A historical study of political system reform in the Tang and song dynasties

Abstract

The theory of Tang and Song reform proposed by Naitō Torajirō, commonly known as Naitō Konan at the beginning of the twentieth century, not only is a perspective on the differences between the Tang and Song institutions but, to a large extent, also formed the research model on the history of the Song-dynasty system in Japanese research on the history of political institutions. Since the 1990s, the topic of Tang and Song reform was introduced to China, but it did not bring any new ideas to the study of Chinese history, nor did it promote reflection on previous research ideas or methods. The historical transformation in the Tang and Song dynasties is, indeed, worthy of attention from historians, but it needs to be done by combining the discussion of Tang and Song reform with the study of political institutional history, avoiding the various existing paradigms in theories on Tang and Song reforms. We must expand the research horizon, placing importance on the restoration of historical reality and referring to the perspectives of “change” and “continuity” rationally, thus allowing for a true breakthrough in Tang and Song historical studies.