9 Fictional Sovereigns, and 1 (Possibly) Real One!

This episode we will go through the first nine legendary sovereigns.  Having covered Iware Biko, aka Jimmu, in the last several episodes, the following eight sovereigns are likely completely fictional--possibly famous names in the stories of Yamato, they appear to have been placed here specifically to pad out the royal lineage and make it seem longer and more ancient than it was.  By the end of it all we should be approaching what we might at least recognize as something we can correlate with some actual dates, even if a lot of the details are still suspect.

As we quickly make our way through we will talk about some of the information we get from various names and talk about other things, such as the how they used to keep time.  

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-27

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 27: 9 Fictional Sovereigns, and 1 (Possibly) Real One!

Before we get started, a quick shout-out and thank you to Chad, Brian, and Daniel for donating to support the podcast.  If you would like to join them, you can donate over at ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo.

Alright, everyone we are almost there—almost to a period where we can start verifying things against the historical record.  Since getting into the Chronicles we have been moving from the mythical into the legendary.  Soon we’ll at least be getting into the proto-historical period, but first we have a few entries of some of the legendary sovereigns to go over and we are literally going to just plow through them.  According to the Chronicles, this covers about 500 years of history, but as we already know, much of this information—let along the dating—is suspect.

So when last we talked, Iware Biko – the first Sovereign, aka Jimmu tenno - was governing the land from the court at Kashihara.  This court lasted for years, but it wasn’t to last forever.  After all, thanks to Ninigi and his judgmental views about women’s looks, the royal family—perhaps even all of humanity, depending on your reading of it—had only the time of a fleeting blossom here in the world. 

And so, eventually, Iware Biko passed away.  His wife and Queen, Hime Tatara Isuzu Hime, and his three sons—Tagishi Mimi, Yawi Mimi, and Nunagawa Mimi—immediately went into a period of seclusion and morning for their father.  Tagishi Mimi, the eldest of the three, had traveled with their father all the way from Himuka, in Kyushu, and had been with him throughout the conquest of Yamato.  During the Kashihara court he apparently had a hand in dealing with the administration of the government, as well.  Understandable, given who his father was.  As such, he had the most experience with the affairs of state, and so he continued in that role in the face of their father’s death.  No doubt, though, he must have been thinking about what would come next.  After all, he may be handling the affairs of state, now, and Tagishi Mimi was a son of Iware Biko, but not the Queen, Isuzu Hime.  His mother, Ahiratsu-hime, was simply noted as a wife or consort, but hadn’t been officially raised in status, and so her son, Tagishi Mimi, was apparently not eligible to succeed his father, and that may have rubbed him the wrong way.

The Chronicles describe it in stark terms:  They say that Tagishi Mimi had developed a “perverse disposition” and that he was “opposed to justice”.  Of course, his position at the court was powerful, but only until a new sovereign took the throne, and his half-brothers both had stronger claims, since they were sons through Iware Biko’s appointed queen.  It wouldn’t have helped any that there were no clear rules for succession early on.  There was clearly no hard and fast rule of primogeniture, so one’s birth order was not the most important factor in determining legitimacy.  Furthermore, there is no indication that Iware Biko issued any statement clearly designating one of his sons as heir, or Crown Prince.

It is perhaps for these very reasons that we are told that Tagishi Mimi was considering fratricide—he was plotting to murder his own brothers, which would have left him the sole heir to his father’s position.  It is a dark story, but one that is hardly unique in human history.

Plotting must have still been in its infancy at this time, though, because Iware Biko’s Queen, Isuzu Hime, uncovered his intentions.  It was apparent that if Tagishi Mimi found out that Isuzu Hime knew what he was plotting against her sons, he would come after her as well, so she decided to encode a warning for her sons into a song.  Sure enough, when her two sons heard the song, they instantly realized that Tagishi Mimi did indeed intend to seek their deaths, and so they resolved to stop him before he could carry out his plan.

First, they would need to prepare.  They reached out to various groups to help make the weapons they would need.  I’m not entirely sure why, mind you, unless Tagishi Mimi was some kind of werewolf or something.  I mean, I assume they could have pulled a bow and some arrows out of storage somewhere, as one suspects they had them for hunting, at least, if not their own conflicts with other people on the archipelago.  Where were all the weapons from dear old dad’s earlier conquests?  Still, this is helpful in the way that they describe at least three parts of the process, with the making of a bow, arrowheads, and the actual arrows all considered separate crafts.

