Episode 50: New Research on the Origins of the Japanese Population

October 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

New research shows that the old dual-structure hypothesis of the origins of the the Japanese populations—that is that there were contributors from the Jōmon period and then a second wave—or waves—of immigrants from the Yayoi period onward—may need to be refined or even re-written to show three distinct ancestral groups: Jōmon, Yayoi, and then another group that came in during the Kofun period.

This episode is focused on discussion of the recent paper “Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations” by Cooke, et al, which many people are claiming is “re-writing” ancient Japanese history. But what history is it re-writing and what do their findings mean for us, going forward?

Map showing rough areas of the various river basins—the Amur River Basin in the north, the Yellow River Basin in the southwest, and the West Liao River Basin in between. In red see the approximate location of the Longtoushan site.

Geography

So first off, there is a lot of talk about various locations on the mainland that we don’t normally cover, so we’ll have some maps here to help out.

So one of the places we will be discussing is the West Liao River Basin. The Liao river runs into the Yellow sea on the western side of the Liaodong peninsula (in fact, Liaodong can be translated as basically “east of Liao”). The River Basin includes the various rivers and tributaries that flow into the Liao River and then on into the ocean. Three of the individuals from the continent that the researches compared DNA to were from the Longtoushan site, a bronze age site in the West Liao River Basin, hence the nomenclature of WLR_BA and WLR_BA_o. The first referring to the two individuals with significant DNA matches to populations in the Yellow River Basin while the second referred to the one individual with DNA that indicated ancestry in the Amur River Basin. This was the individual who most closely matched with the Yayoi samples on the archipelago.

Map demonstrating possible gene flows during various periods based on the most recent findings. An attempt has been made to show the possible maximum extent of the ancient shoreline, when the archipelago and the continent were directly connected, which likely lasted until maybe 16,000 years ago, or even earlier, about the start of the Jōmon period, where populations show signs of extreme isolation.

This next map is extremely general, and shows what seems to be the general gene flow into the archipelago, based on the latest research. There is a flow that comes from Southeast Asia up north and into Japan from the earliest period of migration, which likely happened from ~38,000 to ~16,000 years ago. Then there is gene flow detected from what seems to be the Amur River Basin, possibly passing through Western Liao River Basin before making its way to the islands around the time of the Yayoi, about ~3,000 years ago—around 900 BCE, when rice first starts to show up as a crop on the archipelago. Finally, we have gene flow from the Yellow River Basin sometime between the Yayoi and the late Kofun period, between roughly the 3rd and 7th centuries CE. By the end of the Kofun the genetic makeup of the Japanese population appears to be fairly stable up through the modern day, with only slight variation as compared with earlier populations.

Previous Episodes

If you want to go back and listen to some of the episodes that may be relevant to the discussion, here’s a brief, non-exhaustive list:

Episode 1 - Pre-historic Japan
- Perhaps a bit of a misnomer since we stayed in pre- or proto-history for quite some time—many even still count proto-history up until the actual publication of the Chronicles themselves. Anyway, in this first episode we talked about Minatogawa Man and the earliest traces of homo sapiens on the archipelago, including how they may have got there.
Episode 5 - Goggle Eyes and Wet Earwax
- Episodes 2 through 5 were all about the Jōmon, and in our fifth episode we talked about what we learned from the DNA sequencing of the woman from Rebun island, off the coast of Hokkaidō. She is one of the previously sequenced genomes that this study used in their research and analysis.
Episode 7 - Rice comes to Japan
- Though we touched on some of the continental movements in Episode 6 and the birth of rice agriculture in the Korean peninsula, Episode 7 is where we really see rice coming over to Japan and the start of the Yayoi period. This is presumably when the Amur River ancestry makes its way into Japan.
Episode 8 - Bronze and Iron
- Here is where we discussed the establishment of Lelang and the various Han commanderies on the Korean Peninsula, though it is at the very end of the episode. The fact that the commanderies were established in 108 BCE, though, means that while they could have brought Yellow River DNA with them, it was much too late for the first wave to cross over to the archipelago about 800 years prior.
Episode 9 - The Langauge of Wa
- This is one area where I think we definitely have some questions to ask ourselves. If the early Yayoi were people with Amur River ancestry, then did they bring the language of “Wa”—that is to say, Japonic—with them or did the origins of Japanese in the archipelago come later? It is still possible that there is a link to the Shandong peninsula, but if so, perhaps the Japonic language families didn’t come in until some time after people with Yellow River Basin ancestry arrived. We certainly see traces of what looks to be Japonic in the names used for the countries of Japan in the mainland accounts, so it would seem to have been established by that time, but who brought it to the islands, and when?
Episode 30 - Yamato and the Continent
- For about 21 episodes we covered the Age of the Gods and various legendary—possibly mythic—sovereigns, finally coming back to the connections with the continent—something that we touched on throughout, but here we talked about some of the evidence in the Chronicles pointing to emigration from the peninsula from a very early period.
Episode 39 - Birth of the Three Kingdoms
- This was the episode we concentrated on what was going on over on the mainland, including the destruction and collapse of the commanderies, leading to an apparent diaspora of the ethnic Han citizens across the peninsula and over into the archipelago.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 50: New Research On The Origins Of The Japanese Population.
Before we get started, quick shout out to Poser27 for your support. If you’d like to join them, feel free to drop us a few dollars over at ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo. That’s K-O-DASH-F-I-DOT-COM SLASH “Sengokudaimyo”.
Now this episode is a bit special: we’re taking a break from the Chronicles to talk about a breaking piece of research, a new study just published by a team of scholars out of Trinity College, in Dublin, as well as many others from around Japan. You may, if you follow the right hashtags, have seen some flashy headlines about this, such as “Ancient DNA rewrites early Japanese history”—a pretty bold claim. So this episode I would like to dig a bit into this study itself, how it connects to what we’ve been talking about in the podcast about the changing population of Japan, and hopefully get beyond the clickbait.
And, since it’s Episode 50 – wow, time flies! – and we’re referring back to some topics we’ve already touched on, I’m going to feel free to name-drop earlier episodes to provide you a handy guide to where to find a refresher on anything we’ve already talked about.
A few caveats up front as we get into this: First off, you are mostly getting my take, as discussed with my lovely wife and editor, based on our reading of the study, various articles, and Twitter threads by scholars who know their stuff about Japanese history, so I’ll try to have links to all of that in the show notes at up at Sengokudaimyo.com/Podcast. Second, though I want to dig into the article, I make no claims at being a geneticist. I will be trying to do this without directly discussing things like haplogroups and the statistical functions used to compare ancient genomes. These are accomplished scientists and this is a peer reviewed paper, so I am taking them at their word. Rather than looking at the science of the genetic research, I want to see how their conclusions match up with what we think we know about early human activity on the archipelago in the pre- and proto-historical eras.
The study itself was published in the Journal “Science Advances”, which is a well-respected, open-access, multidisciplinary journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. If you’ve heard of the journal “Science”, these are the same people and they’re legit. The study, which came out on 17 September, is called “Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations” - we’ll have a link to the article itself up on the website, at sengokudaimyo.com/podcast.
The study reported out 12 newly sequenced ancient Japanese genomes, and compared all of them with each other, and other previously-known genomic data from Japan as well as the continent. Their findings would appear to indicate three different contributors to the DNA of modern Japanese populations: Jomon and Yayoi contributions are unsurprising, but they noted a third contributor showing up by the late Kofun period.
So is this a big deal, and if so, why? Let’s go back to the source and talk about the whole practice of tracing the origins of the people of the Japanese archipelago.
As you may have gathered, this has long been a part of Japanese historical studies. Heck, even the 8th century Chronicles that we read were making attempts to do that very thing by ascribing a divine origin to the creation of the islands and the descent of its people—or at least of the ruling elite.
For the longest time, this was *the* history of the archipelago that people followed, and though it does speak of various people coming over from Korea, and families who claimed descent from either Korean or Chinese families, the general assumption appears to be that those immigrants were assimilated into a much larger and uniquely Japanese population that maintained its links to that original heavenly descent.
In the late 19th century, though, archaeology was added to the mix, providing a means to place various artifacts into an historical context. In some cases this helped confirm what written sources had to say, but in others it just brought up more questions. Jomon and Yayoi pottery weren’t necessarily new—no doubt farmers and others had been digging them up for centuries—but with new tools and concepts of how to date and categorize the finds, the history of the archipelago exploded. While the Kofun period had always been apparent—after all, giant mounds of earth in distinct keyhole shapes, often moated, are hardly inconspicuous—the addition of the Jomon and Yayoi periods not only added more context, but they pushed back the boundaries of when people had arrived on the archipelago. Instead of history starting in the already fanciful 7th century BCE, the Jomon period and other prehistoric finds pushed the early date of human habitation back to about 38,000 years ago. We discussed this, and briefly covered the Jomon people in the first five episodes back in 2019—we’ll have links on the site so you don’t need to comb through the archives to find them.
Further studies showed a distinct change with the advent of rice farming. Originally thought to have been about 300 BCE, that date has since been pushed back to about 900 BCE. During the Yayoi we see rice, bronze, and new lifeways entering the archipelago. There was a lot of debate about where all of this came from, with strong indications that it arrived from the continent via the Korean peninsula, though some theories did suggest a southern route, up from south China and Taiwan. At this point, though, I think we can fairly confidently assert clear influence from the Korean archipelago during this period.
That said, the prevailing theory even with this new archeological evidence was that the people of the archipelago had not significantly changed. That is, the idea still held that the Japanese people themselves were established in the archipelago some 38,000 years ago and that, though they may have acquired technology and other cultural goods from abroad, they were essentially the same people. Of course, in this one might also see shades of discussions of things such as race, prevalent in the early 20th century, and the idea that the Japanese were somehow unique and distinct from the rest of Asia was definitely a view pushed by nativists and nationalists, who were seeking reasons to tout Japan’s superiority over other people.
However, much to the nationalists’ dismay, further archaeological studies demonstrated that there was not only a cultural change, but a demographic one as well. Skeletal remains from the Yayoi period demonstrate different morphological features that seemed to indicate at least two different groups of people existing in the islands at the same time. One group was more similar to the Jomon and ancient people of the archipelago, wile a second group was more closely related to the people of the peninsula and the continent—as well as modern Japanese.
Some people tried to push the idea that this was just part of the natural changes that could occur in populations over the years. After all, just between the Edo period and modern times a distinct change can be detected in the average height of Japanese people, largely attributed to things like changes in overall health and diet. However, more and more people questioned this idea, especially given the presence of the Ainu, in the north of the archipelago, a people who appeared to share more physical similarities to the earlier Jomon people, at least in regards to skeletal dimensions. Furthermore, it was in the north of the archipelago where the Jomon culture continued and evolved into the epi-Jomon, while in the central part of the archipelago the Yayoi culture was thriving. Later DNA tests demonstrated that there was an ancestral link from the Ainu to ancient Jomon populations, though intermixed with other people of the Okhotsk Sea region.
From this type of research emerged the idea, now generally taught in textbooks: The islands had been populated by the early Jomon people, but then a new group came in and, through the use of technologies like rice farming and new bronze, and later iron, weapons, were able to soon supplant or assimilate the previous inhabitants of the archipelago. This idea that modern Japanese are a mixture of these two populations—the earlier Jomon people and the later Yayoi, a group who came over during the Yayoi in one or multiple waves – is called the dual origin theory of the modern Japanese population, and it was largely solidified through the ideas of Hanihara Kazuro, who wrote about it in Japanese in the 1980s and then later published in English in 1991. Some of the Jomon people who didn’t assimilate into the new ethno-culture complex on the islands became ancestors of the Ainu, in the north, mixing with other groups in and around the Okhotsk and Japan sea regions, but the rest mixed with the North Asian population.
Where this wave of Yayoi immigrants ultimately came from—beyond the obvious answer of the southern Korean peninsula—has been a question for some time. Many of the early studies were based on various physical characteristics of the Yayoi and later Japanese, many associated with cranial dimensions—that is the specific dimensions of the skull. By the way, the origin of these studies, known as craniology, have a particularly nasty past, having to do with Eurocentric theories about the existence of racial characteristics as well as attempts to measure skulls against so-called Caucasian traits to determine some kind of racial hierarchy. While the racial underpinnings of craniological research have been discarded by modern anthropologists, it can still be a useful tool for distinguishing potentially different populations, particularly in a paleo-anthropological context, and so the these kinds of physical measurements continue to be used today for description, rather than classification.
From those kinds of studies, it was determined that the Jomon were associated with traits found in Southeast Asia, and were assumed to have come from South Asia during paleolithic times. The Yayoi were associated with traits more common in North Asian populations—and specifically Northeast Asian populations.
Now, linguists have largely assumed that these immigrants to the archipelago are the source for the Japonic languages. After all, cultures associated with Yayoi or later, such as the Japanese and Ryukyuan populations, speak some form of Japonic, while the Ainu language is its own thing, possibly connected to a language spoken in the archipelago prior to the spread of Yayoi culture.
Given this connection between Japonic languages and Yayoi culture, linguists searched out the roots of the language and some have looked at these findings in the context of what we knew about the coming of the Yayoi people—people that were likely the Wa of the ancient Chinese chronicles. Some scholars connected the Japanese language to Koguryoic, the language family of Korean, identified with the people of Goguryeo and the Buyeo people, among others. This in turn was connected to larger “transeurasian” language families.
More recently there has been some suggestion that proto-Japonic may have come over to the Korean peninsula via the rice cultivating cultures of the Shandong peninsula. Under that theory, any similarities between the Japanese and Korean languages are more likely related to their many centuries of close interaction, rather than an actual direct link between them.
All of this linguistic work seemed to enhance the idea that a large group of people came over in the Yayoi period, further emphasizing this concept that the Yayoi was, in a way, the “birth” of the Japanese people—that it was these two groups, the Yayoi and the Jomon, coming together that gave rise to the Wa, the ancestors of the modern Japanese population.
Of course, besides skeletal morphology and linguistics, this brings us up to one other category of evidence, something we’ve brought up in previous episodes and which is the subject of this latest study, and that is DNA. Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese soil doesn’t tend to be the best for preservation of organic material. It tends to be more acidic, and so many times human remains are hard to find. Still, to date there have been enough bones and bone fragments found for scientists to start to build a picture of ancient genomes. For instance, in our first episode we discussed the pre-Jomon era Minatogawa Man, down in the Ryukyu Islands, and back in Episode 5 there was the Jomon woman up in Hokkaido whose genome told us, among other things, that people in the Jomon period had already developed a tolerance for alcohol..
Most of those genetic studies have been largely focused on individuals found in a Jomon context or earlier—so pre-Yayoi immigration. When compared with modern Japanese, we find that there are certain genetic markers in modern populations that would seem to trace back to those early Jomon populations. This correlates with some of the physical data as well, suggesting traits of both north and south Asian populations are found heterogeneously in the modern Japanese population. This information is important because it suggests that the Jomon were not simply conquered and wiped out, but that, as some of the archaeological evidence has suggested, they were assimilated and incorporated into Yayoi society.
There are also studies that looked at the current Japanese population and where they had the most affinity with the people of the continent. Those studies seemed to confirm an affinity, along with modern people on the Korean peninsula, with the larger East Asian population, including the ethnic Han people and the Yellow River Basin.
Of course, that would make sense if the dual origin theory was correct: A wave of people coming over from the continent, bringing with them wet rice agriculture. Since that rice agriculture seemed to have a basis in the Yellow River or nearby Shangdong peninsula regions, we seem to have a nifty line connecting language, culture, and people. The Yellow River basin is part of North Asia, and so, even if it was multiple, successive waves of people coming over from the continent, the implication is that they were largely the same people.
So, that’s a summary of the prevailing theory: the dual origin hypothesis, which makes sense given the archeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence available to date. But this new study has provided some evidence that sets some of this – not all, but some - in a new light. Though it largely supports previous theories, it raises some interesting questions.
First off, this latest study has increased our understanding of the changes in the genetics of the Jomon people. The study reports out an unprecedented 12 new genome sequences—nine of whom were from individuals buried in a Jomon context. Together with previously sequenced genomes, the team has been able to determine several things.
First, the Jomon DNA that was studied demonstrates attributes that are strongly associated with the modern populations in the Japanese archipelago, but are otherwise rare on the continent. All of the Jomon individuals studied formed a tight cluster when compared with other populations, suggesting that they had, indeed, been largely isolated—otherwise we would expect to see more similarities between them and the continent. This is consistent with the idea that, as the glaciers receded and the oceans rose after the last glacial maximum, it left a population of humans stranded on the archipelago. These people, who may have been part of a lineage of hunter-gatherers who came north into East Asia from Southeast Asia some time prior would be the people we would come to know as the Jomon. And while genetic isolation is not quite the same as cultural isolation—we find, after all, evidence of cross-strait commerce—this does seem to fit with previous theories of early life in the Japanese islands.
Now in addition to the Jomon DNA, the study looked at five examples of post-Jomon DNA. Three of those were newly sequenced DNA from Kofun era individuals who were all buried in the same general area, south of the Noto peninsula. Two of the individuals were previously sequenced in other studies, and were found in a late Yayoi context in Northwest Kyushu and demonstrated a physical resemblance to Jomon people. What is a bit surprising, and what is driving those dramatic headlines, are both the differences between these Yayoi and Kofun individuals, and the fact that the Kofun era individuals group extremely well with modern Japanese, suggesting much less change between the Kofun and today than between the Yayoi and the Kofun period.
So what does this mean for the dual origin hypothesis? If if was the Yayoi immigration that largely shaped the genetics of modern Japanese, why do we see such differences in the genetic samples between Yayoi and Kofun?
One possible explanation for this could simply be that there was continuous immigration to the islands from the Yayoi into the Kofun period of state formation. So rather than a single wave of Yayoi era farmers coming over and setting up shop in the archipelago, that suggests to me the idea that continuous waves of people may have been coming across at various times. This would be in line with an extension of Hanihara’s dual structure hypothesis, as well as what we know from the Chronicles.
However, the DNA situation here suggests that it is a bit more complex. The Yayoi samples from the study definitely contain significant contributions from the Jomon people in the study, but there is also another contributor that’s a bit surprising. Given that the Yayoi is when rice farming appeared, we might expect that this other contributor might be from individuals tied to the Yellow River Basin, which is thought to have been the source of rice farming culture that made it to Japan and kicked off the Yayoi period. However, the two individuals sampled showed little affinity to the Yellow River Basin. Where the study’s authors did detect some kind of connection was with a genetic sample from the non-rice farming people of the West Liao River Basin, which stretches from Inner Mongolia to the border of North Korea, sits northwest of the Korean peninsula and northeast of the Yellow River Basin. More specifically, these individuals were from a site known as Longtoushan, near the village of Tuchengzi, Chifeng, in Inner Mongolia
In fact, this West Liao sample consisted of three individuals from the same archaeological site but with fairly diverse genetics. Two of the three individuals studied had genetic ties to the Yellow River Basin area. For those looking on a map, the Yellow River is the large river that empties into the Yellow Sea, between modern Chinese mainland and the Liaodong and Korean Peninsulas – so really, not that far of a hike from Japan. But the third had a greater connection to people of the Amur River basin, which makes up the northern most border between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, for the most part significantly north of modern Japan and Korea except at the very northern edge of the Korean peninsula.
Of those West Liao individuals, it was the one with Amur River genetic affinity, not the two associated with Yellow River populations, that had a high genetic affinity with our Yayoi samples. This suggests—at least given the current data—that the Yellow River basin was not likely to be a major source of the non-Jomon ancestry in these two Yayoi individuals, which somewhat violates our expectations. Rather, it is with people more associated with the Amur River region.
The study’s authors further tested several potential sources of continental ancestry, creating hypothetical mixtures of their DNA with that of the known Jomon DNA. These were all groups who shared a dominant Northeast Asian component to their ancestry. In the end, the Yayoi seem closest to individuals of the middle Neolithic and bronze age from the West Liao River Basin who also had a high level of Amur River ancestry, and the West Liao River Basin is just north of one of the supposed routes that rice agriculture took, from the Shandong peninsula, down the Korean peninsula, and to the archipelago. And so it isn’t out of the question that there were some people with northeast Asian ancestry, and specifically Amur River ancestry, who were part of the wave pushing that technology across the early Korean peninsula and then to the Japanese islands.
In contrast, the three individuals who had been buried in a Kofun context, hundreds of years later, tell of a different story. In their case they are much closer to modern Japanese. They don’t show the specific traits that linked the Yayoi to the Amur River basin - instead they show a much greater affinity with people of the Yellow River and, in fact, to much of the rest of east Asia.
And so the story that is emerging from all of this is that it seems there was one wave of immigrants that came over with the Yayoi, as already expected, but then there was at least one more wave of immigrants that came over around the time of state formation. It is even possible that there were other, successive waves.
By this time, if you’ve been following the podcast, you might be saying: Well, yeah. The Chronicles themselves talk about numerous people coming over from the Korean peninsula, including elites who married into the royal line. However, this isn’t exactly the narrative we get in all the histories. Usually it is just: People arrive, get isolated on the islands, and start making pottery with cord markings. Then a new group of people arrive, bringing rice and bronze and iron. They build up their settlements and eventually we get Queen Himiko, the shaman queen. From there, a big question mark, people start building giant, kingly tombs. That becomes a fad and then we get state formation. Hurray! Japan!
Okay, maybe not quite that simplistic, but I think you get my drift.
The DNA from this study supports some the theories and evidence that exist outside this long-standing official narrative. We can point to the change in material goods, and even what the written histories have to tell us, but this really gives us another data point to go off of, and hopefully we will get more.
And while many are quick to point out that this overturns the dual structure hypothesis, I would argue that it more refines it. Where Hanihara had originally had two sources for the origin of the Japanese population, South and North Asia, respectively, his models don’t rule out the possibility of multiple waves of immigration from different parts of north, northeast, and east Asia.
Now, quick caveat time—the Yayoi samples come from two individuals, from the same location, in Northern Kyushu. It is entirely possible that these two individuals happen to be outliers, though I would note that they contain a mixture of Jomon and external genetic markers, such that they are unlikely to be just off the boat. Furthermore, since they determined that none of the individuals in the study were related, that would indicate that there were at least two descendants from the initial mixing—probably several generations. Likewise our three Kofun samples come from the same area, and they were not occupants of keyhole shaped tombs, so they may be of some status, but they weren’t the elite running the country, and, again, the sample size is limited.
There is still a lot we don’t know. We don’t know how all of this information on genetic diversity matches up with stories of the Emishi, the Tsuchigumo, the Kumaso, or the Hayato—some of the ancient groups of the archipelago—possibly different ethnicities. We don’t know if the ancestry of the people in the mountains was different from those in the plains and farmland. And it would be especially interesting to see comparisons with various people on the Korean peninsula.
But given what we do know, at this point, what does it tell us?
Well let’s go back to the information about the Amur River connection to our two Yayoi individuals. We know that farming came across 900 BCE—about 600 years earlier than was previously thought, even 20 years ago, and there are *still* sources that have it start at 300 BCE or later, even today. In 900 BCE, from what we can tell, there wasn’t much Han presence in the peninsula region, and so it makes some sense that the people coming across would be more broadly connected with Northeast Asia, even though the West Liao River basin seems to have been a mixing pot of various people.
Unfortunately, from what I can tell, we seem to have a gap on the Korean peninsula itself. There have been various studies on the modern Korean population and trying to link them to various ancient ancestors, but I’m not sure that there is much in the way of paleo-genetics for the peninsula between the Yayoi and Kofun periods. While later studies confirm a relationship between Korean, Japanese, and ethnic Han populations, it seems that this relationship is assumed to generally extend back into the distant past.
But if we have another population coming to the archipelago in the Yayoi, then one assumes that the peninsular people were similarly different, at least in that early Neolithic and bronze age period.
I suspect this could be explained by the creation of the Han commanderies on the peninsula in 108 and 107 BCE, which we first discussed back in Episode 8. I suspect that a large number of ethnic Han immigrated to the peninsula at this time. It is possible that some intermarried with local populations, bringing in new genetic source material to the peninsula.
And then, in the early 4th century CE, we see the destruction of the commanderies by Goguryeo, and soon thereafter we see written culture arising in places like Silla and Baekje—possibly brought with an influx of ethnic Han fleeing Goguryeo and the destruction of the commanderies. Lots of population churn during this period, as we discussed in Episode 39.
There are still some important questions to be asked in terms of timing. We know that the Kofun era individuals in the latest study closely resemble modern Japanese, bringing in a much higher proportion of East Asian DNA. But when did that happen? The study says that the specific Kofun individuals were from about 1300 years ago. That actually puts them towards the end of the Kofun period. So we can see that change happened between the Yayoi and the end of the Kofun, but we still have a question of when.
Was there immigration during late Yayoi? Is that what led to the creation of the giant keyhole tomb mounds? That is one of the defining features of the Kofun period, so it could be a logical leap.
I would note, however, that there were already mounded tombs in the islands in the Yayoi period, in the form of funkyubo. Based on that, we don’t exactly need an external explanation for the arrival of mounded tombs, unless it came even earlier in the Yayoi period. The earlier, simpler tombs could have locally evolved into more complex practice along with changes in social complexity, the role of elites, and so on.
On the other hand, perhaps the kofun were part of the later migrations that were happening. Proponents of Egami’s horse-rider theory might point to this as another piece of evidence supporting their supposed conquest of the islands: A large group sweeping south. Of course, that theory suggests that those same riders were part of a general Buyeo ethnic group moving south, from Goguryeo to Baekje. But I wonder how that squares with the higher genetic connection to the Yellow River Basin? After all, the Buyeo and Goguryeo populations were likely more connected to other northeast Asian populations, themselves.
Perhaps this is all just was increased emigration over the course of the Kofun period, especially if the Wa people had some foothold on the peninsula, providing an entry point to mix and travel back and forth. Could it be that simple? Greater contact with the continent, and with the peninsular kingdoms, and more people coming over—enough to significantly affect the gene pool on the archipelago.
One thing is certain: We need more of this kind of research. Not just the new tools of DNA analysis, but the application of various big data techniques to draw out relationships. It then needs to be incorporated into our understanding of the past. In the last decade, the tools and methods for this kind of data to be collected and analyzed have been refined and expanded, and I expect to see more of it.
So what are the lessons we should take away from this whole thing?
Well, for one, if you see a dramatic headline, check your sources—and then check the sources behind what you are reading. The Internet, for one, is horribly mixed up. There are plenty of places that will still cling to old sources. And sometimes it takes a while for the latest research to show up in a form that is easily accessible to most of us. Even here in this podcast I’m trying to do my best to accumulate current research but it isn’t always an easy task, especially for an independent scholar outside of the academic system. One of the reasons I try to give you my sources is because then you can check them out yourselves and take a look at the date on the information.
Now, it isn’t the case that newer is always better. Sometimes new theories don’t pan out, but that is a decision you can make on your own.
For another thing, I think this study provides another piece of clear evidence of the complex relationship between the archipelago and the continent, with multiple waves of immigration coming over, bringing new people, new technology, and new ideas. Although we often talk about the insular nature of the Japanese archipelago, more and more we can see that they were actively involved with the continent in trade, politics, and populations, and the Kofun period was a particularly dynamic time.
For example, in the same week that this article on ancient Japanese DNA was posted, we got word that in a Yayoi era kingly tomb in Fukuoka, northwest Kyushu, were found glass beads which seem to have originated in the Mediterranean region of the Roman Empire. Similar beads were also found in Mongolia, and based on scientific studies they appear to have come from the same place, meaning that glass beads traveled from the Mediterranean all the way to Japan via Mongolia and the central steppes of Eurasia.
And this isn’t entirely new. Exchanges between Asia and the Mediterranean have long been known, traveling through trade networks and handled by individuals traveling the long routes from one side of Eurasia to another. Most of their journeys aren’t captured in any writings or histories, but their imprint and impact can surely be felt. This is something we will talk about as we see more things coming across, but it is always good to keep in mind that it isn’t just the modern world that is incredibly connected—and Japan has long been a part of that connected world.
Next episode we’ll bring the focus back around the Chronicles and the stories therein. We are going to look at the stories of Oho Sazaki no Mikoto, aka Nintoku Tennou, and his court in Naniwa—modern Ohosaka.
And that’s all for this episode, until next time, 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.
Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you and your ideas.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Cooke, N. P., Mattiangeli, V., Cassidy, L. M., Okazaki, K., Stokes, C. A., Onbe, S., ... & Nakagome, S. (2021). Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations. Science Advances, 7(38), eabh2419. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh2419
Ning, C., Li, T., Wang, K., Zhang, F., Li, T., Wu, X., ... & Cui, Y. (2020). Ancient genomes from northern China suggest links between subsistence changes and human migration. Nature communications, 11(1), 1-9. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16557-2
HANIHARA, K. (1991). Dual Structure Model for the Population History of the Japanese. Japan Review, 2, 1–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25790895
-, -. (2020). A History of Crainiology in Race Science and Physical Anthropology. The Penn Museum Website. Last viewed on 9/28/2021. https://www.penn.museum/sites/morton/craniology.php

Episode 49: Three Brothers, One Throne

September 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Crown Prince Uji no Waki Iratsuko (菟道稚郎子), as imagined in the 19th century.

RSS

Archives

When Homuda Wake died, we are told that he left his youngest son, Uji no Waki Iratsuko, as Crown Prince. However, there were still two other brothers with a claim to the throne, and not everyone was committed to upholding their father’s wishes. This episode we discuss the succession crisis that arose after Homuda Wake’s death. We also try to provide a little external context, looking beyond the story in the Chronicles. Finally, we briefly touch on a UNESCO World Heritage Site associated with this whole episode.

The Dual Kingship Model

One of the discussion points in this episode is the dual kingship model, as presented by Kishimoto Naofuji in his article, “Dual Kingship in the Kofun Period as Seen from the Keyhole Tombs.” He builds on the previous theory of gendered co-rulers—the Hiko-Hime-sei—suggesting that the co-regents weren’t necessarily gendered, but simply had different functions. He explains this through the grave goods and the shapes of the various tombs: While they all have the same general “round-keyhole” or “前方後円” shape, there are slight differences in the tiers and shape, such as various protrusions, that seem to come from different “lineages” of tomb construction. Since these tombs are roughly equal in size and therefore assumed to be roughly equal in status, and the two lines continue through successive tombs, he suggests that they were for royal elites with slightly different functions.

Of course, it is hard to see any such model in the continental references. Nowhere do they explicitly reference multiple “kings”, though in the Wei Chronicles they do mention someone who helped with the administration while Himiko handled more sacred and mystical duties. One reason for this lack in the external sources may be that the continental chronicles just didn’t have a full understanding of Wa politics and therefore assumed that they governed under rules similar to the ones they themselves knew.

It is also possible that this whole thing is wrong. Without access to most of the kingly kofun, we may never know for certain who is buried there—and even with access there is likely to be debate. But it does keep us on our toes and should be a good reminder not to trust everything that the Chroniclers throw at us.

Prince Ō Yamamori (大山守皇子) and Prince Nukata Ō Naka tsu Hiko　(額田大中彦皇子)

The connection between the prince known as Ō Yamamori and Prince Nukata no Ō Naka tsu Hiko is still somewhat uncertain. It seems clear that they were conflated into a single character by the 8th century chroniclers, but it is quite possible that in truth, their stories were combined at a later date. This seems further emphasized by the fact that in the story about Ō no Sukune and the rice-lands of Yamato, the Prince in question is referenced consistently as Nukata (or Nukada) no Ō Naka tsu Hiko. However, in the scene after this, it is Prince Ō Yamamori who is referenced. The placement and the grudge would seem to indicate that the story of the rice-lands incident added to the frustration that Prince Ō Yamamori felt with his position, and there is even a mention that the reason Prince Ō Naka tsu Hiko felt entitled to the lands was because they belonged to the “Yamamori”.

However, I would be remiss not to note that there is a later story—some 60+ years later—that also mentions Prince Nukata no Ō Naka tsu Hiko. This is many decades after Prince Ō Yamamori’s death. Unfortunately, that simply leaves me with more questions.

Regardless, we maintain here Aston’s assertion that the two were actually one and the same, with Ō Yamamori being the title (Great Mountain Protector) and Nukata no Ō Naka tsu Hiko may have been the prince’s actual name, such as it is.

Ujigami Shrine (宇治上神社)

This shrine is well late of our narrative, as we don’t have evidence for it until some time between the 8th and 10th centuries, but it still is interesting and it is connected to our story because it enshrines three of the individuals we discuss: Homuda Wake, aka Ōjin Tennō, and two of his sons: Uji no Waki Iratsuko and Ōsazaki no Mikoto. On top of that it is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, and if you are ever in Uji city, you should check it out.

