BEIJING--Researchers in Japan and China believe that an eighth-century Chinese epitaph was written by a visiting Japanese student, a valuable artifact that retraces the bilateral relationship in eastern Asia in ancient times.

The Shenzhen Wangye Museum in China on Dec. 25 announced that a stone epitaph for a Tang Dynasty official in the museum’s collection is believed to have been written by Kibi no Makibi (695-775), a powerful Japanese scholar and official.

Researchers at the announcement in Beijing said that Makibi apparently wrote the obituary-like text while he was staying in China as a student during the Nara Period (710-784) in the early eighth century.

The eulogy is the first-ever writing identified as Makibi’s inside or outside of Japan. It is also the first time researchers have discovered an epitaph for a Chinese person written by a Japanese.

The museum, a private organization in Guandong province, obtained the epitaph in 2013.

The text consisting of 328 Chinese characters in standard style, divided in 19 lines, is inscribed methodically on a stone, 35 centimeters long, 36 cm wide and 8.9 cm thick.

The eulogy is for Li Xun, a middle-ranking bureaucrat of the Tang Dynasty who worked at Koro-ji, an office that was responsible for entertaining diplomatic missions and other tasks and located in the Tang Dynasty’s capital of Changan, today’s Xian.

Li died from illness on June 20, 734, or in the Chinese era Kaigen 22, and was buried in the suburb of Luoyang on June 25, according to the epitaph.

The last line of the epitaph shows two names, “Hishojo Chu Siguang Bun” and “Nihonkoku Ason Bi Sho.”

It suggests Chu, a Chinese, came up with the text and a Japanese identified as “Bi” wrote it.

The museum, together with China’s cultural property officials and other research organizations, have studied the epitaph.

Multiple researchers in Japan and China have also comprehensively analyzed the time Makibi stayed in China, the use of terminology, handwriting style and other aspects.

They have concluded, with a high probability, that Makibi wrote the eulogy.

“It is safe to say the epitaph was written by Makibi,” said Yasunori Kegasawa, director of the Institute of East Asian Epigraphy and Stone Artifacts at Meiji University who specializes in Chinese history.

Starting from four years ago, Kegasawa began gathering information about the epitaph, contacted the museum’s founder and passionately called for joint studies on the potentially history-making discovery.

“The epitaph is an invaluable historical source for thinking about the history of Japan-China relations,” he said.

Makibi is a figure often mentioned in Japanese history textbooks. He was a scholar as well as a politician, and an expert on Confucianism and the art of war. He is often compared with famed scholar Sugawara no Michizane (845-903).

Makibi was born to a family of a low-level functionary. In 717, he was sent to China with Abe no Nakamaro, who later became a Tang Dynasty bureaucrat.

After returning to Japan, Makibi played an active role in the administrations at the time. But he was relegated to a lower position. He later returned to China as a member of the Japanese envoy to Tang China.

After the mission, Makibi was promoted to a key government post, Minister of the Right. He died in 775 at the age of 81.

There are not many historical materials in existence that document the nearly 20 years that Makibi resided in China as a student.

According to a history book in China, Makibi learned Confucianism and history among other subjects from instructors invited to the Koro-ji office.

Makibi boarded a ship to return to Japan in October of the year when the epitaph was made, according to the book.

It is conceivable that Makibi stopped by Luoyang on the way to Japan.

Haruyuki Tono, director of the Takeda Science Foundation Kyou Shooku, who specializes in ancient Japanese history, said: “It is possible that Li took care of Makibi when he studied at Koro-ji. When he received the news of Li’s death, Makibi may have picked up a pen and written the epitaph."

Makibi’s achievements during his stay in Tang China are not well known, Tono said.

Now, with the latest discovery, Tono wonders if Makibi had become a “popular figure and established a reputation good enough to be selected to write the epitaph.”

(This article was written by Masayuki Takada, correspondent, and Kazuto Tsukamoto.)