- 2025年10月31日
Why Make a Bible? The Fascinating Comparative Cultures of Japan and Ancient Jewry
Why Make a Bible? The Fascinating Comparative Cultures of Japan and Ancient Jewry
Short Summary This essay explores from a comparative cultural perspective why the Jews compiled the Bible while Japan lacks a single holy scripture. It posits the hypothesis that for the Jews, the diaspora and the loss of their kingdom spurred “canonization,” whereas for Japan, a system of succession through importing, editing, decentralized preservation, and renewal proved functional. The argument is made tangible through a thought experiment: creating a “Japanese Bible.”
“Japan is a civilization of a ‘distributed canon.’ The Jews are a civilization of a ‘centralized canon.'”
Japan does not have a single, unified scripture. This, however, is not a “deficiency.” The Rikkokushi (Six National Histories), the Engishiki, the copying of sutras, and the ritual rebuilding of the Ise Grand Shrine (Shikinen Sengū) symbolize a distributed canon—a preservation apparatus that continually renews itself—that has sustained the civilization of this island nation.
Why Did the Jews Create the Bible, and Why Did the Japanese Not?
It seems that humans and nations tend to create collections of some sort, though the degree, era, and context may vary. Globally, there is a clear trend of compiling texts, establishing them as orthodox, and placing them at the center of a religion, people, or nation.
The Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—which constitute a major global force centered on scripture, may seem distinct. However, from a broader perspective, they all derive from the Bible and ancient Judaism, forming a massive civilizational sphere. While hundreds of millions of people, such as the Chinese and Hindu Indians, exist outside the biblical sphere, the “People of the Book” of the Abrahamic traditions are a global majority.
Buddhism, too, in both its Theravada and Mahayana traditions, holds its scriptures in high esteem. The journey of the monk Xuanzang to India to obtain sutras is famously depicted in Journey to the West. In Korea, compiling the entire Buddhist canon was a national project.
A defining feature of the Abrahamic religions is the creation of the Bible, which lies at their very core. Its creation was one of humanity’s greatest inventions. The Chinese, as well, are a people who have repeatedly compiled historical texts, Confucian classics, and other documents with each dynastic change. In Communist China, this tradition may have shifted to works like Das Kapital, the Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, or books on Xi Jinping Thought. In any case, there is a culture where a central text is vital for a state or religion.
While I am not deeply familiar with Hinduism, in ancient India, the oral tradition of the Vedas, combined with what we now know about the existence of writing (contrary to old theories of a pre-literate society), would have formed the core of the culture. In this sense, Buddhism is no different. During eras when China and Korea were Buddhist nations, the compilation of Buddhist scriptures was a national endeavor. I recall a Japanese company that was compiling the Buddhist canon as part of its corporate philosophy, though I am unsure of its current status.
Observing this global history, one could argue that the act of compiling texts and establishing them as orthodox is the very nucleus of current human civilization.
Amid this world, Japan stands out as a nation that did not (or perhaps only partially did) engage in the national compilation and canonization of texts. Combining the perspectives of structuralist difference and post-structuralist relativism, two questions emerge:
- Why does the world seek to create comprehensive compilations of texts and establish them as orthodox?
- Why does Japan not engage in the intensive compilation of texts or canonize them?
The world’s civilizations are too broad a topic, so let’s narrow the focus to a comparison between the ancient Jews who compiled the Bible and the Japanese people.
Did the Japanese Not Compile and Canonize Texts?
The compilation and canonization of texts is not a binary of “doing” versus “not doing,” but a matter of degree. Japan did, in fact, undertake national-level literary compilations. Conversely, the ancient Jews, lacking the immense power of China, may have limited their compilations to religious texts and related works, rather than encompassing everything from medicine onwards. China, I believe, is truly exceptional. While a nation with sufficient strength could compile texts and build libraries, the great libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad were lost to the ravages of war. The texts compiled by successive Chinese dynasties have not all survived to the present day either.
What about Japan? While the details of its state formation are debated, we are fortunate that much is known thanks to Chinese documents. Japan’s oldest literary collections are considered to be the Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, and Man’yōshū. The Nihon Shoki, in particular, is unequivocally an orthodox text compiled by the state. Alongside such “hard” texts are “softer” national compilations like the imperial poetry anthologies (Chokusen Wakashū).
So, it is not that Japan did not create compilations or collected works. However, while foundational texts like the Nihon Shoki appear to have been created with great resolve, others seem more relaxed in nature.
There must be a reason why a nation or people would pour intense effort into compiling texts. By the same token, there must be a reason if they do not.
