Much of this episode focuses on the idea of names. Nadia Kanagawa, in a Zoom talk she gave in December, 2021, used the term “designator” for the various ways in which people are called, and I tend to agree that is a good way of looking at this. It isn’t just about a person’s name, but it is what those various names, or designators, say about them.

Many of the earliest names we have appear to be designators of one kind or another—often titles. Even a name like Iware Biko can be broken down into “Iware”—which is a place—and “Biko” (or “Hiko”), meaning “child of the sun”, aka a Prince. The name of the famous “Himiko” herself is likely just this kind of title.

Sometimes we see names that are not necessarily titles. For example, Ōsazaki, aka Nintoku, whom we’ve discussed previously. He is often Ōsazaki no Mikoto, where “Mikoto” is a title or honorific, but we don’t immediately have an explanation for his name other than what is given in the Chronicles. Likewise with the fisherman we discuss later, “Osashi”.

On the other hand, many times we only know people by their title. So “Sotsuhiko” is likely just “Lord of [the land of] So”. It has been transformed into a name in how we use it, but it is unlikely that this is how his parents would have known him. Likewise we see things like “Naka tsu Hiko” or “Naka tsu Hime”, which mean little more than the “Prince” or “Princess” of the Middle—possibly indicating their birth order amongst several siblings or some other feature about where they were.

By the way, for those Japanese speakers out there, think of “tsu” in many of these names as an old equivalent to “no”, which itself can be seen almost like adding “ ‘s” to the end of word. So Yamato no Atae would be “Yamato’s Atae”, or “[the] Atae of Yamato”. Because of the way these names are constructed, I find it difficult to see just what is a title or position and what is a name.

There would be a parallel of this in the Edo period, when many people would take court titles as part of their name. So someone named naninani-no-suke isn’t necessarily claiming that they are a “no-suke” of some actual place or office. Likewise the various “Uemon” and “Saemon” aren’t really saying they work in the court guards of the right or left gatese.

And for the most part it doesn’t matter, though it is useful to keep in mind that the “names” by which people are remembered are likely not how they referred to themselves with their close friends and family, but we usually have little more to work with beyond how they were remembered to history.

Now over time, we see the tradition of designators that are not directly tied to your rank, position, or even where you are from, but rather it is more about the group that you belong to. This appears to start with the idea of the “-Be” (部) groups. For instance, the Umakaibe (馬飼部), the Horse-keeper’s ‘-be’, means literally just that, and likely comes from what they were supposed to do. Others may not be so easily recognizable, with their names seemingly related to a particular location or a family.

There is some thought that it is through these kinds of organizations of individuals, membership in the organization being continued through familial lines, that the families themselves began to develop. These large groups, often considered clans, as they claimed to be related through ancestors back in the legendary past. Groups like the Wani, the Katsuraki, the Yamato, and the Izumo all appear to be using locatives—that is to say surnames derived from placenames. This would have been a natural transition: “Katsuraki no XXXX” is still “Katsuraki no XXXX”. Others, like the Mononobe (物部) and Imbe (忌部) appear to have arisen directly from the corporate “-Be” groups themselves. And then there are groups like the Nakatomi (中臣), whom we will see more prominently in later centuries, whose name appears, at least to me, to derive from their position as “middle ministers” (naka tsu omi).

Added to these names are various titles, honorifics, etc. Some of these appear to be titles or honorifics that are no longer remembered as such—thus a lot of the -mimi titles we see early on. Others, like Iribiko and even Tarashi seem to be recognized as titles, but are still unclear. The title of “Wake” is often seen, and there is an explanation that it indicates and individual of royal blood who has been otherwise separated (wakeru) from the royal lineage. This seems to be a false etymology, however, and the most we can say is that they appear to be of elite status.

These early titles do not all appear to be equally distributed, geographically, in the Chronicles, with some elements being found more commonly in certain areas of the archipelago. But over time, the designators do seem to coalesce, likely as the influence of Yamato and the idea of a central authority also grew. And so around the 5th century we are seeing some things with some regularity. “Sukune” appears to be a personal designator, indicating a person of considerable rank in the court. Meanwhile “Mikoto” is reserved for sovereigns and kami. Titles such as “Miko”, meaning Prince, and “Iratsume”, indicating a woman of royal blood, are more frequent as well. Hiko and Hime also appear, but with seemingly less authority than in days past.