The groups they contacted  for these jobs were familial associations, or “Be”—kinship groups dedicated to a particular product or otherwise supporting a particular location or activity.  We’ve touched on these groups briefly in past episodes - they may or may not have descended from a single remote ancestor, but they were classified as a single clan or uji.  In this case Tagishi Mimi’s brothers reached out to the Yumi-Be—the Bow Makers—the Kanuchi, or Smiths, of Yamato, and the Ya-Be, or Arrow makers.  And so Yumibe no Wakahiko was commissioned to make a special bow, while Ama tsu Maura of the Yamato no Kanuchi was requested to make several metal arrowheads.  Finally, the Ya-be were contacted and asked to make the actual arrows—the haft and fletchings, and no doubt attaching the arrowheads. 

Armed as they now were with their bespoke bow and arrows, the two brothers looked for their opportunity and soon found it.  They learned that their half-brother was taking a break, resting on a couch in a muro, or building of some kind, in Kataoka.  Working together, the younger brother, Nunagawa Mimi, who was still no spring chicken, would throw open the door, and Yawi Mimi would take the bow and arrows and kill their brother.

And everything seemed to be going to plan.  They crept up on the muro, and as it had been arranged ahead of time, Nunagawa Mimi quickly opened the door, providing his brother a clear shot.  And yet, instead of firing, Yawi Mimi hesitated.  Perhaps he had never been to war, or perhaps it was simply the thought of killing his own half-brother that made him balk.  Regardless, Yawi Mimi was overcome with anxiety, and his hands started to shake, so that he could barely hold the bow, let alone nock and loose an arrow.

That hesitation might have put an end to it, except for Nunagawa Mimi’s quick reflexes.  Noticing his brother’s distress, Nunagawa Mimi reached over and grabbed the weapons from him and immediately shot at their brother.  One arrow caught Tagishi Mimi in the back and the other caught him in the chest.  And that was the end of Tagishi Mimi.

With their half-brother dead, Yawi Mimi turned to his younger brother, Nunagawa Mimi, and quickly submitted.  He was ashamed that he had hesitated at a crucial moment, but clearly Nunagawa Mimi had not, and because of that they and their kingdom were saved.  Yawi Mimi concurred that it should be Nunagawa Mimi who ascended the throne and succeeded their father.

And that is what he did.  Nunagawa Mimi, known by the 7th century as Suizei Tennou, ascended the throne some three or four years after his father passed away.  At that time he also started a tradition that would continue for many generations to come—he moved the palace from Kashihara to a place called Katsuraki, where he is believed to have built the Takaoka palace.  This is something that would mark most of the reigns in the Chronicles—each new sovereign would ascend to the throne and almost immediately—sometimes before their father’s tomb was even completed—they would move the court to a new location.

So although this is still considered a mythical account, this idea of changing the palace and moving the entire court was something that was clearly documented well into the historical period.  It is often assumed that the death of the previous sovereign somehow polluted the old buildings, and so a new palace would be erected in a new location, without any of the taint of death or the old regime.

Of course, there may be other reasons for the move as well—political as well as ritual.  The court could be moved to get away from a particular lord or family who had grown particularly powerful in a given region.

It does seem like quite a lot of work to build a new palace each time a new sovereign is installed, but then there is a bit of a question as to what exactly this entailed.  Early on, for example, the palace may have been little more than a single building, and given these people’s ability to erect large, mounded tombs, they surely had the manpower.  You may also recall that the “Palace” of Ohonamuchi, up in Izumo, was one building on nine pillars.  It is possible that a “Palace” was simply a larger building, but still nothing like the Forbidden City or Versailles.  

This tradition continued until they started building permanent capitals—and even then it took some time before even the permanent capitals were truly permanent.  In fact, most of the Sovereigns are often known in the Fudoki and similar literature not by their names, nor by their posthumous names, but by the name of their palace.  So Iware Biko might be known as the Kashihara Sovereign, and thus Nunagawa Mimi might be known as the Takakura Sovereign, etc.

Speaking of which, let us return to his story.

