Mononobe Family

This episode we talk a fair bit about the Mononobe, and there will be more in the future, as the Mononobe were major players in the court. While here we focus on their military aspect, they were also seen as ritualists who would eventually resist the influence of the foreign Buddhist thought and practice vice “indigenous” ways of ritual and worship. At this point they were still fairly dominant, however.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 62: Crime and Punishment
So in recent episodes we’ve had a lot of talk about the less desirable qualities of Wakatake no Ohokimi, aka Yuuryaku Tenno. And yet, it seems clear from the chronicles that the reign of Wakatake wasn’t all about his personal character flaws—some of which may not have even been considered flaws by people of the day. After all, for all of his own penchant to resort to violence, this was not necessarily a forgiving time, and it seems that this is what kept him on top, but also a trait that he brought to bear in further growing and strengthening Yamato rule in the archipelago and its influence abroad. So in this episode we are going to explore what the Chronicles have to say about the ways that Wakatake and those who served him asserted royal authority throughout the archipelago and even onto the peninsula. In doing so we will also explore the importance of the Mononobe, the court’s enforcers, and what they tell us about the court’s punitive and peacekeeping authority.
By the way, just a quick note that we will be covering a variety of topics dealing with death and violence, including mentions of violence against women and sexual assault. While we should be able to avoid the more gory details, I just wanted to put that out there for anyone who might be sensitive to any of those topics.
Now, we mentioned back in Episode 60 some of the evidence that Yamato still wasn’t entirely unchallenged in their hegemony of the islands. Even in the mid-fifth century, when Wakatake came to power, the lords of Kibi were building kofun to rival those in Yamato. While it does seem that Yamato may have had some sort of primacy, there was no guarantee that they would be able to keep it indefinitely, and Kibi was a particular threat.
This comes across most clearly in a story from the Nihon Shoki, set during Wakatake’s reign: the story of the Sakitsuya, Omi of Lower Kibi, known in another work as Yama, of the Kibi no Omi, the Kuni no Miyatsuko—in other words the ruler of the land of Kibi.
Now there were men of Kibi serving at the Yamato court. One of these was a Toneri, or male attendant, known as Ohosora of the Yuge-Be, or Bow-Maker’s Be, of Kibi. While in service to Wakatake, Ohosora was called back home on a matter of some urgency. However, once back in Kibi he was detained by Sakitsuya, who refused to let him return. In fact, he held Ohosora back for several months, until Wakatake started to wonder that he had not returned. After all, Kibi is really not so far from the lands of Yamato and Kawachi, all things considered—about 170 km from modern Ohosaka to Okaayama, which is probably a week or so on foot or by boat, but perhaps a couple days on horseback, and only 48 minutes or so by Shinkansen.
So Wakatake sent another person, Mike no Kimi to go find him, and Mike was, indeed, able to get Ohosora back to Yamato. When he did, Ohosora had quite the tale. If the Nihon Shoki’s account is to be believed, Sakitsuya was apparently obsessed with Wakatake—in a pretty creepy and disturbed way.
For example, this one time, he took a bunch of young girls and make them fight grown men. The girls were all meant to represent the men of Wakatake while the grown men represented Sakitsuya’s own troops. This was all going well until the girls started to get the upper hand, at which point Sakitsuya, in a rage, drew his sword and started to kill them.
In another episode, Sakitsuya took a rooster and had it plucked of its feathers, its wings clipped, and he called it Wakatake’s rooster. Then he choose a large rooster of his own and used precious iron to create even more deadly spurs, like some kind of early mecha-veloci-rooster. He then pitted the two against each other.
Once again, however, things did not go as planned, and when the naked bird representing Wakatake started to get the upper hand, just has had happened before, Sakitsuya drew his sword and killed the offending cock.
When Wakatake heard all of this one can only imagine his reaction. He sent thirty soldiers from the Monono Be to Kibi, where they found Sakitsuya and put him to death along with seventy other members of his household.
Of course, we have to remember that the Nihon Shoki isn’t exactly a reliable narrator when it comes to the actions of Yamato and its sovereigns—after all, they had a vested interest in making Yamato out to be the good guys, even if they weren’t. Still, we can see the echoes of conflict with Kibi, Yamato’s neighbor who controlled a not insignificant strategic location along the Seto Inland Sea and whose rulers were being buried in style comparable to Yamato’s own royalty. I see little reason to doubt that there was some ruler over Kibi, perhaps even an independent king, who tried and failed to stand up to Yamato.
