Ministry of Ceremonies (Japan)
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Ministry of Civil Administration (治部省, Jibu-shō) (lit. the department of governance affairs) was a division of the eighth century Japanese government of the Imperial Court in Kyoto), and it is sometimes identified as the "Ministry of the Interior".
History
It was instituted as part of the Taika Reforms and Ritsuryō laws in the Asuka period and formalized during the Heian period. It was previously called Osamuru-tsukasa. The ministry was replaced in the Meiji period. Today the Board of Ceremonies (宮内庁式部職; Shikibu shoku) of the Imperial Household Agency is the successor.
Overview
The ministry was organized to address the ceremonial aspects of the Imperial year, to manage the ceremonial nature of formal relations with China, Korea, and other nations, and to oversee the maintenance of Imperial tombs and mausoleums. The ceremonies of the Imperial Household evolved over time.
The ambit of the Ministry's activities encompasses, for example:
maintenance of the roster of names of officials
oversight of the succession and marriage of officials of and above the fifth grade of rank
oversight of formalities relating to deaths, funerals and the granting of posthumous rank
management of the memorial activities which honor the anniversaries of the demise of a former Emperor
monitoring and recording of the names of all the former Emperors, so that none of those names shall be used by any of the succeeding Emperors nor by any subject
adjudication of disputes about the order of precedence of the various families
supervision of all matters relating to the music
registration of names of Buddhistic temples, priests and nuns
reception and entertainment of foreigners and managing to their presentation to the Emperor
maintenance of the imperial sepulchers (misasagi) and royal burial mounds (kofun), including oversight of those in attendance upon them.
This ministry was also responsible for rules for noble families above the fifth rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ministry of Ceremonies (Japan)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.