Now of course, Nunagawa Mimi had other business to attend to besides just moving buildings.  For one thing, he raised his mother, Iware Biko’s Queen, up to the position of Queen Dowager, and he made his own wife Queen in the following year.  There are several different names and lineages given as to who this queen might been, but the orthodox view seems to be that this was Isuzu Yori Bime, who was also a daughter of Koto Shiro Nushi, just as the previous queen had been, making her, in fact, Nunagawa Mimi’s own aunt.  Of course, this was nothing new for the royal family—you may recall that Ugaya Fukiaezu , son of Hiko Hohodemi, also ended up married to his own mother’s sister.  In fact, based on at least the lives of the next 8 sovereigns or so, it would seem that it was not uncommon to keep things “in the family”, at least in theory.

Nunagawa Mimi and his Queen had a son, Shiki tsu Hiko Tama-demi, born around the same time that the older brother, Yawi Mimi, passed away.  A couple decades later, this son was made Crown Prince—even though he seems to have been the only remaining legitimate son to inherit.

As for the actual policies of Nunagawa Mimi’s court, there is even less information for Nunagawa Mimi than there was for his father, Iware Biko.  We are told that he possessed the “vigor of manhood”, even as a child, and that as an adult his form was gigantic.  We are also told he excelled in warlike accomplishments, but other than the incident with his half-brother, we have no clear information on any specific campaigns, battles, or conquests—not even some fanciful tale woven into the narrative.

And yet, this is still more than we get for the next several sovereigns in the Chronicles.  Honestly the next seven entries are an almost formulaic construction, at least in the Nihon Shoki—you could probably get an AI to write them for you.  Each entry goes something like this:

First, they mention the sovereign and their parentage, usually with an extra detail thrown in on the maternal side of the line.  They mention when they were made Crown Prince, and then go into the details of their reign.  They ascend the throne, they move the palace to a new location, they name the previous Queen as Queen Dowager, they raise up a Queen of their own and then it mention their children.  One of their sons is named Crown Prince, and then they die.  Typically they also mention where the misasagi, or royal tomb, of the previous sovereign was built, and they might add details about the descendants of those princes who did not become rulers, themselves.  That’s about it.  No great works of state.  No huge cultural changes. 

The Kojiki and the Kyujiki follow a similar pattern, with some minor differences.  The Kojiki is much less concerned with specific dates, though it does touch on when things happened in relation to one another and there is one major event, which we’ll get to, that the Kojiki mentions during the reign of the sovereign known as Kourei.  The Kyujiki, unsurprisingly, includes details about the ministers at court, since the ministers were largely descended—or so they claim—from Umashimaji.  Beyond that, the Kyujiki and the Kojiki are also highly concerned with the areas of genealogy, sometimes going into considerable depth on the various “begats”—who begat whom, etc.  Which isn’t to say that the Nihon Shoki ignores it, mind you, but the other two chronicles seem much more focused on those details.

For our part, I am going to try to get through this pretty quickly.  It is going to be a lot of names, and information, but it’s included more so that we can see some patterns and similarities, such as in the names of these supposed sovereigns.  In addition, almost every Queen in the Nihon Shoki for these records has several alternative accounts as to her name and parentage, and I’ll try to touch on some of that but not all of it. I don’t want to overwhelm you.  After all, the text of the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki are easily available online in Japanese and English—I recommend the Japanese Historical Text Initiative, myself, but you can likely find it elsewhere as well. 

There may indeed be some scholarly value to be gleaned from going through all of these various names and trying to draw a deep web of name elements, family mentions, and apparent relationships that could generate an interesting network diagram of who’s who in these narratives, but that is a little more than I intend for this podcast.  There are a few things I do want to look at, though—some of the more obvious things that pop out to me as we go through these records, but it still won’t be with quite the depth that a more scholarly treatment might give it, and it is mostly my own impressions as I read through the sources.