In this story we also see the use of the Mononobe, specifically, as the military arm of Yamato. The Mononobe—descendants of Nigi Hayahi no Mikoto, the Other child of Heaven—were connected to the Isonokami Shrine, dedicated to Futsunushi, and clearly were a large part of the military arm of the Yamato court. In fact, much like the sovereigns themselves, they seem to have had both military and spiritual authority, with Isonokami ranking alongside Izumo, the holy Mt. Miwa, and Ise in the stories in the Chronicles. In Wakatake’s reign we often see the Mononobe chastising individuals for the court.
It is intriguing to me that here they are only said to have taken thirty soldiers to chastise Sakitsuya, and those thirty killed Sakitsuya and seventy members of his household. I must say, this strikes me as quite the event, and while we may be rounding to the nearest power of ten, it is actually a remarkably reasonable number. Even later historical accounts tend to exaggerate numbers of soldiers. Comparatively, 30 sounds like a fairly decent group, to be honest—even though it isn’t even as many as the 47 ronin of Edo period infamy. Still, does that number include all of the soldiers that Wakatake sent, or just the Mononobe? Or was it the number of noteworthy warriors, and did each one have other warriors under their command?
And how does that compare with the warbands that, as we’ve discussed, Yamato periodically sent against the Korean peninsula? Unfortunately there is still a lot we just don’t know about this period. On the one hand, since this feels like a much more local squabble, this size a group may have been more like a raiding party. Campaigns against the Korean peninsula, on the other hand, with the possibility for more loot and greater reward, might have easily drawn from much farther afield, gathering more warriors together for those raids.
I also have to admit the possibility that the numbers here are deliberately under played—the point may have been as much or more about the idea that this was a small, seemingly weaker force, which would balance well with the story of Sakitsuya’s ill-advised murderfests, where the seemingly underpowered opponent, representing Wakatake, nonetheless gained the upper hand in each instance.
Again, even with the uncertainties and less than believable narrative of obsessive megalomania, this seems to describe some sort of conflict between Kibi and Yamato, with Mononobe dishing out the pain on behalf of Wakatake—something that we have plenty of other examples of. You may remember last episode when the Carpenter, Mane, was handed over to the Mononobe for execution, and that is just one example.
In 474 the Nihon Shoki tells us about a special campaign by Mononobe no Ushiro no Sukune and Mononobe no Me no Muraji, who were sent out to smite Ise no Asahi no Iratsuko for some offence. Asahi met with Ushiro at Aowaka, in Iga. There he boasted about his skill and strength with a bow, making the claim that he could pierce two thicknesses of armor with his powerful shot.
Incredible as such a boast may have been, Ushiro no Sukune took a pause, refusing to advance for two days and a night, waiting until his fellow Mononobe, Me no Muraji showed up. Me immediately took up his sword and then ordered a third Mononobe, Mononobe no Ohowonote—whose name literally means “Great Axe Hand”—to take up his shield as he advanced into the army. This may have been a large shield made of wood, or even covered in iron plates, more like a pavise than what we might typically call a shield, and used as a screen to protect from arrows as troops approached. After all, as we’ve seen, archery was quite common, even if it wasn’t necessarily the mounted archery of later periods.
As the Mononobe came closer, Asahi decided to follow up on his boast. He fired an arrow towards Me, but Ohowonote screened him with the shield. Even then, the arrow was indeed quite powerful, piercing entirely through the shield and even getting through the armor, so that Ohowonote was just pierced by the tip, which entered only an inch. Still, Ohowonote continued to advance, screening for Me the entire way, until finally they reached their quarry, and Me slew Asahi no Iratsuko.
When it was all over, Ushiro no Sukune – the one who had waited for his compatriots - was too embarrassed by his cowardice and delayed his report to Wakatake for seven days. Eventually, though, Wakatake started asking questions about just where he was—something of a theme in many of these stories is that you can’t be too long out of court without something like a doctor’s note, or whatever the Kofun era equivalent might be. Eventually, even without Ushiro’s official report, the sovereign got word of what had happened—particularly regarding Ushiro’s cowardice and hesitation.
