This year marked the 1,400th anniversary since the first ambassador, Ono no Imoko, was sent to the Sui Dynasty Court. The imperial court of Japan sponsored these missions sending officials, monks, scholars and artisans to learn numerous aspects of the advanced culture of China. There were about 18 or so of these expeditions over the following 300 years. During this long span, Japan slowly absorbed this massive learning and adapted it to its own environment. It is a crucial aspect of Japan/China relations.
These were big undertakings. Each official mission usually traveled in three to four ships, with 400 to 600 persons making the voyage. To try and understand the experience of such missions in Spring 2007, I traveled with a small like-minded group along the path followed by the last of these missions that left from Japan’s shores in 838 A.D. I chose to focus on this particular group because their experiences were carefully documented by monk Ennin, later known as Jikaku Daishi, in his The Record of a Pilgrimage to Tang China in Search of the Law, one of the great travel diaries of the world, covering his nine-year sojourn, from 838 to 847. Ennin kept an almost daily log in classical Chinese throughout his expedition. The wonderful details he recorded form a quilt of life of the Tang Dynasty.
Japanese ships of the early missions safely skirted the peninsula and followed the island chain to the Shandong peninsula of China. However, after the new Kingdom of Silla that unified the Korean peninsula in 660, subsequent missions sailed the hazardous open sea toward Yangzhou or Ningbo in the south. This made the voyage more dangerous than before. Disasters at sea were numerous, around one fourth of the persons on board and several ambassadors never returned home.
We boarded a ship in Japan to imitate this 838 voyage of the Tang mission and returned again to Japan as they did by boat from the Shandong peninsula. Our group from diverse backgrounds swelled and shrank in numbers during the 13-day trip, but we had important elements. We had an ambassador and a second ambassador that was a must for those historical embassies. We also had a senior monk, regular monks, scholars, students, translators, artists, artisans, businessmen, and others. Our troop represented four nationalities and all 20s to 70s age groups. Fortunately, quite a number Chinese students also joined the anniversary activities in Yangzhou.
Boarding the New Ganjinmaru at the Kobe pier, we all felt that this was not just an ordinary ferry ride to China. No, we were in the mind-set of an adventure of more than a thousand years ago. The members read Ennin’s dairy and looked for signs that would link us to his experience.
References to Sui and Tang missions included months of departure and return, seasons, and currents. Winds for going to China were favorable in summer months, whereas autumn and winter had the best winds sailing to Japan. We weren’t counting, of course, on currents or specific wind patterns. What I experienced, though, was something that no time could change. The water of the ocean and the passage on the sea remained as ever.
Ships of the past ambassadorial mission left from Naniwa port (near today’s Osaka), passed through the Inland Sea and Straits of Shimonoseki to Hakata Bay in Kyushu, then touched the Gotoo Archipelago and finally headed across the open sea. It took them eight days sailing southwest, to reach the coast near Rudong Town in today’s Jiangsu Province.
Ours was a modernized transport and yet I felt close to the eye level of those ancient travelers. En route I stared out into the black night imagining what a frightening fate it was for those when ships went down in the black void of sea and sky. Our boat arrived in two days after a smooth crossing. At dawn we had entered the wide mouth of the Yangtse. No shore was visible, yet the color of the water was markedly muddy. This was the good sign, Ennin had observed, that the deep ocean was behind and their ship nearing land. After traveling up the Huangpu River, Shanghai’s impressive skyline took us into the 21st c.
For the official mission to Tang, however, getting ashore was a greater trial that one might usually imagine. We know from Ennin’s Diary that their boats smashed on a shoal, sunk into soft mudflats and broke apart. Those on board were despondent. Fortunately, locals guided them to nearby narrow inter-coastal canals. Several skiffs, piled up with their tribute goods, bore them inland. They conversed by brush and learned of their whereabouts.
Where they landed could have been one of any number of inlets. I decided that it was in the vicinity of today’s Bingfang Coastline. Today’s coast has been extended over 15 km by the build-up of silt since their mission arrived. I went looking for the sea, but I finally had to ask some passing shell gatherers, jammed into a tractor-lorry, where the water was. According to my modern map, the legal shoreline was far behind. They laughed and replied, “Right here, tide’s out.”