The honden, or main worship hall, of Ujigami Shrine—one of the oldest extant examples of shrine architecture, in this case dating back to the Heian period. This hall is a national treasure and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 49: Three brothers, one throne.
Quick content warning upfront in this one—there is some brief mention of suicide in this episode, as well as other forms of violence in this episode. We’ll add notes about it to the episode description when it is released if you need more specific details.
Also, before we get going a quick shout out to Craig and Shinanoki for donating to support what we do here. Also thanks to Shinanoki to making the suggestion to open “memberships” on Ko-Fi, which is a new feature, so now you can either drop us a one time payment or set up a monthly donation. That is all over at Ko-fi.com, that’s “K”-“O”-“DASH”-“F”-“I”, “dotcom”, “Slash” “sengokudaimyo”.
More on that at the end of this episode.So, when we left off at the end of our last episode, Homuda Wake was dead. The sovereign who had ruled over Yamato through so many eventful years was no more. Over the course of his reign, Yamato’s influence on the peninsula had expanded, along with its influence on the rest of the archipelago. Weavers, seamstresses, smiths, and more had made their way from the continent to the islands where the Wa lived, spurring advancements in a wide swath of different fields. The islands now had horses, and people could read and write. And one thing that seems true around the world: reading and writing greatly increase the speed at which a people can import new ideas, thoughts, and philosophy.
One thing was for certain: things were changing, and fast. Like the parable of the frog in a pot of water, we don’t always notice change until well after it has happened. In fact, we often tend to see change as though it wasn’t change at all—we project back on the past an image consistent with what we know. Maybe we make some comparative notes between how it was when we were growing up and how it is today, but there is a tendency to assume that anything quote-unquote “beyond living memory” was just some version of life like our grandparents told us about.
How that’s relative here is that we are watching change happen over some two hundred years—from the end of the Yayoi period in the 3rd century and the mention of Queen Himiko to the current era in our story. For comparison, as of this episode, recorded in September 2021, the US constitution is roughly 233 years old – and the Edo period in Japanese history lasted for a little over two and a half centuries, depending on how you count it. And both those periods have been marked by enormous change as well.
During the 200-year span in our narrative, we have seen the emergence of small countries, or perhaps proto-states, across the islands. It may not be fully correct to assume that they had complete control, even within the borders attributed to them, however. The polities that arose from the Yayoi period were based on a practice of wet-rice cultivation and trade that saw them spread out the plains and river deltas, as well as along the coastal regions, but at the same time various other lifeways continued in the mountains, which even then made up the majority of the archipelago’s landmass. Given that most fertile plains in Japan are around the deltas where rivers empty into the sea or large lakes, like Lake Biwa, it seems quite understandable that the waterways would also be an important means of travel and communication, which only further draws a distinction between the plains and the mountains.
Which isn’t to say there weren’t population centers built around other commodities, such as the jade-producing regions in the Koshi region, but these appear to have been exceptions, rather than the rule. Even the various mountain communities interacted with the rice-growing cultures on a regular basis, though they are clearly depicted as being outsiders.
Of all of these early states, Yamato appears to have been the largest and most powerful of these entities, but all the same it is questionable how much direct control it had beyond its own borders. Control, however, is different from power. Levers of power are complex, even today. There are many types of power that any individual or group can access and deploy to their benefit. Legal and military power are the ones we probably think of most often when we think of a modern state or country, but influence can be achieved through other means as well. Religions often wield considerable power through the influence they have on their followers, such that leaders like the Catholic Pope or the Dalai Lama might be seen as highly influential figures on the world stage, despite not having the typical trappings of a state apparatus. Economic and trade networks also create their own levers of power that can influence others. Or you might just be able to use logic and persuasion to get people on your side and to do what you want them to do. And then there is simply the force of tradition, and traditional relationships, which may generate influence between groups. There are so many ways that one can influence others, it isn’t just about being the person at the top of the legal pyramid. After all, what is a leader if nobody decides to follow them?
And whatever else we may say about the state of Yamato, it does appear to have become a leader in the archipelago. This had likely been accumulating through a variety of means, one of them possibly being the spread of the cult of Mt. Miwa and a burial ritual for elites based around monumental tomb structures – the giant kofun that we’ve been talking about, which by this time period were reaching truly impressive sizes. Whether this cultural practice was part and parcel of the spread of direct Yamato power, or a separate influence, I can’t really say, though they may have encouraged one another. Either way, as this ritual and the knowledge of its specifics was based in the area of Yamato, that seems to have given the Yamato elites a leg up in their dealings across the archipelago. These relationships, properly cultivated, and reinforced through marriage politics across the various countries, had grown into something more—perhaps a kind of confederation.
A similar process seems to have been going on over on the peninsula, within the areas of the Samhan, the three Han of Ma, Jin, and Byeon. Here, we know a little from the accounts in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, including the Wei Chronicles, as well as the stories from the annals of the Silla and Baekje kingdoms that eventually were recorded in works like the Samguk Sagi and the Samguk Yusa. In particular, in the Baekje Annals we are told that there was a single ruler, or King, of the Mahan confederation, but that position was replaced by Baekje as they began to conquer, assimilate, and subjugate their neighbors. Silla, we are told, grew up out of an alliance of six members of the Jinhan, eventually rising to power as the pre-eminent state in that region. Byeonhan looks to have been in a similar process, with various mentions of a King of the states known as Kara, or Kaya, as well as a ruler of Nimna—whether or not those were the same individual is hard to say, but the Chronicles seem to suggest that there were different positions. Kara, however, seems to have been late to the game—perhaps it never had the external impetus of others to bring the various communities together, or perhaps, trapped as it was between Silla, Baekje, and the Wa of the archipelago, it was pulled in too many directions, given that it was the crossroads across which the others would often march in their conflicts. This is a position the entire peninsula would find itself in, later, but for now it appears to have affected the growing states of Kara the most.
So, looking at the details of how these states on the peninsula consolidated their power, it is reasonable to assume that a similar process was at work in the archipelago – although the Chronicles, being the official record of the Yamato court written centuries after the fact, don’t go into the same level of detail of how their own sausage was made. This power consolidation wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision on any one person’s part. There was no great unifier to point to who was bringing these states together—no Oda Nobunaga with his armies, nor a Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. At least, not yet. And still, a shared culture was being built through various rituals and ties across the various countries of the islands.
Early on, we see this not only in the monumental tombs, but in the distribution of elite goods. Bronze mirrors seem to have been the most popular such item, at least early on. These were likely acquired from the continent, from groups like the Wei and the early Jin courts, and then distributed by a central authority, whom many assume to be the Yamato court. In addition to those acquired from the continent, local copies were also produced. The importance of these mirrors is further emphasized in the stories, such as when various local lords bring out their finery to meet envoys of Yamato, or even in the depictions of how Yamato’s own missions were decked out. Furthermore, the mirror’s place in the legend of Amaterasu also seems to be key.
But as the centuries went on, the 4th century, into the 5th, saw another item, also mentioned in the story of Amaterasu, which we start to see more of, even as incidents of bronze mirrors begin to decline. These are iron swords, and as we start to see more of them in tombs, especially as the bronze mirrors diminish, we can make some assumptions as to where the people of the archipelago were placing their values. Mirrors may represent ritual authority, but they also represent a kind of wealth. Mirrors have a use, but having many mirrors seems to be more about strict wealth—and access to the kinds of continental goods that would make someone important in the early periods. Swords, along with armor and other tools of war, are also signs of wealth, as iron was still largely obtained through continental trade, but these have a much more direct use, as well. After all, arm 100 people with mirrors and, unless you are constructing an Archimedean death ray, they aren’t going to do a whole lot in a fight. Arm those same 100 people with swords and armor, and you have a formidable fighting force, especially when previous forms of arms and armor consisted largely of bronze or stone and lacquered wood. It seems that there was, in this period, a greater emphasis on military might and achievements.
Which isn’t to say that it was all peace and love before—we certainly have examples of the kind of mass violence seen in inter-group conflict early on, but this doesn’t appear as one of the defining aspects of the social elite as it would come to be later on. This change may be understandable given the turmoil that had taken place on the continent. Goguryeo had destroyed the old commanderies, which no doubt caused disruption in the trade networks. That could help explain increased incidents of Wa raiders along the coast of the peninsula—though for all we know this may have been something that had been going on for much longer, with nobody around to record it. It is also possible that the concept of a warrior elite was coming over from the peninsula with waves of immigrants, many of whom were captives or refugees; victims of the violence that seems to have characterized this period.
Evidence of immigrants can be found across the archipelago. For one thing, immigrants are tied to many places in the archipelago, and specifically to the current dynasty. We’ve talked a little bit about immigrant influences in places like the country of Toyo, as well as Kawachi, Izumo, and Koshi on the main island of Honshu. Indeed, Kawachi, in the south of modern Ohosaka, is a hotspot in the chronicles for immigrant presence, and it seems to have been a the center of activity, as that is where this dynasty‘s tombs, and many of their supposed palaces, were located. The narrative of the royal family even claims ties back to Silla princes and there is evidence that they may have also had marriage ties to the Baekje royal line.
We’ve also heard about artisans brought over from the peninsula to revolutionize weaving and other crafts. In the 5th century we will see the rise of sue-ware pottery, a kind of high temperature fired stoneware that likely came over from Kara. You see the same techniques adopted in Silla for their pottery around the same time. These techniques required extremely high temperatures, requiring a new kind of kiln, built upon a hillside. These same high-temperature techniques would have been useful in the process of extracting iron, necessary for all of the arms and armor we are seeing.
But of course, when it comes to pottery, it isn’t just peninsular style stoneware that we see—local traditions were also evolving. In particular, we see more and varied styles of haniwa, those terracotta clay figures that adorned so many of the kofun, particularly the monumental kingly kofun. Eventually these figurines would come to be important windows in to what life actually looked like at this time.
And as we are talking about the march of time and things that were eventually forgotten, I’m also reminded of Professor Kishimoto Naofumi’s dual kingship model. We talked about this a little bit previously, but this model states that for a time, there were actually two sovereigns: one who ruled as a sacred authority, interpreting the signs of the kami and directing the spiritual well-being of the land, while another dealt with more secular matters, having to do with things like administration of the government as well as any military activities. This goes back to the description in the Wei Chronicles of how Queen Himiko ruled through her spiritual power, and others seemed to be handling the day to day work of administering Yamato, and it is further indicated in the shapes of the kofun themselves. In fact, Prof. Kishimoto points to aspects of their shapes like certain protrusions, and the number of tiers, that appear to show at least two parallel lineages for tomb construction. I wanted to bring this back up, because otherwise we get just the view of the Chronicles, which crams all of the rulers into a single, largely unbroken, patrilineal descent model, either because the 8th century chroniclers couldn’t conceive of anything different from their current model or possibly because they had drunk too much of the continental KoolAid in regards to what was a quote-unquote “proper” model of kingship.
So here we have the possibility for two separate lines stretching back to at least Himiko. When, with Homuda Wake, the power of Yamato moved from the Nara basin out to Kawachi, with its greater access to the sea, that could be a demonstration of another chiefly line taking control, or it could be indicative of a desire for easier access to the waterways that led to the peninsula and the rest of the continent. Either way it pulls the sacral ruler further west, away from the holy mountain of Mt. Miwa, and seems to turn the face of Yamato towards the trade connecting it with the continent.
And that brings us back to where we are in the narrative. The sovereign, Homuda Wake, was dead. His body may have been laid out for a time—mogari—before being entombed in one of the kingly kofun. Tradition says that this was Kondayama Kofun, and based on the size it was likely constructed well before his death, as some have estimated that construction of something that large would have taken at least a decade. Tomb construction was probably a business all unto itself, constantly in motion, organizing the labor, resources, etc. for both the tombs of the rulers but also other elites across the archipelago. The construction would likely have been taking place as the backdrop to Homuda Wake’s court.
Now from what we are told, the succession issue after Homuda Wake passed should have been pretty cut and dried. After all, Homuda Wake had set up his son, Uji no Waki Iratsuko, as the Crown Prince. As for his other two eligible sons, he had actually set them up as well. Oho Yamamori had been put in charge of the mountain areas, while Oho Sazaki, whom you may recall from last episode gave Homuda Wake the answer he had been looking for in terms of his succession decision, was made the Assistant to the Crown Prince and put in charge of administration—which sounds vaguely similar to idea that he may have been set up as a co-ruler, per professor Kishimoto’s model, while his brother, Uji no Waki Iratsuko, was set up to succeed Homuda Wake directly.
Whatever was actually going on, of course the story in the Chronicle maintains the story of a single throne and a single ruler, and Uji no Waki Iratsuko was supposed to be that ruler. But, as you might have guessed, that isn’t how everyone saw things. Now Oho Sazaki had no problem with this arrangement, we are told. He immediately turned over the reigns of government to his brother. Uji no Waki Iratsuko, on the other hand, well he didn’t actually want to take the reigns of power himself. He looked at his older brother, and everything he was doing to run the country, and he tried to turn everything over to him. Oho Sazaki wouldn’t hear of it, of course—their father had made his decision, and Oho Sazaki was determined that they would stick to it.
Meanwhile, their eldest brother, Oho Yamamori, aka Nukada no Oho Naka tsu Hiko, had other ideas. He wasn’t at all pleased with how things had turned out, and he was more than willing to take matters into his own hands.
The first we hear about Oho Yamamori gathering power is in the Nihon Shoki, and it is something of an ancient legal dispute. You see, he attempted to use his position to take administration of the official rice-lands and granaries in Yamato from a member of the court, Ou no Sukune, claiming that the lands had originally been a part of the Mountain Warden, or Yamamori, land. As Oho Yamamori, he believed that he should have governance over those lands and how the granaries were run. From a western perspective, this is like requesting the keys to the royal vault. From at least the 8th century, when the Chronicles were written, and probably going back to the early structures of wealth in the rice-growing Yayoi culture, control of the production and distribution of rice was one of the main features of elite administration. Owning rice-land, which is to say being entitled to the taxes on that land, as well as handling the granaries where taxed rice was stored would provide a tremendous income boost, as throughout most of Japan’s history, it was common for the one controlling the taxes to take some amount for themselves, as long as the state got what it was owed.
And so it is little wonder that Ou no Sukune was taken aback at having these fields and granaries removed from his administration. He went Homuda Wake’s designated heir, Uji no Waki Iratsuko, to submit a report and ask for a ruling, but Uji no Waki Iratsuko delegated—perhaps showing that he was cut out for leadership after all. He sent Ou no Sukune to his older brother, Oho Sazaki no Mikoto, to make the report to him, instead. Of course, Oho Sazaki had been administering the government for his father already, so he knew what needed to be done. In this case he went to a man named Maro, the ancestor of the Yamato no Atahe. He asked Maro if it was truly the case that that the granaries and rice-land originally belonged to the administration of the Yamamori. This was probably because much of the early Wa legal system seems to have been based on precedent and tradition. It is, of course, unclear how such precedent would be passed down originally—perhaps there were specialists among groups like the Katari-be who memorized not only genealogies but important events as well. After the advent of writing, court families would maintain their own diaries and records of what had happened, and why, and these would be passed down, creating private repositories of precedent that helped cement their family’s status and importance to the court.
In this case, however, Maro was at a loss, but he suggested that they contact his younger brother, Agoko, whom he was sure would have an answer for them. Unfortunately, Agoko was off on a mission in Kara, and so Ou no Sukune was sent to recall him. Ou was given command of some 80 fishermen—one might say a boatload of fishermen—from Awaji to act as oarsmen. There seems to be a correlation that the more oarsmen, the faster a boat will travel, and so this seems to indicate he was sent off with all haste.
Ou no Sukune made it to Kara and found Agoko and brought him back to the court. Agoko, who must have been quite the student of the old stories, told the court what he knew. According to Dr. John Bentley’s translation in the Sendai Kuji Hongi, aka the Kujiki, Agoko said: “Tradition says that during the reign of the Great King who ruled from the Makimuku Tamaki Palace—which is to say Ikume Iribiko, aka Keikou Tennou, the 11th sovereign and part of the previous dynasty—the authority was given to Heir to the Throne, Oho Tarashi Hiko, who established the granaries of Yamato. At that time, the edict read, ’All granaries of Yamato are to be the granaries of the Great King and not the property of the child of a Great King. If the Great King is not in power, then the granaries are not his.’ Therefore this land is not the land of the Yamamori.”
While that is likely an insertion by the Chroniclers—after all, we have no evidence of written edicts from the time of Oho Tarashi Hiko, for one thing—the answer that Agoko was giving was pretty clear: The granaries and rice land all were owned by the actual sovereign—the Oho Kimi, or Great King—so Prince Oho Naka tsu Hiko – aka Oho Yamamori - could get bent. Sure, Uji no Waki Iratsuko and Oho Sazaki were still vacillating on who should actually be running things, but it wasn’t Oho Yamamori , so he couldn’t just go around demanding control of the rice lands and granaries.
Oho Yamamori was at a loss. He apparently didn’t have anyone on his side to refute Agoko’s argument, and so he dropped his case. Specifically we are told that he “realized that he was in the wrong”, and because of his contrition his brother, Oho Sazaki, forgave him and didn’t do anything to further punish him for his actions.
The story goes on that Oho Yamamori was fuming. First, he had been passed over to inherit the throne by his father, Homuda Wake, and now he had been rice-blocked by his two younger brothers. *He* was the eldest and *he* was entitled to sit on that throne, and he would do whatever it took to make sure that came true. And so he started to raise an army in secret to kill his brother, Uji no Waki Iratsuko, the heir to the throne.
“Secret”, however, is a relative term. Word of Oho Yamamori’s plans reached their middle brother, Oho Sazaki no Mikoto, who immediately went and told Uji no Waki Iratsuko, who in turn raised up an army of his own. The Kojiki tells us that these men were concealed along the banks of what may have been the Kizu River, south of Uji, and that curtains were placed at the top of a nearby mountain or hill, to make it look like Waki Iratsuko was there, holding court. They even dressed a decoy up and placed him on a dais so that it would further seem like it was Waki no Irtasuko up there. The Nihon Shoki and the Kujiki suggest that this was the location of Waki Iratsuko’s own palace—hence the “Uji” in his name. Either way, Oho Yamamori approached with his men, expecting to catch him unawares.
Meanwhile, Waki Iratsuko had put on a disguise. This is one feature that all of the Chronicles agree on—he disguised himself as a common ferryman and set himself up on the side of the river. Some accounts even claim that he greased the boats to make them more slippery. And it wasn’t only Waki Iratsuko who had disguised himself—Oho Yamamori had concealed his troops and moved them in secret, while he, himself, wore clothing over his own armor, to hide his martial intentions. When he finally arrived at the river, he looked across and saw what he thought was Waki Iratsuko on the other side. Confident that his victory was a mere boat ride away, Oho Yamamori got into the ferry, not realizing that the commoner running it was none other than his own brother.
Glowing the confidence of a comic book supervillain just before his plans come to fruition, Oho Yamamori posed a cryptic question to the ferryman, asking him if he thought that he could take the “huge enraged boar” on the mountain on the other side. At this the Waki Iratsuko said that he would not take the boar, and then suddenly he tipped the boat, dumping his brother, Oho Yamamori, into the river.
As Oho Yamamori floundered in the river, fighting against the weight of his armor, he begged the ferryman to help him, still not realizing it was his brother. Of course, he was a royal prince, so this wasn’t just some exclamation, but it was sung out in lines of poetry. Or so we are told—that may just have been a narrative device to help remember and recount the dramatic part of the story. Either way, he called out, and, when no help was forthcoming, he tried to swim to shore. As soon as Waki Iratusko had tipped the boat, however, his own men arose on the banks of the river, bows in hand, and they kept Oho Yamamori from reaching either bank before he finally sank beneath the water. Later they would search the river near where he went under and eventually they found him as their poles hit his metal armor, and they dragged his body out of the river at a place known as Kawara, said to be part of modern Kyoutanabe city, just south of Uji. There is a poem of grief attributed to Waki Iratsuko, who *had* just thrown his own brother overboard and watched him drown, after all. Later, he would have Oho Yamamori buried in a tomb on Mt. Nara—traditionally identified as Sakaimedani Kofun, aka Narayama-baka, north of modern Nara city, south of the supposed site of the conflict. Oho Yamamori’s line didn’t end with him, however, and several families traced their lineage back to this figure.
So with that out of the way, one might assume that Uji no Waki Iratsuko had finally come into his own. He had shown that he could raise an army, outsmart a foe, and take the necessary steps to stay in power—even if it meant the death of his own older brother. One assumes he could have used his victory to cement his place in the lineage. And yet… he *still* insisted on making his older brother, Oho Sazaki no Mikoto, take the throne. And Oho Sazaki continued to defer, claiming he didn’t want to go against his father’s wishes. And so for a while there they were, each in their own private homes, which should have become the new court once Homuda Wake passed away, but each refusing to take up the mantle. Waki Iratsuko had his palace up in Uji and Oho Sazaki was probably living in Naniwa—modern Ohosaka.
Things were so bad, that people weren’t sure what to do. For example, one day a fisherman, or “ama” in Japanese, came to the Uji Palace with a mat filled with fresh fish to offer up to the sovereign. He approached Uji no Waki Iratsuko with the gift, since he had been named as Crown Prince and successor by the previous sovereign, Homuda Wake. But Waki Iratsuko refused the gift. “I am not the sovereign,” he told the fisherman, and anyone listening. He insisted that the gift should be presented down river at the Naniwa palace of his brother, Oho Sazaki no Mikoto. This was a journey of probably around 40 km, or 24 miles, and would have taken a day on foot—perhaps not quite so much on the river, but still something of a hike.
And so the fisherman dutifully took his catch down to Naniwa, where he presented it to Ohosazaki no Mikoto, but Oho Sazaki also refused it, just as had his younger brother. He would not go against their father’s orders, and so he commanded the fisherman to head back to Uji no Waki Iratsuko.
Now by this time the day had grown late, and the fish were starting to go bad with all of the travel, and so the fisherman tossed the whole thing and resolved to try again the next day with a new catch.
Sure enough, he caught the fish and wrapped them up, just as before. He went to the palace in Uji, this time prepared to explain that Oho Sazaki had sent him back, but it was no use. Just as before, Uji no Waki Iratsuko insisted that he was not the sovereign and that any offerings had to be made down in Naniwa to Oho Sazaki. Once again the fisherman made the treck, but just as had happened the day before, Oho Sazaki refused, claiming he was not the sovereign. Once again, with all the back and forth, the fish were rotten and no longer good for anyone to eat, and we are told that the fisherman just threw up his hands and wept, for there was nothing else he could do.
From this came a saying: “Ama Nare Ya, Onogamono kara nenaku”—“There is a Fisherman who Weeps on account of his Own Things”.
And it seems like things may have continued on like this, which couldn’t have been good for anybody. Somebody was going to have to budge, but who would it be.
According to the Nihon Shoki, it was Uji no Waki Iratsuko who finally took matters into his own hands. Seeing that his older brother would not give in, and realizing that this couldn’t continue like this or everything would fall apart, Uji no Waki Iratsuko, we are told, took his own life.
As soon as the shocking news reached Waki Iratsuko’s brother, Oho Sazaki, he raced upriver to Uji. As he got there, they were already preparing Waki Iratsuko’s body for burial, and we are told that he was lying in the coffin, dead, when Oho Sazaki arrived, weeping and wailing and pouring out his heart. It seems, however, that Waki Iratsuko was not quite ready to fully leave the mortal plane, however. Though he seemed to be dead as a doornail he suddenly sat bolt upright in his coffin and addressed Oho Sazaki. The zombie prince told his older brother not to grieve, because this was in the best interest of the country, and Waki Iratsuko then asked Oho Sazaki to take Waki Iratsuko’s sister—a daughter of Homuda Wake, but by a different mother than Oho Sazaki—as a wife and to install her in one of the side palaces. After saying all of that, he then fell down dead once more. Tradition states he was buried at Maruyama Kofun in Uji—also just known as Uji-baka—a round keyhole style tomb on the north side of the Uji River in modern Uji city.
And so it was that Oho Sazaki no Mikoto, also known as Nintoku Tennou, finally ascended the throne.
We’ll talk about his reign over the next few episodes, but let’s quickly take a look back at this story. One of the things that struck me as I was reading this in the different sources is that this seems to be one of the stories where there is generally agreement between the various chronicles. It isn’t something that just shows up in one or two, but all three, and the with similar beats in the action, with only small differences in the details. So either they were drawing from the same story or it was a fairly well known and popular one, I would assume.
Still, that doesn’t mean I fully trust all the details. For instance, were they really all siblings, sons of Homuda Wake? Or were they simply separate claimants to the throne? Even if they were all three sons of Homuda Wake, did they all have an equal claim to the throne? We’ve typically seen in the past that there is a single queen whose progeny are then eligible, but here we have three different potential sovereigns from three different queens. It is, of course, possible that the blood ties were fabricated, later, based on an assumption that it was needed to succeed the previous ruler.
Then there is the question of whether or not things were really this cut and dried. It seems like a lot, even when dressed in peasant garb, to assume that Oho Yamamori would not recognize his own brother. Things still have a somewhat fantastical bent to them, though it certainly is possible—the idea of lining the river with your men and having them shoot at someone so they could not swim to either bank seems like a tactic that someone might try.
Even if we take the whole thing at face value, though, it says something about just how perilous and chaotic the period after a sovereign’s death could be. Without a clear tradition that laid out who would succeed, fights could easily erupt between different claimants to the throne, even when a Crown Prince had clearly been named. In this case the eldest clearly thought that they deserved the throne, and the middle and youngest brothers continued to bicker over just who should have it. And while I wonder if some of that isn’t just a romantic face to a much more complex and, perhaps, bloody affair, it is probably the case that this was often what happened. Heck, even back in the stories about Queen Himiko it sounds as if there was often some chaos a ruler passed away as they tried to determine who would be next. So let’s keep that in mind as we see stories of seemingly “simple” succession stories.
I’ll end this episode with one more note, and that is actually about a rather famous shrine that is connected with this whole episode, and that is Ujigami Jinja, in, as you may have guessed by the name, Uji city.
Uji city, situated between Kyoto and Nara, is known for many things, tea being one of the more well known. Uji-cha has a long history, but not as long as what we are looking for. Uji is also home to the Byodoin, an ancient Heian aristocrat’s home along the Uji river that was turned into a Buddhist worship hall after his death. And just across the river from the Byoudouin is the relatively unassuming Ujigami Shrine.
If you didn’t already know about it, you might easily pass by this UNESCO world heritage site, and yet it features some of the oldest shrine architecture in Japan. Specifically it has a honden, or main shrine, that dates back to the late Heian period, demonstrating some interesting features of classic Heian architecture. Inside the building there are three bays, each one a shrine to the three main kami of Ujigami shrine, those being, chiefly: Homuda Wake no Mikoto and two of his sons: Uji no Waki Iratsuko and Oho Sazaki no Mikoto. Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, is considered the chief deity, and worshipped at the central shrine in the main building. Interestingly, this shrine, though worshipping Oujin Tennou, does not appear to be a part of the Hachiman cult—it is not considered a Hachiman-gu. Remember, we discussed last episode how Oujin Tennou became associated with Hachiman in later years, and this may have been an association that predates that connection. In the two side shrines, Uji no Waki Iratsuko is enshrined to the left while Oho Sazaki no Mikoto, is enshrined to the right. And while the main building is the oldest and goes back to the late Heian period, there are several other buildings on the shrine grounds that go back to the Kamakura period.
Now we aren’t exactly sure when the shrine was founded, except that it was before even the main shrine hall, or honden, was erected. The shrine is mentioned in the 10th century Engi Shiki—a collection of volumes on various ceremonies written down in the Engi era, including mention of many of the more important shrines that were part of the court system around the country at that time. It is said to have been mentioned in the Fudoki as well. That still puts it some 3 centuries after the events the Chronicles describe, but it would not be surprising to learn that a shrine had been built some time ago to a local elite, and that it is quite possible that the story that was passed down in the area would be connected with the shrine. We just don’t have any written records to confirm that this is the case.
But nonetheless, if you are in Uji, drop by and maybe pay your respects to the Prince who refused to be King.
And that’s all for this episode, until next time, 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.
And as I mentioned at the top of the episode, we are opening up recurring monthly payments and the option to become a “member”, but we are still looking at what that might entail, to include transcripts, early release, special episodes, and more. If you have ideas of what you think membership might entail, hit us up at Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you and your ideas.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Kim, P., & Shultz, E. J. (2013). The 'Silla annals' of the 'Samguk Sagi'. Gyeonggi-do: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
Kishimoto, Naofumi (2013). Dual Kingship in the Kofun Period as Seen from the Keyhole Tombs. UrbanScope: e-Journal of the Urban-Culture Research Center, OCU. http://urbanscope.lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp/journal/pdf/vol004/01-kishimoto.pdf
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Shultz, E. (2004). An Introduction to the "Samguk Sagi". Korean Studies, 28, 1-13. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720180
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
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 48: The Life and After-Life of Homuda Wake

September 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

19th century depiction of Homuda Wake, aka Ōjin Tennō

RSS

Archives

This episode sees the end of the reign of Homuda Wake, and a little glimpse into the future as well. When talking about history, there is always something of a pull between trying to tell the story of the particularly time period you are looking at but also looking across the years at the influence those events had. Since almost all of history is basically one giant spoiler alert for everything up to the present, it is easy to see things as inevitable, much in the same way that we see our now as an almost ever-present Now and assume that things will always be as they are at this moment. There are so many things that don’t get any attention unless they are connected to something else.

And this episode we do a little of both. We’ll try to look at things in the context of the late 4th and early 5th centuries, but we will also take a peek into the future, particularly in regards to Homuda Wake and his connection with an important god of war whose cult will play an important role in future.

In this blogpost, we’ll dig in a little past the narrative covered in the podcast. We’ll provide some of the individuals involved, but also some of the details that just didn’t make it into the podcast itself this time around. So let’s get started.

Who’s who?

Ajikki (阿直岐)

The Baekje subject who was sent over to Yamato with the tribute of two horses in 404. He helped care for them and teach the Wa what they should do. We are also told that he could read and write and he actually became the tutor to the Crown Prince, Uji no Waki Iratsuko. He is said to be the ancestor the Atogi (Ajikki) scribes.

Wang’in/Wani (王仁)

Baekje scholar sent to Yamato in the year 405. It is thought that he may have been an ethnic Han scholar, descended from those scribes and scholars who supported the Han Commanderies in the 4th century, or possibly even from somewhere across the Yellow Sea. As soon as he arrived in the archipelago he took over Uji no Waki Iratsuko’s education.

Takuso (卓素)

Mentioned in the Kojiki as a smith from Kara who was sent over by the Baekje. The Kara region seems to have long been known for smiths and iron, at least in the archipelago, and was probably where much of Yamato’s early iron products came from. This may explain, somewhat, the similarity of arms and armour between the two regions.

Susukori (須須許理), aka Nipo (仁番)

Mentioned in the Kojiki as a brewer sent over by the Baekje king along with or shortly after Takuso. He apparently made quite the brew for the sovereign and his court, which had Homuda Wake stumbling home. In the podcast we talk about a particular proverb, or kotowaza, that comes from this episode:

堅石避醉人也　ー＞　堅石（かたしわ）も醉人（えいびと）を避（さ）く
Katashiwa mo Eibito wo Saku -> Even a solid stone avoids a drunkard.

Maketsu (眞毛津)

Seamstress (縫衣工女) sent over by the King of Baekje in 404 to the Yamato court. She is claimed as the ancestor of the seamstresses of Kume.

Saiso (西素)

A weaver of Kure (呉服 - see below) whom the Kojiki tells us came over with the smith Takuso, sent by the King of Baekje. The Nihon Shoki gives a more detailed account of how weaving came from Kure, however.

Achi no Omi (阿知使主) , Tsuga no Omi (都加使主), and the Weavers of Kure

A father and son who came over with members of the “17 Districts” (十七県). We aren’t exactly sure where they came from, but it is said that they started the Aya clan of Yamato (倭漢), where “Aya” uses the character for the Han dyansty (漢). They would eventually head back to the continent and bring back four weavers of Kure with them.

A map of northern China around 406, during the 16 Kingdoms period. YOu can see a few of the kingdoms that were competing and vying for power at this time. Map by SY, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Regarding the 17 districts, I wonder if this is referencing some of the many divisions in the north of what is today the modern country of China. Though this period is called the “16 Kingdoms” period, those kingdoms were constantly shifting. Even the specific count seems to depend on what gets counted, with the name “16 Kingdoms Period” coming in around the mid-6th century. While I’m not sure of the accuracy of the specific boundaries, I think the map here, taken from Wikipedia, does a decent job of showing the confusion around the time that Achi and Tsuga would have been traveling.

Also, I’d note that the “Omi” here (使主) is interesting to me. Usually the kabane of “Omi”, which usually indicates either a minister or minister-level clan, uses the kanji for “minister”: 臣. In this case, though, they use two kanji, the first of which is often found to indicate “messengers” or “envoys”, and the second is “lord” or “master”. A more intuitive reading might be “tsukahi-nushi”, but universally it seems that “Omi” is the given reading. Dictionaries note that this is a kabane that is regularly found with foreigners. It is not uncommon to find titles that are similar in Japanese, but that use different kanji to differentiate their exact meaning.

To get to Kure, Achi and Tsuga are given two guides. Their names are Kure Ha (久礼波) and Kure Shi (久礼志). The meaning would seem to be clear, and yet their names are not spelled with the character for “Kure” (呉) used for the country.

Finally, we are actually given names for the four weavers that Achi and Tsuda are said to have brought back. They are:

Ye Hime (兄媛) - Elder Lady
Oto Hime (弟媛) - Younger Lady
Kure Hatori (呉織) - Weaver of Kure (aka Wu)
Ana Hatori (穴織) - Weaver of Holes

As you might notice, these names are not exactly informative. Two of them are little more than mentions of birth order—there is even another Ye Hime mentioned elsewhere in Homuda Wake’s own reign—and “Weaver of Kure” sounds purely descriptive. “Ana Hatori” is the only one that doesn’t immediately come to mind as an obvious place name, and yet who knows. There are places such as “Ara” on the peninsula—an “Ana” wouldn’t seem too far off. On a truly far stretch I could possibly draw a connection between the story of Amaterasu and the Heavenly Rock Cave, but that is a bit too far at this point, I think. Notably, there is nothing close to the name “Saiso”, given in the Kojiki.

King Jeonji of Baekje (腆支 / 直支)

Prince (and eventually King) of Baekje. He reigned from 405 to either 415 (the date given in the Nihon Shoki) or 420 (the date given in the Baekje records in the Samguk Sagi). His name is most popularly known as Jeonji (腆支), but is also recognized as Jikji (直支), though Aston posits that this later name is taken from the name of Ajikki, and is a mistake. The Samguk Sagi seems to also claim that “Jikji” is another name, but given its dating it is always possible that for some of these entries they were consulting the Japanese chronicles—though if that were the case I would expect more consistency between them on certain issues, to be honest.

Speaking of, the death of King Jeonji is odd for its disagreement between the sources. In large part, we can match up the sexagesimal dates between the Samguk Sagi records and the Nihon Shoki, at least when the same record exists. Occasionally they might be a year off, which could be explained by when they leave one court and eventually arrive at another. But in this case there are at least 5 years difference between the sources. So which one is correct?

On the one hand, we might assume that the Samguk Sagi is correct since it is the peninsular source. However, it was also written much later, compiled from earlier histories which, as far as I am aware, are no longer extant. The Nihon Shoki was written closer to the events—though still centuries out, and the compilers also appear to have had access to annals specifically from Baekje.

Personally, I suspect that the Nihon Shoki may be right, in this instance, or at least closer to the truth, and they may be in good company. Dr. Jonathan Best, in A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche, notes that there is a record for Emperor An of the Eastern Jin (晉安帝), who, in 416, sent an envoy to bestow various titles on the King of Baekje. This shows up in the Nan Shi (南史) and the Song Shu (宋書 - compiled 492-493), where they refer to this king as “餘映” (Yú Ying in Pinyin or Yeo Yeong in modern Korean). Later, in 420, Yeo Yeong is given a new title by the Eastern Jin court, and in 424 that same King, King Yeo Yeong, is said to have sent an envoy to the court of Liu Song.

Now if the Nihon Shoki is correct, it is possible that the king known to the Eastern Jin as Yeo Yeong was Guisin, and perhaps 420 was the year that he attained his majority and even started ruling by himself, which could explain why the Eastern Jin bestowed him with a new title, celebrating his changed status. If, however, this was King Jeonji, as the Samguk Sagi claims, then that envoy arriving in 424 must have somehow been sent at least 4 years earlier, or else we get another contradiction.

My suspicion is that later Baekje records cleaned things up, so that Guisin’s reign began upon him attaining the age of majority, possibly overlooking or sweeping away a potentially embarrassing incident involving Mong Manchi, for whatever reason—either because he just wasn’t considered that important or because the story is less than flattering for the Baekje royal house.

Prince Hunhae of Baekje (訓解)

As the brother of King Asin, Hunhae was the uncle to Jeonji, and upon Asin’s death, Hunhae took the throne of Baekje, reportedly holding it until Jeonji returned, at least according to the Samguk Sagi. However, he was killed by Asin’s youngest brother, Jeomnye, who then usurped the throne. One has to wonder whether or not Hunhae actually had intended to hold the throne for Jeonji, or if he was just another claimant to the throne, despite the noble intentions ascribed to him.

Prince Jeomnye [Jeoprye?] of Bakeje (蝶禮)

Youngest brother of King Asin who killed Prince Hunhae and usurped the throne. Because of this, Prince Jeonji held off his return, holing up on an island with 100 Wa troops. Eventually the people overthrew him and welcomed Jeonji back. Or at least that is what the official records tell us.

King Guisin of Bakeje (久爾辛)

Son and heir to King Jeonji of Baekje. He was apparently too young to rule when he came to the throne, and Mong Manchi seems to have acted as a regent, at least according to the Nihon Shoki. The Baekje Annals of the Samguk Sagi ignore this altogether, which may partly account for why his reign starts many years later in peninsular chronicles.

Mong Manchi (木満致)

Mong Manchi is the son of the general Mong Nageunja (木羅斤資f) (or possibly Mongna Geunja? Given the names, the former is probably correct, though Aston had it in the latter form) and a Silla woman. He seems to have been a lord or even king in Nimna (任那) one of the states of Kara (加羅). When King Jeonji of Baekje died, the Nihon Shoki claims that he took over the administration of that state. The Japanese record claims that Mong Manchi had an affair—or at least improper relations—with the Queen Mother, and so he was recalled by Yamato. The section of the Baekje chronicle claims that he was recalled because of his violence. Of course, there remains a question: what power did Yamato have to recall him in the first place?

Continental Clans

There are three clans, or uji, that come up this reign, and I want to talk briefly about them. All three of these may even be found as surnames, today, and the kanji used for each comes from a particular dynasty, with various claims of connection. The strange thing is that the name associated—the way the name is pronounced—has no apparent connection to the dynasty or kanji in question, but it is thought that it may have something to do with a weaving technique or type of fabric or similar that may have been brought over and associated with each one, much like we associate porcelain with “China”. These may have originally been groups—probably with immigrant roots—who were dedicated to making the products in question. The names are:

Hata (秦) - This name references the Qin dynasty of the 3rd century BCE. Some sources would associate people of this name with the early attempts at finding the Island of the Immortals. Others claim that they traveled over to Jinhan during the Qin and later emigrated to the archipelago from there, possibly with the people of Yutsuki. Hata may reference weaving and looms.
Aya (漢) - This is less common, today, it seems. The name references the Han dynasty, and some stories connect them with Achi no Omi and his son, whom they claim descended from the Han ruling family before it fell. Aya likely refers to figured cloth.
Kure (呉) - This references the Wu kingdom, one of the Three Kingdoms that arose after the fall of the Han. I am less confident on what the word “kure” could have been referring to, but it seems obvious that much of what is called “Kure” in the chronicles would have to have been some other place.

Hachiman

The god Hachiman will be quite important in later centuries. For our purposes it is mainly the fact that he is associated closely with Homuda Wake that is of interest, though that is likely due to stories that came out around the 9th century.

If you are looking to read up on the early stories about Hachiman, his divinations, etc., Dr. Ross Bender did a lot of work in this area. You may want to check out his work on Hachiman and how it plays into the Dōkyō Incident.

Homuda Wake’s Kofun

Aerial photo of Kondayama kofun. Copyright © National Land Image Information (Color Aerial Photographs), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. — **Aerial photo of Kondayama kofun. Copyright ©** **National Land Image Information (Color Aerial Photographs), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.**

As with other early kofun, we are not positive that this one belongs to Homuda Wake, but it certainly is grand. It is the second largest kofun in size, but it is estimated that it has more actual material than any other kofun in Japan. There are several kofun around it, as well, crowding it, and earthquakes and erosion have done their fair share as well. By all accounts it does seem to be around the 5th century, and had an impressive number of Haniwa—though human figures would still be a little later on.

