Kibi no Makibi
Template:Japanese name Kibi no Makibi (吉備 真備, 695 – November 3, 775) was a Japanese scholar and noble during the Nara period. Also known as Kibi Daijin ("Minister Kibi"). Born in Bitchu Province (present-day Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture) as Shimotsumichi Asomi, he came from a line of local elites. Kibi was the name of the town or area he came from.
In 716, he traveled to China to study. He stayed in China for 17 years before returning to Japan.[1] He is credited with bringing back a number of things, introducing to Japan for the first time the game of go, the art of embroidery, and the biwa (a kind of lute). He became famous for these journeys in China with Abe no Nakamaro and the monk Genbō.
In 737, he received promotion to the junior fifth rank. In 751, at the senior fourth rank (upper grade), he received an appointment as vice-ambassador to the T'ang Dynasty and traveled to China the following year, returning to Japan in 753.
After spending some years in Kyūshū as the assistant administrator of Dazaifu (the principal governmental post on that island), he returned to Nara for appointment in 764 to the leadership of the project to construct Tōdai-ji. Promotion to the junior third rank followed, as well as appointment to head an army to put down the uprising by Fujiwara no Nakamaro. Reaching the second rank in 765, he took the offices of Major Councillor, then Minister of the Right. In 770, he supported a losing candidate for the throne and submitted his resignation from office, but the court accepted only his resignation from military office, and retained him as Minister of the Right. He finally resigned in 771, devoting himself to the study of Confucian principles and their applications in Japanese administration. Kibi died in 775.
Kibi has sometimes been credited with inventing the katakana phonetic syllabary and writing system.
A late 12th century narrative handscroll in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston depicting Kibi's journey to China is one of the earliest of all Japanese narrative pictorial handscrolls (e-maki) known to be extant. It is believed to have been commissioned to help support the prestige of a school of divination which claimed connections to Kibi. Its purchase by the museum in 1932 directly led to the strengthening of Japanese laws against the removal of cultural properties of particular importance from the country.[2]
See also
Notes
- ^ Fogel, Joshua. (1996). The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China, p. 22, p. 22, at Google Books; excerpt, "Like Genbō, Kibi no Makibi remained in China after the embassy ships returned to Japan, returning home himself at the same time as Genbo seventeen years later."
- ^ Morse, Anne Nishimura et al. MFA Highlights: Arts of Japan. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2008. p194.
References
- Papinot, Edmond (1910). Historical and geographical dictionary of Japan. Tokyo: Librarie Sansaisha.
- Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (1995). Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd.