Seeking the Elixir of Immortality across the Eastern Sea
A Legend of Xu Fu where Qin Shi Huang and Ancient Japan Intersect
“Where there is no fire, no smoke rises.”
This is a proverb that has been used in Japan since ancient times. It means that a rumor does not spread without cause. If a rumor arises, there must be some factual basis behind it. The proverb applies not only to rumors but equally to legends that have been transmitted in various parts of the world.
Even now, believing in such things is considered foolish or irrational. But that is because people place excessive blind faith in science. Science at best arrives considerably late to confirm as fact the location of a fire that was already burning. Science is not absolute truth. It is merely a supplement to what has already been told. But it is precisely in this role as supplement that the true purpose and power of science resides. When we stop treating science as the protagonist, the reality in what has been dismissed as unscientific, whether rumor or legend, becomes something anyone can feel.
I have been independently surveying the pluralistic world of Japan through fieldwork across the country. In the course of this work I have repeatedly encountered a legend that spans multiple regions. It is the legend of Xu Fu [徐福 (Jofuku)]. The origin of the Xu Fu legend lies in a record found in the Shiji, the most important historical document in Chinese history, compiled by Sima Qian. The Shiji is thought to have been completed around 91 BCE during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Former Han dynasty. The Xu Fu legend, however, reaches back to the preceding Qin dynasty.
The Xu Fu legend is deeply connected to Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BCE), the first emperor to unify China. More than a century separates the events from the compilation of the Shiji, and the upheaval of the transition from Qin to Han intervened. It is reasonable to assume that by Sima Qian’s time these events had already taken on the character of legend.
The Xu Fu legend holds that Xu Fu, seeking the elixir of immortality to present to Qin Shi Huang, set out for a land across the eastern sea, leading as many as 3,000 people to the Japanese archipelago, where some of them settled. The exact number varies by version but the common understanding is that several thousand people crossed. The land across the eastern sea is the ancient Japanese archipelago.
On the Japanese side, the story begins with the aristocratic and monastic elite of the Heian period, who had access to Chinese texts and knew of Xu Fu as a matter of book learning. Of particular note is a record preserved on the Chinese side stating that Kanpo [寛輔], a monk of roughly the tenth century, told a Chinese monk that Japan possessed Mount Horai, the mountain Xu Fu had been seeking, and that it was Mount Fuji. Kanpo is almost unknown in Japan, but his account appears in the Yichu Liutie [義楚六帖], compiled in 954 by Yichu during the Later Zhou (951–960) of the Five Dynasties period. According to the text, Yichu heard the story directly from Kanpo in 958. The apparent discrepancy in dates is explained by the fact that the work was not actually published until around 973 during the Song dynasty, and the account was added during the intervening period.
Mount Horai is the mountain of immortality in the Chinese tradition. What matters here is that Kanpo equated Mount Horai with Mount Fuji. Among a segment of the Heian-kyo elite, the understanding that Xu Fu’s destination was Mount Fuji had begun to circulate. This can be regarded as the starting point of the Xu Fu legend’s narrative on the Japanese side. Mount Fuji, however, has no actual connection to Mount Horai. The association was newly created around this period. The reason is relatively clear. In Japanese texts concerning Mount Fuji that predate this tenth-century source, there is not a single passage linking the mountain to either Horai or Xu Fu.
For example, the Fujisan Ki written in his later years by Miyako no Yoshika (834–879), an aristocratic scholar of the early Heian period, depicts Mount Fuji as a divine realm where celestial maidens dance at the summit. But it makes no mention whatsoever of Horai or Xu Fu. The famous Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, whose date of composition is uncertain but is believed to have been completed by the early tenth century at the latest, also portrays Mount Fuji in association with the thought of the immortals, yet says nothing of Horai or Xu Fu.
In other words, Kanpo’s anecdote was based on a new current that emerged in the late Heian period and was limited to the Heian-kyo elite. The background to why Mount Fuji began to be deified in this way will be addressed separately. For now the essential point is that this was something intellectuals began discussing on the basis of book knowledge. What truly sustained the Xu Fu legend was the oral tradition actually inherited in local communities. The Xu Fu legend in Japan has two distinct lineages. One is the Xu Fu image developed by the elite, who took knowledge from Chinese texts and connected it to the ideology of the ruling class. The other is the Xu Fu image held by non-elite peoples who transmitted from generation to generation the belief that they were Xu Fu’s descendants.
In the Heian period the Xu Fu legend was nothing more than a piece of knowledge. But in the Kamakura period that followed, the legend gained reality. The reason was the emergence of an ideology that would later become the source of Kokugaku, the nativist school of thought with its anti-foreign bent that flourished in the Edo period. The foremost figure behind this ideology was Kitabatake Chikafusa (1293–1354), a court noble and historian. Kitabatake lived during the peculiar Nanbokucho period in which two emperors existed simultaneously, each waging civil war over the claim to legitimacy. The Northern Court and the Southern Court were established as rival imperial lines, and the power struggle among the ruling class played out around each. Kitabatake Chikafusa was a major figure on the Southern Court side and its de facto leader.
In the end it was the Northern Court that is regarded as having prevailed. But it is now widely known that legitimacy actually belonged to the Southern Court. The Northern Court’s imperial line and its ruling class usurped the throne from the Southern Court, which held the rightful claim to succession, and then declared themselves legitimate. The proof of imperial legitimacy in Japan’s imperial line is a set of treasures inherited since the mythological age known as the Three Sacred Treasures. The Southern Court’s line possessed them.
Because the Three Sacred Treasures guaranteed imperial legitimacy, the Northern Court fabricated replicas, and a fierce struggle over legitimacy escalated between the two sides. At this juncture Kitabatake Chikafusa, the effective leader of the Southern Court, wrote a book to argue for the legitimacy of the Southern Court’s imperial line. That book was the Jinno Shotoki [神皇正統記], completed in 1339. In the section on the reign of the seventh emperor, Korei, Kitabatake included a passage to the effect that Xu Fu came from Qin and died in Japan.
Emperor Korei is one of the early emperors whose historical existence is doubted, and his dates of reign are unknown. One conventional dating places his reign at 342–215 BCE, but this is based on the modern fabrication that positions the enthronement of the first emperor Jimmu in 660 BCE and cannot be directly trusted. However, it is a fact that some figure corresponding to Emperor Korei was placed in the approximate era of Qin Shi Huang’s reign and linked to the Shiji’s record that Xu Fu came to Japan. It goes without saying that the Western calendar (Gregorian calendar) was not in use during Kitabatake’s lifetime. These dates were determined by scholars from the Meiji period onward and have nothing to do with him.
But this is not mere fantasy. What matters is that through a work written by Kitabatake Chikafusa to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Southern Court, the Xu Fu legend was incorporated into Japan’s official historical narrative. From this point forward the legend took root in Japan, meaning it has captivated a segment of the Japanese people for nearly seven hundred years.
As consciousness of the emperor’s legitimate lineage intensified among the ruling class during the Nanbokucho period, the legend of Xu Fu dispatched by Qin Shi Huang became linked to Japan’s official history. This generated a question driven by curiosity. If Xu Fu died in Japan as Kitabatake claimed, who are his descendants?