Note: And now, our first look at developments in Asia in the post-Seres era! Part of this update is post-678, but that is because 678 is the starting date in Europe, and these Asian updates will be rarer.
Fall of the Middle Kingdom: 347-420 by Takamuko Hirohito, University of Kagoshima Press, 1890
The effects of the fall of Seres [1] on the Orient cannot be understated. The cultural, military and economic hegemon of the region had lost all geopolitical and societal legitimacy. The plague that began in 347 has decimated the armies campaigning in Funan [2], spreading the disease to Southeast Asia. It went through all the major cities, felling the nobles and the people like stalks of bamboo. The drought made the farms go barren, and the rivers dry up before they could reach the cities. The country had already been hurt by barbarian invasions, and the plague only exacerbated the societal problems of the Jin. Buddhism, with its quietness, had not offered much to the suffering masses of the people of the south, and temples, stocked with food and safe from constant bandit raids, were attacked by mobs of peasants. The armies had died fleeing Funan, dropping like flies to the great plague. Huan Wen had been killed in battle- there was complete and total chaos.
By the end of the plague in 361, much of Seres was dead, her armies humiliated and broken, her people starving. It was the beginning of the end.
The Jin had only just been able to install stability in Seres after the fall of the Han dynasty. The government lacked legitimacy in a time when it needed it the most. Starving, dying people cared little for the words of Confucius- they needed rice, water, a stop to the plague, anything! They needed an army to put down the bandits and prevent the northern and southern barbarians from moving in on Seres. The Jin had none of these things, and across the empire revolt and outright secession became common. The Jin army, by then, was losing to the Wu Hu and Xiongnu in the north, and the disastrous campaign of 365 wiped out much of the remaining loyal nobles and the Jin army. In 369, Emperor Jianwen and his court were assassinated on a hunting trip- the Jin Dynasty had fallen.
Seres dissolved into a multitude of little kingdoms, and the stage looked ripe for conquest- a plague-ridden, starving country beset by bandits with little military force defending it. Then, the plague hit in both the North and the South, with limited exposure northern Chosen [3], Funan and the Lac Kinh kingdoms. The Lac Kinh were weakened, Chosen broke into smaller kingdoms ripe for conquest by Silla, and the barbarians, although weakened, began to strike.
In western Seres, cities and petty bandit kings declared their own domains. Both drought and plague were less severe in western Seres, and the major cities of the west, including Chang’an, soon became the nuclei of breakaway states. Across the large breadth of western Seres, bandits, peasants, corrupt soldiers and former nobles became kings. The cities became states and the imperial system was broken. The population was bolstered by a better harvest and refugees from the rest of Seres, fleeing plague and invasion from the northern barbarians. These states sat on the Silk Road, but the loss of political unity made trade a much more dangerous prospect
Of course, one would ask why these ragtag states were not also conquered. Some states inherited parts of the Jin Army. Others had enough material wealth to bribe barbarians or hire mercenaries. The main reason was that other regions farther east had more to raid, more to plunder, and more to tax. The barbarians themselves were depleted- they did not have the energy or the leader to truly conquer all of northern Seres. As northeastern Seres was raided and conquered by the Xiongnu, the small western states were left largely alone, paying what amounted to protection money to the barbarian lords.
In the south, warlords began to coalesce themselves into states. The plague was less severe in the far southern coast than it was in the north and the middle of the country, and the states in the south were not only larger in geography but stronger economically. They had rivals in the expanding Lac Kinh [4] kingdoms, who burst into Hainan and the lands near it as order began to crumble. The (second) state of Minyue was the result of these struggles against the Lac Kinh- one warlord rose victorious, and declared himself the High King of the Bong Dynasty in 404.
The Lac Kinh, however, still managed to seize a great wealth of land. Northern Serinja [5] (as it is known in the west), Leizhou, Hainan and Yunnan all fell within their sphere, and the era of Serican domination was officially over, replaced with a Lac Kinh empire across the lands between Minyue and the Khmer.
The center of China was hit worst by the drought- the crops here died in the field as livestock and farmers died in the countryside. The cities burst into riots and chaos- 75 percent of the population of Kaifeng died in the first years of the plague. The armies and cities were so weakened that any state declared was at best local; any larger dominions existed only in name.
