Episode 86: All the Other Stuff

May 16, 2023 Joshua Badgley

Sado Island, off the coast of Niigata prefecture, what was once the land of Koshi. Public domain photo by NASA taken from the ISS in 2021, downloaded from Wikimedia.

Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tennō

A familiar name for anyone who has been following us: Ame Kunioshi is our current sovereign. Son of Wohodo no Ōkimi, he was the fourth sovereign in our current line-up, and the second generation of this dynasty. While he was on the throne, Nimna took Silla, and Buddhism was (probably) first introduced to Japan.

Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi

Head of the Soga family, and one of the top three officials in the court of Ame Kunioshi. One thing to note: It is unclear how much that is attributed to him is accurate, as it is possible that some of this was later Soga attempts to prop up their ancestor, but still there seems little reason to doubt that his daughters married into the royal family, at least.

Ishihime

Ame Kunioshi’s primary wife, and daughter of his half-brother, Takewo Hiro Kunioshi no Ōkimi, aka Senka Tennō, and his primary wife, Tachibana Nakatsu, who was, herself, a daughter of Ōke no Ōkimi, aka Ninken Tennō. This made her Ame Kunioshi’s aunt, as well, because he was the daughter of her sister. She was also a sister to Ohatsuse Wakasazaki, aka Buretsu Tennō, the last sovereign of the preivous dynasty.

Yata no Tamakatsu

The eldest son of Ame Kunioshi and Ishihime. We don’t hear much about him other than his death, and that may seem odd unless you consider that he was probably the Crown Prince up until that point. His death would leave room for his brother.

Osada Nunakura Futodamashiki no Mikoto, aka Bidatsu Tennō

Nunakura is the younger son of Ame Kunioshi and Ishihime, and would come to the throne after Ame Kunioshi’s death. He is named Crown Prince after the death of his older brother, Yata no Tamakatsu

Kasanuhi (aka Satake) no Himemiko

Kasanuhi is the daughter of Ishihime and Ame Kunioshi, and the last of their three children.

Kitashi Hime

Daughter of Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi, and one of the wives of Ame Kunioshi.

Wonane Gimi

Another daughter of Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi, and also wife of Ame Kunioshi.

Takechi (or Takeuchi) no Sukune

The first “Prime Minister”, or Ōmi, and a descendant of Ōtarashi Hiko no Ōkimi, aka Keikō Tennō. He was a close confidant and supporter of Okinaga Tarashi Hime (aka Jingū Tennō) as well as her son, Homuda Wake (Ōjin Tennō). Many lineages would trace back to him, including the Heguri and the Soga.

Koshi no Kuni

The land of Koshi (越), which was later split up into various provinces such as Echizen (越前), Etchū (越中), and Echigo (越後), among others. It was along the Japan Sea side of Honshū. It comes up a lot in various records, usually on the periphery of the state.

Sushen / Mishihase (粛慎)

The term “粛慎” shows up in continental records talking about a Tungusic people on the mainland, so it is possible that it is these people that the Chroniclers are talking about. However, it is just as likely that they were some other Tungusic speaking people, or that they were jsut from “up north” just as the Sushen were “up north” from the lands of the Yellow River and Yangzi. There is some thought that they might be from the Okhotsk Culture, which inhabited northern Hokkaidō and the islands to the north. It is also possible they were from the Zoku-Jōmon, or Epi-Jōmon people of northern Tōhoku and Hokkaidō. These are both groups connected with the modern indigenous Ainu population.

The name is often glossed as “Mishihase” in Japanese, and it was used for groups in Tōhoku in later centuries, though it is unclear if they were actually related to the people in the Chronicles.

Sado Island

Sado Island is just off of the coast of modern Niigata prefecture. The island is shaped something like an “S” or a lightning bolt, with two mountain ridges and a valley in between. It has been inhabited for thousands of years, and was later a place of political exile.

Nivkh

A people indigenous to Sakhalin island, along with the Ainu who lived in the southern regions. Their language is a language isolate, meaning that there are no other languages that have been identified as close enough to be considered part of the same family.

Kawahara Tami no Atahe no Miya

We don’t know much but from the name, we can assume Miya was from Kawahara (or Kawara), possibly in Asuka, where Kawara Temple would one day be built. Of course, here he is just seen as a person buying a pretty incredible horse. Later it is said he lived in nearby Hinokuma, which would seem to strengthen that assessment.

Umakai no Omi no Utayori

Utayori was one of the Umakai no Omi (or Mumakahi no Omi, for another reading). This family shows up early on in the Chronicles having been the people in charge of raising the horses for the royal court. They bear the kabane of Omi, putting them, socially, on par with families like the Soga, although I would not say that they were equals at this point. Their position as being in charge of the “horse-keepers” may have something to do with the accusation regarding the queen’s saddle.

Umakai no Omi no Morishi and Umakai no Omi no Nasehi

Two sons of Utayori, who had been killed during torture to try to extract a confession—they were also considered guilty by association, apparently, and only at the last minute were they saved.

Hafuri

A hafuri is actually a job, basically one of the types of priests who handled the indigenous religion of the archipelago.

Michi no Ushi

A local ruler in the land of Koshi. We have seen other instances where it is thought that “no Ushi” became “Nushi”, and so it is likely that he was the ruler of a place called “Michi”.

Shibagaki

An area in Hase (or Hatsuse): a river valley that flows into the southeast Nara Basin, it was probably a place to go and hunt and get away from the day-to-day at the palace.

Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Arako

One of two people sent to meet the Goguryeo envoys in Koshi. “Yamato no Aya no Atahe” is the name of one of the branches of the “Aya” family, which were likely weavers brought over from the continent, originally. In this case it appears to be the Aya of Yamato, though they just use the character for “East”, and they were apparently rather prolific in and around the court. His name, Arako, or “Child of Ara”, makes me wonder if there was a connection to the peninsular state of “Ara”, though I believe they used different characters.

Katsuraki no Atahe no Naniwa

The Katsuraki family has a history of dealing with foreigners, and may have even come from the peninsula themselves, tracing back to one of the few names that may be found in the Korean sources: Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko. The name “Naniwa” is interesting, and I don’t know if that was truly a given name or just where he was from.

Sagaraka (or Saganaka)

An area in Yamashiro, possibly near Saganaka Shrine, which uses the same characters (相樂), though it is hard to know for certain. That is just north of modern Nara city.

Kashiwade no Omi no Katabeko

A member of the Kashiwade no Omi family who was actually the one to retrieve the Goguryeo envoys and to whom Michi no Ushi gave reverence, exposing that he was not the sovereign, because why else would he bow like that to someone else?

Kose no Omi no Saru and Kishi no Akabato

Little is known other than they were apparently taking a barge to fetch the Goguryeo envoys.

Yamato no Aya no Saka no Ue no Atahe no Komaro

This name is a mouthful, but it still breaks down into fairly reasonable chunks. So “Yamato no Aya” is one part, and we addressed this before. “Saka no Uhe” is probably another locative, so they are from the Yamato Aya in Saka no Uhe, or something similar. “Atahe” is the family kabane for Yamato no Aya. And then “Komaro” is his actual name. He is sent to be the one to “entertain” the Goguryeo envoys, so likely he was taking care of everything they needed at their residence.

Nishikori no Obito no Ōshi (or Ōishi)

This is the other person sent with Komaro. Nishikori no Obito is the family name and kabane and then their name is Ōshi or Ōishi (大石).

Wang Jinnie

We talked about him and his family last episode. Sometimes referred to as Ō Chin’ni, or something similar, his name appears to be Sinic from somewhere on the continent. That likely explains how he was able to assist so much with the Goguryeo envoys.

Tsunoga Arashito

Another example of someone coming from the peninsula, a local ruler trying to impersonate the Yamato sovereign, and then arriving after the sovereign passed away, except that he was back in the era of Mimaki and Ikume Iribiko.

Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa

Named similar to Katsuraki no Naniwa, above. He was supposed to return shipwrecked envoys from Goguryeo.

Iwahi and Masa

Two of Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa’s men who accompanied envoys back to Goguryeo.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. This is Episode 86: All the Other Stuff
This episode I want to finish up the events of Ame Kunioshi’s reign. We’ve been following Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tenno, for a while and covered perhaps the things that he was remembered for most, as well as the two most large-scale disruptive things that happened around the time of his reign. First of these disruptions was everything going on on the continent, and the consensus appears to be that at this point we truly get into a period where the Korean peninsula is under the authority and control of the three main states—Baekje and Silla in the south, and Goguryeo in the north. Silla’s own power was on the rise—whereas it was always counted as something of a local power, it had gained enough might to take over the various statelets in its orbit, and with ambitions for more.
The second disruption, which we’ve covered in the last two episodes, is the arrival of Buddhism to Japan. As we noted, it is likely that Buddhism had come to the islands earlier, but it is in this reign—or slightly earlier—that it shows up in the historical record and is counted as something of interest to the court. We’ll follow up on this over the course of the next several reigns, as Buddhism, and its connection with the Soga family, play a large part in this period.
Speaking of the Soga Family, they once again tie in to what we’re going to focus on in the rest of this episode: the nitty-gritty of the rest of Ame Kunioshi’s reign, when we’re not focused on Buddhism or the continent. As we alluded to previously, the rise of Soga no Iname is another key factor of the politics at the time. The Ohotomo had had their moment at the top, and the Mononobe were still going strong, but Soga no Iname appears more and more in the record. Of course, all of this is based on a narrative compiled by members of the court centuries later, and so we should just keep in mind that we aren’t reading about all the things that happened, but just those things that were considered important to telling the story of Yamato and, perhaps even moreso, those things considered important to telling the story of the royal family.
Some of these entries make perfect sense in that context and others, well, not so much. I’ll do my best to make sense of it, but some of it may require more study and scholarship than I have time and access to, and if you have any thoughts, feel free send them in.
So let’s start with the biographical info. First, we have Ame Kunioshi’s queen, Ishihime. Just as Wohodo had married Tashiraka, a daughter of Ohoke no Ohokimi, aka Ninken Tennou, Ame Kunioshi’s queen, Ishihime, was also the daughter of a previous sovereign. In this case, though, she was technically Ame Kunioshi’s niece, as she was the daughter of his half-brother, Takewo Hiro Kunioshi no Ohokimi, aka Senka Tennou, but that just meant they continued the tradition of keeping it in the family.
Ishihime had two sons and one daughter. The eldest was Yata no Tamakatsu, presumably Ame Kunioshi’s Crown Prince, and then there was his younger brother, Wosada Nunakura Futodamashiki. They also had a sister, Kasanuhi, aka Satake.
Besides Ishihime, Ame Kunioshi is mentioned as having two other consorts. Kitashi Hime and Wonane-gimi, both daughters of Soga no Iname, the Oho-omi. Between them they gave birth to 11 sons and 7 daughters. Significantly, and without getting into too much detail, Kitashi Hime would give birth to three of the next four sovereigns, meaning that the Soga family would have their immediate relatives on the throne for over forty years.
By the way, to make that work out, at least according to the rules of succession that the Nihon Shoki seems to imply, the Soga family itself would need to be of imperial descent – and indeed, it is traced back to Takeuchi no Sukune, and through him to Ohotarashi Hiko no Ohokimi, aka Keikou Tennou. Of course, there is a lot of speculation in that lineage, and it was probably simply made up to help legitimize the Soga family and their royal offspring. On the flip side, Ishihime, Ame Kunioshi’s primary wife and the one recognized as Queen by the Nihongi, who would also produce a future sovereign, was clearly tied in to the royal lineage through maternal links to Ohoke no Ohokimi, aka Ninken Tennou.
There were a few other consorts, but I’m not going to go into every single one other than to say that Ame Kunioshi was clearly prolific—or a lot of lineages wanted to connect themselves back to him. He was quite popular, I guess.
Many of these consorts may have been taken before he was even sovereign. Tradition holds that he was born in 509 and came to the throne in 539, so already thirty years old. Of course some have tried to push that back, and if you recall, the previous sovereigns were supposedly just keeping the throne warm for him, something I don’t quite buy given his age when he finally did ascend. That assumes that the dates are correct, which is a rather big assumption.
So five years after Ame Kunioshi takes the throne, we have the first somewhat oddball event. It was a report from the land of Koshi, which, for those who don’t remember, is the area north of the Japan Alps on the Japan sea side of Honshu, from roughly the area of Ishikawa up to the Tohoku region. So, facing the continent and the peninsula – and apparently, in this year, there were men of Sushen who arrived on Sado Island, at Cape Minabe.
Sado Island is part of modern Niigata prefecture, sitting just a little to the west of modern Niigata city. It had been populated since at least the Jomon period, and in later centuries it would become a place of exile for powerful individuals who were on the political outs. In the Edo period they discovered gold and silver and there was a booming mining industry out there, and you can still go visit some of the old mines today. So that’s the first important thing about this report: it brings Sado into the picture, historically. Sado and the far reaches of Koshi—the influence of Yamato would seem to have grown.
Furthermore, who these unexpected arrivals to Sado were seems to be of some contention. The kanji used are the same that the continental records used for people called Sushen, who are believed to have been a Tungusic people living on the continent of Northeast Asia, possibly up towards modern Siberia. The Japanese, however, gave these characters a different gloss, pronouncing them as “Mishihase”. It is possible that the Mishihase were also Tungusic, or from a similar region of Northeast Asia, and hence the Japanese used the same characters. Or it is possible that they reused a name from the continental records for people living in the north of Japan or in the Okhostk Sea. I’ve seen suggestions that these were related to the Nivkh people or the Okhostk Culture from northern Hokkaido and Sakhalin islands.
The name “Mishihase” is interesting, because at this time, we know that there were a group of people that Yamato referred to as the Emishi living in the far Kanto regions and up into Tohoku. Many of the encounters with the Emishi in the Chronicles, however, appears to take place in regions that had at least transitioned to rice agriculture during the expansion of Yayoi culture, which had once reached up into the northern reaches of Tohoku before settling in the southern parts of Tohoku and down to Kyushu. Above that, archaeological evidence suggests that there was a continuation of Jomon culture, referred to generally as the Epi-Jomon or Zoku-Jomon, which existed in northern Tohoku and Hokkaido until the 7th century, when the cord-marked pottery gave way to a new type of scraped pottery, called Satsumon. Generally speaking the peoples of this area would all be lumped together by Yamato as Emishi, though there is some evidence of the use of the term “Saheki” as well and a few other local ethnonyms that pop up here and there.
The Okhotsk culture appears to have been north even of the Epi-Jomon and eventual Satsumon cultures, and may be related to the modern Nivkh people, who are indigenous to northern Sakhalin. I would note, however, that the Nivkh language is not Tungusic, but rather it is considered a language isolate, so these are not likely the Sushen of the continental records, but ancient people of Sakhalin may have been identified as such by the Yamato court, who simply saw them as being in a similar geographic relationship to Yamato.
Of course, it is also possible that a Tungusic people did take a ship and possibly sail out from the Amur river region, which enters the sea near the northern end of Sakhalin island, or some point north, and that they landed at Sado island, but much more likely it was someone from northern Tohoku, Hokkaido, or even Sakhalin. The Japanese would use the term “Mishihase” for a variety of people through the centuries, much as they would use the term “Emishi”, which makes this hard to pin down.
Wherever these people were from, they apparently arrived during the Spring and Summer and to catch fish for food, and the locals did what humans throughout history have done: They greeted them with open arms and welcomed them to their settlement. Oh, wait, scratch that. Nope, they decided that these people were different enough that they must not be human, called them devils, and refused to go near them. And so began what must have been quite the spring and summer as the locals of Sado kept watch on these strange fishermen, but from a nice, safe distance.
They may have had reason to be wary. At a village called Umu, the people had gathered acorns and covered them with ash. You see, acorns, for all that they seem to be the favorite of squirrels and other such woodland critters, are actually not all that great to eat. Sure, once you remove the cap and outer seed covering, they contain a lot of great nutrients, but many times they are also full of tannic acid. This is the same thing used to tan animal hides, so you can imagine that it might do a number to your insides, and it is rather astringent at that. That bitter taste is normally a clue that you probably shouldn’t eat too much of something.
Thousands of years ago, however, people learned a neat trick, and this seems to have been discovered independently in multiple areas. If the acorns are soaked in ash—often a mixture of ash and water—you can actually leach out the tannins in the acorns. After that, if you wash them and leave them to dry, there is a lot you can do with them, including creating a kind of acorn flour.
This is likely what the people of Umu were doing when the shells of the acorns turned into two men. The images of these men hovered about a foot over the fire and suddenly they started to fight. The villagers broke up the fight and took the shells to a courtyard, where they started to do the same thing. Based on this strange omen, combined with the general human mistrust of outsiders, the people of Umu determined that the strangers meant them harm. Sure enough, the fishermen showed up at the village soon after and plundered it.
Now I can’t say I put much stock in this supernatural fight night, but a lot of this general story seems to be reasonable enough. Fishermen from the Japan Sea or even the Sea of Okhostk could easily have made their way south along the coasts, looking for new and better fishing spots. A local village, particularly one more interested in harvesting the bounty of the land than the bounty of the sea, may have chosen to just ignore the strangers and hope they would go away. And of course, either side could have just as easily raided the other if they felt up to it—no supernatural explanation needed.
Eventually the foreigners apparently settled at Senagawa Bay—probably one of the areas of Sado Island—where it is said that there was a kami that lived there called “Mishihase no Kuma”, or the “Bear of the Mishihase”, or “Sushen”. It is said that anyone who tried to drink the water at Senagawa Bay would immediately drop dead, and that the bones of unfortunate travelers littered the spot.
It isn’t that hard to imagine an area near the shore with an apparently inviting stream or other water source that turned out to be less than ideal, and certainly a story like this could have been a local tradition, handed down to ensure that nobody gave in to temptation. In a place like Japan I suspect that there are all sorts of things that could have gotten into a water source and been largely undetectable.
The name of the kami though is particularly interesting, at least to me. Mishihase no Kuma. As we mentioned, the kanji for “Sushen” is often read in Japanese as “Mishihase”, and “kuma” is bear. Furthermore, we know that the modern Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido and northern Honshu, are known for their close association with bears in their religious worship, including a somewhat controversial bear ritual, known as Iomante, that was once outlawed, but has deep roots in some Ainu cultural practices. Likewise there are also bear connections with the Nivkh people and others in northeast Asia and Siberia, so it doesn’t seem too farfetched that people from Hokkaido or points north would be associated with a bear kami. Then again, it could be coincidence. Bears show up across multiple cultures. But in short: although the Chronicles say that the kami was already present, it’s easy to imagine that an area settled by visitors from a different culture to the north could have left a stamp on the area such that those cultural differences were preserved in the local lore about the area’s kami, and back-dated to time immemorial.
So that covers the goings-on in Sado. Two years later, in 546, the court received another report, but this one was from closer to home, from Imaki, in Yamato. Apparently two years earlier—so around the same year that the report from Cape Minabe came in—there was a man named Kawahara Tami no Atahe no Miya, and he bought a horse. Well, okay, it wasn’t quite that simple. Miya was apparently in the upper story of a building, looking out, when he noticed a horse. Now this horse was bred from the mares which transported food offerings from the fishermen of Kii to the sovereign’s own table. As Miya was watching this young horse, it suddenly saw a shadow, which caused it quite the fright—not entirely surprising, as horses are notoriously skittish. What was surprising, though, was how the horse let out a great neigh and suddenly leapt completely over its mothers back.
Miya immediately knew he had to have that horse, and he went down and bought it right there on the spot. Later people marveled at the horse, which was tame and broken, but a different temperament than most. Anyone who has worked with horses will tell you that they each can have very different personalities, much like people. This horse was special, however, as its leaping days were far from over. In fact, it is said that it once leapt over a ravine at Ouchi that was said to be 180 feet wide. That’s more than half a football field in length—and that’s regardless of if you are talking about soccer or American hand-egg, though maybe not quite Aussie rules.
Alright, so Miya has an awesome horse. Great. Why do we care? In fact, why do we care about any of this? The report from Sado – Koshi – had at least added somewhat to the court’s scope: it mentioned another people, put them in relationship to the Center of Yamato, and demonstrated Yamato’s far-flung reach that they were even getting reports from as far away as Sado Island. But Miya and his horse were close to home, so why this report was noteworthy is less obvious. Okay, so there is the mention of the tribute from Kii, which was a kind of food tax sent in to the Yamato court, which may have been something that the Chroniclers wanted to note for some reason. There may be a few other things going on, though.
For one, Miya is said to have lived in or near Hinokuma. And his name, Kawahara, is also the name of the location of one of the early temples in the Asuka area. The Asuka area, of course, was where the Soga family were dominant, and would play a large role as the location of different palaces and, eventually, Buddhist temples. So it is possible that this was all related geographically to the region, to the Soga, and, through the Soga’s political marriages and influence on the court, to the royal lineage.
This is speculation on my part, however. It is also possible that it had something to do with the horses, and possibly even with the way that they were described on the continent in nearly mythical terms. It wasn’t enough to get a horse, but it had to be a horse of particularly good stock and breeding. Who knows, maybe we’ll see connections that make more sense later in the Chronicles, as sometimes these kinds of Chekovian guns don’t go off until several reigns later—if at all.
Like the story of Miya and his horse, many of the other accounts of this period have to do with various individuals and some of it makes a lot more sense in terms of the Chroniclers’ ambitions. For instance, in 552 we are told that Prince Yata no Tamakatsu no Ohoye no Miko died. It is a short entry, and we really hadn’t encountered Yata no Tamakatsu much before this, other than seeing that he was the eldest son of Ame Kunioshi and his queen, Ishihime. In fact, that appears to be what is meant by “Ohoye” in his name. That likely means he was also the Crown Prince, although he is never named as such. This is par for the course in the narrative up to this point, though—Crown Princes who don’t succeed to the throne are rarely named as such unless there was something else that they did.
Sure enough, two years later, Nunakura Futodamashiki, Yata no Tamakatsu’s younger brother, is named Crown Prince. He would eventually succeed to the throne, and is remembered today as Bidatsu Tennou.
Speaking of death, things were not great in the archipelago during this time. Remember how in 552 they said that Buddhism had come, and then also been rejected, because of a pestilence? Well apparently it wasn’t just disease that hit because flooding came, and that brought with it famine.
Japan is no stranger to heavy rains. In fact, even today the islands experience hurricanes, or “taifuu”, in Japanese, bringing tremendous rain and winds. Even without the winds, though, rains can come that wash out hillsides and flood rivers and valleys. An “Ooyu”, or Big Rain, is nothing to sneeze at in the mountainous islands of Japan, so it is quite believable that a particularly heavy rainy season, coming after years of pestilence, might have brought extensive damage across the land. The Chronicles claim that it got so bad that some people even resorted to cannibalism.
Fortunately the Yamato court officials were learning a phrase that may strike fear into the hearts of anti-establishment types everywhere: “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” Except, in this case they absolutely were. All of those taxes that had been acquired in the form of rice payments had been collected and stored in granaries, which not only helped to pay for the various public works that the court wanted to undertake, like setting up their base in Kyushu, but now they could literally just open up the granaries and feed people. And that’s what they did. The royal granaries helped alleviate the hunger so that people could get through the year.
Of course, just because people were able to eat and get on with their lives didn’t mean that death wasn’t still an ever-present threat. Granted, not everyone gets their own obituary in the Chronicles, but those in the elite circles often were considered worth a note. Sure enough, in 570, we are told that Soga no Iname, the Oho-omi, died, just one year before the sovereign, Ame Kunioshi, would also pass away.
Soga no Iname’s death was no doubt a big event; he was the head of a power family and the Oho-omi, or Great Minister. Not only is he connected with the first instance of Buddhism in the archipelago, but, once again, two of his daughters had married Ame Kunioshi, and while it may not have been known at the time, the Chroniclers certainly knew the importance of this figure who would have at least three grandchildren take the throne. On top of that, his own son, Soga no Umako, would succeed him a couple of years later, and he would be close with another Soga relative, the prince Umayado, or the Prince of the Stable Door. But we’ll get to him in a later episode.
Before we finish there are two other entries that I want to touch on. I mentioned this is somewhat random right?
The first event is the Slander of Utayori. So here we are told that in the 6th month of 562, a person—we don’t know who—slandered a man named Umakahi no Omi no Utayori. They claimed that they had seen his wife with a new saddle that looked suspiciously like the Queen’s saddle. I guess that the charge was that he had stolen the queen’s saddle, or possibly made a replica of it. I’m not entirely sure.
Either way, the court was not happy and so they sent someone to investigate. Of course, this was centuries before Sherlock Holmes, or even before the famous Judge Dee, and so investigative methods were more like harsh interrogation, to the point of torture, to get a confession. You may recall back in Episode 60 something similar happened when the envoys from Silla had come to pay their respects upon the death of Woasatsuma Wakugo no Ohokimi, aka Ingyou Tennou, and the then prince Ohohatsuse Wakatake, later known as Yuryaku Tenno, had basically arrested and interrogated them after a misunderstanding, creating a bit of an international incident.
Of course, at this time, there was no concept of “Innocent until proven guilty”. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, there was a general belief that if someone was accusing you of something then even if you weren’t truly guilty of that particular crime you must have done something to upset the social balance, or else why would someone accuse you and risk their own reputation? The fact that many people would confess under such conditions just to get the interrogation to stop is unsurprising—modern studies have shown that information gained through torture as an interrogation technique is highly suspect, despite how much the movies like to use it.
In this case, however, Utayori wouldn’t break. He maintained his innocence throughout the entire interrogation, until he eventually died in custody.
Now when this happened, there were apparently numerous calamities at the Palace, though since there was no Buddhist threat, the Mononobe and Nakatomi seem to have stayed quiet about it all. In fact, they were either seen as not connected at all or that somehow it was just more proof that Utayori was guilty, because Utayori’s sons, Morishi and Nasehi were then arrested. They were sentenced to be “cast into the fire”, which was apparently an ancient form of execution, akin to burning at the stake, though the officer tasked with this duty was apparently reluctant to do so. I guess at least someone had been paying attention.
This concerned officer himself received a reprieve when Utayori’s wife, the two sons’ mother, appeared and she made a kind of curse-prayer promise-threat. She said, “If my children are to be flung into the fire, surely a great calamity will follow. Therefore I beseech thee to hand them over to the Hafuri to be a slave in service to the gods.”
Given her ardent prayer—and perhaps others wondering about the calamities, not to mention how much Utayori had protested his own innocence—the sons of Utayori had their sentences commuted and instead they were forced to work for the hafuri, or priests, likewise toiling for the upkeep of a shrine or similar religious institution.
This whole episode seems rather odd. The accuser is never named. Utayori seems to be clearly innocent from the Chronicle’s point of view—it doesn’t exactly do the ancient justice system any favors. It is fortunate, for us, however, as it gives us another glimpse into how things apparently operated in ancient Yamato.
