[Insert Name of Monarch Here]

CW: Suicide.

This episode is an "odds and ends" episode, talking about a variety of different things, all of which supposedly happened during the reign of Oho Sazaki, but which really has little or nothing to do with the sovereign and could have occurred just about anywhere.  Of  course, this isn't simply true of this reign, and I'm sure we'll see more of this before we get to a truly acceptable timeline.

For sources and more check out https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-53

Rough Transcript:

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 53, Insert Name of Monarch Here .

Before we get started, a quick shout-out to Joe for helping to support the show.  If you want to join him, you can find us on our recent Patreon page—just look up Sengoku Daimyo—or you can also donate through KoFi, at Ko-Fi.com/sengokudaimyo.

Also, a quick content warning:  some of these entries contain things that may be disturbing.  Specifically, this episode we will be referencing a suicide, however briefly.

This is probably going to be our last episode on the reign of the Great Wren, Oho Sazaki no Ohokimi, aka Nintoku Tennou.  We’ve gone over the story of how he came to power, of his many loves, and several other stories—including how early elites were getting brain freezes in the summer thanks to their private slushee stash.

This episode is going to be about many of the other stories from his reign—those I didn’t cover previously.  I’d generally categorize them in two different ways:  First there are stories relating to the mainland, specifically to the Korean peninsula and our favorite cast of characters over there—mostly Silla and Goguryeo.  Then there are stories from the archipelago itself.  But the big thing that seems to unite these stories, in my mind, and why this episode has the title it does, is the fact that the sovereign’s place really isn’t defined or required for most of them.  While the sovereign may, indeed, be referenced, and though some of the stories do seem to fit with other events, the truth of the matter is that it could be any sovereign, and how and why these stories are particularly tied to Oho Sazaki is not immediately clear, at least not to me.

For those stories referencing the continent, I suspect that a large part of that narrative is being driven by stories in things like the Baekje Annals, which the chroniclers were clearly pulling from.  As we’ve seen, though, the dates don’t always line up, and it’s possible that some of these stories were added in simply because of the dates—which are still wildly inaccurate in this time period—and not because of a clear connection with Oho Sazaki’s reign.

On the other hand, the stories from the archipelago feel, to me, like local stories, not dissimilar to what we find in the later Fudoki.  They are probably set in the 5th century, but as for whether or not they were explicitly set during the time of Oho Sazaki’s reign is unclear.

What does seem clear is that there was a very important fifth century ruler of some import—hence the presence of Daisen Kofun, which we discussed in episode 51 – as a reminder, this is the largest kofun in the archipelago, and one of the largest mausoleums in the entire world.  Its construction likely took years, and untold numbers of laborers, crafters, and more.  Whether the individual interred there was actually known as Oho Sazaki or not, their reign was no doubt a marker for later generations, and I suspect that, between the reigns of Oho Sazaki and his father, there may have been numerous stories that were attributed to them, particularly if they took place some time early in the reigns of their particular dynasties.  And so the stories all get woven together and start to settle into a timeline.  As things get written down, they obtain a kind of canonical position in the histories.

So with that understanding, let’s get started!

We’ll begin with the stories regarding the continent.  Here we see the continued evolution of the complex relationships between the emerging nation-states of the peninsula and the archipelago.  This isn’t as simple as stating that it was Baekje and Yamato—and possibly the states of Kara—against Silla and Goguryeo.

For instance, at one point it seems that Yamato’s relationship with Goguryeo had improved, at least since the days of Gwangaetto the Great. To illustrate this, a Goguryeo embassy is said to have arrived, bringing a gift of two iron shields.  These caused quite the stir in a land that had iron armor but seems to have largely still been using shields made of wood.  Not a month after the embassy had brought them, the ambassadors were being entertained at the court and people started shooting arrows at the shield.  Rather predictably, the shields did as expected, and the arrows seem to have bounced off.  Nobody could pierce them, unlike, one presumes, the wooden shields of the time.

Nobody, that was, until one man, Tatebito no Sukune.  He stood up and took aim and he must have had quite the draw weight on his bow, as his arrow pierced the target.  In recognition of such a feat, Oho Sazaki bestowed on him a new name.  While he was previously known as Tatebito, a name that could be translated as “shield person”, he was given the name of Ikuba no Toda, where “Ikuba” means “target”.

