What's In a Name

We are back and continuing with the story of Oasatsuma Wakugo, aka Ingyō Tennō, and this time around he has a bit of thorny problem on his hands: names. Specifically that people are just taking family names willy-nilly, claiming high rank. So we'll look into just what names mean and why the fledgling state even cares.

We'll also talk about a few of the other things that occurred, including an incredible free dive in the Seto Inland Sea!

For more, check out https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-56

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 56:  What’s in a name?

Now before we get started I have a few shoutouts this episode as I want to thank Pedro, Thaddeus, Lyndon, and Lewis for supporting the show and the rest of the work that we are doing here at Sengoku Daimyo.  If you’d like to join then, you can go over to our Ko-Fi site, Ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo or check us out on Patreon.  Every dollar goes back into the show and to keeping the website up and running, so thank you so much.

And with that, let’s move on to the episode itself.

Now, in the last episode—before the New Year’s recap—we were talking about Woasatsuma Wakugo no Sukune no Mikoto, aka Ingyou Tennou.  He was the brother of the previous two sovereigns, Inaho Wake, aka Richuu Tennou, and Midzuha Wake, aka Hanzei Tennou.  All three of them were sons of Ohosazaki no Mikoto, aka Nintoku Tennou. 

We talked about how Woasatsuma had been injured by disease, so that he couldn’t, or at least he had trouble, walking, and how his attempts at a cure through somewhat dubious methods had invalidated him to succeed to the throne in the eyes of his parent and siblings.  And yet, by tradition he seems to have been the last man standing, as it were, at least of the offspring of Ohosazaki no Mikoto and his primary wife and queen, Iwa no Hime.  The one other possible male heir—and I stress male because the Chroniclers seem to just ignore most of the women—was Ohokusaka no Miko, the son of Ohosazaki no Mikoto and Kaminaga Hime.

Despite the court’s apparent insistence that Woasatsuma take the throne, he kept pushing it off, saying that it couldn’t be him, until finally his wife, Osaka no Ohonakatsu Hime, stepped in, and almost died for her trouble.

Of course, there are all sorts of questions here.  It seems that the Chroniclers really wanted to point out the presence of Ohokusaka no Miko, even though we hadn’t honestly heard anything about Kaminaga Hime since the reign of Homuda Wake, and almost nothing about her progeny.  It seems telling that the Chroniclers specifically make mention of him as one of two sons of Ohosazaki no Mikoto who are left.

In the end, however, Woasatsuma Wakugo no Sukune did indeed take the throne, and he made his wife, Osaka no Ohonakatsu Hime, queen.  And lest we forget, Osaka no Ohonakatsu Hime was quite likely his senior, as she was the daughter of Woasatsuma’s grandfather, Homuda Wake, and the princes Kaguro Hime.  So yes, in true royal fashion, Woasatsuma had married his own aunt, though since they weren’t related through maternal connections it was okay, I guess?

Anyway, Woasatsuma, to show his love, is said to have created the Osaka-be.  We may have touched on this before, but these “-be” are often referred to as corporations.  They were individuals gathered up and placed into a group, often for an express purpose – either the production of a particular type of good for the court, or a group whose production went to the support of a given individual, family, or institution.  These “-be” corporations were hereditary, and they operated as an extended family, with actual or fictitious familial bonds, all gathered under a particular name.

All of that gets to the heart of one of the events I want to discuss this episode.  You see, by at least the 6th century, if not earlier, names and relations were rather important.  The ancient kabane system, for instance, often applied rank and status to an entire family or at least to a cadet branch, as well as to particular individuals.  This is the oldest form of titles and ranks that we know of in the Chronicles, and it is unclear to me just what came about, when.  I suspect it is entirely possible that there are titles that pre-date the kabane system, and that different areas of the archipelago may have even had or used titles slightly differently, as there is no evidence that cultural and linguistic elements were homogenized prior to the spread of the round-keyhole tombs.  What were the differences between terms like Wake, Hiko, Mimi, Sukune, Atahe, Agatanushi, Kimi, etc. throughout the centuries, and why did some titles attach themselves to individuals while others were more familial?  Some titles even seem to have faded into little more than name elements well before the system was properly codified.  At some point, soon, I’ll try to address all of that, but for now it is enough to know that it exists.

