In
Japan, an ambivalent tone was set early in its relationship with China.
Shōtoku Taishi (574–622), Prince Regent of Japan, is famous for having sent a letter to the
Emperor of China starting with the words: "The Emperor of the land where the sun rises sends a letter to the Emperor of the land where the sun sets to ask if you are healthy" (日出處天子致書日沒處天子無恙云云). This is commonly believed as the origin of the name
Nihon (source of the sun), although the actual characters for Nihon (日本) were not used.
Not long after this, however, Japan remodeled its entire state and administrative apparatus on the Chinese system under the
Taika Reform (645), the beginning of a period of
Chinese influence on many aspects of
Japanese culture until
Imperial Japanese embassies to China were abolished in 894.
In 1401, during the
Muromachi period (室町時代), the
shōgun Yoshimitsu (足利義満) restarted the lapsed tribute system (1401), describing himself in a letter to the Chinese Emperor as "Your subject, the King of Japan" while also a subject of the Japanese Emperor. The benefit of the tribute system was a profitable trade. The trade was called
Kangō[31] trade (means tally trade
[31]) and Japanese products were traded for Chinese goods. This relationship ended with the last envoy of Japanese monk
Sakugen Shūryō in 1551,
[32][33] which was
Ashikaga Yoshiteru's era, including a 20 years suspension by
Ashikaga Yoshimochi.[
clarification needed] These embassies were sent to China on 19 occasions.
During the
Mongol-led
Yuan dynasty of China, Japan thought of China as no longer a genuine Chinese land.
[34] Subsequently, Japan often used the names "China" and "
Huaxia" to refer to itself.
[34]
In the years 1592–1593 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, having unified Japan, tried to conquer Korea as a prelude to conquering Ming China. The attempt to conquer "all under heaven" (itself a sinocentric concept identifying China as "the world") ended in failure.
Japanese responses to Sinocentric concepts have not always been so straightforward. The
Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281 evoked a national consciousness of the role of the
kamikaze (神風) in defeating the enemy. Less than fifty years later (1339–43),
Kitabatake Chikafusa wrote the
Jinnō Shōtōki (神皇正統記, 'Chronicle of the Direct Descent of the Divine Sovereigns') emphasizing the divine descent of the imperial line.
The Jinnō Shōtōki provided a Shinto view of history stressing the divine nature of Japan and its spiritual supremacy over China and India.
In the
Tokugawa era, the study of
Kokugaku (国学) arose as an attempt to reconstruct and recover the authentic native roots of Japanese culture, particularly Shintoism, excluding later elements borrowed from China. In 1657,
Tokugawa Mitsukuni established the
Mito School, which was charged with writing a history of Japan as a perfect exemplar of a "nation" under Confucian thought, with the emphasis on unified rule by the emperors and respect for the imperial court and Shinto deities.
In an ironic affirmation of the spirit of Sinocentrism, claims were even heard that the Japanese, not the Chinese, were the legitimate heirs of Chinese culture. Reasons included that the Imperial House of Japan never died out comparing to the rise and fall of Chinese monarchs in the past, and that Japan was free of barbarism like Qing Dynasty's forced adoption of Manchu queue and clothing on Han Chinese after 1644. Combined with Shintoism, came the concept of "Shinkoku/the Divine Kingdom (神國). In the early Edo period,
neo-Confucianist Yamaga Sokō asserted that Japan was superior to China in
Confucian terms and more deserving of the name "
Chūgoku". Other scholars picked this up, notably
Aizawa Seishisai, an adherent of the Mito School, in his political tract
Shinron (新論 New Theses) in 1825.
As a country that had much to gain by eclipsing Chinese power in East Asia, Japan in more recent times has perhaps been most ardent in identifying and demolishing what it dismissively calls
Chūka shisō (中華思想), loosely meaning "
Zhonghua ideology". One manifestation of Japanese resistance to Sinocentrism was the insistence for many years in the early 20th century on using the name
Shina (支那) for China, based on the Western word 'China', in preference to
Chūgoku (中国 Central Country) advocated by the Chinese themselves.