As they moved inland they stopped for tea in Rugao Town. Ennin described the willow-lined waterway as having fine homes on either side. We, too, walked through unlit alleys of old Rugao that were actually the covered remnants of canals the mission probably used to come into the area from the coast. Our group stood in the dark and tried to focus on the bridge that the emissaries would have crossed to a small tea stall on the other side. As we continued on along narrow stone walkways, the enveloping night made the passage through history plausible.
When Ennin’s mission finally got underway again, they moved inland along the main canals, dug in the Sui Dynasty, with a fleet of about forty barges tied together and pulled by water buffalo, plying paths along the banks. Ennin was amazed. “This unexpected sight is not easy to record.” Today boats are motored, but often make long boat chains as in the old days.
People traveling on this ambassadorial mission were given warm hospitality in Yangzhou both at the government level and at various temples. They were surprised by such a cosmopolitan metropolis. We must remember that hundreds of Japanese coming into the city meant finding a lot of housing. Officials stayed at one place, monks another, while the common persons had their own quarters. For all the romanticism about the missions going all the way to the Tang capital of Chang’an and mixing with Silk Road culture there, more realistically it was prosperous, populous towns like Yangzhou where Japanese were exposed to the latest trends in Chinese culture. These coastal cities also had international flavor. According to Ennin, beside those Silla Koreans who assisted the mission as translators, there were also Arabs, Persians and people from the Kingdom of Champa (Vietnam). The most sought after treasures were books, scrolls and sutras and each mission actually had lists of those books to be brought back to Japan.
Our mini-mission of 2007 tried to give something back to a few of the towns where earlier missions had stayed. We planted trees in Yangzhou, Huai’an, Qingzhou, Shidao and Penglai. I hoped these trees would also be memorials to those who never made it home, as well as to the hospitality of local people. That included communities of persons from the Korean peninsula who lived in special enclaves in the above-mentioned cities. They served as interpreters, advisors and ships captains for many of the missions.
Those Japanese officials that went on to the capital usually didn’t dally there. They were often back within a month or so searching along the coast for a way home. What route they took home was based on where they could find a sea-worthy ship. The Ambassador’s mission of 838, utilized the canal system, paid their respects to the Tang emperor and joined up with the rest of the entourage at Chuzhou(today’s Huai’an). From there they passed along the Huai River out to the sea. After a rough voyage they landed on the tip of the Shandong Peninsula. Waiting for favorable conditions, they finally set out for home from the port of Shidao.
Ennin decided to stay on in China and after much trouble finally received permission to travel to Mt. Wutai and Chang’an. He also traveled to Dengzhou (Penglai) which figures prominently in the early history of these missions. As I stood on the ramparts of the Penglai Pavilion on a clear day, I saw the chain of islands stretching out into the Bohai Sea. Ennin stayed at the Kaiyuan Temple. The site is now an apartment complex. There he found faded wall paintings commissioned by members of a previous Japanese mission and barely made out the three characters for Japan (日本国) and the names and ranks of the Japanese. Fortunately, Ennin copied down whatever he could of the writing next to the paintings. The unique reference to Japan and names of Japanese sojourners were saved for posterity by the chance visit of Ennin.
Seven years later Ennin also left on a Silla-manned ship from Shidao at the eastern tip of Shandong. The closest port our group could find was a ferry leaving from Qingdao. On May 3rd we left from there on this safer “northern” sea route in a path very much like that of the official mission’s return voyage sailing from Shandong in 839. Their vessels were laden with books, scrolls and gifts for the Emperor. Our ship, the 24,000-ton ship Utopia, was carrying gravel and large containers filled with modern goods as it turned toward home, skirting the Korean peninsula, going some 1,060 km. Those on voyages of the past, however, feared that if they missed the Japanese islands, they would be lost in the horizon.
At 3 a.m. the ship stopped for three hours to adjust the time for arrival at Shimonoseki. I awoke with the sudden stillness and went out on deck. It was then that I realized that prayers at Sumiyoshi Shrine were not just to quell storms during the journey. Prayers were also for a certain amount of favorable wind so they would not be stranded at sea. Ennin had such an experience as his boat stalled south of the Korean peninsula. They prayed hard and offered mirrors to the sea. We, too, recited a sutra and cast one cosmetic compact into the depths. As I stood on the deck two shimmering white seagulls appeared out of the night and did a dance in the black sky above me. I knew that the persons on those missions would have rejoiced knowing their homeland was near.
The history of these interconnected relations of East Asia peoples, when they helped each other, learned from each other and respected each other, can be regarded as a precious lesson for us today.