And because they had these titles—and because the rank and title often applied to the entire family, not just an individual.  Then, as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.  It is easy to see why someone would want to make a claim to a prestigious family background.

Now, of course, from generation to generation, people likely had a good idea of where the family lines went, but it wasn’t that difficult for people to insinuate themselves into a lineage.  After all, does everyone really remember how many kids that great-grandfather had and where they ended up?  And how much more difficult out in the countryside.  Someone showing up in Kochi and claiming to be related to a well-connected family in Harima, you might not even question it.  If your lineage wasn’t quite as shiny as you’d like it to be, just add in a few prestigious ancient ancestors that nobody was likely to have heard of, and suddenly you can gain some unexpected honor and prestige.

And, in fact, that is a lot of what we see going on in the Chronicles.  Not only is it about the lineage of the royal family and making sure that they are connected to all of the right personages back to time immemorial, thus creating the image of an unbroken chain, but it is also about the various court nobles and families trying to make sure that their ancestors—whether real or imagined—are properly accounted for and, where possible, tied into the royal family in an official record.

That was all happening in the 8th century, however, when the Chronicles were actually being written, and presumably many different people had input into just exactly what was being recorded.  In the 5th century, remember that reading and writing had really just come over in the past few generations.  Prior to that, lineages were likely remembered through oral traditions passed down from family to family.  Also, as we’ve seen, many characters were simply remembered by their titles—the lord or lady of this or that—rather than by some personal name.  Even family names are recorded in the Chronicles as a relatively recent thing in the archipelago, likely borrowing from continental tradition.

And so, perhaps it is little wonder that we see a complaint in both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki about the “disorder of names”, and both chronicles put this complaint in the reign of Woasatsuma.  The Kojiki puts this argument in the mouth of Woasatsuma himself, when he proclaims that “the titles of various families,” by which they mean the uji and the kabane by which they were ranked, and “the names”—or ‘Na’—“of the people” were confused.  The Nihon Shoki claims this as the reason there wasn’t good government, which seems a bit of a stretch, to my mind.  Nobody is, I guess, talking about the fact that nobody apparently wanted to run the government in the first place?  And of course the royal family and the court don’t exactly take any blame for this on themselves.

The Nihon Shoki goes on to claim that some people had taken surnames that were not theirs in order to claim high position.  And so it was up to the sovereign to put everything back in order, and to quote-unquote “correct” the names, all of which suggests, to me, a few things.

First:  As we’ve already mentioned, at some point groups of supposedly related individuals were taking clan names, known as uji.  The term “clan” is often used here, as members in an uji were only notionally related, usually through some common mythical ancestor.  It isn’t clear that they were necessarily all blood related.  Later, these uji would break up into cadet families, known as “ie”.  While the Uji came to be regulated by the court, the cadet family names were under much less strict controls.

Prior to the development of these Uji names, individuals are mentioned as the ancestor of this or that family, but they really aren’t identified as having an uji, per se.   However, we do see some proto-Uji in the form of placenames, since many of the Uji were derived from just this kind of construction.  And so where Izumo no Yebito might have originally meant “Yebito of the land of Izumo”, later the same name might be interpreted as “Yebito of the Izumo family”—a slight but important difference.

Aston, in notes to his translation of the Nihon Shoki, claims that at this point the uji themselves still didn’t exist, but we do see what appear to be clan names on a few items from around the mid to late 5th century.

Now there are different theories as to where these clan names actually came from.  Early Japanese scholars provided a variety of theories based on proposed etymologies for the word “uji” itself.  Others claim that the first formal familial groups came from the Korean peninsula.  In fact, some even suggest that they came from the idea of the corporate “-be” familial groups, which we discussed earlier in this episode.  I suspect that there was not a small number of individuals who also brought their own tradition of family from the continent in one way or another.

Second: This suggestion in the Nihon Shoki that people were taking names to take on powerful positions emphasizes the idea that lineage carried with it influence, as individuals were taking names in order to claim a high position.  This is something where the archipelago would differ slightly from many continental traditions.  In Confucian influenced systems there was at least the nod towards a meritocracy—that one’s position and rank should be based on one’s individual skills and moral character.  In the archipelago, lineage and family were still quite important factors.

