Online Forum on Japanese History

We are delighted to announce the launch of Kyushu and Okinawa Studies'
first on-line symposium. This is the first in a series discussing the
history of Kyushu and Okinawa and featuring major academic contributors.

Title: Gateway or Gatekeeper?
Central participants: Bruce Batten, Obirin University, Japan and Wang
Zhenping, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Subject: Medieval communication between Kyushu and the Asian continent.
Date: May 1st to May 7th, 2006.
Participation: The forum is open to anyone who wished to register and
participate: specialist, student or amateur.
Location: www.kostudies.com/forum

Introduction: Two myths dominate the story of Japan's relationship
with the outside world. The first and most common is that Japan was an
isolated country, opened by the arrival of Commodore Perry. The second
compares Japan to an oyster, because the foreign influence that it
accepted was no bigger than a grain of sand.

In recent years, those myths have come under attack from researchers
studying medieval communication between Kyushu and the Asian
continent. We are delighted to announce the participation of two
authors whose work details a far richer and more complex environment.
Professors Batten and Wang describe a time in which pirates,
diplomats, traders, monks and soldiers sailed to and from Japan.

Much of this scholarship is new. For example, Professor Batten
examines the Kôrokan, the official guest-house for foreign visitors,
which was located in Hakata, now located inside the modern-day city of
Fukuoka. A thousand years ago, most visitors to Japan would have
arrived by ship at Hakata Bay, the one and only authorized gateway to
Japan. For years the site was buried underneath the city's baseball
stadium and only in recent years, after the demolition of the stadium,
has the evidence been unearthed. Professor Wang also utilizes recent
archaeological findings and little-known archival material to come to
new conclusions about relations between Japan and the outside world.

Professor Batten approaches the topic by covering the history of
Hakata from 500 C.E. into the medieval period. He has chapters
focusing on war, diplomacy, piracy, and trade. Professor Batten has
spent his professional career focusing on Kyushu and has had access to
the latest archaeological discoveries in the area. Chapter 4 of this
book, "Gateway to Japan", available to visitors of this symposium,
focuses on a single case study. By focusing on the particularly
well-documented case of a Chinese junk that arrived in Hakata in 945,
Professor Batten showcases many of his findings, including those on
immigration, trade and official attitudes toward the outside world.

Professor Wang's focus is on diplomatic relations and a series of
important embassies sent from the Japanese islands to Sui and Tang
China. Wang explains in detail the rigorous criteria of the Chinese
and Japanese courts in the selection of diplomats and how the two
prepared for missions abroad. He journeys with a party of Japanese
diplomats from their tearful farewell party to hardship on the high
seas to their arrival amidst the splendors of Yangzhou and Changan and
the Sui-Tang court. One of his central ideas, outlined in the
introduction is that the traditional view of China's tributary system
is oversimplistic. He argues that it was not a unilateral tool of
hegemony but a more complex situation in which multiple partners were
able to modify the rules depending on the times and circumstances.