Later Toda no Sukune—whose name is spelled differently, but who is claimed as an ancestor of the Ikuba no Omi—was made an ambassador himself, along with Sakashi-nokori no Omi, who gained his title at the same event where Ikuba no Toda no Sukune was given his name for piercing the shield.  These two were sent to the mainland because, at least as the Nihon Shoki puts it, Silla had not been sending expected tribute.  I mean, it kind of makes sense that you would send a guy who can shoot an arrow through an iron shield as an ambassador to a misbehaving tributary nation, right?

Toda and Sakashi-nokori showed up and were offered—and I use that term in the loosest of meanings—a quite specific one thousand four hundred and sixty pieces of tribute, including silk and various objects.  In total it was 80 shiploads—probably just the Chronicles’ way of saying it was a heck of a lot—quite the haul for anyone at that time, however it may have actually been acquired.

Of course, this wasn’t the only “embassy” to Silla.  At one point Takahase, who is said to be an ancestor of the lords of Kodzuke, the Kodzuke no Kimi, was sent to Silla, again because of this perceived failure by Silla to send tribute to Yamato.  As he started out, though, before he left the islands, he spotted a white deer, a presumably auspicious sign, so he broke his journey and took the deer and returned to the sovereign.  He then chose another day and left to travel across to the peninsula.

Shortly after Takahasa had left, Oho Sazaki decided he wanted a little insurance that the mission would be successful, and so he sent Takahase’s own brother, Tamichi, to follow after him, commanding him that if Silla refused to pay up then he should raise up an army and invade.  Heck, this is looking more and more like some medieval gangster type shakedown.  I can just see Don Sazaki saying something like “leave the sword, take the cannolis.”  Or whatever the equivalent sweet of the day might have been.

Now it seems that Silla was, indeed, recalcitrant.  They offered battle daily, rather than pay – I mean give - the Yamato forces what they wanted.  But Tamichi made strong fortifications, and he refused to leave them.  One day, as the siege dragged on, the Yamato forces captured a Silla soldier who was questioned—and probably not in a very nice way—and eventually gave up details of Silla’s order of battle.  It seemed that Silla’s strongest forces were typically concentrated in the right van of their forces for some reason, and when Tamichi heard of this he knew what to do.  The Yamato forces did go forth to do battle, and as they did so, Tamichi saw the hole in Silla’s left flank, just as the soldiers had said.  He took a force of swift men—the chronicle says cavalry which might be an exaggeration, though we do see horse equipment from this period—and he bore quickly down into the gap.  Once the left side of the Silla army collapsed, the Yamato soldiers were able to roll up the rest and rout them.  In the end we are told they ended up taking—read “enslaving”—four villages worth of prisoners back to Japan, where they were no doubt resettled and put to work for Yamato.

This must have been a huge victory, and Tamichi was no doubt lauded for it, but his story doesn’t end there.  For some time after his victory in Silla he was sent to the northeast, as the Emishi were rebelling.   Unfortunately he did not fare as well in this campaign, and it would prove to be his last.  Tamichi was slain at the Harbor of Ishimi.  One of his soldiers was able to obtain his tamaki—an armlet apparently made of beads and bells tied together with a string—and they brought that back to his wife, who used it to strangle herself, thus joining her husband in death .  This act moved even the hardest of the soldiers to tears.

At some later point—we aren’t told when, other than it was after Tamichi had been buried and a tomb erected—the Emishi once again rebelled and made as though to carry off many of the people.  At the same time they dug up Tamichi’s tomb, presumably somewhere up in the Kozuke region, to loot the grave, and when they did so a giant serpent came out of the tomb.  Its poison was potent, and all but two of the Emishi died.  Thus it is said that Tamichi was able to get his revenge, even from beyond the grave.

As I mentioned above, these stories seem less about the sovereign, and more about notable individuals, such as Toda no Sukune and Tamichi, and their war-time heroics.  Similarly, other stories seem to be about various people and places.

For example, there is the story of the giant tree of Toutoumi, which is to say, the western lands of modern Shizuoka province, around Lake Hamana, formerly known as Tohotsu-a(f)umi, from which the province got its name.  Now whether there were particularly torrential rains or a massive earthquake—or just that nature took its course—we aren’t told, but what we are told is that the Kokushi, or provincial governor, of Toutomi reported that a huge tree had fallen along the banks of the Ohowigawa, floating downstream until it got stuck, firm as the Evergiven in the Suez Canal.