Why Was Japan Not Zealous About Compiling National, Ethnic, or Religious Texts?
Let’s first consider Japan’s case. One factor might be that Japan could simply import what it needed from China, rather than creating it itself.
Japan is situated geographically and geopolitically adjacent to the great civilization of China. Though separated by sea, interaction was possible. Why go through the trouble of creating something yourself when you can import it, especially when the Chinese product is of superior quality? There’s no need for the painstaking effort. While Japan had to create its own histories and poetry, which couldn’t be imported, everything else was available in China.
(Though China had everything, it was relatively poor in precious metals like gold, silver, and copper, which Japan, conversely, had in abundance, although mining and refining in Japan developed much later.)
Meeting each other’s needs through trade is the very ideal of commerce—a win-win relationship. Of course, China was a superpower and Japan a small nation, so the scale of trade was likely small initially, and Japan was probably insignificant to China. Furthermore, Chinese civilization operated under a tributary system for long periods, which differs from modern trade.
Thanks to the great Chinese civilization, Japan could—to use a blunt term—plagiarize everything from laws to institutions. Laws, systems, social statuses, technology, religion, writing, myths, culture, industry—all could be introduced from China. (Perhaps some things were not permitted to be taken out of China.) The vast majority of Japanese vocabulary is of Chinese origin. Buddhism, though from India, was introduced to Japan entirely through China. The Ritsuryō system of laws and governance was also Chinese.
Whether this was a blessing or a curse is debatable, but Japan’s unique characteristic is its ability to selectively introduce these elements. Moreover, it could edit the imported culture. It could change the original to suit its own needs or tastes. And no one would complain; or if they did, Japan could simply ignore them. It’s not as if anyone would go to the trouble of invading Japan over it—the cost-performance would be terrible.
Compared to Korea and Vietnam within the same Sinosphere, Japan was fortunate. It could cherry-pick the best of Chinese civilization regardless of China’s own disposition. In fact, one wonders if China even cared about or paid any attention to a small eastern nation like Japan. Whether to join the tributary system was decided by Japan based on its own convenience. If it was advantageous, Japan would pay tribute; if not, it would stay away. (It’s questionable if China even had an “intention” regarding a small, remote country like Japan.)
Far from being a docile neighbor, Japan was fundamentally a “barbarian” tribe—one of the “Four Barbarians” (Shíyí): the Eastern Yi (that’s Japan), Southern Man, Western Rong, and Northern Di. To China, barbarians were invaders to be defended against, an endless source of trouble who often ended up conquering and ruling China itself. Japan was no exception. It fought the Ming Dynasty in invasions of Korea, ravaged the Chinese coast as wokou pirates (though many wokou were Chinese), and waged the Sino-Japanese War.
Korea and Vietnam, being contiguous, have histories of being directly invaded and ruled by China, and tend to hold complex feelings toward it. The Chinese, for their part, have different attitudes toward the Han Chinese at the center of the world, tributary states, and barbarians. The Chinese are naturally the popular kids at the center of the world; they have no need for bravado, possessing a pride and confidence so ingrained it’s unconscious. Tributary states are tributary states. As for barbarians? They probably dislike them. Not because they are “barbaric,” but because they whimsically attack China and destroy its dynasties.
In contrast, the “barbarians'” feelings toward China seem pure, simple, naive, innocent, or even childlike. Geographically distant and fearing no invasion, they could respect Chinese civilization while attacking it when deemed profitable.
A Thought Experiment: Creating a Japanese Bible
To make this more concrete, let’s try a thought experiment: creating a Japanese Bible, or a comprehensive collection like those of China.
The Bible is a religious text, but it is also a history book, a collection of poetry, stories, and wisdom literature—a document compiled by the Jews, for the Jews, encompassing as much of the Jewish people’s essence as possible. It was not a modern paper book from its inception. Imagining a modern, translated Bible gives the wrong impression of the original.
The Bible is a collection, an anthology of various texts. It was based on manuscripts, with multiple textual traditions and variations. Simply gathering texts was not enough; practical and complex decisions had to be made about which manuscript was best, which phrasing to adopt, and which was closest to the original. After selecting texts deemed worthy, they were brought together into one set—but with the technology of the time, they couldn’t be bound into a single paper volume. It would have been a collection of scrolls, likely parchment. It might be better to call it a Complete Collection of Judaic Texts. The first part of the Bible is called the Pentateuch, or the Five Books of Moses. In a modern Bible, they look like chapters, but they were originally separate books. While paper and binding technology now present it as a single volume, the first book, Genesis, was once a single text, likely a parchment scroll. The Bible was a collection of many such scrolls.
