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Take your time to explore the site... It is chock-full of great information.
Background Information and Gaming Aids for The Celestial Empire role-playing game
and other TTRPGs set in East Asia
2013-06-06
Rìběnguó (日本國)
The Celestial Empire is centred on China and the neighbouring lands. I don't know how 'close' you feel that Japan (Rìběnguó 日本國) is to the East Asian mainland. It's certainly quite close geographically, but except for the ill-fated Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281, for the Imjin War (1592–98), and for the Wōkòu raids on the maritime provinces of China and Korea, there haven't been any direct contacts between the East Asian peoples and the Japanese at the time periods covered by The Celestial Empire.
Mediæval and Renaissance Japan, however, are often popular with players of fantasy role-playing games. As a result, I am offering you a link to Sengoku Daimyo, a web-site devoted to this fascinating place and times. The web-site is maintained by Anthony J. Bryant, the author of Sengoku, the best feudal Japanese role-playing game ever, and of the following Osprey books: Early Samurai AD 200–1500 (Elite), The Samurai (Elite), Samurai 1550–1600 (Warrior), and Sekigahara 1600 (Campaign).
Take your time to explore the site... It is chock-full of great information.
Take your time to explore the site... It is chock-full of great information.
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there haven't been any direct contacts between the East Asian peoples and the Japanese at the time periods covered by The Celestial Empire.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Especially since the Tang Dynasty, China had a huge direct influence on Japan. Many Japanese came to Tang China to study, and brought back Chinese science, technology, architecture, agriculture, bureaucracy, city planning, not to mention Buddhism and the writing system! The Japanese sent many diplomatic envoys to the Chinese court from the Tang onward. There is also a long history of direct Japanese-Chinese maritime commercial relations, in addition to the piracy issue you mentioned.
See here and here for starters.
My bad. I should've written there haven't been Many direct contacts...
ReplyDeleteContacts were limited to official embassies, though, of which there weren't many. Joe Average (whether from China or from Japan) couldn't simply travel across the sea to the neighbouring land.
Contacts were limited to official embassies, though, of which there weren't many.
ReplyDeleteThere were 15 kentōshi (envoy missions) to China during the Tang period alone. These carried Japanese students and scholars of Tang civilization to and from China, some of whom remained on the continent 30 years or more before returning to disseminate the knowledge they learned.
The success of the Tang missions is demonstrated by the great volume of knowledge they transmitted to Japan. By the end of the 9th century, the Japanese possessed at least 1700 Chinese texts including Confucian treatises on government and social harmony, as well as works of history, architecture, agriculture, poetry, divination, and medicine.
Almost every aspect of the everyday life of "Joe Average" Japanese (whoever that was) was profoundly influenced by the adoption of Chinese institutions and practices. These included the written language (Japan had none before the adoption of Chinese characters -- "kanji"), Buddhism (Saichō and Kūkai were Japanese scholars who sailed as part of the 804 embassy to China. Upon their return to Japan, the former founded the Tendai sect of Buddhism, and the latter founded the Shingon sect, which were largely responsible for the spread of Buddhism in Japan), Confucian bureaucracy, city planning, irrigation systems, road systems, etc, etc.