Xu Fu徐福

Style & Daoist names

Xu Fu, Junfang

Period

Qin

Dates

c. 255 BCE — ?

Role

Fangshi (Master of Methods)

Birthplace

Langya in the Qi region (present-day Shandong; alternatively Ganyu, Jiangsu)

Life

Xu Fu, a fangshi of the Qin dynasty, was a native of the region of Qi. The 'Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin' in the Records of the Grand Historian records that in the twenty-eighth year of the First Emperor's reign (219 BCE), Xu Fu submitted a memorial stating that in the sea there were three sacred mountains — Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou — inhabited by immortals, and requested permission to undergo ritual purification and seek them out together with young boys and girls; the First Emperor thereupon dispatched Xu Fu with several thousand boys and girls to seek the immortals across the sea. After several years without success and at great expense, Xu Fu, fearing punishment, falsely claimed to have been harassed by a great shark; in the thirty-seventh year (210 BCE) the First Emperor sent him out again, this time with three thousand boys and girls and craftsmen of the hundred trades, along with seeds of the five grains, and he never returned. The 'Biographies of the Kings of Huainan and Hengshan' in the Records of the Grand Historian states that he 'found a broad plain and vast marshes, and settled there as king, never returning.' Xu Fu is a representative figure of the sea-voyaging quest for immortality under the Fangxian Dao of the Qin dynasty; later legend holds that he crossed the sea to Japan, and there are legends and shrines associated with Xu Fu at various places in Japan, though there is no reliable historical evidence to confirm this.

Contributions & Influence

• A representative figure of the Qin-dynasty Fangxian Dao's sea voyages in search of immortality
• An important disseminator of the legend of the 'Three Sacred Mountains'

Legends

According to legend, Xu Fu crossed the sea and reached Japan (one account identifies him with Japan's Emperor Jinmu), leaving traces at Kii, Saga, and other places; this account first appears in the Five Dynasties and early Song and belongs to legend.