[Buddha-l] Religious, But is it the power of Kings?

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joy,

> I don't know anything about Japanese history. Could it have been mimetic
court behaviour? If Chinese culture is imported so heavily (scripture,
classics and all, perhaps including governing technics and tactics?), it
probably would have been considered cool to follow the latest fashions from
the Chinese emperial court. I can still imagine a bottom-up development,
through the intermediary of the aristocracy , merchants (or equivalent).

All that is true as well, but the main conduit of Buddhism into Japan, as
Bob mentioned, was Korea, not China (though some things, especially during
the Nara period (7th-8th c), began to come from China as well). Only in
recent decades has Japan begun to acknowledge the major influence of Korea
on Japan in those early centuries (even the old style burial mounds for the
Imperial family are imitations of the Korean mounds -- so the influence was
not just about Buddhism -- a popular "conspiracy" theory in Japan is that
the imperial family is itself Korean, not Japanese; they like to point out
that the faces of the Imperial family "look Korean," not Japanese!).

As I mentioned, I have some deadlines, but, will try to write more on this
in a few days.

Dan