People level the ground, build earthen banks, and dig water channels. They cultivate and maintain the fields, then pass them on to the next generation. In Japan, wet-rice farming—growing rice in irrigated paddies—has depended on labor, skill, and cooperation within local communities.
A single disaster can severely damage this accumulated work. Natural disasters threaten both the current crop and the fields and waterways needed to grow the next one.
Praying for good harvests has long been part of the emperor’s ritual duties. These prayers can be understood as expressing a wish that people’s labor will produce food and that everyday life will continue in peace.
Even when people’s lives are profoundly disrupted, the presence that prays for their harvests and well-being continues through the imperial line.
This article sees that continuity as a source of reassurance. To explore this relationship, it begins with wet-rice farming: a historical foundation of daily life closely connected with the emperor’s ritual duties.
Rice Paddies Are Built and Maintained by People
Wet-rice farming requires people to create the conditions in which rice can grow.
They clear and level the land and build earthen banks around the fields. Water channels and weirs—low barriers used to regulate water levels and flow—allow them to bring in water, retain it, and drain away the excess. At the Itazuke archaeological site, which preserves evidence of early wet-rice farming in Japan, excavations have revealed water channels, weirs, and field banks reinforced with wooden stakes.
Once built, these structures require continuing care. People maintain the banks, repair the waterways, and check the flow of water. Alongside the work of cultivating rice, they must preserve the conditions that make food production possible.
They must also agree on who can use the water, when, and in what quantities. Arrangements for agricultural water use developed through long periods of negotiation, sometimes involving disputes. The physical infrastructure and the rules for sharing it formed a single working system.
Wet-rice farming depends on continuous human intervention.
Earthworks, maintenance, seasonal farm labor, and cooperation over water and workloads all contribute to keeping this food-producing system in operation.
Drawing on archaeological research, Japan’s National Museum of Japanese History dates the beginning of wet-rice farming in northern Kyushu to around the tenth century BCE. Behind the familiar landscape of rice paddies lies a long history of human work.
Disasters Threaten the Work of Generations
The Japanese archipelago has repeatedly experienced disasters caused by earthquakes, typhoons, heavy rain, and volcanic eruptions.
Heavy rain can deposit soil and debris across fields. Landslides can destroy waterways. Earthquakes can crack or shift the ground and damage the structures that control water. During the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes, farmland suffered cracks and subsidence, while irrigation and drainage facilities were damaged.
When the ability to supply, retain, or drain water is disrupted, the entire process of growing rice is affected. Resuming cultivation requires people to repair fields and waterways and restore the physical foundations of food production.
Disasters threaten the harvest and the conditions needed to produce the next harvest.
What people have built and maintained over many years can be severely damaged overnight. The loss carries the weight of generations of work, together with the loss of confidence in the stability of everyday life.
People do everything within their power to build their livelihoods. Even so, they face events beyond that power. The sense of impermanence explored in this article resonates with this deeply practical experience.
Impermanence and the Hope for a Harvest
The Buddhist teaching known in Japanese as shogyo mujo expresses the impermanence of all things. Japanese literature includes works that connect this understanding with experiences of disaster and social upheaval.
A notable example is Hojoki, written by Kamo no Chomei in 1212. Through accounts of fire, a whirlwind, famine, and an earthquake, it examines the loss of stability in people’s lives and homes.
A sense of impermanence also relates to an appreciation of things that change and pass away. Wabi, which values simple and modest beauty, and sabi, which finds beauty in the marks left by time, share a connection with this sensitivity.
At the same time, people working to sustain their households want their efforts to produce a harvest and their families to have enough to eat.
They want the fields and waterways to remain sound. They want the rice they have tended to grow. They want to reach the harvest safely.
People work with all their strength and pray that their work will bear fruit.
When wet-rice farming is viewed as a historical foundation of daily life, prayers for abundant crops become understandable in these terms. Praying for good harvests means praying for daily meals and for the community’s continued existence.
In Japan, prayers for harvests and peace have also been offered through Buddhist ceremonies alongside rituals honoring the deities. Teachings that contemplate change and prayers for stable livelihoods have developed within the same society.
The Emperor as a Ritual Monarch Who Prays for the People
The rituals discussed here are ceremonies in which people honor deities and offer prayers and thanks.
In this article, a “ritual monarch” is a monarch whose central duty is to perform such rites and pray for good harvests and the well-being of the people.
The duty of praying for the people provides a reason to respect the office. This is the perspective through which the emperor is considered here.