Northern barbarians were not the only people to invade Seres in the vacuum. Thai peoples were pushed out of Yunnan by resurgent Lac Kinh incursions northward, and, having avoided the plague, pushed into the center. The Thai peoples met little resistance from local military forces, and established a kingdom in the year 400. The Thai would soon centralize into a strong kingdom, controlling much of the trade between the chaotic north and the south, along with many of the terminals of the Silk Road. Thanks to sea trade and the fall of Serican civilization, the Thai would take somemany Indian traditions from the Khmer and the Malayans of the southern isles, along with their more Sericized northern neighbors, including an altered alphabet
The northeast of Seres was at first conquered by the Xiongnu and ruled as a kingdom with Wu Hu and Xiongnu nobles. This decentralized “state” had control of the major northeastern cities and the peninsula below them, and had a domain stretching to the borders of Northern Chosen. However, the “kingdom” was also wracked with instability- the remaining Sericans resented their barbarian overlords, and the economy was wrecked completely. By the year 440, the state was falling apart.
In Chosen, the destruction caused by plague, famine and drought heavily weakened the northern kingdom of Goguryeo; the kingdom’s influence in Manchuria was rendered nil as barbarian peoples moved in to southern Manchuria. Baekje suffered a civil war and riots in its capital, and Silla, relatively spared by the violence, made its move.
In the year 442, the King Kim Ilsung (as he is known; regnal names fell out of practice with Ilsung) rose to the throne of Silla, and began revitalizing the army and bureaucracy of the kingdom. In 444, the armies of Silla poured over the borders of Baekje, taking the capital city and executing the former king and much of the royal family. This success emboldened Il-Sung; he invaded the remains of Goguryeo in 447, conquering all the way to the Liaodong Peninsula. For the next 11 years, the kingdom was consolidated, with building campaigns being undertaken in Gyerim [6] and Pyongyang. In 453, Ilsung finally died of old age, allowing for his son, General-Prince Kim Jongil, to purge his rivals and take the throne. Jongil, as a king, was also a man of conquest and building; the great Tower of Heavenly Idea was built in Pyongyang, where it remains to this day. He warred with the Xiongnu kingdom, and by 476, the Empire of Shinjoseon/ Shinchosen stretched from Chosen in its entirety to the Shandong peninsula, including the key city of Fanyang, now known as Fumyeong [7]. For their glories and their success in revitalizing the economy and crushing the nobles, the two were made legendary kings in the national mythos, revered above all other kings to this day. They moved the capital to Pyeongyang, and turned Shinchosen into a local superpower, a power in the northeast rivaled by no others. Jongil’s successor, Empress Seolsong, would continue their great legacy, known as Mother of the Nation for her administrative and cultural reforms.
The fall of the Xiongnu kingdom in 476 is considered the end of the downfall period- after that date, the area once ruled by one Son of Heaven was split into many kingdoms and different peoples. As time went on, the Serican culture was only truly continued on in full by the West, where the Han Chinese continued the lingual and cultural traditions; the Thai, Viet and Chosen peoples had their own languages, and Minyue began to slowly split away from distance and influences from trade. And in Nippon, the Kofun period was shifting as the Toraijin [8] began influencing the state.
The First Orient, as the period from the Qin Dynasty to the year 476 is known, had ended. In its place came the Second Orient, one bereft of any clear hegemonic power, one of war, recovery, and change.
A Cultural History of Early Nippon: From the Toraijin to Hata Kyoko, Fukuyama Sakura, University of Namba, 1945
The fall of Seres, for Nippon, was largely a boon. The plague didn’t spread very far, and the Nipponese harvests were bountiful as China had decades of drought, famine, or even flood. In addition, much of the Serican refugees couldn’t go anywhere other than Nippon. The south was in some ways worse off than the north, Chosen was hit by the plague, and the west offered only desolation. The cream of the Serican intellectual establishment, with all their art and culture, went instead to Nippon, to the court of the emperor in Namba [9]. The effect of this on Nippon was enormous; Nipponese culture is divided by the Sericization of Nipponese culture, effectively starting the split with the Burial Mound Reform of 398. This reform stopped the construction of large kofun for much of the nobility, opting instead for square, stone tombs. The military reforms of 411 allowed for the expansion of Nippon, where the young warriors borne of the population booms of the 390s could fight for glory and small independent holdings. Nippon soon expanded across all of Honshu, and then Hokkaido. The full conquest of the Home Islands was completed in 456, after 45 years of effortless expansion.
The bureaucratic tradition of Seres was also co-opted as the conquests were slowly integrated into Nippon. The Empire was beginning to form; Toraijin nobles ruled much of Honshu and Hokkaido, and Serican cultural traditions began to seep in, from the emperor on down.
Art and architecture were irrevocably transformed; sculptures of the Asuka period draw from many old Serican styles, and architecture took on more Serican features, as seen in temples across the region. Stonework became common during this period- the ancient southern wing of the Imperial Palace in Namba is made largely of stone. Crafts also took on Serican features, especially porcelain, metalworking and other arts outside of painting.