Finally, we are at our last story from this reign, and it is interesting not just because of some of the implications for foreign relations, but also because it spanned the course of two reigns. The story starts in the fourth month of 570, and it once again it takes place in Koshi of all places. Apparently ships carrying envoys from Goguryeo had gone significantly off-course and landed all the way up there. How exactly they’d gotten there isn’t clear. Had they come down the normal route, and somehow missed the straits and the entrance to the Seto Inland Sea? Or had they sailed off the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula, perhaps in an attempt to find another way to Japan. Seafaring ships were apparently getting better. By 512, Silla had annexed the island of Uleung, which had been inhabited since ancient times, but is still a staggering 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, east of the Korean peninsula. Still, that is not nearly as far as crossing the Korea strait, which is about 200 kilometers, or 120 miles, if you avoid island hopping along the way. Not that such distances can’t be crossed, but it is just rather significant, so when they say that they had lost their way, that seems accurate.
The envoys also didn’t seem to know much about the geography of the archipelago. Certainly, they weren’t the first from Goguryeo in Japan—there had been earlier immigrants, including a group that ended up in Kyushu and were eventually resettled in Yamashiro. But these envoys landed somewhere in Koshi, and there they met with a local ruler, Michi no Ushi, who claimed to be the true sovereign of Yamato, accepting the tribute that the Goguryeo envoys had brought with them.
Of course, this caused a bit of a problem as word of the envoys’ arrival was not exactly kept a state secret, and word quickly spread down to the actual Yamato court of their arrival, though that was delayed a bit as the court was on vacation. Ame Kunioshi and the entire court had gone down to Shibagaki, in Hase, possibly for hunting or some other such excursion, and so it wasn’t until they got back that they sent off Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Arako and Katsuraki no Atahe no Naniwa to go up and meet with the envoys and bring them down. In the meantime, they also began to prepare accommodations for them in Sagaraka in Yamashiro.
By the 5th month, it was Kashiwade no Omi no Katabeko who was the one to first meet the envoys. He came to the mansion of Michi no Ushi, who recognized a representative of the Yamato court and prostrated himself in front of him. At this point the Goguryeo envoys realized that something was up, and that they had apparently made something of a mistake. They demanded that Michi no Ushi return the tribute that they had given him. Katabeko helped arrange all of that and then went back to the court with word of where things stood.
Once the tribute was gathered up, the envoys proceeded on foot down from the Japan Sea coast to Afumi, aka Lake Biwa. With all of the preparations required, they arrived in the 7th month of that year, three months since they had first landed. There they were met by Kose no Omi and Kishi no Akabato, who had come upriver with a decorative barge from the port of Naniwa. They hauled it up to Mount Sasanami, and met the envoys at Kitayama, the North Mountain, in Afumi. From there they traveled downriver, finally arriving at the official residence of Komahi in Yamashiro. From there, they were handed off to Yamato no Aya no Saka-no-Uhe no Atahe no Komaro and Nishikori no Obito no Ohoshi, who took them to the official residence of Sagaraka, which had been prepared for them.
Now I know there are a lot of names in this, but bear with me. For one, there are a lot of Yamato no Aya, one of the groups of Aya, descended from continental weavers, and probably still considered to have continental ties. Then there is the “Nishikori” reference, which is another family that will show up with some ties to mainland traditions.
It is interesting to see how many people were involved in all of this, but also how long it took. It was at least three months from the time they arrived to getting them settled into an official residence. And they sat there for a while, likely until a schedule could be set for their audience with Ame Kunioshi. Unfortunately, before that could happen, tragedy struck. The Nihon Shoki claims that at some point the sovereign took to his bed, sick and ill at ease, and then, in the 4th month of the following year, 571, he passed away.
Nunakura, the Crown Prince, would take on the mantle of sovereign. And after seeing his father buried in Hinokuma, of all places, one of his first orders of business was to greet the Goguryeo envoys and apologize for their long wait—still, the burial of Ame Kunioshi and the ceremonies for enthronement—as well as setting up or confirming court officials, such as the new Oho-omi, Soga no Umako—amust have taken some time, as it was now 572, some two years since the envoys had arrived in the archipelago.
Besides the tribute, the envoys also brought a memorial from Goguryeo—a letter from their sovereign to the sovereign of Yamato, but none of the scribes could read it, not even the envoys, apparently. The memorial wasn’t just a piece of paper, after all—instead, the Goguryeo king had his message inscribed on black crows’ feathers, and then the memorial was brushed on in black ink. Unfortunately—or perhaps deliberately—this made the message a little difficult to read, as it was black on black, and just making out the characters was tough. Here’s where a little continental ingenuity came in to play, for it was none other than Wang Jinnie, whom we talked about last episode, who had a solution.
You may recall that Wang Jinnie was an ally of the Soga family. He had been made the Funa no Fubito, or recorder of ships, by Soga no Iname, and Soga no Iname and his son, Umako, had also played a roll in the advancement of at least two of his sons. Jinnie used a trick where he held the feathers in the steam of boiling rice, and then pressed the feathers to paper to transfer the letters, which could then be read. For this he received high praise from Nunakura no Ohokimi and from the new Oho-omi, Soga no Umako. Jinnie was also able to provide a translation of the memorial, which we assume was the standard diplomatic jargon, as no copy of it is given in the record.
Their message delivered, back at the residence, the Chief Envoy from Goguryeo had apparently berated his assistance. He was pissed at the debacle of the whole thing. Not only had they gone off course, but the tribute had been delivered to the wrong person! Sure, they had eventually sorted things out, but it was no doubt a huge embarrassment.
This left his entourage in a bit of a pickle. As they had delivered the tribute and the memorial, it would soon be time for them to return home, and once they got there, the Chief Envoy’s report would no doubt be the end of their careers—and possibly even their lives if they were held liable for embarrassing their king and country like that. And so they were resolved that the only way they could go home is if the Chief Envoy was not with them, and they decided, then and there, to kill him.
The Chief Envoy got wind of the attack, but it was too late, and he didn’t know what to do. He headed out into the courtyard of the official residence where they were staying. As soon as he was out in the open, one of the assassins ran out, hit him with a club, and then disappeared again. Then someone came from his righthand side and struck him with another club. Then someone rushed in and stabbed him with a sword in the belly and ran off. As the Chief Envoy fell to his knees, prostrating himself and begging for his life, yet another assailant rushed out from the darkness and finished him off.
The body was found the next morning. The official entertainer, Yamato no Aya no Saka-no-uhe no Atahe no Komaro, who had been given the duty back in the reign of Ame Kunioshi, heard about it and asked what had happened. According to the various Associate Envoys, they claimed that the Chief Envoy had been “disobedient”. They said that he had disrespected Nunakura by refusing a wife that the sovereign had presented, and the Associate Envoys were so embarrassed by this that they killed him to make up for the snub.
This seems to have satisfied the Yamato court, who buried the Chief Envoy with full honors and sent the rest of the delegation on its way.
This whole episode is interesting, and seems plausible. There likely were the unfortunate times that diplomatic missions went astray, and they could stay at a foreign court for months or years. After all, it wasn’t like there were regular flights back and forth, and courts had to expect a long lag time between communications.
There is also an interesting parallel here with the story of Tsunoga Arashito, whom we discussed in episode 30. Prince Tsunoga was supposedly descended from the King of Great Kara, rather than Goguryeo, and he is said to have arrived during the time of Mimaki Iribiko, aka Sujin Tennou. Like the Goguryeo envoys, the local ruler of the place where he stopped—in that case Anato—claimed that he was the ruler of Yamato, but rather than stopping, he continued around the northern coast, past Izumo, and eventually down to Yamato that way. By the time he did all of that, though, Mimaki Iribiko had died and his son, Ikume Iribiko, aka Suinin Tennou, had taken the throne and was the one to receive him.
Either this act of impersonating the ruler of Yamato was not exactly a new trick, or the Chroniclers were possibly borrowing some details between stories. It is hard to say for sure, but certainly worth a look.
This was not the last that the archipelago would see of Goguryeo envoys. In the following year, another group of envoys came through Koshi. Unfortunately there was an accident, and their ship was wrecked and many of them drowned—probably along with any tribute. The court itself was starting to get a little suspicious about all of this, as it was the second time they’d had problems and come through the northern ports. Rather than entertaining them—possibly because the tribute and any memorial were lost—the court sent Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa to escort the envoys back home.
Two months later, Naniwa was up in Koshi and had acquired two ships. Two of Naniwa’s men, Iwahi and Masa, were sent aboard the Goguryeo boat, while two of the envoys traveled with Naniwa, a not-uncommon hostage situation for the time. However, several leagues out, the waves started getting rough. Naniwa grew scared, and in order to calm the waves he yeeted his hostages overboard—either to appease the kami or possibly to get rid of bad luck that they had brought with them. At that point there was no way that he could show up in Goguryeo and explain what had happened, and so he turned around. Back in Yamato he gave a whole story of how a Whale and other fish had risen up and were preventing any boat from rowing out, and so that is why they were in Goguryeo at the moment.
However, the problem with lies is that you often have to face the truth, eventually. In this case, retribution came in the form of yet another diplomatic mission. When the envoys arrived at the court, they brought back their guests, Iwahi and Masa, who had been treated as befitted envoys of a foreign land, and they asked about what had happened to the men on the other ship.
Nunakura, who hadn’t quite trusted Naniwa’s account in the first place, was now positive that Naniwa had thrown the envoys over and then lied to cover it up. And so we are told that Naniwa was punished, which probably meant that he was put to death.
And that about wraps up the stories of the Goguryeo envoys. Regardless of anything else, we can see that Yamato is in regular diplomatic contact with various peninsular powers, at the very least. And we are now into the reign of Nunakura no Ohokimi, aka Bidatsu Tennou. And we’ll get to him, but next episode I might try something a little different.
You see, for the most part we are following what we have in various Chronicles, but there is a lot that the Chronicles don’t go into. For one thing, there are day-to-day items that just don’t get mentioned, but even larger events that seem to go unnoticed. We’ll talk about one such event with the two eruptions of Mt. Haruna, and we’ll talk about how some of the picture is being made clearer through the work of archaeology.
Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us 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 on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links 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.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4