The informal name of the kofun seems to be “Konda Yama”, using the first two characters of Homuda Wake’s name: 誉田山.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 48: The Life and After-Life of Homuda Wake
This episode is probably the last episode for Homuda Wake—we’ve covered some of the points about his reign, from the events written down on the Gwangaetto Stele in the 5th century, to the hostages from Baekje and Silla living at his court, all of which seem to indicate that the Wa were a power of some sort in the region—if not quite as powerful as their own Chronicles make them out to be. We are also told that this is when writing, in the form of Sinographic characters, first came to the islands, along with horses and classic continental literature. We’ve also talked about a few of the other characters from this period, including Takechi no Sukune and Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko, who dealt with things on the continent as well as those back at home. This episode we’ll continue with a few other things between the archipelago and the continent, and discuss briefly what this means. We’ll also discuss matters on the archipelago, such as the division of Kibi, Homuda Wake’s choice of Crown Prince, and more. And then, of course, we’ll talk about what happened after Homuda Wake’s reign—and we’ll touch briefly on how he is connected to one of the most famous kami in the archipelago: Hachiman, the God of War. We’ll talk about all that and finish up with a brief description of the kofun said to be his—one of the largest kofun in all of Japan.
Now, as a reminder, based on all of the stories and some of the events that can be corroborated with the peninsular records, we can make the assumption that this was all went down sometime in the late 4th and early 5th century, which is also a period of change in the archaeological record. Swords and suits of armor start to replace the bronze mirrors that had previously been common in large tombs, which would also seem to indicate that soldiers and martial pursuits were well valued, which certainly seems in step with the various conflicts both on the peninsula and within the archipelago.
And thus through trade and conflict, continental culture was flowing across the straits to the archipelago, where it was mingling with the people and traditions already present. Given the close ties between the islands and the peninsula throughout the previous centuries, it may be difficult to say just when any particular thing came over, but during this reign, as we’ve seen, travel and immigration in both directions was particularly noted.
Most of the immigration appears to be through Yamato’s close ally on the peninsula, the Kingdom of Baekje. Of course, some of those who came to Yamato were only temporary residents. These are the envoys and high status individuals like Prince Jeonji, King Asin’s own Crown Prince. Others seem to have come over on a more permanent or at least semi-permanent basis—primarily scholars and artisans. For instance, we already talked about how Ajikki was sent over with the Baekje king’s gift of horses to teach the Wa how to care for them and eventually raise horses of their own. And then there was Wang’in, who was brought over specifically to help teach the continental classics and how to read and write.
The Kojiki notes a smith, named Takuso, who also came over during this reign, and then there was the man known as Nipo, aka Susukori. He was a brewer, which put him in good stead with the court, who appreciated a good drink. Now we know that Yamato had alcohol, so this wasn’t exactly new technology, and we aren’t even told if he introduced anything particularly new to the archipelago. But he was, apparently, quite talented. He brewed a stiff drink for the Sovereign and his court, and it seems that everyone drank their fill, singing songs and just having a grand old time—in other words, not that much different from certain types of Japanese celebrations, today. Homuda Wake even made up songs of praise for Susukori, he was so pleased. Later that evening, the sovereign, Homuda Wake, staggered down the road, where he came upon a large rock. We are told that he struck the rock with his walking stick and sent it flying away.
From this seemingly innocuous incident we are told there was a kotowaza, or proverb, that you might even hear today:
Katashiwa mo Eibito wo Saku.
In English we might say: “Even a solid stone avoids a drunkard.”
Of course, it isn’t as if this proverb led to any kind of temperance movement. People continued to enjoy their adult beverages, nonetheless.
The other major craft that is mentioned as coming over during this reign was that of fabric arts. We previously mentioned the seamstress Maketsu coming over—a seamstress, likely bringing over continental fashions and how to make them. And then, elsewhere, they mention weavers—those who make the actual fabric from which the clothes are put together—coming over as well. The Kojiki mentions a weaver named Saiso, who is said to be from Kure, while the Nihon Shoki gives us more details.
In fact, it is in the Nihon Shoki where we hear the story of Achi no Omi and Tsuga no Omi, a father and son team. Achi no Omi himself is said to have immigrated from the continent around 409, bringing with him his son, Tsuga. They came to Yamato with a retinue of people from what the Chronicles call the 17 districts. While there doesn’t seem to be anything that firmly identifies just *which* 17 districts we are talking about, Achi no Omi is said to be the ancestor of the Yamato no Aya, where the name “Aya” utilizes the character for the Han dynasty. Later genealogies would claim that he was a direct descendant of the Han royal family, which might make sense if we were using the uncorrected dating of the chronicles, but seems less plausible for the 5th century. Nonetheless, there is a clear connection between him and the continental mainland, suggesting he may, indeed, have been an ethnic Han immigrant. The Yamato court would later ask Achi no Omi and his son to travel back to the land they had come from and to ask for weavers to be sent to Yamato.
Indeed, they headed out on their mission, but when they reached the peninsula, they couldn’t find a way to their apparent homeland. We are told they were headed to the court of Kure, more commonly known as Wu, one of the three Kingdoms that arose after the fall of the Han in the 3rd century. Which might have been accurate if we took the Nihon Shoki’s dates at face value, but even the Wu had been displaced by the time of our current sovereign, given our corrected dates, so if this happened then it was likely that they were traveling to either Eastern Jin, whose court was, at that point, operating out of the area of modern Nanjing, or else to one of the other, northern states that had arisen—perhaps one of the Yan or Wei kingdoms. This is known, after all, as the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms—though even that number may be off depending on how you count. Suffice it to say there are a lot of possibilities here for where they ended up.
Regardless, to get from the peninsula to the mainland, it seems that these envoys would need more than just the assistance of Baekje, and the Nihon Shoki claims that it was only through the help of Goguryeo, who provided them guides, that they were able to make the journey to “Kure”, whichever polity that was—which is somewhat interesting given that Baekje had established relations with the Eastern Jin by at least 372. It is possible that, given the turmoil on the peninsula several decades later, during the reign of Gwangaetto the Great, any unilateral path to the Eastern Jin court had been blocked, making Goguryeo the ultimate interlocutors for relations with the continent. Or perhaps, as mentioned, they were going somewhere else altogether. Either way, they were successful in their mission, and Achi and Tsuga returned with four weavers who brought with them the traditions of the mainland. Of course, we don’t have any clear evidence for this in any of the court records from the mainland, though, again, that may be understandable if they were dealing with one of the outer states and not a formal envoy to the imperial capital.
All of these stories demonstrate the kind of contact that the archipelago had with the mainland, and the individuals who were coming over, often starting new families who would, one assumes, become responsible of the production of continental goods in the archipelago. Information may even be hidden in the names, here. The names “Aya” and “Kure” for instance, though spelled with the sinographic characters for the Han and Wu dynasties, use a native Japanese gloss in their reading that doesn’t clearly identify with anything on the continent, but which may instead refer to the type of woven fabrics that were associated with each dynasty.
It is also interesting to me how the court was relying on a lot of continental assistance in the form of allies or immigrants to undertake these missions for them. Achi and Tsuga are said to have come over to the archipelago less than a decade before they were back up and heading back to the mainland. Horses and writing were sent to Yamato by the King of Baekje. Even the muscle that was being used on the peninsula was apparently a Baekje general.
But of course, it isn’t just what Baekje could do for Yamato—it was also about what Yamato could do for Baekje. Enter the story of Prince Jeonji.
Just a quick recap from previous episodes, Prince Jeonji was a hostage at the Yamato court, sent in 397 by his father, King Asin of Baekje, who came to the throne after the death—some sources suggest overthrow and murder—of Asin’s own uncle, King Jinsa. Prince Jeonji may have been sent to keep him safe, given that Goguryeo had previously defeated Baekje and taken several members of its court back with them, or he may have been sent to appease an angry Yamato. Either way, young Prince Jeonji grew up in Yamato until the unwelcome tidings of his father’s death reached the court 12 years later, in 405 CE, a date that seems to correspond between the Nihon Shoki and the Baekje annals of the Samguk Sagi with a clean break of 120 years, or two sexagesimal cycles of 60 years each.
Immediately, Homuda Wake suggested that Prince Jeonji return and take the throne, which I’m sure was entirely altruistic and had absolutely nothing at all to do with making sure that Yamato had a known quantity and a friendly ruler in place in Baekje. Homuda Wake even gave him command of 100 Wa soldiers to help.
Of course, this may have been more than just some courtesy. The Tonggam and the Samguk Sagi appear to agree that when King Asin died, his brother, Prince Hunhae, took over as regent until Prince Jeonji could return, and he was likely the one who sent for Jeonji in the first place. However, before Prince Jeonji could arrive King Asin’s youngest brother, Cheomnye, took the throne. The Samguk Sagi seems to make this out as an usurpation, but I would note that from what we’ve seen of the period and penn-insular succession rules in general, neither primogeniture nor patrilineal descent appears to have been necessary to claim legitimacy. In fact, in many cases it seems to have only been a requirement that one be the eldest—probably male—member of the family, and even *that* hasn’t been a hard and fast rule. Forms of agnatic succession—where the throne passes to a brother, rather than the sovereign’s own children—are definitely in evidence. This is all well and good, of course, until you get a couple generations in and suddenly have a plethora of potential royal candidates.
Anyway, it may have been this usurpation by Cheonmye that caused Homuda Wake to provide some Wa soldiers to help out. And yet, they were hardly used. Prince Jeonji made his way to the peninsula, but upon hearing that his uncle had usurped the throne, he withdrew with the troops to an island. There he waited until the people themselves, fed up with Cheonmye’s rule, overthrew him and placed Prince Jeonji on the throne as the true successor.
Now did the people really just overthrow Cheonmye, or did the Wa forces see a bit of action? We aren’t entirely sure, though it seems that the Baekje people have a suspicious habit of nobly rising up against a king as soon as it is convenient to prevent any whiff of the Wa having a hand in regime change. For my part, I see the heavy hand of Yamato in continental politics once again.
Of course, none of this should be too surprising, given the close association between the Wa and the peninsula. And here is where we get into territory that will likely cause some people a bit of a headache. Because there is plenty of reason to believe that a lot more came over from the continent than just new technologies. With artisans coming over and bringing others, as did Achi no Omi, they likely did what immigrants around the world have done and brought their own ideas, beliefs, and spiritual practices. We’ve already seen how material evidence of Yayoi spiritual life echoes, in some ways, the spiritual life that we see on the peninsula, and so it would seem no great stretch if the residents of the archipelago continued to incorporate some of the beliefs of the people immigrating into Japan. And so it is with little surprise that we see similarities in the ancient myths and legends of the archipelago with those of the continent. Even some of the kami that would come to be central to later beliefs, have connections with the continent. Susanowo is actually said, in some stories, to have first come down from heaven to the peninsula, where he then made his way over. And some of the aspects of the story of even Amaterasu Ohokami herself, and her weaving hall, seems to have a connection with the various weaver deity cults that we see elsewhere on the mainland. This is not to suggest that these are exactly foreign—the stories as we know them were still developing. For example, the kofun burials of this time were largely pit burials, dug into the top of the main mound of the kofun. It wouldn’t be until some time later that they would being a practice of building a corridor into the mound, which itself would seem to inspire some of the imagery around the whole world of the dead—the dark world of Yomi. And by that time, local and foreign legends and stories were merged, and foreign aspects were localized to the archipelago.
And there is nothing to suggest that the transfer was simply one way. It is hard to know what went from the peninsula to the archipelago and what went from the archipelago to the peninsula. Importantly, though, is that many of these things were transnational, meaning they crossed the various borders, often blending foreign and native concepts together. This is why I spend so much time talking about the mainland as well as the islands, because none of it developed in an isolated bubble. This often causes problems when people would like to have a clean narrative, especially for nationalists who want to see Japan and the Japanese Imperial Household as more isolated, unique, and unadulterated than it ever actually was. In contrast, we have plenty of examples of high ranking court nobles, whose offspring would marry into the royal line, with claims of continental descent. There is even an example of a Baekje princess who was sent to Yamato to become one of the sovereign’s wives.
Looking in the other direction, material culture, such as pottery and even burial practices from the archipelago show up in the peninsula from at least the Yayoi period onward. In the late 5th century we even see round keyhole shaped tomb mounds, oddly similar to those in the archipelago, showing up in the Yongsan River Basin in the southwestern peninsular region. This was a highly dynamic time for the region, during which many of the things that we may take for granted as being fundamental to Japanese history and identity were still being forged in the fires of international trade and immigration.
Back to the story of King Jeonji, there is one more event that I want to touch on here before we take a look at the rest of what was happening in the archipelago, and that is the death of King Jeonji. It seems that he was not fated to outlive Homuda Wake, and the Nihon Shoki claims that he died in 414, only nine years after his father and his return to Baekje. Upon his death his son, Kuisin, was named king, but he was still a child. And so a regent came to power: Mong Manchi. Now Mong Manchi was the son of Mong Nageunja, whom you may remember as the Baekje general who had helped in the late 4th century Baekje-Wa Alliance and who later had gone to Silla to stop Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko—though sometimes it is questionable whether he served Baekje, Yamato, or was his own independent warlord of some sort who allied with both.
Anyway, the excerpt of the Baekje Annals in the Nihon Shoki claims that Mong Manchi had taken over Baekje forcibly. According to the Nihon Shoki, with apologies to Aston, the Baekje record states: "Mong-man-chi was the son of Mong-na Keuncha, born to him of a Silla woman when he invaded that country. The great services of his father gave him absolute authority in Nimna. He came into our country [that is, Baekje] and went back and forward to the honourable country, accepting the control of the Celestial Court. He seized the administration of our country, and his power was supreme in that day. The court, hearing of his violence, recalled him." The Japanese Chroniclers of course assume that the “honorable country”, or “Kui-guo”, is Japan, as is the “Celestial Court”. Their own entry embellishes this story further, claiming that Mong Manchi was a subject of Yamato and that his actual crime wasn’t forcibly placing himself on the throne but rather having improper relations with the widowed Queen Mother.
Now this isn’t clear evidence of any actual Yamato interference and influence, at least not to my mind. After all, we aren’t sure that the “honorable country” actually referred to Japan, and the idea that Homuda Wake was presiding over something that Baekje would call the Celestial Court also appears to be equally suspect to my eyes. However the idea that that the throne of Baekje was briefly usurped by someone, possibly the King of Nimna itself may not be too farfetched.
And perhaps that is where we would leave it if it weren’t for one *tiny* detail. You see the Samguk Sagi and the Dongguk Tonggam appear to refute this whole story. They claim that King Jeonji didn’t die in 414, as the Japanese chronicle would appear to suggest, but rather that he died in 420, and his son, Kuisin, then took the throne, without any evidence of the kind of trouble suggested by the Baekje record in the Nihon Shoki. So what, exactly, is going on here? Did the Chroniclers just insert that entire episode in there because they thought it sounded good?
And with that, I think we’ll turn aside from the continent for a bit and focus on what else was happening on the archipelago. Much of the events recorded in the Chronicles are fairly standard compared with what we’ve heard about from earlier reigns. For example, even while Yamato was flexing its muscle on the continent, there were still independent entities on the archipelago. Mention is made early in Homuda Wake’s reign of the eastern Emishi attending with tribute, and they were put to work building the Mumazaka road, similar to the way that continental envoys were put to work building ponds, bringing into question, in my mind, just what sort of “envoys” these all really were. Then there is discussion of Homuda Wake meeting with the Kuzu, who are, in the Hitachi Fudoki, equated with the Tsuchigumo. In this case, though, they appear to be the kuzu of the mountains areas of the Kii peninsula, which suggests to me that while Yamato held sway over the plains and river deltas, where rice farming could be particularly successful, there may have still been plenty of independent groups living in the mountains, possibly with their own culture and values, which focused more on the mountain lifestyle than that of the plain-bound farming culture that largely sustained kofun-era Yamato. Of course, these are peripheral cultures, and therefore largely invisible in the text except when they directly interact with the people and court of Yamato.
In this instance we are given some insight into their ways—particularly into their rituals. For Kuzu offered songs and sake to the sovereign. In particular we are told that after they sang they “struck their mouths like drums” and laughed. The Kuzu are described as a plain and honest people who gather wild berries and boil frogs as a delicacy. They lived amongst the steep cliffs and ravines of the Yoshino river area, and produced such things as chestnuts, mushrooms, and trout. All of this speaks to me of people with very different lifeways from those common in the large settlements of Yamato.
But it wasn’t just the people living in the Japanese hollers and tucked away in the mountain crevasses who were outside of the larger Yamato polity, but there were plenty of other rice-growing areas as well. Of course, in either case, the Chroniclers extend the cloak of national unity over everything, but in this case I think we get a very interesting story, and it is tied in to Homuda Wake’s last queen.
I say his last queen because, based on what we’ve seen of royal succession to date, there appear to have been several. Takaki no Iribime, for example, is said to have been a descendant of Ikume Iribiko. She gave birth to one of the princes and eventual claimants to the throne. Then there was Naka tsu Hime—the Middle Princess, whom most genealogies name as the primary wife and queen, though little is actually said about her. She was a sister to Takaki no Iribime, we know that much, and their father was, oddly enough, Homuda no Mawaka no Miko, a royal prince with a name eerily similar to that of the sovereign, Homuda Wake. Naka tsu Hime would give birth to another eligible Prince.
But it is the last lady, who gave birth to the youngest of Homuda Wake’s eligible sons, who is the subject of our current story. She is Miyanushi Yagawa no Ye Hime, or the Elder Princess of Yagawa.
Now of the three possible claimants to the throne, Takaki no Iribime’s son, Ohoyamamori no Mikoto—who may be the same as Nukata no Oho Naka tsu Hiko—was the eldest son. Naka tsu Hime then gave birth to Ohosazaki no Mikoto. He was also eligible to become Crown Prince, and is the middle of three children who seem to have been in the running. The third eligible prince was known as Uji no Waka Iratsuko (or Uji no Waki Iratsuko), and he was the son of Miyanushi Yagawa Ye Hime, who was the daughter of Wani no Oho-omi, the great minister of the powerful Wani clan.
Ye Hime herself is mentioned several times throughout the reign, while Naka tsu Hime and her sisters are really only mentioned in the various lists of names and genealogies. Regarding Ye Hime, on the other hand, we get the full Hallmark treatment, from her courtship in Chika tsu Afumi to her later travels to Kibi.
Now the courtship of Ye Hime is given primarily in the Kojiki, where we are told of how they met and got married with the typical feasting that seems common in these kinds of stories. Ye Hime’s father has her serve Homuda Wake a large wine cup, which seems to have been about as close to a betrothal as you could get.
It is interesting that the Kojiki places all of this in Chika-tsu-Oumi, and in the song, that he sang at the feast, Homuda Wake seems to make the claim that he is from Tsunoga—aka Tsuruga Bay. That was where he had exchanged names with the Kami, and the area where Ame no Hiboko had been worshipped, which again begs the question about potential links between Homuda Wake and the peninsula.
The Nihon Shoki, however, gives Ye Hime a slightly different place of origin. For in that case we are told that one day, while they were both looking out over the land from a high tower, Ye Hime had a longing to go home and see her parents. And so Homuda Wake, who loved her so much that he would do nearly anything, summoned up 80 fishermen and had them take Ye Hime to Kibi. He even composes a song as she leaves where he calls her, quite blatantly, his spouse of Kibi.
And this seems a rather intriguing disagreement between the sources. The Kojiki has them meeting in what was presumably her home of Chika tsu Oumi—which is to say around Lake Biwa. Meanwhile, the Nihon Shoki claims that she is from Kibi. Of course, it could be that some other Ye Hime is meant in one of these accounts.
Either way, the Nihon Shoki claims that Homuda Wake then followed Ye-Hime to Kibi, dwelling in the palace of Ashimori, in Hata. This is traditionally identified as being along the Ashimori river northwest of modern Okayama city. This is an area with large, keyhole shaped tomb mounds that rival those in Yamato, and it may have actually been the home to an independent kingdom, particularly in the early 5th century.
This is why it is interesting what else we are told: That, while dwelling at Ashimori, Homuda Wake took a particular liking to a gentleman named Mitomo Wake, who, along with his entire family, waited on the sovereign, hand and foot. Eventually, Homuda Wake decided to divvy up the land of Kibi. Five of the various lands went to the five sons of Mitomo Wake, while the district of Hatoribe is said to have been given to his wife, Ye Hime, as her own. Mitomo Wake himself was designated as the Kuni no Miyatsuko, and his sons as Agatanushi, and the divisions—which may reflect later political boundaries—would largely remain in use, either formally or informally, until the present day.
Once again, we need to look beyond what the Chronicle is telling us. For instance, we know that there are huge, round keyhole shaped kofun in that region. The largest is known as Tsukuriyama Kofun, and it was built sometime in the late 5th century. By the way, “Tsukuriyama” is actually the name of several kofun, largely because its name merely means “man-made mountain”. In this case, though, we are talking about the fourth largest kofun in all of Japan, larger than most of the so-called imperial tombs. Many believe that it belonged to a king of ancient Kibi, and based on the size of the kofun, one who likely rivaled Yamato in terms of the power and labor that they were able to mobilize. And not only that, but the Kibi region has some of the densest concentrations of kofun outside of the Kinai region of central Honshu, built between the 4th and 7th centuries. There are over 140 of the large keyhole tombs, with at least twenty of them in the region of Tsukuriyama and the modern city of Okayama.
And yet I can’t help but note that they were following in the tradition set by Yamato in building a giant, round-keyhole tomb.
From the earliest stories, Yamato is said to have conquered and subjugated Kibi. But then again, they were also said to have conquered and subjugated the Korean peninsula, and in that case we have both textual and archaeological evidence to the contrary. Here we only have archaeological evidence, but I wonder: would Yamato have really allowed a subject to build such a large and grandiose resting place if they could prevent it? I figure at the very least it shows that the local elites had a fair amount of autonomy. Still, there are so many things that we are missing, and I wish we had records from outside of the main narrative, but alas, we will have to console ourselves with what the archaeology tells us.
Perhaps this story about Homuda Wake was actually about another king altogether—a king of ancient Kibi. Or perhaps there is some evidence here of an ancient marriage link to Kibi through his wife, Ye Hime, and perhaps even with her son, Uji no Waki Iratsuko.
Speaking of whom…
Now we know that Homuda Wake himself was quite enamored of his youngest son, and he had decided to make him the Crown Prince, which would seem fitting if he was actually the product of two powerful royal families. That said, he had at least two other sons who were apparently eligible for the throne, and if they didn’t support Uji no Waki Iratsuko’s claim it could be problematic after Homuda Wake’s death. And so, in one of those epic bouts of parenting that the royal lineage up to this point is so known for, he questioned his two elder sons, Oho Yamamori and Oho Sazaki, to ask, in a roundabout way, their thoughts. Of course, you can’t be direct with this kind of question, right? You know, just come right out and say, “Hey boys, I’m thinking of making your youngest brother the next ruler. You cool with that?” Nope, instead he sets up this whole elaborate thing. First he pulls them over to him and he comments about how they both have children of their own already—so they were already fully grown adults, themselves, by this time. He then asks which of their own children is more deserving of their love, the youngest or the eldest. Basically playing a game of “who does dad love the best” with the two that you’ve already decided are out of the running. Really?
Now, neither of the two other sons seem to have had any idea what he was getting at, but Oho Yamamori thought that this might be the moment to put in a bid for the throne himself. After all, he was the oldest, and he was the most experienced, right? Anyway, Oho Yamamori expounded upon the virtues of the older brother and how they were the most loved.
As Oho Yamamori went on about this, I imagine Homuda Wake’s visage took on a dark cast. You know that feeling when the audience has soured on what someone is saying, but they just keep going, anyway? Yeah, awkward…
So while Oho Yamamori was busy bombing on pitching their pater, Oho Sazaki saw what was happening and realized this wasn’t what their father wanted to hear. So when it got to his turn, he took a different tack, and he basically told his father what he thought he wanted to hear.
First off, he talked about how older children have already grown up and discovered their way in life. They were adults and had experience and could fend for themselves. The younger children, however, were still children. They didn’t have as much experience and therefore they needed the most love and support.
Clearly this was the answer that Homuda Wake was looking for. In the end, neither Oho Yamamori nor Oho Sazaki, despite their seniority, would be named the Crown Prince—that honor would go to their youngest brother, Uji no Waki Iratsuko. However, perhaps in response to the brown-nosing, he did appoint Oho Sazaki as assistant to the Crown Prince, and asked him to help administer affairs of state. Meanwhile he gave Oho Yamamori, well, he made him Oho Yamamori, which is to say the warden of the mountains and forested areas. This is probably where his name, or more properly title, actually comes from. His actual name may have been Nukata no Oho Naka tsu Hiko, but this is largely a guess on our part, based on the lists of Homuda Wake’s many offspring.
Of course, I’m sure that there were absolutely no hard feelings, and when Homuda Wake passes away, everything will be fine, right? Well, for that you’ll need to wait for the next episode.
First though, there is one more thing I’d like to touch on, though it isn’t exactly mentioned in the chronicles, and that is the story of Homuda Wake after his death. No, I don’t mean to suggest that he rose from the grave like some undead revenant, though that would have been a cool. Rather, I mean how the idea of Homuda Wake continued and evolved after his death.
So, yes, Homuda Wake did eventually pass away, and we are told he is buried in one of the large, round keyhole style mounds in the Mozu-Furuichi tomb mound group. But his spirit lived on in an interesting and, perhaps, appropriate way.
You see, centuries after his death Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, would be worshipped as one of the most famous deities of the archipelago, for he came be associated with the famous god-slash-Boddhisatva, Hachiman.
Now most people are familiar with Hachiman due to his later connection to the Minamoto family. His shrine in Kamakura, once the headquarters of the early shogunate, founded by Minamoto Yoritomo, is still extremely impressive, and an easy daytrip from Tokyo. But Hachiman was important before the Minamoto ever existed. And to examine the origins of Hachiman we are going to have to travel away from Kamakura and all the way to the western island of Kyushu.
It was here, on the island of Kyushu, that the cult of Hachiman was born, likely sometime in the 5th or 6th century, and the processes that come together in the founding of the Hachiman cult are highly demonstrative of the changes that are happening in the archipelago in general during the time of Homuda Wake, and so it is not entirely without merit that the two are linked, in my opinion.
It is difficult, of course, to know when an idea or story first comes into being, and much of what we have is based on the later information in works like the Shoku Nihongi, the successor to our current chronicles, and the founding tales of Usa shrine, that were passed down through the ages and eventually written down. Scholars suggest that originally this new tradition centered around a deity of a place called Yahata or Yabata, the native Japanese, or kun’yomi, reading of the characters in the name “Hachiman”. Yabata probably meant something like “eight fields”—a quite plausible locative, which could be just about anywhere in the archipelago. Eventually, though, worship of this deity took hold in Usa, one of the ancient settlement sites of northern Kyushu.
From the records we know that there were three families associated with Hachiman from an early time. One of these was, unsurprisingly, the Usa clan, who were probably the chieftains of the place with the same name. Usa comes up from time to time in the Chronicles, such as during Iware Biko’s march from Kyushu to Yamato, and later they were known for their Buddhist priests, whom they would occasionally send to the court. They certainly appear to have been an important place, even if the connection with Hachiman isn’t mentioned until much later.
Also involved in the early Hachiman cult were the Karajima. They appear to have been based out of the country of Toyo, but their name suggests that they descended from people who came over from the peninsula and settled there. The scholar Nakano Hatayoshi suggested that between the 3rd and 6th centuries they pushed south into the area of the Usa clan and conquered that region.
The last family were the Ohoga, whose name is just a different reading for “Ohomiwa”. Indeed, it seems they claim descent from the family charged with looking after the ancient holy site of Mt. Miwa, and they may have been sent out to the region as an extension of the Yamato court to help provide oversight of the Yamato-centered rituals. In fact, it may have been through such ritualist envoys that Yamato was able to exert some measure of control, along with sending out specialists in, of all things, burial mound construction—hence why we see the proliferation of the round keyhole style and related burial mounds in the kofun period.
And so we see here a merger of the local traditions, through the Usa clan, the Yamato traditions in the form of the Ohomiwa, and peninsular traditions of the Karajima. Three different traditions coming together.
It is this syncreticism that make Hachiman so interesting to many scholars of Japanese religion. To an outside observer, the shrines and rituals of Hachiman may closely resemble other forms of Japanese Shinto practice, but in many ways it is its own unique thing. At Usa shrine, Hachiman was venerated along with an image of Maitreiya Bodhisattva, and the worship of both was carried out together. Later, Hachiman would be designated as the protector of the Great Buddha at Toudaiji, in Nara, and the oracles of Hachiman would have significant impact on Japanese history.
The earliest records we have of Hachiman, in the 8th century, depict him as helping to secure a military victory, though this seems to have been a relatively minor part of his portfolio, at least early on. Later, as the chosen deity of the Minamoto clan, his God of War aspect would definitely be further developed. Initially, however, it was his role as a protector and his oracular divinations that caused such a splash. These divinations are at the heart of the famous Dokyo Incident in the 8th century, and came through the voices of the priests and mediums of Usa Shrine, rather than divine visions of the sovereign or reading the cracks on burnt deer scapulae or turtle shells. This was different from the type of divination generally seen with other kami, and it has been suggested that it was the result of a combination of practices from the peninsula and on the archipelago. It also likely didn’t hurt that there was no one single family that could lay claim to Hachiman and his cult. He was, in a way, a free agent, meaning that he could be shaped by later courts and sovereigns into what they needed him to be.
The connection of Hachiman with Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, actually comes in rather late. It is in the 9th century that we get a text which tells us that Hachiman revealed himself to be Oujin Tennou to the sovereign known as Kimmei Tennou in the mid-6th century, after Hachiman had already been adopted by the royal house as a protector.
In all likelihood, Hachiman had nothing to do with Homuda Wake until centuries after the fact. But even then it is intriguing to think about just what Homuda Wake meant to people. By all accounts he seems to have been from a different dynasty than the 8th century ruling family, though his line was important enough for them to work into their own narrative, and his story is often tied up with the reign of his mother—where Okinaga Tarashi Hime was a conquerer and warlord, the story of Homuda Wake focuses more on assimilation of new people and ideas. This balance of martial prowess—Wu or Bu—with literary pursuits—Wen or Bun—is a common dichotomy in Asian thought and philosophy, and so it is unsurprising that the narrative might reflect that.
And yet, as Hachiman, Homuda Wake is often depicted wearing arms and armor, and as much a conquering hero as an administrative governor. Of course, these different aspects may better reflect the needs of the people at any given time, rather than any core aspect of Homuda Wake’s character.
And with that, we have just one more thing to discuss before we move on and say farewell to Homuda Wake, or at least his human incarnation—as Hachiman he will definitely be putting in an appearance in later episodes, don’t you worry. Now this wouldn’t be the kofun period if we weren’t talking about the giant kingly tombs that these sovereigns are said to be buried in, and in Homuda Wake’s case it is a grand tomb, to be sure.
Measuring 425 meters in length, the Ega-no-mofushi no Oka Kofun, also known as the Konda Gobyou Yama or just Konda Yama Kofun, is the largest of the Furuichi kofun group, which lies in modern Ohosaka, south of the Yamato River, and just west of the mountain pass leading to the Nara basin. Not only is it the longest in its group, but it is the second longest in all of Japan, and the largest by volume of any of the kofun in the archipelago. As for the largest kofun, at least by length, that distinction falls to Daisen kofun, which lies just a little ways to the west in the Mozu kofun group, and which is said to be the burial site of Homuda Wake’s son, the sovereign known as Nintoku Tennou. Together they are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Mozu-Furuichi Kofun group, which attained official status in 2019. This is the height of kofun construction in the archipelago, at least for sheer monumental size.
In addition to its size—and the impressive array of haniwa figures that adorned it--Kondayama Kofun is, predictably, also the site of a shrine to Hachiman—Konda Hachimangu. By the way, I should probably note, since you can’t tell through the microphone, that the “Konda” here is just another reading of the name “Homuda”. The shrine itself claims that it was originally built in the front of Homuda Wake’s mausoleum in about the 6th century, and then later moved to the present location (south of the mound) in the 11th century. I have reason to question this, but that is the claim that the shrine appears to make.
And that’s all that I really have for you this episode. I appreciate everyone who has stuck with it—there has been so much this reign, it has taken us roughly six episodes to get through it all. Next episode, though, we get to move on and we’ll see just who becomes the next sovereign. Is it young Uji-Waki-Iratsuko, who was the designated Crown Prince and Successor? Or perhaps Oho Yamamori, who was passed over by their father. Or perhaps Oho Sazaki will step up. You’ll just have to wait and find out next episode.
So, until next time, 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. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Lee, D. (2014). Keyhole-shaped Tombs and Unspoken Frontiers: Exploring the Borderlands of Early Korean-Japanese Relations in the 5th-6th Centuries. UCLA. ProQuest ID: Lee_ucla_0031D_12746. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m52j7s88. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qm7h4t7
SCHEID, B. (2014). Shōmu Tennō and the Deity from Kyushu: Hachiman's Initial Rise to Prominence. Japan Review, (27), 31-51. Retrieved August 10, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23849569
Kawagoe, Aileen (2009). “Did keyhole-shaped tombs originate in the Korean peninsula?”. Heritage of Japan. https://heritageofjapan.wordpress.com/following-the-trail-of-tumuli/types-of-tumuli-and-haniwa-cylinders/did-keyhole-shaped-tombs-originate-in-the-korean-peninsula/. Retrieved 8/24/2021.
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Shultz, E. (2004). An Introduction to the "Samguk Sagi". Korean Studies, 28, 1-13. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720180
Ishino, H., & 石野博信. (1992). Rites and Rituals of the Kofun Period. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 19 (2/3), 191-216. Retrieved August 16, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/30234190
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
Bender, R. (1979). The Hachiman Cult and the Dōkyō Incident. Monumenta Nipponica, 34(2), 125-153. doi:10.2307/2384320
Bender, R. (1978). Metamorphosis of a Deity. The Image of Hachiman in Yumi Yawata. Monumenta Nipponica, 33 (2), 165-178. doi:10.2307/2384124
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1
Hall, John W. (1966). Government and Local Power in Japan 500 to 1700: A Study Based on Bizen Province. Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0691030197

Episode 47: The Man Who Might Be King

August 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Haniwa of a quiver full of arrows from the 5th century Muromiyayama Kofun. Photo from the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.

RSS

Archives

This episode we talk about Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko, covering what we know of the stories he is in as well as discussing what might be lurking behind these stories.

Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko

The names we find in the Chronicles are primarily 「葛城襲津彦」 (Katsuraki [no] Sotsuhiko) in the Nihon Shoki and 「葛城長江曾都毘古」 (Katsuraki [no] Nagae [no] Sotsuhiko) in the Kojiki. In the Old Japanese of the Kofun period it is probably something like Kaduraki [no] Sotubiko. Old Japanese had many differences from modern Japanese pronunciation, and is a study unto itself.

The other name we see is from an excerpt from the Baekje annals in the Nihon Shoki, and it is「沙至比跪」(Satibiko). There is technically the possibility that this story is about someone else, or that the Baekje Annals themselves had it wrong, in the first place. The general consensus, though, appears to be that these figures are, indeed, referencing the same person.

The idea of him being a high ranking chieftain, and possibly one of those responsible for the trade routes with the continent—after all, there were only so many ways to get from the archipelago to the peninsula—is intriguing. Perhaps he was some sort of King. However, I would also note that the excerpt from the ancient Baekje Annals, which is no longer extant, other than the fragments in the Nihon Shoki and other histories, like the Samguk Sagi, does not refer to him as the sovereign of all of Yamato, and puts him in a subservient position. That said, it is clear that the Chroniclers tinkered with the wording of the Baekje annals in places. Sometimes it was simply to update words to increase understanding, such as changing “Wa” to “Yamato”. It would have been easy enough, however, for them to “clarify” something in such a way that it changed the meaning to better suit what the Chroniclers knew to be the truth, so even here we can’t be entirely sure that we are getting a faithful transliteration. Still, it seems reasonable to assume that Satibiko—or Sotsuhiko—is, indeed, the one being referenced here.

Ame no Hiboko

You might recall the “Heavenly Sun Spear”—「天日槍」in the Nihon Shoki or「天之日矛」 in the Kojiki—from our earliest discussions of relations with the continent. He was said to be a Silla prince who eventually settled in the area of Kehi, along modern Tsuruga Bay, where he came to be worshipped as a kami. Of course “Ame no Hiboko” is a Japonic name, and unlike other names on the peninsula. He might be the same, however, as the man named Sonaka (or Tsunoga) Shichi (or “Cheulchi” in modern Korean). Some accounts have his origin in Silla, while others point to Nimna and the confederated Kara states. In some stories he even has a title that would appear to equate to about the 3rd rank of the Silla court.

The Chronicles make Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko one of Ame no Hiboko’s descendants, and provide yet another connection to the areas of Silla and Kara on the southern Korean peninsula.

Takechi no Sukune

We just talked bout him last episode (Epsiode 46), and while the Chronicles suggest he was Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko’s father, there is enough evidence to question whether or not that was actually the case.

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Also known as Jingū Kōgō (神功皇后), she was the sovereign who is said to have “subjugated “ the Korean peninsula for Yamato. She is also connected to the Katsuraki family, through her lineage, and some of the earliest stories about Sotsuhiko happened, ostensibly, during her reign.

Homuda Wake

The sovereign for most of this period that we have been discussing, aka Ōjin Tennō (応神天皇). We’ll cover more on him next episode.

King of Kara and his Sister

The King of Kara is referenced as “Kwi-pon” in the Aston translation (己本旱岐—Kwi-pon Kanki). Aston goes on to note that the Dongguk Tonggam, a 15th century compilation of Korean history, gives the sovereign at this time as “I Si-Bpeum” (伊尸品). It is possibly a transliteration error, or it could be the difference between the king of Geumgwan Kara, the primary city-state of the Kara confederacy, or it could be that this is a different '“King” altogether. We have little to go on besides what is written here.

It is interesting that he is given a similar Silla rank to Ame no Hiboko, that of Kanki. I don’t know if this was added later or if it is indicative of Kara kings accepting court rank from Silla, similar to how other states sought out titles from the Wei and Jin courts, a practice we will go over in more detail in a later episode.

His younger sister’s name is given as 「既殿至」, which Aston translates as “Kwi-chon-chi”. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough information on the language of Kara to give you anything more, but it is likely better than reading it using modern Japanese on’yomi. This is the younger sister who then goes to the court of the “Great Wa” to complain about “Sachihiko” not following through with his orders.

Mongna Geunja

Mongna Günja (or Mongna Künja—possibly even something like Mong Nagunja: 木羅斤資) is a Baekje general who shows up during the reign of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, helping out with the Baekje-Wa alliance and later chasing down “Sachihiko” and stopping the assault on Kara. Later he would have a son (with, interestingly enough, a Silla wife) who would have his own role to play in pen-insular events.

Yutsuki / Kungwol

Specifically this individual is referenced as “Yutsuki [no] Kimi” (弓月君)—Lord Yutsuki or Lord of Yutsuki. Yutsuki here is the traditional pronunciation in modern Japanese, and the Korean would be something like Kungwol (and the characters at that time may have been something like “Kung-ngwet” based on a Middle Chinese reading of them). The Chronicles don’t specify exactly where they are from, which has given rise to various theories, many of them trying to connect Yutsuki to someplace in modern China or even out in the Xinjiang region, near the border with Kazhakstan. While that certainly is possible—the trade routes of central Eurasia have long been in operation—it seems difficult, if not impossible, to prove by just this particular entry.

Maketsu

Maketsu (眞毛津) was a seamstress sent over to Yamato from Baekje. She is hailed as the ancestor of the seamstresses of Kume. At that time it seems common to set up villages that specialized in particular goods and skills, and many of the stories of this time talk about the deliberate importation of expert crafters from the continent.

Clothing in particular we have a rather murky view of until we get more human-shaped haniwa in the 6th century, and even then it can be difficult to make out what is actually going on and what is exaggeration by the haniwa sculptures, but here we can see textual evidence of what we see later on, which is the influence of continental styles on the archipelago. Granted, prior to this they were probably in synch with at least what was going on in the southern tip of the peninsula, but I suspect that what Maketsu and people like her were bringing may have been a more Sinified aesthetic.

I should note that it mentions she was sent as “tribute”. It is unclear to me just how much choice that artisans like this had in their assignments, but my guess is that they didn’t have much. It has been a not-uncommon move across the globe for artisans to be forcibly taken and re-established elsewhere so that another group could acquire their intangible cultural properties. Of course, there are also examples where artisans were also enticed with lucrative offers of a comfortable living, and some may just have wanted to travel and explore the world, but given the way it is written and how people were enslaved, resettled, and sometimes sent to foreign courts, I suspect that there was very little choice involved here.

Iwa no Hime

We are told that Iwa no Hime (磐之媛) was the daughter of Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko. She would go on to become the queen of the sovereign Ōsazaki, aka Nintoku Tennō, and her son, Izaho Wake, would eventually follow him on the Yamato throne, becoming known as Ritchū Tennō. I wonder if this connection had something to do with the way that Sotsuhiko is treated in the narrative.

King Naemul of Silla

Naemul was the first historically attested sovereign of Silla in the 4th and very start of the 5th century. Naemul sent the future King Silseong to be a hostage at the Goguryeo court, and may have been the one to send Prince Misaheun to the Wa.

King Silseong of Silla

Silseong followed Naemul, despite the fact that Naemul had at least three sons: Nulji, Bokho, and Misaheun. In the first year of his reign, according to the Samguk Sagi, Prince Misaheun was sent to the Wa as an envoy, though this may have happened in the reign of Naemul, as attested to in the Samguk Yusa. Later he would send Prince Bokho to Goguryeo, and he married his daughter to the eldest of Naemul’s sons, Nulji. Eventually, though, he seems to have had a change of heart and attempted to have Nulji killed, but the plan would ultimately backfire.

King Nulji of Silla

After killing King Silseong in retaliation for Silseong’s attempted assassination of Nulji, one of the first things that King Nulji would do is to set about trying to get his brothers returned from the various courts at which they were being held hostage. This was eventually accomplished by the loyal courtier, Pak Jesang

Prince Bokho of Silla

Prince Bokho was sent by King Silseong as a hostage to the court of Goguryeo. He eventually escaped their custody with assistance from Pak Jesang.

Prince Misaheun of Silla

Prince Misaheun was a hostage at the Wa court. His eventual rescue is mentioned across multiple sources, with slight variations in the details, including the Nihon Shoki, the Samguk Sagi, the Samguk Yusa, and the Dongguk Tonggam. In the Nihon Shoki, Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko plays a prominent role in those events.

