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This episode we are closing out our coverage of the Nihon Shoki with a couple of different topics. We cover various records and edicts on slavery, as well as new laws depicting people as "good" or "base" and how that would impact Japan for centuries to come. We also look at some of the military preparations, including someone who might be one of our first recognized martial artists. And we close out looking at some of the crimes being mentioned, including impersonating an official and what some of the officials themselves were getting up to.

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Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 157: Slavery, Swords, and Scandal

Iwanari stood proud in the center of the market. He had with him the tools of his trade—his bow slung over his back, sword at his side, and a spear in hand. A crowd gathered around to watch as he demonstrated his skills with each. He had already fired off his arrows at a distant target, each one hitting the mark. As he transitioned to his spear, he thrust forward, advancing, and then back and then to the sides. His moves were controlled, practiced, and deadly as he hit the targets set up to demonstrate his accuracy.
Abruptly he dropped the spear, and drew the sword. The long, thin, straight blade gleamed in the light. He demonstrated cuts and thrusts at opponents only he could truly see, once again acting like the center of a whirlwind of sharp metal, attacking to all sides. As he finished, he sheathed the sword and put it down, picking up a wooden one from the ground. He was then attacked from all sides by soldiers who were similarly armed with wooden swords and spears, and Iwanari dealt with each in their turn.
When the dust settled, Iwanari stood triumphant. It was only a demonstration, but the crowd was suitably impressed. A cheer went up from those assembled, and Iwanari, for his part, humbly accepted their praise.

This episode is a bit of a grab-bag: we’ll be bouncing around several different, unrelated topics as we come to the end of the Nihon Shoki. I’ll try to tie them together as best I can, but mainly these are just glimpses into things that I think we should touch on but that may not warrant a full episode at this point. This includes a few points about the court, a discussion of slavery and how that practice was being reconciled with the Tang dynasty concepts of classes of people, military preparations across the archipelago, as well as some rather audacious crimes and the resulting punishments that are noted in the Nihon Shoki. As I said, a lot of little things, so hopefully we can weave this together for you in a way that isn’t too abrupt as we move from topic to topic.
So hold on to your seats as we get started.
We’re going to start with what was going on with the court around this time. Lots of things were still new and changing, and we’ve covered a lot of them in our past episodes. There was a fair amount of work being spent on things like organizing a census, which was supposed to take place every six years, according to the previous regulations. Ministers were also dispatched to the four Home Provinces to ensure the proper distribution of rice-land to the people there.
In the court itself we had updates to the official outfits that people were to wear while on duty at the court. We mentioned that back in episode 150, when we talked about the nobles more broadly. A few months after that sartorial update, the court decided to add another edict that everyone should show up to work already dressed out in their official garments. Previously people had been arriving at the court and getting changed there; in fact, when the Toyosaki Naniwa Palace was built, there was even a specific building for them to change in. At the Asuka-Kiyomihara palace, however, which was significantly smaller, there may not have been that much space, nor places to keep everything. I also imagine that if people were changing at the office then you likely had people in and out of uniform, as it were. It may have just been cleaner to have everyone show up already dressed out.
Speaking of dressing out, while the court costume of the various ranked officials had been specified in the edict, apparently clothing rules needed to be expanded to those people who did not hold rank, but who, nonetheless, had business at court. This included common free people, as well as people who were enslaved, known as “nuhi”. A common person with no rank, would be expected to wear yellow clothing, while an enslaved person would have been required to wear black. Now I’m not sure when an enslaved person would be at court or need official robes, but there you go.
By the way, the term used here for “black” is not the typical character for “koku” or “kuroi”. It appears to be a character that is related to “black” and “acorns”—at least according to the etymology I found online—and it isn’t clear to me if it is black like the pitch black we think of. Since it was notoriously difficult to get a deep, lasting black dye for a reasonable price in ancient times, a true, deep black was often something reserved for lacquered items and elites. That makes me wonder if this dark clothing for enslaved people wouldn’t have been more like a dark brown type of black, instead. Regardless, it seems like something that probably didn’t come up all that often, but they did have a rule for it.
That brings up the topic of slavery in the archipelago, which was still very much a thing. We’ve talked about slavery in the past, and how people came to be enslaved. In many cases it appears that people were forced into servitude because they were captured in war. We have early accounts of “Saheki”, who appear to be one of the groups associated with the Emishi and brought back to work the land in Yamato and elsewhere, where they were organized into the “Sahekibe” and put under the charge of a family called “Saheki”, who claimed to be related to the Ohotomo. Eventually, those forced into servitude would become just another one of the families in Yamato and, later, Japan.
We also see accounts of how people from the mainland, captured in war or in raids on the Korean peninsula, were brought back and put to work in the fields. If they were particularly talented, however, they could work their way to more prestigious positions where they would actually be granted court rank and more.
Given all of this, the majority of people in enslavement appear to have been other Japanese who were enslaved for a variety of reasons. I don’t think I can emphasize enough that there was no difference between enslaved and enslavers other than their status in society.
One example of this is that besides being captured in war, a common means of being enslaved was by being sold, often by a family member with authority over the person being sold, though in later centuries we also see people selling themselves to raise money for their family, which was likely happening in this era as well. We are given specific examples of a younger brother being sold into slavery by his elder brother or a child being sold by their parents. One could also be forced into slavery to pay off interest on a debt. And children of enslaved people were also enslaved—even if one of the parents was free. Enslaved people could be gifted and sold, and they were clearly marked out from the rest of society.

There were ways for an enslaved person to be freed, as evidenced by the edicts. For example, one edict mentions that if an enslaved person was manumitted—that is, freed—and removed from the house register as an enslaved person, they could not then be enslaved again by that same house. I would note that there does seem a loophole that they could still find themselves in service to another house or institution, but that would probably have required a transgression, whereas, without this law, the family that had freed them could likely find an excuse to enslave them again through manufactured debt or something similar. This may also have had something to do with the fact that only free people counted towards the census for tax purposes. I could see where someone might try to convert everyone to “slave” status—at least on paper—to lower their effective tax rate.
I don’t know that we have good numbers for how many enslaved people there were in the archipelago at this time, but we get a glimpse in 689, when Shimotsukenu no Ason no Komaro petitioned for some 600 enslaved persons to be set free.   I think it is fair to assume that these were people that were in slavery in Shimotsukenu, aka Shimozuke, out towards the frontier. Silla and Goguryeo immigrants had been settled there, but it was also adjacent to former Emishi territory, and so I suspect more than a few Emishi had ended up enslaved in Shimozuke, with their children and children’s children also falling under the same system. We aren’t told Komaro’s motives. Was he against slavery, and were these all the enslaved people in Shimozuke? Or were these people who were specifically in service to him or to the State more broadly? Was this some kind of attempt to make merit? None of that background is given, only that he petitioned for their release and it was granted.
In addition to the freeing of enslaved people through petition, we also see, in 691, an attempt to clarify the position of people in this class in relationship to the law of the time. Months earlier, a census had been ordered, and it is likely that there were some questions around how to classify people in a non-free status. An enslaved person was more properly referred to as “nuhi”, but there were various other levels of servitude and class distinction. The edict specifically notes that people should be considered “free” or “bond” for census purposes based on the conditions that put them in servitude. This may be more appropriately labeled as “good” and “shunned” or even “base” individuals, but one’s status in the census would come to have important ramifications as Yamato adopted a legal caste system from the Tang dynasty codes.
You see, the Tang dynasty had slavery, and they classified slaves with a larger group of people considered to be “shunned”, “lowly”, or “base”. The word in modern Mandarin is “Jianmin”—“senmin” in Japanese. All other individuals were known as “liangmin”, or “ryōmin”, which literally meant the “good” people. This created a dual-caste system that scholars refer to as the Liangjian or Ryōsen system; the system of the “good” and “lowly”
Bentley notes that in the “Ryō no Shūge” commentary on the Yōrō Ritsuryō code there are descriptions that show us who was in each group, and those groups largely mirror the Tang codes with some minor exceptions.
There were effectively four types of ryōmin or good people, largely following the Confucian model. This included:
•             Kanjin - Government officials
•             Kōmin - Commoner citizens
•             Shinabe – Professionals and tradesmen with skills relevant to courtly functions
Zakko – Other tradesmen, including those dealing in military matters, who were considered lower than the others.
Then there were five divisions of “lowly”, or “senmin”, individuals:
•             Ryōko - Grave guards or caretakers – those posted at kofun and the like.
•             Kanko – Servants bonded to a government office or ministry
•             Kenin – Servants bonded to a high level household, including the palace.
•             Kunuhi – Public slaves—enslaved people who otherwise served the State.
•             Shinuhi - Private slaves—individuals who were enslaved by private houses and individuals
These were the goseki no sen, also called just “gosen”—the five types of senmin.
Now this is where it was going as the laws were revised over the next several decades. I don’t know that these categories were quite in effect in the 690s, but it is how things were set up according to the Yōrō Code, which was compiled in 718 and distributed in 757. So we can see where things were going.
This legal framework places all of the senmin as effectively outcastes, while ryōmin were the ones for whom the system was designed. Ryōmin and Senmin could not intermarry, in most cases, so this created a permanent, hereditary underclass of people who were unequal under the law. It also connected idea of senmin to indigenous concepts of kegare, or pollution. For example, making those who were forced to guard the royal tombs “senmin” likely was because of the association with death. Later that would translate to various occupations, such as those who performed work like tanning animal hides.
The ryō-sen laws would remain for several centuries before they largely became irrelevant with many of those in the “bonded” or “shunned” category being recategorized as “free”. There weren’t really grave guards anymore, and many servants were reclassified as free people. Slaves still existed, however—both for financial issues, like failing to pay a debt or even selling oneself into slavery for their family; and as a punishment for various crimes. Legal slavery would continue until the late 16th century, and even then it was largely abolished to prevent Japanese from being sold to European merchants. There would still be forms of indenture that were little different than slavery as well as classes of people who were shunned by society. Outcasts—either because of their profession, parentage, or because they had committed certain crimes—would continue to exist in the archipelago. They were called by derogatory terms such as “eta” and “hinin”, and would often be forced to live in their own separate hamlet or village, also known as a “buraku”. Even when the legal status of Eta and Hinin was abolished, people from these districts—these “burakumin”—would face heavy discrimination in Japanese society into modern times. A lot has been done to try and remove the stigma of coming from a buraku family, but the issue persists, even to this day.
As for the 691 edict, the rules were something like this: If someone was sold into slavery by their elder sibling—i.e. if a younger brother was sold into slavery by his older brother—then that person, the younger brother, in this case, would still be classed with “good” people—the ryōmin. If the person had been sold by their parents, however, then that person was classed as “shunned” or “lowly”—senmin.    If someone was enslaved to pay off a debt, they were also to be classed as “ryōmin” for purposes of the census, along with any children that they might have had, even if the other parent was enslaved. It appears that there were certain types of slavery that were considered more of a temporary status, which could explain why, in those cases, one might be classified as “ryōmin”. For instance, if you are enslaved for failure to pay off a debt, then once your debt is paid you would be free. In the case of an older brother selling a younger brother, there likely were similar restrictions on the kind of enslavement that was involved.
Aston translates all of the “senmin” as slaves, but Bentley notes that there was a distinction. Enslaved people were treated as property and they did not actually count towards the census. Meanwhile, it would seem that those who were not counted as slaves did count for the census, and could likely be offered up for military or corvee labor service, as well.
And since we are talking about military service, let’s move on to our third topic of the episode, and take a look at some of the military and martial notes from this reign. For the most part, this was not a particularly notable time from a military perspective. There were no major campaigns in the archipelago to speak of—both the Emishi and the Hayato seem to largely have been at peace with the Yamato State at this point. Furthermore, the situation on the Korean peninsula had calmed down and diplomatic relations had been re-established. So there wasn’t a lot that happened in terms of battles—the country was largely at peace—but that didn’t mean that they weren’t staying prepared. There were still fortresses to man, drills to run, etc.