Episode 85: The Buddha Comes to Japan

May 1, 2023 Joshua Badgley

Sun setting over the hills that form part of the valley around Asuka. In the 6th century this was the territory of the Soga family, and the location of some of the earliest known Buddhist temples in Japan.

RSS

Who’s Who

Ame Kunioshi no Ōkimi, aka Kimmei Tennō

The current sovereign in our narrative. It is unclear when, exactly his reign started and even the role he played vice the various other ministers. This is further brought into question due to the clear attempts by the Chroniclers to portray him as more powerful and involved than he may have actually been.

Soga no Iname no Sukune

Soga no Iname is perhaps one of the most active participants in this narrative. He is the head of the Soga family and the current Ōmi. We know that he resided in the area of Oharida and Mukuhara, in modern Asuka area. He was the first Soga no Ōmi mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, and he hits the ground running. While many previous Ōmi are less than prominent figures in the narrative, Soga no Iname is clearly doing the most with his time in office. In addition to his official position, he had also manuevered two of his daughters into marrying Ame Kunioshi, meaning that he had a very good chance to play grandfather to future sovereigns, or at least members of the royal family.

The Soga family is later said to descend from Takeuchi no Sukune and Ishikawa no Sukune, though this is questionable. More reasonable is the lineage from Soga no Machi to Soga no Karako and Soga no Kōma down to Soga no Iname.

Mononobe no Okoshi

At this point in the story, Mononobe no Okoshi was Ōmuraji, the head of the Mononobe house. He had a powerful lineage, being descended from preivous Ōmuraji who had held the position since at least the time of Wakatake no Ōkimi back in the 5th century.

Wang Jinnie and his children

Wang Jinnie (aka “Ō Shinni” or “Ō Chinni”) is something of an enigmatic figure. He shows up a few times, but his surname name (王) would appear to mark him as having come from the continent. He seems to be involved with recording ships and other such administrative tasks. He has a son, Itsu—or possibly something like “Danchin”, if you use the old Chinese reading—also has a role to play.

Immigrants provided the Yamato court an extremely useful population. They were generally skilled in various arts and technologies, including the technology of government. And so they understood how to read and write and what was necessary to administer different parts of the state. At the same time, immigrants would not necessarily have the same local or regional ties in the archipelago. Members of established families would have ties to the land and the people, which made them useful for administering those areas, but also made them potential threats. Despite what the Chronicles would like us to believe, the central authority was not yet that solidified, and succession could still be an issue.

In such a climate, it is relatively easy to see how immigrants could be useful as they would not have the same political baggage attached to them as members of the local elite.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 85: The Buddha Comes to Japan.
Last couple episodes we’ve talked about Buddhism. We talked about its origins in the Indian subcontinent, with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, aka Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, and how those teachings spread out from India to Gandhara, and then followed the trade routes across the harsh deserts of the Tarim Basin, through the Gansu corridor, and into the Yellow and Yangzi River Valleys. From there the teachings made it all the way to the Korean peninsula, and to the country of Baekje, Yamato’s chief ally on the peninsula.
This episode we’ll look at how Buddhism came to the archipelago and its initial reception there. For some of this we may need to span several reigns, as we’ll be looking at events from early to late 6th century. This is also about more than just religion, and so we may need to dive back into some of the politics we’ve covered up to this point as well. Hopefully we can bring it all together in the end, but if it is a bit of a bumpy ride, just hang with me for a bit.
So let’s start with the official account in the Nihon Shoki, which we already mentioned two episodes ago: the first mention of Buddhism in the Chronicles. The year was 552, or the 13th year in the reign of Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tennou. That winter, during the 10th month—which was probably closer to December or January on a modern calendar—King Seongmyeong of Baekje had a special gift for his counterpart, the sovereign of Yamato. By this time there are numerous accounts of gifts to Yamato, generally in conjunction with the Baekje-Yamato alliance and Baekje’s requests for military support in their endeavors on the peninsula, generally framed in the Yamato sources as centering on the situation of the country of Nimna.
In this case, the gift was a gilt-bronze image of Shakyamuni Buddha, several flags and umbrellas, and a number of volumes of Buddhist sutras. King Seongmyeong sent a memorial explaining his intent: “This doctrine” (aka Buddhism) “is amongst all doctrines the most excellent. But it is hard to explain, and hard to comprehend. Even the Duke of Zhou and Confucius had not attained to a knowledge of it. This doctrine can create religious merit and retribution with appreciation of the highest wisdom. Imagine a man in possession of treasures to his heart’s content, so that he might satisfy all his wishes in proportion as he used them. Thus it is with the treasure of this wonderful doctrine. Every prayer is fulfilled and naught is wanting. Moreover, from distant India it has extended hither to the three Han, where there are none who do not receive it with reverence as it is preached to them.
“Thy servant, therefore, Myeong, King of Baekje, has humbly dispatched his retainer, Nuri Sacchi, to transmit it to the Imperial Country, and to diffuse it abroad throughout the home provinces, so as to fulfil the recorded saying of Buddha: ‘My law shall spread to the East.’ “
Upon receiving all of these things and hearing the memorial, we are told that the sovereign, Ame Kunioshi, literally leapt for joy. He thanked the envoys, but then put the question to his ministers as to how they should proceed. Soga no Iname no Sukune, holding the position of Oho-omi, recommended that they should worship the statue of the Buddha. After all, if all of the “Western Frontier lands” were worshipping it, then should Yamato really be left out?
On the other side of the argument were Mononobe no Okoshi as well as Nakatomi no Kamako. They argued against stopping the traditional worship of the 180 kami of Heaven and Earth and replacing it with worship of some foreign religion.
With this split decision, Ame Kunioshi decided to have Soga no Iname experiment, first. He told him to go ahead and worship the image and see what happens. And so Soga set it up at his house in Oharida, purified it, and, per Buddhist tradition, retired from the world. He had another house, in nearby Mukuhara, purified and made into a temple. Here he began to worship the Buddha.
Around that same time, there was a pestilence—a disease—that was in the land. People were getting sick and some were dying. This was likely not unprecedented. Healthcare was not exactly up to our modern standards, and while many good things traveled the trade routes, infection and disease likely used them as pathways as well. So diseases would pop up, on occasion. In this instance, though, Mononobe no Okoshi and Nakatomi no Kamako seized on it as their opportunity. They went to Ame Kunioshi and they blamed Soga no Iname and his worship of the Buddha for the plague.
Accordingly, the court removed the statue of the Buddha and tossed it into the canal at Naniwa, and then they burned down Soga no Iname’s temple—which, as you may recall, was basically his house. As soon as they did that, though, Ame Kunioshi’s own Great Hall burst into flames, seemingly out of nowhere, as it was otherwise a clear day.
Little more is said about these events, but that summer there were reports from Kawachi of Buddhist chants booming out of the sea of Chinu near the area of Idzumi. Unate no Atahe was sent to investigate and found an entire log of camphorwood that was quote-unquote “Shining Brightly”. So he gave it to the court, where we are told they used it to have two Buddha images made, which later were installed in a temple in Yoshino; presumably at a much later date.
And then the Chronicles go quiet for the next couple decades, at least on the subject of Buddhism, but this is the first official account of it coming over, and there is quite a bit to unpack. For one thing, the memorials and speeches once again seem like something that the Chroniclers added because it fit with their understanding of the narrative, including their insistence that Yamato was a fully fledged imperial state, and there is some fairly good evidence that King Seongmyeong’s memorial is clearly anachronistic. But there are a few other things, and conflicting records on things such as dates and similar.
So first off, let’s acknowledge that there are too many things in the main narrative in the Chronicles that are just questionable, such as the sovereign “leaping with joy” at the chance to hear about Buddhism, and the fact that King Seongmyeong’s memorial apparently quotes a part of the sutra of the Sovereign Kings of Golden Light, known in Japanese as the Konkoumyou-saishou-ou-kyou, but that translation wasn’t done until 703, during the Tang dynasty, by the monk Yijing in the city of Chang’an. While it would have been known to knowledgable monks like Doji, who may have been helping put the narrative together in 720, it is unlikely that it was in use during the 6th century, when the memorial is said to have been written.
In addition, there is question about the date that all of this supposedly happened. The Nihon Shoki has this event taking place in 552, well into the reign of Ame Kunioshi. However, there are at least two 8th century sources, roughly contemporary with the writing of the Nihon Shoki, the Gangoji Garan Engi and the Jouguuki, and both of these put the date at 538, a good fourteen years earlier, and in the era of Ame Kunioshi’s predecessor, Takewo Hiro Kunioshi, aka Senka Tenno. The first of these, the Gangoji Garan Engi, is a record of the founding of the first permanent temple in Japan, Gangoji, aka Hokoji or, informally, Asukadera, which was founded by Soga no Iname’s heir, Soga no Umako. More on the temple itself, later, but for now we want to focus on the historical aspects of this account, which mostly corroborate the story, talking about Soga no Iname’s role in receiving the image and enshrining it, as well as the early conflict between the Soga clan and their rivals. The other source, the Joguki, focuses on the life of Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado, who will become a major subject of our narrative at the end of the 6th and early 7th centuries. Not only is he considered the father of Japanese Buddhism, but he had strong connections to the Soga family. Today, most scholars accept the 538 date over the 552 date when talking about Buddhism’s initial arrival into the islands