Pak Jesang

Pak Jesang was a loyal courtier of the Silla court. He offered to personally go and bring back King Nulji’s brothers, the Princes Bokho and Misaheun. Even today he is held up as a legendary example of loyalty, giving up everything, including his family and, eventually, his life for his lord.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 47: The Man who Might be King
There are certainly a lot of names that get thrown around in the Chronicles. Most of them only appear once, usually in a list telling us who begat whom, which usually looks like a rather blatant attempt to connect some high muckety-muck with the royal family or otherwise explain the origin of some person or group that was around in the 8th century. This is especially true of the eras we’ve been discussing, I’d say, probably because of the lack of good source material to draw from, among other things. Still, you occasionally get a recurring character here or there that keeps popping up and making an appearance.
Last episode we talked about one such supporting character, Takechi no Sukune, the first Prime Minister, or Oho-omi, who supposedly held his job through at least 5 different reigns, and who was involved in some of the more impactful parts of the narrative, even if he wasn’t the main character.
Now Takechi no Sukune isn’t the only name that keeps popping up again and again in the Chronicles for this time—though certainly he seems to be one of the most influential, not to mention long-lived. Unfortunately, just like the sovereigns he served, we cannot confirm anything about his actual existence. Was he an actual person? Or was he, perhaps, an amalgamation of individuals, perhaps all serving under the name or title of “Takechi”? I suspect that he was an important figure in the transition to the new dynasty—possibly someone referenced in various stories, and maybe he did provide some kind of connection back to the previous dynasty, but all of that is speculation.
At the same time, we have evidence of at least one individual from this time who, more likely than not, did exist. In fact, he’s got a better claim to actual historicity than do either Homuda Wake, the supposed sovereign of Yamato, or his prime minister Takechi no Sukune, since he unlike either of them, this person is directly referenced in the Baekje annals by name. Furthermore, despite not having as many entries in the Japanese chronicles as either of those other two, he seems intimately tied in to the royal lineage. On top of all of that we’ve mentioned him before, though just in passing. His name is Katsuraki Sotsu Hiko.
Now, Katsuragi is a place name, as well as the name of a prominent family group, which is quite likely related. It is located in the southwest corner of the Nara Basin, opposite the old capital at Miwa in modern Sakurai. I haven’t found anything that clearly states when it became a place of significance—or even if the place was named for the family or vice versa. Regardless, the family group claims a lineage going all the way back to the time of Iware Biko, though you may have some inkling just what kind of stock I put into all of that.
More importantly for our current narrative, the Katsuraki family are found in the lineage of Homuda Wake’s mother, Okinaga Tarashi Hime. Specifically they are mentioned as part of the lineage descending down to her from that ancient Silla Prince, Ame no Hiboko. So they are both tied to the royal family and to the royal family of Silla, though of course there is no evidence for this prince in the Silla annals, just in the Japanese chronicles. Still, that tie to the continent is going to be important, because it is in dealing with the continent—and in particular dealing with Silla, where Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko will gain most of his notoriety.
Before we get to those stories, let me quickly touch on the rest of his name, though: Sotsu Hiko. It is an interesting name, in part because it would seem to mark this character as the lord or prince—Hiko—of some place called “So”, assuming that the “tsu” here is, indeed, that possessive marker we’ve seen and discussed before. In the Baekje annals his name is rendered as Sachihiko, which may simply be a transliteration error from the Japanese to the Korean and then back again. In Old Japanese these characters likely sounded even closer: probably something like So tu Bpiko, and “Sa ti Bpiko”.
So to start with, let’s go with the story that is at the core of the belief that So-tsu-hiko was, indeed, a real boy, and that is the excerpt that the Japanese Chroniclers included from the Baekje Annals for the year 382. Now in the hodgepodge of the Chronicles this event actually shows up during the reign of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, backdated by 120 years to 262, but given the rest of the contextual evidence we can fairly confidently put this incident at about 382, which is about 9 years before the events recorded on the stele of King Gwangaetto the Great. This is in the time of King Gusu—aka Geungusu—of Baekje, who had succeeded his father, King Chogo, in 375. In Silla this was still the reign of King Naemul, who had sent his envoys to the Jin court only a year earlier.
According to the Baekje records, the Wa were angered when Silla didn’t wait upon them—by which I assume they mean that they didn’t send them the expected payment-slash-bribe that they were expecting—and so the Wa sent a force to attack Silla, under the command of So-tsu-hiko. So-tsu-hiko had his forces ready to march on Silla, but Silla had a rather unusual plan of their own. Rather than readying an army to oppose him they decided to appeal to try a different approach, sending two beautiful Silla ladies to seduce him. Apparently this ploy worked, and So-tsu-hiko called off the attack on Silla, though that left him with a conundrum: He had troops in the field, and no doubt they were expecting some action.
While we don’t know a lot about the military armies or bands or whatever they were at this time, certain things we can deduce from what we know about militaries around the world. One of those things is that, historically, you need to make sure your troops get properly rewarded, since they are putting their lives on the line. Even in conscript armies you need to keep morale up, and in this period I suspect that many of the soldiers fighting were probably doing so on a semi-voluntary basis, mainly because Yamato court didn’t quite seem to have the kind of authority to just force people off of their land to go fight and possibly die on their behalf. I doubt anyone at this time had true standing armies, though we are starting to see more weapons and armor—something that will become common burial goods, replacing the earlier bronze mirrors as high status grave goods.
Besides, it takes a lot of organization to keep soldiers fed, clothed, armed, and trained, and typically the resources to do that came from the booty acquired during the actual fighting. In later periods we would see this as land that could be given out to those warriors who had fought exceptionally well, while in this period it may have been more material goods, captured during the fighting.
Either way, these troops would need to be taken care of—to send them all the way to Silla, ready to fight, but then to balk at the last minute might have been a rather dangerous ploy for So-tsu-hiko. In all likelihood it he found it easier to simply redirect his forces, and so, instead of reprimanding Silla, the army marched into the lands of Kara, instead.
Of course, this was not exactly a subtle change in direction. The King of Kara, given in the Baekje Annals as Kwi-pon—though Aston gives his name as Si-Bpeum according to his reading of the Korean Tonggam—fled to Baekje due to So-tsu-hiko’s assaults. The King’s sister, Kwi-chon-chi, then went to the Great Wa—aka Yamato—and asked the sovereign there, Okinaga Tarashi Hime, for assistance, complaining about the assaults by So-tsu-hiko and his Wa troops. Well Tarashi Hime was quite livid to hear of this impertinence. Her orders to So-tsu-hiko had been clear, after all, and they had been all about reprimanding Silla, nothing to do with attacking Kara. And so she asked for the Baekje general, Mongna Keuncha, to go and sort things out. Mongna Keuncha, as you may recall from some episodes back, was one of the generals that had led troops as part of the Baekje-Wa alliance, and so here he is again, setting things right in Kara.
Mongna Keuncha appears to have been successful at stopping the assault on Kara, but he didn’t capture So-tsu-hiko, who remained at-large on the continent, presumably with those two Silla women to keep him company, though who knows if they had stuck with him through his defeat. Another account, for which, like a viral meme on social media, we aren’t given the actual source, claims that So-tsu-hiko went into hiding as soon as he learned that Tarashi Hime was upset with him.
That said, Sotsu Hiko had his own eyes and ears in the court. He seems to have had an in with one of the ladies at court, who still thought well of him, despite everything that had happened. After giving everything some time to blow over, he secretly sent her a message and asked her to feel out the mood in the court—specifically that of the sovereign. This court lady found a time to bend the ear of Tarashi Hime. She claimed to have had a dream about So-tsu-hiko. Well as soon as the lady in waiting mentioned his name, Tarashi Hime’s mood soured, and she loudly declaimed that should he ever show his face around Yamato again, she would have him killed.
And so no, things hadn’t blown over. Realizing that no pardon would be forthcoming, So-tsu-hiko headed off into a cave and died.
Which, of course, would seem to bring our story to a close. He was a general, he went to Silla, he was seduced into betraying his orders, attacked Kara, and then died, hiding in seclusion.
Except, of course, that isn’t at all where this ends. In fact, it is barely the beginning, and this is probably why the Chroniclers caveated that whole portion with “one source says” because I suspect even they were having some problem putting all of this together.
You see, Katsuraki So-tsu-hiko shows up—either by his full name or just as So-tsu-hiko, in stories from at least the adjusted year of 325 and then continuing for the next century and a half, scattered across three reigns. Of course, from what we can verify we can more reliably trace him in the historical record from about 325 to probably 418, and maybe even 426. For all of that, though, many of the stories about him seem to be retellings of the same incidents, just placed in different reigns, though with some of the actors changed. We’ve seen similar “repeated” stories in the Chronicles after all.
For example, in the 14th year of Homuda Wake’s reign—probably about 403 CE, right smack dab in the middle of the conflicts with Silla and Goguryeo--, we are given another story about So-tsu-hiko. In this case an envoy named Yutsuki—or possibly something like Kungweol, in modern Korean—attempted to travel from Baekje to Yamato to provide his allegiance. Word may have been sent with an envoy earlier that same year, or perhaps the year prior. The Baekje annals in the Samguk Sagi note that Baekje had sent an envoy to Wa to seek out large pearls, while the Japanese chronicles mention a seamstress named Maketsu who was sent over—possibly as part of the ongoing exchange surrounding the, shall we say, residency of Crown Prince Jeonji of Baekje at the Yamato court. To help Yutsuki make the journey, So-tsu-hiko was sent out to see them safely from Kara at the end of the Korean peninsula, over to Yamato, but after he left, the court heard nothing.
Of course, in this age before modern communication, it is little wonder that nobody heard anything back immediately. All sorts of pitfalls could waylay a journey, and who knew how long it would take on the other side before anyone heard anything back. In this case, though, it was rather excessive, as three years went by and still nobody had showed up at the Yamato court. And so they sent two generals out to find out what happened. Convinced that Silla had interfered and was holding them, the troops made there way to Silla and, low and behold, Silla was indeed keeping So-tsu-hiko and Yutsuki hostage. Under the threat of the Wa forces, or so we are led to believe, Silla admitted to kidnapping them and allowed them to return with the Wa forces.
Now some see in this story a retelling of the earlier So-tsu-hiko story, possibly mixed with something like the early stories of the Baekje ambassadors from the supposed first meeting of Baekje and Wa, who were also waylaid by Silla and, in that case, forced to bring Silla envoys along with them to the Yamato court. In both casesHere, you have So-tsu-hiko going to the continent and someone else having to go after him. In this story, though, he is treated as more of a victim, rather than a rogue general. And in all of these instances it is Silla who somehow detains him or causes him to stray from his mission.
Of course, this could just be a common theme in pen-insular relations—Silla may have regularly looked to intercept Wa and Baekje ships, and vice versa. But there are a few of these kinds of accounts scattered about.
Unfortunately, there isn’t too much too corroborate this in the Korean sources. The Samguk Sagi does have the Wa attacking the peninsula around 405 CE, but according to Silla they were repelled. Then there were two attacks in 407 where they kidnapped 100 people and took them back with them. But whether any of this correlates to the other stories is impossible to say for certain.
Now as to why one story has So-tsu-Hiko as the villain, disobeying the court, and the other paints him as a victim of Silla’s treachery may have to do with the different sources that the stories were coming from, as well as what we are told afterwards. You see, Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko had a daughter named Iwa no Hime, who would wind up marrying Ohosazaki, the successor to Homuda Wake. She would give birth to one of the future sovereigns, Izaho no Wake. This, by extension makes So-tsu-hiko the ancestor of several generations of sovereigns in the Middle Dynasty, as well as the current lineage, at least according to the Chronicles.
This is interesting for a few reasons, beyond perhaps the obvious. I mean, let’s face it, everyone was trying to tie themselves to the royal lineage, so I don’t think that his placement there is all that big of a shock—if you were a major family and you didn’t claim some tie in with the court then come on, you aren’t even trying, and there were some big names that claimed descent from So-tsu-hiko.
Beyond that, though, it wasn’t just that one of his daughters was married to the sovereign, but rather that she was considered a queen. You see, as we’ve discussed before, there are multiple women who are brought into the royal family as wives of the sovereign, but most do not become the queen, and so their offspring are not considered to be in line for the Yamato throne. To be considered eligible to be a queen, and thus for one’s offspring and descendants to be considered eligible to inherit the throne, a woman had to be of royal blood herself.
Now, of course, technically Iwa no Hime is of royal blood, as is So-tsu-hiko. The Chroniclers saw to that, making sure to connect So-tsu-hiko to Takechi no Sukune, but as we discussed in the last episode on Takechi no Sukune, there are a few things that call this lineage into question, not the least being their disparate titles.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first questionable lineage in the sources, especially for women who would become the queens and mothers of the official sovereigns. However, in this case, she is the daughter of a supposed subject, rather than being the daughter of some lord outside of the Yamato court. So, unlike with those others for whom a royal inheritance may have been manufactured, here we see no obvious political benefit to the royal line for her to be considered as a Queen, let alone for her children to be considered legitimate claimants. Dr. Cornelius J. Kiley discussed this back in 1973 in an article entitled “State and Dynasty in Archaic Yamato”, published in the Journal of Asian Studies. There he discusses a few other points about the succession, but regarding So-tsu-hiko in particular he points out that the stories have him defying the orders of the Yamato sovereign, and later some of his descendants would go on to found the powerful Soga clan, which dominated court politics in the 6th and early 7th centuries. And of course the Soga’s power seems to have been partly based in their association with Buddhism and the continent, which we will see in a bit coming over from the Korean peninsula as well.
Dr. Kiley isn’t the only one to have noticed all of this, and there is some thought that the truth may be that So-tsu-hiko was not actually a vassal of the Yamato court, but rather another sovereign or independent Wa lord who was heavily involved in the activities of the peninsula. Here it is suggested that So-tsu-hiko, wherever he was based, was perhaps in alliance with Yamato, but likely had his own powerful territory or kingdom, and it may be that more than a few of the actions ascribed to figures such as Homuda Wake or the ambiguous “King of Wa” may have actually been referencing him, or some similarly independent figure. We can’t know for certain of course, but we do know that there were other powerful figures—perhaps even rival courts—across the archipelago, given the number of large, kingly tombs that we see outside of the immediate geographical base of the Yamato court.
And so it may be that So-tsu-hiko was his own kind of sovereign—a king in his own right, as it were. He may have been allied with Yamato, and it is even possible that, as an independent ruler of some part of the archipelago or the southern peninsula, he was supporting a larger confederation of Wa countries. Of course, this totally goes against the narrative of the Yamato court, where the rule of the Heavenly Descendant was just a natural consequence of their divine nature and the fact that the kami had gifted the archipelago to them. Even early stories of conquest are treated more like inspection tours, with the odd outsider or resistance from uncivilized barbarians, rebels, and bandits, but no real talk of any other sovereigns. This is especially true in dealings with the continent, where the official story continues to push a narrative of conquest and subjugation by Yamato—a narrative that is not exactly backed up by the other evidence we have available to us.
So was So-tsu-hiko an independent king in his own right, possibly even the true power behind the early Baekje-Wa alliance? Or was he just another court noble, who was then entrusted with great responsibilities on the continent? Or was it something in between? Could this be why we have some stories where he seems rebellious and antagonistic, and others where he is shown in a more positive light, the Chroniclers working from stories from different parts of the archipelago and from different dynastic eras?.
These are the things I urge you to keep in mind as we read further stories about So-tsu-hikothese stories and try to piece together what is happening. That said, let’s get into those stories, and what they tell us.
Now, of only passing interest to us, perhaps, is an account from the 41st year of the reign of Ohosazaki—a year that probably didn’t exist as Ohosazaki was, most likely, not on the throne for that many years to begin with, but they still had to make up all that time since they were condensing the entire 3rd and 4th centuries into only three reigns.
Now in the account of that year we are told that the grandson of the King of Baekje was rather disrespectful towards the Wa envoy, Ki no Tsuno no Sukune, and he was delivered up to So-tsu-hiko to be brought back to Yamato as a form of punishment.
Again, this story has some eerie parallels with another.
There was another act of disrespect from Baekje during Homuda Wake’s reign, where Ki no Tsuno was also sent to the Baekje court to handle the matter. In that case it was king Jinsa of Baekje, whereas the later story focused on a different king, but there are enough similarities to make you wonder if they aren’t just different stories of the same event. So this could be taking place any time around the end of the fourth or first quarter of the 5th century.
And where this intersects with us is that, in the later telling, So-tsu-hiko appears to have been on hand at the Baekje court, or at least in close enough proximity that he could come and take charge of the young princeling and escort him across the straits to Yamato, where he was basically kept as a hostage as penance for his insulting behavior.
Thus, once again we see So-tsu-hiko in a role of essentially escort. Whether it was the young Baekje prince being sent to Yamato as a punishment, or envoys like Yutsuki being brought to pay tribute, So-tsu-hiko was the one who was helping them from the peninsula to the archipelago, and facilitating their journey across the ocean.
Now I’ve tried to save the best for last. It is, in my opinion, the most dramatic account that So-tsu-hiko is involved with, and that is the escape of Prince Misaheun of Silla from the Yamato court.
Now back in Episode 45 we mentioned that Prince Misaheun was sent to the Wa in the year 402, by the continental reckoning, which was also during the events inscribed on the Gwangaetto Stele. Silla claims he went as a peaceful envoy, but the Wa held onto him as a hostage, refusing to let him return home. It is a tale that is found not only in the Samguk Sagi, which says he was sent by his uncle, King Silseong, but it is also found in the more fantastical accounts of the Samguk Yusa, where blame for his departure was put on King Naemul. I tend to lean towards the Samguk Yusa story on this one, given a variety of factors. The Nihon Shoki, as usual, plays fast and loose with dates, and without going into too much details, let’s just say the Japanese chroniclers put this story during Okinaga Tarashi Hime’s reign because it fit right into the stories of various raids and military exploits that they were lumping together. Regardless, Prince Misaheun becoming a hostage of the Wa was a big deal, no matter when it happened. Although, had King Silseong had his way, it likely would have become a non-issue altogether.
We’ve already talked about how King Silseong came to the throne of Silla, having spent ten years as a hostage in the Goguryeo court before succeeding his brother, King Naemul, Misaheun’s father. Upon coming to the throne, he almost immediately sent Misaheun as a hostage to the Wa—though perhaps that had already happened during the Wa invasion mentioned on the stele during his brother’s reign. Ten years after taking the throne, Silseong would send another of his nephews, Prince Bokho, to the Goguyreo court, to be a hostage there, much as Silseong himself had been. You can see in both of these examples a trend: Silseong wass getting his brother’s children, future rivals for the throne, out of the way.
And sure enough, only five years later, Silseong was starting to worry. He had taken the throne in the first place under the pretense that none of his brother’s heirs were old enough at the time, but now his eldest nephew, the eldest, Nulchi, was getting on in years. Though Nulchi was married to Silseong’s own daughter—proving that it wasn’t just the Wa who liked to keep it in the family, so to speak—about fifteen or sixteen years into his reign, Silseonghe decided that he would do something about Prince Nulchi—permanently. The stories claim that he hired a man from Goguryeo—an outsider, an one whom he probably had contacted through his network within the Goguryeo court. He hired this ancient hitman to kill Prince Nulchi, and arranged for the two of them to meet on the road.
As you might guess, things didn’t go according to plan. Apparently the hired sword had a soul, and when he saw Nulchi on the road he was struck by his appearance—the elegant air of a prince of the blood. Rather than kill the Prince, the would-be assassin told him how he had been hired by his uncle, the king, to kill him, and then he returned to Goguryeo. Nulchi was incensed, and rightly so. Taking matters into his own hands the Silla annals tell us that he found his uncle, King Silseong, and killed him and took the throne for himself. The Samguk Yusa gives slightly different details than the Samguk Sagi, claiming that it was group of soldiers that were sent after Nulchi, and that when they met him they switched sides and killed King Silseong instead, installing Nulchi on the throne.
Once he was on the throne, King Nulchi immediately decided to get the gang back together, and he started looking for a way to bring his two brothers back to Silla. Into this stepped a man of Silla known as Pak Jesang. Much like Takechi no Sukune and Katsuragi no So-tsu-hiko, Pak Jesang is one of those fascinating characters who lives in the margins of the stories of the rulers of these ancient countries. Much of what we know about him comes from this story – which, according to Samguk Sagi, along with the Dongguk Tonggam, took place around 418, while the Samguk Yusa gives the date as 426, and most of the details come from the Samguk Yusa and the Nihon Shoki, with some corroboration coming from Aston’s notes on the Tonggam.
Now Nulchi was grieving for his brothers. Neither Goguryeo nor Yamato were ready to just give up their royal hostages, and so Silla needed a wise and brave man to help them hatch a plan. They found such a man in Pak Jesang, the form of the magistrate of Sapna county, and his name was Pak Jesang. Pak gladly accepted the task from his king, and after taking his leave of the court he disguised himself and headed north, to Goguryeo, to the capital at Gungnae—modern Ji’an, where Gwangaetto the Great was buried. There he found out where Prince Bokho – the Goguryeo hostage – was staying, and found a time to talk with him in secret.
Here it may be helpful to understand that being a royal hostage wasn’t quite the same as being a prisoner. Though the prince was unable to leave, it is quite likely that he was being kept in a manner befitting his station, and he would regularly attend the King’s court. He had the opportunity to meet with the members of the court and the people around him and get to know them. He just wasn’t allowed to leave.
Unfortunately, the actual escape from Gungnae—which only sounds like a Snake Plissken flick—isn’t recorded in any great detail. What we do know is that Pak Jesang had a plan, but that plan apparently consisted of the Prince pretending to be sick for a few days, and then finally running off to meet at Koseong, on the coast, where Pak Jesang would have a getaway boat ready. Seems easy enough… except when you realize that the coast would have been well over 300 kilometers away. I hope he had a horse.
Regardless, it seems to have worked, in part because of the good friends that Prince Bokho had made, particularly amongst the guards. When they king found out he ordered his guards to chase him down, but they used headless arrows when they fired at him, and deliberately missed, since he had been such a good friend to all of them—or so the stories go.
When Prince Bokho made it back to Silla, his brother, King Nulchi, was overjoyed, but there was still one more prisoner left—Misaheun, hostage of the Wa. Pak Jesang left on that voyage so quickly he didn’t even stop to say goodbye to his wife, who ran after him, only to see his ship already departing the shore.
Now when Jesang made it to the islands of the Wa where they were holding Prince Misaheun hostage, here’s where we get the Japanese Chroniclers’ perspective on things as well. The Chronicles claim that Silla sent three envoys as part of a tribute mission, none of whom had names resembling Pak Jesang. In the Samguk Yusa we are told that Pak made it to the Wa court by claiming that he was running away from Silla, since the King there had killed his father and brothers without a legitimate reason. Apparently this was believable, and the Wa ruler provided him a place to stay.
As he was staying there, he made friends with Prince Misaheun, and the two of them began heading down to the seashore and bringing back their catch each morning to the Wa sovereign. They kept this up until one day, the fog rolled in, and Pak Jesang saw their chance. He had the Prince taken away by a Silla boatman, and then he went back to the Prince’s house to buy some time. When the Wa came looking for Misaheun to check on him, Pak Jesang told them that he was feeling tired from hunting the previous day, so he was resting. They came again at noon to ask after him, and by then they discovered that Prince Misaheun had fled.
The ruler of the Wa was wroth and ordered his men to go in pursuit, but it was to no avail—the Prince was long gone. Returning back to the court he sought out Pak Jesang and poured out his rage on him, since he had claimed to become a vassal of the Wa king. Pak Jesang, however, now defiantly claimed that he was a man of Silla, through and through, and even as they tortured him, standing him up on a red hot iron, he would not say anything but that he was a vassal of the King of Silla. Finally, realizing they would get nothing out of him, they hung Pak Jesang on Kishima—Ki island.
The story in the Nihon Shoki is similar, but definitely without the pro-Silla angle to it. There, Prince Misaheun beseeches the sovereign to let him go, claiming that the envoys told him that since he’d been away for so long, the King of Silla had confiscated his wife and family and had them enslaved. He asked to go back to Silla to find out if this was true.
The sovereign gave him leave to go, and here is where our friend, Katsuragi So-tsu-hiko, re-enters the narrative. As we already demonstrated, he was the go-to guy for people traveling from or to Yamato. Together they all reached Tsushima together—So-tsu-hiko, Prince Misaheun, and the three Silla envoys, along with whatever sailors and soldiers were sent along as well. They then stayed the night at the harbour of Sabi no Umi.
It was here that the envoys found the chance they had been waiting for. They put Prince Misaheun on a boat that they had arranged to meet them and they sent him back to Silla. In his place, they created a dummy made of straw, which they put in Misaheun’s berth on the ship, and made it seem like he was ill. So-tsu-hiko was worried about his health, however, and sent men to check on him, and help nurse him back to health, but of course, they discovered the ruse.
Angry and upset at being deceived, So-tsu-hiko had the three envoys placed in a cage and then burned them all alive. He then proceeded on with his ship and his men and attacked Silla, taking the castle of Chora, and capturing and enslaving numerous people whom he brought back to Yamato. These were the ancestors of several villages and families. He never did catch up with Misaheun, however, who made it safely back home.
There is one more telling, somewhere in between these two, which comes from the Dongguk Tonggam, and it is provided by Aston in his footnotes to the Nihon Shoki. As with the Samguk Yusa, it claims that Pak Jesang was the one who went to rescue Misaheun, but in this story he went to the trouble of actually having his own family and that of Prince Misaheun imprisoned so that when the Wa checked his story they would see it was true. Indeed, the Wa believed that both Misaheun and Pak Jesang were rebels, and so when they decided to send an army to attack Silla, they enlisted both of them as guides. The Wa generals were plotting each day on how to get in and take back the families of Prince Misaheun and Pak Jesang, but meanwhile, the Prince and Jesang were spending a little time each day in a separate boat, fishing, where they could discuss things.
One day, everything being arranged, when they went out on their excursion, Pak Jesang had Prince Misaheun taken in another boat back to Silla, while he stayed behind. He stayed out as long as he could, all by himself in the boat, until he was sure Misaheun was far away.
As soon as the Wa learned that Misaheun had escaped, they bound Pak Jesang and attempted to pursue Prince MIsaheun, but mist and darkness meant that they could not catch up. The lord of the Wa was enraged and threw Pak JChesang into prison. He interrogated him, asking him why he would help Prince Misaheun to escape, and, as in the Samguk Yusa, Pak Jesang simply stated that he was a vassal of the King of Silla. They tortured him numerous times, but he would not stray from his story. Finally, he was burned to death.
Though slightly different, we can see here three stories that are clearly about the same events. The actual names are a bit different, due to the problems of transliteration and even changes in the languages over time, though I have tried to standardize them here. Still, there are enough similarities that we can make out the general picture.
Now there is one more reference to So-tsu-hiko that I want to bring up, and that comes from the Man’yoshu. I can’t recall if we’ve talked about this, but the Man’yoshu is the oldest anthology of native Japanese poetry. While, yes, many poems exist in the chronicles, the Man’yoshu was written specifically for poetry, and it not only contains many poems that are said to be much older than the work itself, which was compiled around the same time as the Chronicles, in the 8th century, but it specifically made an effort to translate the sounds of Japanese, using Chinese characters.
Anyway, that work deserves an episode of its own, but for now I want to talk about just one poem that is found in that work, and it goes something like this:
Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko ma-yumi araki ni mo;
Tanome ya kimi ga wa ga na norikenu
I’m not sure I can quite do this poem justice from a translation standpoint, but based on what others have said, it appears to be equating the strong, unfinished wood bow of Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko with the act of telling someone—or possibly asking for—a woman’s name. This was a rather intimate act, as most women’s names were private, and typically only known to the family and to a prospective husband.
Because of the subject matter and the fact that it references So-tsu-hiko, some have attributed this poem to So-tsu-hiko’s daughter, Iwa no Hime. Of course, authorship is rather difficult to truly ascertain, but it does at least tell us that So-tsu-hiko was well enough known that his name appears in yet another source, even if just a fleeting reference.
We also can get a sense that he was more than just an escort. The reference to his bow being made of raw wood certainly suggests that people assumed he had a warrior’s aspect, and who knows what stories were being told that just aren’t around anymore?
Whatever else may have been floating around out there about So-tsu-hiko, this is what we have. We don’t even have a good story about his death, beyond that one which claims he killed himself because he couldn’t come back to the court of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, but we already covered how he was apparently active after her, though of course, who can really be sure of any of these things, particularly if the reigns overlapped in some fashion, as opposed to the strictly serial pattern of inheritance that the Chronicles put forth?
We do have a possible candidate for So-tsu-hiko’s final resting place, though even that is suspect. There is nothing mentioned, of course, in th e Chronicles, but there are some traditions claiming that he is buried at Muromiyayama Kofun, in Gose City. Of course this might be a bit awkward, as that is also said to be the burial place of Takechi no Sukune, and we covered it last episode. I doubt both of them are buried there, and it is just as likely that it is neither of them, but it’s interesting that both of these “recurring characters” in the Chronicles have these parallels in death as well as in life..
So that’s the story of Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko. I hope you enjoyed it. Next episode we’ll continue, and hopefully wrap up the life of Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, and maybe even get into the cult

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Kim, P., & Shultz, E. J. (2013). The 'Silla annals' of the 'Samguk Sagi'. Gyeonggi-do: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
太田蓉子. (2020)「葛城」を詠んだ万葉の歌. http://www.baika.ac.jp/~ichinose/o/20211125ota.pdf
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Iryŏn, ., Ha, T. H., & Mintz, G. K. (2004). Samguk yusa: Legends and history of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
Kiley, C. (1973). State and Dynasty in Archaic Yamato. The Journal of Asian Studies, 33(1), 25-49. doi:10.2307/2052884
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 46: I Stan Takechi no Sukune

August 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Takechi no [Sukune] no Ōmi on a Japanese 1 yen note from 1916.

RSS

Archives

This episode we cover the life of Takechi no Sukune, whom we’ve partially covered in past episodes, but this episode we take a look at his whole life, including records of his actions during the reign of Homuda Wake. There is a lot of discussion of different reigns, so I’ll try to lay out some of what is going on with each one. This might help give an idea of what we are seeing, but there are still a lot of questions and supposition in all of this:

Iribiko Dynasty

Mimaki Iribiko

Nominally the “first” dynasty of Yamato (despite the 10 reigns before), and contemporary with Yamato Totohi Momoso Hime, who might be “Himiko” by some estimations. She is buried in Hashihaka kofun, which dates from the 3rd century.

Ikume Iribiko

Mimaki Iribiko’s successor. This reign, which likely was in the later 3rd century, assuming Mimaki Iribiko’s reign ended somewhere near the time Hashihaka Kofun was built. During this period, there is early connection to the continent, and many of the traditions—sumō and the situating of Ise Shrine—that are placed in this reign.
Theoretically both Waka Tarashi Hiko and Takechi were born during this reign, it would seem, though it is likely that any direct connection between the Iribiko and Tarashi dynasty is fiction to try to connect these ancient stories together.

Tarashi Dynasty

Ōtarashi Hiko

The first of the “Tarashi” dynasty. During Ōtarashi Hiko’s reign we see the “conquest” of much of the archipelago, including subduing the Kumaso in the south and the Emishi in the north, along with the occasional Tsuchigumo. It was during this reign that Takechi first starts to take on official duties. His charting of the East sets the stage for Yamato Takeru’s later campaign, during the same reign.
If this was really the reign that introduced Takechi, then one would have to assume that, given what we know about other reigns, it should probably be assumed to be somewhere in the mid-4th century.

Waka Tarashi Hiko

Despite a relatively long reign, very little is actually written about Waka Tarashi Hiko’s reign. He is said to have reigned well, but when he dies, the throne passes to his nephew, rather than to a son.

Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko

In comparison to the previous sovereigns, his reign was amazingly short—only 9 years. Despite that he still gets more written about him than Waka Tarashi Hiko. During this reign, we first meet Okinaga Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune is clearly helping out with some of the ritual components.

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Known for her raids against the peninsula, Takechi no Sukune seems to be her partner in her campaigns on the peninsula and in the archipelago. Later, Takechi is seen accompanying the young prince, Homuda Wake. Based on the connections with Baekje, this reign would need to have been in the later 4th century.
Many people have suggested that Tarashi Hime is completely fictional. She is definitely used as a stand-in for the Himiko of the Wei Chronicles.

Middle Dynasty

Homuda Wake

The first reign of the Middle Dynasty. He is probably the sovereign at the end of the 4th century and into the 5th century, though some doubt his existence as well. This is the last “reliable” reign where we see Takechi no Sukune.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 46: I Stan Takechi no Sukune
Well, we’re back and we are still talking about the reign of Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou. Last episode we talked about incidents recorded on the stele of Gwangaetto the Great, which provide some important contemporary context for everything going on both on the peninsula and the archipelago at this time. These next couple episodes we’ll turn back to the Chronicles for most of our information, and we’ll look at some of the so-call “supporting” characters, those outside of the royal line, that are now starting to play larger and larger roles. And we’ll start with someone whom we already talked about in a previous episode, but whose exploits continue through the reign of Homuda Wake, and that is the legendary Takechi no Sukune. Now, I started this episode with the idea that we would just quickly cover a few things from Takechi no Sukune during the reign of Homuda Wake, but the more I started to get into the material the more I realized that I really want to do something of a deep dive. And I know we’ve talked about Takechi in the past, but I don’t think that did him justice.
I am finding that, the more I learn about him, the more fascinated I am about this character, in part because, before undertaking this project, I didn’t even know he existed. Or at least that stories about him existed—we can’t really say much of anything for the existence of any particular individual in the Chronicles, really, until we have corroborating sources and unfortunately I don’t know of any source that can corroborate the existence of this character—he exists purely in chronicles and related stories, from what I can tell.
And yet, I can’t shake this feeling that he is actually rather important to trying to understand some ground truth to all of this.
Now you may recall Takechi no Sukune—also known as Take-uchi no Sukune—from when we talked about the reign of Homuda Wake’s mother, Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jinguu Tennou. Now during Homuda Wake’s reign, Takechi no Sukune continued on in his role as Prime-minister-for-life.
His exploits, of course, begin well before this period, and even before that of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, Takechi no Sukune supposedly came into the world the same year as Homuda Wake’s great-uncle, the sovereign Waka Tarashi Hiko aka Seimu Tennou, which would put his birth during the reign of Ikume Iribiko, or Suinin Tenno. That’s about five reigns back from where we are now, and probably in the latter half of the 3rd century, assuming the Iribiko dynasty fills in for the time around Queen Himiko’s reign. And so the Chronicles already have him living well over a century at this point in the narrative, surviving several contemporary sovereigns and would-be sovereigns, and providing a rather storied career in the process. Of course, despite everything he accomplished, the chronicles aren’t really about him, so they still treat him like a background character, kind of like Rex in the Clone Wars, or even Wedge in the original trilogy—though in this case we may be more in R2D2 territory, given the scope of his involvement. Sure, the story may be focused on members of a particular dynasty, but when you really look, he always seems to be there at those critical moments.
As I said before, Takechi no Sukune had quite the life. During his youth, he purportedly marched out to the east, to explore and open up those lands.Of course, Yamato Takeru took most of the credit for all of that, his own legends far outstripping, and possibly even replacing, those of young Takechi. Furthermore, despite his youth, he displayed uncommon loyalty and good sense from the get-go. For instance, there was that time that Oho Tarashi Hiko threw a party so grand that all of the court officials were basically secluded in a drunken bender for several days. All, that is, except for Takechi no Sukune and Prince Waka Tarashi Hiko, who stood guard over the palace to make sure that none of the court’s enemies decided that this was a good time to get up to some shenanigans.
For his loyalty and good sense, Oho Tarashi Hiko made him Oho-Omi—the Prime Minister, and the next several sovereigns also confirmed him in this role. This would mean that he was not only involved in administering the affairs of Yamato, but also he would be heavily involved in the rituals as well. This shouldn’t be at all surprising since the two went hand in hand—in fact, you can’t really separate the two, and this would remain the case for much of Japanese history. Thus, when the kami contacted Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko and Okinaga Tarashi Hime and commanded them to invade the Korean peninsula, he was there, assisting with the rituals, helping to cover up Naka tsu Hiko’s death, and eventually supporting Tarashi Hime as she sailed forth. Later, during the formation of the Wa-Baekje alliance, we once again find Takechi no Sukune at the wheel, delegating who would be the ones to represent Yamato in negotiations.
Beyond helping to direct overseas negotations, he also seems to have had quite the hand in Homuda Wake’s own upbringing. Not only did he help keep him safe as a child, but he later took the young Prince around Lake Oumi, and to Tsuruga Bay, where Homuda Wake exchanged names with the kami, which we discussed back in episode 41.
And so, other than the incredible lifespan that it would seem to imply, it should be no surprise that Takechi no Sukune continued to be deeply involved with government affairs during the reign of Homuda Wake, as well. For example, given increased traffic with the peninsula, there were more and more people coming to the islands from elsewhere. Most of these visitors are identified with either Baekje, Silla, or Kara, though in this reign we do start to see some discussion of Goguryeo as well—we’ll spend a lot of time on everything going on here next episode, as there is a lot happening, especially at the end of the 4th century and into the early 5th. For whatever reason that people are coming—whether by choice, seeking greater opportunities, or fleeing war and conflict, or possibly even as slaves, captured in raids—the Chronicles give Takechi no Sukune command of these immigrants, who are immediately put to work building ponds.
As a quick reminder, building ponds was actually something that was quite important. Up to this point it has largely been sovereigns and royal princes who were building ponds, and so this isn’t just about digging ditches somewhere. These are effectively community hydrological works, and seem to have been important irrigation projects. The pools themselves are named things like the “Baekje Pond” and the “Kara Pond”, seemingly referencing the labor used in their construction. Though it is odd that the Baekje Pond, which is mentioned in the Kojiki, was apparently built by immigrants from Silla. Meanwhile, the Kara pond, mentioned in the Nihon Shoki as being made specifically under Takechi no Sukune’s supervision, with labor by people from Baekje, Silla, Goguryeo, and, interestingly, Nimna, aka Imna or Mimana. Of course, most of those aren’t “Kara” or “Kaya” as we know it, though “Kara” would eventually become a general term for anything from the peninsula and even from the continent.
So here we see that Takechi no Sukune continued to have significant influence in the court. He had a hand in just about everything. But it wasn’t all just administration of the state, and there is a story in this reign that I think talks to the personal influence he had with the sovereign and the royal family.
The story revolves, as many of them do, around a woman. Her name was Kaminaga Hime, and she was the daughter of the Muragata no Kimi no Ushimoroi in the land of Himuka, on the eastern shores of Kyushu, and news of her exceeding beauty had reached the ears of the Yamato court. Now we are told that Ushimoroi had long served Yamato, but he was getting on in years and thinking of retiring. As he did so, he offered his daughter’s hand to the sovereign—which would seem to be another example of those marriage politics we’ve seen used to create bonds between various parts of the archipelago. Ushimoroi’s title of “Kimi” would seem to imply that he was some kind of local ruler, possibly over an independent country or region. So this would have been an offer with some political weight beyond just the fact that she was a beautiful woman. Homuda Wake was greatly intrigued, and so he sent for her to come and to become one of his many wives at the palace.
Now neither communication nor travel were instantaneous back in those days, and so it was that six months went by. Homuda Wake went on with his life, and one day he and his retinue had traveled to Awaji Island, on the Seto Inland Sea, to take part in some hunting, when he spided something rather odd. Looking out to sea, towards the Harima coastline, and he saw what appeared to a herd of stags swimming towards him in the water. They eventually stopped at the harbor of Kako in Harima, a little ways east from the modern city of Himeji. Intrigued by what he had seen, Homuda Wake sent a messenger over to Kako to find out what was happening. It turned out that what they had seen, off in the distance, were actually the boats accompanying Kaminaga Hime on her journey to Yamato. The men rowing the boats had all donned deerskins, with the horns still attached, apparently as part of some ceremonial garment.
And if you would, just take a moment to imagine what that must have been like as they cut through the water.. From far away, it very much may have looked like a herd of stags, all in a line, swimming through the water—and deer are known to swim between islands, so that wouldn’t have been so strange, but for them to be lined up in two neat rows, all with impressive racks, well, it is no wonder that Homuda Wake sent someone over to figure out just what was going on.
It seems that Kaminaga Hime wasn’t playing around. She was coming in all of the glory of her station, and nobody was going to question who she was or the power of her people.
When the impressive, antler-clad retinue finally made landfall, they were greeted by the court. The Chronicles then tell us that immediately one of the royal princes, Ohosazaki, one of Homuda Wake’s many sons, became awestruck by her beauty, and fell immediately in love.
Of course, lovestruck though he might have been, the prince had a problem, becuase she had come to marry his father, not him. Perhaps if it had been anyone else, he could have easily claimed some prerogative, but it would probably be a bit awkward to ask his dad to just stand aside.
And so who did Ohosazaki turn to in order to help him out? You guessed it, the trusted advisor and prime minister, Takechi no Sukune.
I imagine the scene playing out as if this were some anime—or possibly even a Shakespearean play, the tropes surrounding lovestruck youth are plenty old. Anyway, I imagine Ohosazaki, his heart beating with his young crush, storming into Takechi no Sukune’s quarters and swooning all over the furniture while pouring out his grief at his hopeless case, Takechi, of course, just patiently taking it all in and consoling the young Prince. Of course, the Chronicles aren’t nearly so dramatic and simply note that Ohosazaki asked Takechi no Sukune to intercede on his behalf in hopes that he could make Kaminaga Hime his wife.
Well, if there was anyone who could help the young prince, it was Takechi no Sukune. And so he found an appropriate time to bend the ear of Homuda Wake, probably taking him aside and letting him know about his son’s longing. Of course, had Ohosazaki asked for her hand directly, that might have been considered improper. However, Homuda Wake had several wives at this point, and for all of Kaminaga Hime’s connections, it was unlikely that she would take the place of his primary queen..
And so, with Takechi no Sukune’s help, Homuda Wake could make it look like giving Kaminaga Hime to his son was his idea, all along.
And in case you are wondering, no, the Chronicles don’t give any thought about Kaminaga Hime’s position on all of this, which may say more about the 8th century than about the 4th or 5th.
So Homuda Wake gave a banquet in the Hinter Palace—that is, the women’s quarters of the palace, and depending on the source he either gave her the upper seat, or kamiza, or else he set it up so that she would serve wine to Ohosazaki in a special cup. Either way, the conspirators had ensured that Kaminaga Hime would be the center of attention when Homuda Wake launched into an impromptu bit of suggestive poetry—given here in Aston’s translation from the Nihon Shoki:
Come! My son!
On the moor, garlic to gather,
Garlic to gather
On the way, as I went
Pleasing of perfume
Was the orange in flower.
Its branches beneath
Men had all plundered
Its branches above
Birds perching had withered
Of three chestnuts
Mid-most, its branches
Held in their hiding
A blushing maiden
Come! And for thee, my son,
Let her burst into blossom.
Ohosazaki took his meaning immediately and answered with an impromptu poem of his own:
In the pond of Yosami
Where the water collects,
The marsh-rope coils
Were growing, but I knew not of them :
In the river-fork stream,
The water-caltrops shells
Were pricking me, but I knew not of them.
Oh, my heart !
How very ridiculous thou wert !
The Kojiki has a few other songs, though I think you get the picture. The others, by Ohosazaki, talk about her laying by his side and another has a rather, well, questionable line that states that “she slept with me / unresisting”, which, just, ugh. Sigh. Because yes, “resisting” was a thing and consent wasn’t considered necessary, and at some point here we will spend some time on this rather distasteful aspect of court culture, with plenty of appropriate content warnings up front.
But that is all tangential to our main thread, which is the role of Takechi no Sukune and the trust and loyalty he seems to have had at court, which this whole story illustrates very well – and which makes the next story so very strange, when you stop to think about it.
Now it is unsurprising that in all of his work for the state, Takechi no Sukune was not universally appreciated. In fact, it seems that there were those who were rather jealous of his success and his control over the administration of the state. It is a tale as old as time, really—in any political system with limited positions at the top of the heap, there is only room for so many people up at that rarified altitude. And so people were regularly jockeying for position, and even friends could become rivals in their pursuit of status. In Takechi’s case, however, trouble didn’t just come from some random colleague trying to impugne his character. No, the dagger that was thrust towards the Prime Minister came from another direction: His own younger brother, Umashi no Sukune.
It makes a perveted sort of sense, when you think about it. As brothers, they both came with a similar lineage—though we aren’t told if they were full brothers or only half-brothers. But as far as their lineage went, there was likely not much to distinguish one from the other. Even so, it seems that Takechi no Sukune’s own position was, from an early period, based on his personal relationship with the sovereigns and their family, and then it built upon that with all of his works. Meanwhile, we haven’t heard from Umashi no Sukune until now, though his title of Sukune would seem to indicate he’d done something right, though that could have all been due as much to his elder brother’s influence than anything he had personally accomplished.
It is unclear exactly why Umashi no Sukune decided to betray his older sibling—whether he hoped to inherit his powerful station, or whether he just had a grudge from some perceived slight that he had been nursing for some untold period of time.
Whatever the cause, there is no indication that Takechi no Sukune had even the faintest hint that something was amiss. And so, as he embarked on a trip to Tsukushi to inspect that region, he likely had no thought as to the dangerous situation that would soon unfold.
At the court, with his brother gone, Umashi no Sukune seized his opportunity.
He found his way into the good graces of Homuda Wake and, like Wormtongue whispering his dark thoughts to Theoden, he started to slander Takechi to the sovereign. He intimated that Takechi had treasonous plans on the country, and claimed that while he was in Tsukushi he would start to enact plans to break the entire island off from the rest of Yamato. From there he would control all trade and communication with the continent, and that would eventually give him control over the entire archipelago.
One might question if Homuda Wake would truly be swayed by such an outlandish and audacious story. After all, this was Takechi no Sukune, who had served loyally for so many years and had basically helped raise the young sovereign. On the other hand, the accusations were coming from his own younger brother. Furthermore, remember how Homuda Wake had come to power, and the many roles that Takechi no Sukune had played leading up to that. I mean, if anyone knew how to rally and lead an army to put himself or someone else on the throne, it would be Takechi no Sukune
In the end, whether fully convinced or just deciding that he couldn’t take the chance that Umashi no Sukune could be right, Homuda Wake decided he must take action. Fearing the damage that would happen to the realm--not to mention what might happen to him—Homuda Wake had Takechi no Sukune branded as a traitor and sent warriors out to track him down and kill him for his alleged crimes.
Fortunately, Takechi no Sukune’s time as Prime Minister hadn’t just garnered him enemies, but he seems to have had quite a few friends as well. In fact, given how he seems to have operated, I suspect he had made as many, or more, friends than enemies in his long and highly successful career. And so word reached him of the warriors that were hunting him well before they arrived.
Takechi no Sukune was crestfallen by what must have felt like a massive betrayal. After all he had done, had it really come to this? Could Homuda Wake really think so little of him? I can hardly imagine the turmoil he was going through trying to understand how this had happened. But ancient politics were brutal, and having skin in the game wasn’t just a metaphor. For someone in power as long as Takechi no Sukune had been, he must have known that his position at the top made him a target.
While Takechi no Sukune was still reeling from his misfortune, no doubt trying to strategize a way out of this mess, he was approached by a man named Maneko. Apparently this man bore an uncanny resemblance to the prime minister, and he offered to be his stand in—his Kagemusha, if you will. It is unclear whether he made this offer purely out of some sense of civic duty, or if there was some greater obligation that he felt towards the prime minister, but Maneko made his offer freely, knowing full well what it would mean. Nonetheless, he felt it was worth it if it would give Takechi no Sukune time to return to the court and make his case to the sovereign in person.
And so, to throw the assassins off Takechi no Sukune’s scent, Maneko made himself up to look as much like the Prime Minister as possible and then he threw himself onto his own sword.
Local people must have been shocked when they heard the news, and it likely spread quickly through the archipelago. Eventually the news reached the assasins who were still on the road. They were told that Takechi no Sukune had taken his own life rather than let himself be killed. Without a mission left to accomplish, the would-be assassins apparently turned around and headed back home.
And so, making the most of Maneko’s sacrifice, Takechi no Sukune himself—very much not dead—made his way quietly back to the court. One can imagine that he must have done his best to hide his identify, lest word get back to his rivals that he was still alive. We are left to imagine just how he made his way back, but eventually he he snuck back into Yamato.
Once back, he slipped into the palace without being recognize, and once there, he revealed his presence and threw himself at Homuda Wake’s feet. He explained everything, at least as he knew it, refuting any accusations of disloyalty from his brother.
Homuda Wake was in something of a bind. Which brother was really telling the truth? Unsure, and, now presented with two different stories, Homuda Wake interrogated both Takechi and his brother, Umashi. All he had to go on, though, was their individual testimony. There was no evidence that Takechi was plotting anything, other than his own brother’s say-so, but then again, there was no clear evidence to exonerate him, either—and this is well before any concept of “Innocent until proven guilty”. And so, in order to get at the truth, they were both submitted to the ordeal of boiling water.
I am not exactly sure what form this took, but it sounds like they would have had to endure boiling water in some form or fashion, and one imagines that the one who better endured the pain would be the winner. We are told that it took place on the banks of the Shiki river, and Homuda Wake called upon the gods of Heaven and Earth to help decide the case.
Personally I’m imagining that this was something similar to the ordeals imposed in Europe, operating along similar lines. A person would be submitted to boiling hot water, which should severely scald or even burn them. Theoretically some great power—God in Europe, or the kami in Japan—would intervene on behalf of the innocent to ensure that they came out unscathed. Hardly the kind of justice system that I would want to be subject to, but apparently it worked, and Takechi no Sukune was, of course victorious.
As soon as the verdict was read out, Takechi leapt into action. He didn’t even wait for sentencing; he may have been an old man by this time, but he was still spry, and he jumped on his traitorous brother. Gone was any sense of the calm, cool-headed administrator. This was the Takechi who had traveled out to the east and raided the coasts of the continent with Tarashi Hime. He was angry, and he was out for blood.
Apparently such a reaction caught the entire court offguard. They were probably expected him to be nursing his wound from the ordeal. Wrestling on with his startled brother, Takechi quickly pulled his own cross-sword and was about to kill him when Homuda Wake suddenly intervened and parted the two men.
In the end, Umashi no Sukune wasn’t killed, but he was handed over to the lord of Kii. Of course they didn’t exactly have a prison system that we are aware of, so we have to make some assumptions as to what this meant. Perhaps Umashi no Sukune was forced to work as an enslaved servant, or, given his status, he may have simply been held under a kind of house arrest, away from the politics and power of the court. Enforced exile seems to be a common punishment for more high ranking individuals, and perhaps that is what happened here. Either way, we don’t hear any more from him in the Chronicles.
As for Takechi no Sukune, he returned to his work, and despite everything that had passed, he would continue to serve the court until at least the reign of Homuda Wake’s son, Ohosazaki no Mikoto.
He isn’t as prominent, however—in fact, we have only a single reference—a set of poems by the sovereign and Takechi no Sukune referencing the odd occurrence of a wild goose found laying an egg—odd in that geese do not typicallylay their eggs in Japan, preferring their summer nesting grounds up in the arctic tundra, so this would have been an odd occurrence indeed, though why it would be connected to Takechi no Sukune is beyond me, to be honest.
Interestingly there is also a similar entry in the Harima Fudoki that similarly talks about an area named “Kamo”. It was apparently so-named because the wild geese used to gather in that area, and, again, they talk about them laying eggs, which must have been an odd find. In that story, however, the eggs were laid in the reign of Homuda Wake, not that of his son, suggesting that this incident, like so many others, may not be in exactly the right spot.
Regardless, that is the last we hear from Takechi no Sukune, aka Takeuchi no Sukune, at least in the Chronicles. From there we need to look at other sources to see what might have happened to him.
A Kamakura source, claiming to be from the no longer extant Inaba no Fudoki, claims that Takechi no Sukune retired around the ripe old age of 360 years old and headed north, to the country of Inaba. He lived there for a time, and then one day he just disappeared. They found a pair of his shoes at Kamegane hill, or so we are told. Today, you can actually visit the site of Kamegane Hill at Ube Shrine, in the southeast of modern Tottori City, near the Fukuro River. It is just north of the archaeological site thought to be that of the old Inaba provincial office, and the shrine claims the title of the Ichinomiya, or principal shrine, of that ancient country. Here they proudly lay claim to the tradition of Takechi no Sukune, which holds that he was buried in a kofun whose remains can be seen on the shrine grounds.
Other sources—all much later than the Chronicles—suggest he died some time during the reign of Ohosazaki, aka Nintoku Tennou, sometime between the 55th year of that reign—the same year that those goose eggs were found—and the 78th year of the same. These accounts then put him at various ages, all on the upper side of his third century, however. As for the actual place of his death, that’s also scattered across the country, with some traditions having him pass away at Kai, others at Mino, and still others having him remain in the Nara region.
Likewise, his actual kofun is also unclear, though we know he had one. One of his descendants, Tamada no Sukune, is depicted escaping to it in one account of the Nihon Shoki, but they don’t actually tell us where it was. The traditions at Ube Jinja obviously have it up there, but in the Nara basin there is a round keyhole shaped tomb known as Muromiyayama Kofun, formerly known also as Muro no Ohobaka. It sits at the foot of the mountains that form the southern extent of the Nara Basin, in Gose city. Some traditions claim that this is where they laid to rest the famed courtier.
The kofun is the correct age, dating to about the start of the 5th century. It is 238 meters long—about 40 meters shorter than Hashihaka Kofun, thought to be the resting place of Queen Himiko, and less than half the size of the giant Daisen Kofun of Nintoku Tennou. So while it may be similar in scope to previous kingly tombs, it doesn’t really hold a candle to what was going on over in the Furuichi-Mozu area of Kawachi—modern Ohosaka. Still, it is impressive, and if it really was for Takechi no Sukune then it seems like a decent kofun for someone of his status, though its placement in the southern edge of the Nara Basin strikes me as slightly odd—I would imagine a tomb mound closer to the court in the Kawachi area, nearer to the kingly Furuichi-Mozu tombs, but perhaps there was some significance in the Gose region that we don’t have the context for, today.
And that is it for the life of Takechi no Sukune—or at least the life that the Chronicles lay out for us to find. But we are still left with quite a few mysteries. Perhaps the largest amongst them is what, in all of this, is actually true?
Well, most of this is going to be conjectural, but I’ll provide some of my own theories. First off, I think that it’s important to note that Takechi no Sukune features in the lineages of some rather important families in the 7th and 8th centuries. Not only is he linked as an ancestor of the royal lineage, but he is also said to be one of the ancestors of the Soga family. The Soga were extremely powerful in the 7th century, to the point that they were effectively running the government, with power that rivaled that of the royal house, itself. There were also numerous other families that traced their lineages back to Takechi no Sukune through one means or another.
So it would make some sense that the ancestor of these powerful families would be an important figure that couldn’t just be written out of the story.
On the other hand, it is possible that we have the opposite effect, here—rather than Takechi no Sukune being important because those families claimed him as an ancestor, it could just as easily be that those families claimed him as an ancestor because he was important. I mean, everyone tried to claim some connection to the royal family, if they could, and Takechi no Sukune is said to have descended from one of the likely fictional sovereigns before Mimaki Iribiko. So there’s that. But also, if he was a known character in so many of the oral histories, it may be that he was a great legendary figure to help bolster your own family’s position in the status-conscious court of the 8th century.
And there is some evidence to suggest that this is the case. You see, many of the more famous families claiming him as an ancestor appear to be doing that through another legendary figure of this time—someone I had actually planned to talk about this episode but, well, we’re already getting a bit long so I think we’ll cover him next time. His name is Katsuragi no So tsu Hiko.
And what stands out, here, is that title: “Hiko”. Now we’ve seen many examples of “Hiko” already. Today it is often translated as Prince or Lord, and we often talk about the Hiko-Hime ruling pairs that are a staple of the earliest stories, where “hiko” appears to be an old word for some kind of territorial ruler or authority.
The key there is that it is an older title. Sukune, and even Wake, appear to be later signifiers of authority, and, in fact, we have one piece of evidence that appears to help place all three of these titles in context for us.
You see, we have a sword dated to the late 5th or early 6th century—probably about a century out from our current temporal coordinates within the narrative. It had been buried at Inariyama Kofun, and it is important because it contains a lineage inscribed on the blade that takes us up to the time of the sovereign Wake Takeru, aka Yuuryaku Tennou. This lineage, starts with Oho-hiko, who may have been the same one mentioned as one of the four generals of Mimaki Iribiko, and it progresses through several generations. In the earliest generations we see a transition in the titles from Hiko, to Sukune, to Wake. If we assume that the family continued to grow more powerful, with successive generations ascending to new heights, then we would expect to see the same kind of progression and escalation of titles in other lineages as well.
For the offspring of Takechi no Sukune, the vast majority of them are also given the title of Sukune, presumab ly inherited from their father. One notable exception to this pattern is So tsu Hiko—if he was truly Takechi no Sukune’s son, then we would expect that he would also have a title like Sukune, or possibly even Wake.
In all likelihood this stems from the fact that So tsu Hiko wasn’t Takechi no Sukune’s son at all.
But, if that is the case, it just leaves us with more questions. If there was no direct connection to these families other than one they made up, then why, again, was he mentioned so many times and in so many places?
Personally, I can’t help but wonder if he was more than what he is made out to be in the text—and that is quite a lot. Perhaps “Prime Minister”, or “Oho-omi”, was a convenient way to explain all the things the stories said he had done. He may have even been something of a legendary figure, but they couldn’t quite slot him into the royal lineage in the way they did with everyone else.
I also wonder if he wasn’t, in fact, a co-ruler. If the theory of co-rulership is true—and it wasn’t actually gendered—then perhaps he wasn’t just an administrator, but was actually a co-sovereign. To that point, I can’t help but notice the similarities between his title, Oho-omi, the Great Minister, and the 5th century title used for the sovereign, “Oho-kimi”.
There is also the business of him and Okinaga Tarashi Hime, where the two often look like they are working extremely closely together, and while that could be explained as the natural response to their situation, I can’t help but wonder if it is more than that.
Another possibility is that he wasn’t a co-ruler, but that he was the chief of one of the other countries in the archipelago—perhaps even a king in his own right. Remember, we are still seeing evidence of some independence in places like Kibi, Izumo, and Tsukushi, even if they may have largely been working with the Yamato hegemon.
If that were the case, it seems the most logical place for him to have been was probably somewhere in Kyushu, which many of the stories connect him to. Perhaps the story of him possibly breaking away and declaring himself the sovereign was not just a fanciful conspiracy theory, but an actual threat to Yamato’s dominance. After all, we’d already seen rulers at the Shimonoseki Straits reportedly telling people that they were the actual rulers of the archipelago. Some have even suggested that most of the actions of the Wa on the peninsula were actually referencing some powerful, northern Kyushu entity, rather than Yamato as we think of them.
There is a less exciting possibility. That one suggests that these stories aren’t actually of the same person, but that Takechi, or perhaps Takeuchi, was actually more like a title that got passed down over time, and that multiple different people held this position during different reigns.
Of course, none of that is really provable without corroborating evidence, and given the lack of any written history prior to the early 5th century, it seems unlikely that we’ll get much more than speculation, at least for now. Heck, there are even those who don’t believe that any of this is even remotely historical, so there’s that, too.
Before we close, though, I do want to touch on one more thing. It is impressive that Takechi no Sukune is so prominent across so many stories, but the Chronicles don’t seem particularly interested in how long-lived he had to have been. Which may give us some evidence, however sketchy, to take another look at just how long people were reigning.
For example, let’s make the assumption that Takechi no Sukune was, indeed, extremely old at the time of his death. While it would probably be odd, let’s assume that he lived for roughly 80 years, and that he died during the reign of Homuda Wake—the incident with Ohosazaki could have just as easily happened when the sovereign was still a young prince. If we assume he passed away in the first or second decade of the 5th century, then he would have come into the world some time towards the start of the 4th, perhaps even as early as the 320s or 330s, with him only being in power from the latter half of that century, since he wasn’t running a country just after he was born. So looking at his professional career, starting with the Oho Tarashi Hiko and continuing to Homuda Wake, we have all four sovereigns of the Tarashi dynasty and then Homuda Wake—five reigns in total. Even allowing that he likely wasn’t in power until late in Oho Tarashi Hiko’s reign, that gives us reigns averaging about 15 years a piece. That’s much shorter than anything claimed in the Chronicles, of course, but much more realistic. Average reign lengths in the latter part of the chronicles, not including Homuda Wake and his immediate successor, average about 11 to 12 years, which makes sense if you assume that typically a reign starts after the death of the previous sovereign—most monarches are coming to the throne when they are much older.
That doesn’t entirely solve our issue of dates, but I do think that it is a useful tool to try to see how, rather than Takechi no Sukune’s lifespan being incredibly long, it is more likely that the reigns that we’ve been seeing up until now were much shorter.
And so, there you have it. The life and times of Takechi no Sukune. I really do think that he is one of the interesting figures in this period, perhaps in part because I suspect he was largely ignored as the Chroniclers were messing with everything. Sure, his timeline gets dragged out with everything else, but I can’t help but wonder if he wasn’t actually a real person, and probably there for the actual coalescing of the early hegemony. The story suggests that when he started his career, Yamato was still largely just a powerful central state, with no real hegemony much beyond the Nara Basin, and that by the end of it Yamato was making alliances and working as a mover and shaker on the Korean continent. The latter half of the 4th century in particular had seen tremendous growth, and if Takechi no Sukune were there for it, well, I think that would be pretty exciting.
Next we’ll talk about someone whose feet are more firmly planted in history—he even gets some love from the continental sources. He is Katsuragi no So tsu Hiko, and though his exploits may not quite rival those of Takechi no Sukune, he was party to some rather important events, especially dealing with Silla and the continental powers.
So, until next time, 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. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Shichirō, M., & Miller, R. (1979). The Inariyama Tumulus Sword Inscription. Journal of Japanese Studies, 5(2), 405-438. doi:10.2307/132104
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 45: The Stele of Gwangaetto the Great, Part II

July 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Image of a horsed warrior from the Goguryeo tomb known as the “Twin Pillar Tomb”, from the 5th century. Though a bit later than our current story, perhaps it was warriors like this that charged down across the peninsula in the late 4th and early 5t… — Image of a horsed warrior from the Goguryeo tomb known as the “Twin Pillar Tomb”, from the 5th century. Though a bit later than our current story, perhaps it was warriors like this that charged down across the peninsula in the late 4th and early 5th century, expanding the realm of Goguryeo under the rule of Gwangaetto the Great. The Twin Pillar Tomb was in Nampo, near modern Pyongyang, the Goguryeo capital after Gwangaetto’s reign. At the National Museum of Korea in Seoul.