Now this wasn’t just some log, but it must have been a massive old-growth tree, likely hundreds of years old.  It was 10 “girths” in size—in other words it was an incredibly big tree—and split in two at the very end.  This was such an incredible find that the court sent Yamato no Atahe no Agoko himself to take care of things.  Now, you may or may not remember Agoko—we mentioned him back in Episode 49 when Prince Oho-yamamori—or perhaps Nukada no Ohonakatsu Hiko—took the rice-lands and granaries from Ou no Sukune during the interregnum, while Oho Sazaki and his brother were still bickering over who would be sovereign.  Even though Agoko had been off on a mission on the Korean peninsula at the time, the court tracked him down to help resolve the dispute, since apparently nobody knew the courtly traditions quite like he did.  His ruling saw the land and granaries returned to Ou no Sukune and fueled the murderous rage of Oho Yamamori, who tried and failed to kill his own younger brother and take the throne for himself.

Here we see Agoko’s return to the forefront—he traveled to the land of Toutoumi, had the giant tree made into a boat, and then he sailed it back to Naniwa by way of the Southern Sea—in other words he sailed down south, around the Kii Peninsula.

A minor historical note here—this story, besides giving us more evidence of Agoko’s competence, is the earliest story we have that references the person overseeing a land or province as “kokushi”, which might well be termed something like provincial governor.  Of course, much like the mention of horses during Yamato Takeru’s campaigns, this could just be an anachronism thrown in by later chroniclers.  Nonetheless it could also be an indication of the structural changes occurring in the political make-up of the islands.  Certainly Yamato’s hegemony appears to have hit a zenith at the point that Daisen kofun was built, so it may be that they were, in fact, exerting greater and greater control over the provincial leaders.

There are also a number of stories out of the Fudoki—largely from the Harima Fudoki.  Many of these are simply etymologies for various place names.  For instance, Ikahino, which literally translates to something like “the fields for keeping wild boar” claims that the area was given by the sovereign to keep a wild boar consecrated to Amaterasu.  Sawoka, on the other hand, which means rice-planting hill, was named after the annual rice-planting festival that was held there.  There is also Kurusu, named after a local chestnut grove, supposedly started from peeled chestnuts presented by the sovereign.

While some of these are interesting, and provide some tidbits on the operation of the court and various beliefs and onomastics, most such entries don’t have the depth that we’d really like.  Though there is one with a bit more flair.  It is recorded in the entry about Mikazuki Hara—the soaking fields.

We are told that there were two men who were so extravagant that they washed their feet with fine, clear sake.  These two men were named Kaguro of the country of Houki and Oyuko of the country of Inaba—both areas on the Japan Sea side of western Honshu.  The Yamato court considered that their conduct was excessive and disrespectful, and it sent out Sayo of the Sa(w)i no Muraji to bring them in and face punishment.  Accordingly, Sayo went out and arrested all of the members of their households.  And since there was no due process nor concepts of “innocent until proven guilty”, on the way back, Sayo tortured his prisoners, dunking—or soaking—them in water.

During the journey, there were two women who wore jewels on their wrists and ankles—not the kind of thing you’d expect to find on a servant, even one in a crazy rich household like that of Kaguro and Oyuko.  In fact, after Sayo dug into it a little while he found out that they were, in fact, Una and Kuwa, the daughters of Miso of the Hatori no Muraji and his wife, Arasaka Hime, who herself was the daughter of the kuni no miyatsuko, or lord, of Inaba.

Now Miso was apparently a rather influential man at the court, and Sayo likely had a moment of panic as he realized just who it was that he had been treating as common criminals.  He immediately released both of the women and sent them on their way.  The place they were released was known as Farewell Hill, or Mi-oki-yama, and the place where Sayo had tortured his prisoners by dunking them in water was Mikazuki Hara, the Soaking field.

Once again, it is hard to exactly place this story in the timeline of Oho Sazaki’s reign, even though the Harima Fudoki does mention that it was the time of the Prince of Takatsu in Naniwa—based on the details, it could have been just about any time.  For example, there is no clear evidence for a Hatori no Muraji named Miso, or his influence at the court.  Granted, there are few enough individuals mentioned, anyway, and it could be that stories about him just didn’t warrant inclusion in the Chronicles and other records.

Once again, I suspect that this story evolved from some larger conflict the Yamato court had with Houki and Inaba, but what exactly I couldn’t say—just more evidence of the lack of good and reliable records for this period.

There is one thing in this story that would probably be worth noting, however, and that is the use of torture.  Now this could be just part of a false etymology given life – finding an explanation for why this given place was called the “soaking field”, but we do see in the archipelago, at least later, that officials were not above using torture to get a confession.