While art took on Serican features and innovated during the early Asuka period, other Serican reforms were opposed tooth and nail. Confucianism and Daoism, for example, were shunned almost completely by the merchants, the craftsmen and the military class; the Toraijin nobility and about a third of the farmers adopted it, but others generally argued for Shinto religious traditions as opposed mixed with Buddhism and Serican figures.
This clash continued throughout much of the Asuka period. As art, music and styles slowly became Sericized, old Nipponese culture became obsolete, and a vibrant hybrid culture began to emerge. The best intellectual and artistic achievements of the continent now influenced Nippon, and the emigration of skilled people to plague-free and peaceful Nippon sparked a golden age of culture, lasting for centuries after the fall of Seres.
The Chronicles of Hata Kyoko, by Haya Fujiwara Reiko, 808 AD, abridged by the International Gnostidox Church for popular use in 1808 AD.
Hata Kyoko was born to a Toraijin family of merchants in Shikoku in the year 700, at the bottom of the Confucian social ladder. Raised in the Shinto traditions of her neighbors, Hata Kyoko was constantly dissatisfied with the Confucian order of things- a sentiment shared by much of Shikoku, Kyushu and the lands near the capital at Namba.
She, however, was also dissatisfied with the ossified traditions of Shintoism and Buddhism. She wanted a more satisfying faith- one that did not rely on ancient tradition or constant moderation. At the age of 17, Kyoko moved to Kagoshima, apparently to become a temple maiden at the temple of Tsukuyomi. In actuality, Kyoko ended up working in a bar in the merchant quarter as a serving lady, little better than a celibate geisha. However, she also had access to books and outside learning, and soon became a literate, cultured lady.
Kagoshima, as opposed to the backwater of Shikoku, was a booming, cosmopolitan city. Due to hostilities between Nippon and the mainland at the time, most trade coming into Kagoshima came from the south, from the Indians and other traders beyond India. She soon learned of the various cultural traditions of the southern lands- the growing Volcano Goddess cult picked up from the Ma Rei of the far south, the Hindu traditions, and even the Manichaean and Christian sects, which had traveled all the way from the distant west. In the midst of this cultural and theological ferment, Kyoko began to take interest in these different traditions. It was in the merchant quarter, in the year 721, that she met the Gnostidox missionary Eronimo [10].
Eronimo came from the far west, from a land he himself called Rumanyo [11]. The Gnostidox church was a young church- the last theology of Sergios had been completed in 567, and Rumanyo had only been fully converted for a century by then. Nevertheless, the Roman trade boom in the Indian Ocean allowed for widespread foreign proselytization- which was not always met kindly. At the time, Indian Ocean missionary work was only just beginning, carried on the trade ships that went from the Julian Canal to Nippon. Eronimo was in fact a pioneer- most merchant-missionaries, as scant as they were, traded in the ports of India or the south. Very few chose to go to Nippon. But Eronimo and his cohorts had heard of the trade port to the far north, and had decided to base themselves there in the year 707.
Eronimo, by the time he met Kyoko, was a man who had seen 40 winters; he was no young man. That being said, he was also wise with his age, and was fluent in Nipponese, written and spoken. He had been proselytizing to Kagoshima for more than a decade, and parts of the merchant communities of Kyushu, and even some in southern Honshu, had quietly converted to Gnostidoxy, called the Seinaru no Kyokai Nazo, or Church of the Holy Mysteries. They generally kept to themselves, keeping to one part of the port cities, living together isolated from the wider Shinto-Buddhist or Confucian-Buddhist-Taoist populations.
When they met, Kyoko was already interested in Gnostidoxy, having heard of it from customers of hers. One day, she ventured to a small white-walled building in the western part of the merchants quarters, and met Eronimo.
She was engrossed in the theology of the faith, of the details of both Christ and the higher Aeons, of the social structure of the faith. For two years, the two met on a continual basis as Kyoko became more and more engrossed in the faith. In mid-winter 723, Hata Kyoko converted, keeping her native name as other converts had done. She returned to the bar a Christian woman, and began talking to her customers about the faith.
She spoke with confidence, with the force of the Logos and a healthy sense of charisma. She soon gathered more converts than the Rumanyo such as Eronimo, because she could appeal to local sensibilities and local issues. When many of the Rumanyo left for other lands, Kyoko, along with her followers and Eronimo, stayed to preach to more and more followers. Eventually, they had a following across Kyushu, prompting Kyoko to leave for the other islands to preach with her own group of missionaries. This group was called the 6 Nipponese Apostles (excluding Kyoko, a separate figure in her own right). By this time, Kyoko had married a Rumanyo missionary-merchant.
