
145,18'' the name Ji-pSn — in Japanese Nippon, was first used in A. D. 670. See also T'ang-shu,
220,18*'.
The character Wo means ((dwarf», and the Chinese have frequently called Japan Wo -jon- 25
kno {^. ), ((kingdom of dwarfsn, and Wo-nu-kuo ^ U (-^ ^j^ 1^ ) ((kingdom of dwarf
slaves)). See e. g, Sung-shif, 491, and Yiian-shi, 101. It was only in 1895 that, at the urgent
request of the Japanese Government, an Imperal Rescript was issued by the Chinese Emperor
prohibiting the use of this term in China.
2) This refers to an early period of Japanese history, probably in the seventh century, when 30
the Ainu still possessed the northern portion of the island of Hondo. We find mention of «Hairy
men» in as old a work as the Shan-hai-king, but it is not possible that they were the Ainu, the
((Hairy men» of our text. The earliest mention we have found in Chinese works of the use of the
correct name of the Ainu, Hia-i ($^ ^), occurs in T'ang-shu, 145,l8^ where it is said that in
A. D. 632 the Wo came to Court and with them were Ainu ($S ^|| hA who lived on an island 35
in ,the Ocean. Their envoy had hair four feet long. They wore earrings and had arrows stuck in
their hair. A gourd was hung up, and at a distance of some tens of feet they hit it with their
arrows every time.
3) The Japanese bonze Tiau-jan— in Japanese Chonen, who visited the Court of the Sung
in A. D. 984, is the authority for this statement. Sung-shi, 491,7. He also gave the population of 40
Japan as 883,329 male adults. The division of Japan into five Home Provinces (551 W^ 6b)
in Japanese Qo-Ttinai, consisting of the Kyoto, Nara and Asaka districts, seven Provinces — in
Japanese Bo, and two islands— Tsushima and Iki,— was made in the third century of our era by the
Empress Jingo, after her Korean expedition, and in imitation of the Korean system. The Emperor
Mommu (696—707) increased the number of provinces to 66 by subdividing the older ones. See 45
Tsin-shu, 97,7 and Chamberlain, Things Japanese (fifth edit.), 211. ffiawgr, in Japanese ^o, here
15