In fact, one might note that the rule of thumb was less “Innocent until proven guilty” but more “guilty until proven innocent.”  If you were arrested in ancient times, your guilt was more or less presumed.  After all, if you were an upstanding citizen, why would you ever be arrested?  Obviously, as we understand the legal system today, this is extremely problematic, but in ancient times it wasn’t uncommon to derive a confession through torture or other means, since that was seen as just streamlining the process.  This would be true throughout most of the archipelago’s history, really.

But I digress.  Beyond a few details that seem odd, there is nothing too outlandish about the story, overall—well, other than it taking Sayo until after they were tortured to determine that two of the women were actually rather important personages.

But not all of the stories are quite so mundane.  While the stories of fighting on the mainland or even just dealing with a literal log jam in Toutoumi, might seem reasonable, the next story is one that seems like it would be more comfortable several reigns back, when Okinaga Tarashi Hime had to deal with literal winged rebels.  This is the story of Sukuna of Hida.

Hida, by the way, indicates the area west of the Hida Mountains, in the northern, mountainous areas of what is today referred to as Gifu Prefecture, encompassing the areas of modern Hida, Takayama, and parts of Gero cities.  This landlocked area is exactly the kind of treacherous area that was largely uncharted even into modern times.  It is also the home of the famous Shirakawa-go and Gokayama villages, where the specialized gassho-zukuri houses have earned the area a UNESCO World Heritage site status. This especially steep-roofed houses were specifically developed due to the deep and heavy snows that regularly inundate the region, indicating the harsh conditions facing anyone in the region, so it may not be surprising that it was the source of some rather fanciful tales.

Which brings us back to Sukuna.  We are told that on one “trunk” he had two faces, each turned away from each other.  The crowns met, and there was no nape of the necks.  Each of the two sides had their own hands and feet, and there were knees, but they were conjoined all the way down the back side.  He carried swords on his right and his left side and he used the bow and arrow with all four hands.

Sukuna, who sounds like something out of an episode of He-Man, did not use his powers for good.  In fact we are told that he plundered the people, and so the sovereign sent a man named Naniwaneko Takefurukuma, to deal out justice and stop his reign of banditry.  Sure enough, Naniwaneko was successful and eventually slew Sukuna, ending his threat to the people.

So let’s break this down somewhat.  First off, let’s address the obvious—isn’t it possible that the description we are getting is of conjoined twins?  And it probably is possible, but not very likely.  I think it is also safe to say that unfortunately, conjoined twins have historically been more at risk of violence from society than threats to it, given that humans can often be cruel and intolerant.

However, I suspect something else may have been going on here, as it seems the much simpler answer is that in the stories about Naniwaneko’s exploits, Sukuna was given monstrous characteristics that would both signal to the audience that he was a bad dude, but it would also make him that much more of a challenge for our hero to overcome.  It strikes me as more likely that Sukuna was probably more of a local bandit or warlord, hiding out in the mountainous Hida region, and plundering nearby settlements.  Of course, whether he was more of a Blackbeard type or Robin Hood, we cannot know, since we only have Yamato’s side of the story.

In fact, he’s more important, here, as a foil for Naniwaneko, who was an ancestor of the famous Wani no Omi family.  We haven’t really discussed the Wani no Omi much, but the stories do mention them over and over, from the stories about Iware Biko, aka Jimmu Tenno, and his march on Yamato, up throughout the narrative.  Mostly it is a reference here or there, but given the frequency we can assume that they were a family of some importance.  I suspect that stories such as these were likely gleaned from the histories of the noble families, which in turn ensured that they would back the Chronicles as the official history of Yamato.

A similarly fantastical tale is told about another warrior, a man of fierce temper and of great bodily strength.  We don’t know his name, but he was the ancestor of the Kasa no Omi and we are otherwise merely told that he was an agatamori—similar to an agatanushi, and likely translated as something like a “district warden”.  Now this Agatamori lived in the land of Kibi—that land where it seemed they often rivaled Yamato in their power, or at least in their ability to organize labor and build giant, kingly style round-keyhole tombs.

The Nihon Shoki tells us that there was once a water-snake who sat at a fork in the Kawashima river, in central Kibi—probably the area later known as Bitchuu, in the western area of modern Okayama Prefecture.  Travelers who passed by the area where the snake was at were “affected by its poison”, and died.  Of course, we aren’t exactly told how they were affected—one assumes it bit them, but there are also stories of snakes effectively belching their poison, like some kind of dragon.  Whatever the method it used, it was killing people and needed to be stopped.

