Kamatari no Fujiwara

Background

Kamatari no Fujiwara was born in 614 into the Nakatomi family, a family of rather lowly status that served the Yamato court and had charge of affairs pertaining to the Shinto religion.

Education

From an early age he showed great fondness for learning and surpassed others in whatever he did. He studied under the Buddhist priest Min, who had been sent to China as a student and had remained there for over twenty years, and Min was said to have regarded him as a man of extraordinary ability. Even the most powerful minister of the time, Soga no Iruka, treated him with deference.

Career

Kamatari, angered at the excessive authority wielded by Soga no Iruka and at his lack of respect for Empress Kogyoltu, the ruler at the time, began to consider ways to overthrow him. He first became friendly with Prince Karu but later transferred his attentions to Prince Naka no Oe, a person of superior ability, and together they plotted the downfall of the Soga family. In 645 they attacked and killed Soga no Iruka when he was in attendance at the palace and then succeeded in wiping out the other members of the family. It had earlier been agreed that Prince Naka no Oe should be made ruler, but Kamatari persuaded him to give way to Prince Karu so as to avoid antagonizing the older factions at court, and the latter accordingly ascended the throne to become Emperor Kotoku. He had no real power, however, all affairs of government being handled by Prince Naka no Oe and Kamatari.

In 668 Prince Naka no Oe ascended the throne to become Emperor Tenji. The following year, when Kamatari fell ill, the emperor came in person to visit him and inquire about his condition, whereupon Kamatari asked that he be given a modest burial that would not impose a burden upon the common people. The emperor, in recognition of his achievements, bestowed on him the surname Fujiwara, and on the sixteenth day of the tenth month, Kamatari died.

Achievements

• Kamatari was a leader in the development of what became known as the Taika Reforms.
  
  In 645, Taika, the first formal nengo (era name) to be used by the Japanese court, was adopted, and in 646 the so-called Taika Reform Edict was promulgated, setting forth the principles for a new system of government. The main characteristics of this system are as follows:
  
  1. All land and persons were to become the property of the state.
  
  2. In order to implement this goal, appropriate machinery for administra¬tion, communication, and military control was to be set up.
  
  3. Population registers were to be drawn up and land alloted to the people in equal shares.
  
  4. All taxes were fixed by law.
  
  Kamatari and the others of his party thereby created the so-called ritsuryo, or penal and civil code system, a bureaucratic system designed to create strong centralized government with the emperor at its head, the kind of government that Min and others who had been to China had observed in operation there under the Sui and T’ang dynasties. The establishment of this new system of centralized government represents, along with the creation of the shogunate system by Minamoto no Yoritomo and the Meiji Restoration, one of the three most important political innovations in the history of the Japanese state.

Connections

In 653 Kamatari’s eldest son, a Buddhist priest whose religious name was Joe (born in 643), was sent to T'ang China as a student priest, ostensibly to study Buddhism but also to act as a hostage. At this time the T’ang dynasty was extending its power into the Korean peninsula, and eventually it conquered the state of Faekche, which had been strongly allied to Japan. Japan dispatched an army to go to the assistance of Packche, but in 663 it was defeated, and all vestiges of Japanese control disappeared from the Korean peninsula. In order to guard the country from possible attack by Chinese or Korean forces, garrison troops known as sakimori were established along the coast of northern Kyushu. The T’ang government, however, only requested that Japan recognize its sovereignty over the Korean peninsula and did not attempt to send a military force against Japan.

In 665 Joe, who until then had remained in China as a hostage, was sent home, though the exact reason for this is unclear. On his return, he was poisoned by a man of Paekche who had taken refuge in Japan after the overthrow of his native country.