Wakan and Sangoku : The Images of the World in the Early Middle Ages(<Special Issue>The 57th JLA Convention (2nd Day))

Abstract

What is the national identity of the early Middle Ages? The answer lies in examining the images of the wakan (Japanese-Chinese) world and of the sangoku (Indian-Chinese-Japanese) world, both of which were established in the early Heian Period, because the self-image of a country is inevitably created in relation to the images of other countries. Thus, as is shown in the annotations on Kokin-shu, discourses and counter-discourses on the two views of the world enabled the self-identity of the nation to be formed. The world images are not politically neutral as they were actually used to prove the national supremacy of Japan. In the geography of the sangoku world, for example, Ezo, present-day Hokkaido, was defined as a frontier. This shows that the formation of the national identity was based on the logic of exclusion.