By Fu Yin, Vision Times
More than 1,300 years ago, a young Japanese scholar crossed the sea to China, hoping to study the culture, institutions, and scholarship of the Tang Dynasty. He would spend the rest of his life there, rising through the imperial bureaucracy and forming friendships with some of China’s most celebrated poets.
His name was Abe no Nakamaro (阿倍仲麻呂), known in China as Chao Heng (晁衡). Despite rising through the ranks and achieving success at the Tang court, his longing for Japan endured, where he found expression in a poem about the moon rising over the mountains of his homeland.
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Arriving in Tang China
In 717, Japan dispatched an official diplomatic mission to Tang China, then hailed as one of the world’s most powerful and culturally influential empires.
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Japan had been adopting Chinese administrative practices, Buddhist teachings, legal systems, and literary traditions. Its diplomatic missions brought students, monks, and officials to China to study subjects ranging from Confucian classics and religion to medicine and astronomy.
Among the travelers was Nakamaro, then approximately 20 years old. He was accompanied by other prominent Japanese scholars, including Kibi no Makibi and the Buddhist monk Genbō. After arriving in Chang’an, the Tang capital, Nakamaro studied Chinese literature and government at the imperial academy.
His scholarly achievements eventually opened the door to a career in the Tang civil service. Over the following decades, he held several government positions, including appointments associated with the imperial library and offices responsible for advising the emperor. The Japanese student eventually became an established figure within the Chinese political establishment.
A foreign official among China’s great poets
Chang’an was among the most cosmopolitan cities of its time, attracting merchants, diplomats, religious figures, and scholars from all across Asia. Nakamaro’s fluency in Chinese language and literature helped him become part of the capital’s intellectual circles, where he developed friendships with celebrated Tang poets Wang Wei and Li Bai.
Wang Wei composed a farewell poem titled Sending Secretary Chao Back to Japan, reflecting Nakamaro’s standing at court and the respect he had earned among Chinese scholars. Li Bai also regarded Nakamaro as a friend, later writing a poem mourning his presumed death.
Their surviving works provide evidence of the cultural ties Nakamaro forged during his decades in China, illustrating how a foreign-born scholar could participate in the intellectual and political life of the affluent Tang empire. But despite his achievements, they did not erase his attachment and longing for Japan.
An opportunity to return home
In 753, more than three decades after Nakamaro first arrived in China, another Japanese diplomatic mission offered him a long-awaited opportunity to return home. Kibi no Makibi, who had traveled to China alongside Nakamaro in 717, was among the returning envoys.
Now in his fifties, Nakamaro received permission to accompany the mission back to Japan. According to a tradition preserved in the Japanese poetry anthology Kokin Wakashū, a farewell gathering was held for Nakamaro at Mingzhou, a coastal departure point in present-day Zhejiang Province.
As the moon rose, Nakamaro was reminded of Mount Mikasa near Nara, where he had spent his youth. There, he composed the celebrated waka poem:
天の原ふりさけ見れば春日なる三笠の山に出でし月かも
An English rendering reads, “As I gaze across the vast expanse of heaven, could this be the same moon that once rose above Mount Mikasa in Kasuga?” The verse, later included in the famous Ogura Hyakunin Isshu collection, remains one of Japan’s best-known expressions of homesickness and longing.
Nakamaro was finally preparing to return to the country he had left as a young man.
A voyage that changed his fate
The Japanese diplomatic fleet departed China later that year, but the journey ended in disaster. While aboard the ship, violent storm scattered the other ships, carrying the vessel transporting Nakamaro and chief envoy Fujiwara no Kiyokawa far south toward Annam, in present-day Vietnam.
When news of the ship’s disappearance reached Chang’an, Nakamaro’s friends believed he had died at sea. Grieving the apparent loss, Li Bai composed Lament for Chao Qingheng, a tribute to his Japanese companion. But little did he know that Nakamaro had actually survived the ordeal.
After enduring considerable hardship, he eventually returned to Tang China. His attempt to reach Japan had failed, and he never made another successful journey home.
A life remembered across two countries
Nakamaro continued serving the Tang court during a period of extraordinary political upheaval. The An Lushan Rebellion, which erupted in 755, devastated much of the empire and brought an end to the stability that had characterized the earlier decades of his career. Despite the turmoil, Nakamaro remained in China until his death in 770, more than 50 years after his arrival.
His life remains a remarkable chapter in the history of cultural exchange between China and Japan: A scholar who crossed the sea in search of knowledge, found success and friendship in a foreign empire, yet never stopped remembering his homeland.
Original article
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