So we’ll just touch briefly on each of the sovereigns in order.  I’m not going to bother with their regnal dates, because those are undoubtedly fictitious, but I still think it is useful to note who they are in the chronicles, where their palace was located, their Queen—at least according to the Nihon Shoki—and the supposed location of their tomb, or misasagi.  Most of these locations—both the tombs and the palace sites—are within a 2~4 hour walk from one another, and that gives us an area that apparently the Chroniclers, at least, thought was important to the founding of the state—though whether that was because of actual historical facts or because they were justifying the current court’s location, you can decide for yourself.  For each one I’ll give you their quote-unquote “real” name—which itself may be more of an ancient title than a straightforward name, as we might have one, and my personal reading of it.  I’m leaving off a lot of the honorifics—while culturally important, I’m not sure that they are necessary for comprehension and for the most part these names are long enough as it is.  Some of these, such as “Sumera no Mikoto”, aka “Tennou”, are definitively not part of the early Japanese title system and therefore truly don’t apply until the 7th century or so.  I’ll also give you the posthumous names, which were also something that was instituted in a much later time, but is also how most of these sovereigns are known and referenced today, in the same way that Iware Biko is more commonly referred to as Jimmu.  Besides “Suizei” is just so much simpler than “Kami Nunagawa Mimi”, so I definitely see the appeal.

Also, I should note that there are not only slight differences between the names of people between the different Chronicles, but there are also differences in the way that they have been represented by different translators, so I’m going to primarily refer to the names as they are in Aston’s translation of the Nihon Shoki, to hopefully provide some level of consistency, except of course for those characters who don’t appear in the Nihon Shoki.

So first, after Iware Biko, the posthumously named “Jimmu Tenno”, is Kami Nunagawa Mimi, which I interpret as the Divine Lord of Nunagawa, aka Suizei Tenno.  As I mentioned earlier, his court was at the Takaoka palace in Katsuraki, which would put it due west of Kashihara.  His queen was Isuzu Yori Bime, his own aunt and daughter of Koto Shiro Nushi, though some records also have Kawa Mata Bime or Itori Hime—whether these are truly different people or just different names for the same person I couldn’t reasonably say as there isn’t enough information.  His tomb is said to be on Tsukida Hill, in Kataoka.

Next up is sovereign #3, Shiki tsu Hikio Tamademi, that is to say Tamademi, the Prince of Shiki, aka Annei Tennou.  His palace is said to have been between the previous two and a bit north—it was the Ukiana palace of Katashiho.  His queen was Nunaso Hime, also known as Nunasoko Naka tsu Hime, a granddaughter of Koto Shiro Nushi, this time.  Others say she was Kawa tsu Hime, daughter of the local chieftain of Shiki, or Itoi Hime, daughter of Ohoama no Sukune.  Another record suggests Akuto Hime, daughter of local Chieftain Haye, older brother to Kawa Mata Bime, which would make them, in the Kojiki at least, first cousins.  He is credited with several children beyond the Crown Prince, some of whom show up in later records as concubines of future sovereigns.  He is said to be buried in Mihodo no wi, south of Mt. Unebi.

The fourth sovereign was Ohoyamato Hiko Sukitomo—the Prince of Great Yamato, Sukitomo—aka Itoku Tenno.  His palace was either Magariwo or Sakaioka in Karu, south of Kashihara.  His Queen was Amatoyo tsu Hime, daughter of Okiso Hime (or Okiso Mimi), while other sources note daughters of the local chieftains of Shiki. He was buried in Manago or Masago valley, south of Mt. Unebi.

The fifth sovereign was Mima tsu Hiko Kayeshine—Kayeshine, the Prince of Mima, aka Koushou Tennou.  His palace was Ikegokoro of Wakigami, though the Kojiki has it as the Wakigami palace of Katsuraki.  As with the others, it appears to be an area in the at southwest corner of the Nara basin.  His queen was Yoso Tarashi Hime, who was related to the Owari no Muraji.  Other sources have Nunaki tsu Hime, daughter of a local chieftain of Shiki or Ohowi Hime, daughter of Toyoaki Satawo of Yamato province.  Kayeshine has two interesting tidbits in his entry.  The first is that his coronation was the first time in the Chronicle that the eldest son actually ascends the throne—all the other sovereigns either had older brothers or were an only child.  Clearly birth order was only so important in determining who could inherit the throne.  Then there is the odd note about his burial.  You see, for some reason, the Nihon Shoki places his burial some 37 years after his death, which is ludicrous.

