Okada Hidehiro
Professor Emeritus, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

History of the Chinese Civilization; Progressive Altaicization of the Chinese States

47th Meeting of the PIAC, Cambridge 2004

I have just completed a draft of a book, tentatively titled History of the Chinese Civilization (Chugoku Bunmei no Rekishi). Its characteristics are a triple division of historical ages determined by the progressive Altaicization of the Chinese populace. In the pre-Chinese period, all the people of four different kinds of livelihood came face to face in the Lo-yang Basin in North China of today, as it was on the common border of where they lived, and engaged in trading their local products with each other. Cities sprang up where those activities prospered, with a language as the means of their communication, known today as ya-yen or the traders’ language. in the First Chinese period, 221 B. C. –A. D. 589, a Hsiung-nu rebellion broke out in A. D. 304, which marked the beginning of emerging Altaic power. In the Second Chinese period, 589–1276, a Ch’i-tan emperor obtained the Peking-Tatung region from the Sha-t’o Turkic dynasty in 936, which made a decisive victory for the Altaic power kept rising through the Sui and Tang dynasties. In the Third Chinese period, 1276-1895, the last Ming-Chinese emperor committed suicide and the Manchu emperor sat on the Peking throne in 1644, marking the resurgence of the Altaic power. In the post-Chinese period, 1895 and later, China is completely changed by the Japanese influence, which goes on never stopping.