Regarding the Aug. 12 article "Has another society of such superlatives ever existed at all?": Michael Hoffman claims that the Nara Period (710-784) "saw Japan's emergence from semi-barbarism into the full light of Chinese-style civilization." He talks at length about "feverish importation" and "how terribly far Japan had to go" for the sources of literacy and civilization he believes inspired the Heian Period (794-1185).
The 10-year hiatus between the two periods was due to the moving of the capital from Nara to Nagaoka in 784, then to Heiankyo in 794 -- by Emperor Kanmu, who reigned from 781 until his death in 806. Hoffman lists a number of elements that "had penetrated Japan some two centuries earlier, along with Chinese writing," and then "burgeoned." He fails to say that these elements burgeoned because of the tutelage of thousands of immigrants and refugees from the Korean Peninsula.
Emperor Akihito knows where Japan's literacy and civilization came from and why it flowered. At his 68th birthday press conference in 2001, he referred to the "Shoku Nihongi" when acknowledging his Korean ancestry through Kanmu. Heiankyo, which Kanmu built a few years after his mother's death, was heavily populated by clans with Korean roots. "Shinsen Shojiroku," a peerage compiled in 815 shortly after Kanmu's death, lists 1,182 imperial and other clans of which 326 (28 percent) were of nonindigenous, mostly Korean origin. Over half of the immigrant clans resided in Heiankyo, now Kyoto.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.