A lot of the records here are not very sensational, and just demonstrate the day to day of the State. Orders were given to the local governors to update the populace registers, as mentioned, but also to arrest vagabonds and to institute proper military training.
The people of the Japanese archipelago were not strangers to fighting, and you still had individuals who had fought in the Jinshin no Ran not more than 30 years prior. It does appear, however, that there were attempts to reform the way the conscript army worked.
For one thing, it wasn’t just about calling up everyone you could. Instead, individuals who were considered fit for military service in the provinces were divided up into four different groups. At any given time, only one of the four groups would be training, with the rest presumably serving their time. Several years after that was set up we see that specific military instructors were sent out to the provinces to give instructions and training.
In addition, they instituted regular inspections of the arms that everyone was supposed to keep, starting with Princes of the Blood on down. Since conscript soldiers were expected to show up with weapons provided by their household, it wasn’t enough to just keep an eye on what the State had available. Even elite members of the court were expected to maintain their weapons and armor, following the Confucian idea that men of noble birth should have both civil and martial duties and skills. Those in the upper most ranks were to maintain a suit of armor, a sword, a bow, a set of arrows, a wrist-guard, and a saddle-horse. Those of lower rank were similar, but they would not have been required to maintain armor or a horse. After all, armor and horses were expensive. I would note that it doesn’t say you couldn’t have those things, but they were simply not required of the lower ranks of nobility. This is not all that different from other cultures, where it was customary for individuals to bring their own weapons and armor.
Of course, just because you had the weapons didn’t mean that you knew how to use them. We do have one individual, whoever, who was specifically called out for his martial skill. His name was Takata no Obito no Ihanari, and we got a glimpse of him at the top of this episode: he is said to have been proficient in the use of the three weapons, which would mean the bow, the sword, and the spear. Of these, the spear was probably the one that would have been issued by the government—after all, putting a pointy piece of metal on the end of a long stick was probably not nearly as expensive as everything else. While we have plenty of people whose martial deeds are noted in previous entries, outside of wrestling and the purported origin story for sumō, this may be the first example we really have of someone being recognized specifically for their skill with weapons.
Unfortunately the only record we have of Ihanari is him getting recognized—apparently in the middle of the market, possibly meaning the middle of the town or city. Still, it isn’t at court, so that seems a bit odd. The recognition came as various presents that he was given as a reward for his skills. Of course, we don’t know how exactly those skills were demonstrated. There were no “schools” of martial arts that we know of from that time. The idea of a particular “ryūha” or “ryūgi”—a style or school—of swordsmanship or martial prowess was still a ways off.
We aren’t exactly sure how people trained, though it was likely similar to how people trained all over the world—through a combination of basic techniques, general physical training, and sparring with blunted weapons. Archery at least could be practiced through hunting. Sword and spear would require a bit more. As for how someone would demonstrate such skill, who knows? Perhaps it was all done in training sessions, though perhaps there were also demonstrations, much like people would come to watch horse racing, archery, and wrestling competitions. We really just don’t have any way to know. I took some license to speculate what a demonstration could look like, but the truth is we just don’t know.
Now along with the attention paid to weapons and how they were used, there were also continued inspections of the various defenses, including Takayasu castle, which appears to have been the Nara Basin’s primary defensive site. It would have seen any fleets coming across the Seto Inland Sea, and it was on the mountain ridge between Kawachi and Yamato. That said, it was likely that many of the castles that had been built in the 7th century were already starting to see a decrease in the amount of attention that they received; there were much more pressing issues that could use those funds and labor, like building the new capital.
Another thing that required funding was the maintenance of the old kofun and various misasagi. Eighteen noble houses were required to deliver records to the court about the various tombs of their ancestors. This was probably a list of where those tombs were, who was said to be buried there, etc. The list of houses that were required to do this included some of the most influential families in the Yamato court. We have the Ohomiwa, the Sazaibe, the Isonokami (aka the Mononobe), the Fujiwara (aka Nakatomi, at least for now), the Ishikawa (also known as Soga), the Kose, the Kashiwadebe, the Kasuga, the Kamitsukenu, the Ohotomo, the Ki, the Abe (also known as Fuse), the Saheki, the Uneme, the Hodzumi, the Adzumi, the Heguri, and the Hata.