I mean, yes, there is some evidence that official burials didn’t happen immediately, and we have evidence of burials that seem to have been placed months or years after the person died, but nothing approaching 37 years.  What would they have done with the body during that time?  Just leave it in the “temporary mourning hut”?  There were capital cities that didn’t last even 16 years, let alone 37. 

And this isn’t even just some innocent typo.  Given its placement in the narrative it would seem that the scribes actually did think that he was buried many years after he had passed away.  It is possible that this is a consequence of the strange chronology that we have going on here—the same way that these reigns seem to be awfully long.  I would propose that it could be something else.  We have seen evidence of secondary burials, and maybe this reflects that tradition.  Or perhaps the story originally reflected some kind of abdication, and he actually died much later, after his son took the throne.  Or the Kyujiki is correct and he was buried just a year after his death and the Nihon Shoki just got it wrong.

And I realize I’m arguing here about a fictional account, but there still is some idea that this may have come from some important story or legend on the archipelago that was being used to fill the space in the royal lineage.  Still, I think these are interesting, myself.

So anyway, where were we?  Ah, yes:  Suizei, Annei, Itoku, and Koushou.

Following Koushou, aka Kayeshine, is Yamato Tarashi Hiko Kuni Oshibito, aka Kouan Tenno.  Now, to be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure how to parse this name.  “Yamato” is pretty much a common name element moving forward, and “Tarashi” appears to have been an early title or rank that we find in the names of both men and women, such as in the name of the Queen Mother, Yoso Tarashi Hime, so Yamato Tarashi Hiko would appear to reference a royal prince of Yamato.  But the Kuni Oshibito?  This seems to refer to a person of the country.  His brother, by the way, is listed as Ama Tarashi Hiko Kuni Oshibito, with the only difference being “Ama” (like all of the Heavenly Deities) and “Yamato”, referring to the country. 

By the way, interesting side note: at this point “Yamato” is often glossed with the character for “Wa” or “Wo”, and sometimes it is prefixed by the character Oho, or Big, so you get “Daiwa” or “Ohoyamato”.  It was common for states in East Asia to use the term “Great” in front of their name:  like the Da-Qin, the Da-Han, or the Da-Tang, so that appears to be just another example of following continental patterns.

It would also explain why Daiwa, today—with the character “peace” substituted for the derogatory “Wo” character”—is most commonly glossed as “Yamato”, referring to the Japanese state.  It all goes back to early on and how they Japanese adopted the Sinitic writing for their own purposes.

Anyway, sorry for the diversion, but as I said, I’m not entirely sure what the name refers to.  Nonetheless, we are still told that he set up his palace of Akitsushima in Muro, which would seem to be even further to the southwest.  Oshibito apparently took to wife the daughter of his older brother, which is to say his own niece, Oshi Hime—though once again, other sources claim it was Naga Hime, another daughter of the local chieftain of Shiki or Isaka Hime, daughter of Isaka Hiko, the local chieftain of Tohochi.  He was eventually buried in a tomb on Tamade Hill.

Kouan was followed by Kourei, aka Ohoyamato-neko Hiko Futoni, who dwelt in the palace of Ihodo in Kuroda, in the land of Yamato—that is, the Nara Basin.  Here we see a new construction—Yamato (or Ohoyamato) Neko.  And no, this doesn’t mean that they were a line of cats on the throne.  Rather, this construction appears in several sovereigns’ names, and even shows up in an edict at one point, so Aston has suggested that it may have been the early title of the Yamato sovereigns.  So I guess this might be best translated as Royal Prince of Yamato, Futoni.  For his Queen he chose Hoso Bime, aka Kuhashi Hime, daughter of Ohome, the local chieftain of either Shiki or Tohochi.  Other records suggest Chichihaya Yamaka Hime of Kasuga or else Mashita Bime, another daughter of the local chieftain of Tohochi.

But now things start getting interesting, because Futoni not only raised up a Queen, but we are told that he had several other wives, designated simply as as consorts.  The implication seems to be that the children of these other wives would not hold the same legitimacy as the children of the Queen, just as we saw with Tagishi Mimi.  Nonetheless, we see a number of consorts in this reign, at least two of whom—Haye Irone and Haye Iroto—appear to be the daughters of the Third sovereign, Tamademi. 

Okay, so we’ve already seen that they are trying to keep this family tree on the straight and narrow, if you get my meaning, but according to the dates in the Nihon Shoki, they both must have been at least 200 years old by this point.