His punishment was not execution, however, despite what we’ve seen of Wakatake’s temper up to this point. Instead, Ushiro was stripped of his rights to the Wina Be, in Ise—the same Be that Mane the carpenter, from last episode, was from. Instead, these were given to Mononobe no Me, who had been the one to push the attack and eventually kill Asahi no Iratsuko.
By the way, we’ve actually encountered Mononobe no Me before. The Sendai Kuji Hongi – the history of the Mononobe - claims that Me was eventually made Ohomuraji, and he was the one who intervened when Wakatake wouldn’t recognize his own daughter, Kasuga no Ohoiratsume, teaching Wakatake about the birds and the bees as it were in the process.
Perhaps one of the most detailed stories of Mononobe no Me comes from an account of Hadane no Mikoto.
Now Hadane no Mikoto was the many times great grandson of none other than Saho Hiko. This is another guy we’ve encountered before, back in the days of Ikume Iribiko—Saho Hiko was the brother to Saho Hime, and he tried to have Ikume Iribiko assassinated so that he and Saho Hime could go off together. He eventually burned to death in an inaki, or rice castle—usually depicted as hastily made fortifications made of rice bales.
So fast-forward to now, and in about 469, Saho Hiko’s descendant, Hadane, was getting into his own kind of trouble. He had apparently seduced one of the court serving women or Uneme, named Yamanobe no Koshimako. While the Uneme were serving at the court they were at the pleasure of the sovereign, though we have seen before where they were at least suspected of having a dalliance with someone else and they weren’t punished. So it is unclear if this was a mutual affair or if perhaps the issue was that Hadane’s advances and eventual intercourse were unwanted by the Uneme in question.
Whatever they considered the actual crime, either violating the sovereign’s will or the will of Koshimako herself, Hadane was given for punishment into the charge of Mononobe no Me. Hadane pleaded for leniency and offered payment: in lieu of a more deadly form of atonement, he agreed to hand over eight horses and eight swords, and the Nihon Shoki even includes a song he is supposed to have made, requesting leniency.
All of this, swords and horses both, was brought to the area of Ega, near the Ishi River, in the land of Kawachi, at the western base of the mountains in the southeast corner of modern Ohosaka prefecture. There it was all laid out under an orange tree—a Tachibana, which for some reason is particularly noted.
This bringing of Hadane to account brought further honor to Mononobe no Me, and Wakatake gave him the village of Nagano, in Yega. Indeed, even now this area along the Ishi River is modernly called Kawachi-Nagano city.
And so, in summary, we do see quite a lot of Mononobe no Me, eventual head of the Mononobe clan, performing what we might call military or law enforcement powers and getting rewarded for doing so. This no doubt helped contribute to the rise of the Mononobe, who would definitely take on the mantle of one of the most important family groups in the fifth and into the sixth century. That said, the Mononobe were not exclusively responsible for dishing out royal chastisements—I hesitate to call it “justice”. For example, there is a case where a man named Katabu went with an Uneme to sacrifice to the deities of Munakata. This was in Yamato, as opposed to the famous Munakata shrine in Kyushu. When they arrived at the place where they were to perform the rites Katabu apparently decided that his carnal appetites were more important and he forced himself on the Uneme.
When Wakatake heard of this, he was incensed—though I’m not sure it was for the right reasons. He seems to have been less concerned with the rape and more concerned with the fact that such behavior was not appropriate while performing the rites. At some point we’ll get into this more, but it definitely was a pervasive attitude in early Japan that rape and romance were seen as basically the same thing—and even today there are still large, systemic problems with sexual assault in Japan.
In Wakatake’s day the circumstances of this particular incident made it a capital crime, and he initially sent Naniwa no Hitaka no Kishi out to find Katabu and put him to death. We’ve also heard of Hitaka before: back in Episode 60 he was sent to Silla to find out what had happened to Otogimi and bring back artisans from Baekje.
Hitaka searched high and low, but could not find the culprit, as Katabu had fled and hid. When Hitaka returned empty-handed, Wakatake sent Yuge no Muraji no Toyoho to go scour the land and see what he could find. Eventually he uncovered Katabu’s hiding place at Awi no Hara in the district of Mishima, where Toyoho finally caught and slew Katabu.