A couple of months after these families were required to turn in their records, another decree was issued, this one having to do with the households that were designated for maintenance. For a tomb, or misasagi, of a former sovereign, there were to be five households assigned to take care of it. For others, such as princes of particular merit, then only three households would be assigned. If the houses themselves couldn’t properly take care of the tomb, then peasants could be drafted through corvee labor, who would work on the tombs in three year shifts.
Considering the number of tombs at this point, that seems like it must have been a lot of households dedicated to this work. It isn’t clear to me how much of the household’s work was in labor and how much it was about paying the stipends of the grave guards and caretakers, so they had a budget to work with. Also, I don’t know that the caretakers had yet been relegated to the senmin status. All of that would come later as the court continued to move away from kofun towards new traditions, such as memorial temples.
Now we’ve talked a lot about all of these various decrees that were issued and how things were changing. New laws and new ways of doing things were being implemented, and one can be pretty sure that they weren’t all instituted properly. There was also a lot of opportunity for something to go amiss—either purposefully or just because people didn’t understand everything that was asked of them.
Which brings us to the question of where we are with laws and punishments; putting the “ritsu” and “ryō” into the Ritsuryō period. We’ve already seen some indications of how they were dealing with crime. We talked about Law and Order under Ōama, aka Tenmu Tennō, back in episode 145. We discussed the types of punishments and how they could be mitigated through royal amnesty. In Uno no Sarara’s reign, we similarly see amnesties being issued, presumably tied to attempts to make merit for the Yamato state for one reason or another.
So what kinds of shenanigans were people getting up to, now?
Well, last episode we briefly discussed the prohibition on Sugoroku—that is to say, backgammon—likely not so much because of the game but because of the gambling that accompanied it. But that wasn’t really a specific case of anything.
There is, however, the case of Kashiwahara—or possibly just Kashiwara—no Hiroyama. We honestly don’t know much about him. His name appears to be a combination of locatives—“the field of the oaks” and “wide mountain”. Indeed, “Field of Oaks”—pronounced as “Kahiwara”—is a city district of modern Ohosaka prefecture, located where the Yamato River exits the Nara basin. We are told that he was from the Shibukawa district of the land of Kawachi. We know that the Shibukawa district—at least in the 10th century, when the Engi Shiki was written—encompassed shrines that indicate it was part of modern Yao and Higashi-ōsaka districts, just to the northwest of Kashiwara city. We aren’t given any indication of his rank or kabane, though I suspect that the Kashiwabara family were locals from around the area that we know of today as Kashiwara. There may be a connection with the Mononobe, but that seems tentative at best.
For whatever reason, it seems that Hiroyama may have sought a government position, but does not appear to have had one. Or perhaps he had one but wanted something better. Or maybe something else was going on in his life—the Chronicles, as usual, are short on details. Whatever the reason, Hiroyama decided that his best course of action was to impersonate one of the palace guards.
What possessed him to do such a thing or how long he was able to do it is unclear, but we can speculate on why he would have wanted that position. The palace guards, known as the Hyōe-fu, or the “Tsuwamono no Toneri no Tsukasa”, were a great entry level position in the government—we talked about the “toneri” position back in episode 134. At least in later years, the palace guard positions would often go to the sons of provincial elites—folks like governors and the kuni-no-miyatsukko. The job would provide experience with the workings of the capital and the court, providing valuable experience for those selected. That experience would often be parlayed into important positions when they returned home.
Alternatively, an ambitious and hard-working toneri could get noticed at court. Then they might be selected for a more senior position in the palace guards or even elsewhere in the government, leading to the potential for a more prestigious position within the court itself. Essentially these jobs were stepping stones—the paid internships of the Yamato court.
There were also plenty of these positions to go around. These would become common positions for the sons of provincial warriors in later periods, and as the power and prestige of the court waned in favor of military government, many people would appropriate the titles to use in common names. Thus you get names like “Yohee”, “Gonbee”, or “Kitchibee”, where a head character—“Yo”, “Gon”, or “Kitchi” in these examples—is prepended to the characters for “Hyōe”, which were then just read as “hee” or “bee”. So this title continues to show up frequently, whether as the actual title or a name element, right up into modern times.
