Kindle Edition - Emperor Shōmu 724-748

[Ross Bender]

This is the Kindle e-book version including both Emperor Emperor Shōmu: Early Years, 724-737 and Emperor Emperor Shōmu: Peregrination, 738-748. These were previously published as paperbacks. Note: The Tables of Imperial Edicts and Orders from the Great Council of State are somewhat garbled in the digital version, so I have attached these to this email as a pdf.

Amazon.com: Emperor Shōmu: Early Years and Peregrination, 724-748 eBook : Bender, Ross, Bender, Ross Lynn : Kindle Store

The first fourteen years of Shōmu’s reign were marked by a number of dramatic incidents. In 727 a Crown Prince was born to Shōmu and his consort Kōmyō, but the infant died within a year. Prince Nagaya, the Great Minister of the Left led the government until the bizarre affair of his supposed conspiracy resulted in the death of him and his family in 729. Shortly thereafter Kōmyō, a Fujiwara woman, was elevated as Empress. From 735 to 737 a great smallpox epidemic ravaged the country, leading to the deaths of many of the high nobility, including the four sons of Fujiwara Fuhito. Tachibana no Moroe rose to prominence at the end of this period along with the Buddhist priest Genbō and Shimotsumichi no Makibi (later Kibi no Makibi). Miraculous omens of tortoises and new planetary observations marked this era, along with the increasing importance of official Shinto and Buddhism. Diplomatic relations with Silla and Balhae increased significantly, along with a major military campaign against the Emishi in the northeast.

Emperor Shōmu’s travels, particularly in the years from 740 to 745, have long attracted attention from Japanese scholars. He has been characterized as “the wandering Emperor,” and the period saw the sovereign undertake a months-long trek from the capital in Nara to the east and northeast, culminating at the site of his new capital, Kuni, at the end of 740. Then in the fall of 742 he set out for Shigaraki in Ōmi Province, where another city was begun, until a series of forest fires and earthquakes forced its abandonment in 745. At the Kōkadera in Shigaraki the construction of a massive statue of Rushana Budda was initiated, although the disasters forced the interruption of the project, which continued back at the Nara capital. Significantly, a good portion of time before and after this great peregrination was spent at yet another capital, Naniwa, in present-day Osaka, which Shōmu had rebuilt in the 720s. This translation covers the years of Shōmu's reign from 738 to 748. It analyzes his travels as both a reaction to the Fujiwara no Hirotsugu rebellion of 740, and also as a spiritual pilgrimage, during which the Emperor began to understand himself as a disciple of the Buddha due to karmic causation in previous lives. The growth of official Buddhism was coupled with intense devotion to the Ise Great Shrine, and a new reverence for the shrine of Hachiman in distant Kyushu.

Ross Bender