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On the sixth day of the eighth month in the autumn of the fifteenth year [284 CE.] a Prince from [the Korean state of] Baekje called Araki came before the court and presented two fine horses to the [Japanese] emperor.... This Araki was very good at reading the [Confucian] classics.... Hearing this, the emperor asked Araki, "Do you possess a fine Confucian professor [in Baekje]?" Araki replied, "There is one called Wani, he is excellent." Arata Wake and Kamunaki Wake were dispatched to Baekje to get Wani. In spring in the second month of the sixteenth year Wani arrived. Prince Uji no Waki Iratsuko took him as his teacher. He learnt various classics from Wani. There were none of them he could not master. Wani became the first keeper of the imperial books.1
So began the history of Confucianism in Japan. Confucian professors were fine gifts for princes who could use them as symbols of status and connection. As a prince would show his prowess and exhibit his own status by skillfully riding an especially fine stallion, so too a prince "able to master" all the Confucian classics, taught by a fine teacher, exhibited not only the status of "having" that teacher, but also his own accomplishments in being able to "master" the material.
This passage seems to be the first Japanese historical source narrating Confucianism's arrival in Japan. Whether this occurred in 284, as the source could be literally interpreted, or 402, as Peter Kornicki has suggested, or whether this story is a work of complete fiction from the late seventh or early eighth centuries, when Nihon Shoki was compiled, we will never really know.2What is evident is that Confucianism--both its personnel and texts--were initially perceived primarily as part of the status symbolism of East Asian interstate relations.
The beginnings of Confucianism in Japan were thus closely intertwined with the beginnings of the Japanese state itself. The formation of a single, dominant state in central Japan occurred concurrently with a new wave of importation and institutionalization of political and religious culture from mainland Asia, most notably from states on the peninsula now known as Korea. The impact of, most importantly, Buddhism,...