Given this background, I think it is easy to see why Hiroyama was looking to sneak into a position. For one thing, nobody would think twice about why they didn’t recognize him, as there were likely many new faces joining the ranks from the provincial elites. Furthermore, if he did well enough, and wasn’t found out, perhaps he could impress someone into giving him a real job. Even without that, he would have a stipend from the government for a time and experience that he could carry with him whenever he did leave.
All that said, I imagine that pulling off such a ruse would take more than just slick talk. The government bureaucracy was improving, and records were being kept in written form. That would make it more difficult to just slide into the ranks without anyone noticing. And, as you may have guessed from the fact that we know about what he did, somebody noticed. That somebody was Mibube no Muraji no Tora.
Unlike Hiroyama, Tora, whose name means “tiger”, was an actual member of the palace guards. We don’t know how he found Hiroyama out. Maybe he just didn’t recognize Hiroyama—or perhaps Hiroyama’s outfit or something else screamed counterfeit. It could be that Hiroyama let something slip and it made its way to Tora. Whatever the circumstances, Tora realized that Hiroyama was a fake and he made the arrest himself.
When the whole scheme came to light, Hiroyama was punished with banishment to the land of Tosa, on the Pacific coast side of Shikoku, far from the court and any hopes he might have had of making it big. Tora, for his part, was granted the rank of Tsuikwosan—the third “broad” rank of the Tsui category, which was still towards the lower end of the court hierarchy. Nonetheless, it does look like the whole Tsuwamono no Toneri thing was working out for Tora, at least.
Hiroyama didn’t exactly rise through the ranks of the court, and his punishment was pretty severe. Let’s compare that, however, with another crime that was discovered—this time by a verified office-holder.
Ohotomo no Wobito was the Uchi no Kura no Tsukasa no Jō – which was something like the assistant Minister of the Inner Storehouse—i.e. the treasury. He was effectively the third person down the hierarchical ladder from the Minister—Tsukasa no Kami—and vice minister—Tsukasa no Suke. In the later, numerical rank system this would be a job for a Junior Upper 7th Ranked individual—that was out of a system of 9 ranks, each divided into two to four sub-levels. So it wasn’t the highest position in the government, but it was part of an important post, since the inner storehouse would have dealt with the State’s finances.
Wobito may have gotten the position through the influence of his father, believed to be Ohotomo no Makuda. Makuda had been an official in the Afumi court under Naka no Ōe, but when Ōama left the court and Naka no Ōe passed away, Makuda and his brother both left the court to support Ōama. Makuda’s actions in the ensuing conflagration of the Jinshin no Ran earned him recognition from Ōama’s court, including a posthumous promotion in rank when he passed away in 683. Wobito likely earned his start in the government with his father’s help. He would have probably entered service as a toneri and had worked his way up to his current position in 693.
We also know that Wobito had at least two clerks that he worked with, named Okisome no Ohoku and Uno no Ohotomo. “Clerk” here is specifically “Ten’yaku” or “Kagi no Tsukasa”, referring to one of the lowest ranked officials under the Naka no Matsurigoto no Tsukasa, the Central Ministry. Okisome no Ohoku may be the same Okisome who traveled to the Tang court almost forty years earlier, in 654, though the given name was spelled differently, it seems to be generally assumed they were the same person. We do know that he was present during the Jinshin no Ran, and that he supported Ōama in that conflict, possibly working alongside Wobito’s father.
We have less information about Ohoku’s colleague, Uno no Ohotomo. An interesting note is that his apparent given name matches the surname of the assistant manager, Ohotomo no Wobito, while we have no record of anyone else with the family name of “Uno”. It isn’t even the same as Uno no Sarara, and some have suggested that it may pertain to someone of Silla or Baekje descent.
Finally, to round out the actors in the current drama, we have Kose no Muraharu, an auditor, or kenmotsu. Much like Uno no Ohotomo, this is the first time we see Muraharu’s name in the record, though it won’t be the last, and it isn’t clear what he had been doing prior to this. As an auditor, we can assume his job was to review the work that was going on in the government offices and make sure that everything was being done according to policy and above-board.