RSS

Archives

This episode talks about the rest of the inscription on the stele, and takes us through the invasion of Silla and other conflicts.. We’ll also touch on King Silseong and his rise to power.

A lot of the discussion of this period revolves around the question of who are being referred to as the “Wa” (倭) and debates over just what was the state of the archipelago—pun fully intended. While it is hard to say exactly who might have been included as “Wa”, we might be able to shed a bit more light on this concept of statehood, which sometimes may seem to be splitting hairs for those not entirely familiar with the concept.

First off, I think we all are well familiar with the idea of the modern nation state, which is how most modern countries are organized. But where is that line between early societies—organized in family units, clans, or even villages—and then what we think of as a state, with an organized bureaucracy and some form of centralized authority?

There are plenty of early titles that seem to indicate some level of authority among the Wa, and there seem to be various paramounts with authority. Early on there are discussions of even a kind of taxation system. At what point do the traditions of the culture get codified into laws? How much were things held together through the personal charisma of a given leader vice some larger state apparatus?

The formation of the kofun is a good indicator. With the kofun, you had to mobilize a large amount of labor, meaning that you needed influence and organization to do so. But just how far did that organization extend? Was it centralized in the court? Or was it a series of family alliances, with the elites in various regions paying a kind of tribute up the social ladder, but maintaining direct control of what happened in their own lands and under their own authorities?

Without clear evidence, it is very difficult to say. Furthermore, because of the language used to describe everything, the Chroniclers uses sinographic characters with meaning over on the continent that may be used in an overblown sense in the archipelago.

And so, even if we don’t see a “state” as such over the archipelago, we may see hegemons who are able to command large forces and draw on a variety of resources—possibly even speak for the archipelago on various matters, but do they have the kind of organization that we would refer to as a state?

If we do believe we have a central state, how far did the “state” actually control?

These are all questions that make this period interesting but also frustrating to study—and perhaps it would be easier if our sources were more trustworthy. But that’s what we have.

Specific questions or comments? Feel free to post them, below.

Haniwa depiction of a boat from the 5th century. Was the Karano just a larger version of this?

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 45: The Stele of Gwangaetto the Great, Part II
So last episode, in Part I, we talked about the stele of Gwangaetto the Great, and how useful a historical resource it is, since it was erected shortly after the period of time it describes—starting in 391—and therefore is fairly close to the action. Of course, that doesn’t remove its own biases, such as attempting to aggrandize King Gwangaetto of Goguryeo, the ancient ruler the stone was created to eulogize in the first place. It also doesn’t mean that it is perfect—there are plenty of lacunae in the inscription and the ancient sinographic script is open to various interpretations by modern scholars. And that is without the modern political and cultural issues surrounding the stone, its finding, and its use as propaganda in the early 20th century, which leaves us with some controversial and questionable interpretations. Nonetheless, it is the closest we have to an eye witness to this period and thus we find ourselves piecing together the story in the inscription along with those in the Japanese and Korean Chronicles—specifically the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki, the Kujiki, and the Samguk Sagi. Where possible, we are also trying to square this with the archaeological evidence as well.
As a reminder, this is all ostensibly happening during the reign of Homuda Wake, though that is hard to corroborate. The Korean sources don’t mention a Wa king by name, and although there are episodes we can match up between the Japanese and Korean chronicles it is by no means certain that everything is in the appropriate chronological order. Still, it is what we have to work with—the truth, as you might say, that the Chroniclers left us with—and so it is the story that we have to go off of at this time.
So far that has left us with the story of a powerful Goguryeo state in 391 who was making claims, justified or not, on both Shilla and Baekje as tributary or subordinate states. Certainly Silla seems to have been in some kind of direct relationship with Goguryeo, while Baekje was more on again and then violently off again. Goguryeo of course did not find any fault in their own belligerent activities, but blamed disorder on the peninsula largely on the Wa, whom they seem to have seen as the primary disruptors of the peace.
We discussed the conflicts with Baekje and the eventual death of King Jinsa of Baekje, followed by the ascension of king Asin of Baekje and his reinvigoration of the alliance with the Wa, despite—or perhaps because of—Goguryeo’s invasion and forced subjugation of Baekje, including the delivery to the Goguryeo court of top officials of the Baekje court. King Asin sent his own son, Crown Prince Jeonji, as a hostage to the Yamato court to help reinforce the good relations between those two allies, and then he turned around and began and aborted attempt at a military campaign against their northern rivals.
Meanwhile, the Wa had been continuing their own on again, off again attacks against Silla, who was ruled at this time by King Naemul, the first Silla king that we know from external records to have actually existed, as he sent emissaries to the Eastern Jin court. King Naemul had previously sent a nephew as a hostage to Goguryeo, hoping to enlist that more powerful state as an ally in their own struggles against Baekje and the Wa.
Now, the Silla Annals in the Samguk Sagi claim that the Wa attacked in 393, and that they encircled the capital of Geumseong, at modern day Gyeongju, besieging them for about five days. The soldiers of Silla wanted to go out and take the fight to the Wa troops, or so we are told, but the King told everyone to just sit tight—eventually they would have to leave. This actually seems to have been the tactic most often used in similar accounts in the past. The Samguk Sagi claims that the besieging Wa forces did eventually give it up and began to head back to their ships, at which point the Silla troops were able to heroically sally forth and attack them as they retreated.
The whole encounter leaves me with some questions, but the large question is perhaps why they mention this event, which may, perhaps, have been the impetus on the stele for saying that the Wa had subjugated Silla in the early 390s, but then the Annals don’t mention the other, seemingly much greater conflict in 399 and 400s.
You see, according to the stele, around 399, King Gwangaetto learned that Baekje and the Wa had formed an alliance, and he marched south from Jian to the fortifications at Pyongyang. I suspect that he was intending to punish Baekje for breaking their agreement—one suspects he may have already dealt with the hostages in one form or another, as we don’t hear from them again, but if so, that probably wasn’t enough.
Whatever he may have been planning, however, things changed when he got to Pyongyang, as a messenger arrived from his ally, King Naemul of Silla. According to the message, the Wa were at it again and had invaded that country. As a nominal vassal to the Kingdom of Goguryeo, Silla requested King Gwangaetto’s assistance in removing the Wa from their lands.
King Gwangaetto sent the messenger back with a promise to help, and assurances for the king for Silla. He then made sure to gather all of his forces and they marched down to Silla together.
If the stele is to be believed, this was perhaps one of the largest forces the peninsula had ever seen. It claims that there were 50,000 soldiers in the army that marched south. Even accounting for the exaggerated numbers that were typical of the time, it seems undeniable that it was a large and, shall we say, persuasive force.
It is not quite clear to me if the forces that were occupying Silla at this time were just Wa, or if was a combined Baekje-Wa alliance. The stele gives the Wa top billing, but unfortunately this section is one of the most heavily damaged sections of the stele, leading to a lot of potential interpretations depending on the reader. My sense, however, is that it was likely Baekje and Wa, and possibly some of their allies from Kara as well. That most of the stele seems to rail against the Wa could have been for a variety of reasons, including not wanting to give Baekje too much credit in the campaign—perhaps even trying to hold onto some sense of the fiction that Baekje was a Goguryeo subject and not a rival kingdom.
Now, does anyone remember watching Game of Thrones, and how, when they finally got to the Battle of Winterfell, everything was so dark you couldn’t actually make out any of the action? Yeah, that’s what reading this section of the stele feels like. All of a sudden there are a huge number of missing characters, which no doubt were recounting the triumphs of the Goguryeo soldiers, but most of it is gone, forever lost to history. But at least we can get the gist of it.
What we can be sure of is that Goguryeo repelled the Wa forces and their allies, and pushed them out of Silla. But they didn’t stop at the borders. Gwangaetto and the Goguryeo forces continued with their advance, pushing to the southernmost tip of the peninsula. The stele tells us that the Ara—one of the Kara states—also joined in the fighting, though I’m hard-pressed to tell you whose side they were on, exactly. Eventually, though, the Wa—and likely Baekje—forces gathered at a fortress in the country of Nimna-Gara, which appears to have been somewhere along the southern coast. There they held out for as long as they could, but eventually the fortress fell.
Nimna will show up later in the Japanese chronicles as an allied state, though the nature of that alliance has been contested. Some have even suggested that this could be related to the state of Thak-syun, who had helped facilitate the earlier alliance between Baekje and Yamato. It does show up in the chronicles in an entry with a corrected date of about 396, which claims that Men of Goguryeo, Baekje, Nimna, and Silla all attended the Yamato court, and they were then made to dig a pond, known as the Pond of the Men of Kara—which honestly sounds more like the story of people captured in war and raids and then put to work than any kind of official envoy, but it still is notable for its inclusion among the other kingdoms of the peninsula.
Whatever its status at this time, we will definitely see them later on in the narrative, but this is the first reliable instance of a place by this name, and given the contemporary nature of the stele, well, despite concerns about possible exaggeration on numbers and just how firm things like “subjugation” really were, I think we can have some reasonable confidence that a place called Nimna—known as Imna in Korean and Mimana in Japanese—existed. This was a pretty big deal for the Japanese when they first found it, as much of Japan’s later claims to anything on the peninsula would hearken back to the idea that there was an ally-turned-puppet state-turned Japanese colony on the peninsula until it was wiped out in the wars that would eventually see the peninsula united under a single kingdom. We’ll probably be referencing this again in the future as Nimna—or Mimana—coms to play a larger part in our narrative. For now, we’ll just leave it there in the stele, with the idea that they at least appear to be allied with the Wa at this point in the late fourth century.
Now, I have to admit, I find this whole story rather incredible. Not only for the broken glimpse it gives us into the wars swept through the peninsula at this time, but for the fact that it seems to have not been recorded anywhere else that I can see. It is somewhat understandable that it isn’t in the Baekje or Yamato histories—why would they want to memorialize such a defeat? It may be understandable that it is not found in the Silla annals—unless the earlier account from 393 is expected to cover this period. But the real question is: Why would this not have been included in the Goguryeo annals, at least? Instead, the Goguryeo annals record these years as ones of defeat at the hands of the King of Yan, a rivalry that never makes its way onto the stele.
It is possible that the original records were lost. Or they just weren’t considered important enough by later scribes to include. As we mentioned last episode, the stele itself seems to have been abandoned and forgotten, and so if written annals for this period were not available to the later chroniclers then they may have only been working with external sources.
Or, perhaps, the victory wasn’t all it was cracked up to be on the stele. Sure it was an impressive feat, but was it truly as all-encompassing a defeat as the stele seems to portray?
Whatever the reason, we are left to wonder about just what happened here.
Now, speaking of the stele, what happened when Goguryeo had defeated the Wa and their allies? Did they turn on Baekje and march on their capital? Did they consolidate their power and install governors over the southern territories? Did they exact tribute on the Kara states?
Actually, the stele doesn’t record any of that. Instead, they just seem to have withdrawn their troops. There is no mention of taking more prisoners or hostages. No indication that they required submission and further subjugation. Nor did they march back up through Baekje and take out their anger on them.
Now it is possible that Baekje wasn’t very involved. Perhaps, despite the alliance between the Baekje and the Wa, this was really more of the Wa and other allies on the peninsula, and Baekje wasn’t involved at all. That seems odd, however, given that the authors of the stele’s inscription seem to make a point of how Baekje and Wa had made another alliance, angering Goguryeo. Why would that be mentioned at the top of this particular conflict if it wasn’t relevant?
I have a couple theories on that point. First, I wonder if Baekje was seen as subjugated by the Wa, and therefore, portrayed as they were as the junior partner, it was the Wa, and not Baekje, that Goguryeo focused on. This could also be a bit of politicking—after all they still claimed Baekje as a vassal state, but the Wa were clearly viewed as an external threat. I wonder if this didn’t lead the court to focus the story on the evil Wa and downplay, to some extent, the role that Baekje had played. Heck, if that were the case, it is even possible that Baekje played a much greater role and may have been the lead figure in the invasion force, and they were just written out of the story because it didn’t fit the narrative.
Unfortunately, we just don’t know, and we can speculate all we want, but without more evidence I doubt we’ll reach any firm conclusions.
There is still the question, though of why Goguryeo didn’t do more to solidify their victory, as they had done against Baekje, earlier.
Perhaps they trusted Silla to handle things on their own. Or they just couldn’t keep their troops in the field for too long—a large force, whether 50,000 troops or smaller, was likely a significant portion of the Goguryeo forces, and Goguryeo had expanded significantly. Plus, as the saying goes, “an army marches on its stomach”, and they had traveled a fair distance away from their traditional lands. Even with their victories, I doubt they could exactly rely on the local populace to be friendly and submissive. So sure, they could bring the violence, but once that was over, where do you go from there?
Furthermore, they had other problems. Indeed, as I mentioned before, the Goguryeo annals claim that King Gwangaetto was involved in a separate conflict with the King of Yan—a conflict that must not have been going too well as it never seems to have made it onto the stele. Yan reportedly marched some 30,000 troops across the border with Goguryeo in response to a perceived slight. Perhaps the date on that was slightly off, and that is why Goguryeo forces were pulled back, or perhaps they just didn’t want to leave themselves exposed for any longer than they had to.
Or perhaps the victory wasn’t quite as complete as the stele makes it out to be. Perhaps they had chased their enemies off the Peninsula and back to the archipelago, but were they equipped to follow them?
Whatever the reasons there seems to have been an uneasy peace that existed, though perhaps that was due, in part, to droughts and famine that are mentioned in the Samguk Sagi across the peninsula in the succeeding year. And so it seems that Goguryeo was handling its affairs in the north, and Baekje and Silla were rebuilding and working their way through drought and famine. If there were more attacks, the record seems to be silent.
Then, in 402, the King of Silla, Isageum Naemul, died. According to Silla’s annals in the Samguk Sagi, he had been ruling for almost 50 years, starting in 356. Even if it hadn’t been that long, he is recorded in the Jin court chronicles as having sent an embassy in 381, so he had at least been on the throne for the past 20 years, which was nothing to sneeze at. Quite likely he was the longest reigning king in the region at that time.
That said, his death formed an interesting transition. Despite having several sons of his own, they did not succeed him—not directly. King Naemul had several sons, whom one would expect would have inherited the throne, but we are told they were still young, and so Prince Silseong, who had been a hostage in Goguryeo for the past decade, returned and took on the title of Isageum, or King. One can imagine that this must have only further cemented the alliance between Goguryeo and Silla—the King of Silla wasn’t simply a friend of Goguryeo, but he had spent the last decade in the Goguryeo court. He knew the court, the nobility, and likely knew King Gwangaetto as well. In fact, it is hard not to see the hand of the Goguryeo Court itself in this move, ensuring that they have a friendly ruler overseeing Silla for them.
And that may be why we don’t get Silseong merely as a regent—he seems to have desired more than that. He did marry his daughter to King Naemul’s eldest son, Prince Nulchi. But he would eventually send off Nulchi’s two younger brothers, Misaheun and Bokho, as hostages themselves.
Of particular interest to our narrative is the position of Prince Misaheun. It seems that as soon as Silseong came to the throne in Silla he sent Misaheun as a hostage—but not to Goguryeo as one might think. Instead, he reached out to an unlikely source—the King of the Wa.
Now this seems rather odd, doesn’t it? It isn’t as if the Wa and Silla had been exactly friends. And hadn’t the Wa just taken a severe drubbing from their last run-in with Silla and their Goguryeo allies? So why is Misaheun being sent to the Wa as a hostage?
And this isn’t just in one source. Both the Silla Annals in the Samguk Sagi and the Japanese Chronicles record the incident—though the Japanese chronicles do have a few issues with just where and when it is all happening, as the story got sliced up a bit in the Cuisinart of the Chroniclers own fumbling around with the chronology. Still, it seems likely it actually did happen, so what is up?
One option is that the dates are off. It is possible that Misaheun wasn’t sent to Wa by his uncle, King Silseong, but rather by his father, King Naemul. This is the story given in the Samguk Yusa, and it is dated to about 391.
According to that source, the Wa envoys of the time denounced Baekje’s attacks on Silla and then demanded that Silla return their courtesy by sending a prince to their court. This was around the time of King Jinsa of Baekje—he was the one who noped out of the fighting with Goguryeo, somehow got himself on the outs with Yamato, and eventually died, somewhat suspiciously, during a quote-unquote “hunting trip”, so perhaps there really was some truth to this. According to the story, King Naemul sent 10 year old Prince Misaheun—named Mihae in the Samguk Yusa story, but clearly the same person—back with the Wa. Of course, shortly thereafter the Wa found a new friend in Baekje’s King Asin, and the Samguk Yusa tells us that the Wa immediately treated Prince Misaheun not as an envoy but as a hostage, holding him as leverage over the Silla Kingdom. He would remain in Yamato for the next three decades.
Of course, it is possible that the truth lies somewhere in the middle—sending royal hostages certainly seems to have been a diplomatic tool that we see showing up in this period, and we’ve seen them sent proactively, to help cement an alliance—as was the case with Silseong of Silla and Jeonji of Baekje—but we also have seen them taken by force, such as Goguryeo’s abduction of King Jeonji’s own brother and ten high court officials. Personally, I tend to lean towards that explanation—especially if the invasion of Silla by the Wa and their allies was as complete as the stele makes it sound.
The Silla annals also impart a bit of bias on King Silseong’s part—upset that he had been sent away at such a young age to a foreign court by his own brother, he decided to do the same thing to his brother’s sons, exiling Misaheun to Yamato and eventually sending another nephew to Goguryeo and then, ultimately, attempting to kill the eldest of the three, Prince Nulchi. Thus, the exile of Prince Misaheun may have just been easier for the scribes to pin on Silseong, clearing the name of the revered King Naemul of any failure or misstep.
Either way, King Silseong seems to have garnered some ire from the Chroniclers—possibly for good reason, or possibly because they considered him tainted given his time in Goguryeo. Remember, he hadn’t been living in Silla for the past decade, and if the youngest of Naemul’s sons, Misaheun, was already 10 years old in 391, then that would suggest that his brothers were at least 20 years old, if not more—hardly children at the time, and not so young that one would expect they would need a regent. My personal head canon is that Silseong was likely forced on the Silla court by Goguryeo, and likely leveraged his Goguryeo allies to stay in power. That likely would have done little to endear him to his Silla subjects, and may also explain his attempts to prune the royal line, as it were.
Whatever the reason that Misaheun was sent—whether as an envoy or forced to go at swordpoint—if Silla was hoping that, like Baekje, this would give them some kind of leverage with the Wa—or at least respite from their raids—they were mistaken. The Baekje-Wa alliance under King Asin was strong, and Wa ships continued to plunder the coast.
Speaking of Wa ships, there is one more item of note on the stele having to do with Wa, and it is, frankly, the most difficult of the various claims for me to fully believe. According to the stele, in 404, a Wa fleet arrived at the district of Daifang, the location of the old Daifang commandery, which had fallen to Goguryeo at the start of the 4th century.
We aren’t told exactly what the purpose of such a fleet was—were they simply trying to assist their ally, Baekje, reclaim some of the territory they had lost? Was this an attempt to strike at the heart of Goguryeo and repay them for being kicked out of Silla? Or was it something else? But whatever the purpose, we can be sure they didn’t have Goguryeo’s best interests at heart.
Once again, I’m left to wonder if this was really just the Wa, or if the Wa are just the big scary bogeymen used on the stele. In later centuries it is almost a trope that any pirates, especially in northeast Asia, are attributed to the Wa and the Japanese archipelago. Known as “Wakou” by the mainland—the Japanese typically refer to them as “Kaizoku”, or similar—their reputation was such that almost any raids or violence was attributed to them, whether or not any Japanese were actually involved. It may be that such a reputation was already well-established in this much earlier period.
If so, this could as easily have been a combined fleet—possibly sponsored by Baekje. After all, Daifang is a little farther out than the Wa have typically been traveling—most of their raids so far have been recorded as against Silla and the eastern side of the Korean peninsula, rather than along the Yellow Sea shoreline, most of which was under the control of their ally, Baekje. It would have been extremely odd, therefore, to sail a fleet all the way to Daifang without Baekje’s support. Once again, I suspect Baekje played a larger part in this than they are given credit for.
Unfortunately, once again we just don’t know. What we do know, at least from the stele, is that Goguryeo successfully repelled the invasion, but once again this isn’t recorded in any of the 8th century or later chronicles, whether in Japan or Korea. Once again, perhaps the Chroniclers left out potentially embarrassing episodes in the other sources.
The rest of the stele then continues with King Gwangaetto’s military conquests. It is no wonder that he was known, posthumously, by this moniker, Gwangaeeto: The King who expanded the territory. The other two campaigns mentioned on the stele were a dispatch of troops to either Baekje or Houyen in 407 and the subjugation for “Tung-fu-yu” in 410. The king finally died in 412 or 413, and his tomb and stele seem to have been erected in 414.
Regrettably, that’s all we have from this period—at least in writing. Our next window, outside the Chronicles and archaeological finds, will come at the end of the 5th century in the form of the Song Shu, which will provide some glimpse into five named kings of Wa—but that will need to wait, for now.
Speaking of archaeology, though, what do we see there? Well, starting in the 5th century we see more and more evidence of Korean technology coming to the archipelago. In the Kawachi area in the 5th century we see the rise of Sue ware, which is very similar to a type of pottery found on the peninsula, and we see the development of more and more iron smithing, as well as horses and their associated accoutrements. Whether through conquest or friendship, it is clear that the archipelago was continuing to grow from its contact with the peninsula.
But, as I said, this is still where the text on the stele ends, leaving us with just our familiar companions, the Chronicles and the Korean Annals to help us make sense of what we see in the archaeological record. And as you may have sensed throughout this episode, there isn’t exactly a full agreement between the various sources. While the Stele may have exaggerated various actions, and was possibly even off by a year or two here or there, it was written during the living memory of the events it records. It was likely that they had people who could help them and who remembered what had happened, at least regarding Goguryeo. In contrast, our written sources were all compiled hundreds of years later, and we no longer have the original documents they used to compare them to. There are a few other things as well.
First, there is still the question of who are the “Wa”. Even in the Chronicles, we are confronted with this to an extent, as the Chroniclers used an extant copy of Baekje’s chronicles—along with other continental records—when they put together their own history. They weren’t just going off of the old court records and insular oral histories, but they were using other sources. And since, at that time, “Wa” was known as another name for the country of Japan, it is easy to understand how they would assume that all of those events were actually part of the Yamato court, which, at least at this point, was said to be headed up by Homuda Wake.
Many of the records, though, may have only mentioned the “Wa” or the “King of Wa”, without naming names. Without names, it really is difficult to tell if they are talking about the court of Yamato or if they are talking about other, ethnically Wa groups in Kyushu or elsewhere. Many archaeologists still seem unsure about the overall cohesion of the archipelago at this time. Could a sovereign ruling out of the Kinki region—whether the Nara basin or the Kawachi plain—actually mobilize enough people from across the islands, like the stele and other accounts would seem to claim?
I really struggle with this, and I think part of it goes to definitions of “state” and “kingship”. And I think we get a hint of this from the Japanese word for the sovereign around this time: Ohokimi. This term, which I believe is first written down in relation to Homuda Wake’s successor, was likely the actual term used for Homuda Wake as well. He wouldn’t have been Tennou or, as it was read in a more natural Japanese sense, Sumera no Mikoto, as that was clearly a later title, and so Homuda Wake—and possibly others before him, were likely Ohokimi, a term we see glossed with the sinographic character for “King”. But what does that really mean?
Well, I can’t say for certain, but I would point out that we see “Kimi” as a common title in the chronicles, and it appears to reference important people and families—perhaps even the ancient rulers—of various countries in the archipelago, such as Izumo, Kibi, Izumo, etc. It would be natural to assume, then, that Ohokimi was simply the Great Kimi, or the Great Lord—or perhaps the great sovereign or king.
To be honest the only thing that makes real sense to me, from the period of Queen Himiko to our present point in the narrative, is that there must have been networks of alliances, more like a kind of confederation, with Yamato as a nominal head. Even as the dynasties changed and the courts moved about the Kinai region, I find it telling that the name “Yamato” appears to have persisted from the period of Queen Himiko up through the current. Even in the unified period of the Sengoku period, there were identities tied up in the ancient provinces—what used to be the old independent states of the archipelago. That would indicate that even if the territory and even dynasties may have shifted some over time, the name itself seems to have held some cachet and identity with the people throughout the centuries.
Personally, I suspect that the Wa were not a unified state, but neither should we assume that they were all acting unilaterally. Rather, I tend to think that the ruler in Yamato may have acted in a role that was, quite often, primus inter pares—the first among equals. I see a parallel in how the shogunal authorities managed affairs, and even during the powerful reign of the Tokugawa there were those domains that were more independent, held together less by the strict threat of violence and more through an intricate web of politics and consequences.
If that were not the case, then we are left truly wondering: Who are these Wa that are apparently having such an effect on the continent that they are a thorn in the side of King Gwangaetto the great? Why would they be mentioned in so many of the conflicts that were ongoing? Why would Silla and Baekje be sending their princes as hostages?
Hopefully this will get somewhat easier as we move through the 5th century and cover the rest of this Middle Dynasty. Over time, Yamato authority would continue to expand. Where they previously had direct control over the Nara Basin, the Middle Dynasty seems to have had direct control over a larger area, but I suspect that just means that they had a more indirect control over the rest of the islands. This is portrayed, in the Chronicles, as a divine imperial authority, but that is no doubt an exaggeration. Still, the evidence that we have so far does seem to suggest that the Wa could somehow field enough troops to be of concern to their peninsular neighbors.
Speaking of which, there is a story in the Chronicles that I think might fit well in here. It is the story of a ship, of all things: The Karano.
The Karano was built, we are told, by the people of the country of Izu. This country was located on the mountainous, forested peninsula of the same name, at the eastern edge of modern Shizuoka prefecture, south of Mt. Fuji, between Sagami and Suruga Bays. This ship was tremendous for its day—the chronicles say it was 10 rods long, which is estimated to be around 100 feet in length. For reference, that is just 17 feet shorter than the Santa Maria, the flagship of Christopher Columbus when he sailed from Europe to the Caribbean. This thing must have been massive for its day, and it said to have been fast, as well—likely because of the number of rowers it could accommodate.
Now, as usual, we may be getting a bit of hyperbole in all of this. I doubt someone took a measuring stick out, and if they did, that it was precisely written down. I’m not even sure if the measurements they use—often translated as “rod”—were actually the lengths we ascribe to them. Many of these kinds of measurements could vary slightly from place to place until there was a single authority to provide a standard. And most of the time it didn’t matter. Whether it was 60 feet long or 100 feet long the point was that it was big.
And what was the purpose of building large ships if not to carry lots of men and equipment?
The Karano—meaning “Light and Swift—was built around 394, and it was supposedly called that because, well, was said to be light and swift. Based on when it was built, it would have been in service for most of the encounters on the peninsula. It remained in service until about 420, a total of 26 years, but by the end of that time, it was done. Seawater and time are not kind to wooden vessels, and over time, it started to break down. We are told that it had rotted out and was in disrepair. And so they decided to honor the ship, which had doubtless seen its share of action by then. They disassembled the ship and decided to use the wood to burn seaweed for salt, which would, in turn, be sent out to the various countries in return for ships, built as the spiritual ancestors of the grand Karano.
The salt fires were lit, and the salt collected, but at the end of it, they realized that not all of the wood had burned through. Some of it had survived, and so they took the unburnt wood and made a zither, or koto, and a song was composed to commemorate the event.
By the way, the fleet of ships? Well, they didn’t fare quite so well as the Karano. Apparently as they came in they were gathered as a fleet in Muko Bay. As they were sitting there, likely pulled up onto the beach, a fire broke out in the buildings on shore. Apparently the fire quickly spread and it must have caught the boats, and the entire fleet went up in flames.
So once again we have a story emphasizing the nautical nature of Yamato’s power, and describing some truly impressive ships for the time. Even if they are exaggerations, we can see that it was an important aspect of the culture and people of the 4th and early 5th century archipelago. A people we will try to get to know more in subsequent episodes.
But for now, that’s probably enough. Thank you for listening, and I hope you were able to follow along. This period is confusing, but fascinating at the same time. Perhaps the main takeaways are the chaos and violence on the peninsula, which are often times of growth and change, and the involvement of the Wa in so much of what was going on. Plus the various alliances—in particular that of Baekje and Yamato. This would be crucial in later years.
Of course, there is a lot more to come—we haven’t even touched on our long lived prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, and I want to introduce another figure of some note, whom we have perhaps briefly made mention of, Kazuraki no Sotsuhiko. We’ll also go into details on just what became of the princely hostages. There is so much going on this reign, I don’t think we’ll cover all of it—we probably don’t need to talk about the 200th time that the Silla coast was raided, for instance, but we’ll see where the narrative takes us.
So, until next time, 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. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
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.
Rhee, S., Aikens, C., Choi, S., & Ro, H. (2007). Korean Contributions to Agriculture, Technology, and State Formation in Japan: Archaeology and History of an Epochal Thousand Years, 400 B.C.–A.D. 600. Asian Perspectives, 46(2), 404-459. Retrieved June 18, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42928724
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Shultz, E. (2004). An Introduction to the "Samguk Sagi". Korean Studies, 28, 1-13. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720180
Iryŏn, ., Ha, T. H., & Mintz, G. K. (2004). Samguk yusa: Legends and history of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press.
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
Hatada, T., & Morris, V. (1979). An Interpretation of the King Kwanggaet'o Inscription. Korean Studies, 3, 1-17. Retrieved June 18, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23717824
Kiley, C. (1973). State and Dynasty in Archaic Yamato. The Journal of Asian Studies, 33(1), 25-49. https://doi.org/10.2307/2052884
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 44: The Stele of Gwangaetto the Great, Part I

July 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Detail of the stele honoring Gwangaetto the Great

RSS

Archives

This episode we look at the late 4th century history of the peninsula—especially the role of the “Wa”—with the addition of what we are told by the inscription on the stele outside of the tomb of the Goguryeo king, Gwangaetto the Great, whose posthumous name even references his work expanding the territory of the Goguryeo kingdom.

We talked about Goguryeo somewhat when we discussed the Three Kingdoms of the Korean peninsula. It is the oldest of the Three Kingdoms, but because of its position at the head of the peninsula it has not generally had direct contact with the people in the southern tip of the peninsula and the archipelago. Instead, the people of the archipelago mainly seem to have dealt with the Samhan—the three states of Mahan, Byeonhan, and Jinhan—and then the successor states of Baekje, Silla, and the independent states of Kara. But with the Wa raids on Silla, who then allies with Goguryeo, sending one of their princes to the Goguryeo court, and the Wa alliance with Baekje, a traditional rival with Goguryeo, the Wa and Goguryeo would start to come into conflict.

The territory of Goguryeo fluctuated over the centuries, but largely seems to have centered between the Yalu River and Pyongyang, at least in the 4th century. The Yalu River, for those who aren’t familiar with peninsular geography, is the modern border between China and North Korea. In fact, that border, at the head of the peninsula, is largely the Yalu River to the southwest and the Tumen River to the northeast, both of which flow to the sea. In fact, across the river in China are areas of ethnic Koreans who are, in fact, living as an ethnic minority in PRC controlled territory in the modern states of Liaoning and Jilin.

The old capital of Goguryeo and the royal tombs of the 4th century are located at modern Jian in Jilin Province, just on the PRC side of the Yalu River. Later, the Goguryeo capital would move back down to Pyongyang, the current capital of North Korea. Of course, the current political climate tends to make sites in North Korea difficult for others to gain access at this time.

Regardless, we do have some access to the Goguryeo stele and to the various tracings and rubbings that have been made over the years, and in the podcast we talk about some of how that came about.

The Kings of Goguryeo

So let’s quickly recap the kings of Goguryeo. I’m mostly going to use the posthumous names by which they are largely known and this is just a very quick overview:

King Bongsang (r. 292-300) - Not treated well in the Annals, he killed many of his rivals and was eventually killed himself. This or the next reign may have been the point when some nobles fled Goguryeo for Mahan, eventually founding the state of Baekje.

King Micheon (r. 300-331) - Fled the tyranny of King Bongsang and was invited back after the latter’s death. This is the other reign that may have seen an exodus of Goguryeo officials. This is the reign when Goguryeo destroyed the old Commanderies on the peninsula, which allowed Goguryeo to start expanding south but also provided room for the other states on the peninsula to start to expanding and solidifying into independent states as well.

King Gogugwon (r. 331-371) - Gogugwon followed King Micheon. His reigns suffered from numerous foreign invasions. He eventually died defending Pyongyang from Baekje forces, and is the only Goguryeo king to actually die in battle.

King Sosurim (r. 371-384) - He strengthened Goguryeo, who was still involved in numerous military conflicts, especially with the peninsular state of Baekje. It is also said that it is in this reign that Buddhism first came to Goguryeo—but we’ll talk about that in a later episode when we get to Buddhism and how it came to the archipelago.

King Gogugyang (r. 384-391) - He continued to build up the Buddhist and Confucian institutions in Goguryeo, continued to push back against Baekje and others, and allied with King Naemul of Silla, taking in Prince Kim Silseong, King Naemul’s nephew, as a royal hostage.

King Gwangaetto (r. 391-413) - King Gwangaetto the Great is the king in our current moment in the podcast, and his expansionist wars helped grow the boundaries of Goguryeo, and would spark over a century of growth in what was one of the high points of the Goguryeo kingdom.

The Kings of Baekje

Below is a short summary of the Kings of Baekje of interest to us.

King (Geun)Chogo (r. 346-375) - Called the “Later” Chogo in the Samguk Sagi he was probably just King Chogo, originally. He is considered the first historical sovereign of Baekje, though Baekje history claims a much lengthier lineage, all the way back to the mythical King Jumong, just like Goguryeo. It was during his reign that friendly relations were first established with the Wa, which is also mentioned in the Japanese Chronicles. It was also during his reign when Baekje attacked Pyongyang and killed King Gogugwon of Goguryeo.

King (Geun)Gusu (r. 375-384) - Like his father, he was also a “Later” king Gusu according to the Samguk Sagi, but many believe the previous Gusu was fictional, added to pad the lineage. He kept up the fight against Goguryeo and, from all accounts, maintained friendly relations with the Wa.

King Chimnyu (r. 384-385) - He is considered the first king to actually recognize Buddhism. Other than that, his reign was cut short due to his untimely death.

King Jinsa (r. 385-392) - He was the brother of King Chimnyu, and came to the throne because the Crown Prince, Prince Abang, was still considered too young. Under his rule, Baekje suffered major defeats by Goguryeo, and relations with the Wa appear to have fallen apart. He died while off on a hunting expedition, according to the Samguk Sagi, while the Japanese Chronicles claim that he was killed by his own people.

King Asin (r. 392-405) - King Asin (formerly Crown Prince Abang) came to power after his uncle, King Jinsa, passed away. He suffered initial defeats by Goguryeo and, according to the inscription on the Gwangaetto Stele, was made to submit to Goguryeo. Afterwards, he strengthened the friendship with the Wa, sending his own son, Prince Jeonji, to the Wa court as a hostage, much as Silla had done with Prince Silseong. This alliance appears to have further angered Goguryeo, who went back on the warpath.

King of Silla

Surprisingly, there is only one king of Silla that seems to have been active through most of the time that we are largely concerned with in this episode:

King Naemul of Silla (r. 356-402) - Ruling under the title of maripgan, he was recorded as king in the annals of the Eastern Jin. He was likely the king for the early alliance of Baekje and Wa, which may be the reason for his alliance with Goguryeo, sending his nephew, prince Silseong, as a hostage to that country. Later, when Baekje and Wa allied again under King Asin of Baekje, he would call on Goguryeo’s aid.

A note about “Wa”

So I want to talk a bit about the “Wa”. This is how most of the continental sources refer to the Japanese until they rename themselves as “Nihon”. In later Chinese records there are notes that the character for “Wa” should be understood as “Yamato”. But there are still questions about whether that actually encompassed all of the Wa ethnic groups. There are many who feel that Yamato, though a powerful Wa state, was just one of many. It could be that the original Wa-Baekje alliance was with a different state of the Wa, and that the raids against Silla were likewise made by another state, one situated in Northern Kyushu, most likely.

When the Japanese chroniclers in the 8th century were compiling everything, they made the assumption that “Wa” always referred to “Yamato” and therefore deftly added them into the narrative where they felt it was appropriate. As such, it is possible that all of the records from the Baekje Annals, while likely accurate, are not, strictly speaking, about Yamato. I am trying to be careful about which one I’m using, but I won’t guarantee that I don’t switch them up here and there, but just realize that does cause a bit of confusion.

One piece of possible evidence for the idea that this was Yamato all along is, in my opinion, the seven-branched sword commissioned in 372, which was sent to the Isonokami Shrine in the Yamato region. If that sword, which seems to clearly link a state of the Wa with Baekje, was indeed sent to some other group, then one assumes that it was later taken, possibly as a spoil of war or conquest—or possibly as part of the accumulation of shrine treasures that we see discussed in the earliest part of the Chronicles—and moved to Isonokami. If it was placed at Isonokami from the get-go, that seems to be an indication that it may indeed have been Yamato that Bakeje was allying with. Regardless, just know that it is more than a bit confused.

That should give you much of the background for this episode. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us!