The children of these bi-centenarians will be of particular interest later, however.  The first is Yamato Totohi Momoso Hime.   She will be featured later in the story of Mt. Miwa.  In fact, though, we’ve already talked about her, some, as she is supposedly the one buried in Hashihaka Kofun, which is also believed by many to actually be the resting place of Queen Himiko.  This has sparked the suggestion that Yamato Totohi Momoso HIme and Queen Himiko are, in fact, the same person.  And, as we’ll get to soon enough, we are getting up to about the right time frame—though of course the Chronicles only claim that Totohi Momoso Hime was a princess, not a sovereign.

Another figure from this period is her brother, Hiko Isaseri, aka Kibi tsu Hiko, or the prince of Kibi.  We’ll talk more about him in a later reign, but you might know him by another name—a fanciful name that often occurs in a famous children’s story:  Momo Taro.  Okay, okay, he may not have emerged miraculously from a peach, but it is thought that a story about his military exploits laid the groundwork for what would become the popular fable.

There are four other siblings in the bunch, not including the future sovereign, so we won’t go into all of them. Instead, we’ll just leave off with Futoni’s tomb in Mumazaka (or possibly Umasaka) at Kataoka.

The eighth sovereign is Ohoyamato-neko Kunikuru, or the Royal Prince of Yamato Kunikuru, aka Kougen Tenno.  His court was at the Sakaibara palace back in Karu again.  His queen was said to be Uchi Shiko Me, sister of Uchi Shiko Wo, the ancestor of the Hozumi no Omi, and, according to the Kyujiki, one of the descendants of Umashimaji.  Like his father, he had several consorts, and various children by them.  One of them was actually the niece of his Queen, Ika Shiko-me, daughter of Utsu Shiko Wo.  And though we don’t get into a full list, apparently many families traced their roots back to this particular sovereign.  When he died it is said he was buried in a tomb on the island in Tsurugi pond.

Finally, for this episode, at least, we have the ninth sovereign:  Waka Yamato-neko Hiko Ohohihi, The Young Royal Prince of Yamato, Ohohihi, aka Kaika Tenno.  His court met at the Isakaha palace in Kasuga, and in keeping with the idea that genetics are best kept in the family, he apparently raised up Ika Shiko-me, his cousin/stepmother, as his Queen, and then took several consorts, including Mima tsu Hime, Oke tsu Hime, and Washi Hime.  Besides the crown prince, he, too, sired several children, including Hiko Imasu.  Hiko Imasu would eventually be one of the Four Generals, the Shidou Shogun, along with Ohokibitsu HIko.  It is said that Ohohihi was eventually buried at the Sakamoto tomb at Isakaha in Kasuga, near the supposed sight of his palace building.

And that takes us through the first nine sovereigns.  Of course, I keep saying it, but I’ll say it one more time:  These are all believed to be fictional.  Certainly the dates are fictional, and we have no corroborating evidence regarding any of these individuals beyond the other 8th century chronicles written near the same time, but certainly with shared source material.

So what does all this mean?  And why do we bother with it?  If it is all just made up, why not ditch it and move on to the good stuff?

Well, first of all, though I believe these entries to be fictional in terms of the royal lineage, that doesn’t mean that everything about them was just made up.  Certainly there are some details that would seem to have required at least some massaging to make them fit, but I suspect that these represent some attempt at veracity.  It has been suggested that some of these may have been important chieftains who were then fit into the royal line of Yamato, perhaps because of their importance to individuals in the court or their exploits.  Certainly, at a glance, Nunagawa Mimi, Shiki tsu Hiko, and Mima tsu Hiko all sound to me like princes of specific areas, since they don’t carry the Yamato Hiko name, let alone the Yamato Neko elements.

It strikes me that that some of these stories could also represent some of the co-rulers, assuming we trust the dual kingship model.  Could the conflict between Tagishi Mimi and Nunagawa Mimi represent some kind of conflict between co-rulers, whether or Yamato or elsewhere on the archipelago?  Or is it just simply your standard sibling rivalry and jockeying for power and position. 