Beginning in Kagoshima, the Six Apostles were a group of mostly young, inspired missionaries close to Kyoko and personally ready to spread the word of God. Unlike most converts, these Apostles had learned the Greek of Sergios of Galatia, and helped translate the Bible and Theology into Nipponese. They began coalescing in 725, around the birth of Kyoko’s daughter Maryama on December 25th, 724.
The Nipponese Apostles, as they are known, were not all women, nor were they all native. The women were Mari of Nagasaki and Ayame of Shikoku. The men were Dayenizo of Kerida, who was Kyoko’s husband [12], Hideki of Hiroshima, Terujiro of Nara and Sabaku no Mohama [13]. These six began preaching across Honshu in 727, and became well known across the land for their kind deeds, drawing many converts. The cities were especially receptive, and soon became bases for the growing Gnostidox movement, called Kirishigakure [14] by its followers.
Of course, this was not without repercussion- the nobles and government knew of their activities, and the large numbers of converts in the cities and even the rural areas. The six were renowned for their kindness and what they preached. It did not fit with the Confucian ethic of the nobility, and so the state reacted to what they saw as blasphemy.
Among the offenses was the use of Amaterasu to represent Hedone and the rejection of the other gods. With the carefully maintained social order being openly rejected by people, the powers that were decided to suppress and crush Kirishigakure in its infancy in 731. Across the countryside, small rudimentary chapels were set on fire, and icons were smashed to the ground. Foreign missionaries were openly attacked, and most of the Rumanyo merchants fled to southern ports or even back to Rumanyo.
Despite this, the Six, along with entrenched foreigners like Eronimo, continued to preach. For two years, the Six, along with Kyoko, began hiding followers and bolstering the faith despite increasing attacks from the state. In spring 731, Sabaku no Mohama was captured by nobles in eastern Honshu and impaled in front of his flock. He is the first Nipponese Martyr. His flock fled to safety in the south, where support for Kirishigakure had grown stronger.
In late winter 732, Mari and Hideki, who had just had a child, were crucified on the road to Namba. Their son, Tojo Barasu, would be spirited away to the mountains of Shikoku by followers, where he would be safe. Ayame and Terujiro went into hiding as well, and the movement outside of Kyushu quieted down, being practiced in secret.
For a period of over a year, Kyoko and Dayenizo, preached openly, their daughter hidden safely in the mountain cave monasteries in Shikoku. Traveling by night, they ministered to the scared converts, inspiring them to resist the nobles and the clergy, along with those who did not convert.
Finally, the two ended up back in Kagoshima with the 50 year old Eronimo in early summer 733. For a time, they were able to convert more and more people, and connect the various Kirishigakure groups together in Kagoshima. However, on September 10th, 733, the city guards, on the order of the nobles, found Eronimo in a cave chapel in the caldera, and captured him in prayer. He was paraded the next day (Kyoko could see him, hidden away in a building) and tortured in the public square. They decided to boil him alive, and he died chanting the holy prayers of Gnostidoxy. It was then that Kyoko and Dayenizo decided to flee, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Rumanyo itself.
The sermon of the cave, as Eronimo was buried, was told to the loyal followers along with Ayame and Terujiro on the 13th. On the 19th, a west-bound ship carrying trade goods also took Hata Kyoko and Dayenizo and their 8 year old daughter on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
For 3 years, the two traveled the Holy Land and Rumanyo, meeting with religious leaders and praying at holy sites. The Patriarch of Konstantinopolis, who had heard of efforts from others, declared sainthood for the martyrs, even declaring Eronimo patron saint of merchant-missionaries. Finally, in winter 736, the two left to return to Nippon with a Palmyrene missionary and clergyman- Toma Eripandasu [15]. They had the blessing of the Patriarch and holy books to distribute to the congregations.
In that same time, the remaining apostles went up to Hokkaido to hide amongst the Ainu-Nipponese settlers there. They converted, in that time, the main towns of the island, and followers in the other islands continued to spread the word of Kirishigakure. However, the country itself had split into civil war over the succession of the emperor, and the nobles were too busy fighting each other to bother with the Kirishigakure movement.
On March 15th, 737, the ship arrived in Namba, the capital of Nippon at the time. What they found was far different from the monolithic, unified Nippon they left. The country had fallen in civil war.
Of course, the island was no longer so unified against the Kirishigakure. In May 735, the nobles behind the throne, along with much of the Imperial Family, had fallen to assassination on a hunting trip. The nobles of the country had fallen into civil war, and the Kirishigakure followers had slipped into the cracks as the countryside burst into civil war.