Many of these incidents seem to involve Uneme, and the next one I have for you is not much different—except that in this case the Uneme wasn’t from just another land. No, this time the Uneme was from Baekje, on the Korean peninsula.
Now the Nihon Shoki makes it seem like Uneme were regularly sent from the continent, which would seem to imply Baekje’s subservient status in regards to Yamato. The excerpt from the Baekje annals, however, seems to refer to Wakatake asking for a “nyeorang”, which seems to have a slightly different meaning in Baekje, and may have been viewed more as a typical form of marriage alliance at the time. Women at the time might have to travel great distances, along perilous routes under the guise of diplomatic relations.
In the case of Wakatake’s request, it appears that it went to King Gaero of Baekje, and he sent back Cheokke, the daughter of Lady Moni. In Japanese she is referred to as Princess Iketsu.
At some point on her journey across the perilous seas and through the various lands of the archipelago, Princess Iketsu met a man named Tate, from Ishikawa. The two had an affair, and word of this pairing reached Wakatake.
And by this point I suspect we all know what this means. Besides, he had specifically asked for Baekje to send someone, and he apparently desired to have her all to himself. And so, enraged, he called on Moriya, the Ohotomo no Ohomuraji. Moriya headed out with members of the Kume Be—the army—to find Princess Iketsu.
I don’t really want to go too much into the details—you can read the chronicles yourself and see what it says—but suffice it to say that Princess Iketsu met a brutal and tortuous end.
King Gaero of Baekje was none too pleased when he heard about what had happened, and he gathered up his counsel to determine an appropriate response. In the end their response was tempered—possibly because they still needed their Wa allies to help them against Silla and Goguryeo. Baekje decided that they would no longer send women as Uneme to the Yamato court, but that didn’t mean they cut off relations. Indeed, just after that Gaero told his own younger brother, Lord Kun, to go to Japan and serve there as a kind of hostage, so clearly Baekje wasn’t exactly punishing Yamato for this incident. At least not too harshly.
By the way, quick note here: When Lord Kun left for Japan, King Gaero gave him one of his consorts who was reportedly pregnant. Gaero said not to worry, but that if she delivered on their journey they could just send the child back to Baekje, since it would have been one of Gaero’s children. Basically they were sending a woman who was probably in her third trimester on a dangerous voyage overseas to a foreign land, and if she gave birth they were immediately send a newborn child back across the sea again. It sounds unbelievable.
Which leads me to suspect that it is. The Nihon Shoki claims that she did give birth on the island of Kahara in Kyushu, and the child, named Lord Shima, or Syeom in modern Korean, was then sent back to Baekje where he eventually grew up to become King Muryeong. This all feels like an attempt to tie King Muryeong to Japan, but why?
Well, it could just be an extra attempt to claim that the Baekje royal family were more closely indebted and connected to Japan, much as we had seen with Baekje princes living in Japan in the reign of Homuda Wake. There is also an interesting connection between Muryeong and the Royal Family, but it wouldn’t come until later. You see Yamabe no Sumera no Mikoto, aka Kammu Tenno, who reigned from 781 to 806, claimed descent through a royal Baekje bloodline that traces back to King Muryeong. It seems that Yamabe’s mother was descended from a son of King Muryeong who was living in the Japan archipelago in the early 6th century.
Muryeong, who would reign between 501 to 523, is also known through his tomb, which was excavated in 1971. There he is known through his personal name, as recorded in the Samguk Sagi, of King Sama. Here I can’t help but note the similarities between “Sama” and the Japanese word “S(h)ima”, which is the name they seem to give to him. Regardless, I am highly doubtful of this whole story that claims he was born on an island off of Kyushu, as the logic just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
So: back to the Korean peninsula. Of course, it wasn’t just Baekje that Wakatake was dealing with, and during his reign, Wa troops would see a tremendous amount of action over there. We had already talked about how Wakatake’s actions during his father’s funerary rites had started things off on the wrong foot when he briefly imprisoned a Silla delegation over a misunderstanding. And then there was the issue we talked about just two episodes back, in Episode 60, with Tasa no Omi being sent to govern Nimna, but then ending up in Silla after he realized it had all been a ploy for Wakatake to steal his wife. That was all said to have happened in or around 462.