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 44: The Stele of Gwangaetto the Great, Part One
Today we are going to head back to the peninsula for a bit and talk about what was going on there, ostensibly during the reign of our current sovereign in Yamato, Homuda Wake. This is going to be the first of two episodes—I was initially just planning to do one but, honestly, I felt there was enough here to break it into two shorter pieces.
As I’ve alluded to in previous episodes, one of the frustrating things about this period in Japanese history is how far all of our sources are from the actual events that are happening. I mean, sure, the writers of the Chronicles were bringing in fragments of records that were probably closer to the source, but they were compiling this all with their knowledge of events some 3 to 4 centuries later. We have enough trouble figuring out what happened in the 17th and 18th centuries, today, and that was with all of the things that actually got written down. And a lot of historical records are not the most detailed—people tend to leave out a lot of the whys and wherefores and simply give you the bare bones details. Consider: if you are going to write an account of what is going on around you, what do you include, and what do you leave out with the assumption that it is obvious to readers? Filling in the missing pieces is a constant practice for historians. I mean, if 2020 were recounted in ancient histories it probably would be something like: In the 2nd month of 2020, a great plague infested the land and there was great suffering. And that literally might be about it. Perhaps in 2021 you’d see a note about vaccines being distributed for the Great Plague, but you wouldn’t get a blow-by-blow of what happened, who said what, when, etc. And then, hundreds of years later, someone has to find that particular entry of interest for their purposes and include it in their compilation of events. It is no wonder things get lost.
And so whenever we can get a contemporary account to compare the Japanese Chronicles to, it is priceless. And that’s why the Gwangaetto stele is so impressive. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the fact that it is a huge slab of stone is rather impressive. Specifically it is a large slab of natural stone, 6.2 meters, and about one and a half to two meters on a side. It is covered in Sinographic characters—Chinese writing—and these tell the story of King Gwangaetto the Great of Goguryeo.For us, though, the most important part is that it was erected in 414 and it tells the story of Gwangaetto the Great and his reign, covering the period from about 390 to Gwangaetto’s death – so, in other words, it was written down shortly after all of those events happened. And even that might not mean much to our story except that many of his dealings specifically mention the Wa, or Japanese. So, this stone slab is possibly the closest we have to a contemporaneous, eyewitness account of what was happening on the peninsula, and what role the Wa had in it.
Before we get to what it says—and match that up with what we know in our other sources, let’s talk briefly about the history of this monument so we can gain a little bit of context. We know that it was erected in 414 outside of the tomb of King Gwangaetto the Great of Goguryeo. His tomb lies just outside of the capital at that time in Jian, in the middle reaches of the Yalu River in what is today part of the People’s Republic of China. Shortly after the stele was erected, Gwangaetto’s successor moved the capital south, to Pyongyang, leaving several families in charge of taking care of the tomb and the stele. Eventually, Goguryeo itself fell, becoming part of a single, unified kingdom that would become what we know as Korea, and over time the area of the old capital site was completely abandoned. The grand tombs of the kings of old became overgrown, and their monuments were lost, except to the odd traveler who would pass by and remark on them, but whether it was because they were so overgrown, or just a general apathy, nobody seems to have bothered to record what they had to say. Despite this, the monument continued to stand, alone, for centuries.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the stele gained renewed interest. The Qing dynasty had decided to open up land in the area of modern Jian, and numerous farmers, lured out with the promise of new land to open up, started to come in and cultivate the area. This was no doubt driven in part by the encroachment of Russia and the European powers, creating a very dynamic situation. Into this mix came Japanese adventurers as well.
When some farmers reported their find of a large stone slab, the local Qing official came out to investigate. To get a better look, he had all of the vegetation covering the stone burned off, leaving only the stone itself, and using tracing paper he had the first ever copy made. Holding the tracing paper up to the stone, the characters were individually traced, one by one, and then everything outside of them was filled in with black ink. This kind of copy is less accurate than a rubbing, and prone to error, but may have been done because of the stone’s rough, uneven surface. Eventually there would be rubbings made as well.
Only a few short years after its discovery, the stele was noticed by a Japanese man named Sakao Kagenobu. He was an army officer and an intelligence agent of the Japanese General Staff office, and he was charged with investigating conditions in Manchuria and China. Since the Meiji Revolution in 1868, which overthrew the shogunate and put in place a new government under the head of Emperor Meiji, Japanese, particularly military officers, had been traveling around the world in an effort to help gather information and modernize their newly opened state. Japan had a particular interest in the continent, and was already building its influence in part through the rapid acquisition of western technology. When Kagenobu sent an outline tracing of the stele back to the Japanese General Staff Office there was a lot of fascination with it because this object—situated at the head of the Korean peninsula—contained numerous references to the “Wa”, a known reference to Japan and the Japanese, such that even the kanji for Yamato can be translated as the Great Wa. Moreover, these references included language that could be interpreted to say that the early Japanese state had actually subjugated the kingdoms of Baekje and Silla, enhancing the idea of Japan as a powerful early state with historical claims on the ancient Korean entities.
There was also mention of another important location in the stele’s text: Nimna, or as the Japanese knew it, Mimana.
Now as we’ve discussed on previous episodes, the Japanese Chronicles mention Mimana, and in the early 19th century it was specifically believed in Japan that ancient Yamato had a colony on the Peninsula which was referred to as “Mimana Nihonfu”—a phrase used in the chronicles for the 6th century, during the reign of the sovereign known posthumously as Kinmei Tennou. This phrase has raised a lot of speculation and debate, but in the 19th century the Japanese—particularly members of the General Staff—latched onto this idea of Japan’s historical role on the peninsula as a rationalization for their own desires to gain a foothold on the continent. A team of military scholars and civilian historians were convened to go over the stele, which does mention both the Wa and the country of Nimna. They published their findings in 1889 under the authorship of Yokoi Tadanao, who was a professor at the Military Academy and the director of the research into the stele’s inscription.
Of course, Japan would go ahead and continue to push forward their continental ambitions, and in 1895 they would go to war with the Qing in what has become known as the first Sino-Japanese war. Ostensibly this was to protect Japanese interests in Korea, and it largely put Korea under Japanese influence. Japan would eventually set up the puppet state of Manchu-kuo and generally continue to be belligerent until they were defeated at the end of World War II. And while the interpretation of the Gwangaetto stele had not exactly caused the war, it was one more factor seen as pushing the Japanese in that direction.
And so it should be unsurprising the Korean scholars have challenged the interpretation of the stele by the Japanese military. There are even claims that the Japanese military defaced the inscription, changing, adding, or erasing characters to ensure that it fit with their interpretation. This was first brought up by Yi Chin-hui, a Korean scholar living in Japan in the early 1970s who published his own work, studying the various tracings, rubbings, etc. that had been made by that point. This had intense repercussions throughout the scholarly community, with some looking to reexamine the inscription and others attacking Yi’s work. Since then independent Chinese scholars have verified the authenticity of the inscription as it is known—though there are certainly parts missing, there is no indication of deliberate tampering with the passage that has been found.
In fact, in more recent years, another stele was found that seems to authenticate some of the Gwangaetto stele’s inscription—or at least the characters used in it. Though the other inscription was more administrative in nature, the characters used seemed to match those found on the Gwangaetto stele. Similar characters have also been found in metal engravings from this period. All of that helps vouch for the veracity of the inscription as it is.
That hasn’t exactly settled the debate, however, and arguments about the authenticity still come up from time to time. The stele is worn and some of the characters are missing—or may never have existed in the first place, given the irregularities of the stone, which may have forced the authors to shorten some of the lines. In addition, the language it is written in does not lend itself to easy translation. Scholars have made various interpretations of the stele by breaking sentences at different points. Since the ancient Chinese that was the early written language of the peninsula and the archipelago didn’t exactly use punctuation like we do today, and even the meaning of certain characters has changed over time, there is a lot of room to interpret the stele in different ways, and some of the missing characters could drastically affect a reading if they were something unexpected. Scholarly arguments exist for various readings, most biased in some way towards a particular scholar’s pre-existing understanding of this history of this period.
On top of questions of authenticity and interpretation there are also questions about the veracity of what was written on the stele. Though many of the sections of interest to us were written in a matter-of-fact style, we must remember that this was, primarily, a political tool, written to aggrandize a deceased monarch. Gwangaetto himself is referred to specifically as a “King” or even “Great King”, while the rulers of other states are given lesser titles of sovereignty—a not-so-subtle dig at their status vis-à-vis Goguryeo.
Some of these even get downright rude. While the character used for the Wa is the same derogatory character that showed up in the Wei and Han chronicles, the Wa forces are usually referenced as either pirates or brigands rather than with more martial or military terms. Likewise the state of Baekje is actually referred to as Baekchan, or just “Chan”, using a character that means “crippled”. It has been suggested that this was an attempt to label Baekje as a morally crippled state, likely named such because of the opposition they presented to Goguryeo.
There is also a debate on just who is meant by the “Wa” in this inscription. Many have debated that the actions taken by Wa seem much too grandiose to be referring to the archipelago, which many see at this point as not yet unified into the kind of kingdom that could be participating in military expeditions over on the peninsula; certainly the keyhole tomb mound culture is still growing across the archipelago, but there are plenty of regional differences such that many don’t consider the unification of the islands entirely complete. Others have suggested that the “Wa” mentioned here are simply ethnic Wa pirate groups, likely based out of North Kyushu. Others have suggested that the Wa were an extension of Baekje. Still others have suggested that they were a completely different group.
All that said, I think there is still plenty in here to give us an idea of what was happening, and I tend to think that the Wa here is, indeed, referring to the Japanese of the archipelago. It may not necessarily mean that every instance of Wa was a formally sanctioned military endeavor by the court at Yamato. Which gets to one more thing about the stele: the events it talks about don’t necessarily have clear connection with anything in the other written records. Neither the Samguk Sagi nor the Japanese chronicles reference the information from the stele directly. That doesn’t mean they disagree, though: when you look at the events, many seem to line up, even if years don’t exactly correlate.
Now the content of the stele itself can largely be broken up into three parts. The opening lines are about the mythical founding of Goguryeo, all the way back to the legendary King Jumong, and then the rise of the stele’s main subject, King Gwangaetto.
The second part of the stele, which is the area that we are most interested in at this point, recounts his military exploits and expeditions. All told,there are roughly seven different campaigns that are mentioned on the stele. Along with the subjugation of various groups, some of whom we have no other clear records for, like the Pi-Li, the Po-Shen, and the Tung-fu-yu, the stele also details one campaign specifically against Baekje and several campaigns, against the Wa, including not a few invectives thrown at them for good measure. It is these latter campaigns that will be our primary focus.
The last part of the stele includes instructions for the tombs caretakers—those families who were put in charge of tending to the tomb and its environs. Though a fascinating look at Goguryeo culture and society, we’ll leave that for other scholars to ponder.
So enough with the context. We’ll be looking at what was happening during the time covered in the stele’s inscription, and we’ll be placing it in context with the information from the Korean annals of the Samguk Sagi and what we find in the Japanese Chronicles as well to try to get a handle for just what might have been happening. So let’s get into just what we think is going on here, and to start with, let’s check back in with the Kingdom of Goguryeo.
Now several episodes back when we were talking about Baekje we mentioned that Baekje under King Chogo, who reigned from about 346-375, was at the height of its power. During his reign they had pushed north, all the way to Pyongyang, where they had even killed king Gogugweon of Goguryeo, giving him the dubious distinction of being the only king of Goguryeo to ever actually die in battle.
Of course, that didn’t put an end to the violence. Baekje may have had a significant victory, but it appears they did not have the forces to keep it—something we’ll see time and again. So after sacking Pyongyang, rather than occupying the city for themselves, Baekje pulled back, keeping only a portion of the territory they had conquered. Back and forth fighting continued along the border between Baekje and Goguryeo through the next several reigns. But it wasn’t just Baekje that Goguryeo was fighting. Positioned as they were at the head of the Korean peninsula, straddling the areas of modern Liaoning and Jilin, they were also contending with various tribes in the north, as well as with natural disasters—in the years 388-389 there was drought and locusts leading to severe famine.
Then, in 391, the King died, and the Crown Prince, Tamdeok, came to the throne. He would be the one who would later be known as Gwangaetto the Great, and he’s the one for whom this stele was eventually erected.
Now, spoiler alert: if you know Korean history you likely know about Gwangaetto the Great. His full posthumous title is Kukkangsang Kwanggaet'ogyeong hot'ae-wang, and sometimes he is known as Hot’ae and sometimes as Yeongnak. He was probably known as Tamdeok until after his death, but for our purposes I’m going to refer to him as Gwangaetto. If you go out looking there are movies and even miniseries about him as one of the truly legendary figures in Korean history. Even without the stele, he’s a badass who expanded his nation’s reach over the course of his reign. It is in this expansion that he came into contact with the Wa, and thus our interest.
Despite the trials of the previous reign, Goguryeo seems to have been doing alright when Prince Tamdeok assumed the throne. The stele, which was written some 2 decades later, claims that Baekje and Silla had long been subjects of Goguryeo, but in 391 Wa came in, and, well, basically they messed everything up. If we are to believe the stele, Goguryeo was sitting sweet and pretty at the top of the heap on the peninsula and, well, it would have stayed that way if it weren’t for those meddling Wa.
This is perhaps the most controversial part of the entire stele, because one interpretation is that the Wa came in and effectively subjugated both Baekje and Silla. This is based on a particular reading of the characters and an assumption of one missing character. This reading, of course, fits in beautifully with that of the Japanese Chronicles, which does make the claim that Yamato did cross the waves and subdue Silla and at least ally themselves with Baekje. But yet, when we look at the archaeology, do we really see a state ready to take on this kind of an expansionist challenge? According to the archaeological record, the islands themselves weren’t fully unified at this time, so how is it that they are quote-unquote “subjugating” others?
And maybe part of it has to do with that word, “subjugate”. To quote Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word… I do not think it means what you think it means.”
For most of us, I suspect when we hear “subjugate” we think of the meaning “to bring under dominion or control”, and it is that last piece, “control”, that I’m not sure is entirely accurate. From what we’ve seen of the Wa at this time, their modus operandi appears to be that of a seaborne raiding culture, when it comes to the peninsula. If they can get the resources they need without raiding—for instance if someone is willing to pay them to get out of the fighting and inevitable destruction that would come with it—then that suits their needs. And so I wonder if “subjugate”, to them, was little more than ensure promises of payment.
There was no need for direct interference in their local affairs. As long as people paid lip service to your authority and the prestige goods, kept making their way through—by which Yamato could pay off the other states in the archipelago and keep them on their side, then what more is needed?
But the language that they are using to record all of this is the language of empire. And so I take it that everything could be skewed through that lens as well. The words and terms that were likely expected by the scribes, who have inherited their arts from the courts of the Jin, the Wei, and going back to the Han and Qin states, well, those were based on a concept of statehood and control that may have far outpaced what we actually have in the peninsula—let alone the archipelago—at this time.
There is also the thought here that the scribes of Goguryeo may have been exaggerating for effect. This is the tomb of Gwangaetto the Great, after all! Of course Baekje and Silla had been their subjects. You know… in the past… at some point…. Hey now, let’s not get caught up in all the minutiae, alright? They were ours and you all know it and you can just shut up about it.
Seriously, though, this was meant to be a monument, and claiming some kind of ancient status over the peninsula was just the kind of power move that one would expect here, so I don’t think we need to pay it too much mind, honestly.
That said, in support of the stele’s take on things, we are told in the Samguk Sagi that the king of Silla sent his nephew, Silseong, to live in Goguryeo as a hostage, so one assumes that they were fairly close. Or at least, Silla wanted to be close—probably influenced by the fact that they had pirates on their coastline and Baekje at their front door. That said, I’m not sure I’m buying it that Baekje was in the same position: There are numerous accounts of Goguryeo raiding the Baekje border, and vice versa, and, again according to the Samguk Sagi, in 392, King Gwangaetto of Goguryeo attacked Baekje with such ferocity that of the King of Baekje at that time pretty much refused to go out and face them. He just noped himself into his capital city and allowed the Goguryeo to do their thing.
It is possible that the stele could be referencing the much older connection—that Baekje claimed descent from the same Buyeo nobility as Goguryeo. If they really were founded by nobility from Buyeo or even from Goguryeo itself, the Goguryeo court may have honestly seen Baekje as their traditional subjects, regardless of how Baekje saw things.
And speaking of Baekje, let’s switch focus for a moment: According to the Baekje annals in the Samguk Sagi, this historical noping-out was in the 8th year of King Chinsa, a grandson of King Chogo, who had previously opened up relations with the Wa. He had taken over when his brother, King Chim’nyu, unexpectedly died just two years into his reign. As it turned out, Chim’nyu’s own son, Abang, was still young, and so Chinsa came to the throne instead. Japanese records, based on their own copy of the old Baekje annals, also acknowledge Chim’nyu’s death and Chinsa’s ascension, but claim that Chinsa effectively usurped the throne. If that is the case, one has to wonder just how much of the court supported his reign at this time. The official record paints a rather flattering picture of him, but what wasn’t written down? Rarely do you see this kind of usurpation without some hard feelings.
The Nihon Shoki goes on to provide an account from 392 that claims that Chinsa was disrespectful towards Japan—a rather vague causus belli that goes hand-in-hand with the exaggerated position that they were somehow suzerains of the southern peninsula—so Homuda Wake sent a force to call him to account. However, by the time they arrived they found that he had died—specifically the Nihon Shoki claims that the people of Baekje killed him by way of apology and established his nephew, Abang, as King.
Could it be that with all of Baekje’s defeats at the hands of Goguryeo—especially the latest by King Tamdeok, aka Gwangaetto—he offered some form of submission to Goguryeo? If so, Yamato may have seen this as disrespectful if they believed that Baekje had pledged their submission—or at least allegiance—to *them* instead. After all, Goguryeo appears to have been allied with Yamato’s traditional rival, Silla, and so if Goguryeo asserted dominion of some kind over Baekje as well, Yamato would be isolated. That could disrupt the flow of goods to the islands, and, as we’ve seen multiple times in the past, when the trade spigot is turned off or disrupted the archipelago often experiences chaos. I even wonder if this isn’t the basis for the apparent unity within the archipelago—even if the countries themselves are independent, they would band together to keep the routes to the continent open for trading—not to mention the occasional raid.
That said, only the Nihon Shoki claims that the King Chinsa was killed by his own people. It would be understandable—if he wasn’t standing up to Goguryeo, Baekje’s long-time rival, that may have been seen as grounds for some sort of coup. But the Korean sources we have claim that he actually spent time hunting out at a place called Kuweon, around the time that Goguryeo attacked and overran the seemingly impregnable fortress of Kwanmmi. The King was gone for 10 days, never returning back to the court, and he finally died at his temporary residence.
It is easy, here, to see a King that has abdicated his responsibilities. While he doesn’t have a golf course to go to, hunting was effectively the noble equivalent at the time—a leisure pastime for the wealthy, as opposed to subsistence hunting for your daily meal. And here he’s out gallavanting at the same time that Goguryeo is devastating the north of the country. It would hardly be unusual in human history for members of his court to be eager to do something about a King that wasn’t governing, regardless of whether his actions would have actually affected the outcome or not.
Then there is also that question about what happened with the succession. If he really had come to power under questionable terms, and there was a legitimate heir waiting in the wings, perhaps there was already an anti-Chinsa faction at the court who questioned his legitamacy, and, well—let’s just say that I wonder what actually happened out on that hunting trip, you know?
Regardless of what actually happened, it seems clear that King Chinsa was dead, and Prince Abang, the son of King Chimnyu, was crowned as the new King of Baekje, and he would be known to posterity as King Asin. Now King Asin’s reign was almost immediately faced with the threat of Goguryeo and King Gwangaetto’s expansionist intentions. There were successive campaigns between Baekje and Goguryeo. In fact, there was a campaign of some sort each year for the next three years, in 393, 394, and 395. So if there were any concessions that Goguryeo had extracted from King Chinsa, it seems those were already as dead as season two of Jupiter’s Legacy.
Things came to a head in the autumn of 395. Baekje’s annals in the Samguk Sagi claim that King Asin ordered his troops to attack Goguryeo, and King Gwangaetto himself rode out to meet them, personally commanding 7000 of his own soldiers. The resulting battle above the P’aesu River was a huge defeat for Baekje, who lost 8,000 soldiers in the engagement. King Asin then attempted to personally lead an army to avenge the loss of their soldiers, but they were caught in a snowstorm in the mountains. Many of their officers froze to death, and the King withdrew to Hansan Fortress.
Given the scale of their loss—first at the hands of Goguryeo, and then at the hands of General Winter herself—it puts the information on the stele in perspective, for that stone edifice claims that in the following year King Gwangaetto personally sailed down with a fleet to Baekje—though perhaps that was actually part of this same campaign.
Now, according to the stele, the Goguryeo forces swept through, capturing 18 fortress and eventually making their way to Baekje’s own capital, where they forced King Asin to submit and swear his allegiance. As part of his submission they took away a great number of people—likely to be enslaved—and great quantities of cloth. They also required territorial concessions and forced King Asin to send his younger brother and ten high officials as hostages to the Goguryeo court.
One can only imagine the devastation that this invasion wrought on the state of Baekje, but it is interesting to note that while Goguryeo took people and material, but there is no mention that they left anyone behind to govern or otherwise attempt to directly control Baekje. Instead they left the king on the throne and took hostages as assurances that Baekje would not attack again.
This is the first campaign mentioned against Baekje on the stele, despite the other records of fighting, above, possibly because it was the most significant, or possibly aggregating all of those assaults into one. After all, there was only so much stele to go around. Either way, the Baekje Annals conveniently left this out of their own story, it seems—or at least the later compilers of the Samguk Sagi opted not to include it—or perhaps something happened to it.
This all may explain the corresponding entry for the next year in the Nihon Shoki, though, where we are only told that King Asin “disrespected” Wa—which seems similar to the language used when they sent a force to call to task his uncle, King Chinsa. What form this “disrespect” took is, again, not defined. One could presume that Baekje signing their allegiance to Goguryeo was the offense. But what if it was something else? What if some sort of expected bribe, um, I mean tribute payment never made it? After all, Goguryeo had just devastated Baekje, and whatever trade missions had been going on between the Baekje and the Wa may have been disrupted. The “disrespect” could basically have just meant that they didn’t have anything to offer in whatever trade agreements they had made with each other.
As we’ve seen already, when the flow of trade stopped, that seems to be when Yamato would mount another expedition to the peninsula.
In this case, however, there was no force necessary, because King Asin preemptively reached out making assurances to Yamato, and both the Nihon Shoki and the Samguk Sagi mention that King Asin sent his own son, Crown Prince Jeonji, to the Wa as a hostage at this time.
Since we’ve mentioned hostages a couple of times already, let’s pause a moment to talk about what this likely meant. We’ve seen what looks like two different kinds of hostages, though for similar purposes I suspect that Prince Jeonji’s status in Yamato was much more amicable than that of his uncles’ as hostages in Goguryeo. After all, Baekje had submitted to Goguryeo, but only under extreme duress, and the hostages were there specifically as leverage to ensure obedience. Baekje, however, was under no such threat from Yamato—at least, not that we are aware of. Certainly the Japanese chronicles talk a good game, but as we saw it looks like they may have been more about rading than actually subjugating per se. Granted, Baekje was likely were ensuring good relations and preventing potential pirate raids along the coast, but even the Baekje annals mention that this was a friendly exchange, and make no intimations whatsoever that it was performed under duress of any kind.
That said, it strikes me that King Asin had to have realized how precarious his position was. What if Goguryeo had required the Crown Prince as a hostage, and not just King Asin’s brothers? Sending the young Prince Jeonji to a friendly Yamato court got him out of harm’s way and it helped cement their alliance with the Wa, a potential ally against an increasingly powerful and belligerent Goguryeo. King Asin was playing a dangerous international game—as soon as Goguryeo caught wind of the alliance they would know that something was up and likely attempt to punish Baekje.
For Yamato, this must have been emboldening. To have another kingdom send their Crown Prince to their court must have been a huge boost in prestige. Also, I would suspect that a number of Baekje officials and servants may have come with him—after all, as Crown Prince of Baekje he no doubt had a household to maintain. And maintaining close ties with Baekje is what would lead to them eventually receiving horses for the first time, brining Ajikki, and then Wang’in, to help teach the court how to read and write—and perhaps as the young Crown Prince’s tutor as well.
Now as it stands, Yamato hadn’t been sitting on the sidelines all this time. Besides involving themselves with Baekje when Chinsa submitted to Goguryeo in 392, a year later the Silla Annals in the Samguk Sagi tell us that the Wa invaded that country once again. It isn’t clear if this was a force from Yamato or an independent group of raiders—if it is mentioned in the Chronicles then the dates don’t match up clearly, and there isn’t enough to definitively say which attack this was, but it fits a general pattern, regardless. Clearly there was still animosity between Silla and Yamato, and the alliances were shaping up. It seems as thought it was Silla and Goguryeo against Baekje and Yamato—and possibly some of the states of Kara as well. This was where things were headed on the Peninsula at this point—it seems everyone was picking side, lest they find themselves caught in the middle.
Now if King Asin of Baekje was afraid of Goguryeo finding out about his alliance with the Wa, he wasn’t trying to hide it. Instead it looks like he went on the offensive, himself. A year after sending his son to Yamato, King Asin of Baekje began preparations to attack Goguryeo again, hostages be damned. Goguryeo had been in constant struggle, and in 398 the stele tells us that King Gwangaetto had sent out a small force to subjugate the Su-shen, another independent group in their orbit,, so Baekje may have seen this as a chance. However, as they were gathering the troops they witnessed a falling star—actually, the Samguk Sagi claims that the star fell into the Baekje camp—and King Asin decided to hold off. This was likely a wise decision, as the stele’s text makes it seem like the bulk of Goguryeo’s forces were still available to be deployed.
That said, word would soon reach Goguryeo about the Baekje-Wa alliance and when it did, King Gwangaetto was not a happy camper. He gathered his forces, and he started moving south. And heaven help anyone who stood in his way.
And that’s where we are going to wrap it up for now. This gives us most of the background, including the continuing relations between Baekje and Wa, the conflicts between Baekje and Goguryeo, and the continued attacks by Wa on Silla. Soon we’ll get into perhaps the greatest conflict detailed on the stele, especially as it concerns us and the history of Japan.
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. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
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.
Rhee, S., Aikens, C., Choi, S., & Ro, H. (2007). Korean Contributions to Agriculture, Technology, and State Formation in Japan: Archaeology and History of an Epochal Thousand Years, 400 B.C.–A.D. 600. Asian Perspectives, 46(2), 404-459. Retrieved June 18, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42928724
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Shultz, E. (2004). An Introduction to the "Samguk Sagi". Korean Studies, 28, 1-13. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720180
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
Hatada, T., & Morris, V. (1979). An Interpretation of the King Kwanggaet'o Inscription. Korean Studies, 3, 1-17. Retrieved June 18, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23717824
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 43: Finally, Some Real History (and Some Horses Too)

June 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Crude image of what appears to be a man riding a horse inscribed on a 5th century cylindrical haniwa. From the Chikatsu Asuka Museum while on loan to the Tokyo Museum for the Fall 2014 exhibition 「西日本の埴輪－畿内・大王陵古墳の周辺」. Photo by author.

RSS

Archives

This episode we’ll talk about the history of, well, history. Homuda wake is seen as a pivotal figure in many ways, and stands at the head of what is thought to be by some a completely new dynasty. This episode we get into some of that, but we also talk about the actual start of historical record-keeping with the coming of writing to the court, including a court record keeper. Of course, that doesn’t entirely mean that just because they started writing things down everything we have from here on out is a 100% accurate representation of the facts.

One of the things that we don’t exactly know is just when this was happening. Despite the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki being largely in agreement on most of the details, they place the advent of writing at two different points in the late 4th century. The Kojiki claims that the Baekje king at this time was our good friend Chogo, while the Nihon Shoki claims that it was Asin. King Chogo’s reign ended with his death in 375 CE and King Asin reigned from about 392-405, so there is a bit of a gap. It is quite possible that it was even a different sovereign altogether. In the case of the Kojiki, they may have simply been attributing it to the most notable sovereign, the one who first opened relations with Yamato, and who had just started a written record for Baekje through Gao Xing, while in the Nihon Shoki they don’t expressly name a sovereign so much as date this whole thing to a year that, when corrected, would line up with the dates of King Asin. One possible hint in all of this is the mention, in the Nihon Shoki, of Areda Wake as the lead envoy to request Wang’in’s presence. Areda Wake, you may recall from last episode, was one of the generals sent to the peninsula during the Yamato-Baekje campaigns in 369. Either way, they both agree that this was during Homuda Wake’s reign, whenever that actually was and we can probably assume that was some time between the 370s and 405, during which time there was plenty of contact between the archipelago and the peninsula.

The other big thing we talk about in this episode is the advent of horses.

We talk about what a big deal the horse is in the episode, and what we find in the 5th century tombs, so here is a gallery of just a few of the horse items that we find, from haniwa to actual tack.

Haniwa horse

An example of a horse from about the 6th century. Much of the tack shown is similar to earlier examples.

Iron banner holder

An iron banner holder meant to fit to the back of a saddle, from the 5th or 6th century in Japan. Compare to the similar Korean example.

Korean banner holder

A Korean horse banner holder. Note the similarities with the same version from the archipelago. There was a clear link between the islands and the continent at this early date, though later they would diverge.

Horse bits

Horse bits from the 5th through 6th centuries found in kofun on the archipelago

One more thing—we previously mentioned that Homuda Wake’s name seems to come from something that was later referred to as a “tomo”. That appears to be this item shown on this 6th century haniwa warrior. There are also examples that we have in the Shōsōin repository from the 8th century. Those are made of a stuffed leather. It is unclear to me exactly how they were used—they seem extremely bulky, and they aren’t used in any modern tradition that I am aware of. Nonetheless, one could get an idea of how a fatty growth on the arm could be seen as something similar, though I still am not sure about calling them “homuda”.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 43: Finally, Some Real History (and Some Horses Too).
Alright, so I know I keep saying we are almost there. We are almost to real historical stuff. You know, stuff that was written down, so we have some idea that it actually happened and we aren’t just dealing with oral history. And I think we are finally there. Well, sort of. Okay, let me explain.
This episode we are finally talking about Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, the first sovereign traditionally considered truly historical in that it was during his reign that the court started to keep records. Or at least that’s what we are told. You see, we aren’t quite sure because those particular records no longer exist, and where they were incorporated into the Chronicles they aren’t exactly highlighted as such AND there was still plenty of oral history going on at the same time.
You know, let me start back at the beginning. Just know that we are going to talk about several things this episode. Homuda Wake is something of an interesting and pivotal figure in this period, and we’ll talk about why that is, including some talk about the 20th century scholarship about him, and how that has affected our current views of this reign. We’ll also discuss some of the big things that happened during this time—primarily the advent of record-keeping, as I already mentioned, but also the first evidence of horses coming to the archipelago.
But first, let’s recap where we are. Supposedly, we are somewhere at the end of the 4th century. Probably some time after 371—possibly later, though it could be earlier—with the previous sovereign-slash-regent Tarashi Hime’s death tied to that of Queen Himiko, the exact timing is confused, but we are still generally assuming that the dating in the Nihon Shoki is about 120 years or so off of what was actually happening.
Tarashi Hime’s death finally put her son, Homuda Wake, firmly in the driver’s seat. Whether or not he was part of a ruling pair before this, he was certainly the one handling things from here on out. And he was inheriting the throne at a highly dynamic period. While I’m not quite sure there was an archipelago spanning government—local countries were probably still operating under their own systems—the influence of Yamato and the surrounding area, as well as the keyhole tomb culture in general, seem to have gained prominence, and they had relations—friendly and otherwise—with at least two of the more powerful kingdoms on the peninsula, Baekje and Silla.
From here on out, though as I said, we supposedly start to get actual written accounts that were included into the Chronicles, the dates for many things are still quite sus. The Chronicles from this point were probably a combination of information from written sources from the peninsula and the archipelago as well as various oral histories that were handed down separately. We see a lot of poetry, written in a style of Man’yogana, that is using the Sinitic, or Kanji, characters for their sound and very deliberately reproducing the Japanese poetry styles that would become popular later on. We also see various accounts from the continent that may or may not have lined up appropriately with things happening in the archipelago.
Time wise, you have two major reigns coming up—Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, and his son, Oho Sazaki, aka Nintoku Tennou. Once again it is somewhat difficult to tell if they actually reigned separately—heck, some people even claim they may have been the same person! Either way, I suspect both reigns were considerably shorter than they are written, especially when you look at other reigns that are only a handful of years. Remember, the historians needed to “find” a couple of 60 year cycles in all of this, to make the math work out according to plan.
One more thing about this period is that there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between our continental and archipelagic sources. Continental sources talk about the fighting and conflict on the peninsula at this time, while the Japanese chronicles focus on more inward matters. And so while there may be some hints of where the two come together, it isn’t at all clear every time.

So where do we get started? Well, we already know a few things about Homuda Wake. For one thing, he was miraculously carried in his mother’s womb for up to three years, if the Nihon Shoki is to be believed, and his name supposedly comes from a growth on his arm that looked like a “Homuda”, or an archer’s wrist-guard. Of course, he also went up to Kehi, at Tsunoga Bay, and exchanged names with the kami of that area. But beyond that, we know very little.
We know that the Nihon Shoki dating is off, and he probably wasn’t in his 69th year when his mother died and he came to the throne. Beyond that there isn’t a lot we can be sure of.
He does seem to have many wives and a fair number of children, at least according to the stories, though whether they are all his or not we can’t be entirely sure, and the kofun attributed to him, Konda yama Kofun, in modern Ohosaka—which may or may not be his, mind you—is definitely in the kingly category in terms of size.
Perhaps most relevant for us to keep in mind that is that Homuda Wake is is considered by many to be at a turning point, and he is placed at the head of the “Middle Dynasty” or the “Kawachi Dynasty”, a potentially new group of regents, despite the orthodox view of an unbroken lineage. Along with the influx of various technologies from the continent, this makes this a very interesting period. I’ve made mention of this before, here and there, but I would like to talk about what this all means.
The Japanese Imperial Household Agency maintains the orthodox view expressed in the Chronicles that the current emperor can trace an unbroken lineage all the way back to the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Ohokami. That doesn’t mean that every sovereign is necessarily the direct descendant of the previous one—we see brothers and cousins and nephews inheriting the throne, instead—but they are all part of that lineage with a direct tie back to the lineage of the Sun Goddess herself. This is the official line coming out in the 8th century that can be seen in all of the various Chronicles, to include the Kujiki, the Kojiki, and the Nihon Shoki. Even if there are some things that may be fantastical legends, this view holds that the lineage is basically correct, even if some of the details might be a little bit fuzzy.
This orthodox view was largely maintained up through the end of WWII in the early 20th century. There may have been those who questioned parts of the lineage, and even those who considered that many of the details were added or lifespans enhanced in order to extend the lineage back to around 663 BCE, but even though they may have questioned some of it, the orthodox view still held as true that the imperial lineage traced back to Amaterasu Ohokami, at least.
In the early 20th century, a right-wing nationalist fervor overtook Japan, and much of it centered around the concept of Kokutai, the government of the state, based on the idea of a Heavenly-descended Imperial Line. I won’t try to pass myself off as a student of these modern times, but suffice it to say that there was a clear party line on what constituted the Japanese state and the Emperor was at its head. Proponents of this view set themselves up against what they saw as Marxist and left-wing Socialists, whom they believed would destroy the character of the country. In such a heated political climate, discussion of the Imperial lineage became more than just a matter of history.
Enter one Tsuda Soukichi. In the early 1900s he wrote up his belief that much of the lives of the first fourteen sovereigns—so up through and even including Okinaga Tarashi Hime—was fictional. While some of the stories may have come from actual incidents, Tsuda claimed that the overall history was written merely to support the central raison d’etre of the Chronicles—codifying the divine lineage of the Imperial line. For the most part this was an academic discussion and seems to have stayed in academic circles, and I don’t know that he saw his own view as particularly radical, but in 1942 he was actually taken to court for his views, accused of profaning the imperial house. He was actually sentenced to 3 months in prison, but was later pardoned. All because his theories questioned what some considered the foundation of the Imperial Household.
After the war, there was a much greater freedom to investigate the origins of Japan and the Emperor, though the imperial household agency continues to control certain aspects tightly to maintain the dignity of the imperial family. Still, many theories have flourished, often building off of Professor Tsuda’s work.
For example, moving beyond the idea that the first fourteen sovereigns are purely fictional, there is some thought that the earliest sovereigns may have simply been unrelated lords of various areas in and around the Nara basin, though I tend to agree that for those first nine sovereigns there is very little evidence of their existence at all.
Another scholar, Mizuno Yu, who studied at Waseda University around the same time that Tsuda was teaching there would go ahead and divide the sovereigns into three dynasties, suggesting even further that while some of the sovereigns may have existed, they were not actually linked hereditarily. Under Mizuno’s system, the first nine sovereigns were considered completely fictional, while the emperors from Mimaki Iribiko through Tarashi Nakatsu Hiko are considered part of the ancient dynasty, sometimes called the “Miwa” court, due to the location of the court at the foot of Mt. Miwa in the southeast corner of the Nara Basin. The site of this court was attested to in the Nihon Shoki, and of course there were numerous kofun and the holy mountain of Miwa itself, but there was still some doubt about whether there had actually been any kind of a court here until 2009, when an excavation found an extremely large structure, thought to be a palace or ritual center, which dated from about the 3rd century, which would seem to confirm the Chronicle’s account, though the dating was clearly off. This dynasty is sometimes referred to as the “Iri-“ dynasty due to the prevalence of the term in various names. For example, Mimaki IRI-biko and Ikume IRI-biko.
Mizuno also included the Tarashi dynasty in this same general category, although there seems to be more support for the Mimaki and Ikume Iribiko than for the various Tarashi’s, including Oho Tarashi Hiko, Waka Tarashi Hiko, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, and Okinaga Tarashi Hime. While Mimaki and Ikume are assumed to be actual names, the other rulers of this ancient period seem to be marked with titles, with the exception of the name “Okinaga”, and so there are much greater doubts about their actual existence.
Mizuno’s next dynasty was the Middle dynasty, sometimes called the Kawachi court and that started with our current subject, Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, and continues until the 25th sovereign, wo-Hatsuse no Waka Sazaki no Mikoto, aka Buretsu Tennou. His successor, Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennou, was not directly related to him. In fact, Wohodo’s lineage goes separately back some five generations to our current sovereign, Homuda Wake. From Wohodo to the current Emperor, Mizuno considered that the New Dynasty.
We do know that the center of building for the giant, kingly kofun transitioned around this time from the Nara Basin out to the country of Kawachi, in the area of modern Ohosaka. Large tombs were built in this area until the time of Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennou, in the early 6th century. Together they are known as the Furuichi and Mozu tumulus groups. They are the most dramatic evidence of the court having moved to this area around this time, and it includes the largest of the keyhole shaped tombs, Daisen Kofun. If that name sounds familiar it has been in the news of late as they have allowed some very basic excavations to take place recently on the outside of the tomb as part of the necessary upkeep. This tomb is actually said to belong to Homuda Wake’s successor, and is an indication of the power of the early Kawachi court.
Now here’s the thing about this and Mizuno Yu’s theory: He not only noted that the courts had moved, but he also suggested that these three dynasties weren’t actually related to each other despite what the Chronicles say. Or at least, not significantly. According to Mizuno, the Chroniclers pasted the various dynasties together into a single lineage to support the legitimacy of the current sovereigns in the 8th century, but prior to that, these dynasties may have actually descended from separate groups of local rulers, who may have had varying degrees of control, though generally ruling from the modern Kinai region, around the country of Yamato. The 6th century Wohodo’s own tenuous link to Homuda Wake may be little more than a genealogical fiction designed to support his legitimacy and connect him back to an older dynasty, and likewise the Tarashi lineage may have been little more than a bridge from the Iribikos up to Homuda Wake.