And that brings me to the third thing:  The way that the families and ranks were tied together provided another means of Yamato extending its grasp over the entire archipelago.  Early on, we talked about the power that local elites had consolidated power over various settlements and then spread their influence, creating a kind of hub and spoke system of related communities, tied together in one way or another, but exhibiting similar cultural traits in the archaeological record.

I suspect, based on what we have seen, these elites tied themselves together with a combination of elite trade goods, marriage alliances, and shared rituals.  In fact, control of particular ritual sites may have been another important factor in the influence of groups like Yamato.  And of course there was also plenty of military action that took place, based on what we see of weapons and armor, and the stories don’t have it confined to action on the peninsula.

Eventually, however, if Yamato really was to consolidate power, it would need a means of administration beyond the center.  The various elites and the newly created lineage groups provided a decentralized form of administration across the archipelago.  These family groups—the uji—had charge of various resources, such as rice land, granaries, mountain areas, etc., recognized by the court, who provided prestige in a novel way that went beyond just access to continental prestige goods.  The system of titles that were handed out—the kabane—also provided a carrot that the court could use.  And later, it would become a stick—much as in the case when the queen, Ohonakatsu Hime, had someone stripped of their titles and busted down in the rank system, as mentioned in episode 55.

Thus we can see the importance of insisting that the uji owed their position—even their very existence—to the court and, more specifically, to the royal family.  Now how far this authority actually extended is something I would wonder about—I suspect that plenty of uji existed outside of formal recognition, especially the farther you went from Yamato proper.  We see an example of this in the late Heian period with the Osshuu Fujiwara—a clan in the Tohoku region that claimed Fujiwara lineage and set up their own rule in the northeast partly on the basis of those claims.  It wasn’t until the court in Heian-kyo got wind of it that they sent people out to investigate what was going on.

Which all comes around to another point to be made about the current topic, to ensure that the names of the people were correct, and that is the continental flavor of all of this.  I’m actually reminded specifically of the Confucian concept of the Rectification of Names.  This comes from the Analects.  As translated by James Legge:

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

Now on the one hand we may see here that “names”, in this instance, might just as easily be described as “words”—that is, it seems not to simply refer to the names of people, or families, but to the names given to anything at all—from something as simple as an apple to something as philosophical as justice.  However, on the issue of governance it seems that it often fell squarely onto the idea of names, ranks, and titles, and ensuring that the people of the “hundred names” were well ordered.

By the way, quick side note, even that phrase, the “hundred names” is a very continental reference to the names found in the various regions of China, referring to the various family surnames that were commonly used, and often used as a reference to the entire citizenry.  In the Nihon Shoki it is used in this same way, which is another indication that they were also drawing very much on continental ideas and sources.

And so we get at the heart of the control and assignment of names as a legitimizing act—something that is done by good sovereigns to keep order in the realm.  There may indeed have been a need to ensure that people weren’t abusing the system by falsely claiming a lineage that they did not have, but it also feels like an exercise in authority.  Because for all of the local power that a family might hold, a sovereign able to invalidate their name and title would have a significant lever against the various families.  Whether or not the court actually originated the concept of the uji and the kabane or not, gaining control no doubt further strengthened the central government’s control over the archipelago.

In fact, we’ll see similar edicts in later reigns.

One last thing to throw out here is the curious fact that these names and designations only affected a certain portion of the population: the nobility.  Commoners had no family names nor rank—though they may have belonged to a group, like the corporate -be structures we discussed.  On the other end of the spectrum, however, there is no family name given for the sovereigns or the rulers, either.  In some cases they have been referred to as the “Yamato” dynasty, but “Yamato” was never their surname.  In fact, there were nobles identified as Yamato—like the Yamato no Atae—but they weren’t any more connected to the royal line than anyone else.  Rather, the royal line seems to have had no need for a surname, as their titles were enough to identify them as separate and apart.