Imperial rituals have a close relationship with wet-rice farming. The Engishiki, a tenth-century compilation of regulations, describes state rituals including the Kinensai, Niinamesai, and rites concerning wind and water. Kokugakuin University Museum explains their connection with rice cultivation and links prayers for abundant harvests with prayers for peaceful daily life.
At the imperial court today, the Kinensai includes prayers for a good grain harvest. During the Niinamesai, newly harvested grain is offered to the deities in gratitude for the harvest. The Genshisai includes prayers for the prosperity of the nation and its people.
The Daijosai, performed once in a reign in connection with accession to the throne, likewise involves the new emperor offering newly harvested grain. Shinto historian Shoji Okada draws attention to the offering of millet alongside rice. He interprets this as expressing a wish to protect people’s food supply and sustain their communities in an archipelago exposed to frequent disasters.
The crops offered to the deities are connected to the work of those who prepared the land, managed the water, and tended the plants. Giving thanks for the harvest and praying for the next one direct the emperor’s ritual duties toward the lives of people who work and live in the country.
People build their livelihoods, and the emperor prays that their work will bear fruit. The meaning of a ritual monarch becomes concrete when the office is understood as carrying this shared hope.
The People’s Hearths: A Monarch’s Duty in Ancient Records
The connection between people’s livelihoods and the emperor’s duties also appears in ancient texts.
One example is the story of Emperor Nintoku known as “The People’s Hearths,” or Tami no Kamado. It appears in both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, two early Japanese chronicles.
According to the story, the emperor looks out across the land and sees no cooking smoke rising from people’s homes. Taking this as a sign of poverty, he suspends their tax and compulsory labor obligations. Meanwhile, his own palace deteriorates. Even when rain begins to leak through, repairs are postponed.
In the Nihon Shoki, smoke eventually rises from the households again. Seeing this, the emperor declares that he, too, has become prosperous. The empress asks how he can describe himself as prosperous when the palace remains in disrepair.
His reply in the Nihon Shoki includes these two phrases:
「君以百姓爲本」
“The ruler takes the people as his foundation.”「百姓富之則朕富也」
“When the people prosper, I too prosper.”
Here, the ruler’s own prosperity is measured by the people’s living conditions.
The story can be read as a record of the duties associated with the imperial office. Restoring people’s livelihoods takes priority over repairing the palace. This understanding of a monarch’s role was written into an ancient text.
The Kojiki was presented to the court in 712, and the Nihon Shoki is understood to have been completed in 720. Both emerged from compilation projects undertaken by imperial command. Early eighth-century records produced within the world of royal authority placed people’s livelihoods at the center of a monarch’s responsibilities. This is what makes the story important to the present discussion.
People prepare fields, maintain channels, and grow rice. At the end of that work are the daily meals cooked at household hearths.
Prayers for abundant harvests and the duties expressed in “The People’s Hearths” can therefore be read as sharing a common concern.
People should have enough to eat. The recovery and stability of their livelihoods belong at the center of the imperial office’s responsibilities.
Why Successive Governments Recognized the Emperor’s Authority
The people who exercise political power change, just as landscapes and livelihoods change. For long periods in Japan, those who governed and the emperor occupied different roles, while political rulers continued to recognize imperial authority.
Japanese history includes periods when reigning or retired emperors directed appointments and policy and took a sustained leading role in government. Warrior governments later emerged. Through the fourteenth-century Kenmu Restoration and the conflict between the Northern and Southern Courts, the roles of the emperor and the warrior rulers became more distinct. During the Muromachi and Edo periods, warrior governments generally took the leading role in running the country.
To understand this relationship, it is important to consider why recognizing the emperor’s authority also mattered to those who held political power.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, for example, received the title of shogun from the imperial court and visited the court in 1603 to express his gratitude. Receiving formal status from the court gave his government a place within an established historical order.
At the same time, the Tokugawa government regulated the court through the Laws for the Imperial Court and Court Nobles. Respecting the emperor’s position and securing the government’s own political control operated within the same arrangement.
The practical power to govern and the historical authority to recognize a government’s status were located in different institutions.
Viewed this way, the arrangement helps explain how imperial authority could continue to be recognized as political leadership changed. Those who governed could connect their own position to the authority of the court.
The imperial office combined ritual duties concerning people’s livelihoods with a role in connecting governments to a long-established order. Together, these functions help explain both the respect attached to a ritual monarch and the value of imperial recognition to those exercising political power.