If we were to create a Bible for the Japanese people’s “Japanese religion” (or ethnicity), we would have to start by gathering and selecting texts. The Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, and Man’yōshū would be essential. For history, works like the Ōkagami, The Tale of the Heike, and the Dai Nihonshi might be included, among many other candidates. For poetry and song, imperial anthologies and works like Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North might be added.
The religious part would be difficult. Japan is not monotheistic, and it is brimming with various philosophies that blur the line between religion and non-religion. Even if we could group a religion as “Shinto,” there is no single, definitive holy scripture. Conversely, Buddhism has too many sutras. Perhaps one could create an all-star collection by including famous texts like the Heart Sutra, the Amitabha Sutra, the Flower Garland Sutra, and the Lotus Sutra. For Confucianism, including the Four Books and Five Classics would likely suffice. Since the Jewish Bible contains various literary works, The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book, and Essays in Idleness could also be included. One would end up adding all the classical literature typically taught in high school and introductory university courses.
Even including other necessary texts, the collection would be vast, and it would be difficult to say it is “complete.” This would be an incredibly cumbersome process, and it is unlikely any consensus could be reached. Factions would surely form, leading to conflict and shifting alliances.
But even before that, one would surely feel: “Why must we do this?”
The idea of compiling Japan’s classics, religious texts, and other documents—or creating a library to house them—is not one that arises easily. There might be no sense of necessity, and there might even be opposition. In other words, in Japan, there was and is no need to create a canon, a complete collection, or a great library.
Why Did Civilizations Other Than Japan Want to Create Canons, Collections, and Libraries?
This leads to the inverse question: Why did the rest of the world compile texts, create canons, build complete collections, and found libraries?
There are likely many reasons, but they could be divided into “because they wanted to” and “because they had to.” Or perhaps a mixture of both.
“Because they wanted to” might stem from a ruler’s hobby or some passionate drive. Japan’s imperial poetry anthologies or the Goryeo dynasty’s Tripitaka Koreana might fall into this category.
“Because they had to” seems to fit the case of the ancient Jews’ Bible or the great collections of China’s dynasties. If the Jews had intended to create the Bible from the start, they could have done so before the diaspora. The fact of the diaspora likely created a strong imperative to do so. In China’s case, it was a matter of form, or even duty. With each dynastic change, the new dynasty would burn the old dynasty’s documents and compile new ones. This was a necessary ritual to guarantee the new dynasty’s legitimacy. The historical sections, in particular, needed to present the transition as a Mandate of Heaven granted due to the previous dynasty’s misrule.
Cases where “wanting to” and “having to” coincide might include the compilation of Buddhist scriptures after the Buddha’s passing. While it was once said that India was a pre-literate society in the Buddha’s time, current archaeology confirms the existence of the Brahmi script in Southern India and Sri Lanka in the 6th century BCE. So, while some teachings were transmitted orally, others may have been written. There was a need to preserve the Buddha’s words and deeds after his death, but there was also likely a passion, a deep-seated desire, to do so.
Compiling religious texts and canons is often driven by necessity or urgency. The diasporic Jews, for example, would have needed to hasten the creation of their canon. The Goryeo dynasty, with a stable state, could undertake their compilation not out of urgent need but out of religious passion as a national project.
In Japan’s case, it’s unclear, but there seems to have been no pressing national need to compile a comprehensive collection or canon. Nor does there seem to have been much independent desire or passion to do so. It was sufficient to import what others had compiled as needed. Or perhaps it was enough to know where such things were and go to see them if necessary.
There are many possible reasons, but perhaps there was a fundamental trust that texts, or cultural artifacts in general, would not be lost. For instance, it could be that Japan was simply peaceful. The capital being engulfed in war was rare—the Ōnin War, the Hamaguri Gate Incident, or the Battle of Toba-Fushimi at the end of the Edo period come to mind. But the Ōnin War, though an internal conflict, was a messy squabble. The burning of Kyoto at the end of the Edo period was, globally speaking, a relatively peaceful affair. In the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, Tokugawa Yoshinobu—hailed as a genius on par with the great founder Tokugawa Ieyasu—retreated to avoid a full-scale civil war. Edo itself was spared from battle thanks to the negotiations between the great statesmen Saigō Takamori and Katsu Kaishū.
Perhaps the Japanese never experienced, nor expected to experience, the kind of continental wars or religious civil wars seen elsewhere. Kusunoki Masashige’s strategic proposal during the Nanboku-chō period to lure the enemy into the defensively weak capital of Kyoto was never realized. That’s why Oda Nobunaga’s burning of Mount Hiei was so shocking to the Japanese—and he was ultimately assassinated.