Now in the case of Woasatsuma Wakugo no Ohokimi and rectifying the names of the people during his reign, the Kojiki claims that he was able to handle it all through divination—specifically using kukabe divination pots and requesting the assistance of specific deities, through which he established the families and ranks throughout the kingdom.

In the Nihon Shoki, the process was a little more in depth.  First, he garnered the assistance of the various ministers, and they worked on a plan.  Three weeks later, they came up with a solution that was much practical than simple divination.  Well, at least it was more participatory.  The solution that they set up was not exactly a calm debate or pouring over ancient stories or records.  What they actually came up with was a bit more, well, medieval.

They decided the best way to test people’s claims to parentage was to put them through an ordeal:  Trial by boiling water.

Each person was to purify themselves, practice abstinence, and then plunge their hands into the boiling water.  If they were claiming a surname that wasn’t theirs, then the kami would judge them and burn them.  Otherwise, they would make it through unscathed.

This is not exactly the only time such an ordeal was used.  For example, there was one where mud, rather than just plain water, was boiled, and person was supposed to stir it around with their bare arms.  In another version, an iron axe head was heated up to glowing red hot and placed in the palm of the hand.  In both cases, there was an idea that the kami would protect the innocent.

These are all frighteningly similar to ordeals that people were put through over in Medieval Europe, and likely just as effective, were they actually ever employed.  For reasons I feel are quite obvious it is unlikely that everyone in the various uji—or even just the various family heads—would have been subjected to such tortuous and inhumane treatment.  That said, there does appear to have been some belief in its efficacy, at least in extreme circumstances.

Whatever the actual reckoning methods that were used, the outcome was that the court did acquire, by hook or by crook, some authority over the various uji.  Eventually—perhaps not quite in the 5th century—they would gain complete control of the uji, including the authority to create new ones.  And this continued – this was the case, for example, with the creation of the Toyotomi, in the 16th century.  Of course, this power would not stop new families from arising, and many cadet branches of powerful uji would simply form their own houses, or “ie”, maintaining ties to the uji.  This was, in fact, something being lamented during this part of the Chronicles, meaning that at least by the 8th century this was already a factor complicating some of the relationships.

Now, Woasatsuma’s reign wasn’t just about names, and there were a few other things that happened during this reign.

For one, we are told there was an earthquake.  Now this shouldn’t be much of a surprise.  We’ve talked about Japan’s place on the ring of fire, and earthquakes could not have been a too infrequent occurrence.  Even in recent years, the area around modern Nara averages over 9 earthquakes a year that people can sense—that’s between a 3 to a 5 on Japan’s “shindo” scale, a slightly different measurement from the Richter scale people may be familiar with.  So it is almost more remarkable that we don’t hear about them more often.

In fact, the only reason this one merits a mention at all appears to be what happened around it.  You see, apparently Midzuha Wake, the previous sovereign, had not yet been buried.  We’ve talked about this practice of mogari before, where the body lay in state, possibly in a temporary burial or even exposed to the elements—perhaps in little more than a temporary hut or enclosure.  This could go on for weeks, months, or even years.

For Midzuha Wake, his body was still lying in this state of temporary burial, which was overseen by Tamada no Sukune, who was either the son or grandson of the late Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko.  Sotsuhiko was, of course, also the father to Iwa no Hime, and thus grandfather to both Midzuha Wake and Woasatsuma Wakugo.

On the evening of the earthquake, Aso, of the Owari no Muraji, went to examine the shrine of the temporary burial.  There he found everyone that was expected to be there except one:  Tamada no Sukune, the man who was supposed to be in charge of the whole thing.  Long story short, Aso set out to find him, and when he did he discovered that Tamada no Sukune was at home hosting a revel.

Aso found Tamada no Sukune and explained what had happened—and how he had basically been caught pulling a Ferris Beuller and shirking his duties.  Of course, Aso would need to go back and report all of this to the court, and that got Tamada no Sukune’s attention.

Taking Aso aside, Tamada no Sukune offered him a fine horse if he could just forget this whole episode.  He could tell the court something else—anything other than the truth that Tamada no Sukune had gone AWOL to throw a bender with some of his friends.  And it seemed to have worked.  Aso agreed, and took the horse, but Tamada was paranoid, and didn’t trust that Aso would follow through on his end of the bargain.  After all, why should he?  He had the horse, what was to really stop him from denouncing Tamada to the court?  And so he quickly sent his own men out and they caught up with Aso and cut him down on the road.