Another consideration: it could be that some of the Queens mentioned were more than just wives and mothers.  Certainly we see the importance of marriage diplomacy to tie in other lineages with the line of the royal house, but I can’t help but wonder if, at least in some cases, it wasn’t the woman who was originally the more important of the two, but that is unfortunately a hard point to prove.

And of course, we must remember that while we have examples of Sinitic writing from early on in the archipelago, there doesn’t seem to be evidence for any kind of local written culture until some time in the 7th century.  There are occasional inscriptions and characters here and there, but it would appear that most of these stories would have been passed down through an oral tradition among professionals like the Katari-be. 

Because of this, I largely discount the locations of the palaces and the early tomb mounds, myself.  It really feels like the fact that they’re all located in the Southwest corner of the Nara Basin is more related to the location of the court at the start of the 8th century rather than anything else.

There are a few things that stand out though, in the collection of everything, besides just the locations of the palaces and the tombs.  For instance, it is remarkable how many of the Queens—and even one sovereign—are tied in the Chronicles to the local lords of Shiki or of Tohochi.  You may recall that we encountered the land of Shiki during Iware Biko’s conquest of Yamato.  In fact, it was Shiki the Elder and Shiki the Younger whose forces were originally covering the village of Iware, and it was the younger chieftain of Shiki who had supported Iware Biko against his own brother, much as had happened in Ukashi, earlier.  In the Nihon Shoki, these are all written with the same characters for “Shiki”, which would seem to indicate something important about that area—which is understandable since the district of Shiki occupied much of the Nara basin, including those areas identified through archaeological remains as the primary location for the founding of the Yamato state. 

Tohochi I have less on to this point, though we will encounter it later in the chronicles.  It would appear to be a part of Shiki—perhaps carved off at a later date, though I’m not seeing it as an ancient district in the same way.  There was certainly a family that traced their lineage back to the local chieftains of Tohochi, though.

And we should touch on one more thing, something I’ve talked about but is going to be important, soon enough, and that is the dates.  Now it should be clear that dates such as “660 BCE” do not appear anywhere in the Chronicles.  Of course they weren’t dating their Chronicles based on some Christian practice.  Rather, dates were tied to the reigns of the sovereign, so we get things like “In the first year of his reign” or “In the 26th year of his reign”.  This is similar to the system used on the continent, particularly among the Sinitic kingdoms, though I want to caution that it is hardly unique to that region, or even Asia.  Many people used these kinds of regnal dates to record historical events, which is useful for localizing the event to a particular era, but less helpful when you want to report it out against the broad canvas of history.  That’s why various charts have been drawn up to match up the regnal dates to the Western calendar.  This will get even more fun as we get into Nengou, where a ruler would decide to declare a new “era”, and start the counting all over again.  It also means that the last year of one reign is almost always the first year in another, which we recently encountered when the 31st year of Heisei became the first year of Reiwa with the recent  ascension of the new emperor in Japan.  Technically, Heisei 31 is a year with only four months (January through April), and Reiwa 1 is a year with only 8 months.  At least they planned the official change for midnight on May 1st, which is something of a blessing.

Now on top of all of this, there is another system used in dating that is not tied directly to these regnal dates.  This is the stems-and-branches, commonly known as the Chinese zodiac, though really it is more in depth than that.  You know when you go into some Chinese restaurants and they have the placemat with the twelve animals and each animal is associated with a year?  The Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Cock, Dog, or Boar?  Well, it is that system, except with an added twist, which is the five elements—known as the Gogyou or, in Mandarin, Wu-xing.   These are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.  They are arranged with the symbols from the zodiac for a total of 60 different combinations.

Every year is then associated with an element and an animal of the zodiac—or more a Heavenly Stem or an Earthly Branch.  There are technically 10 Heavenly Stems—each element being broken up into an “Elder” and “Younger” element—and then 12 Earthly Branches.  There is a lot more that could be said if we wanted to dive deep into Yin-Yang theory and various other ideas, but for now, it is enough to know about the cycle of sixty and that this could be applied to any timely cycle.  So, for instance, the day was broken up into 12, with each “Hour” being made up of roughly two hours on a modern clock.  Then the days would continue in cycles of 60, constituting roughly 2 months.  And then, finally, the years themselves would be marked in this way, making up 60 year cycles.