If the Chroniclers did move the event from 538 to 552, one has to wonder why. This isn’t a simple matter of being off by 60 years, and thus attributable to a mistake in the calendrical sexagenary zodiac cycle of stems and branches, so there must have been something else. One suggestion is that the date conflicted with the chronology that had already been set for the sovereigns. 538 is during the reign of Takewo no Ohokimi, aka Senka Tenno, but what if succession was not quite as cut and dried as all that? What if Ame Kunioshi no Ohokimi had his own court and was in some way ruling at the same time as his half-brothers, Magari no Ohine and Takewo no Ohokimi? They were from different mothers, and thus different factions at court. Ame Kunioshi was young, so it was possible that there were rival lineages attempting to rule, or even some kind of co-ruler deal hearkening back to more ancient precedent. Some even theorize that Magari no Ohine and Takewo Hiro Kunioshi were simply fictional inserts to help span the period between Wohodo and Ame Kunioshi.
Whatever the reason, this theory suggests that it would not have happened in the 13th year of Ame Kunioshi’s reign, but that his reign started in 526, rather than 540. An intriguing hypothesis, but one that begs the question of whether everything in the reign would then need to be shifted to account for that. Given that there are a few attributable events noted that fit with outside sources as well, that doesn’t seem quite as plausible without some very conscious efforts to change the timeline.
Another thought is that the compilers weren’t sure exactly when this event happened, but given Ame Kunioshi’s reputation and long reign, they chose his reign to place it in because it just fit. I suspect that this happened more than once, with people more likely attributing past events to well-remembered sovereigns. If this is the case, then when searching for a date they may have just chosen one that seemed auspicious. In this case, 552 CE was, in some reckonings, an important year in Buddhist history, as there were those who say it as the beginning of the age of “mappou”, the “End of the Law” or perhaps the “Latter days of the Law”.
This definitely is an intriguing theory, and resonates strongly. For most of Japanese history, the idea that we are in this period of “mappo” has had a strong influence, and to a certain extent it is kind of an apocalyptic view of things. The idea of mappo is that while the Buddha was alive, his teachings were fresh and available to all living things. However, after his death, his teachings had to be remembered and passed on. Even with the advent of writing, the meaning and understanding of his teachings, and thus an understanding of dharma, would also atrophy. Different translations, changes in meaning, and just bits and pieces lost to time would mean that for the first 500 to 1,000 years, the Buddha’s disciples would keep things well and the meaning would be protected, but in the next 500 to 1,000 years things would decline, but still be pretty close to the truth. Then – and this is when the period of “mappo” starts - things would really start to decline, until finally, about 5,000 to 10,000 years later—or about 1,000 to 12,000 years after the time of the historical Buddha—things would break down, factions would be fighting one another, and eventually everyone would have forgotten the dharma entirely. It was only then that there would come a new Buddha, Miroku or Maitreya, who would once again teach about the dharma and how to escape suffering, and the whole cycle would start again.
The year 552 would have coincided, according to some estimates, with 1,000 years since the time of Siddhartha Gautama, and so it would have had particular significance to the people of that time, particularly if you counted each of the first two Ages as 500 years each, meaning that the word of the Buddha, that his teachings would spread to the East, would have been completed just as we entered the latter days of the Law.
Regardless of the time—and, as I said earlier, 538 is the more accepted date—the general events described – the statue, the offer of Soga to experiment, and the resulting events - are usually agreed to, although even here we must pause, slightly and ask a few questions.
First off, was this truly the first time that Buddhism had ever shown up in Japan? The answer to that is probably not. There had been many waves of immigrants that had come over to Japan from the peninsula, and even if only a small handful of them had adopted the new religion before coming over it is likely that there were pockets of worshippers. Later, we will see that there are people in Japan who are said to have had prior experience as a monk, or who had their own Buddhist images. These images were probably used by people in their homes—there is no evidence of any particular temples that had been built, privately or otherwise, and so there is no evidence that we have any active monks or nuns in the archipelago, but who knows what was going on in communities outside of the elite core? There were plenty of things that were never commented on if it wasn’t directly relevant to the court.
Furthermore, with all of the envoys that had been to Baekje, surely some of them had experience with Buddhism. And then there were the envoys *from* Baekje, who no doubt brought Buddhist practices with them. So there was likely some kind of familiarity with the religion’s existence, even if it wasn’t necessarily fully understood.
The second point that many people bring up is the role of the sovereign, Ame Kunioshi, or whomever was in charge at the time that the first image came over. While the Nihon Shoki attempts to portray a strong central government with the sovereign at its head, we’ve already seen how different households had arisen and taken some measure of power for themselves. At the end of the 5th and into the early 6th century, the Ohotomo and Mononobe houses were preeminent, with Ohotomo Kanamura taking on actions such as negotiating dealings with the continent and even manuevering around the Crown Prince. The Mononobe wielded considerable authority through their military resources, and now, the Soga appeared to ascendant. It is quite possible that the idea of the sovereign giving any sort of permission or order to worship Buddhism is simply a political fig leaf added by the Chroniclers. The Soga may have been much more independent in their views and dealings. To better understand this, let’s take a look at the uji family system and the Soga family in particular.
Now the Nihon Shoki paints a picture as though these noble uji families were organic, and simply part of the landscape, descending from the kami in the legendary age, with lineages leading down to the present day, although there is some acknowledgment that the earliest ancestors did not necessarily use the family names until a later date. For much of Japanese history, the concept that these family, or uji, were one of the core building blocks of ancient Japanese political and cultural spheres is taken as a matter of course. However, in more modern studies, this view has been questioned, and now the prevailing view is that these families are somewhat different. In fact, the uji are likely just as much an artificial construct as the corporate -Be family labor groups.
According to this theory, early on people were associated with local groups and places. Outside of the immediate family, groups were likely held together by their regional ties as much as anything else. Names appear to be locatives, with ancient titles indicating the -hiko or -hime of this or that area.
Some time in the 5th century, Yamato—and possibly elsewhere in the peninsula—began to adopt the concept of -Be corporate groups from Baekje. We talked about this back in Episode 63, using the Hata as a prime example of how these groups were brought together. More importantly, though, was that each of these -Be groups reported to someone in the court, sometimes with a different surname. These were the uji, created along with the -Be to help administer the labor and work of running the state. They were essentially arms of the state itself, in many ways. The kabane system of titles emphasizes this, with different families having different ranks depending on what they did, whether locally, regionally, or at the central court. Some of these titles, like -Omi and -Kimi, were likely once actual jobs, but eventually it came to represent something more akin to a social ranking.
There have been some questions and emails asking for a bit more in depth on this, and I’d really like to, but I’m afraid that would be too much for now. At the moment I want to focus more on the uji, particularly on those at the top - the uji with the kabane of either Omi or Muraji, as these are the ones most likely to be helping to directly run the government. They even had their own geographical areas within the Nara basin, and elsewhere, that were uji strongholds. The Hata had areas near modern Kyoto, the Mononobe clearly had claims to land around Isonokami, in modern Tenri, and the Soga clan had their holdings in the area of modern Asuka and Kashihara city. At the very least, that is where Soga no Iname’s house was—in Mukuhara and Oharida, both located in the modern area of Asuka, which will become important in the future.
It wasn’t just the landholdings that were important, though. Each uji had some part to play in the functioning of the government. In many cases it was the production or control of a particular service, such as the Hata and silk weaving, or the Mononobe and their affinity with all things military. For the Soga, they appear to have had a rather interesting portfolio.