The Meiji State and Changes in the Organization of Ritual
The Meiji Constitution placed imperial succession at the foundation of the state’s authority. It vested the powers of sovereignty in the emperor and required their exercise to follow the Constitution. It also established the advisory duties and responsibilities of ministers and the role of the Imperial Diet, the national legislature. The legitimacy of the imperial line stood at the center of a system in which several institutions participated in government.
The Imperial Household Ritual Ordinance was promulgated in 1908, formalizing the organization of imperial rites. As the modern state took shape, both the political position of the imperial line and the institutional framework of ritual were reorganized.
The ordinance ceased to be in force at the end of May 2, 1947. Imperial rites continued as traditions of the imperial household. As the legal system changed, the emperor’s position and the duty of performing rituals continued under new arrangements.
The Imperial Line: Passing On an Office and Its Duties
The imperial line is the family lineage through which the throne is inherited. Its traditional origin story reaches back to Emperor Jimmu, whose accession is dated in that tradition to 660 BCE.
The history of ritual institutions has its own chronology. The Daijosai took shape in the late seventh century, acquired its basic form during the Heian period, and has been transmitted to the present through periods of interruption and revival.
Two forms of inheritance overlap here.
One is the transmission of the duty to pray for harvests and people’s well-being. The other is the inheritance of the office by successive members of the same imperial line.
The expression bansei ikkei conveys the ideal of an imperial line continuing through the generations. Each successive emperor inherits the throne and takes on the duties associated with it.
What remains “unchanging” in this article is the continuity of the imperial line and the continuing presence of the emperor in Japan.
“The People’s Hearths” expresses a standard that places people’s livelihoods at the center of a monarch’s responsibilities. Ritual repeatedly gives form to prayers for harvests and daily life. When these are understood as duties inherited with the throne, the significance of the imperial line’s long continuity becomes more tangible.
The ancient court organized rituals through which prayers were offered for rice harvests and people’s peace. Today, as ways of life change, successive emperors from the same imperial line continue to inherit the throne and the duty to pray for the people’s well-being.
A relationship becomes visible across the generations: the connection between people’s livelihoods and an office entrusted with prayers for them.
Prayers That Connect With Life Today
Prayers associated with wet-rice farming can be understood as wishes that people’s work will produce results, that households will have food, and that everyday life will continue. Understood in these terms, their meaning also connects with contemporary life.
People need food, secure homes, safe working conditions, and the means to rebuild after disaster. Occupations and social systems change, while these needs remain part of human life.
Japan’s present Constitution defines the emperor as “the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People,” with that position deriving from the will of the people.
Praying for the people’s well-being is also explicitly expressed in the understanding of imperial duties. In the imperial message of August 8, 2016, prayer for the peace and happiness of the people was described as central to the emperor’s responsibilities.
Visits to disaster-affected areas also express this connection with people’s lives. After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, the Imperial Household Agency explained the intention to visit affected communities in terms of offering emotional support to those living through the disaster.
As ways of living change, the duty to wish for people’s recovery and stability continues.
The concern for people’s livelihoods expressed in ancient records and the prayers for the public described today can be read as connected through this understanding of the office’s duties.
Why Can This Continuity Offer Reassurance?
For people who understand the emperor as the holder of an office dedicated to their well-being, the continuity of the imperial line connects their own lives with a longer history.
Even when disaster damages homes and the foundations of production, a member of that line continues to carry the duty of praying for their lives and recovery. The relationship reaches back through generations.
This article finds a source of reassurance in the connection between people’s livelihoods, an office entrusted with prayers for them, and succession within the imperial line.
Other societies also have traditions in which monarchs perform ritual duties. At the Temple of Heaven in China, emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties worshipped Heaven and prayed for abundant harvests.
What this article identifies as distinctive about Japan is the way these elements have come together within one history: wet-rice farming sustained by continuous human work; disasters that threaten that accumulated effort; a cultural sense of impermanence; a standard that gives importance to people’s well-being; and the long continuity of an imperial line carrying ritual duties.
Conclusion: A Connection That Continues When Life Is Disrupted
A single disaster can severely damage the lives people have built. Even then, the duty to value their well-being and pray that their work will bear fruit continues to be inherited through the imperial line.
When daily life is disrupted, the connection with a presence that prays for that life continues.
For people who understand the emperor in this way, that continuity can provide reassurance.
In a society shaped by a sense of impermanence, people’s livelihoods and the emperor’s duty to pray for them remain connected across generations. In the continuity of that relationship, and in the reassurance it can offer, this article finds a distinctive feature of Japan.
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