I do feel obligated to note that it is a little unclear as to just when the animals were associated with this cycle, and the characters used for these Stems and Branches do not actually reference the animals or elements they are said to represent, so that may be a later overlay or part of a mnemonic device to help remember them.  Nonetheless, I’ll refer to them that way so that it will hopefully be easier to follow, but students of Japanese history may want to look into this subject more deeply, as it pops up in all sorts of contexts, not just dates.

And the importance of all of this is that it gives us a second dating system.  Occasionally a stem-and-branch year is called out, like when Nunagawa Mimi and his brother Yawi Mimi learned about their half-brother’s intentions, that was a “Tsuchinoto-U” year of the cycle.  “Tsuchi no to” refers to a “Younger Brother of Earth” and “U” refers to the 4th Earthly Branch, commonly known as the Hare.  So this means it was a year of the Earth Hare.  Later we learn that the year that Nunagawa Mimi ascended, the first year of his reign, was a Kanoye-Tatsu year in the cycle, meaning that it was a year of the Fire Dragon, in modern parlance.

So anyway, overlaying this 60 year cycle on top of the reign dates helps us put things in order and works like something of a checksum to make sure that the dating is still accurate. 

Except for one thing.  This whole branch and stem system is clearly continental in origin, and as far as we can tell, no such system existed by the time of Himiko, and probably not until much later.  We may occasionally find references to it, often on items that came from the mainland, but there is no evidence that this was actually in use at the time.  In fact, some have theorized that the original yearly cycle in the archipelago was not based on a lunisolar construct at all.  That is to say, a year wasn’t based on a single cycle around the sun.  Rather, it has been suggested that in the early stories, the “years” were actually harvest cycles.  This is, after all, the cycle that would have been most important to the Yayoi agriculturalists, and you would have had two of them per year.  Suddenly, a reign of 80 years is now forty, and reign of 120 is only 60, which seems much more reasonable.

That said, years in the Japanese court by the time the Chronicles were written were clearly based on a solar year, give or take a few days to match up with the lunar cycles.  And the Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch system that they applied had one other important feature that I should probably mention, and that has to do with auspicious and inauspicious years. 

This is something that we find even today.  In Shinto belief, certain years are better and certain are worse, and this largely comes from a person’s age—when they were born and where they are in the cycle.  But there were then cycles on top of that, and there was a general belief, at least by the 8th century, that certain years would naturally be years of great change and reform.  Just like the direction Iware Biko attacked from was important to his victory over Nagasune Biko and the conquest of Yamato, the year and timing of such events was important as well. 

So it became important to the chroniclers to understand and ensure that important historical events not only matched up with known dates and times, but that they matched up with the appropriate calendrical cycles, some of which went even beyond the simple 60 year cycle.  This is likely why Iware Biko’s conquest and enthronement were placed in the historical record in order to match up with an auspicious time for a great change – which would then be relatable, again, to great change in the 7th century.

Still, even if we know that these dates are generally fictional, they can still be useful in verifying accounts in the later records, and this is one part of the equation that some scholars, such as Boleslaw Szczesniak in the early 50s, used to try to correct the dating in the Chronicles—or at least the Nihon Shoki.  For instance, he judged that the events of the reign of the sovereign known as Oujin related to events described on a Stele from Koguryeo on the northern Korean peninsula, erected in 414 – and that the stele dates were almost precisely 120 years off—or two 60 year cycles – from the dates given in the Nihon Shoki.  By pulling Ojin’s reign forward by 120 years, it necessarily brings most of the rest of the accounts forward as well.  This alone would pull our records up from where they currently end, around 98 BCE, to something more akin to 22 CE.  If we assume similar corrections and changes—for example, many of the sovereigns have insanely long lifespans in the Chronicles that we should clearly shorten, then by the end of our 9th sovereign’s reign we are possibly into the latter half of the 2nd or early 3rd centuries, which is much more probable and matches up a lot better with what we see in the archeological record.

Which catches up with our next sovereign.  The 10th sovereign and, quite possibly, one whose story may finally have to do with events in an historical time frame.  Unfortunately, this episode is running long already, so we’ll get into his reign next episode, where we’ll talk about the enshrinement of Ohomononushi on Mt. Miwa, and about the Generals of the Four Roads, including Ohokibi tsu Hiko. 

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That’s all for now.  Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.