Traditionally, the Soga family is said to trace its lineage back to Takechi no Sukune, the first Oho-omi back in the time of Okinaga no Tarashi Hime and Homuda Wake no Ohokimi—see episode 46 for more on him. That lineage is likely fabricated, however, and the earliest actual evidence for the family may be from the Kogoshui, where we are told that Soga no Machi was put in charge of the Three Treasuries. These were the Imikura, or sacred treasury; the Uchikura, or royal household treasury; and the Ohokura, the government treasury. This seems like quite the position of responsibility, and it would fit with some of what we see later as the Soga are involved in helping set up Miyake, the various royal storehouses across the land that acted as Yamato court administrative centers for the purposes of collecting goods and funneling them to the court, as well as keeping an eye on the local regions. Although here I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t also note that the “Three Treasuries”, or “Sanzou” is one way to translate the Tripitaka, and given the Soga’s role, I don’t think I can entirely ignore that point.
So the Soga family had experience with administration, and specifically they were dealing with a variety of different goods produced in different regions. If that is the case, then their authority did not necessarily derive from the standard uji-be constructed familial connections, but rather they were deriving positional authority from the central government itself. This may seem like common sense to us, but in the world of ancient Yamato, where family connections were everything, this may have been something new and innovative—and very in keeping with various continental models of administration. It is quite likely that the Soga were dealing with some of the latest innovations in government and political authority, which would also have opened them up to the possibility of new ideas.
In addition, their position meant they likely had wide-ranging contacts across the archipelago and even onto the peninsula. The Soga themselves have connections to the peninsula in the names of some of their members, such as Soga no Karako, where “Karako” can be translated as a “Son of Kara” or a “Son of Gaya”, possibly referring to their origins, and Soga no Kouma, where “Kouma” is a general term for Goguryeo, and so quite possibly indicates a connection with them as well. On top of that, there is a now-out-of-favor theory that once suggested that Soga no Machi might be the same as Moku Machi, an important Baekje official in the late 5th century. While that has been largely discredited, the fact that “Machi” is possibly of Baekje origin cannot be entirely overlooked.
Then there are a series of notes in the Nihon Shoki, particularly surrounding the area of Shirai, in the land of Kibi. These start in 553, just one year after Soga no Iname’s failed attempt to launch a Buddhist temple, at least according to the Nihon Shoki’s record of events. It is a relatively simple note, but it mentions how Soga no Iname made a man by the name of Wang Jinnie the “Funa no Fubito”, or “Recorder of Ships”, and put him in charge of the shipping tax—all at the behest of the sovereign, of course.
Later, in 555, Soga no Iname went with Hozumi no Iwayumi no Omi to Kibi, where they consolidated five districts, or agata, under the administration of a single administrative Miyake in Shirawi. Later, in 556, he would go back to Kibi and establish a Miyake in Kojima, putting in place Katsuraki no Yamada as the Tazukai, or “rural rice field governor”. That same year he and others went to the Takachi district in Yamato and established the Miyake of Ohomusa, or “Great Musa”, for immigrants from Baekje and then Womusa, or “Small Musa”, for immigrants from Goguryeo.
In 569, the person that Soga no Iname had put in charge of recording the ships, Wang Jinnie, had a nephew, Itsu—or possibly Danchin, depending on how you read it—go out to Shirawi to take a census. This is the same Shirawi that Soga no Iname had helped establish in 555. Itsu becomes the Shirawi no Obito, and in 574 we see Soga no Umako, Iname’s heir, heading out to Shirawi with an updated register for Itsu.
So, in short, the Soga family clearly is doing a lot of government administration, and particularly of the Miyake, which is the extension of the court authority into the rest of the archipelago. On top of that, look at how often the names that are coming up in conjunction with what they are doing are referencing immigrant groups. Even the Hozumi family are known at this point for their work on the peninsula, and we see the Soga heavily involved with the Wang family and their fortunes, not to mention Greater and Lesser Musa and the Baekje and Goguryeo individuals there. Wang Jinnie will have even more of a part to play, but we’ll hold onto that for later.
Given everything we can see about how they are operating, is it any surprise that the Soga would advocate in favor of Buddhism? I’d also note that, while other clans have clear connections to heavenly ancestors and kami whom they worshipped, it is unclear to me if the Soga had anything similar. There is mention in the 7th century of the creation of a shrine to their titular ancestors, Takeuchi no Sukune and Ishikawa no Sukune, and today there is a shrine that is dedicated to Soga tsu Hiko and Soga tsu Hime—Basically just lord and lady Soga. But there isn’t anything like the spirit of Futsunushi or Ohomononushi, let alone an Amaterasu or Susano’o.
Why is that important? Well, prior to the 6th century, a lot of clans claimed authority from the ritual power they were perceived to wield, often related to the prestige of their kami. One of the ways that Yamato influence had spread was through the extension of the Miwa cult across the archipelago, and there were even members of the Himatsuribe and the Hioki-be, basically groups of ritualists focused on sun worship, which upheld the royal house. The Mononobe controlled Isonokami shrine, where they worshipped their Ujigami, Futsu-mitama, the spirit of the sound of the sword. And then there were the Nakatomi, who haven’t had much to do in the narrative so far, but we know that they were court ritualists, responsible for ensuring that proper rituals were carried out by the court for the kami to help keep balance in the land.
The dispute between the Soga and the Mononobe and Nakatomi is presented as a struggle between a foreign religion and the native kami of Japan—leaving aside any discussion, for now, about just how “native” said kami actually were. This is, in fact, the primary story that gets told again and again, that the Mononobe and Nakatomi were simply standing up for their beliefs, sincerely believing that if too many people started worshipping foreign gods then it would supplant the worship already present in the islands.
And that may have been a genuine fear at the time, but I would suggest that it was only a small one. What seems more apparent is that we are really looking at just an old fashioned power struggle. Because what all of the information we have about the Soga distills down to is: they were the new kid on the block. The Soga were the up and coming nobility. They had connections with the continent and various immigrant groups. That gave them access to new ideas and new forms of resources. The Mononobe were built on a more traditionalist line. They had been around, ever since at least Wakatake no Ohokimi, playing a significant role in things, alongside the Ohotomo. The Mononobe were at their apex, claiming descent through their own Heavenly Grandson, and having held sway at court through numerous reigns at this point. They represent, in many ways, the old guard.
Worship of a fancy new religious icon—effectively a new kami—threatened to give the Soga even more power and sway. They already had control of the three treasuries, if the Kogoshui is to be believed, and likely had a rather impressive administrative apparatus. Soga no Iname had also ended up successfully marrying off two of his daughters to Ame Kunioshi, making him father-in-law to the current sovereign. If he added to that a spiritual focus that people came to believe in, that would only enhance the Soga’s power and place in the hierarchy.
And what better way to taint all of that, and neutralize these upstarts, than to blame this new god for the plague and pestilence that was killing people. We see it all too often, even today—when people are scared and when there are problems, the easiest people to scapegoat are the foreigners and the outsiders. Those whom we do not see as “us”. It was probably easy to turn the court against Buddhism, at least initially. They threw the image in the canal and burned down the temple, and no doubt they were pleased with themselves.
But that was merely the opening salvo, and as we’ll see in the coming years, the Soga family were hardly done with Buddhism. One can argue whether they were truly devout or if this was merely for political gain, but the Soga family tied themselves to this new foreign religion, for good or for ill, and they wouldn’t be pushed around forever.