Then, Tamada no Sukune made himself scarce, hiding out in the area around Takechi no Sukune’s tomb, presumably hoping the whole thing would just blow over.  Of course, it didn’t, and word did reach the court of Aso’s death, though the details were apparently still a bit fuzzy, and the sovereign called for Tamada no Sukune to try to figure out what was going on.

When Tamada no Sukune responded to the summons—I guess hiding out just wasn’t an option anymore—he was more than a bit nervous.  Woasatsuma saw how he was acting and also noticed something else.  Tamada’s clothing didn’t seem to fit quite right—there was something underneath.  Curious as to what was going on, Woasatsuma had one of his handmaidens—known as “uneme”—go check it out.  Sure enough, Tamada had come dressed in a suit of armor underneath his clothing, presumably in case he had to fight his way out.  Immediately he found himself surrounded, but his armor worked and Tamada fled back to his home.  There, soldiers from the Yamato court surrounded his house and eventually found him and put him to death.

And you thought your boss was strict about timecard fraud!

There’s one last story that I want to hit on this episode, and that takes place in what should by now be a somewhat familiar setting for us:  The Island of Awaji.  As so many had done before him, Woasatsuma Wakugo no Ohokimi decided to take part in the royal sport of hunting, a common pastime of the sovereigns of Yamato.  And as he and his retinue walked the island it should have been an epic haul.  There were animals everywhere:  Deer, monkeys, wild boar, you name it.

And yet, no matter how many arrows were shot, spears thrown, or traps set, they couldn’t catch a single thing.  All of their efforts were for naught.  Now I’m sure that everyone has a bad day, but this was apparently epic levels of fail, such that they called off for the day to regroup and figure out just what was going on.

And if you are going to ask questions, then who better to ask questions of then the locals?  By which I mean the local kami.  Yup, they performed a divination to try to figure out why they felt like Elmer Fudd on a bad hare day.

Sure enough, they performed the rituals and the kami of the island, none other than Izanagi himself, answered their call.  He told the sovereign and his band that it was through his actions that no beast was caught.  He demanded a tribute of sorts—there was a large pearl at the bottom of the sea of Akashi—which is to say the area of the Seto Inland Sea just north of Awaji.

Now the Seto Inland Sea is generally described as shallow, which it is when compared to the nearby Pacific Ocean, but it can be deep enough.  In the area where the pearl was located the waters are over 100 meters deep.  This was too deep for most people to dive.  In fact, most people rarely go more than 6 or 7 meters on their own, and even for trained ama, the famous Japanese pearl divers, it is rare that they go more than 25 meters deep.  Modern recreational SCUBA diving rarely goes below 30 meters.  Even in modern free diving—the art of diving without assistance, such as scuba gear—the deepest someone has gone without assistance appears to be just over 120 meters.  Part of the problem is just the logistics of the amount of time one can hold their breath, even with training to regulate their metabolism.  Many of the world record holding divers to get to that depth took three to four minutes to complete the dive.  While people have been known to hold their breath for longer—10 to 11 minutes, with some world records claiming 20 to 24 minutes—that time would have likely been shortened due to the sheer exertion of getting down and coming back up.   And that’s just for the dive, let along the time to find and retrieve something. Just to get down to the bottom of the Seto Inland Sea would have likely required an amazing athlete.

Fortunately, they had one on hand:  a fisherman named Wosashi from Nagazato in the province of Awa, over on Shikoku.  And he excelled at what he did.   He tied a rope to his waist and dove down to the bottom, coming back up after some time.  We aren’t told how long, but he had to have time to not only go down, but have a look around, which would have been a feat in and of itself, as he would not have had access to any artificial light sources, so seeing things would have been its own issue.  Regardless, he reported that he had found a huge abalone—a primary source for the kinds of pearls that were mostly used at that time.  Abalone pearls, you see, are often not as symmetrical and round as oyster pearls, and they can be much more opalescent, since they are made from the same coating as the inside of the abalone’s shell.  To acquire them, the abalone has to be pulled away from the rock, which can be quite a feat in and of itself, not to mention the dive down and back.

