Xu Fudong crossed to Japan and became the first emperor of Japan, Emperor Shenmu, which was once passed down for a long time. But is this the case? What do Japanese people think of this?
The story of Xu Fudongdu mainly comes from Sima Qian's "History of Qin Benji" and Liu An's "Huainanzi", which says that Qin Shi Huang sent Xu Fu to the sea to find "Penglai, Abbot, and Yingzhou" to seek divine medicine, and "Huainanzi" said that Xu Fu went to the sea without success, and once again asked Qin Shi Huang to send 500 boys and girls to accompany Xu Fu again to find the Immortal Mountain Divine Medicine, and as a result, Xu Fu arrived at a place of "Plain Guangze". Since the 1950s, some Chinese scholars have deduced that Xu Fu was Emperor Shenwu based on the Records of History and Huainanzi, combined with the Records of Ancient Events and the Nihon Shoki.
However, Teacher Hu Weiquan said that in Japan, although there are nearly 40 historical sites related to Xu Fu in Japan, the legend of Xu Fu to Japan is also spread today. However, many of these historical sites were built in the Edo period, and the earliest mention of the historical materials from Xu Fu to Japan is also until the 8th century. It is more than a thousand years away from China to the Qin and Han Dynasties BC more than 200 years ago, why? Because Japan only began to establish frequent relations with the Sui and Tang dynasties in the 7th century, the story of "Xu Fudongdu" spread to Japan with Japanese students. So why do Japanese people popularize the story of "Xu Fu Dongdu"? The reason is also very simple, they are willing to believe that the three immortal mountains of Penglai, Abbot, and Yingzhou that Xu Fu searched for and arrived at are Japan's mainland, and Japanese intellectuals hope to use the legend of Xu Fu to strengthen the concept that Japan is the place of gods and gods. But Xu Fu was never recognized as their first emperor, and Emperor Shenwu could not have been a Chinese alchemist.
From this example, we can see that China and Japan have very different perspectives on the understanding and use of a thing. The Japanese always have their own unique views on the use of foreign cultures.
However, for Chinese, the most incomprehensible thing is the emperor's position as a fictitious monarch. Why has Japan's emperor been able to remain in power? This is not easy to understand in the Chinese conception of history. Why can Japan be "one lineage"? Because the emperor himself had no real power, the de facto rulers of the past generations—Regency, shogun, Oda Toyotomi, Tokugawa shogunate, Meiji government, and military department—did not need to abolish the emperor, but could instead use the "son of heaven to order the princes" to deify the emperor and gain more practical power.
Why doesn't the Emperor hold real power? In fact, there is also a historical process. Why did the Emperor rule the world with the Fujiwara family? The phenomenon of "regency" was also accidental at first. "When the emperor was young, the regent assisted the young emperor in running the country, and when the emperor became an adult, the regent changed his name to Guan Bai and assisted the emperor in overseeing political affairs." Until the beginning of the Heian period, regency was originally limited to members of the emperor's family," but from the second half of the 10th century onwards, "regency" and "Sekibai" had completely become the pockets of the foreign relatives Fujiwara Hokuya, which was very similar to the foreign relatives who took turns ruling in the Eastern Han Dynasty, except that the Fujiwara clan held the government for a longer period of time, lasting up to 1,000 years.
Why did the "Enduring Rebellion" have a major impact on the imperial system? It explains why the shogunate later controlled the government, because Emperor Toba was dissatisfied with the arbitrariness of the shogunate, so he took the initiative to launch a war against the Kamakura shogunate in 1221, but the shogunate was militarily powerful, the emperor was defeated, Emperor Toba was exiled, and the emperor officially became a target of surveillance and protection under the samurai regime.
Is it very leisurely for the emperor's life without real power? Not laid-back. The emperor starts on the first day of each year, and almost every month, every week, or even every day, he has to perform various sacrifices on behalf of the country, the author wrote in "The Ancient Emperor's Life Without Political Power Was Very Leisurely? The "New Year's Day" lists the New Year's Day Pilgrimage, the Hemao Festival, the Divine Tasting Festival and the Tanabata Festival, the New Taste Festival, and the Great Tasting Festival, and it seems that the emperor's priesthood task as a religious leader is also very busy!
What does the emperor do to economic income? Of course, the economy is always positively related to power, when the emperor has great power, "under the whole world, can not be the royal land", and the shogunate is powerful, the state's tax collection power falls into the hands of the shogunate, the royal economic ability has dropped significantly, and the emperor wants to take the throne and sacrifice, basically relying on the full support of the shogunate. In the Sengoku period of Japan, shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki himself was still too busy to take care of himself, the emperor's life was very sloppy, and the scale of various ceremonies was reduced, and the most affected was the emperor's funeral and the new emperor's ascension to the throne. Fortunately, the three kings of the Sengoku period—Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu—did not have a self-reliant portal: Nobunaga expelled the shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki, but took the initiative to honor the emperor; Hideyoshi not only tried to restore the emperor system as it should be, the Taishang emperor system, but also asked the emperor to give himself and his family a new surname, "Toyotomi", and actively integrate into the emperor system; the Tokugawa clan worked hard for several generations to stabilize the situation and establish a dual political mechanism of "emperor-shogunate" until the Meiji Restoration.
The Meiji Restoration was originally a rebellion by the lower samurai against the Tokugawa shogunate, and later they brought out the Meiji Emperor and began a social reform on a social scale, but the inertia of history was like this, there was no tradition of holding real power, making the Japanese emperor system superficially very similar to the European "absolutist" monarchical era, but the emperor was always reluctant to fully go to the forefront, various political factions kept playing games, the replacement of the prime minister was like a marquee, and finally introduced "militarism", pushing the Asian people to the abyss of war.
"Chrysanthemum Dynasty - Two Thousand Years of Japanese Emperor History" shows us all aspects of the history of Japanese emperors with 70 questions, which is suitable for readers who have a certain understanding of Japanese history. If you have read "A Short History of Japan" or even "Chrysanthemum and the Sword", and then read this book, you should be able to continue to increase your knowledge. What is the relationship between "Hinomaru", "Jun's Generation", chrysanthemums, and cherry blossoms and the emperor? What is the Emperor's daily diet like? The mystery of the emperor's life is described in a very detailed and "gossipy" way in the second half of the book, and I will not dwell on it here.