The Imperial Family was all dead- with the notable exception of the young Prince Ninsei and his mother. However, in May 735, the Empress Dowager died, her son still protected by the Kirishigakure movement in Namba. They quickly seized the city and established control of Namba and its environs, Shikoku and Kyushu. Kirishigakure across the country went into further hiding, and the faith became a faction in Nippon’s civil war.
The newly-christened Kyokai faction soon began setting up fortifications and taking towns. By November 735, an armistice existed between the Kyokai and the other factions fighting each other in northern Honshu. The Toraijin class that had settled much of northern Honshu in the centuries after the fall of Seres was eating itself alive.
The return of Hata Kyoko reinvigorated the prepared Kyokai faction, and followers across Nippon, many of them Nipponese noble converts, took up arms and took the fight to the exhausted enemies. They had broken themselves in the siege of Namba in April 736, and the Kyokai armies had seized western Honshu before consolidating once again.
The return of the Hata family boosted morale and conversions among the people in Kyokai territory, and Eripandasu was made Patriarch of Kagoshima in a small ceremony in that cave chapel. With new weapons, a core of Rumanyo mercenaries and boosted morale, the Kyokai were ready to win Nippon.
The core of the army was converted native Nipponese and Ainu nobles, fighting against the entrenched, privileged Toraijin class. Despite previous support for Shinto, these nobles and their loyal soldiers were swayed by the efforts of Ayame and to a lesser extent Terujiro, who preached mainly in the far north. These armies soon began to fight the other factions in the field, and central Honshu became a bloodbath as armies fought fiercely for the smallest villages. Ayame and Terujiro died in 740 defending a flock from invading forces in south-central Honshu, martyrs and warriors of the faith to their last.
In 742, at Sekigahara, the last battle for Nippon was fought. Kyoko herself led the holy army, and the last two factions fought for the soul of Nippon. By the sunset that evening, the Kyokai faction held complete control of Nippon. The cream of the Toraijin warrior-noble class was destroyed, and the intellectual and merchant classes had converted to Kirishigakure by that point. The battle for the culture and soul of Nippon had been won.
Afterwards, Ninsei was crowned Emperor of Nippon, married to Hata Maryama by Patriarch Toma I. The two married as Gnostidox Christians, and the royal family became officially Christian, along with the realm.
Despite the victory of the Christians, the faith overall only comprised a very dedicated third of the Nipponese population at the time of the first census of the Emperor Ninsei. Over the years, Hata Kyoko would work tirelessly to convert the rest of the Nipponese population, and by the time of her death in 777, the official census of Ninsei recorded that 77% of the population genuinely followed the faith. The divine work of the faith was received well by the people- most Buddhist temples fell into disrepair and ruin, while Shinto temples were often converted to cathedrals.
The Six Apostles, Patriarch Thomas, Eronimo and Hata Kyoko would go on to comprise the 9 Original Saints of Nippon, each called Haya. Kyoko herself is revered as the Haya Hata Kyoko-dono, Prophetess of the True Faith and the Holy Mysteries. Eronimo, Dayenizo and Toma are revered as Daihaya [16], the others being revered as Haya.
Two great cathedrals were created in the time of Kyoko. The first is the Holy Cathedral of Daihaya Eronimo in Kagoshima, the other being the Prophetess Hata Kyoko Cathedral of the Holy Mysteries in Namba, where she is buried in glass and clear resin right in the floor, next to Dayenizo. The latter, in her lifetime, was called the Cathedral of Holy Mysteries, gaining its current name after her death.
Nippon had gone, within a lifetime of one inspired individual, from a religiously divided state to one increasingly unified culturally and religiously by a newer, foreign faith. With the blessings of the Logos and the truth of the world, the Seinaru no Nazo Kyokai will continue to grow in Nippon, driving away the false truths of Buddhism and the pagan superstition of Shinto.
[1] Unified China
[2] Ancient Indochinese state predating Khmer/Chenla
[3] Japanese author uses Chosen, the translation of the Korean native name Joseon
[4] Alternate name for the Viet
[5] Western name for Indochina- Seres-India becomes Serinja
[6] Capital of Silla- modern Gyeongju
[7] Beijing
[8] Korean and Chinese immigrants to Japan
[9] Osaka
[10] (Hagios) Hieronymos
[11] Romanion
[12] Dionysios of Krete
[13] Literally Muhammad of the Desert, a missionary from Petra. Alt. name- Muhammad banu Quraysh, born later in this alternate universe to alternate circumstances.
[14] Kirishi is Christ; means Hidden Christ
[15] Thomas Elipandas
[16] Great Saint (Hagios being saint in Greek).