So after locating where the abalone was, Wosashi was determined to go down and get it.  He tied a rope to his waist and dove down again, likely with a knife or some other tool to help him pry the abalone from its rocky home.  He was down there for a long time—longer than before.  No doubt people were getting worried he would not make it back up.

But then, suddenly, they saw him, rising up through the waters, the abalone in his arms.  He finally made it to the surface, but he was no longer breathing, and they say he died just as he reached the surface, sacrificing his life for that abalone.  Later, they would lower a rope down where he had gone and they measured the depth at 60 jin, or 360 shaku, which is roughly 110 meters, by my calculations.  Regardless, it was an amazing dive.

Inside the abalone they found a pearl the size of a peach, we are told.  That may be an exaggeration—or else peaches were much smaller back then—but the point is made:  it was big.  And more importantly, it was big *enough*.  Izanagi was satisfied with the offering, and from thenceforward the hunt was successful.

They did not forget about the sacrifice of Wosashi, however.  Although he was simply a common fisherman, it was determined that he should be buried in style, and so a proper tomb was built for him.  Tradition holds that you can go and visit that tomb to this day by going to Ishinoneya Kofun on the island of Awaji.

Woasatsuma’s reign continued to be successful.  He and his wife had many children, and the land appears to have prospered.  When he finally died in what the Nihon Shoki claims was the year 453—not an unreasonable date from what we know, so I’m willing to go with it—he was well respected at home and abroad.  It is said that even Silla sent a tribute mission, with eighty tribute ships and eighty musicians of all kinds.  Upon arriving in Tsushima they let out a great wail of lamentation, and they did the same when they arrived in Tsukushi.  In Naniwa, they put on garments of pure white—the color of death, and they brought articles of tribute and proceeded to the capital in Asuka, in the southeast corner of the Nara Basin.  As they traveled they sometimes wept and wailed, sometimes danced, and finally they assembled at the shrine of his temporary burial—which we discussed earlier regarding the temporary burial of Midzuha Wake.

Now it is unclear just when this actually would have happened—let alone if it even did.  After all, we haven’t exactly seen great relations between Silla and Yamato, and there is nothing in the Silla annals to suggest that relations had improved much.  This could just be trying to show that Silla was a dutiful vassal state, which could be nothing more than Yamato propaganda.  That said, there is a lot going on that we don’t see in the annals or the Chronicles, so it is possible that we’ve just missed a lot of key moments.

Either way, the time to learn about the sovereign’s death, gather the musicians, and coordinate such a parade likely took some time, and one wonders if it didn’t happen a year or two later—possibly in the reign of another sovereign.

Which may be the case, and it could be that this is more important for regarding a later sovereign’s foreign relations, and this has to do with what happened when the envoys were headed home.

You see, as the Nihon Shoki tells it, on their way back, the envoys passed by the holy mountains of Unebi and Miminashi.  So they yelled out:  “Uneme Haya!” and then then “Mimi haya!”

This caught some of the Yamato officers off-guard.  Specifically, a member of the Horse-keepers, the Yamato no Umakahibe, thought that they were yelling obscenities about having sex with the Uneme—the handmaidens at court.  Shocked and appalled, he made the embassy turn around and return to the court.  There they told Prince Ohohatsuse about the Embassy’s supposed improprieties.  Prince Ohohatsuse was understandably shocked in turn, and had the embassy thrown into prison, where he then questioned them.  Imagine the egg on his face, though, once he realized that it was all just a translation issue, and that they were actually complimenting the two mountains.  Well, the Prince released the embassy, but the damage was done, and relations with Silla soured after that.

And we may come back to all of that during a later reign, but for now, this brings the reign of Woasatsuma Wakugo, aka Ingyou Tennou, to an end.   Of course, you can probably guess some of what is coming next—after all, Woasatsuma was the last son of Ohosazaki and Iwa no Hime, but he had plenty of his own sons, and even a designated heir.  So I’m sure that will just work itself out—you know, like it has in the past.  But that can wait for now—come back next episode and see just what happens!

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