This episode we say goodbye to Wohodo and say hello to his successor, Magari no Ōye, aka Magari no Ohine.

On Succession

We’ve talked in the past about succession and the Chronicles’ conception of what was appropriate. In that formula, only the son of the current sovereign and the designated Queen was considered a viable candidate for the throne, and a Queen wasn’t just the wife of the sovereign. The Queen had to be specifically designated as such and they had to be of royal descent themselves.

There is no evidence that I see which directly suggests that Menoko had those qualifications in the Chroniclers’ eyes. Rather, they clearly see Tashiraga no Iratsume as the One True Queen. Nonetheless, where they could have easily erased Prince Ohine and his brother from the record, they did not. They left them in, albeit with short reigns—possibly an accurate reflection of the time.

Some later sources put Tashiraga’s son, the future sovereign known as Kimmei, aka Ame Kunioshi Hiraki Hiro Niwa, as the direct inheritor from his father, Wohodo, aka Keitai. There are even some clues, hidden though they may be, that Ame Kunioshi had his two elder brothers killed in a struggle that the Chroniclers chose not to report for some reason.

The Nihon Shoki makes the claim, of course, that Ame Kunioshi was simply too young, and that he hadn’t come of age. This seems a bizarre claim given that they count Homuda Wake as sovereign from the time he was about 3 years old. Granted, much of Homuda’s story has more than a little of the fantastical about it, and so the veracity of that claim is questionable, but still it is left in without comment by the Chroniclers. Why would they not have commented on that?

This is a thread we’ll continue to pull on as we move closer to Ame Kunioshi’s assumption of the throne.

Miyake (屯倉) - The Royal Granaries

These are often translated as the Royal (or Imperial) Granaries or something similar, though there is no direct account of just what it was and what they were like. Many assume, however, that they were an early form of local governance set up by Yamato—and possibly others—in more far flung territory.

As seen above, the idea of storehouses appears in the archaeological record from at least the Yayoi period. Early raised structures were likely places to store grain where vermin could not easily get to it and it kept things dry.

Storehouses were a common good for a village. We see don’t see a storehouse attached to every household, so they were likely shared resources. But as states started to form, it wasn’t just villages and surrounding farms. Rice was the currency of the day, and taxes—largely rice, but likely other commodities as well—would be collected in central locations run by the central government. Essentially these would be local tax centers.

This could be what the structures in Osaka, pictured at the top of this post, were for. There were at least 10 of them, and it may be that they were the local center both taking in rice and distributing it when necessary. It is also possible, seeing that this was in Naniwa during the time when the ancient court is said to have been there, that these represent the endpoint of a network of storehouses.

That appears to have been the function of the “miyake”, which oversaw selected acreage of rice-land and the income that the state demanded. Based on later examples, we can make an assumption that local administrators would likely set the amount of rice to be collected and take a cut of the collected rice for operating the miyake itself. This would be some amount over what the court expected to receive.

Furthermore, these miyake didn’t collect generic tax revenue. Rather, the revenue generated by the miyake was designated to specific purposes or even to specific persons. So you might have land for the upkeep of the Queen’s quarters, or even for maintaining a particular kofun. In other cases you might have land that is designated for the use of a given noble or official, so that they could live in a style appropriate to their position.

In the brief reign of Ohine, aka Ankan Tenno, we see the largest number of miyake mentioned—more than during any other reign. They are occasionally mentioned elsewhere, but not nearly so heavily, let alone so many in the course of one or two years. While the language in the Nihon Shoki can make it seem as if the miyake were, in many cases, previously extant and simply repurposed, I suspect that in many, if not most, cases this is the point of their effective creation.

Generally speaking, these are miyake that are being created for the benefit of members of the royal family, which is effectively the court. It demonstrates a way that the court was further expanding its administrative and bureaucratic structures, much as the creation of the Be had similar effects. Later, provincial governance would be further structured and organized.

Another aspect we see here is the assertion of royal prerogative over any and all land. The ability to assign or re-assign land and titles is a key lever of power by which the sovereign and the court could require compliance. Now, how this worked in actual practice vice tentative legal theory is another question altogether. I suspect that such things would have to be reinforced from time to time with actual violence, rather than just threats of removing land or title.

References

• Barnes, Gina L. (2015). Achaeology of East Asia: The Rise of Civilization in China, Korea and Japan

• Kiley, C. J. (1973). State and Dynasty in Archaic Yamato. The Journal of Asian Studies, 33(1), 25–49. https://doi.org/10.2307/2052884

• 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