Some titles appear to move from a personal title to a familial one. Thus we get things like Omi and Muraji. “Omi”, in particular, seems to indicate a minister in court, but later we see that there are entire families designated as “Omi”, and it is highly unlikely that everyone in that family was a minister. Instead you get the Ō-omi and the Ō-muraji, who appear to be the heads of their respective clans and also hold a position of authority at court.

And that is key. As Omi, Muraji, Atae (later Atai), and other kabane are formalized, they tend to apply not just to the individual, but to everyone in their clan. So if the clan rises in prestige, and if they were given a more prestigious kabane, then everyone is lifted by such a pronouncement. This likely indicated the work that individuals could do in the court, as well, and how far they would rise. Your own place in society was determined by not just your deeds and what you did, but by your entire family—including your extended family.

We’ll see more of this in a later episode, where we will get a more formal definition of the kabane at the court. For now we see them, but they haven’t really been explained in the narrative. Most of the 8th century authors and readers would likely have already been familiar with the concept, so they may not have felt the need to explain it here.

I will mention one more thing that may be worth noting, though, and that is the tendency for titles and ranks and even surnames in the narrative to be more than a little anachronistic. There are cases where people are noted not as members of a particular clan, but simply as their ancestors. In that way they are connected, but it is not directly indicated that they used the uji, or clan name. Where we do see an uji used, though, it is sometimes used with a kabane that actually wasn’t awarded until some later point in time. So just because someone is named XX no Omi or XX no Muraji does not mean that such was their rank during the events that are being described. Most of the time this isn’t an issue, but occasionally it does make one wonder if knowing the actual ranks at the time wouldn’t help us to better identify the trends and what was happening around this time.

Free Diving for Pearls in Ancient Japan

One of the other stories in this episode focuses on the idea of pearl diving. Now it does strain credulity that someone in that period dove down 100 meters or more to pull up an abalone and made it back to the surface, but it is not necessarily impossible. As we mention in the episode, people have been known to free dive to more than 100 meters—and assisted free dives even further, using weights and other such things to go down and come back up. Furthermore, free diving doesn’t come with quite the same risks of the “bends” that you get with, say, SCUBA diving, where you are taking in pressurized air—though there are dangers for those who do continuous dives, but overall the risk seems much lower.

So the idea that someone was able to dive down exceptionally deep, get an abalone, and then would make it back up is not entirely far fetched.

This is a practice that goes back to the earliest writings about the archipelago. Even the accounts in the Weizhi appear to reference this very feat, and we see examples of it straight through to modern times, where we have the tradition of ama pearl divers, though much diminished, still practiced by a handful of individuals. While the ama today are traditionally women, it is unclear if it was limited to that in ancient times. By the name, Osashi (男狭磯), which starts with the character “man”, we assume that we are talking about a male fisherman, but it is quite possible—even likely—that those characters were assigned well after the event had happened and was being passed down orally. Without other markers, I don’t know that I could definitively say if they were actually a man or a woman,

Now the pearls they were bringing up were very likely more along the lines of the abalone pearls. Abalone only have a single shell, that spirals outward. Technically they are a gastropod, and a type of marine snail, though you might know notice that at first glance. As a consequence of their biology, the pearls they generate tend to be less spherical and are more likely to be irregular. However, they also have an iridescent sheen similar to the inside of their shells, which gives them their own beauty, which over the years has sometimes been prized more highly than the spherical, white pearls generated by oysters and similar bivalves.

References

• Kanagawa, Nadia (2021). Zoom Talk: The Name Game in Nara Japan: Immigrant Origin and the Court Status System;

• Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7

• Kawagoe, Aileen (2009). “Uji clans, titles and the organization of production and trade”. Heritage of Japan. https://heritageofjapan.wordpress.com/following-the-trail-of-tumuli/rebellion-in-kyushu-and-the-rise-of-royal-estates/uji-clans-titles-and-the-organization-of-production-and-trade/. Retrieved 1/11/2021.

• Confucius, ., & Legge, J. (2008). The Analects of Confucius. Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library.

• Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253

• BAKSHEEV, Eugene S. (2001). THE MOGARI RITE THROUGH THE HISTORY OF JAPANESE CULTURE; Japan Penomenon: Views from Europe: International Conference; http://ru-jp.org/yaponovedy_baksheev_01e.htm

• Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co.  ISBN4-8053-0794-3

• Steinkraus, W. E. (1980). Socrates, Confucius, and the Rectification of Names. Philosophy East and West, 30(2), 261–264. https://doi.org/10.2307/1398850

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

• Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1