Two years later, in 464, Silla was apparently looking to Goguryeo for help against future Wa attacks. According to the Nihon Shoki, they had been given over to “vain talk”—which sounds like a diplomatic way to say that they were talking trash about Yamato and others. They had stopped sending any kind of gifts to Yamato. And now, at least according to the Nihon Shoki, which is hardly the most reliable narrator, they were quaking in their boots and requesting support from Goguryeo in the north in case Yamato decided to do something about these perceived insults—which, given Wakatake’s track record on controlling his temper, seems a reasonable enough concern.
And so, sure enough, Goguryeo sent a contingent of about 100 men to Silla for their protection, but it turned out that this force might also have had other aims—after all, this wasn’t exactly the era of selfless philanthropy. During a furlough period, one of the Goguryeo soldiers left to go home, taking with him a Silla servant. As they were traveling, he let slip to his servant that the way things were going, Goguryeo would occupy and control Silla before too much longer.
The servant could hardly believe what he had heard, and he knew he would have to get word back to his own people. And so he pretended to be sick, and through this ruse he was able to escape back to Silla, where he told the court everything he had heard.
Well the Silla King—likely King Jabi, assuming the dates are correct—was upset, but in a bit of a pickle. The Goguryeo troops had already insinuated themselves into key positions and fortifications. And so he sent out a secret message to his people, telling them to “kill the cocks in their own houses.” Sure enough, the people of Silla rose up and killed the Goguryeo warriors, and only a one man escaped back to his homeland, where he told the King of Goguryeo everything that had happened.
Now it was the King of Goguryeo’s turn to be apopleptic. He raised an army, determined to punish Silla.
Eventually, the Silla court came to hear the sounds of Goguryeo music on all sides, and they quickly realized they had a fight on their hands. Despite the fact that this started because of their treatment of Yamato, they apparently had only one recourse left: They sent a messenger to the King of Nimna to request assistance from none other than our good friends, the Wa.
The King of Nimna was able to persuade three men of Wa to help Silla, to include Ikaruga, of the Kashiwade no Omi; Wonashi, of the Kibi no Omi; and Akameko, a Kishi of Naniwa.
These three generals set off with their troops and marched north to Silla, where they eventually spied the Goguryeo encampment. Here it seems they found themselves in a stalemate with the Goguryeo troops. Neither side seems to have wanted to engage directly, and so they sat there, watching each other, for 10 days.
Finally, one night, the Wa troops found a steep place, where Goguryeo could not see them, and a path through it. So they passed all of their baggage that way, including the wagons. From the Goguryeo perspective, it looked like the Wa troops were retreating, so they gathered up their men and headed after them, hoping to catch the Wa troops from behind.
When they caught up with the departing baggage train, I imagine that the Goguryeo men were in good spirits. After ten days of tense waiting they were finally going to see an end to these interlopers. However, that mood soon soured as the Wa troops who had been hiding burst out in an ambush on Goguryeo’s left and right flanks. Suddenly, the predator became the prey, and soon the entire Goguryeo army was put to rout, saving Silla—though that was the beginning of a major falling out between Silla and Goguryeo.
Meanwhile, Kashiwade marched up to the King and warned Silla that maybe they should lay off the trash talk for a bit. Perhaps they might want to stay on good terms with the Wa court, or else maybe they wouldn’t answer the call in the future.
Now this whole episode is rife with questions for me. For one, there is very little actual interaction with Wakatake, or even some otherwise unmentioned “sovereign”. Also, it seems like it is the King of Nimna who is negotiating and sending Wa troops to help fight Silla. This would seem to give credence to the idea that Nimna was more closely allied with Wa, and perhaps these generals were already in the area. I do raise an eyebrow at the fact that one of them was apparently from Kibi, and then there are no Mononobe mentioned—perhaps their activities were still largely confined to the areas of Yamato and its immediate surroundings. Meanwhile it was others who were handing out chastisements on the Korean Peninsula.
It is also possible that these individuals were not actually from Yamato proper. Perhaps these each represent other lands in the archipelago, sending their own troops to assist, much as Yamato’s own expeditions were likely a coalition of different groups. Once again we are at the mercy of our limited sources, which are hardly unbiased in their interpretation of events.
One more thing of note—literally. Aston has a footnote to this fight where he tells us that this whole thing doesn’t appear in any of the Korean histories, and the tactics and even the speech to Silla seem lifted straight out of a Chinese history of the Wei period—a source that we know the Chroniclers had some access to.
