This article focuses on the interaction between East Asian palace poems and Buddhism in order to research political and cultural images. It will view said interaction through investigating and comparing Chinese and Japanese kingships’ preferences as well as the very construction of palace poems. Confucianism was the theoretical basis for palace poems in Early Tang Dynasty. The political group led by Li Shimin rejected poems written at royal command that held any Buddhist connotations, resulting in the disappeance of a once thriving form of poetry written by royal decree in the South dynasties, which carried similar Buddhist implications. At that time with the reigns of Emperor Gao of Tang and Wu Zetian, Buddhism received the kingship’s support. Thus, Buddhist-influenced poetry became popular and revealed an image of a sacred Buddhist kingship. On the other hand, Japan in the seventh-century experienced a period of change, namely transforming from Wa (倭) to Japan. Chinese literature, Confucianism, and Buddhism from mainland East Asia all underwent serious consideration by the Japanese rulers during this transformative period. The Japanese kingship did not initially make use of Buddhism in their composition of palace poems. Rather, Confucianism was the main concept within Japanese palace Chinese poems. Eventually, as the Japanese envoys traveled to the Tang, poetry and literature popular during the Tang Dynasty in the eighth-century flowed to Japan, and palace poems with Buddhist imagery finally appeared in the Japanese palace.
