State Formation in Japan

"This book examines the processes of elite identity formation and accumulation of political power in Japan between the 2nd century BC and late 4th century AD. It analyses early chiefly patterns of interaction both with peer chieftains on the Korean Peninsula and within the Japanese Islands, and with political superiors in the Chinese imperial court. Chinese records about the archipelago's inhabitants frame the study of polity formation at the 'Edge of Empire', while analyses of new burial data and art historical evidence generate hypotheses that early female queens ruled as earthly equivalents of the Chinese mythical Queen Mother of the West. It offers a rebuttal of Wallerstein's characterizations of the Han tributary system and portrayal of the economic periphery as applied to Japan and undertakes a comparison of the Chinese and Japanese historical records in which the former identifies queens as rulers but which are omitted from the latter. Furthermore, the author presents a thorough examination of the chiefly burial mound system and its research problems and an analysis of burial data to document the formation of polities and emergence of elite rulers. A reconsideration of the identification and role of elite class formation in early state society is presented along with an interpretation of political ideology underpinning the early Japanese state bsed on Chinese mythology. This book brings together for the first time a significant body of the author's scholarly work on Japanese early state formation, forming a coherent overview of the problems and solutions of ancient Japan."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.