Buddhism and kanji: two main borrowings of Kofun

02. 08. 2012

Last time we spoke of technical borrowings of Kofun. Today I would like to speak of two main intellectual borrowings of Kofun period:

Buddhism and Chinese writing system.

According to Japanese chronicle Nihonshoki in 522 king (wan) of Baekje 

Songmyong sent his subject Norisa Chige with the following gifts: a statue of Buddha some banners and sutras.

Norisa Chige also brought a letter of his king where king of Baekje wrote that doctrine of Buddhism is a beautiful almighty magical mean accepted by all states from distant India to three states of Korea.

Kimmei tenno didn’t want to decide himself about this new belief so he let people of three most mighty clans (Soga, Mononobe, Nakatomi) decide themselves about this new belief.

Soga decided that if all other states revere Buddha the state of Yamato also was to do the same. But Mononobe and Nakatomi said that if they set a cult of a new kami (Buddha) local traditional kami could be offended.

After all Kimmei tenno said: “Let the statue of Buddha will be given to that who desires it and let he tries to revere it”.

Soon after Soga clan began to revere Buddha happened some epidemic diseases and Mononobe and Nakatomi decided that it happened due to the new cult and threw statue of Buddha of Soga temple to the Naniwa channel.

But Soga clan continued to revere Buddha and slowly Buddhism spread.

The main point here is the following: in 5 – 6 centuries there were some clans of high nobility who were believed to originated from kami for instance Nakatomi were supposed to originate from Ame no Koyane no mikoto, Mononobe from Nigi Hayahi no mikotob while Soga had no kami among ancestors, Soga originated from Takuichi no Sukune a real person who was a successful militant famous by his actions against so called “eastern barbarians”. Thus it is quite obvious that Soga wanted to raise prestige of their clan.

It is important to note that tenno clan also was interested in Buddhism cause Buddhism could be the base to unify interests of different clans while traditional cults (Shinto) could not and instead were good base for centrifugal tendencies.

Actually practically all groups were interested in Buddhism cause they could get some profit from it.

First Buddhism was accepted outwardly without understanding of its meaning, i.e. Buddha was considered just as one of mighty kamuy/kami. And only a while later they started to grasp its real meaning.

But I am to tell that since the very beginning Buddhism influenced to the Japanese culture. The main influence of Buddhism in Japan is spread of Chinese writing system – kanji – Chinese signs.

All sutras were written in Chinese. To read them they were to know Old Chinese or Wen Yan. Then they started to write original texts in Chinese. It is important to note that hieroglyphs were convenient to expression of Chinese language where words consisted usually of one syllable but were not convenient for Japanese where words could consist of many syllables.

So first Japanese wrote in Chinese then somebody invented to use Chinese sings as signs for syllables: 多太 tada, 安佐 asa such way of writing was called Man’yogana cause it was used in poetry anthology Manyoushuu

Since man’yogana they began to elaborate a standard set of syllabary signs which resulted as katakana and hiragana.

Here are picture representing the development of signs of katakana and hiragana from certain Chinese signs: 

                                                 Katakana and its Chinese original Kaishu

                                                  Hiragana and its Chinese original Caoshu

And finally we got kana kanji majiri bun: a system where unchangeable part of word is written by kanji while changeable is written by kana.