Now despite the warnings to Silla to keep playing nice—including sending tribute to Yamato—Silla apparently remained, shall we say, independent minded. And so, in the following year, 465, Wakatake decided to chastise Silla. He wanted to go in person—something that feels totally in character for this sovereign—but pre-travel divination revealed a kami who told him not to go. And so he instead gave orders to four others to go in his stead, claiming that Silla had taken the “Western Lands” on the peninsula, and that they were preventing Goguryeo from sending tribute while also devouring walled cities belonging to Baekje.
And so he appointed four men as generals, including Ki no Woyumi no Sukune and Wokahi no Sukune. In particular, Ki no Woyumi was suggested to lead the forces.
Ki no Woyumi agreed, but with a weird conditional flex to his going. He reached out to Ohotomo no Moriya—the same Moriya who had been sent out to punish Princess Iketsu, the Baekje Uneme who had an affair on her way to the Yamato court. Woyumi mentioned to Moriya that he was happy to go but, you know, his wife had passed away and, well, he was a bit lonely. After all, there was nobody to take care of him. I mean, other than his children, his servants, and all the rest.
Woyumi must have had some clout, as Moriya passed this along to Wakatake, who sent an Uneme from Kibi to go and quote-unquote “look after him”, if you know what I mean. And so Wakatake “sent him off with a shove to his axle”.
It does appear that did the trick. The four generals made their way to Silla, violently butchering their way through the districts as they went. King Jabi of Silla got word of the Wa advance into the land of Tok and apparently high-tailed it out of there. Ki no Woyumi in particular pursued Silla and ended up killing the enemy general, though the King survived.
Now most of Tok was under control, but a portion would not submit. There is some confusion here as Tok may have been counted as a part of Nimna, but if Nimna really was equivalent to the Kara confederacy, then it was really more of a collection of independent lands loosely associated under a single banner, probably similar to the situation in the archipelago. Either way, it seems that not all of Tok was happy with their new overlords—possibly something to do with how they had “butchered” their way up there in the first place.
And so the four generals met up and together, as a single force, went out to deal with the remaining band of resistance. This fighting, however, was not nearly so easy as routing the Silla forces, and the Wa took heavy losses. Men of the Ohotomo and the Ki were both slain. One man, Tsumaro, went looking for his lord, Ohotomo no Katari, one of the four generals, only to find he had been slain. Tsumaro, grief-stricken and without hope, flung himself into the fighting, and perished against the enemy.
It soon became clear that the fighting was too heavy, and the Wa forces—which are labelled in the Nihon Shoki specifically as “government forces”—had to fall back.
Some time in this campaign, Ki no Woyumi, the general-in-chief, fell ill, and shortly after this battle he passed away while there at the front.
Command of the troops fell to Wokahi no Sukune, who took over as general-in-chief. At least, he held command for a time. You see, word must have traveled quickly, for Woyumi’s son, Ki no Ohiha no Sukune, heard of his father’s death and proceeded to Silla. Once there, as his father’s heir, he took over his father’s command, taking it over from Wokahi no Sukune.
Well this pissed off Wokahi no Sukune to no end. After all, he had been the one out there, fighting and bleeding, and here comes this, this CHILD, and just because he was Woyumi’s son, he takes over, taking complete authority of the troops. Who wouldn’t be infuriated about that?
And yet, from what I can tell, that was the way of Yamato at the time. It was families, more than individuals, who controlled things. The head of a family might have particular duties, and those duties were likely to then fall to his son. It is possible that responsibilities—and the prestige, influence, and even financial incentives that came with them—could be transferred to someone else, but even then it was likely to be inherited by members of their own family.
Nonetheless, though this may have been one of the cultural norms of the period, it didn’t mean that people were always happy with it. Certainly Wokahi was less than thrilled. He contacted the other remaining original general, Karako no Sukune, and warned him that eventually Ki no Ohiha would eventually take his command away as well. This bred suspicion in Karako no Sukune, who also began to distrust Ohiha and his attentions.
This rivalry between the three Wa generals—apparently nobody had been sent to replace Ohotomo no Katari—grew obvious enough that soon word reached the king of Baekje, an ally of Wa in pushing against Silla. He invited all three of them to join him, hoping to put an end to the tensions between them.
