Customer Reviews

The Emergence of Japanese Kingship

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Joan Piggots' scholarship is excellent. Pulling from a wide array of sources, covering everything from shipping tags attached to merchandise delivered in payment of tribute to the quasi-legendary early chronicles, to written works of law, literature, and religion, archaelogical artefacts and tomb burials, as well as previous works of historical scholarship, she presents an exhaustive and authoritative analysis of a frequently overlooked period in Japanese history, the 3rd through 8th centuries.

Piggott's work focuses on the emergence of the nascent Japanese nation-state, from its indigenous roots with a tennou ('sovereign' ) who was a chief among clans to its period of heavy Chinese borrowing and transformation into a 'modern' (for the era) nation headed up by a Chinese-style Emperor. Adopting a metaphor of archaeological trenches, she describes and analyzes seven major periods of development, discusses the various problems associated with research in that particular period, the known information, and conflicting points of view, while cogently and persuasively arguing her own viewpoint.

Her historical scholarship is impeccable and her writing style is clear and readable -- a great boon to anyone who has wrestled with some of the more obscure writings on the same topic. In short, she makes a significant addition to body of knowledge in the English language regarding a little known era of Japanese history.

It is rare to find a work that is both good history and well written; Piggot's examination of the emergence of kingship in a country where 'the gods have not yet died' is an important expansion of our understanding of archaic Japan in particular and sacral kingship in general.