Liewen Zhe/Wen
Tang Dynasty culture had an immeasurable influence on Japan.
The most crucial of these are those who sent Tang envoys to Tang, and examining their behavior in The Tang Dynasty can clearly understand how much Japan really admired the Tang Dynasty at that time.
In a period of two and a half centuries, Japan dispatched nineteen envoys to the Tang Dynasty, three of which failed.
These members of the Japanese mission who came to Tang Dynasty carried out extensive cultural study activities in the Tang Dynasty, mainly: collecting books, studying karma and learning the Law, and extensive socializing.
At that time, the Japanese imperial court attached great importance to studying in the Tang Dynasty, which can be seen from the cultural level of the members of the Tang mission.
At that time, the Japanese who came to Tang Had a high cultural attainment.
In addition to the international students studying abroad monks engaged in professional study and work, the formal diplomatic members of the Tang Dynasty Mission were mostly high-ranking Japanese cultural leaders who were familiar with scripture and history and were good at literature and art, and some were also famous Japanese high priests in the country at that time.
Not only that, but even among the service personnel in the mission, there are many elderly people with a skill or a certain level of education.
The most famous of these is probably Kurita Ieji, who, as an attendant of the ambassador of the Tang Dynasty, was able to copy the paintings of han gan, a famous great painter of the Tang Dynasty, to the level of "appearance and clothing without a loss" and "one according to Han Gan's appearance", which shows his painting level.
The main contents of the study of the Tang delegation to Tang are:
1. Collect books
At that time, the Japanese who came to the Tang Dynasty basically took some books with them, regardless of their status, and the number of international students and monks who specialized in studying brought back was staggering.
For example, when the international student Ji Bei Zhenbei returned to China, he took with him one hundred and thirty volumes of the Tang Li, one volume of the Great Yan Classic, twelve volumes of the Great Yan Calendar Licheng, ten volumes of the Essential Records of the Book of Music, and the Records of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
This act of carrying books was appreciated by Emperor Hyotoku at the time. Therefore, the act of bringing books back to Japan is not uncommon.
Yuan Ren and Yuan Zhen, who came to the Tang Dynasty during the Heian period, brought back hundreds of volumes of books, including Buddhist classics, Confucian masterpieces, and historical anthologies.
Most of these books were copied by themselves, hired to copy, donated by The Tang people or purchased at their own expense.
Most of the texts brought back by the monks were copied.
In the Heian period, Zong Rui, who came to fame in the Tang Dynasty, copied books at Ximing Temple from June to October 865 AD;
Yuan Ren copied the scriptures at the Songshan Courtyard;
During her stay in Chang'an, Yuan Zhen also borrowed the Qinglong Temple's Fa Quan's "Great Ritual Track".
Hiring people to copy is also the main means of collecting books.
During his study of Buddhism at Qinglong Temple, Kukai also hired more than 20 students who specialized in copying scriptures to copy the finest tantric sutras such as Vajrapani for him;
The four hundred and sixty volumes of scriptures brought back by the monk were also copied by someone.
For book donations, there are official and folk ones.
Wu Zetian once sent the Sutra theory, etc. to Japan "because of the letter of the country";
The tenth dispatch of Tang deputy envoys to the Tang court to apply to bring back Laozi's classics was allowed by the Tang Dynasty;
When Dao Zhao returned to China, his master Master Xuanzang gave him Buddhist relics, sutras, and Dharma tools.
Yuezhou Kaiyuan Temple also gave "Hohua Xuanyi" and "Myo Lok Ji Shui" to Yuan Zhen, and later also received the "Great Nikkei Interpretation" donated by Qinglong Temple.
For the purchase of books, the most famous of them is recorded in the Old Book of Tang: whenever Japanese and Siamese envoys came to China, they always had to buy the texts of Zhang Que (a very famous scholar in the Prosperous Tang Dynasty) with heavy money.
This led to Zhang's works being expensive even in Japan for a time.
Similar to Zhang's work is Bai Juyi's poems, which have no less influence on Japan than the former.
Their works had a great influence on the literary style of the Nara and Heian periods.
2. Study the Law of Practice
The main body of people who come to Tang to study the Fa are international students and monks studying abroad, and the most emblematic of their love for Tang culture is their learning results.
The study of these people was strongly supported by the Tang court, and they were able to enter the Guozijian to study, and after completing their studies, many of them were also "famous in the Tang Kingdom".
The most famous of these was Chao Heng (Abe Zhongmalu), who was promoted to an official by the Tang court at the time with excellent results.
He successively served as the school secretary of the Zuo Chunfang Bureau, Zuo Shiyi, Zuo Shuque, Yi Wangyou, ******, Zhennan Duhu, Annan Jiedushi, etc.
After learning to become a scholar of martial arts in the Tang Dynasty, Jibei Zhenbei became the highest official among those who returned to the Tang Dynasty, and he mainly studied subsets of classics and history, law, military, astronomy, music, etc. in the Tang Dynasty, and all of them were slightly accomplished.
There is another person who should be mentioned- Yamato Nagaoka, who mainly studied law in the Tang Dynasty, became an authority on Japanese law after returning to China, and made a great contribution to the transplantation of Tang laws to Japan.
In short, these specially studied the members of the mission who studied Tang culture not only deeply, but also extensively and subtly.
Even when Emperor Xuanzong of Tang made Confucius the King of Wenxuan, they informed the emperor of the matter and requested that the title of Confucius in the country be changed to King Wenxuan.
Third, extensive travel
During their study in the Tang Dynasty, most of the Tang envoys had contacts with Tang officials, literati, and monks at that time, and left many poems of singing and harmony.
Among them, the highest level of was poetry is the eleventh dispatch of Tang envoy Fujiwara Aokawa and Tang Xuanzong's interaction;
There are also Sheng Tang poets Liu Changqing and Xu Ning, who have given poems to Japanese envoys.
Many of these exchanges were not severed after the return of Japanese envoys.
In 858, Yuan Zhen asked the Tang Dynasty merchant Zhan Shilang (Jing Quan) to bring letters and gifts (four pounds of mercury) to the monk Chang Ya and others of the Kaiyuan Temple, and Chang Ya also warmly replied to Yuan Zhen.
epilogue
In short, the study of sending Tang envoys to Tang was very successful, even if the Tang cultural factors in Japanese culture today are not uncommon.
By combing through the cultural learning activities of the Tang envoys sent to the Tang Dynasty during the Tang Dynasty, we can see how much Japan worshipped the Tang Dynasty in those years!