In 2004, an epitaph was unearthed in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an, China, but this epitaph did not belong to China, but to a Japanese named Jing Zhencheng. Why do Japanese epitaphs be dug up in Xi'an? Because this epitaph was born in the Tang Dynasty more than 1,400 years ago, and this Jing Zhencheng's identity is very special, in his epitaph is written the four words "Titled To Study Abroad", which is the symbol of the Japanese students sent to China, that is, "sending Tang envoys".
Jing Zhencheng epitaph
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Japan began to send people to China to study. The Sui and Tang dynasties were the period when Japan sent the most intensive personnel to China. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Japan in China was known as the "Uighur Kingdom", and all personnel from Japan were collectively referred to as the Uighurs. In order to further strengthen the scattered rule in the country, emperor Tuigu, the ruler of the Uighur kingdom, began to send people to the Sui Dynasty to study.
This Emperor Tuigu is also a very unique person. Unlike China's imperial system, influenced by the matriarchal society of the primitive period, Japan recognized the legitimacy of female rulers, and this Tuiko emperor was also the first female emperor in Japanese history. Before she succeeded to the throne, the uighur state had not yet formed a stable political system, and the royal family was infighting, but after she succeeded to the throne, she disregarded her previous suspicions and made her nephew, who had been an enemy of herself, as the regent and supported his reforms. It is precisely because of this that Emperor Tuigu sent people to the Sui Dynasty to learn advanced management systems. Although it was a study, Emperor Tuigu was not willing to accept his position as a vassal state of China and wanted to seek diplomatic equality.
Japan's first female emperor
However, Emperor Wen of Sui and Emperor Jue of Sui did not buy it, and in their eyes, the Kingdom of Wei was just an inconspicuous small country. During the reign of Emperor Wen of Sui, the State of Wei sent a group of people to exchange and study. Emperor Wen of Sui asked the envoys of the Uighurs to introduce the relevant situation of the Uighurs, and as a result, they heard the following sentence: The rulers of the Uighurs regard the heavens as their brothers and the sun as their younger brothers. Emperor Wen of Sui was immediately unhappy: a vassal state did not weigh it up, and it was simply delusional to call himself a brother. So he ordered the Uighurs to change this statement. However, the State of Wei was very arrogant and did not listen to Emperor Wen of Sui's words.
By the time the Sui Emperor came to power, the Uighur State still did not change its previous style, and in the letter to the Sui Emperor came the sentence "The Sunrise of the Heavenly Son to the Book of the Day is nowhere to be without the Heavenly Son", the ruler of the Uighur State directly referred to himself as the Heavenly Son, which was undoubtedly a challenge to the orthodox status of the Sui Emperor Tianzi, which made the Sui Emperor very unhappy. It can be seen that during the Sui Dynasty, the Uighur State already wanted to highlight its independent status, but before the Uighur State could realize it, the Sui Dynasty disappeared into the wave of peasant uprisings due to various problems.
Portrait of the Sui Dynasty Emperor Yang Guangnan
After the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, Tang Taizong Li Shimin was known as the "Heavenly Khan" and had a huge influence throughout Asia. The rulers of the Uighur kingdom thought of changing the soup without changing the medicine, so they returned to their old business and continued to send people to the Tang Dynasty to study. In the period of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, the Uighurs felt that they had done it, after all, they had also studied with the Sui and Tang Dynasties for a while, and they had indeed undergone considerable changes, so they began to challenge the Tang Dynasty. However, the Uighurs did not want the war to burn themselves, so they united with Baekje on the Korean Peninsula to fight a battle with the Tang Dynasty, and as a result, they were defeated by the combined armies of the Tang Dynasty and Silla, baekje was directly destroyed, and the Uighurs also signed an agreement to pay tribute to the Tang Dynasty every year, this battle is called the "Battle of Baekcheongang", which is also the first recorded confrontation between China and Japan.
It was also after this battle that the Uighurs realized that they were not good enough, and then sent people to the Tang Dynasty to study. But on the other hand, the emperor of the Uighur Kingdom always considered himself to be equal to the kings of the Tang Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty only regarded the Uighur Kingdom as its vassal state from beginning to end. Therefore, the king of the Tang Dynasty would issue a letter of state to the envoy as a suzerainty after receiving the envoys of the Tang Dynasty. However, if it is handed over directly, the emperor's face cannot be hung up, so the envoys sent to tang generally do not hand in the national certificate after returning. After more than a hundred years of study, the Uighur State felt that it had done it again, and coupled with the deterioration of the political form of the Tang Dynasty, in 894 AD, the Uighur State no longer sent personnel to the Tang Dynasty.
In fact, during the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China, Japan established tributary relations with China and became a vassal state of China. But since then, Japan has been trying to get rid of this subordination and trying to establish an equal relationship with China's ancient dynasties. Therefore, after sending Tang envoys to China, they no longer carried the national letter, nor would they request the Tang Emperor as the suzerainty like other vassal states. In the Yuan Dynasty, even though Kublai Khan twice sent powerful expeditionary forces across the sea to invade Japan, he failed to bring it to its knees. Due to the limitations of geographical conditions, Japan has long belonged to a state of lockdown, which makes Japan a country with a high degree of cultural identity and a natural resistance to foreign cultures. On the other hand, Japan and China are not far apart in terms of geography, which is also a source of confidence for it to establish equal relations with China's powerful feudal dynasty.