The Chinese Influence

In the 600's and 700's, one of the extended family groups began to dominate the others, and it declared itself Japan's imperial household. By tradition, the imperial family has no family name. The head of the imperial house, whose given name was Kotoku, became emperor in 645.

The next year, the imperial family began a program called the Taika Reform. The program involved constructing capital cities and organizing Japanese society following the example of China. The imperial family created a central government and official bureaus and adopted a system of land management similar to China.

Under this system, most people worked as farmers on land the government owned. In return, the farmers paid taxes to the government and provided labor, including service in the government's small armies.

To justify its claim to authority, the imperial family relied not on China but on ancient Japanese beliefs. Japanese histories written in the 700's maintain that the family had descended from the gods who created the Japanese islands in Japanese mythology. The family's presumed descent was through Amaterasu, the Japanese sun goddess.