Born 573

Died 621

Japanese prince and regent

Like Clovis in France (see entry) and Toghril Beg in Turkey (see box), the Japanese prince Shotoku Taishi (shoh-TOH-koo ty-EE-shee) can rightly be called "the father of his country." As regent or advisor to the empress, he held the true political power in Japan, and exercised it to initiate a series of reforms that affected virtually every aspect of Japanese life.

In the realm of law and government, Shotoku is credited as the author of the "Seventeen-Article Constitution," a document that provided the governing principles of Japanese society. These principles were a combination of Japan's native Shinto religion and two belief systems, Buddhism and Confucianism, imported from China. The widespread acceptance of those "foreign" ideas, and their incorporation into Japanese culture, can largely be attributed to Shotoku, who remains...