As it stands, there is still plenty of debate and conjecture over Homuda Wake. Some conflate him and his successor, Oho Sazaki, aka Nintoku Tennou, and others would suggest that the events of his mother’s regency were actually his, and that her existence is largely just a correction in the Chronicles for Queen Himiko.
If I were to suggest anything to take a way from this it is to understand that there is a lot of evidence that the story of a single, unbroken, royal lineage is likely a fiction. Rather, there were several different dynasties that supplied sovereigns at different times. We already know that the chronology is demonstrably incorrect, to the point that some would write it off altogether.
So what is it about Homuda Wake’s reign that makes all of this relevant? Why do these theories all seem to come to a head right here?
Well, that probably has to do with one of the more significant events attributed to Homuda Wake’s reign, and although they can’t agree on the exact details, both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki do agree on one thing: This was the first reign whose events were, in some form or fashion, written down. And not only were they written down, but they were written down by the court itself. I can’t stress how important this is to us. Up to this point, our assumption has been that we only had the oral histories to go on, which were then written down at a later point. Now it looks like we have one of the most important events in the history of the archipelago—writing had come to Japan.
This event is recorded in both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki in such a similar manner that it certainly seems that they were pulling from the same source for how it came to be. They do have differences, and I’ll get to that in a second, but for the most part it is the same. So the stories go, the King of Baekje sent a pair of horses, along with an envoy, who is named in both Chronicles as either Ajikki or Achikishi. The horses were stabled on the slopes of Karu, and Ajikki was given charge of their care and feeding—apparently this was a long-term posting for Ajikki.
Now the horses are certainly interesting—this is likely the beginning of a long culture of horse cultivation in the islands, built off of the peninsular traditions—but there was something more interesting to the people of the time and this is that Ajikki had another skill that the court wanted to cultivate beyond his animal husbandry skills. You see, unlike many others in Yamato at that time, Ajikki could read, and because of that, the young Crown Prince asked him to become his tutor, so that the Crown Prince could learn to read the Classics himself.
Now I doubt that writing was completely new to the people of Yamato, but it is unclear just what sort of grasp they had on the skill. After all, this wasn’t just as simple as learning an alphabet and then learning how to write words with those letters. Literary culture in east Asia at this time relied on Sinitic writing—that is to say the ancient literary Chinese. Of course, Sinitic languages are from a completely different linguistic family than Japonic or even Koreanic. Grammar and word order, in particular, are different. Sinitic actually has more in common with Tibetan than with the languages of the Korean peninsula or the Japanese archipelago. So that means that it wasn’t enough to learn individual characters, or logograms, but you had to learn an entirely new language.
Speaking of the logograms, I’d like to touch on one misconception. Many people consider Chinese to be made up of pictograms, where a picture represents a given word. The issue is that Chinese, or Sinitic, characters aren’t actually pictures. There are certainly symbols that represent particular things, like trees or people, and a direct link can be seen between those characters and earlier pictures. However, by the time of the 4th century, the characters had grown much more complex. They contained symbols with meaning, but also symbols that were used more for the sound they made, and still other symbols represented more abstract concepts. Referring to them as logograms better emphasizes their actual use. Each character, often made up of various parts, represents a single word, concept, or morpheme, and are pronounced as a single syllable.
Now there is evidence of writing in the archipelago from an early date. For example, we have inscriptions on bronze mirrors from at least the start of the Kofun period, if not earlier, and of course the seven branched sword, which had come over from Baekje in the latter half of the 4th century. We also have a few examples of what may be writing on pottery, though usually that is just a character here and there. Most of this writing, however, either came from the continent or it was more decorative or even performative—it demonstrated a certain level of culture and sophistication, but it wasn’t necessary for understanding the meaning. It may have also had a kind of magico-symbolic quality. After all, in many places the idea that you can put ideas into sound and then inscribe those thoughts onto things is really remarkable in a way that those of us in the Computer Age might not always consider. I’m reminded of the various written prayers for the Dead included with the mummies of Egypt, as well as the Tibetan prayer wheels, where the written words stand in for the mantras and prayers of those who turn them round.
But in the 4th century, Yamato was prepared to take the next step. It was more than just performative—this was also basically a request to learn more about the classics of continental literature, such as Confucius and Laozi. Homuda Wake asked Ajikki if there was any one who could teach him and his court how to read the Classics as well. Ajikki, though literate himself, demurred and recommended another Baekje scholar known variously as Wanikishi or perhaps Wang’in.
We don’t know much about Wang’in. The name certainly strikes me as Sinic, though that could just be an artifact of how the name has come down to us. Most likely, if he wasn’t an immigrant to Baekje from the continent, he may have been a descendant of the administrators who had served the Han commanderies in the Korean Peninsula. Either way, he knew the art of writing and could teach it, and so Homuda Wake sent a request to Baekje to send Wang’in over.
With his arrival at the court, Wang’in not only started to teach writing to others, but he also started to chronicle the history of the court—or so we are told. There is no extant evidence of his chronicle, and nothing that I have seen to indicate whether a particular event came from his records or from oral history, which no doubt continued as another source of lore and memory. I mean, it wasn’t like people just stopped telling stories, and even in the reign of Oama in the 8th century the court was still commissioning storytellers to recount history at court.
Since there were records being kept and written down, many consider Homuda Wake to be the first truly historical sovereign, even if we aren’t sure how much of that history is accurate. The point is that for the first time the Yamato court was starting to write out its own records and keep its own annals.
In fact, even the character of the Chronicles themselves, written in the 8th century, would still have elements that link their literary tradition to that of Baekje, and various scholars have drawn a connection between the formulation of the Baekje Annals, as passed down in the Samguk Sagi and elsewhere, and the formulation of Japan’s own chronicles.
Beyond just keeping a record of things, though, writing would also bring other benefits to the archipelago. For one thing, once literacy could be spread, it would increase communication. No longer would you have to rely on the memory of a messenger to relay information, but rules, laws, and edicts could be written down and communicated directly. Likewise, information from the provinces could easily be sent back to the capital. In this way, it was a technological advancement for the state itself, and may have helped to solidify the archipelago even further along its march to status as a unified kingdom.
On top of that, it opened the doors to a host of continental ideas and philosophy. While there is evidence of ideas that entered previously through contact with the continent, being able to read and write would open up so much more to consider. Of course, this would also bring some amount of turmoil, as the indigenous ideas and philosophy that had grown up on the archipelago came into potential conflict with ideas and philosophies from the continent—but that is all still a ways out at this point.
Of course, all of this talk about writing—which is a huge step, by the way, don’t get me wrong—and we didn’t even touch on the other big thing that happened. In fact, it almost got swept aside for all of the literary geekiness. The second big thing that happened in this exchange was that this is the first recorded instance of Japan getting horses.
I know we’ve mentioned this in past episodes. In the discussion of Yamato Takeru, for instance, they talk about how the bridges and mountain pathways through the Japan Alps were often so narrow that a horse wouldn’t be able to make it, but that was before we have evidence of horses or of horsemanship on the archipelago. Up to this point we had seen domestication of some animals, including pigs, but there was scant evidence of horses. There is perhaps evidence of some horse remains from before the Kofun period, but what I’ve seen suggests that there is still a lot of doubt over those finds. And most of the time travel has been via boat, using the sea lanes to cross from one point of the land to another. And horses weren’t exactly needed for rice cultivation—cattle are actually much more useful in that capacity.
But here we have at least two horses given by Baekje and maintained in stables of some sort. The fact that Ajikki, the envoy who brought them, was also there to see to their care and feeding suggests that there weren’t people in the archipelago who already had the knowledge and skills required for horse husbandry.
As a gift from Baekje, this seems to have been not uncommon. Baekje is also recorded as providing a gift of horses to Silla in the Samguk Sagi. Furthermore, if the nobility of Baekje really did descend from the Buyeo people then it was likely that horse culture was a big part of their ethnic identity, and so I have no reason not to believe that horses would have been a suitable and not uncommon gift to other state leaders.
By the way, there is another theory of how horses came to the islands. This theory, known as the “Horse-Rider Theory” is one we’ve touched on before. It claims that the horses came with an invasion force from the Peninsula—likely led by the Buyeo descended nobility of Baekje, who then put their own descendant, Homuda Wake, on the throne. I’ve already mentioned that this theory is accepted about as well as the second Highlander movie, at least these days, but you still see it pop up now and again, and since we already talked about Tsuda and Mizuno we may as well touch on this as well, since it was formulated around the same time and derived from some of the same scholarly lines of questioning.
You see, following on behind Tsuda Soukichi’s work describing many of the earlier sovereigns in the Chronicles as fictional, and while Mizuno Yu was still laying out his ideas for breaking the royal lineage into separate dynasties, another professor, Egami Namio, published his theory, known as “The Horse-Rider Theory” that similarly questioned the lineage as written, though it had a much more radical concept.
Now, I don’t really want to get too much into the politics in Japan post World War II, but there was something of an explosion of ideas as previously taboo areas of discussion were suddenly opened up for debate. There had also been a lot of archaeological research being carried out during the occupation of the peninsula. Egami Namio’s theory certainly combines both of these, I’d say.
Professor Egami looked at the assembly of horse equipment and armor that seems to typify burials from the 5th century onward, which has many ties with the material culture of the peninsula, and he proposed that there must have been some event to create such a rapid change. Why would these assemblages suddenly show up in kofun from this date onward? To add to that, you have several narratives of ancient sovereigns marching armed forces in from the west, from Kyushu along the Inland Sea Route. First, there is Iware Biko’s march east when he conquered the Yamato basin, and then Okinaga Tarashi Hime traveling east and defeating the forces of Princes Kakosaka and Oshikuma to put her son, Homuda Wake, on the throne. On top of that were the connections between Okinaga Tarashi Hime and Homuda Wake with Kehi and the so-called Silla prince, also known as the kami Ame no Hiboko. Professor Egami suggested that these were all stories of conquest from the Korean Peninsula, suggesting that the Buyeo nobility of Baekje were the actual founders of the Middle Dynasty. According to this theory, the lack of horses in the archipelago made them an easy target for the horse-riding warriors from the peninsula.
Archaeologists have since shown that the increase in horse assemblages in the archipelago can be explained through the natural acquisition of horses from the continent, and it doesn’t otherwise demonstrate a wholesale replacement of local material culture that would be expected with an invasion as suggested.
It should probably come as no surprise that certain Korean scholars have latched on to this idea, and though it has largely been disproven, it still comes up now and again.
Also, even though we don’t see a large invasion from the peninsula, we do see a number of artifacts and the Chronicles definitely seem to demonstrate more and more people from Baekje, Silla, and Kara arriving—willingly or not—in the archipelago. It is also quite possible that Homuda Wake’s own lineage included peninsular nobility—perhaps nobility that was erased in favor of a connection to the previous Iri- dynasty.
Now however they first came to the archipelago, the usefulness of the horse was quickly recognized and while the horse-rider invasion theory of Egami Namio may go a bit too far, there certainly was an increase in horse trappings found in Kofun era tumuli from the 5th century onwards, as well as more armor and weapons. Furthermore, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that much of what we find in the tombs matches up with continental fashion and technology, right down to the banner pole holders that would attach to the rear of the saddles. It is quite clear that it wasn’t simply horses that were brought over, but the material culture of equestrianism as well.
Of course, Japan isn’t exactly built for horses. 70% of the archipelago is made up of forested, mountainous terrain—hardly the flat plains of the steppes where Eurasian horse-riding had begun. Much of the flat land that they did have was given over to agriculture in one way or another, and you didn’t exactly want horses stomping on all of the young rice plants, did you?
And yet the horse would come to feature prominently in Japan. Even in the Age of the Gods, on the plain of Takama no Hara, you may recall that it was a colt, a young horse, that Susanowo had flayed and sent flying through the roof of Amaterasu’s weaving hall. Later, various areas would become known for their horses, and in the Kantou region the marshy islands would actually provide natural corrals where they could raise horses of exceptional quality. The use of the horse and the bow, perhaps influenced by further immigrations from the Eurasian continent, would form the basis of the early warriors who would become known as the samurai. Despite a modern view of the samurai as a warrior with a sword, the original connotation was a that of Kyuba-no-Michi: The way of the horse and bow. Even today, you can still witness the art of yabusame, or horsed archery, at various festivals around Japan.
These horses, though, were not, perhaps, the horses you might be thinking of. Many people today think of a horse and imagine something like a thoroughbred—tall and fast. In truth, the horses of Korea an Japan, at least before modern times, were more closely related to their ancestors on the Mongolian steps, and were probably closer to what we would classify as a pony, though that distinction—pony v. horse—is much more of a European classification rather than an Asian one. In Japan, they were all classified as Ma or Uma—horse.
These early breeds were probably shorter and stockier than you might otherwise imagine. The truth is, it is hard to find these ancient breeds today, and most films and even practitioners of traditional arts like Yabusame tend to use more modern breeds. But the shorter and stockier breeds had several advantages.
For one, they tended to be stronger and have greater endurance. Shorter legs would also make them better at navigating the mountain trails and similarly variable terrain. I’ve even heard it said that their gait would also provide a smoother platform, more suitable to a horseback archery, though I don’t have personal experience to confirm.
Either way, the horse would be a huge benefit to the state of Yamato. Not only would it provide a new military tool and advantage in battle, but it also allowed for faster communication. Sure, the boats they used were great for getting around via the water, but horses were much faster on land. Horses could travel 50 to 80 miles in a day. While there are certainly people who can walk 40 miles a day and even runners who have run much more—the world record is over 150 miles in a day—most people are probably in the range of about 20-30 miles in an 8 hour period. Furthermore, by taking a horse, you arrive rested, and with multiple horses you can do even more. This would have been a huge benefit in connecting up the various parts of Japan—at least across the larger islands of Honshu and Kyushu, and even Shikoku.
So there you have it. We’ll go into more details over the next few episodes, but if I were to capture the highlights of Homuda Wake’s reign, I’d say this is it. First off, he’s a pivotal figure in the dynastic succession, and although there were some 10 other sovereigns after him, the new dynasty after that would be linked not to any of his descendants, but rather all the way back to Homuda Wake himself, which does strengthen the case that they may have been a new dynasty altogether. Furthermore, this period in Japanese history would see the advent of writing as well as the horse, two technical innovations that would prove hugely important to the development of Yamato as a whole.
In the next few episodes we’ll deal with some of the other events in the Chronicles, as well as some of the events not covered there, such as the those inscribed on the famous Gwangaetto Stele, a fascinating and, as per usual, controversial source of information.
So, until next time, 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. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
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.
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 42: The Seven-Branched Sword

June 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

The seven-branched sword at Isonokami shrine. There are several reproductions that can be found in museums in Japan and Korea.

RSS

Archives

This episode we are going to talk about the final events that the Nihon Shoki, at least, attributes to the reign of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jingū Kōgō. The Kojiki doesn’t go into the same level of detail, but does seem to attribute the interaction with King Chogo (see below) with Tarashi Hime’s son, Homuda Wake. There could certainly be some truth to this—the obsession in the Nihon Shoki with dates means that they seem determined to make Tarashi Hime’s dates match those of Queen Himiko. Unfortunately, the Nihon Shoki is our only real source for much of this, as the Kojiki and the Kūjiki don’t really deal much with the peninsula other than to discuss Tarashi Hime’s initial campaign against Silla and that’s it.

Or course, that also brings up questions about the entire narrative, since without other sources to compare it against, what did the Chroniclers change, add, or massage to make it fit their narrative? Well, in general we know that they definitely made some changes, such as using more favorable names for “Japan” and otherwise changing a character here or there, but in general I haven’t seen any real attempts to flat out make up a quotation. So when something says the the “Baekje Annals state…” I’m inclined to take the base narrative at face value, even if I question the bent. For instance, the Chroniclers put diplomatic gifts from the peninsula in the category of “tribute”, which conjures up a whole mindset of hierarchical relations that likely did not exist. Certainly when an embassy was entreating with another country they may have acted more subservient if they wanted something, but that may have been little more than diplomatic niceties. It could also have been the case that as things were being translated from one language to another, translators may have slightly editorialized just what was being said. All of this to say that I just don’t think we can read too much into the language to figure out some kind of exact hierarchical map of northeast Asia at this time. These were independent states that were still establishing themselves in their own territories, let alone in the larger geopolitical sphere.

So with that, let’s get into the locations and people discussed this episode—at least as best as we can tell. I will ask for some forgiveness on the pronunciation of things from this period. It is already one thing to determine Japanese pronunciation—I won’t get into it too much here other than to say Old Japanese had more than 5 vowels and had different pronunciations for various consonants. I usually default to modern Japanese for understanding. This gets even more confusing, though, with the names that could come from another language. So for the Korean names that we know, I’ll try to defer to the modern Korean pronunciation as best we know, with some exceptions, and for Chinese I’ll be deferring to modern Putonghua (i.e. Mandarin) where I can—or at least my best approximation. But for some of these, we don’t know the native language. The best we can do is to use the Chinese characters and determine a pronunciation based on that. These are not likely to be exact, but they should get us close. For the most part I’m deferring to others, such as Aston, on the pronunciation, but I’ll try to give you the characters here in case you want to do a more in depth look yourself.

Locations

Wa/Yamato - (倭・和・大和) - Of course, this is largely the name for the main focus of our attention, but I’d make a few notes. First, while the character “倭“ is often assumed to be derogatory, meaning “submissive” or “dwarf”, it was likely chosen because of its phonetic similarity for the name that the Wa people used for themselves. This is further emphasized by the fact that the Japanese themselves would keep the pronunciation “Wa” but use the more complimentary “和“, meaning “Peace”. However, even when using the term “Great Wa” for their state (大和) they would pronounce these all as “Yamato”, a note even made in some of the continental sources.

This is further confused in this particular period (4th-5th centuries) in that the Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo writing refers to “Wa” (“Wae” in modern Korean), but it is unclear if they meant the Japanese on the archipelago or Japonic-speaking people in the southern part of the peninsula. So we end up with “Wa” as a general term for the larger ethnic groups of Japonic speaking people, while “Yamato” refers both to the state that would come to control the archipelago and the area of the Nara Basin.

As a final note on this, I try to refrain from using the term “Japan” until later. Eventually the Japanese themselves will ask to be known by the name “Nihon” (日本), which is probably about where I think it will be best to switch to using the term “Japan” for the state as a whole.

Baekje - (百済) - Also romanized as “Paekche”, which gets into a whole thing about how many east Asian languages focus more on aspiration while English tends to focus on voicing, but that’s neither here nor there. Sometimes you’ll also find this in Japanese as “Kudara” for reasons that are not at all clear to me or anyone that I’ve asked. It seems to be a later reading that came about and was attached to the Kingdom, possibly after its fall at the hands of Silla. It was located on the western edge of the Korean peninsula, stretching from somewhere north of modern Seoul all the way down to the southernmost tip.

One thing about Baekje—the Nihon Shoki takes a certain almost paternalistic view of Baekje, and treats Yamato as the senior party in any relationship. This is in keeping with a certain chauvinism on the part of the archipelago that is seen again and again throughout history. This will come up again in a famous note to one of the Sinic courts when the Japanese sovereign famously opens with the greeting: “From the ruler of the land where the sun rises to the ruler of the land where the sun sets.” This means that we see the Japanese put themselves in the driver’s seat of the various campaigns, whereas it is much more likely that Baekje was probably driving things on the peninsula, with Yamato forces backing them up.

Silla - (新羅) - Pronounced (and sometimes written as “Shilla”, it is also known in Japanese as “Shinra” or “Shiragi”. This was still a relatively small kingdom on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, centered on the capital at the modern city of Gyeongju. Silla had a history of raids and attacks by the “Wa”—whether that was the people in the archipelago or the southern peninsula, it isn’t quite clear.

Thaksyun - (卓淳) - Aka “Taksun” or, in modern Japanese on’yomi pronunciation, “Tokushu”. The latter pronunciation is, in my opinion, the least likely option. Typically in these chronicles we are seeing either the Sinic characters (i.e. kanji) being used for their pronunciation—basically to “spell out” a name—or we are using them for their meaning, so that we are then using the Japanese (or in their case, the Old Japanese) pronunciation. Thus “Takeru” (e.g. Yamato Takeru) is written simply as “武” while a name like “Kibi” is written as “吉備” but Koshi is “越” and Izumo is “出雲”. In the case of Kibi we are seeing them use the “on’yomi” for the characters, but Koshi and Izumo both use the kun’yomi. In the case of the peninsula we generally assume that they are using the characters to phonetically spell the names unless we have reason to believe otherwise. It can also generally be assumed that they were, at the time, using a reading closer to the continental pronunciation of that time, assuming they were getting records from about the 4th century, rather than a modern Japanese on’yomi reading, as on’yomi have drifted some along with the rest of Japanese pronunciation in the centuries after.

As for where this was, we still aren’t sure. Some have suggested it was around modern Gimhae and near the mouth of the Nakdong river, which we know had contact with the archipelago from early on and was one of the stronger areas of the Kara (or Gaya) Confederacy. This is just conjecture, however, given its place in the story. It is possible that it was further west, closer to Mahan and Baekje.

Kara/Gaya States - (加倻・加羅 ) - The modern pronunciation in Korean is “Gaya” but given its importance to Japan and the word “Kara”, I am continuing to use that. Though it may have even been more like Karak or Garak, These states seem to have been the successor states to the Byeonhan (sometimes “Pyonhan”) of the three Han (三韓). That “Han” (or “Kan”) is the same word used to represent Korea today, and in later Japanese periods there was a confusion between the Samhan (Mahan, Byeonhan, and Jinhan) and the three Kingdoms of the peninsula (Baekje, Goguryeo, and Silla). While we believe that there was significant overlap in the territories of Mahan and Baekje, and possibly Silla and Jinhan, the Byeonhan states seem to have been in the south and become the Kara Confederacy, which may have attained the status of a Kingdom just before being swallowed up by Silla in later centuries. Goguryeo was, of course, in the north, at the head of the peninsula, and its territory is not considered part of the Samhan region by most scholars, today.

The general assumption is that the states that the Nihon Shoki claims Yamato and Baekje troops subdued were probably part of this group of states in and around the Nakdong river region. They may have just been city-states, and while some of the names reference Kara, others are unclear. They are, as romanized by Aston. Locations are pulled from Internet sources and I won’t put any real credibility there:

Pichapun - (比自㶱) - Possibly Bijabal? Some connect this with a place called Bihwa Gaya, centered on modern Changnyeong.
South Kara - (南加羅) - The meaning of this one seems clear. Other readings in Japanese include “Arihishi no Kara”, but I’m not sure when that reading comes about, much like “Kudara”
Tokkuk - (㖨国) - “The Country of Tok”. Possibly around the modern city of Changwon?
Ara - (安羅) - Possibly the area of modern “Haman” district?
Tara - (多羅) - Maybe the area of modern “Hapcheon” district?
Thaksyun - (卓淳) - We talked about Thaksyun, above.
Kara - (加羅) - This seems odd, especially with “South Kara”. It does seem that some of the states used “Kara” as part of their name, such as “Taekara”, or “Great Kara”, so this may be one of those.

Kohyechin (古爰津) and Chimmitanye (忱弥多礼・枕彌多禮?) - So I’ll be honest, I have no idea where these are, but the assumption is that they were in the southern tip of the region of the Mahan confederacy. Whether or not these were the actual last Mahan states to be conquered by Baekje is still a question, but they do seem to have been added to Baekje’s territory. Kohyechin is mentioned as being west of the conquests in Kara and then Chimmitanye is noted as being the “Southern” barbarians (and no, not those Southern Barbarians). The characters for Chimmitanye seem to vary depending on your source. I’ve tried to use the ones I’ve found.

Piri (比利), Phichung (辟中), Phomiki (布弥支), and Panko (半古) - These are even more obscure. I’ve seen some that seem to claim they are part of Kara but is suspect they would have been over in the region of Mahan, as they are said to have submitted to King Chogo on his journey to meet up with the rest of the army in the south.

The Village of Winiu - (意流村) - This seems to be a village somewhere in Baekje territory.

Mt. Phiki (辟支山) and Mt. Kosya (古沙山) - Likely mountains in Baekje, possibly of some importance to 4th century Baekje. I have no idea why they would give proclamations on one mountain and then another, but mountains would certainly be memorable reference points.

Tasya Castle (多沙城) - Again, we aren’t sure just where this might be. “Tasya” or “Tasha” castle would be one reading.

People

There are a lot of names in this episode, and I’m not referencing all of them here, but some of the more major players:

Okinaga Tarashi Hime no Mikoto (氣長足姫尊) - She doesn’t have much of a role here, other than the occasional pronouncement and ruling.

Takechi no Sukune (武内宿祢) - The extremely long-lived Prime Minister, who was extremely involved in the government, including planning the eventual campaign against Silla and others.

King Chogo (肖古・近肖古) (r. 346–375) - More popularly known as Geunchogo (the “recent” Chogo) to differentiate him from an early ruler of the same name in the Baekje annals. Historical records for Baekje were first officially kept during his reign, and he both consolidated the power of the King and expanded Baekje’s territory to its greatest extent.

Crown Prince Gusu (貴須・仇首・近仇首) (r. 375–384) - The Crown Prince of Baekje, who would follow his father’s rule, he likewise is known with the prefix “Geun-” to distinguish him from an earlier (probably fictional) ruler of the same name. He was something of a warrior. After the campaigns with Yamato, Prince Gusu led the Baekje forces against Goguryeo and took the fortress of Pyongyang, killing King Gogugwon of Goguryeo in the process.

Kutyeo (久氐), Michyunyu (彌州流), and Moko (莫古) - The three envoys from Baekje. Kutyeo seems to have been the lead envoy, as he is often the only one mentioned later in the account.

Shima no Sukune (斯摩宿禰) - “Sukune” is, of course, indication of his high rank in the court. He was clearly an ambassador of some kind, and seems to have been in charge of the mission that opened relations with Baekje, but like a good manager he mainly seems to have sent his subordinates to perform the actual duties.

Nihaya (爾波移) - Yamato’s initial representative to the Baekje court. Apparently a subordinate to Shima no Sukune. We don’t have much more information on him.

Kwako (過古) - A man from Thaksyun who accompanied Nihaya on his trip to Baekje. In all likelihood, he would have acted as a translator, as it is quite likely that none of the Yamato delegation had experience with the language of Baekje, but Thaksyun, situated as it was on the continent, likely had experience with their language OR knew that Baekje understood the Thaksyun language. Either way, he likely acted as interpreter and go-between.

Go Heung / Gao Xing (高興) - Often listed as a man of Baekje, but he was likely of Han ancestry. He is said to have written the first history and annals of Baekje, but his work is no longer extant. Nonetheless, it is assumed that later histories built off of his original work.

Chikuma Nagahiko / Shimana Nagahiko (千熊長彦・職麻那那加比跪) - Here we have the name from the Japanese records and the name that (at least according to the Nihon Shoki) is in the Baekje records of the time. The Japanese name uses kun’yomi reading of the characters, while the Baekje account has a name that is written phonetically. It is likely that the Baekje record didn’t capture the name exactly, a particular problem with attempting to transcribe names from other languages. Chikuma Nagahiko was the main envoy sent to investigate matters on the peninsula and who worked directly with King Chogo on the details of the Yamato-Baekje alliance.

Areda Wake (荒田別) and Kaga Wake (鹿我別) - The two Yamato generals who led the Yamato forces during the Baekje-Wa campaign on the peninsula. Typically, when multiple people are given, it seems that the first person is treated as the de facto leader of the group, and future references will often only name them.

Mongna Geuncha (木羅斤資) and Syasya Nokwe (沙沙奴跪) - The Baekje generals who participated, leading some of Baekje’s best troops, at least according to our sources.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 42: The Seven-Branched Sword.
Less than 10 kilometers north of the ancient capital at the foot of Mt. Miwa lies the ancient shrine of the Mononobe Family. It is said to have been established during the time of Mimaki Iribiko, and it is said to house important artifacts such as the ten treasures said to have been brought over by the Silla prince-turned-kami Ame no Hiboko, whom we talked about back in Episode 30.
Since its founding, this shrine has been known for the swords that were donated to it—unsurprising given the Mononobe Family’s traditional role in the Yamato court overseeing military affairs. Even the kami worshipped at the main shrine is Futsu no Mitama—literally the spirit of tachikaze, the spirit of the sound of a sword cutting through the air. Not only were a ton of swords made by princes early in its history, but it is said to have even contained the sword that Susanowo had used to subdue the famous Yamata no Orochi, the giant 8-headed serpent of Izumo. That was the same serpent who had another sword in its tail, the sword known as Murakumo, aka Kusanagi no Tsurugi.
But none of these swords are what holds our interest this episode. Instead, it is an old iron sword—though sword only in the barest form, and definitely not function, as it has six protrusions, like mini-swords, three on each side, alternating left and right, all pointed forward, making the end the seventh sword, or branch. It is known as Shichi-shi-tou, or possibly Nanatsusaya no Tachi—the seven branched sword—and it is an important, if controversial and somewhat enigmatic—witness to history.
Most important to our purposes is an inscription on the sword that says it was made by the Sovereign of Baekje for the Sovereign of Wa in the year 369.
Which leaves us with a question: What was going on between Baekje and Yamato in 369?
As far as our narrative goes, we are probably around the early 360s. As you may recall, in the last few episodes, we saw Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jingu, take control after the death of her husband, the 14th sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko. She completed the subjugation of the Kumaso and then took her forces and invaded Silla—and all while she was pregnant. Returning to the archipelago, she gave birth to a son: Homuda Wake. The kami who had sent her to Silla had said this son would inherit everything, but not everyone felt that way. And so, after the fighting in Kyushu and the peninsula Tarashi Hime and her troops had to fight their way back to Yamato.
Through it all, Tarashi Hime was accompanied by her Oho-omi, or Prime Minister, the long-lived Takechi no Sukune.
Of course, up to this point, it is difficult to tell fact from fiction. The dates are all messed up, and the archaeological evidence doesn’t give us enough to build a full picture. We do know that in the 4th century there seems to have been a decline in the Miwa polity until a new power center emerged to the West, in Kawachi. In fact, while the traditional location of Tarashi Hime’s palace is in the Nara basin, along with her supposed mausoleum, the palace and mausoleum attributed to her son, Homuda Wake, as well as her husband, the previous sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, are both in the area of modern Ohosaka, in the area that used to be known as the country of Kawachi, rather than the area of Yamato proper.
Regardless of where the court may have been physically located, precisely, with the issue of succession finally behind them, the court was ready to reengage with the rest of the world—and in this case with the peninsula. This is where there is definitely some potential disagreement between the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, since the Nihon Shoki, which seems to be more directly drawing from dated accounts in Baekje records, puts this next piece in the reign of Tarashi Hime, while the Kojiki would seem to claim that it was happening during her son Homuda Wake’s reign. This is further confused by the fact that one could technically claim all of this as Homuda Wake’s reign anyway, if Tarashi Hime is simply the regent until he reaches his age of majority, meaning that it is entirely possible that both records are correct, just in different ways. That said, I’m sticking largely with the account in the Nihon Shoki, but really it is more about what is happening between Yamato and the Peninsula, so let’s not get too wrapped up in the players, per se.
Whatever the exact circumstances, it seems that Yamato was not satisfied with just raiding the peninsula, as lucrative a business as that may have been, but they decided to send envoys to open up formal diplomatic channels with the peninsula. It is possible that this had been done previously, but the records are not extremely detailed, and it is difficult to confirm dates. If they did establish early ties, it was likely with the region of Kara or Gaya, which seems to have been closely tied to the islands through trade and material culture at the very least. Kara was still more of a confederation of states, though, and not so much a kingdom in terms of how one might describe the later Silla or Baekje states. And so the ties between Kara and Yamato were probably less binding and I expect they were limited. Now, those connections were about to expand, and the Yamato Court wouldn’t just be reaching out to others, but it looked like others were reaching out to them as well.
Based on our corrected dating, it looks like in about the year 364, it would seem that the King of Baekje was seeking contact with the Wa on the archipelago. He is said to have sent three envoys, named Kutyeo, Michyunyu, and Moko to the state of Thak-sun to try to find a way across the straits to the islands and the nation of formidable pirates that lived there. However, it seems that the King of Thak-sun, which we assume was probably along the southeastern shores of the peninsula, was not familiar with the way across the sea. Disappointed, but undeterred, the envoys headed back to Baekje, where they were going to start a new project to build ships that could make the journey and seek out the people across the water.
It was nearly two years after they had departed that an ambassador from Yamato, Shima no Sukune, arrived in Thaksyun himself, and he was told about Baekje’s earlier request for an audience. Shima no Sukune seems to have stayed at the Thaksyun court, but he sent one of his companions, a fellow by the name of Nihaya, as well as a Thaksyun man, named something like Kwako, as envoys to the King of Baekje.
Now the Samguk Sagi is strangely silent on this embassy, but that may be because it has a gaping hole between the years of 347 and 366. What we know of this period is that it was during the reign of one of Baekje’s greatest kings, known as Chogo or, more commonly today, Geun-Chogo, or the Later Chogo, to differentiate him from a likely fictitious 3rd century namesake. Now Chogo is significant not only for the actions that he took as king, but he is also the first king in the Baekje Annals for whom it is said there were actual written records, as the court began keeping track of things about this time. Writing had, of course, been available in the peninsula, but it was in Chogo’s court that they began to really chronicle the important events and keep track of them from year to year.
In fact, Samguk Sagi gives us an actual individual in the reign of Chogo who was said to have kept this record. His name in Korean would be Go Heung, though he may have been an ethnic Han official named Gao Xing. With the destruction of the Commanderies, the former commandery staff would have had the choice to either return back to the mainland of China, or to stay on the peninsula and look for new ways to ply their particular trade. Of course, being versed in the bureaucratic ways of the Chinese courts, they would have had skills of interest to growing states like Baekje. It is quite likely that Gao Xing, then, was not the only bureaucrat to be given a position.
But of course, this means that record-keeping was still quite new, which could explain why none of this is mentioned in the Samguk Sagi. It could be that it was all just too recent a development, or that even if records were written down, they didn’t have a good way to keep and store them, and so by the time of the Samguk Sagi they may have been no longer extant. There is also the possibility that these events were not considered significant enough to record—or at least not significant enough to record in later records, as both the Samguk Sagi and the Nihon Shoki are giving us only an abridged version of things, picking and choosing the historical events that the chroniclers found to be of interest, and often filling with tales from other records where they could.
It is also possible that much of this was made up later to fit the facts—at least the facts as known in Yamato. Still, why would they bring up Thaksyun and this elaborate method of getting in contact with Baekje if there wasn’t something there? I suspect that there is at least a kernel of truth to all of this.
Speaking of which, I hate to tell you this but we aren’t quite sure where this middleman state of Thak-syun is. The best we can figure is that it was probably a coastal state, probably in the region of the Kara states—perhaps even a peninsular Wa state, which could explain both their connection with the archipelago and why Baekje would have made an assumption that they might know how to get to Yamato.
So what exactly could King Chogo want with Yamato, anyway? What reason could he have for reaching out? Well, as you may recall, Baekje was still expanding. Since at least the fall of the Commanderies, if not earlier, they had been taking over the territory of the Mahan states, and it seems that around this time they were eyeing the few states left in the southernmost tip of the Korean peninsula. In addition, there was a threat in the north in the form of Baekje’s sister kingdom of Goguryeo. At the same time, they had conflicts with the rising power of Silla, whom the Wa themselves were apparently antagonizing a well. It would have made perfect sense for Baekje, beset from all sides, to court these coastal raiders to help them against their enemies. In return, Yamato would receive recognition from a continental power, providing legitimacy. Given what we’ve seen so far, it appears as though Yamato’s grip on power had slipped earlier in the century, and if Tarashi Hime and her son were to reestablish some form of control, the prestige that would come with such a relationship may have been significant.
Of course, the Japanese frame all of this as the Kingdom of Baekje paying tribute. Indeed, they claim that they offered bolts of fabric, a horn-bow and arrows, and, perhaps most significantly, 40 bars of iron. These were all bestowed upon the Yamato envoy, Nihaya, with promises of more. Heck, the King of Baekje even showed him his treasure house, which Nihaya took to mean he was offering it in tribute, though I suspect it was more likely being shown off as a sign of Baekje’s wealth and a potential for future profit if Yamato would join them.
This was enough for Nihaya. He apparently provided instructions on how to get to Yamato, and then he headed back to Thak-syun, where he met back up with Shima no Sukune and relayed everything that he had heard and seen, and Shima no Sukune got back in his boats and headed back to Yamato to relay the request to the court.
Sure enough, in the following year, 367, the three Baekje envoys, Kutyeo, Michyunyu, and Moko, sailed off to Yamato, but they ran into a bit of snag. It seems that they were waylaid by men of Silla, who captured the envoys. They would have just killed them and taken the tribute, but Kutyeo thought quickly and pronounced a curse that made them hesitate. The Silla bandits held them for three months, trying to determine what they would do. Finally, they seem to have hit on a plan—the men of Silla would add themselves to the embassy traveling to Yamato. Since Yamato was already preparing for the Baekje ambassadors, and the Silla men could just as easily claim that they wished to pay tribute as well. After all, the Yamato court seems to have believed that Silla would pay them regularly after their earlier raid, and it may even have been the case that these bandits were, themselves, actually an official party from the Silla court, already taking a form of payment-slash-bribe to Yamato in accordance with the agreement that Yamato would cease their raids. Either way, from what we know of the typical tribute trade, this could likely have been quite lucrative, as the court that was being visited was expected to provide even more in gifts than the tribute itself in order to demonstrate their own status, power, and wealth—at least if they wanted to look like the great continental powers they seemed to be modeling after.
Of course, for the men of Silla to get the most out of this, they would need to make sure that their tribute was worthy of a reciprocal gift from Yamato, and what they had with them seems to have been sub-par, at best. Fortunately, however, what they did have was the Baekje tribute, and so they decided to simply pass that off as their own, and since it would look suspicious if the Baekje men showed up with nothing at all, they left them the scraps and the bottom of the barrel.
Then they warned the Baekje ambassadors that if they said anything about this turn of events they would slaughter all of them.
And so it was that they showed up together at the Yamato Court. Immediately, Tarashi Hime suspected something was off. After the report by Shima no Sukune, the tribute that the Baekje envoys had seemed meager and wholly inappropriate to the status of the two nations. Meanwhile, the erstwhile Silla ambassadors seemed to have top quality goods. The Baekje ambassadors, heedless of their own safety, explained what was going on, but it seems it was just Baekje’s word against Silla’s. Someone would need to go to the peninsula and investigate and figure out who was telling the truth. Okinaga Tarashi Hime asked the kami about this, and they deferred to our good friend, Takechi no Sukune, to come up with a plan. After thinking about it for a bit, he appointed Chikuma Nagahiko.
And here the chronicles make a note that while the Japanese account says his name is Chikuma Nagahiko a no longer extant account from the old Baekje Annals that the Japanese chroniclers were using claimed that his name was Shimana Nagahiko.
And so Chikuma Nagahiko went to the continent, presumably with a goon squad in tow. They don’t quite tell us just how he investigated, and as much as I’d like to think he was the Poirot of his time, utilizing “zee leetle grey cells”, I suspect that he just made a trip up to Baekje and confirmed with them what they were sending for tribute, since Baekje and Yamato had diplomatic ties. I mean, technically Yamato may have had ties with Silla, but I doubt they were very friendly. Sure, Silla may have paid them off years ago, but that was hardly an amicable relationship.
Sure enough, Chikuma Nagahiko confirmed the Baekje envoys’ story, and Nagahiko began to work to call Silla to account, staying in Baekje to organize the eventual military assault. This culminated in the following year, in 369—the same year as found on the that strange seven-branched sword—when the campaign was to commence. Yamato sent Areda Wake and Kaga Wake as generals, and they brought Kutyeo, the lead Baekje envoy, on their way to their peninsular ally, Thak-syun, where they gathered their forces to invade Silla. However, someone noted that the forces were short a few troops. After all, this wasn’t just some raid—pop up the river and you’re done. Yamato had grander plans than that. And so they sent a man to Baekje to ask for reinforcements. Sure enough, King Chogo sent two Baekje generals, Mongna Keuncha and Syasya Nokwe, to take command of some of his best troops.
Together, the Baekje and Yamato troops invaded Silla, and then continued their attack on several surrounding states of Kara, named in the Chronicles as Pichapun, South Kara, Tokkuk, Ara, Tara, Thak-syun, and Kara. They then turned westward to Kohyechin and destroyed the people of Chimmitanye, granting that land to King Chogo and Baekje. King Chogo and his son, King Kusu, made their way down with troops, and four other settlements—those of Piri, Phichung, Phomiki, and Panko, all surrendered without a fight.
Finally, the main force and the extra troops under the royal banner of Baekje met up together in the village of Winiu. Mongna Geuncha and Areda Wake came before King Chogo, who congratulated them on a job well done and dismissed them, essentially ending hostilities. The generals could return home to their respective countries.
Chikuma Nagahiko, who had apparently spent the war at the Baekje court as Yamato’s envoy to King Chogo remained there in the country after the armies had left. Together, he went with the king to the top of Mt. Phiki and Mt. Kosya, where together they could make solemn declarations to one another. Here, King Chogo found a large rock on which to sit, since grass or wood might be burned or washed away. There he offered unending friendship to Yamato, and said that they could consider Baekje as their “Western Frontier Province” and they would regularly exchange tribute. And with that, the Baekje and Yamato alliance was formed.
So let’s talk about some of this. Obviously the account I’ve given here is what we have coming out of the Japanese Chronicles, and those may have a bias to them. As noted earlier, the Samguk Sagi is largely silent on this whole affair: the Baekje annals of the Samguk Sagi have a void until 366, when there is a record that Baekje sent envoys to a Silla on what they list as a “courtesy visit”, while there is a record in Silla of an attack by the “Wa” two years earlier, in 364. And then, in 368 CE, we see a record that Baekje supposedly sent two horses to Silla as either tribute or a gift of some kind—only a year before the supposed campaign. Of course, none of this is exactly contradictory, though it may speak to the scope of the campaign, which I suspect was much grander in the minds of Yamato, whereas on the peninsula they may not have thought as much of it. Also, once again, the Samguk Sagi has a decidedly pro-Silla slant to its narrative. The fact that the Japanese chroniclers are quoting what they call the “Baekje Annals”—court records and histories of Baekje that for some reason were not included in later Korean compilations—confuses this even more.
And then there is the confusion about names throughout the Japanese account. Putting aside the fact that one of the states they subdued, Thak-syun, is the same state that was the middleman early on, and who seemed to be on friendly terms with Yamato, previously in the narrative, many of these names don’t seem to exist anywhere else, but they don’t seem unreasonable. Remember, much of the peninsula was made up of smaller states, which may or may not have been part of larger confederations. It is little wonder that many places may have come and gone in the chaotic period during the formation of the three kingdoms—that is, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—without ever making it into the historical record. And then most of the names were deliberately changed in later centuries. This has been particularly frustrating for linguists, erasing much of the evidence of the original languages and linguistic evolution of the peninsula, which are most often captured in the names of ancient places.
Overall, while the details may be embellished, it does seem that Yamato and Baekje worked together. Whether or not they attacked Silla is perhaps a question, but it seems perfectly reasonable that they may have attacked some of the states in the south of the peninsula—including in the southernmost tip—perhaps the last vestiges of the Mahan confederacy. While the Samguk Sagi claims that all of Mahan had been subsumed into Baekje well before this point, that is likely more propaganda than fact, part of the attempt to stretch events of the last 80 years back over several centuries.
One more thing to bring up here is the supposed lasting presence of Japan on the peninsula. It is possible that some of the states in the region—particularly those with populations of peninsular Japonic speaking Wa people—aligned themselves with the archipelago. Perhaps this is what is meant when they claim to have subdued places like Thaksyun. It is possible, and I want to stress here that we are talking possibility and not verified fact, that parts of the Korean peninsula at this point came under Yamato hegemony, at least in name. As we’ve seen on the archipelago itself, it is hard to say that there was any kind of firm control of the islands, so why would the there be anything more secure on the peninsula? And yet, by placing themselves into the Yamato sphere the peninsular regions may have accomplished several things. For one, they would theoretically be safe from the piratical raids of Japanese boats. In addition, they would be able to play the part of intermediary—much as Thak-syun seems to have done—between the peninsula and the islands. Finally, if they were Japonic-speaking peoples, there may have simply been a greater kinship felt with the islands, especially as the Koguryoic speaking people were pushing down from the north and expanding their influence in the peninsula.
What I don’t see is some kind of colony of Yamato on the peninsula. I’m not seeing anything resembling direct control of people or territory. Just so we’re clear.
So whether or not there really was some shenanigans with tribute payments or gifts or anything like that, there likely was some kind of alliance between Baekje and Yamato, and we’ll see more evidence as the Chronicles go on—so this is as good a place as any to assume that it started. More likely than not, Baekje was seeking Yamato’s help with its interests on the peninsula. Later Japanese chroniclers would no doubt play this up, but the idea that Yamato had some form of military influence and may have even helped Baekje finish their consolidation of the Mahan territories is not all that far-fetched. There are certainly elements that sound familiar to stories from the archipelago—for example, that whole thing about sitting on a rock to make their statements? I can’t help but think of all the rocks scattered throughout Japan that are little more than “Naninani-Tennou sat here”, which seems somewhat odd, but would make more sense if these were traditional places to make agreements and similar pronouncements. Unfortunately, this is just an idea at the moment—I have nothing in particular to back it up besides a few “traditional” sites that you can find on Google Maps and this reference, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled as we continue to read through the accounts.
But for now, let’s not dwell too much on the hypothetical rabbit hole, but rather take a look at something a bit more concrete—like that sword. So where is it? We saw the events of 369, which the sword seems to commemorate, but where did the sword come from? Well, let’s dig a little bit more into the narrative.
So Chikuma Nagahiko had stayed back for a time in Baekje while the troops sailed off. They arrived back in Yamato in the 2nd month of 370. Only three months later, Chikuma Nagahiko came back—apparently they had finished up any last remaining details, and possibly Yamato had sent a permanent ambassador. Nagahiko was accompanied on his return voyage by a familiar face: Kutyeo, the lead ambassador from Baekje.
Now the sovereign, Okinaga Tarashi Hime, seems to have been a bit perplexed by this, at first. After all, hadn’t they just finished the task of subduing the peninsula and giving the Western countries, as Yamato called them, to Baekje? What business could Baekje have with Yamato so soon after?
But Kutyeo was chosen as an ambassador for a reason, and he charmed the sovereign, flattering her with promises that Baekje would return every year for the next 10,000 years to attend the Yamato court—which would include the promise of gifts and trade, which wasn’t too bad a deal for Yamato, so Okinaga Tarashi Hime gave Baekje the castle of Tasya for future missions.
By the way, when we say “Castle” I expect that many of you know already that we aren’t talking about tall stone buildings with towers, and keeps, nor even the later Japanese castles, with their tiled rooves and white exteriors. It may be that this was simply a walled enclosure of some kind—perhaps built on a mountain, though not necessarily. Unfortunately, I’m not even sure we know where this was—it may have been on the peninsula or the archipelago, and may have been a dedicated port for the missions, much like the later Kourokan, an official government guesthouse set up in the area of modern Fukuoka City for envoys from the continent in the late 7th century and used through at least the 11th century. This brings up a whole set of interesting questions for those who care about the administrative aspects of history: Did the Yamato court set up warehouses for the goods? Would they have had administrators to help organize the missions as they arrived? Messengers to alert the court—after all you don’t want to be surprised. All of these kind of apparatuses would have provided the kind of infrastructure needed to host embassies, which could be a natural evolution if the court was going to be more involved in what was going on over on the continent.
Indeed, Kutyeo would return the following year, in 371, with gifts, and Tarashi Hime sent both Chikuma Nagahiko and her own prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, on a return mission back to Baekje.
The following year, 372, Kutyeo returned, and this time he had, in and among the tribute being brought from Baekje two items of particular interest to us. One was a “Seven Children Mirror” (Nanatsu-ko-kagami) and the other, you may have already guessed, was a Seven Branched Sword. If you think that these seem like the kinds of Kingly gifts that were being given in the archipelago, you’re right, except that you may notice that the auspicious number here seems to be seven, rather than eight, and the specific shape of this sword very much resembles peninsular motifs.
This has been pretty phenomenal. I talked a bit about the sword at the start of the episode, but let’s go into a bit more depth. It is an iron sword, and one side, it includes the date, the 4th year of Taihe, a Chinese year name that equates to 369 CE. On the other side is another inscription that appears to state that it was given by the King and Crown Prince of Baekje to the King, or ruler, of Wa, aka Yamato.
Of course, as with so many of these things, that is not the only reading of this particular phrase. Some point to language that would indicate that the so-called “King of Wa” was in a subordinate position to the King of Baekje, and certainly there may have been some of that from Baekje’s perspective, just as the Japanese Chronicles make Yamato out to be the superior member of the partnership.
Just to add to the controversy, the inscription wasn’t even known to exist until 1870, when it was noticed underneath the rust that had accumulated over the centuries. It was cleaned up and the characters were filled in with gold—something that also was done to the mei, or signature, on various other swords in the Edo period. Of course, that almost always leads to someone challenging the actual characters and whether or not they were altered in the conservation efforts.
On top of just the reading, there is the dating. 369 CE seems the accepted date in the inscription, but it looks like it may have been made by smiths over in the territory ruled by the Eastern Jin court, who by this time had moved to their southern capital to the area of modern Nanjing. Some have suggested that the first inscription was already there when it was received by Baekje, who then added their own inscription afterwards. I that is the case, then the date may be irrelevant to whatever the circumstances were for handing over the sword.
Of course, another explanation could be that a custom tribute sword like this took time. 369 may have been the year it was commissioned, and it may have taken three years to have it made, transported back to Baekje, and then taken to Yamato. Indeed, we do know that in the first month of 372, a Baekje embassy arrived at the Eastern Jin court, and a return mission to Baekje by the Eastern Jin was sent only five months later. Perhaps this is when the sword was acquired and sent to Yamato.
Regardless of the exact details, there definitely seems to be a clear friendship between Baekje and Yamato, and this alliance would prove useful well into the future.
The rest of the account in the Nihon Shoki seems a bit off. There is an account about Katsuraki Sotsuhiko out of a Baekje annal that seems to be almost a duplicate of what we see in the reign of Homuda Wake, but other than that, the main highlights seem to be the death of King Chogo in 375, the death of his son, King Kusu, in 384, and then the death of King Kusu’s son, King Chimnyu, only a year later, allowing his brother, Chinsa to take the throne in Baekje. A year after that, they claim Tarashi Hime finally passed on herself—a year that happens to correspond with the record of the death of Himiko, so I have a hard time taking it all at face value, rather than one more convenient fiction to make all the dates line up nicely.
Add to this the issue that the Kojiki, which really doesn’t have any dates, equates King Chogo’s time on the throne with the reign of Homuda Wake. For his part, Homuda Wake’s reign seems to continue until 430, but again, this could be overlap caused by the need to somehow get past about 120 years in the narrative.
And that brings me back around to the biggest problem we have as we make a transition from the legendary to historical periods—while we have some confidence that certain events likely happened, it is unclear that they are situated in the appropriate reign. For example, I would not be at all surprised if Homuda Wake’s reign and Tarashi Hime’s reign overlapped—we are still in an era where ruling pairs would not be entirely out of the question. It doesn’t help that most of the continental sources simply discuss the “Wa” as doing something, or the “King of Wa”, without providing any kind of name. I’ll continue to do my best to piece this all together, and we’ll pick our way through, but you should be aware that there are other interpretations of what was going on in this period.
And who knows? Maybe some new evidence will pop up in an excavation of a previously undisturbed kofun that will shed more light on the subject. For now we will continue to chip away at what we can see, realizing that there is still a fair amount of conjecture.
But regardless of whose reign this all occurred in, I think there is evidence that Yamato and Baekje did open relations during the reign of King Chogo. King Chogo would go on to push into Goguryeo’s territory, expanding Baekje to its further extent throughout that nation’s history.
And that’s what we’ll dive into next episode—the reign of Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou. We’ll take a similar approach to Tarashi Hime and try to get a handle on just where we are, temporally. There are actually a fair number of stories about continued interactions both with the peninsula and on the archipelago, especially as more and more people arrive from Baekje and elsewhere for a wide variety of reasons.
So, until next time, 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. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Kim, P., & Shultz, E. J. (2013). The 'Silla annals' of the 'Samguk Sagi'. Gyeonggi-do: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
2013; Vovin, Alexander (2013). “From Koguryo to T’amna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean”, Korean Linguistics 15:2, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
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.
Bentley, John R. (2008). “The Search for the Language of Yamatai”. Japanese Language and Literature (42-1). 1-43. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/30198053
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Shultz, E. (2004). An Introduction to the "Samguk Sagi". Korean Studies, 28, 1-13. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720180
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
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 41: Trouble on the Homefront

May 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Jingū and Takechi no Sukune, armored up for battle. Of course, in this Edo period depiction, they are anachronistically in armor that is many centuries out of date, but it still depicts them as warriors.