When next we touch base on this topic we’ll look at Soga no Iname’s heir, Soga no Umako, and his attempts to start up where his father left off. He would again clash with the Mononobe, and the outcome of that conflict would set the path for the next half a century. It would also see Buddhism become firmly enmeshed with the apparatus of the state. As this happens , we’ll also see the character of Buddhist worship in the archipelago change. Initially, the Buddha was treated little differently from any other kami, and based on the way it is described, probably worshiped in a very similar manner. However, as more sutras came to light and as more people studied and learned about the religion—and as more immigrants were brought in to help explain how things were supposed to work—Buddhism grew in the islands to be its own distinct entity. In fact the growth of Buddhism would even see the eventual definition of “Shinto”, the “Way of the Gods”, a term that was never really needed until there was another concept for native practices to be compared against.
Before we leave off, there is one other story I’d like to mention. It is tangential to our immediate discussion of Buddhism and the Soga, but I think you may find it of interest, nonetheless. This is the story of just what happened—supposedly—to that first Buddhist icon that was tossed into the Naniwa canal.
Because you see, according to tradition, that gilt-bronze icon did not stay stuck in the mud and muck of the canal, nor did it just disappear. Instead there is a tradition that it was found almost a century later. The person who retrieved it was named Honda no Yoshimitsu, and from Naniwa he traveled all the way to Shinano, to the area of modern Nagano, and there he would found a temple in 642. Another reading of his name, Yoshimitsu, is Zenko, and so the temple is named Zenkoji, and you can still go and visit it today.
In fact, the main hall of Zenkoji is considered a national treasure, and it was featured prominently during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. It is a popular attraction for tourist both in Japan and from abroad, and if you get a chance I highly recommend going to see it. On the street leading up to the temple entrance are many traditional shops that still sell various foods and traditional arts and crafts, and there are many intriguring features. For example, there is a narrow walkway underneath the main temple that is completely dark, where you are meant to feel along the wall to try to find the key to enlightenment, a kind of physical metaphor of Buddhist teaching.
And of course there is the icon that Honda Yoshimitsu is said to have fished out of the canal.
According to the temple, the icon still exists, and many worshippers believe it to be the oldest extant Buddhist icon in Japan, even older than the icons at Horyuji. However, there is one catch—nobody is allowed to see it. Shortly after it was installed in the temple, the statue was hidden in a special container, or zushi, and it became what is known as a hidden Buddha. This is a tradition particularly prevalent in Japan, where some Buddhas are hidden away and only brought out on very special occasions. Some cynics might note that those occasions are often when the temple needs to raise funds. As for this hidden Buddha, however, it has not been seen more than a handful of times since it was locked away in the 7th century.
Despite that, we know what it looks like—or at least what it is supposed to look like. The image is said to be a triad, and though the Nihon Shoki claims it was an image of Shakyamuni, the central figure of the Zenkoji triad is actually the figure of Amida, aka Amithabha, as in the Pure Land sect of Buddhism. Amida Nyorai is flanked by two attendants. We know all of this because a copy of the Zenkoji image was made in the Kamakura period, and that image, said to be a faithful recreation of the original is also kept at Zenkoji. While the original is kept hidden in the back, the replica, which is thought to have all of the miraculous powers of the original, sits in front, and is therefore called the Maedachi Honzon, basically the image standing in front, vice the original, the Gohonzon, the main image.
Except it gets even better, because the replica is *also* kept hidden away most of the time, and only revealed on special occasions, known as Gokaicho, or “opening of the curtain”, which occurs once every seven years.
The Zenkoji triad became extremely important in later centuries, and copies were made and installed in sub-temples throughout Japan. Even today you may find a Zenkoji-style triad here or there, each one considered to have a spiritual tie back to the original, and some of them even have inscriptions confirming that they are, indeed, Zenkoji style triads
Of course, the big question remains: does the original image actually still exist, and is there any chance that it actually is as old as it claims to be? There really is no good way of knowing. Zenkoji is not offering to open up the zushi any time soon. We do know a few things, however. We know that the temple has burned down at least 11 times over the years, and the Gohonzon was rescued each time, or so they say. There are some who claim that it still exists, but perhaps it is damaged. If that is the case, how did they make the replica, though?
There was an inspection during the Edo period. There was a rumor that it had been stolen, and so an Edo official was sent to check on the status. They reported that it was still there, but crucially they never described actually laying eyes on the statue. In one account where a monk did open the box it is said that their was a blinding light—kind of like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones but just overwhelming; no faces were melted, at least none that were reported.
The monks of Zenkoji, when asked how they know the image is still there, will point to the weight of the container, which, when lifted, is apparently considerable. They say that is how they know it is still there. Of course, a melted lump of metal might be the same weight as it was when it was full statue, as long as it didn’t lose any actual mass, so it is hard to tell if it is still in good condition.
Even with all of that, there is the question about the veracity of the original objects lineage to begin with. Did Honda Yoshimitsu really just find *the* original statue? And even if he did, how would he have known what it was? Was there an inscription: To Yamato, from Baekje, hugs and kisses?
I’ve yet to see anyone directly compare the purported replica with other statues, but I suspect that would be the route to at least check the age, but nobody seems to be saying that the style of the replica is blatantly wrong for a 6th or 7th century icon from the peninsula or by peninsular craftsmen. Then again, there were plenty of local immigrants in the Naniwa area who could have potentially crafted an image. Indeed, the area around modern Nagano even has traces of Goguryeo style burial cairns, possibly from immigrants settled out there to help with early horse cultivation, and so there is even the possibility that there were locals with the connections and skills to craft something.
If you really want to know more, there is an entire work by Donald McCallum, titled “Zenkoji and Its Icon”, on not just the icon but the entire worship that sprang up around it and caused copies to spread throughout the archipelago.
And that’s where we will leave off for this episode. In the next couple of episodes I want to finish up some of the secular history of this reign, and look a little bit outside of Yamato and the evidence in the Chronicles as well.
Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us 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 on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links 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.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Friday, K.F. (Ed.). (2017). Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315170473
Deal, William E. and Ruppert, Brian. (2015). A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. ISBN: 978-1-405-16700-0.
McCallum, D. F. (2009). The Four Great Temples: Buddhist Art, Archaeology, and Icons of Seventy-Century Japan. University of Hawai’i Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqtwv
Matsuo, K. (13 Dec. 2007). A History of Japanese Buddhism. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9781905246410.i-280
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
Farris, W. (1998). Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824864224
Piggott, Joan R. (1997). The emergence of Japanese kingship. Stanford, Calif : Stanford University Press
Kiley, C. J. (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

Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tennō

Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi

Ishihime

Yata no Tamakatsu

Osada Nunakura Futodamashiki no Mikoto, aka Bidatsu Tennō

Kasanuhi (aka Satake) no Himemiko

Kitashi Hime

Wonane Gimi

Takechi (or Takeuchi) no Sukune

Koshi no Kuni

Sushen / Mishihase (粛慎)

Sado Island

Nivkh

Kawahara Tami no Atahe no Miya

Umakai no Omi no Utayori

Umakai no Omi no Morishi and Umakai no Omi no Nasehi

Hafuri

Michi no Ushi

Shibagaki

Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Arako

Katsuraki no Atahe no Naniwa

Sagaraka (or Saganaka)

Kashiwade no Omi no Katabeko

Kose no Omi no Saru and Kishi no Akabato

Yamato no Aya no Saka no Ue no Atahe no Komaro

Nishikori no Obito no Ōshi (or Ōishi)

Wang Jinnie

Tsunoga Arashito

Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa

Iwahi and Masa

Rough Transcript

References

Who’s Who

Ame Kunioshi no Ōkimi, aka Kimmei Tennō

Soga no Iname no Sukune

Mononobe no Okoshi

Wang Jinnie and his children

Rough Transcript

References