The Agatamori went to where the snake was located, and here it seems he tried a diplomatic tack at first, one that seems somewhat at odds with the task at hand.  He started by throwing three calabash gourds in the water, telling the water-snake that if he could sink the calabashes then the Agatamori would go away.  But if he could not then he would kill the snake.

If this sounds familiar, you may remember a similar test of a water-spirit a few episodes back, when a man who was to be sacrificed to the river to ensure successful completion of a new canal used a similar tactic to prove that the kami was not as powerful as he claimed.  In that case, the kami created a whirlwind to try to push the gourds under the water, but in this case the water-snake transformed into a deer and tried to sink them in that form.  In both cases, this task proved too difficult, even for supernatural beings to accomplish.

And so, since the water-snake had failed to sink the gourds, the Agatamori raised his sword and entered the water to kill the snake, as well as its kith and kin, which filled a cave in the bottom of the pool.  The Agatamori slew them all, such that the river itself ran red with their blood, and the pool became known as the Pool of Agatamori.

Once again, there is nothing in this particular story that is specific to a given sovereign, and it seems that this is more a story of Kibi and of the Kasa no Omi.  There are also some curious parallels with other stories, such as the would-be canal sacrifice I just mentioned.  It also bears mentioning, here, that kami in the earlier stories often appear as snakes, which in this case would certainly seem to be the implication, given how it could transform itself into a deer and all of that.  There are also some intriguing parallels with stories from India and Southeast Asia, where snakes are often connected to rivers and water.

Continuing in the vein of the supernatural, there is one last story that I’ve saved from the Nihon Shoki, and that is the tale of Shiratori kofun, aka the White Bird Mausoleum of Yamato Takeru.  We talked about this back in Episode 35—after the death of Prince Yamato Takeru, he was originally buried in a mausoleum over in Ise, where he had died, cursed-slash-poisoned because he had unwittingly disrespected a kami.  After his wife and children and come to mourn, we are told that his spirit transformed itself into a white bird—a shiratori—and flew off to Kawachi.  When it landed, a second tomb was built to honor his spirit, and it was known as the White Bird Mausoleum.

These kofun were likely more than just giant graves, but rather it seems clear that they were maintained, possibly as worship sites.  Some of the features around larger keyhole shaped tombs appear to be built as areas for rituals—either as part of the burial or perhaps for rituals that were held afterwards.

Whatever rituals may or may not have been conducted there, though, the kofun—or at least some of them—were staffed, by guards if nothing else.  Well, and a bunch of haniwa, but they were less effective as guards .  After all, these giant tombs were not only monuments to the deceased elites of the Archipelago, they were giant treasure chests, filled with treasures of iron and more, just waiting to be opened by some enterprising grave-robbers.

In most cases, no doubt this tomb-guarding was considered an extremely important task, since the kofun contained the remains of the sovereigns and other important personages, but as for Shiratori Kofun, it was more of a memorial—or at least the way the stories were told.  Since it wasn’t, technically, the kofun of the actual Yamato Takeru—that was the tomb over on the other side of the Kii peninsula—then when the Yamato court needed more laborers it seemed like a reasonable move to reassign some of the guards from the Shiratori tomb.  They determined that their service was no longer required at a quote-unquote “empty” tomb.

However, the spirit of Yamato Takeru—or some other kami—wasn’t too pleased with this bit of bureaucratic reshuffling.  Thus it was that one of the guardians-turned-laborers, a man named in the Nihon Shoki as “Meki”, was suddenly transformed into a sacred white deer.  When the sovereign heard about this, he apparently had second thoughts, and immediately had the remaining men reinstated as guardians and gave charge of all of them to the Hashi no Muraji.

Of course, I have a few doubts about the whole thing with the transformation into a deer, but there are still a lot of interesting details to consider about the kofun and the way that they operated.  I suspect that this story comes from the Hashi no Muraji, and that guardianship of the tombs, much like overseeing a shrine or other sacred place, was as much about the rice-lands and taxes dedicated to its upkeep, as well as possible status for those who were in charge of it.  It is stories like this that, looking past the supernatural elements, can really give us a better look into what life was like at this time.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to seek most of these stories elsewhere, as with this episode, we leave behind Oho Sazaki, and start getting into the rest of dynasty and the 5th century.

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