[Common to Junior High History/High School World History] The Feudal Kingdom of Zhou: The Creation of 'Heaven' and the Logic of Revolution

What comes to mind when you see the kanji for 'Heaven' (Ten)?

The world. Celestial bodies. Angels. The Milky Way.

There are many things like these, but when you simply say 'Heaven,' doesn't it feel a bit different from just the space of the sky, and more like an existence that is above the earthly world and watching over us?
The term 'divine punishment' fits that image perfectly.

In that sense, 'Heaven' was conceived about 3,000 years ago in ancient China to explain a certain dynastic change to the people.
And that concept continues to influence Japan today.

Today, I will talk about the reason why this concept of Heaven was created in ancient China.

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About 3,000 years ago in ancient China, the Shang Dynasty, which had loosely ruled the North China Plain and Central China for 600 years, was destroyed.
The center of Shang was a massive settlement/city called Yinxu (Yin Ruins), but Yinxu had no city walls. Perhaps no one dared to oppose the Shang king because other settlements and tribes believed the king possessed divine power.
However, that premise suddenly collapsed.
The ones who attacked Yinxu were one of the nomadic tribes that had previously been subordinate to Shang. They were a tribe based in the Wei River Basin on the western edge of North China; they conquered Yinxu, killed the Shang king, and became the new rulers of the settlements and tribes of North and Central China.

They are called the Zhou.

According to ancient Chinese historical records, the circumstances at the time were as follows.

Originally, King Wen of Zhou (who had sworn loyalty to King Zhou of Shang—the king of 'wine pools and meat forests' fame; he never became king himself, but is called this as the de facto founder of Zhou) repeatedly advised King Zhou to stop his behavior unbecoming of a king (such as holding banquets with wine pools and meat forests, or killing innocent people for fun), but King Zhou would not listen.
Even so, King Wen knew his place as a subject and did not turn against the king.

King Wen's son, King Wu, decided that for the sake of the people of the world, there was no choice but to kill King Zhou, but following the advice of the legendary military strategist Taigong Wang, he waited for the hearts of the people to turn away from King Zhou.

Then, 10 years later, he finally challenged King Zhou to battle, but against the massive army of Shang—which, even in its decay, was still the ruler of China—King Wu's army was only one-tenth the size. Even so, King Wu boldly launched an attack, but when his army began the assault, he noticed something strange about the Shang soldiers.
They held their weapons upside down and willingly opened a path for King Wu's army. It meant there were no longer any soldiers willing to risk their lives for the wicked King Zhou.

This 'Battle of Muye' is remembered in history as the ultimate way to win a war—deciding the outcome before the battle even begins—and it is said that King Zhou was defeated by King Wu as retribution for his own actions.

No, no, that can't be true!
...Well, setting aside the moral lesson, anyone would feel that the story is too perfect to be history.

What were the facts?

First, as I mentioned last time, it is not certain that King Zhou of Shang was truly a wicked king. Rather, as a Shang king backed by divine power, he may have simply been doing what he had to do for the happiness of the people.
The description in historical records of him killing many innocent people can also be explained if we consider it a ritual of offering human lives to the gods, which was practiced in Shang at the time.

However, if his prayers had no effect, and crop failures continued or disasters occurred one after another,

'Wait? Could it be that the Shang king is being ignored by the gods?'

It is possible that people thought this, weakening the king's rule.Taking advantage of that opening, King Wu, the chieftain of the nomadic tribe in the Wei River Basin, may have suddenly conquered the wall-less Yinxu.

However, King Wu had to deal with the difficult problem of how to rule the settlements and tribes of North and Central China that had previously accepted Shang rule.
This is because, having destroyed Shang, he could not rely on the same divine power as Shang (in fact, the Shang gods would surely be angry at King Wu).

Therefore, the new dynasty of 'Zhou' established by King Wu created a 'Heaven' that stood above the gods and explained their actions as follows.

In fact, there is a Heaven above the earthly world where humans live, and Heaven selects an outstanding individual from among humans and entrusts them with the governance of the earthly world (this is called 'bestowing the Mandate of Heaven').
Originally, the Shang dynasty also had its first king, King Tang, receive the Mandate of Heaven, and since then, his descendants had governed the earthly world.
However, the tyrannical King Zhou was finally abandoned by Heaven and destroyed by King Wu.
This is proof that Heaven bestowed a new Mandate of Heaven upon King Wu, and from this point on, King Wu's descendants would govern the earthly world.

Incidentally, this process of the Mandate of Heaven moving from the original royal family to another, resulting in a change of ruler, is called 'revolution'.

This logic is certainly convenient for someone who has overthrown the previous dynasty by force and become the new king, as it justifies their actions.

If this were a world of nomadic horse-riding peoples, it would be a world where 'it is natural for those with real power to become king,' so such logic would be unnecessary. However, to rule over the farmers of North and Central China, one must explain in a way that people can accept why it was right to overthrow the Shang, which was supposed to be protected by the gods.

Of course, the King of Zhou could not secure his rule solely through this logic of Heaven.

When King Wu destroyed the Shang, he assigned vast regions of North and Central China to influential members of his own tribe and to the chieftains and leaders of other tribes and settlements (yi) with whom he had alliances, entrusting them with the governance of those regions (this is called the 'distribution of fiefs').
They are called 'feudal lords'.

Furthermore, in order to expand his rule to distant regions that had not previously been under Shang control (such as the Shandong Peninsula and the opposite bank of the Yangtze River), King Wu entrusted armed farmers to go there and establish new settlements and yi.
Their leaders are also called 'feudal lords'.

In this way, a system was established across the vast regions of China where influential figures entrusted by the King of Zhou with regional governance—feudal lords—governed the local yi, settlements, and tribes.

The throne of Zhou was inherited (hereditary) by the descendants of King Wu, and the positions of the feudal lords were also inherited in the same way.

This method is different from the 'centralized' world empires devised in the Orient about 400 years later, such as the Assyrian Empire or the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
While it is true that the feudal lords recognized by the King of Zhou governed vast regions, their positions were hereditary, and the King of Zhou could not replace them at will.
Furthermore, there were no highways, post stations, or relay systems connecting the yi of Haojing (in the Wei River basin), where the capital of Zhou was located, to the territories governed by the various feudal lords.
This means that the eyes of the King of Zhou did not reach the provinces at all.

This system is called 'feudalism'.

Feudalism does not feel as sophisticated as a centralized world empire, but this in itself led to the long survival of the Zhou kingdom.
However, because the king's eyes did not reach everywhere under feudalism, the feudal lords gradually became independent, and unique cultures grew in each region.

And that also directly influences the history of the Japanese archipelago. World history and Japanese history will gradually begin to intersect, so look forward to what comes next.