Son of Heaven
The title carried widespread influence across East Asia as the ancient Han Chinese imperial title, , "Son of Heaven", was later adopted by the Emperor of Japan during the Asuka period. Japan sent diplomatic missions to China, then ruled by the Sui dynasty, and formed cultural and commercial ties with China. Japan's Yamato state modeled its government after the Chinese Confucian imperial bureaucracy. A Japanese mission of 607 CE delivered a message from "the Son of Heaven in the land where the sun rises ... to the Son of Heaven in the land where the sun sets." But the Japanese emperor's title was less contingent than that of his Chinese counterpart; there was no divine mandate that would punish Japan's emperor for failing to rule justly. The right to rule of the Japanese emperor, descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu, was absolute. Based on epitaphs dating to the 4th and 5th centuries in medieval Korea, the kingdom of Goguryeo had concepts of Son of Heaven (天帝之子) and independent "tianxia". The rulers of Goryeo used the titles of emperor and Son of Heaven and positioned Goryeo at the center of the "Haedong" "East of the Sea" "tianxia", which encompassed the historical domain of the "Samhan", another name for the Three Kingdoms of Korea.