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This article explores the relationship between the importation of Chinese historical and divinatory texts during Japan's Asuka period (552-645) and the contemporaneous development of notions of sagehood and sage kingship. The article argues that the rapid diffusion of these texts led to the emergence of a body of literate individuals from mainly immigrant kinship groups with unrivalled levels of control over and access to the Chinese textual tradition. As Chinese divinatory and political tropes came to pervade political discourse of the period, the court's hermeneutic dependence upon these figures for the interpretation of portents had far-reaching consequences for the conception and representation of kingship during the period. By focusing upon a cluster of immigrant kinship groups associated with the early cult of Prince ShŌtoku, this article demonstrates how these groups utilized their own ancestral legends to initiate a radical redefinition of imperial authority and lineage.

Ethnicity, Sagehood, and the Politics of Literacy in Asuka Japan