However, as the three were on their way to them, Ohiha stopped to let his horse drink from a river. Karako saw this as an opportunity, and tried to shoot Ohiha from behind, hoping to take him out of the equation, but he missed. His arrow stuck in the saddle frame, and startled Ohiha and his horse. Ohiha looked around for the culprit and returned fire, shooting down Karako mid-stream, where he died.
And with that, any pretense at working together again was shot. Wokahi and Ohiha could no longer trust each other, and so the army broke up. They never reached the palace of the King of Silla, and they returned home.
This is quite the episode, and it could easily be taken as one of the many invasions by Wa recorded in the Samguk Sagi—after all, we have raids recorded in 459, 462, 463, 476, and 477—throughout the reigns of King Jabi as well as Wakatake. Of course, all of these raids ended in the Wa’s ignominious defeat in one way or another.
This is also one of the reasons why some suggest that Wakatake is not King Bu, in the Liu Song chronicles, but rather King Kou. After all, it is Bu who requested assistance so that he could continue Kou’s desire to subjugate the Korean peninsula. Certainly there are no further great invasions of Silla noted in the Nihon Shoki. If there was anything that was a particularly likely candidate for this in other sources I would suggest, perhaps, the events of the year 477, when the Samguk Sagi claims the Wa mobilized troops to invade using five routes, but, in the end, they did not succeed and returned from whence they came. That could square with the idea of multiple generals, and even the idea that they ended up departing after a falling out. Still, nothing is quite certain, and Baekje’s position in particular may have been more tenuous, leading to questions about the Baekje king’s involvement. The Goguryeo annals do have some notes about attacks into Silla, but nothing about being invited in to protect against the Wa or the later slaughter of their soldiers. The Baekje Annals of the Samguk Sagi, meanwhile, have tremendous lacunae from this period—missing information that makes it hard to construct a full narrative.
There definitely seems to have been a decline in Yamato power on the peninsula, since in 475, as Goguryeo was descending on the Baekje capital of Hansong, Baekje sent requests for help not to the Wa, but rather to their neighbor and erstwhile rival, Silla.
Of course, this isn’t exactly depicted in Yamato’s version of events—perhaps due to some selective memories on the part of the Chroniclers, or just a different perspective. But still, it seems clear that Wakatake’s own ambitions were not to be realized.
By 479, Wakatake had taken ill, and he handed over the reigns of government to his son, and Crown Prince, Prince Shiraga—who may very well have sent the emissaries to the Liu Song court attributed to King Bu.
But we’ll leave some of that for next episode. For now, I think we can close out this look at the military dealings of Yamato in the reign of the fierce Wakatake. From his chastisement of Silla and other individuals, often with the help of the local Mononobe, to the campaigns on the peninsula, which may or may not have been under Yamato control, there was certainly plenty of blood spilt during this time.
Next episode, I’d like to look at some of the results of all of these campaigns of expansion, especially as regards contact with the Korean peninsula. War and other factors often creates migratory actions in population groups, and so we see people of Baekje and Silla arriving in the archipelago, bringing with them their technologies and beliefs of statecraft, religion, and more. In fact, it seems that many things that we might think of as “indigenous” to Japan actually spring from continental sources. But what does that mean for us? We’ll discuss that next episode.
And, so, until then, thank you for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate through our KoFi site, kofi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the link over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode.
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And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

— (2022). Inabe Jinja Website. http://www.inabe-jinjya.or.jp/index2.html. Last checked 3/31/2022
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Kim, P., & Shultz, E. J. (2013). The 'Silla annals' of the 'Samguk Sagi'. Gyeonggi-do: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
Kim, P., Shultz, E. J., Kang, H. H. W., & Han'guk Chŏngsin Munhwa Yŏn'guwŏn. (2012). The Koguryo annals of the Samguk sagi. Seongnam-si, Korea: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
Soumaré, Massimo (2007), Japan in Five Ancient Chinese Chronicles: Wo, the Land of Yamatai, and Queen Himiko. ISBN: 978-4-902075-22-9
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Best, J. (2006). A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche, together with an annotated translation of The Paekche Annals of the Samguk sagi. Cambridge (Massachusetts); London: Harvard University Asia Center. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1tg5q8p
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
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Mononobe Family

Rough Transcript

References