These four men were all convicted, to various degrees, of participating in what Aston translates as “dishonest practices”. Given that everything was focused on Ohotomo no Wobito, who worked at the Inner Storehouse, it is generally assumed that there was some kind of embezzlement or similar scheme to misappropriate government funds for private benefit. Wobito would get the most serious punishment—he was reduced two grades in rank and dismissed from his post. Okisome no Ohoku and Uno no Ohotomo were both reduced 1 grade in rank and dismissed, also for the charge of “dishonest practices”, presumably in conjunction with whatever was going on. In contrast, we are told that Muraharu had gained no personal advantage and yet he was privy to the theft and let it happen, so he was reduced by two grades and dismissed, just like Wobito.
By all accounts this feels pretty serious. Honestly, it seems more serious than impersonating a palace guard, to me. This seems to be outright theft from the State coffers—which means from the sovereign’s own fund. I suspect that there was some kind of laundering that they were trying to do with the money—the clerks were likely in a position to provide some amount of official cover for whatever Wobito was doing, which he was presumably cutting them in on.
The outlier is Muraharu, who wasn’t directly involved. Still, as the auditor, he either knew or should have known what was happening. Since he allowed it to happen on his watch, that was apparently enough to deserve punishment similar to what Wobito himself received.
Reduction in rank was pretty severe. It would have meant a decrease in the stipend that a person received, and potentially decreased the size of house they were allowed in the capital, once it was built. That said, I would point out that this wasn’t exile. Indeed, both Wobito and Muraharu would go on to have fairly lengthy and distinguished careers in the court, so even though they were accused and found guilty, it wasn’t like that was the end for them, surprisingly enough.
And here we see some of the uneven nature of laws and punishments in the archipelago. A relative nobody impersonates a palace guard—a fairly low position—and they are exiled to Tosa. They likely didn’t really have a grade to be stripped, though their family may have been at least a “muraji” level family, so they would have had some standing. Meanwhile, a noble from a relatively well positioned family, who likely had political connections, is accused of theft and they are reduced two grades and stripped of their immediate authority, but it is clear that they could make their way back into the political system. It is possible that Hiroyama had this chance as well, and just never made anything of it. Amnesties were fairly regular occurrences, often mitigating all but the most serious punishments.
Wobito, indeed, would continue working for the state. We know that at some point in the decade after 693, he achieved the rank of Lower Junior 5th rank, which was actually two ranks above the position where he had been let go for his “dishonest practices”. By 703 he was the governor of Yamato. Five years later, he would later become the head of the capital guards—the Emonfu no Kami, where he appears to have been promoted in 713 to Upper Senior 5th rank and then Lower Junior 4th rank. In 717 he took the position as governor of Nagato. All in all, not bad for someone who apparently screwed up in his early career.
Banishment, demotion, and loss of one’s career were bad, but things could be worse. There was imprisonment, there were levels of banishment, and there was the death penalty. And there was also the possibility of being enslaved. Still, it does seem that one’s position in society had a great deal to do with what kind of punishment someone might receive—which perhaps really tells us that what we often see in today’s world, where it often seems that wealthy people can literally get away with murder, isn’t so different from ancient times, after all.
And on that cheerful note, I think we’ll leave it there for now. This largely closes out the reign of Uno no Sarara. There are a few other events, but mostly they will be better spoken of in connection with events that are coming up. So I think I’ll just hold on to those, for now.
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And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Bentley, John R. (2025). Nihon Shoki: The Chronicles of Japan. ISBN 979-8-218634-67-4 pb
Hansson, A. (08 Nov. 2021). Chinese Outcasts. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004487963
Anon. (2005). 1000 Poems from the Manyoshu: The Complete Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai Translation. Dover Publications. ISBN: 978-0486439594.
Nelson, T. (2004). Slavery in Medieval Japan. Monumenta Nipponica, 59(4), 463–492. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25066328
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 0-80480984-4.

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Rough Transcript

References