In last week’s article, I focused intensively on the fundamental matters that must be taken into account when viewing the non-existent ancestral group of the Japanese people spoken of as Wajin. This allows us to posit the basic figure of the Wajin, yet the grave problem lurking at this ethnic foundation has always undergone extreme transformation while being subjected to the regulations of history. In fact, when Wajin are discussed, they are spoken of as a unique Japanese ethnicity that is Wajin as a general existence abstracted from the present; however, at this point, it has already been transformed by the regulations of the era in which we live, so that is not its original form. Of course, such a discrepancy is something we must undertake as long as we are providing insight into history, but the issue then settles on whether the discussant possesses a thorough level of self-awareness regarding this point.
The conceptual space of Wakoku, objectified by the ancient Chinese state as the country where the Wajin resided, exposes this problem. This is because the very word “Wa,” which had long been in general use as a bureaucratic term on the Chinese side to refer to ancient Japan, later came to be perceived by the Japanese side as discriminatory and derogatory, and a reactionary movement against this archaic designation occurred on a national scale. However, it goes without saying that the concept of the nation at this point is not equal to that of the modern era and remains within a localized space. Furthermore, the figure of Japan seen from the Han to the Wei dynasties, which possessed a perspective deployed on the premise of Chinese civilization, appears as a world of different tribes possessing neither writing, literature, nor a unified system. Actually, the descriptions in the Gishiwajinden [魏志倭人伝], which recorded the oldest figure of Japan in terms of literature, reveal that when viewed by the envoys of Wei at the time, Japan appeared as a reasonably alien existence. However, such ancient documents gradually became a troublesome problem for the Imperial Court forces on the Japanese side, which later acquired the technology of writing and literature and gained power using information compilation as a weapon. This is because, in the process of the Japanese side assembling the Court around the Emperor, a certain sense of ethnic consciousness blossomed locally; yet the expression of this consciousness could not occur actively, and it was always linked to the circumstances on the Chinese side assumed to be outside. In other words, if internal strife occurred on the Chinese side and the system weakened, thereby causing its influence on Japan to decline, then ethnic consciousness on the Japanese side would rise reactionarily. Of course, I am simplifying considerably here, but such dynamics can be understood as homogeneous from the perspective of the dynamics between Japan and the United States after the Second World War.
Therefore, the way of viewing Japan in the documents of the ancient Chinese side gradually came to be regarded within the Court as discriminatory and derogatory. Particularly for some forces that had acquired a certain degree of consciousness of hegemony centered on the Emperor, historically their diplomacy had been to sometimes allow Chinese influence to flow in and sometimes to buffer it; thus, it is valid to say that in the process where the political real power of the Emperor or the clans increased, independence from Chinese influence came to be demanded. The emotional repulsion that began around this time headed toward a movement to discard the designation Wa from Wajin [倭人] and Wakoku [倭国] over a vast period of time. This movement eventually reached the current designation of the country as Nippon [日本] and the designation of the ethnicity as Nipponjin [日本人], but its origin lay in psychological repulsion. However, I must add one thing: the fact that this driving force is perceived as discriminatory or derogatory as mentioned above belongs strictly to our dimension since the modern era, and we must not link this emotion to that time. In other words, it was an alienation from China within the limited category of state formation. What is important is that this consciousness of alienation did not occur generally among Japan and the Japanese people in the current sense, but was merely a phenomenon that occurred in the closed place of the Court, which was a quite limited political center. That is, the ones who viewed the alienation from China as a problem were only the administrators closed within the field of the Court, and it occurred completely unrelated to the residents of the pluralistic world spreading vastly outside the Court. Therefore, the historical insight that sees the Japanese people as departing from Chinese influence and beginning to become independent in this era is a complete error. Such errors stem from a failure to understand that this is a problem of illusion. In a sense, it can be said that precisely because this consciousness was realized first, the Emperor and the surrounding clans were able to seize hegemony, but that was merely hegemony in a limited field and cannot possibly be called unitary rule.
What is significant is that the ancient Japanese administrators who regarded the designation of Wa as discriminatory here did not immediately call its replacement Nippon. In fact, the transformation of the concept indicating the state from this ancient Wa to the modern Nippon involves a transition that is far too complex.