Although Japan is a country of earthquakes and fires, and texts are lost, the will to preserve them, to copy and transmit them, is strong. If Japan was fundamentally safe and peaceful despite disasters and fires, perhaps the impetus to centralize documents never arose.
In fact, concentrating documents in one place would increase the risk of losing them all to a single fire or disaster. The Great Kantō Earthquake saw the University of Tokyo burn, and a vast collection of precious documents it had amassed was lost. Perhaps the Japanese felt it was safer to keep documents dispersed throughout the country.
Furthermore, the Japanese only accept what suits Japan, and if something doesn’t fit, they will “magically remodel” it to make it Japanese. Even when Buddhism was accepted, it was ultimately reshaped into a Japanese form. Despite initial turmoil, by the Edo period it had become an institution for census management, education, and ancestor worship—a curious mix of Confucianism, government office, school, cemetery, and community center. They adapted Chinese characters to create hiragana and katakana, while continuing to use classical Chinese, a hybrid Japanese-Chinese style, and regular Japanese for centuries. They imported the Ritsuryō system but not the civil service examinations or eunuchs.
If you introduce something new and reshape it in a Japanese way, it becomes Japanese. There is a national character, almost instinctual, that is conservative and traditionalist, editing and remodeling new things while preserving the old. There is a habit, a custom, embedded in their principles of thought and action, to preserve old things for the time being, even if their meaning is lost. To be thorough about this means not meddling with old things, but leaving them as they are.
Japan is a country where texts survive, but it’s not just documents that remain
Thanks to its relative peace, Japan is a country where many historical texts survive. But it is not only texts that remain. Various buildings, artifacts other than texts, cultural practices, and old customs tend to survive, or be preserved. This is not like Rome, where robust architecture endured, or like other ruins that have been excavated and reconstructed.
In Japan, wooden architecture is susceptible to fire and decay in the hot, humid climate, and is also vulnerable to earthquakes. The reason so many things have survived is that they have been continuously maintained—texts through copying and transcription, buildings through rebuilding and repair. Kyoto is called the “thousand-year capital” and has many temples and shrines, but that doesn’t mean Heian period buildings remain as they were. Even the oldest structures are often from the early modern period, i.e., the Edo period. The Ise Grand Shrine, with its ritual rebuilding (Shikinen Sengū), has been maintained in a continuous cycle for so long that its exact origins are unclear.
Something even more amazing remains
The most astonishing thing that remains in Japan is its dynasty. And it has continued from the age of myths, for 2,600 years. While the actual starting date is uncertain, it is an unbroken imperial line that predates Japan’s own recorded history.
Ancient Judah became a kingdom under David, but it was eventually destroyed, and the fate of the Davidic line is unknown. The Bible emphasizes that Jesus is a descendant of David, highlighting the importance of lineage and status. Generally, the upper classes tend to remain the upper classes, even through periods of turmoil. For example, the popular manga Kingdom is set in the Qin dynasty, but the descendants of Qin’s key figures remained in the upper echelons in later eras. The protagonist, Li Xin, is said to be an ancestor of the Tang dynasty poet Li Bai.
Japan is a country where bloodlines have been thoroughly preserved. The descendants of figures from the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are still priests at ancient shrines. The ultimate example is the link between Amaterasu and the Imperial Family, but there are countless other old families as well. Even without going back to ancient times, many families can trace their ancestry to the Minamoto, Taira, Fujiwara, or Tachibana clans.
Conclusion
To put it bluntly, Japan had no need for a Bible or a comprehensive collection of texts like China’s. In fact, it might even have been better not to have them. One could even venture the cynical view that Japan deliberately avoided creating such a collection. And this mindset may not have been limited to texts, but might have been its stance toward all cultural artifacts.
On the other hand, for many cultures outside Japan, creating comprehensive collections was—to put it unceremoniously—simply a matter of the benefits outweighing the costs.
While we cannot say that everything has a reason, let alone a rational one, with different perspectives and ways of thinking, one can often find plausible reasons. And even where there are no reasons, one can create them after the fact.
In that sense, the ancient Jews had a reason to create the Bible. And Japan had a reason not to create something like the Bible or a Chinese-style collection—and perhaps it was not a passive reason, but an active one.
Japan did not create a Bible not out of cultural negligence or deficiency, but because it possessed the ultimate canon: a ‘living tradition.’ And its geographical conditions allowed for this. This was a form of identity maintenance unique and different from that of the world’s major civilizations.