著者

田頭 賢太朗

出版者

東洋文庫

雑誌

東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho (ISSN:03869067)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.101, no.4, pp.61-91, 2020-03

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This article examines the characteristic features of the Jinwuwei 金吾衞 Regiment, one of the Twelve Imperial Guards (Shi’erwei 十二衞) units in China’s Southern Command (Nanya 南衙) system from the viewpoint of its relationship to the military command authority of the Tang Period Emperors. The author’s findings are as follows. First, the Jinwuwei was integrated into the emperor’s military command and was the Imperial Guard unit that functioned to activate that authority. This special character of the Jinwuwei stems from the “yuhou” 虞候 military system of the Northern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang periods. Yuhou were the units responsible for reconnaissance and sentry duty, as well as command and leadership of forces in the field, supporting the authority of the high command by implementing its military law. The author argues that the Jinwuwei was an Imperial Guard unit acting in the role of yuhou under the command of the Tang Emperors. Secondly, the Jinwuwei, with the principle of yuhou at its core, was originally formed based on the concepts underlying the nomadic military organization of Xianbei 鮮卑, resembling the Mongolian pastoral bureaucracies of yūrtchī and bulārghūchī, demonstrating, in the author’s view, one occurrence of the nomadic elements which existed within the Sui and Tang Dynasty bureaucracies. Based on these findings, the author concludes that the military command authority of the Tang Emperors was intimately related to the Jinwuwei in the capacity of a yuhou unit, which was mobilized in order to deploy the whole Twelve Imperial Guards under the command of the Emperor. Moreover, the workings of military command authority in general—for example in the case of a special expeditionary force (hangjun 行軍) and regional military governors (jiedushi 節度使)—were similarly based on the yuhou system with its Xianbei nomadic character. From the above findings it is inferred that the Twelve Imperial Guards including the Jinwuwei retained the character of hangjun units under the Emperor’s military command.