RSS

Archives

This episode we take a look at what happened after Tarashi Hime returned from Korea, and the story of how she secured the throne for her infant son. This episode does have a lot of names in it, admittedly, so we’ll try to go through the who’s who for you.

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

We should be well acquainted with our main protagonist by this point. Her father is said to have been Okinaga no Sukune, grandson of Hiko Imasu, who was a half-brother to the tenth sovereign and August Founder, Mimaki Iribiko. Both Hiko Imasu and Mimaki Iribiko (Sujin Tennō) claimed descent from Waka Yamato Neko Hiko Oho Hihi, aka (Kaika Tennō). Meanwhile, on her mother’s side she claimed descent through Kadzuraki no Takanuka Hime, a descendant of the Tajima line from Ame no Hiboko. Ame no Hiboko is said to have been a Silla prince who came over back around the time of Mimaki Iribiko, and the Kojiki specifically waits until they are telling the story of Homuda Wake, Tarashi Hime’s son, before they tell his story, which would seem to indicate that it was really more about the connections with his story then about Ame no Hiboko himself. Below, I’ve tried to give you a rough breakdown of the generations, with the paternal line on top and the maternal line down below:

LINEAGE OF Okinaga Tarashi Hime:
- Yamato Neko Hiko Oho Hihi + Oke tsu Hime
  - Hiko Imasu + Woke tsu Hime
    - Yamashiro no Oho Tsutsuki no Mawaka + Tanba no Ajisawa Bime
      - Kanime Ikazuchi + Takaki Hime
        Okinaga no Sukune
        Okinaga Tarashi Hime
        Kadzuraki no Takanuka Hime
      - Tajima Hitaka + Yuradomi
    - Tajima Hinaraki
  - Tajima Hine
- Tajima Morosuke
Ame no Hiboko + Maetsumi

Homuda Wake

Homuda Wake would eventually be the next sovereign. His birth is considered rather miraculous, as he was conceived before his father, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, died, but he wasn’t born until after Okinaga Tarashi Hime returned from her campaign in Korea. By the count in the Nihon Shoki that would seem to be three years, which is highly unlikely. A quick Internet search turns up the pregnancy of Beulah Hunter, which went 375 days, while in 2016 a woman claimed to be pregnant for 17 months, though it seems that it could not be fully verified and some doctors had their doubts. So it is possible that Homuda Wake was abnormally long in the womb, and even that he was born after Tarashi Hime went to Silla and back, but it likely wasn’t a full thirty six months.

Quite notably, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko doesn’t seem to have ever known his son. He passed away before the kami were able to break the news to Tarashi Hime that she was pregnant. This means that he was never officially appointed as the Crown Prince and heir to the throne—in fact, all we really have is the vision of the kami that said he would be the ruler.

Takechi no Sukune

AKA Take-Uchi no Sukune, Takeshi-Uchi no Sukune, Take-no-Uchi no Sukune, and Uchi no Ason. We’ve talked about him before, of course. The “Take” in his name would seem to be the same as in Yamato Takeru—that is, “Brave”—which seems appropriate given his involvement . In the latter name, used by Kuma no Kori in his poem, Takechi no Sukune is given the title of Asomi, or Ason. This is a title that has roots in the Korean courts, and was likely imported at a later time, but its use here, as we are seeing more and more connection with the peninsula, is interesting, to say the least.

Ō Naka tsu Hime

Another wife of Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, the 14th sovereign (aka Chūai Tennō). She was the mother of the princes Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma. Her father was Hikobito no Ohine (aka Hiko Hito no Ohoye), and his parents were the 12th sovereign, Oho Tarashi Hiko and Inabi no Waka Iratsume. So she had essentially married her cousin. Several things that strike me about her and this lineage. First, she seems firmly placed in the context of the Tarashi dynasty. On top of this, her name, along with that of her husband, seems to form a Hiko Hime pair. The explanation of “Naka” is given that Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko was the middle of three brothers. Is that the same story for his wife? Or was there some place called Naka? It is unclear. But it bolsters an idea that perhaps Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma had a more legitimate claim than the Chronicles make it out to seem.

Prince Kakosaka Hiko

AKA Kagosaka. His name looks suspiciously like a title—the Lord/Prince of Kako Hill. According to the Chronicles, he is said to have been the eldest son of the 14th sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko and Oho Naka tsu Hime.

Prince Oshikuma

The younger brother of Kakosaka Hiko. Perhaps. That’s what the Chronicles say, at least. I only wonder about this because of the name element “kuma”. Typically assumed to be “bear” there certainly are a lot of “kuma” names that show up in the Chronicles for these stories. Most notably, there was the campaign against the Kumaso—probably the Kuma and So. And then we have people in Kyushu like Kumawani and Kumawashi. Then there is Oshikuma, and on the other side there is Take Furukuma. There is even a Kuma no Kori. What it actually means I don’t know that I could say, but the prevalence of this name element certainly seems odd, and with the seeming abandonment of the Miwa area, I wonder if it indicates other groups that were coming to power, bringing new names and traditions with them. Or it could just be that the name element “kuma” became popular around this time. Who knows?

Kurami Wake and Isachi no Sukune

These are the generals who came with the soldiers from the east. We don’t have a lot of information about them, but they seem to have been major players. “Wake” indicates a title—the Chronicles claim it means that they are a royal prince that was separated (“wake”) from the royal lineage. There is also evidence that it may have just been a noble title at the time, so this could just be something like the Lord of Kurami. His partner in all of this, Isachi no Sukune, carries the title of Sukune, just like the once and future prime minister, Takechi no Sukune. Of course, we know that Sukune is a high ranking title in the court—look at Takechi no Sukune. So these are individuals of some status, lending credence to the idea that Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma had some powerful backers.

Take Furukuma

Tarashi Hime’s main general during the conflict. Sometimes his role is usurped in the Chronicles by Takechi no Sukune, but that may just be a case of Takechi being a more memorable figure in general. This is one problem with things like oral history, where it is easy for stories to accrue to the more famous individual, while others become forgotten. He is said to have been an ancestor of the Wani no Omi, a rather powerful family whom we’ve already seen pop up here and there throughout the stories.

Kuma no Kori

As far as we can tell, this was just a soldier in Oshikuma’s forces who composed a song that mocked Takechi no Sukune, or, as the song calls him, Uchi no Ason. Other than showing the importance of verse to the early Japanese, we also get a glimpse at a possible seperate mode of address for Takechi no Sukune. I would also note that hwere we have one more person with the name “kuma”

Izasa Wake no Ōkami

THis is the name given for the god of Kehi that wants to exchange names with the young prince Homuda Wake. In the end he is also known as Mike tsu Ōkami, because of the way he helped out with the offering for the ritual.

Tarashi Hime's Campaign:

Map of the likely route of the campaign, based on the sources, as well as the location of Kehi, also mentioned in this episode. Click to enlarge. Original map by Ash_Crow, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Modified by author.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is Episode 41: Trouble On the Home Front
Now, before we get started, just a quick shout-out to Steve-O for donating to support the show. If you’d like to join him and just help us keep this thing going, we always appreciate any donations at kofi.com/sengokudaimyo. That’s ko(dash)fi.com/sengokudaimyo.
So, from the last episode, we’ve been talking about Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jinguu, and her supposedly successful assault on the Korean peninsula. Of course, as we covered, and despite what the Chronicles would have us believe, this likely wasn’t the first time that warriors from the archipelago had gathered in boats and made the journey across the straits. In fact, if anything, Jinguu’s invasion may have been a story that encompassed numerous different assaults and generalized them into a single campaign. And it really is unlikely that the outcome of the raid was that anyone on the peninsula felt subjugated to Yamato, though there certainly may have been some payments made to hopefully prevent future raids.
“Hey Silla—those are some nice villages you have there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to them.”
Either way, though, that is all only the beginning of Okinaga Tarashi Hime’s story in the Chronicles, and though they don’t exactly count her as a sovereign—the Nihon Shoki continues to refer to her by her title as wife of the sovereign and regent—one has to wonder at the fact that she gets to have her own book in the Chronicles. Not even Yamato Takeru can make that claim, and he was supposedly the one whose lineage would rule the archipelago.
I’ll drop a quick note here that the fact that she isn’t counted as a sovereign is not just something that we talk about today. Kitabatake Chikafusa, writing his own history in the 14th century, known as the Jinnou Shoutouki, gives Tarashi Hime her due and treats her with full honors, claiming she was actually the 15th sovereign, not just a regent. On top of that, there are many other records that accord her with titles, often anachronistic, that are otherwise only used for the other sovereigns of Japan. So even though the Nihon Shoki may not deign to give her the title, she certainly seems to have been a sovereign in all but name.
So there she was, a ruler with a powerful army and direct connections to the kami. Okinaga Tarashi Hime must have been at a high point. Her campaign against Silla had been successful, and she likely came back to the archipelago in quite a good mood. She probably would have been celebrating, if it weren’t for the fact that she had other things on her mind. For according to the Chronicles, no sooner had she gotten back to the island of Kyuushuu but she went into labor. The child she had been carrying finally was due. Before departing for the mainland she had performed a ritual involving a couple of white stones to put off the birth until she returned, and according to the stories, this must have been some medicine, because the Nihon Shoki claims she was gone for three years. Of course, this is still at a time when the Japanese weren’t exactly great at date-keeping, so it could easily be the case that three years was anything but. Still, they don’t seem to think anything of it—after all, she had done the ritual thing with the rocks, right? So all was good.
Now, though, she had successfully returned, and it was time for her to give birth. We aren’t given the details—did they have time to set up a parturition hut for her, or did it come on suddenly? All we know is that her birth was successful, and resulted in a healthy baby boy who would be known to posterity as Homuda Wake, aka—and this may be a bit of a spoiler—Oujin Tennou.
The birth of her son was likely great news for Tarashi Hime, but it also put her in a bind. After all, Homuda Wake was only a baby—just a newborn infant—and however legitimate his claim to his father’s throne, he was hardly the only one with such a claim. Tarashi Hime and her prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, both knew that their position was tenuous, even with their recent successes on the continent. It seems that Yamato wasn’t quite as unified as the Chronicles might have us believe.
Now, up to this point, the title of sovereign seems to have been passed down from one ruler to the next in a fairly orderly succession—or so we are led to believe. It may not have been the eldest child, and not even the child of the sovereign’s first wife, but it does seem to have largely just happened. But then again, was it really in the Chroniclers’ interest to try to challenge the legitimacy of the royal family? Wasn’t building an unbroken lineage back to Amaterasu Ohokami, the sun goddess herself, one of their key tasks?
And yet, despite all of that, there are hints throughout the stories that we’ve read that there were plenty of places where history may have taken a different turn—stories that may even cover up times when the lineage did break, only to be stitched back together through the efforts of some rather creative story tellers. Remember how Ninigi no Mikoto wasn’t the only Heavenly Descendant? There was also Nigi Hayahi no Mikoto, the ancestor of the Mononobe clan. Then, after Iware Biko had conquered Yamato, removing Nigi Hayahi’s descendants, his own chosen heir had to deal with a jealous older brother who wanted the throne. Then there was Prince Take Haniyasu and his wife, who apparently thought they should be in charge rather than his nephew Mimaki Iribiko. And of course, how can we forget that all of this was being compiled after Ohoama – aka Emperor Temmu - had usurped the throne of his own nephew in what would be known as the Jinshin no Ran. It wasn’t enough to just be named the heir, you had to be able to fight for it as well.
I think we can safely assume that Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune realized this fact. For one thing, while she may have been Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko’s partner in the campaign against the Kumaso, she was not his only consort, and there were adult princes running around, who were probably already helping to run things—whether they were off running their own provinces or were keeping things afloat back in Yamato or wherever the seat of government was. And while she had been off on the peninsula, they would have had time to consolidate their own power base. Of these potential rivals, two in particular looked like they were going to be a problem—these were the princes Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma.
Now, it is little wonder that Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma might have some reservations about serving under their younger half-brother. After all, they doubly descended from royalty. Not only was their father the fourteenth sovereign, Tarashi Nakatsu Hiko, their mother was Oho Nakatsu Hime, the daughter of Prince Hiko Hito no Ohine, who, himself, was the son of the Twelfth sovereign, Oho Tarashi Hiko and his wife, Waka Iratsume. They had the bona fides of their lineage, so why should they bow and scrape to some kid who hadn’t even been born when their dad kicked the bucket?
Truth be told, it is unclear how strong Homuda Wake’s claim to the throne was. Sure, they all had the same father, but let’s take a look at his mother, Okinaga Tarashi Hime. Sure, she’s a badass conquering hero who leads troops into battle and speaks with the gods, but how did her background stand up to her husband’s other wife, Oho Naka tsu Hime? Of course, everyone was trying to connect themselves back to the royal family so that, as I’ve noted before, the family tree was often more the family bamboo stalk. Heck, even Takechi no Sukune has a genealogical link back to the legendary eighth sovereign, Oho Yamato Neko Hiko Kunikuru no Mikoto, who was supposedly his grandfather—man that guy must really be old. But how did these two separate lineages compare when it came to deciding who should take the throne?
Well, we are told that Okinaga Tarashi Hime’s father was a man named Prince Okinaga no Sukune—who may or may not be the same person listed in the Fudoki who assisted Oho Tarashi Hiko when he was creep-stalking Oho Iratsume over in Harima Province. Prince Okinaga no Sukune was, in turn, a great-grandson of the legendary 9th sovereign Waka Yamato Neko Hiko-ohohihi, also known as Kaika Tennouō. Perhaps more importantly, she descended through his son, the prolific Prince Hiko Imasu. But it wasn’t just Tarashi Hime’s paternal lineage that is mentioned—the scribes also recorded her maternal lineage as well. Now all of this is somewhat scattered and obscured in what became these long lists of names, but it is still there if you want to pull it out, especially in the Kojiki. There they have her maternal line traced back through her mother, Kadzuraki no Takanuka Hime, herself a descendant of family from Tajima, all the way back to a man that we talked about many episodes back: Ame no Hiboko.
Two things stand out in this lineage. First, it is Tarashi Hime’s connection to the Kadzuraki family. We’ve previously mentioned that “Kadzuraki” may be the name of the envoy to Silla that the Korean annals record as Kalyako, and later there would be another Kadzuraki no Sotsuhiko who would be sent over to the continent, so let’s not forget about that little fact. But looming much larger than that is the presence of Ame no Hiboko, who is said to have been a prince from the Korean peninsula. Specifically he is said to have been a prince of Silla, who followed his wife to Japan, where she ended up at the site of Naniwa where he ended up at Tsuruga Bay, where he was worshipped as a kami at the shrine of Kehi. And Kehi, as you may recall, was the location that Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko had moved the court before heading off to the south, and it was also the location that Tarashi Hime herself had departed from on her way to Kyushu. It seems that Homuda Wake, then, makes claims not only to the Yamato royal lineage, but also to a line of Silla kings, though the connection is not exactly air tight, as we don’t really have anyone in the Korean chronicles that we can identify as Ame no Hiboko, who comes down to us with a decidedly Japanese sounding name.
Now, again, we aren’t sure how much truth there is in any of this—in fact, we are pretty certain that much of the lineages are constructed to try to make everything neat and tidy. But if so, why tie Tarashi Hime—and, by extension, her son—to a legendary Silla Prince?
Well, I suppose that in the first case, it could have just been a way to give her legitimacy for her actions on the peninsula. After all, if she was descended from Silla royalty it would bolster her claim to be the rightful ruler when subjugating Silla. There is also another thought, though, and that is that it tells a story of Silla—or at least continental—blood in the royal line. Some have taken this to mean that Homuda Wake and his mother were entirely from the Korean Peninsula, and that this next story is basically a fanciful retelling of the conquest of Japan by a Korean prince, who stayed and later founded a new line of sovereigns. I’m still not willing to go that far, but it is not out of the realm of possibility that Tarashi Hime and her son were not solely descended from the Wa people of the archipelago, but that they did have Korean ancestors on the continent, as well. In fact, this is almost to be expected given the Wa’s use of marriage politics.
And this is probably the time to discuss one other line that many bring up on this topic, Homuda Wake’s own name. Scholars much more versed in the study of ancient Japanese and Korean have made the case that “Homuda”, or perhaps “Pomuda”, is clearly a Korean name, and not Japanese. For my part, I don’t know about that.
One claim, in the Chronicles, is that Homuda is an old name for a Japanese style of wristguard, known as a tomo. These were bulky pads that were tied around an archer’s wrist to keep the bowstring from striking into the inside of the arm. It is said that the young Homuda was born with a growth of his arm, and hence the name. On the other hand, I don’t think there is any other evidence of such a word in ancient Japanese, and the Chronicles don’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to etymology.
I would note that there was a Homutsu Wake – or Pomutu Wake - as the son of Ikume Iribiko and Saho Hime. He was never Crown Prince, that we know of, but is it so far a jump from Homutsu to Homuda? As for the title “Wake”, that would seem to be just that, a title. Is it possible that Homuda is simply a locative—a place name? If so, is that place in the archipelago or somewhere on the peninsula?
Regardless of the name, there is a question if what we are seeing is more than just a fight between rival heirs to the throne, or if there is something more. Is there, woven in here, an allegory for something else: the rise of elites that were closely tied with the Korean peninsula?
Certainly the changes on the peninsula had created some uncertain times. Goguryeo’s destruction of the Han commanderies meant that there was no longer the threat of continental reprisals to help keep all of the peninsular states at peace, and Silla and Baekje were bringing the other states of their confederacies under their sway—by force if necessary. And though they were the states that would come out victorious, we shouldn’t assume that they were the only ones. Where would the victims, displaced by these conflicts, end up going?
In addition, though there is no direct evidence that I’m aware of, I have to wonder if the life of the Japanese raiders didn’t appeal to certain peninsular people as well. It is a story that plays out time and again throughout history—farmers abandoning their fields, especially in times of conflict and uncertainty, to join up with the same people that the so-called civilized cultures deem as ruthless barbarians. In Great Britain, it wasn’t uncommon for Anglo-Saxon farmers to join up with the Norse raiders, and on the borders of empire, there are stories of peasant farmers abandoning their livelihood to take up with the nomads of the steppes. And why wouldn’t they? As part of a roving band they had opportunities to acquire wealth, whereas on the farm they were little more than targets for others. Would it have been so surprising if some number of people from the peninsula threw in with these Vikings of northeast Asia?
And again, that puts this whole story in a different light. While there is no evidence that there was a sweeping conquest of the archipelago by a peninsular force, could this struggle be rooted in the idea of a new and changing elite—one made up of a blending of people from the archipelago and the peninsula? The jury is still out, but we do know that from at least this point on, there were certainly more and more people who would be coming to Yamato from the continent, with entire families claiming that their ancestors were actually ancient peninsular royalty.
But much of that is to come, so for now, let’s return to the story at hand: Homuda Wake was little more than an infant, and his mother Okinaga Tarashi Hime, knew that she was probably going to have a fight on her hand as she tried to head back to Yamato along the Seto Inland Sea route. Thinking ahead, she decided on a clever ploy.
First, she dressed one of the ships in the style of a funerary boat. Word seemed to have gotten out that the sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, had died, and so she made it seem as though they were bringing his body back to the Yamato heartland so that it could be buried. This ship would sail the direct route, through the Seto Inland Sea, while another ship, carrying her infant son and under the command of her trusted prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, would take the long way, traveling along the Pacific coast side of Shikoku. It would add time to the journey, and expose the ship to some of the dangers posed by being on the open sea, rather than the relatively calm waters of the inland sea route, but those were nothing compared to the dangers that were likely lurking and waiting for them along the interior waterways.
And we’ve talked about this before, but it bears mentioning again, I believe—the Seto Inland Sea may be more protected from the weather and vagaries of the open ocean, but the numerous bays and islands also make it the perfect place for pirates and other nefarious actors who may want a piece of whatever was coming down that channel. The entire waterway is only 34 miles wide at its widest point, and in some places the widest passage between islands is still less than a mile. Furthermore, the many islands and shallow waters can make for some unpredictable currents, if you aren’t familiar with them. It was the fastest way from Kyushu to central Honshu, but it had its share of dangers.
Case in point: The two brothers, Oshikuma and Kakasaka Hiko, the other royal princes. They had heard about the birth of their infant half-brother, and they were determined to resist. Together they raised an army, and they came up with a ploy to intercept the royal ship. Claiming to build their father’s mausoleum in Harima province, they set up a line of boats going back and forth from Awaji Island to Akashi, in Harima Province. There is only about 4 kilometers—roughly two and a half miles—between the island and the shore, and their soldiers were patrolling back and forth.
This army wasn’t just their own men. The two brothers were joined by others from the eastern lands—likely those of Azuma, that Yamato Takeru is said to have pacified. These were Kurami Wake and Isachi no Sukune, and they were quickly made generals. Clearly it wasn’t just the two princes who had a problem with Tarashi Hime and her plans to put her own son on the throne.
Now while they were waiting—their ships spread out to ensure that they would catch Tarashi Hime as she would have to pass through their line or take a detour all the way south around Awaji Island—the two princes went out hunting. Of course, this wasn’t just any hunt—it was a divination hunt. You may remember that Tarashi Hime conducted several of these divinations before setting out for the peninsula, to establish the success of her endeavor. So, as they were planning to hunt Tarashi Hime and her son, the princes knew that if they were victorious in their hunt on land, they would be successful in their hunt on the water.
And so the two sat and waited. The elder brother, Kakosaka Hiko, climbed a tree to look out and see what he could observe. As he did so, a giant beast came crashing out of the underbrush—it was a wild boar.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of encountering a wild boar, but these aren’t like domestic pigs. The Japanese wild boar is, itself, a subspecies of the Eurasian wild boar, slightly smaller than its continental cousins they still can average about 100 kilograms, or about 220 lbs. But that’s just average. Even in the past couple decades there were boars that have been caught that were 220 and 240 kilograms. That’s over 500 lbs, and that isn’t the lazy fat of a pig, happy in its muck. That’s 500 lbs of lean muscle with two tusks 5 to 18 inches long. On top of that, they are aggressive. In Europe, the boar spear, used for hunting such animals, had a crossguard built into it to prevent the skewered animal from continuing to push up the spear to gore its attacker. Although they are not exactly hunters, they are still quite deadly, especially when you have to face them head on.
It was this ferocious vision of the forest that came out and attacked the two brothers. According to the chronicles it knocked down the very tree that Kakosaka Hiko had climbed up into to get a better view, and then gored him to death. Oshikuma, the youngest brother, escaped, but barely.
It would seem that their divination was anything but a success. With his brother dead, Oshikuma had to decide what to do next. Rather than confront Tarashi Hime’s forces as he had planned, he told one of his generals, Kurami Wake, to pull the troops back to Sumiyoshi, near modern Kobe, and they would wait there for the royal ship to arrive.
When that time came, Oshikuma looked out and he could hardly believe his luck. Where he had likely suspected an armada, fresh from their victories on the peninsula, instead he saw the ritual funerary ship, carrying the body of the deceased sovereign, his grieving wife, and only a handful of seamen to work the oars.
Oshikuma gave the words and his men got in their boats and rowed out, expecting an easy victory. But, as the wise Admiral Ackbar once said: “It’s a trap!”
No sooner were Oshikuma’s ships within range when the funerary ship was transformed. What they thought was an empty ritual vessel was quickly shown to be swarming with hardened veteran warriors. They fought back their surprised foes, who turned and ran, but Tarashi Hime’s forces pursued them. Her general at that time, since Takechi no Sukune was handling the infant Prince, was a man known to us as Naniwa-neko Take Furukuma no Mikoto, an ancestor of the Wani no Omi.
The royal forces pushed their opponents to the shore and then pursued them back all the way to Uji, in Yamashiro province. Take Furukuma, Tarashi Hime’s general, was eventually joined by Takechi no Sukune. The two forces found themselves camped out on either side of the river, each waiting for the other to make a move.
As they glared across the waters at each other, a man named Kuma no Kori in the army of Prince Oshikuma sang a song to encourage the men, in which he mocked Takechi no Sukune—or, as he is referred to in verse, Uchi no Ason.
Now the next part is a bit confused—the Kojiki attributes it all to Take Furukuma, but the Nihon Shoki gives the lion’s share of the credit to Takechi no Sukune. Either way, the basic tactic is more or less the same, regardless of who came up with it. First, the men of Tarashi Hime’s army took out their spare bowstrings and tied them into their hair like normal cords. Then he had them all put on wooden swords, made to look like the real thing. Once they did this, they called out to Oshikuma.
Takechi—or perhaps Furukuma—called out that they had received word that Tarashi Hime had died, and now all they wanted was to secure a promise that the young prince could live, and in return Oshikuma could take the throne—after all, why should anyone else fight and die over this. As a gesture of their goodwill, he had the royal army cut their bow strings and then thrown their swords into the water.
Prince Oshikuma, seeing victory at hand, accepted this and magnanimously returned the gesture. He had his men cut their own bowstrings, and throw their own swords into the river. Of course, no sooner had he done so than the ruse was revealed. Tarashi Hime’s forces pulled their spare bowstrings from their hair buns and quickly strung their bows and they started launching arrows at their now weaponless opponents. They grabbed up their real swords and started across the river.
Prince Oshikuma had no other options. Without weapons, there was only one thing he could do, so he ran. He and his men ran north, retreating all the way to Afusaka, near the shores of Lake Biwa. Takechi no Sukune and Take Furukuma continued to pursue Prince Oshikuma and routed him and his men all the way to Kurusu in Sasanami, where Prince Oshikuma’s army was finally destroyed. Defeated and facing certain death, Prince Oshikuma and his remaining general, Isachi no Sukune, decided to take their own lives rather than be captured. They sailed a ship out onto the lake, the Kojiki records the song that Prince Oshikuma sang:
Come my lads,
Rather than receive the wounds
Inflicted by Furukuma
Come, like the nipo birds
Let us dive into the waters
Of the lake of Afumi
And, so saying, they jumped into the lake together. Their bodies were swept downstream, and eventually washed ashore in Uji.
With their opposition now quite decidedly out of the picture, the generals returned, and Tarashi Hime took time in the peace immediately following the conflict to properly bury her husband, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko. Supposedly he was buried not back in the area at the foot of Mt. Miwa, but instead outside the western mountains of the Nara basin at a place known as Nagae or Nagano, in Ega, in Kawachi Province. This has been identified as a late 5th century tomb in Fujidera, in modern Osaka, just south of the Yamato river where it comes out of the Nara Basin. Of course, much of this is suspect, but it certainly does seem like an impressive—even kingly—tomb.
Once her husband was in the mound, Tarashi Hime set up a court at the Wakazakura no Miya, or Young Cherry Blossom Palace, in Iware, on the eastern edge of the Nara Basin. And if Iware sounds familiar, you might remember that it was Iware Biko, aka Jimmu Tennou, who had supposedly marched in and conquered the Nara Basin some 800 or more years prior, at least according to the Nihon Shoki’s dating.
Here, in the Nara Basin, it seems that Homuda Wake was finally poised to take the throne at what I can only assume was the youngest age ever. Have no fear, however, for Tarashi Hime was more than ready to step in as regent and rule in his stead.
For 69 years.
Yes, once again that habit of the chronicles to go all timey-wimey, Jeremy Bearimy on us strikes again. Not only does the Nihon Shoki claim that Tarashi Hime was pregnant with Homuda Wake for three whole years before she brought him to term, but she then sits on the throne herself for 69 years as quote-unquote “regent”. Homuda Wake’s own chapter and deeds doesn’t start until she dies, 69 years into her reign. So something is going on here.
First off, it could be as simple as the idea that she was no regent, but she was the sovereign. Certainly much of the verbiage used for her is, much like with Yamato Takeru, verbiage that would be used for a sovereign. Indeed, in the Fudoki she is often treated as ruler in her own right, and like we discussed above, the later historian Kitabatake Chikafusa certainly viewed her as such—though that 14th century history was based more on his memory than on documents. Still, it supports one idea.
Another thought is that her reign is unnaturally long to account for other events dealing with the Korean peninsula, and we’ll certainly delve back into those. In this case, her rule is so long because she’s being held up as the embodiment of Queen Himiko, and the chronicles are using Himiko’s known dates as well as extrapolating back to the supposed dates of the older rulers.
There is one thought that in this time before the Japanese started writing things down the years were not based on actual seasons, but rather on harvests. Some have suggested that there were even three cycles a year, and that this was what was counted. If that were true, then 69 cycles might only really be 23 to 35 years—still past the age of majority for young Homuda Wake, but not nearly as excessively so.
And then there is the idea that there is actually a problem in the record, and that many of her exploits actually belong to her son. The problem with that is that he then goes on to reign for another 40 some-odd years. So while it is perfectly reasonable that some of his exploits—particularly some of the more martial exploits—were attributed to his mother, it doesn’t explain the supernatural longevity.
Personally, I simply don’t hold much with the chronology. Remember, Takechi no Sukune is supposedly with us through all of this. We’ll see that the earliest date that I might at all want to put any reliance on is about 366, and the last is roughly 385. Even these dates are suspect, but they seem much more reasonable, given other events that we know are going on. This gives us about 19 years to work with—a much more reasonable number than 69.
But what happened in those 19 years? Well, quite a lot, and much of it has to do with the peninsula. Before we get into all of that, though, let’s talk about the other things that happened in Japan.
First off, there were the kami. It certainly seems that the kami were jealous of the time that Tarashi Hime had spent on her campaign. In fact, when she was sailing back towards Yamato, before that whole mess with her stepsons, there was a point where her boat kept getting turned away, and she couldn’t get past Muko Bay in modern Hyogo prefecture. Now one might assume that this was because of the army that was waiting for her, but the Nihon Shoki makes the much more reasonable and sensible claim that it was the kami. Most importantly, Amaterasu Ohokami’s “rough spirit”, or “ara-mitama”, could not be allowed to approach the land of Yamato.
You may recall that the spirit of a kami could be divided up in various ways. This includes their rough, or wild spirit—the ara-mitama—as well as their gentle, or pacified spirit, known as the nigi-mitama. Of course, they had just been at war, so it is little wonder that Amaterasu’s ara-mitama might be with them, but they did not want that spirit of war brought into the heart of Yamato, so it was sent to be worshipped in Hirota by Hayama Hime, a daughter of Yamashiro-neko—a name that suspiciously sounds like they may have been an ancient ruler, or at least major noble, of Yamashiro province.
But that wasn’t all. You know how once you stop to talk to one person all of a sudden everyone else wants a piece of your time? It seems that Tarashi Hime had to deal with this as well, but with the kami. No sooner was Amaterasu Ohokami’s ara-mitama was taken care of than Waka Hirume asked to be worshipped in Nagawo, in Ikuta, just beyond modern Kobe. Then, Kotoshiro Nushi wanted to be worshipped in the land of Nakata, so Hayama Hime’s younger sister, Naga Hime, was sent out to perform the task. Finally, the three spirits that had started her out on her campaign, known as Uwa tsutsu no wo, Naka-tsutsu-no-wo, and Soko-tsutsu-no-wo, asked for their gentle spiritis, or Nigi-mitama, to be worshipped at Nunakura in Ohotsu, so they could watch the ships traveling back and forth through the Seto Inland Sea.
By the way, if any of those names seem familiar, they should. Of course we know Amaterasu, also known as Oho Hirume. Waka Hirume was her maiden, or perhaps even younger sister, who was doing the weaving when Susanowo tossed in that backwards flayed colt, at least in some of the stories. And then Kotoshiro Nushi was a son to the great god of Izumo, Ohokuni Nushi. We’ve encountered him a time or two back in the mythical period.
I mention all this because I find it significant that they are being mentioned at this juncture, because this seems to be that point where we see something else happen, at least in the archaeological record. Around the 4th century we see the abandonment of the Miwa area for some reason. The seat of power when the mounded keyhole tombs became a thing in the archipelago seems to have disappeared. Eventually, though, in that same century, there is a shift to the Kawachi area, and modern Ohosaka. Much of it was probably still under water as part of Kawachi Bay, but that was silting up and creating more and more land.
This is also an area where we see heavy influence from the peninsula, and we’ve already talked about all of the stories associated with the Korean peninsula and this area. This could simply be a reflection of increased immigration as well as increased trade, but with the mention of these kami, was there also something happening to the ancient Miwa cult? Are we starting to see other kami come in and take center stage? Of course, since this is all being written down at a much later date it is hard to pull apart all of the threads, but it does make one wonder.
Speaking of other kami, there is at least one more story that we should relate here. It is likely apocryphal, but it nonetheless adds a few more threads connecting this latest dynasty to the peninsula, because it deals with the god of Kehi.
Now at this time, the young prince, Homuda Wake, was probably no more than about 13 years old, and he went with the prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, on a tour of several provinces. At this point, I have to imagine that Takechi no Sukune must have been Homuda Wake’s father figure. The way they talk about Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune, one almost thinks that they might have been married, but of course, no such allegation is ever made, though it does cause one to wonder. Takechi no Sukune wasn’t exactly a commoner—his lineage in the Chronicles goes back to before Mimaki Iribiko and to the line of sovereigns before him, or at least so they claim. And yet he is never mentioned as anything other than the prime minister and a dutiful officer of the court, still, it does make you wonder if there wasn’t something more in their relationship.
Still, his relationship with Homuda Wake, whatever may or may not have been going on with his mother was undeniably a close one. Travel such as this must have been quite the bonding experience.
Together they went through the province of Afumi and ended up at Tsuruga Bay, near Kehi. There the deity known as Izasa wake no Ohokami no Mikoto reached out to Takechi no Sukune in his dreams and told him that he wished to exchange names with the young prince. Takechi no Sukune agreed, and he said the words of blessing and promised that they would do whatever the kami had commanded. And given everything they had been through, I’m sure that Takechi no Sukune had learned to listen when the kami decided to speak to you.
Izasa wake no Ohokami seemed pleased, however. Rather than Takechi no Sukune preparing some elaborate offering it seems that the kami offered to handle that on his behalf. He simply had to go down to the beach the next day the kami would present the offerings.
The next morning, as he had been told to do, Takechi no Sukune made his way down to the beach. There it seems that a pod of dolphins had beached itself. Their snouts were broken and bloody, and they were lying all over the shore. Dolphins, which were hunted by the Japanese up through the modern day, were considered a source of food—and thus an offering for the exchange of names.
Now, what’s not quite clear to me is exactly what it meant, in this case, to exchange names. Does that mean that Homuda Wake received the name Homuda Wake at this point? If so, does that mean that was actually the original name of the kami of Kehi? If so, what was Homuda Wake’s original name? Was it Izasa Wake? This isn’t answered by the chronicles in any satisfactory way that I can make out. The kami of Kehi is given the name Mike tsu Ohokami, or the Great Kami of the August Food, since they had provided the dolphins as an offering. They are also called, rather uncreatively, Kehi no Ohokami. But nowhere does it actually demonstrate them exchanging names. It is possible that there is a problem with the way that the words are translated, and it was more a ceremony of giving each other new names—or even just getting a name of the kami. Either way it is a strange episode.
Following that encounter, Takechi no Sukune takes the young prince back home, where he is wined and dined with a great banquet by his mother. While the young prince was away, she had worried, as mothers around the world are want to do when their children are away. To take her mind off things, she caused to be brewed a particular sake, which she did as what would appear to be another ukehi—a kind of divination she was rather familiar with. It must have been successful because they did return safely, and in the end she had barrels of sake at her disposal, so what better way to get rid of them than to throw a party.
It was at that party that she invoked the name Sukuna, by which many people believe she meant Sukuna Bikona, the kami who had helped Oho Kuni Nushi. Apparently he had more than a little efficacy in the realm of sake, or at least so we gather by the way that he is invoked by Tarashi Hime in her poetry.
And I think that is enough for this episode. From here, we are going to get into more shenanigans with the peninsula. Notably, however, these are dated shenanigans. We can argue whether it was Tarashi Hime, Homuda Wake, or some unknown sovereign that took part, but the actual incidents seem to come from records older than our extant chronicles that actually describe real activities with what seem to be verifiable—if slightly offset—dates. These are largely from the Chronicles of Baekje, the country that would become one of Yamato’s closest allies, or so it would seem. There are certainly a couple of problems between what we read in the Nihon Shoki and what we read in the Kojiki, but I think we can get over those.
So, until next time, 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. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Geography

Previous Episodes

Rough Transcript

References

The Dual Kingship Model

Prince Ō Yamamori (大山守皇子) and Prince Nukata Ō Naka tsu Hiko (額田大中彦皇子)

Ujigami Shrine (宇治上神社)

Rough Transcript

References

Who’s who?

Ajikki (阿直岐)

Wang’in/Wani (王仁)

Takuso (卓素)

Susukori (須須許理), aka Nipo (仁番)

Maketsu (眞毛津)

Saiso (西素)

Achi no Omi (阿知使主) , Tsuga no Omi (都加使主), and the Weavers of Kure

King Jeonji of Baekje (腆支 / 直支)

Prince Hunhae of Baekje (訓解)

Prince Jeomnye [Jeoprye?] of Bakeje (蝶禮)

King Guisin of Bakeje (久爾辛)

Mong Manchi (木満致)

Continental Clans

Hachiman

Homuda Wake’s Kofun

Rough Transcript

References

Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko

Ame no Hiboko

Takechi no Sukune

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Homuda Wake

King of Kara and his Sister

Mongna Geunja

Yutsuki / Kungwol

Maketsu

Iwa no Hime

King Naemul of Silla

King Silseong of Silla

King Nulji of Silla

Prince Bokho of Silla

Prince Misaheun of Silla

Pak Jesang

Rough Transcript

References

Iribiko Dynasty

Mimaki Iribiko

Ikume Iribiko

Tarashi Dynasty

Ōtarashi Hiko

Waka Tarashi Hiko

Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Middle Dynasty

Homuda Wake

Rough Transcript

References

Rough Transcript

References

The Kings of Goguryeo

The Kings of Baekje

King of Silla

A note about “Wa”

Rough Transcript

References

Rough Transcript

References

Locations

People

Rough Transcript

References

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Homuda Wake

Takechi no Sukune

Ō Naka tsu Hime

Prince Kakosaka Hiko

Prince Oshikuma

Kurami Wake and Isachi no Sukune

Take Furukuma

Kuma no Kori

Prince Ō Yamamori (大山守皇子) and Prince Nukata Ō Naka tsu Hiko　(額田大中彦皇子)