Kibi Makibi

Kibi no Makibi (吉備真備 695–775) was a Japanese scholar and noble during the Nara period. Also known as Kibi Daijin. Born in Bitchu Province (present-day Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture) as "Shimotsumichi Asomi", he came from a line of local elites. Kibi was the name of the town or area he came from.

In 716, he traveled to China to study, and is supposed to have brought back a number of things, introducing to Japan for the first time the game of "go", the art of embroidery, and the "biwa" (a kind of lute). He became famous for these journeys in China with Abe no Nakamaro and the monk Genbō.

In 737, he received promotion to the junior fifth rank. In 751, at the senior fourth rank (upper grade), he received an appointment as vice-ambassador to the T'ang Dynasty and traveled to China the following year, returning to Japan in 753.

After spending some years in Kyūshū as the assistant administrator of Dazaifu (the principal governmental post on that island), he returned to Nara for appointment in 764 to the leadership of the project to construct Tōdai-ji. Promotion to the junior third rank followed, as well as appointment to head an army to put down the uprising by Fujiwara no Nakamaro. Reaching the second rank in 765, he took the offices of Major Councillor, then Minister of the Right. In 770, he supported a losing candidate for the throne and submitted his resignation from office, but the court accepted only his resignation from military office, and retained him as Minister of the Right. He finally resigned in 771, devoting himself to the study of Confucian principles and their applications in Japanese administration. Kibi died in 775.

Kibi has sometimes been credited with inventing the "katakana" phonetic syllabary and writing system.

References

*Papinot, Edmond (1910). "Historical and geographical dictionary of Japan". Tokyo: Librarie Sansaisha.
* (1985). "Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan". Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd.