Episode 87: The Dual Eruptions of Mount Haruna

June 1, 2023 Joshua Badgley

Image of Mt. Haruna’s conical dome in the fall. Public domain photo downloaded from Wikimedia.

This episode is a little different. We are looking at an event—actually two events—that we only really know through archaeology, because nothing that we've found in the written record references it. I’m talking about the two eruptions of Mount Haruna in the early and mid 6th centuries.

For more, check out some of the links we have below in the References section.

Haniwa collection

A collection of Haniwa at the Tokyo National Museum, showing various different types of haniwa figures.

Haniwa warrior

Here we have a haniwa figure of someone who appears to be a warrior or a hunter. Along with regular clothing, he has on arm protectors, a short sword, and accoutrements for archery. Tokyo National Museum - Photo by author.

Belt and accessories

Here we see the patterned belt and various accessories. In particular we see a wrist guard hanging from the belt, used to protect the wrist when using a bow. Tokyo National Museum - Photo by author.

Warrior in "Tanko"

Here we see a warrior in classic “tanko” style armor. Tokyo National Museum - Photo by author.

Kofun person

Another example of the figures found at various tombs. Tokyo National Museum - Photo by author.

Figure sitting in a chair

Here we see someone sitting in a chair of some kind. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Musician

Here we have someone playing music on what looks to be a zither, like the wagon. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Kofun era horse

Here we have a haniwa figure of a horse, all dressed up in its finery. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Kofun bit and stirrups

Here we see a kofun era bit and pair of stirrups. Notice these stirrups are not dissimilar from western stirrups, compared to the later abumi, which were more like curved platforms. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Kofun era stirrups

Another style of stirrup, this one more “pot” shaped, covering the whole of the front of the foot, giving greater purchase, but still covering all sides of the foot. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Belt (reconstruction)

This is a reconstruction of a 6th century belt, quite similar to what was found on the continent. This would have likely been for an elite, with plenty of places to hang pouches and other tools. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Solid "tanko" armor

This relatively solid style, or “tanko” armor was an earlier form, and is more rigid than the lamellar. It is often suggested that the lamellar came in with horse riding culture. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author

Warrior in "tanko" style armor

Here we have a warrior in what appears to be the solid “tanko” style of armor, including the rivets or ties holding it together. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Lamellar armor

Often called “keiko” style armor, this is an example of the lamellar armor found in the archipelago and the peninsula in the 6th century. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author

Warrior in lamellar armor

Here we see a haniwa of a warrior in what appears to be the lamellar, or “keiko”, style of armor. Tokyo National Museum - photo by author.

Peninsular lamellar (reconstruction)

A reconstruction of the kind of lamellar armor found on the peninsula in the Goguryeo region. There are many similarities with armors found in the archipelago at this time. Seoul National Museum - photo by author.

If you want to see more, check out photos I’ve pulled out for the Kofun period in the 6th century, over on Flickr.

The Tone River

A quick note about the Tone River. Although the modern river runs to the Pacific ocean on the coast of modern Chiba prefecture, the original river used to run south, through modern Tokyo and flowing into Tokyo Bay. During the Edo period (1654), to avoid flooding, the river was redirected into a nearby watershed, creating the current geography. This river has long been important in the Kanto plain, as evidenced by the communities that grew up along its banks.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is Episode 87: The Dual Eruptions of Mt. Haruna.
We’ve been going through the Chronicles for some time now, from The Age of the Gods and the legends about how the heavenly grandchild, Ninigi no Mikoto, came down to earth, settling in Kyushu. We read about how the legendary Iwarebiko, aka Jimmu Tenno, came up and conquered the land of Yamato, and how his descendants ruled from there. We’ve also gone over the various dynasties, from Mimaki Iribiko and his descendants to Homuda Wake and his descendants on the Kawachi plain. And recently we had Wohodo no Ohokimi, aka Keitai Tennou, enter the picture, kicking off the latest, and generally agreed to be the current dynasty of rulers.
In the earliest chronicles, it is clear that we were looking at events that had been highly mythologized. Certainly there may have been some truth and memory about how the Miwa cult had become prominent, not to mention references to Izumo indicating its importance in the early archipelago.
The Miwa Cult, of course, refers to religious practices centered around Mt. Miwa, which the Yamato court appears to have used as a political and cultural tool as they expanded their influence across the archipelago. Similarly, the numerous references to Izumo, on the Japan sea side of western Honshu, as a “Land of the Gods” and the eventual submission of those deities to the Yamato court in the record is bolstered by archaeological evidence of competing cultural centers. However, the strict narratives given in the Nihon Shoki can hardly be taken at face value, and there were also plenty of examples of conflicting information.
Most prominently is no doubt the story of Queen Himiko, whom the Wei chroniclers talked about extensively and yet in the Chronicles, excerpts from her life are inserted into the reign of Okinaga no Tarashi Hime, aka Jingu Tennou, leading us to further doubt much of what is written.
Of course, much of the older history was probably passed down as stories and oral teachings, a tradition that appears to have continued right up through the time of the Chronicles. But even as writing came to the archipelago, and the various outposts of the Yamato court started to send in written reports, there are still discrepancies with what we know compared to the records from the peninsula and continent, not to mention the archeological record. Most of this is attributed to the chroniclers themselves and their mission. While ostensibly they were telling the story of “Nihon”, i.e. the story of Japan, more realistically they were focused on the legitimacy of the sovereign and propping up the power and prestige of the court and the important families.
For example, there is a lot on the central areas around Yamato, including Kawachi, Harima, and Yamashiro. Where we do get information outside of these areas, it is typically something regarding the Yamato court - information on the lands of Kibi, Izumo, Koshi, or just about anything in Tsukushi is limited, even though we know these were areas where a lot was going on.
This is particularly intriguing to me as there are some things that you would think might make it in, natural disasters being one of them. Then again, Japan is volcanically active. Earthquakes are not uncommon, and then the occasional volcanic eruption. Then there are the various typhoons and heavy rainstorms that create flooding and other hazardous conditions. However, many of these disasters are localized, and some may just not have been considered that important. If the disaster didn’t affect the court and wasn’t related in some way to a portent or omen about the court, then it may have been overlooked by the Chroniclers. And, with the number of disasters that Japan experiences, many things that we might find shocking or incredible may not have been considered all that special by the Chroniclers.
This episode, I want to start out looking at just such a disaster and what we learn about the period in the aftermath: the 6th century eruptions of the Haruna volcano. Credit where credit is due, this was suggested as a topic by listener Samy who brought it to my attention, so thanks for that.
Mount Haruna is located in modern Gunma prefecture, far to the east of the Nara basin, and thus likely out of sight for most of the Chroniclers. It is in the area of modern Takasaki city, in Gunma Prefecture, just west of Maebashi. This is about 100 kilometers northwest of modern Tokyo, or about an hour and a half by train. Along the eastern edge of Takasaki flows the Tone River, which continues all the way out to its mouth on the Pacific Ocean on the on the eastern coast of Honshu at modern Choushi, in Chiba prefecture. Along the Tone river can be found many kofun, which would appear to indicate a healthy population with elites capable of mobilizing the labor for such monumental constructions.
Volcanoes are notoriously attractive targets for human habitation. Porous rock, such as pumice, with various minerals from the ash deposited in the surrounding areas, can provide extremely fertile soil, which is great for agriculturists. There may also be hot springs, and in this Mount Haruna is no exception, making it a popular place for people to visit, even today. Of course, volcanoes also bring complications. Poisonous gasses can seep out of the ground, often settling, invisible, in depressions and low lying areas. And of course, there are the eruptions. A mountain may be quiet for generations, and then suddenly it erupts. An eruption may mean little more than smoke and ash, or it may mean fiery rocks raining down from the sky and pyroclastic flows—superheated gas and rock that flows like a river, killing all in its path and burying everything in a layer of what is called “tephra”—pumice, ash, and other solid material ejected from the volcano.
For all of their devastating effects, however, these can sometimes be a boon to archaeologists, as they bury a site quickly, preserving it in amazing detail. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Italian city of Pompeii, which was buried so quickly that they found much of the city just as it was in the final moments as the city was buried. A horrendous toll of human life, and yet, centuries later, it gives us an unequaled view into the life that they lived.
At the foot of Mount Haruna, we find what some have dubbed the “Pompeii of Japan”. It is an area around the banks of the Agatsuma River, which flows southeast into the Tone river, in modern Shibukawa. This area was apparently well-populated, with villages on the slopes and around the river. Rather than a single site, there are a collection of sites, including Kanai Higashiura, Kuroimine, and others. No doubt there are more sites, lurking under the soil, still to be discovered in future excavations.
We can never know for certainty what happened in the past, but given the state of preservation, there are a few things that we can know.
The slopes and valleys around Mt. Haruna were dotted with signs of human settlement. One of these were the many kofun in the area. In fact, the 5th century Inariyama kofun, containing one of the swords mentioning Wakatakiru, which we discussed back in episodes 46 and 58, is only about 20km or so southeast of Mt. Haruna, and 4km from the banks of Tone river. So in the mid to late fifth century, someone from the area had been of service to the court at Yamato, as recorded on a precious iron sword. it wasn’t alone. There were kofun throughout the area, including keyhole shaped kofun from the 4th century upward to the current point of our story. They lay mostly to the south, in the flat lands around the various river valleys, such as the Tone River, mentioned before. This was part of the land of Kenu, mentioned in the Chronicles from the time of Yamatodake, later split into Shimozuke and, here, Kozuke.
In addition to the kofun there were, of course, habitats for the living inhabitants of the region as well. We have evidence of pit structures—dug into the ground like the earliest structures on the archipelago—but also we have post holes indicating a raised building and even ground-level structures of some sort. There were also various fences, woven together out of reeds and thin bamboo, set up as well. No doubt the smoke of thousands of fires would have drifted up to the heavens from the valleys as people cooked food, fired pottery, and more.
The flat areas of the valley were likely covered in rice paddy fields, as well as fields for other crops. Men, women, and children would have come together to tend the fields throughout the year, but that wasn’t the only occupation. There were those who raised horses, and others who worked with the earth to create clay vessels. Woodcutters would have climbed the hillside to bring back fuel for the many fires, while hunters sought their quarry in the same, wooded terrain.
There were also special ritual areas. In one instance we know there was a round area designated for some kind of ritual, where various hajiware and other types of pottery were found, stacked layer upon layer, as new dishes were added on top of old. Inside of the clay jars, pots, cups, dishes, etc. there were stone and iron implements, clearly meant for ritual purposes. There were likely special individuals who were tasked to maintain the area and to ensure that the proper rituals—whatever those may have been—were carried out.
Speaking of the people, from the archeological evidence we know that they were rather diverse, at least for the archipelago at this time. Some of them more closely resembled the people who had been in the islands since the Jomon period, but others more closely resembled the people from more recent waves, come over from the peninsula. They lived and worked, side-by-side, and grew up in the same regions and the same villages, such that there was no practical differentiation between them, though likely there were memories of which families had descended from people outside of the community and vice versa.
Along with everyone in civilian dress, you also would see people in iron armor. Lamellar armor, also known as “keiko”, was developed on the continent, and had grown more and more popular. It would eventually replace altogether the rigid, riveted armor, often called “tanko”. The tanko style is made up of rectangular and triangular shaped iron plates, beaten into shape over a wooden form and then riveted into place. Inside it was lined with leather, both for structural integrity and for some level of comfort. Lacquer would have helped keep the iron protected from the elements. The keiko, or lamellar, armors were quite different, being made up of many different small plates, known to us as “san-e”. It could take thousands of iron plates, all laced together, to make a single suit, but it offered a certain amount of flexibility, and was probably the more expensive product given just how labor intensive it would have been to make.
From haniwa figurines from this period, which depict all aspects of daily life, from warriors to dancers and even musicians, we also have some idea of the clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and even makeup from around this period. A particular style of trousers which ballooned out and were then tied at the knee were not uncommon, and there were also overshirts that flared out at the waist. Many of these were held together with ties, though there were sashes and belts as well. In some instances we even see remnants of paint or some kind of coloration on the clothing and faces of the haniwa, which may have indicated a kind of make-up that was popular, or perhaps even a form of tattoo.
To get a better visual, check out some of the haniwa figures from this period on our website: sengokudaimyo.com/podcast.
So this may give us an idea of what life was like along the slopes and valleys surround Mount Haruna in the early 6th century. It was a relatively diverse community, cultivating the land around the rivers, burying their dead in the mounded tombs that dotted the landscape, but otherwise going about their lives. There were farmers, hunters, and various people making crafts, jewelry, and more. There were differences of class as well, with certain elites having a special place in the community, with finer armor, horses, and other distinguishing characteristics.
One imagines them dealing with the various seasons throughout the year, likely gathering to celebrate major events in the life of the community.
From what we can tell, early in the 6th century, life was proceeding normally, and nobody expected what was to come. The timeline and details are fuzzy, but there is enough research and we’ve encountered similar events often enough that we can get an idea of just what happened. There may have been a few warning rumbles—but earthquakes are hardly anything new in the archipelago, and even if there were more or they were more numerous, likely life continued as normally, albeit perhaps with a few more offerings presented in the ceremonial pit. This continued until sometime in the summer, probably around 539.
The first major indication of a problem was likely an explosion and a plume of smoke rising up from near the top of the mountain, which would have stretched out across the skies, pushed by prevailing winds. Magma had reached the surface and interacted with water, which quickly superheated and exploded. Ash was ejected into the sky, but as it rose the fine ash started to stick to the outside of small water droplets, forming a kind of stony hail that started to pelt the area around Mt. Haruna, particularly to the northeast. Small ash pellets, some as large as an inch and a quarter in diameter, began to fall on the surrounding people and settlements. This was followed by a muddy rain—which is to say a rain that, rather than washing things clean, was so full of ash in the air that it left a film on everything it touched. People likely feared what this could mean—rocks and mud falling from the sky isn’t exactly an every day occurrence.
One man, likely an elite, who used their connection to the local kami as part of the justification of their status, decided to try to do something. He donned his lamellar armor—something not too dissimilar from what was being used on the Korean peninsula, and he went out to plead with the angry mountain to quiet its wrath.
Unfortunately for him, the rain of ash was only the beginning. A mixture of superheated rock and water, had been pushed out over the walls of the caldera, and was already flowing down towards the settlement at Kannai-Higashiura. This pyroclastic flow was the same thing that had both doomed and preserved the ancient city of Pompeii, and in a similar way it quickly covered the low-lying areas. Wood was set alight, and metal softened by the heat, men, women, and children attempted to flee, but this was not something you could outrun. Like an angry torrent, it rushed over the landscape, burning everything it touched, but also covering and preserving things close to the ground.
The elite warrior fell face first, likely overtaken by the wall of heat that the flow exuded. Others tried to shield themselves in ditches or behind walls, but it was no use. A wall, at least three meters high, collapsed and was likewise buried.
After a while, the flow stopped. Scars were burnt across the mountainside, and fires still raged, but the eruption itself had ended. Who knows how many lay dead or wounded in the aftermath. Trees had been cut down by the flow, let alone houses, walls, and other structures. Then there is also the question of what we don’t see. While Pompeii was covered in ash, nearby Herculaneum was suffocated by poisonous gasses. How many others survived the initial onslaught only to be overcome a short time after? It is hard to say since we only have that which was preserved, but we can assume that that what had only a short time before been a thriving community was now mostly gone, covered in ash and pumice. It is hard to believe that anyone who survived was not personally touched by such a tragedy.
And yet, humans are resourceful, and not easily deterred. We would not blame the locals for picking up stakes and moving away, abandoning any settlements on or around the mountain. And yet, some thirty years later, we see that people were still living in and around Mount Haruna. Unfortunately we know this because the mountain wasn’t quite finished, and three decades after that first eruption, the Mount Haruna once more erupted. This time, it threw up so much ash and pumice that there was still a layer three centimeters thick in modern Soma city, about 200 kilometers to the northeast. A little bit closer, at only 10 kilometers away, it buried a settlement at modern Kuroimine, across the Agatsuma river on the slopes of an adjacent mountain, under two meters of pumice, which accumulated in only a matter of hours.

As a result, from all of this, we do have a better idea of just what life was like in the 6th century—at least in this corner of the archipelago. We have rice fields buried under sediment. We have the remains of a woven fence, some three meters high. We have armor, in situ, as it was worn, and we have a ritual site that was apparently in use. Normally, such things are only recognizable from traces. Armor may be found in tombs, but details like how it was worn are often lacking. Grave goods in burials are an excellent insight into a culture, but are also inherently biased. They are items that were staged—whether for reasons of ceremony of sentimentality—often leaving us with questions, including how common they were and whether or not what we have was made for daily use or not. Even items in a rubbish pit were often deliberately placed there, and therefore out of context from the whole of how they were use.
Of course, we don’t have everything. The exceedingly high temperatures associated with pyroclastic flows and, well, anything having to do with a volcanic eruption, meant that much of the organic material burned, and metal melted and warped. Even just the physical pressure could have knocked things over and pushed them about, so it isn’t perfect, but some of what archaeologists have uncovered is pretty amazing.
Today, more than 1400 years later, we look on it as a godsend—a treasure trove of archaeological evidence that was preserved unlike almost any other in the archipelago. We talk in sanitized terms of tephra layers, Plinian eruptions, and pyroclastic flows, but meanwhile this was a real tragedy in the lives of the people who lived on and around the mountain. Lives were cut short, and the entire landscape of the area changed. So much rock fell from the sky that it crushed houses, and worse. In living memory of the first eruption, a second had hit. What kind of thoughts must have gone through the heads of the people of the area? How did they come to understand and grapple with this tragic period in their lives?
Such an event must have made an impression on people, and it was certainly wide ranging, impacting sites over 200 kilometers away. And yet, neither of these eruptions are found anywhere in the chronicles—there isn’t even a hint of them. Sure, some dude’s prized horse is worth mentioning, and even contact with people up in the far reaches of Koshi, on the island of Sado, are mentioned. And then there are various omens, such as the palace spontaneously catching fire. Wouldn’t this have been on par with such an event? A mountain blows its top, and nothing at all is written or said about it?
Sure, I could get that things like earthquakes and even typhoons were common enough that they were simply natural—if unfortunate—phenomenon. They weren’t regular enough to be tied to any kind of annual occurrence, and yet they no doubt happened with enough frequency that they were known events. So unless they were tied in with something directly relating to the story the Chroniclers were telling, why mention it?
Were volcanic eruptions that well known? Was it seen as a terrible, but natural event?
Or perhaps they didn’t know about it. Perhaps nobody sent a record or memorial up to Yamato. This seems unlikely as well. We already have this general area tied to Yamato through someone who served at the court of Wakatakiru no Ohokimi in the fifth century, and the court had clearly established Miyake, or royal granaries, in distant regions, such as Kochi, and no doubt out here as well.
That leaves me with just one thought: the court knew about such things, but it didn’t matter to the chroniclers. Perhaps there was some nefarious reason they wanted it kept out of the Chronicles, but more likely it was just not part of the story they were telling. The eruption would not have been visible from the Kinki region, and based on the layers of ash and pumice that fell, much of the impact of the eruption was felt north and east of Mount Haruna, so falling even further away from the Yamato court, in a mostly mountainous region that would have been relatively sparsely populated, at least compared to the low-lying plains that would have made for the better rice cultivation. Without an impact on the royal court and its families, this becomes a relative non-event.
And if something like this can go unnoticed in the Chronicles, what more was happening that we don’t even know about? Sure, certain areas garner our attention. Koshi, Owari, Harima, and even Kibi and northern Kyushu, or Tsukushi, on occasion. But like I said earlier, most of the stories center on the lands of Yamato and Kawachi. Even Yamashiro comes in only every once in a while, and rarely to we hear much from the areas south, such as the Kii peninsula, and pretty much nothing from the island we know as Shikoku. Truth be told, only a small portion of the Kofun era archipelago is ever truly discussed in any detail, leaving us to wonder just what was happening.
Fortunately, archaeology is helping to fill in some of those gaps, as well as helping us to make sense of what was happening elsewhere in the archipelago. This, in turn, raises more questions, and readjusts our understanding—sometimes supporting theories that we already knew, while at other times challenging what we thought we knew.
Some of what we know about the Mount Haruna eruptions comes from rescue archaeology, commissioned prior to a new construction project. Just like the Jomon era ritual site of Shakado was discovered during the construction of the Chuo Expressway, as mentioned way back in Episode 3, so too was the site of Kanai-Higashiura uncovered during excavations for the Joshin expressway. Fortunately for us, archaeology is rather popular in Japan, right down to the local level, and so the discovery of the site led to relatively extensive research and numerous articles on what was found. Researchers are continuing to review what was found and the context of the site..
Today, a fair amount of information can be found online via groups like the Gunma Arachaeological Research Foundation. While the pages are largely in Japanese, I encourage people to check out the reports on their website, which I’ll link to in the References section of the podcast blog page. There you can see some of the actual finds and even diagrams of reconstructions and the extent of the eruptions. For those who don’t speak Japanese, I’ll just say that machine translation has come a long way and while it often isn’t perfect, machine translation can be really useful to help get the gist of what is being discussed.
There is also literature to be found in various works talking as much about the geologic layers that were laid down during the two eruptions. The two tephra layers—the layers of ash and pumice that were ejected from Haruna and laid down across several hundred kilometers—provides archaeologists with relatively clear temporal markers, even in the absence of other identifying information, such as distinct pottery or other clues. They’ve even been able to use organic material at the sites to provide a fairly narrow range for when the two eruptions happened. The first was clearly in the early 6th century, while the other was about the mid 6th century, and they were likely only about 30 years apart from one another. In fact, the layers have distinct names: The Haruna-Futatsudake eruption and the Haruna-Ikaho eruption.
And, as I said, if you’d like to know more we will have various references up on our podcast blog, and you can do some digging on your own—pun, of course, intended. Or maybe take a trip out to Shibukawa and see the sites for yourself—along with a host of other archaeological and historical sites in the region and nearby.
Next, we will get into the reign of the sovereigns who followed Ame Kunioshi, as well as the court politics, not to mention the continued rise of Buddhism.
Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode.
Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

-. -. 金井遺跡群. Gunma Archaeological Research Foundation. http://www.gunmaibun.org/kanaiura/. Last viewed on 5/31/2023.
-. -. 黒井峰遺跡:Kuroimine Iseki. Cultural Heritage Online. https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/216059. Last viewed on 5/31/2023.
Okuno, Mitsuru, et al. (2019). Eruption age of the Haruna Futatsudake Pumice (Hr-FP), central Japan, by radiocarbon wiggle matching with special reference to a 14C dataset developed from a Japanese tree. Quaternary International, vol 527, 30 August 2019, pp. 29-33
-. -. (2018). Kanai Higashiura. Japanese Journal of Archaeology. https://archaeology.jp/remains/kanai-higashiura/. Last viewed on 5/31/2023.
早田勉. (1989).「 6世紀における榛名火山の2回の噴火とその災害」. 第四紀研究1989 年 27 巻 4 号 p. 297-312. https://doi.org/10.4116/jaqua.27.297

Episode 86: All the Other Stuff

May 16, 2023 Joshua Badgley

Sado Island, off the coast of Niigata prefecture, what was once the land of Koshi. Public domain photo by NASA taken from the ISS in 2021, downloaded from Wikimedia.

RSS

Archives

A lot of random stuff in this one. For the most part I’ll put here some of the people and places we talk about in the episode, for those who want to follow along.

Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tennō

A familiar name for anyone who has been following us: Ame Kunioshi is our current sovereign. Son of Wohodo no Ōkimi, he was the fourth sovereign in our current line-up, and the second generation of this dynasty. While he was on the throne, Nimna took Silla, and Buddhism was (probably) first introduced to Japan.

Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi

Head of the Soga family, and one of the top three officials in the court of Ame Kunioshi. One thing to note: It is unclear how much that is attributed to him is accurate, as it is possible that some of this was later Soga attempts to prop up their ancestor, but still there seems little reason to doubt that his daughters married into the royal family, at least.

Ishihime

Ame Kunioshi’s primary wife, and daughter of his half-brother, Takewo Hiro Kunioshi no Ōkimi, aka Senka Tennō, and his primary wife, Tachibana Nakatsu, who was, herself, a daughter of Ōke no Ōkimi, aka Ninken Tennō. This made her Ame Kunioshi’s aunt, as well, because he was the daughter of her sister. She was also a sister to Ohatsuse Wakasazaki, aka Buretsu Tennō, the last sovereign of the preivous dynasty.

Yata no Tamakatsu

The eldest son of Ame Kunioshi and Ishihime. We don’t hear much about him other than his death, and that may seem odd unless you consider that he was probably the Crown Prince up until that point. His death would leave room for his brother.

Osada Nunakura Futodamashiki no Mikoto, aka Bidatsu Tennō

Nunakura is the younger son of Ame Kunioshi and Ishihime, and would come to the throne after Ame Kunioshi’s death. He is named Crown Prince after the death of his older brother, Yata no Tamakatsu

Kasanuhi (aka Satake) no Himemiko

Kasanuhi is the daughter of Ishihime and Ame Kunioshi, and the last of their three children.

Kitashi Hime

Daughter of Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi, and one of the wives of Ame Kunioshi.

Wonane Gimi

Another daughter of Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi, and also wife of Ame Kunioshi.

Takechi (or Takeuchi) no Sukune

The first “Prime Minister”, or Ōmi, and a descendant of Ōtarashi Hiko no Ōkimi, aka Keikō Tennō. He was a close confidant and supporter of Okinaga Tarashi Hime (aka Jingū Tennō) as well as her son, Homuda Wake (Ōjin Tennō). Many lineages would trace back to him, including the Heguri and the Soga.

Koshi no Kuni

The land of Koshi (越), which was later split up into various provinces such as Echizen (越前), Etchū (越中), and Echigo (越後), among others. It was along the Japan Sea side of Honshū. It comes up a lot in various records, usually on the periphery of the state.

Sushen / Mishihase (粛慎)

The term “粛慎” shows up in continental records talking about a Tungusic people on the mainland, so it is possible that it is these people that the Chroniclers are talking about. However, it is just as likely that they were some other Tungusic speaking people, or that they were jsut from “up north” just as the Sushen were “up north” from the lands of the Yellow River and Yangzi. There is some thought that they might be from the Okhotsk Culture, which inhabited northern Hokkaidō and the islands to the north. It is also possible they were from the Zoku-Jōmon, or Epi-Jōmon people of northern Tōhoku and Hokkaidō. These are both groups connected with the modern indigenous Ainu population.

The name is often glossed as “Mishihase” in Japanese, and it was used for groups in Tōhoku in later centuries, though it is unclear if they were actually related to the people in the Chronicles.

Sado Island

Sado Island is just off of the coast of modern Niigata prefecture. The island is shaped something like an “S” or a lightning bolt, with two mountain ridges and a valley in between. It has been inhabited for thousands of years, and was later a place of political exile.

Nivkh

A people indigenous to Sakhalin island, along with the Ainu who lived in the southern regions. Their language is a language isolate, meaning that there are no other languages that have been identified as close enough to be considered part of the same family.

Kawahara Tami no Atahe no Miya

We don’t know much but from the name, we can assume Miya was from Kawahara (or Kawara), possibly in Asuka, where Kawara Temple would one day be built. Of course, here he is just seen as a person buying a pretty incredible horse. Later it is said he lived in nearby Hinokuma, which would seem to strengthen that assessment.

Umakai no Omi no Utayori

Utayori was one of the Umakai no Omi (or Mumakahi no Omi, for another reading). This family shows up early on in the Chronicles having been the people in charge of raising the horses for the royal court. They bear the kabane of Omi, putting them, socially, on par with families like the Soga, although I would not say that they were equals at this point. Their position as being in charge of the “horse-keepers” may have something to do with the accusation regarding the queen’s saddle.

Umakai no Omi no Morishi and Umakai no Omi no Nasehi

Two sons of Utayori, who had been killed during torture to try to extract a confession—they were also considered guilty by association, apparently, and only at the last minute were they saved.

Hafuri

A hafuri is actually a job, basically one of the types of priests who handled the indigenous religion of the archipelago.

Michi no Ushi

A local ruler in the land of Koshi. We have seen other instances where it is thought that “no Ushi” became “Nushi”, and so it is likely that he was the ruler of a place called “Michi”.

Shibagaki

An area in Hase (or Hatsuse): a river valley that flows into the southeast Nara Basin, it was probably a place to go and hunt and get away from the day-to-day at the palace.

Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Arako

One of two people sent to meet the Goguryeo envoys in Koshi. “Yamato no Aya no Atahe” is the name of one of the branches of the “Aya” family, which were likely weavers brought over from the continent, originally. In this case it appears to be the Aya of Yamato, though they just use the character for “East”, and they were apparently rather prolific in and around the court. His name, Arako, or “Child of Ara”, makes me wonder if there was a connection to the peninsular state of “Ara”, though I believe they used different characters.

Katsuraki no Atahe no Naniwa

The Katsuraki family has a history of dealing with foreigners, and may have even come from the peninsula themselves, tracing back to one of the few names that may be found in the Korean sources: Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko. The name “Naniwa” is interesting, and I don’t know if that was truly a given name or just where he was from.

Sagaraka (or Saganaka)

An area in Yamashiro, possibly near Saganaka Shrine, which uses the same characters (相樂), though it is hard to know for certain. That is just north of modern Nara city.

Kashiwade no Omi no Katabeko

A member of the Kashiwade no Omi family who was actually the one to retrieve the Goguryeo envoys and to whom Michi no Ushi gave reverence, exposing that he was not the sovereign, because why else would he bow like that to someone else?

Kose no Omi no Saru and Kishi no Akabato

Little is known other than they were apparently taking a barge to fetch the Goguryeo envoys.

Yamato no Aya no Saka no Ue no Atahe no Komaro

This name is a mouthful, but it still breaks down into fairly reasonable chunks. So “Yamato no Aya” is one part, and we addressed this before. “Saka no Uhe” is probably another locative, so they are from the Yamato Aya in Saka no Uhe, or something similar. “Atahe” is the family kabane for Yamato no Aya. And then “Komaro” is his actual name. He is sent to be the one to “entertain” the Goguryeo envoys, so likely he was taking care of everything they needed at their residence.

Nishikori no Obito no Ōshi (or Ōishi)

This is the other person sent with Komaro. Nishikori no Obito is the family name and kabane and then their name is Ōshi or Ōishi (大石).

Wang Jinnie

We talked about him and his family last episode. Sometimes referred to as Ō Chin’ni, or something similar, his name appears to be Sinic from somewhere on the continent. That likely explains how he was able to assist so much with the Goguryeo envoys.

Tsunoga Arashito

Another example of someone coming from the peninsula, a local ruler trying to impersonate the Yamato sovereign, and then arriving after the sovereign passed away, except that he was back in the era of Mimaki and Ikume Iribiko.

Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa

Named similar to Katsuraki no Naniwa, above. He was supposed to return shipwrecked envoys from Goguryeo.

Iwahi and Masa

Two of Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa’s men who accompanied envoys back to Goguryeo.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. This is Episode 86: All the Other Stuff
This episode I want to finish up the events of Ame Kunioshi’s reign. We’ve been following Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tenno, for a while and covered perhaps the things that he was remembered for most, as well as the two most large-scale disruptive things that happened around the time of his reign. First of these disruptions was everything going on on the continent, and the consensus appears to be that at this point we truly get into a period where the Korean peninsula is under the authority and control of the three main states—Baekje and Silla in the south, and Goguryeo in the north. Silla’s own power was on the rise—whereas it was always counted as something of a local power, it had gained enough might to take over the various statelets in its orbit, and with ambitions for more.
The second disruption, which we’ve covered in the last two episodes, is the arrival of Buddhism to Japan. As we noted, it is likely that Buddhism had come to the islands earlier, but it is in this reign—or slightly earlier—that it shows up in the historical record and is counted as something of interest to the court. We’ll follow up on this over the course of the next several reigns, as Buddhism, and its connection with the Soga family, play a large part in this period.
Speaking of the Soga Family, they once again tie in to what we’re going to focus on in the rest of this episode: the nitty-gritty of the rest of Ame Kunioshi’s reign, when we’re not focused on Buddhism or the continent. As we alluded to previously, the rise of Soga no Iname is another key factor of the politics at the time. The Ohotomo had had their moment at the top, and the Mononobe were still going strong, but Soga no Iname appears more and more in the record. Of course, all of this is based on a narrative compiled by members of the court centuries later, and so we should just keep in mind that we aren’t reading about all the things that happened, but just those things that were considered important to telling the story of Yamato and, perhaps even moreso, those things considered important to telling the story of the royal family.
Some of these entries make perfect sense in that context and others, well, not so much. I’ll do my best to make sense of it, but some of it may require more study and scholarship than I have time and access to, and if you have any thoughts, feel free send them in.
So let’s start with the biographical info. First, we have Ame Kunioshi’s queen, Ishihime. Just as Wohodo had married Tashiraka, a daughter of Ohoke no Ohokimi, aka Ninken Tennou, Ame Kunioshi’s queen, Ishihime, was also the daughter of a previous sovereign. In this case, though, she was technically Ame Kunioshi’s niece, as she was the daughter of his half-brother, Takewo Hiro Kunioshi no Ohokimi, aka Senka Tennou, but that just meant they continued the tradition of keeping it in the family.
Ishihime had two sons and one daughter. The eldest was Yata no Tamakatsu, presumably Ame Kunioshi’s Crown Prince, and then there was his younger brother, Wosada Nunakura Futodamashiki. They also had a sister, Kasanuhi, aka Satake.
Besides Ishihime, Ame Kunioshi is mentioned as having two other consorts. Kitashi Hime and Wonane-gimi, both daughters of Soga no Iname, the Oho-omi. Between them they gave birth to 11 sons and 7 daughters. Significantly, and without getting into too much detail, Kitashi Hime would give birth to three of the next four sovereigns, meaning that the Soga family would have their immediate relatives on the throne for over forty years.
By the way, to make that work out, at least according to the rules of succession that the Nihon Shoki seems to imply, the Soga family itself would need to be of imperial descent – and indeed, it is traced back to Takeuchi no Sukune, and through him to Ohotarashi Hiko no Ohokimi, aka Keikou Tennou. Of course, there is a lot of speculation in that lineage, and it was probably simply made up to help legitimize the Soga family and their royal offspring. On the flip side, Ishihime, Ame Kunioshi’s primary wife and the one recognized as Queen by the Nihongi, who would also produce a future sovereign, was clearly tied in to the royal lineage through maternal links to Ohoke no Ohokimi, aka Ninken Tennou.
There were a few other consorts, but I’m not going to go into every single one other than to say that Ame Kunioshi was clearly prolific—or a lot of lineages wanted to connect themselves back to him. He was quite popular, I guess.
Many of these consorts may have been taken before he was even sovereign. Tradition holds that he was born in 509 and came to the throne in 539, so already thirty years old. Of course some have tried to push that back, and if you recall, the previous sovereigns were supposedly just keeping the throne warm for him, something I don’t quite buy given his age when he finally did ascend. That assumes that the dates are correct, which is a rather big assumption.
So five years after Ame Kunioshi takes the throne, we have the first somewhat oddball event. It was a report from the land of Koshi, which, for those who don’t remember, is the area north of the Japan Alps on the Japan sea side of Honshu, from roughly the area of Ishikawa up to the Tohoku region. So, facing the continent and the peninsula – and apparently, in this year, there were men of Sushen who arrived on Sado Island, at Cape Minabe.
Sado Island is part of modern Niigata prefecture, sitting just a little to the west of modern Niigata city. It had been populated since at least the Jomon period, and in later centuries it would become a place of exile for powerful individuals who were on the political outs. In the Edo period they discovered gold and silver and there was a booming mining industry out there, and you can still go visit some of the old mines today. So that’s the first important thing about this report: it brings Sado into the picture, historically. Sado and the far reaches of Koshi—the influence of Yamato would seem to have grown.
Furthermore, who these unexpected arrivals to Sado were seems to be of some contention. The kanji used are the same that the continental records used for people called Sushen, who are believed to have been a Tungusic people living on the continent of Northeast Asia, possibly up towards modern Siberia. The Japanese, however, gave these characters a different gloss, pronouncing them as “Mishihase”. It is possible that the Mishihase were also Tungusic, or from a similar region of Northeast Asia, and hence the Japanese used the same characters. Or it is possible that they reused a name from the continental records for people living in the north of Japan or in the Okhostk Sea. I’ve seen suggestions that these were related to the Nivkh people or the Okhostk Culture from northern Hokkaido and Sakhalin islands.
The name “Mishihase” is interesting, because at this time, we know that there were a group of people that Yamato referred to as the Emishi living in the far Kanto regions and up into Tohoku. Many of the encounters with the Emishi in the Chronicles, however, appears to take place in regions that had at least transitioned to rice agriculture during the expansion of Yayoi culture, which had once reached up into the northern reaches of Tohoku before settling in the southern parts of Tohoku and down to Kyushu. Above that, archaeological evidence suggests that there was a continuation of Jomon culture, referred to generally as the Epi-Jomon or Zoku-Jomon, which existed in northern Tohoku and Hokkaido until the 7th century, when the cord-marked pottery gave way to a new type of scraped pottery, called Satsumon. Generally speaking the peoples of this area would all be lumped together by Yamato as Emishi, though there is some evidence of the use of the term “Saheki” as well and a few other local ethnonyms that pop up here and there.
The Okhotsk culture appears to have been north even of the Epi-Jomon and eventual Satsumon cultures, and may be related to the modern Nivkh people, who are indigenous to northern Sakhalin. I would note, however, that the Nivkh language is not Tungusic, but rather it is considered a language isolate, so these are not likely the Sushen of the continental records, but ancient people of Sakhalin may have been identified as such by the Yamato court, who simply saw them as being in a similar geographic relationship to Yamato.
Of course, it is also possible that a Tungusic people did take a ship and possibly sail out from the Amur river region, which enters the sea near the northern end of Sakhalin island, or some point north, and that they landed at Sado island, but much more likely it was someone from northern Tohoku, Hokkaido, or even Sakhalin. The Japanese would use the term “Mishihase” for a variety of people through the centuries, much as they would use the term “Emishi”, which makes this hard to pin down.
Wherever these people were from, they apparently arrived during the Spring and Summer and to catch fish for food, and the locals did what humans throughout history have done: They greeted them with open arms and welcomed them to their settlement. Oh, wait, scratch that. Nope, they decided that these people were different enough that they must not be human, called them devils, and refused to go near them. And so began what must have been quite the spring and summer as the locals of Sado kept watch on these strange fishermen, but from a nice, safe distance.
They may have had reason to be wary. At a village called Umu, the people had gathered acorns and covered them with ash. You see, acorns, for all that they seem to be the favorite of squirrels and other such woodland critters, are actually not all that great to eat. Sure, once you remove the cap and outer seed covering, they contain a lot of great nutrients, but many times they are also full of tannic acid. This is the same thing used to tan animal hides, so you can imagine that it might do a number to your insides, and it is rather astringent at that. That bitter taste is normally a clue that you probably shouldn’t eat too much of something.
Thousands of years ago, however, people learned a neat trick, and this seems to have been discovered independently in multiple areas. If the acorns are soaked in ash—often a mixture of ash and water—you can actually leach out the tannins in the acorns. After that, if you wash them and leave them to dry, there is a lot you can do with them, including creating a kind of acorn flour.
This is likely what the people of Umu were doing when the shells of the acorns turned into two men. The images of these men hovered about a foot over the fire and suddenly they started to fight. The villagers broke up the fight and took the shells to a courtyard, where they started to do the same thing. Based on this strange omen, combined with the general human mistrust of outsiders, the people of Umu determined that the strangers meant them harm. Sure enough, the fishermen showed up at the village soon after and plundered it.
Now I can’t say I put much stock in this supernatural fight night, but a lot of this general story seems to be reasonable enough. Fishermen from the Japan Sea or even the Sea of Okhostk could easily have made their way south along the coasts, looking for new and better fishing spots. A local village, particularly one more interested in harvesting the bounty of the land than the bounty of the sea, may have chosen to just ignore the strangers and hope they would go away. And of course, either side could have just as easily raided the other if they felt up to it—no supernatural explanation needed.
Eventually the foreigners apparently settled at Senagawa Bay—probably one of the areas of Sado Island—where it is said that there was a kami that lived there called “Mishihase no Kuma”, or the “Bear of the Mishihase”, or “Sushen”. It is said that anyone who tried to drink the water at Senagawa Bay would immediately drop dead, and that the bones of unfortunate travelers littered the spot.
It isn’t that hard to imagine an area near the shore with an apparently inviting stream or other water source that turned out to be less than ideal, and certainly a story like this could have been a local tradition, handed down to ensure that nobody gave in to temptation. In a place like Japan I suspect that there are all sorts of things that could have gotten into a water source and been largely undetectable.
The name of the kami though is particularly interesting, at least to me. Mishihase no Kuma. As we mentioned, the kanji for “Sushen” is often read in Japanese as “Mishihase”, and “kuma” is bear. Furthermore, we know that the modern Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido and northern Honshu, are known for their close association with bears in their religious worship, including a somewhat controversial bear ritual, known as Iomante, that was once outlawed, but has deep roots in some Ainu cultural practices. Likewise there are also bear connections with the Nivkh people and others in northeast Asia and Siberia, so it doesn’t seem too farfetched that people from Hokkaido or points north would be associated with a bear kami. Then again, it could be coincidence. Bears show up across multiple cultures. But in short: although the Chronicles say that the kami was already present, it’s easy to imagine that an area settled by visitors from a different culture to the north could have left a stamp on the area such that those cultural differences were preserved in the local lore about the area’s kami, and back-dated to time immemorial.
So that covers the goings-on in Sado. Two years later, in 546, the court received another report, but this one was from closer to home, from Imaki, in Yamato. Apparently two years earlier—so around the same year that the report from Cape Minabe came in—there was a man named Kawahara Tami no Atahe no Miya, and he bought a horse. Well, okay, it wasn’t quite that simple. Miya was apparently in the upper story of a building, looking out, when he noticed a horse. Now this horse was bred from the mares which transported food offerings from the fishermen of Kii to the sovereign’s own table. As Miya was watching this young horse, it suddenly saw a shadow, which caused it quite the fright—not entirely surprising, as horses are notoriously skittish. What was surprising, though, was how the horse let out a great neigh and suddenly leapt completely over its mothers back.
Miya immediately knew he had to have that horse, and he went down and bought it right there on the spot. Later people marveled at the horse, which was tame and broken, but a different temperament than most. Anyone who has worked with horses will tell you that they each can have very different personalities, much like people. This horse was special, however, as its leaping days were far from over. In fact, it is said that it once leapt over a ravine at Ouchi that was said to be 180 feet wide. That’s more than half a football field in length—and that’s regardless of if you are talking about soccer or American hand-egg, though maybe not quite Aussie rules.
Alright, so Miya has an awesome horse. Great. Why do we care? In fact, why do we care about any of this? The report from Sado – Koshi – had at least added somewhat to the court’s scope: it mentioned another people, put them in relationship to the Center of Yamato, and demonstrated Yamato’s far-flung reach that they were even getting reports from as far away as Sado Island. But Miya and his horse were close to home, so why this report was noteworthy is less obvious. Okay, so there is the mention of the tribute from Kii, which was a kind of food tax sent in to the Yamato court, which may have been something that the Chroniclers wanted to note for some reason. There may be a few other things going on, though.
For one, Miya is said to have lived in or near Hinokuma. And his name, Kawahara, is also the name of the location of one of the early temples in the Asuka area. The Asuka area, of course, was where the Soga family were dominant, and would play a large role as the location of different palaces and, eventually, Buddhist temples. So it is possible that this was all related geographically to the region, to the Soga, and, through the Soga’s political marriages and influence on the court, to the royal lineage.
This is speculation on my part, however. It is also possible that it had something to do with the horses, and possibly even with the way that they were described on the continent in nearly mythical terms. It wasn’t enough to get a horse, but it had to be a horse of particularly good stock and breeding. Who knows, maybe we’ll see connections that make more sense later in the Chronicles, as sometimes these kinds of Chekovian guns don’t go off until several reigns later—if at all.
Like the story of Miya and his horse, many of the other accounts of this period have to do with various individuals and some of it makes a lot more sense in terms of the Chroniclers’ ambitions. For instance, in 552 we are told that Prince Yata no Tamakatsu no Ohoye no Miko died. It is a short entry, and we really hadn’t encountered Yata no Tamakatsu much before this, other than seeing that he was the eldest son of Ame Kunioshi and his queen, Ishihime. In fact, that appears to be what is meant by “Ohoye” in his name. That likely means he was also the Crown Prince, although he is never named as such. This is par for the course in the narrative up to this point, though—Crown Princes who don’t succeed to the throne are rarely named as such unless there was something else that they did.
Sure enough, two years later, Nunakura Futodamashiki, Yata no Tamakatsu’s younger brother, is named Crown Prince. He would eventually succeed to the throne, and is remembered today as Bidatsu Tennou.
Speaking of death, things were not great in the archipelago during this time. Remember how in 552 they said that Buddhism had come, and then also been rejected, because of a pestilence? Well apparently it wasn’t just disease that hit because flooding came, and that brought with it famine.
Japan is no stranger to heavy rains. In fact, even today the islands experience hurricanes, or “taifuu”, in Japanese, bringing tremendous rain and winds. Even without the winds, though, rains can come that wash out hillsides and flood rivers and valleys. An “Ooyu”, or Big Rain, is nothing to sneeze at in the mountainous islands of Japan, so it is quite believable that a particularly heavy rainy season, coming after years of pestilence, might have brought extensive damage across the land. The Chronicles claim that it got so bad that some people even resorted to cannibalism.
Fortunately the Yamato court officials were learning a phrase that may strike fear into the hearts of anti-establishment types everywhere: “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” Except, in this case they absolutely were. All of those taxes that had been acquired in the form of rice payments had been collected and stored in granaries, which not only helped to pay for the various public works that the court wanted to undertake, like setting up their base in Kyushu, but now they could literally just open up the granaries and feed people. And that’s what they did. The royal granaries helped alleviate the hunger so that people could get through the year.
Of course, just because people were able to eat and get on with their lives didn’t mean that death wasn’t still an ever-present threat. Granted, not everyone gets their own obituary in the Chronicles, but those in the elite circles often were considered worth a note. Sure enough, in 570, we are told that Soga no Iname, the Oho-omi, died, just one year before the sovereign, Ame Kunioshi, would also pass away.
Soga no Iname’s death was no doubt a big event; he was the head of a power family and the Oho-omi, or Great Minister. Not only is he connected with the first instance of Buddhism in the archipelago, but, once again, two of his daughters had married Ame Kunioshi, and while it may not have been known at the time, the Chroniclers certainly knew the importance of this figure who would have at least three grandchildren take the throne. On top of that, his own son, Soga no Umako, would succeed him a couple of years later, and he would be close with another Soga relative, the prince Umayado, or the Prince of the Stable Door. But we’ll get to him in a later episode.
Before we finish there are two other entries that I want to touch on. I mentioned this is somewhat random right?
The first event is the Slander of Utayori. So here we are told that in the 6th month of 562, a person—we don’t know who—slandered a man named Umakahi no Omi no Utayori. They claimed that they had seen his wife with a new saddle that looked suspiciously like the Queen’s saddle. I guess that the charge was that he had stolen the queen’s saddle, or possibly made a replica of it. I’m not entirely sure.
Either way, the court was not happy and so they sent someone to investigate. Of course, this was centuries before Sherlock Holmes, or even before the famous Judge Dee, and so investigative methods were more like harsh interrogation, to the point of torture, to get a confession. You may recall back in Episode 60 something similar happened when the envoys from Silla had come to pay their respects upon the death of Woasatsuma Wakugo no Ohokimi, aka Ingyou Tennou, and the then prince Ohohatsuse Wakatake, later known as Yuryaku Tenno, had basically arrested and interrogated them after a misunderstanding, creating a bit of an international incident.
Of course, at this time, there was no concept of “Innocent until proven guilty”. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, there was a general belief that if someone was accusing you of something then even if you weren’t truly guilty of that particular crime you must have done something to upset the social balance, or else why would someone accuse you and risk their own reputation? The fact that many people would confess under such conditions just to get the interrogation to stop is unsurprising—modern studies have shown that information gained through torture as an interrogation technique is highly suspect, despite how much the movies like to use it.
In this case, however, Utayori wouldn’t break. He maintained his innocence throughout the entire interrogation, until he eventually died in custody.
Now when this happened, there were apparently numerous calamities at the Palace, though since there was no Buddhist threat, the Mononobe and Nakatomi seem to have stayed quiet about it all. In fact, they were either seen as not connected at all or that somehow it was just more proof that Utayori was guilty, because Utayori’s sons, Morishi and Nasehi were then arrested. They were sentenced to be “cast into the fire”, which was apparently an ancient form of execution, akin to burning at the stake, though the officer tasked with this duty was apparently reluctant to do so. I guess at least someone had been paying attention.
This concerned officer himself received a reprieve when Utayori’s wife, the two sons’ mother, appeared and she made a kind of curse-prayer promise-threat. She said, “If my children are to be flung into the fire, surely a great calamity will follow. Therefore I beseech thee to hand them over to the Hafuri to be a slave in service to the gods.”
Given her ardent prayer—and perhaps others wondering about the calamities, not to mention how much Utayori had protested his own innocence—the sons of Utayori had their sentences commuted and instead they were forced to work for the hafuri, or priests, likewise toiling for the upkeep of a shrine or similar religious institution.
This whole episode seems rather odd. The accuser is never named. Utayori seems to be clearly innocent from the Chronicle’s point of view—it doesn’t exactly do the ancient justice system any favors. It is fortunate, for us, however, as it gives us another glimpse into how things apparently operated in ancient Yamato.
Finally, we are at our last story from this reign, and it is interesting not just because of some of the implications for foreign relations, but also because it spanned the course of two reigns. The story starts in the fourth month of 570, and it once again it takes place in Koshi of all places. Apparently ships carrying envoys from Goguryeo had gone significantly off-course and landed all the way up there. How exactly they’d gotten there isn’t clear. Had they come down the normal route, and somehow missed the straits and the entrance to the Seto Inland Sea? Or had they sailed off the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula, perhaps in an attempt to find another way to Japan. Seafaring ships were apparently getting better. By 512, Silla had annexed the island of Uleung, which had been inhabited since ancient times, but is still a staggering 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, east of the Korean peninsula. Still, that is not nearly as far as crossing the Korea strait, which is about 200 kilometers, or 120 miles, if you avoid island hopping along the way. Not that such distances can’t be crossed, but it is just rather significant, so when they say that they had lost their way, that seems accurate.
The envoys also didn’t seem to know much about the geography of the archipelago. Certainly, they weren’t the first from Goguryeo in Japan—there had been earlier immigrants, including a group that ended up in Kyushu and were eventually resettled in Yamashiro. But these envoys landed somewhere in Koshi, and there they met with a local ruler, Michi no Ushi, who claimed to be the true sovereign of Yamato, accepting the tribute that the Goguryeo envoys had brought with them.
Of course, this caused a bit of a problem as word of the envoys’ arrival was not exactly kept a state secret, and word quickly spread down to the actual Yamato court of their arrival, though that was delayed a bit as the court was on vacation. Ame Kunioshi and the entire court had gone down to Shibagaki, in Hase, possibly for hunting or some other such excursion, and so it wasn’t until they got back that they sent off Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Arako and Katsuraki no Atahe no Naniwa to go up and meet with the envoys and bring them down. In the meantime, they also began to prepare accommodations for them in Sagaraka in Yamashiro.
By the 5th month, it was Kashiwade no Omi no Katabeko who was the one to first meet the envoys. He came to the mansion of Michi no Ushi, who recognized a representative of the Yamato court and prostrated himself in front of him. At this point the Goguryeo envoys realized that something was up, and that they had apparently made something of a mistake. They demanded that Michi no Ushi return the tribute that they had given him. Katabeko helped arrange all of that and then went back to the court with word of where things stood.
Once the tribute was gathered up, the envoys proceeded on foot down from the Japan Sea coast to Afumi, aka Lake Biwa. With all of the preparations required, they arrived in the 7th month of that year, three months since they had first landed. There they were met by Kose no Omi and Kishi no Akabato, who had come upriver with a decorative barge from the port of Naniwa. They hauled it up to Mount Sasanami, and met the envoys at Kitayama, the North Mountain, in Afumi. From there they traveled downriver, finally arriving at the official residence of Komahi in Yamashiro. From there, they were handed off to Yamato no Aya no Saka-no-Uhe no Atahe no Komaro and Nishikori no Obito no Ohoshi, who took them to the official residence of Sagaraka, which had been prepared for them.
Now I know there are a lot of names in this, but bear with me. For one, there are a lot of Yamato no Aya, one of the groups of Aya, descended from continental weavers, and probably still considered to have continental ties. Then there is the “Nishikori” reference, which is another family that will show up with some ties to mainland traditions.
It is interesting to see how many people were involved in all of this, but also how long it took. It was at least three months from the time they arrived to getting them settled into an official residence. And they sat there for a while, likely until a schedule could be set for their audience with Ame Kunioshi. Unfortunately, before that could happen, tragedy struck. The Nihon Shoki claims that at some point the sovereign took to his bed, sick and ill at ease, and then, in the 4th month of the following year, 571, he passed away.
Nunakura, the Crown Prince, would take on the mantle of sovereign. And after seeing his father buried in Hinokuma, of all places, one of his first orders of business was to greet the Goguryeo envoys and apologize for their long wait—still, the burial of Ame Kunioshi and the ceremonies for enthronement—as well as setting up or confirming court officials, such as the new Oho-omi, Soga no Umako—amust have taken some time, as it was now 572, some two years since the envoys had arrived in the archipelago.
Besides the tribute, the envoys also brought a memorial from Goguryeo—a letter from their sovereign to the sovereign of Yamato, but none of the scribes could read it, not even the envoys, apparently. The memorial wasn’t just a piece of paper, after all—instead, the Goguryeo king had his message inscribed on black crows’ feathers, and then the memorial was brushed on in black ink. Unfortunately—or perhaps deliberately—this made the message a little difficult to read, as it was black on black, and just making out the characters was tough. Here’s where a little continental ingenuity came in to play, for it was none other than Wang Jinnie, whom we talked about last episode, who had a solution.
You may recall that Wang Jinnie was an ally of the Soga family. He had been made the Funa no Fubito, or recorder of ships, by Soga no Iname, and Soga no Iname and his son, Umako, had also played a roll in the advancement of at least two of his sons. Jinnie used a trick where he held the feathers in the steam of boiling rice, and then pressed the feathers to paper to transfer the letters, which could then be read. For this he received high praise from Nunakura no Ohokimi and from the new Oho-omi, Soga no Umako. Jinnie was also able to provide a translation of the memorial, which we assume was the standard diplomatic jargon, as no copy of it is given in the record.
Their message delivered, back at the residence, the Chief Envoy from Goguryeo had apparently berated his assistance. He was pissed at the debacle of the whole thing. Not only had they gone off course, but the tribute had been delivered to the wrong person! Sure, they had eventually sorted things out, but it was no doubt a huge embarrassment.
This left his entourage in a bit of a pickle. As they had delivered the tribute and the memorial, it would soon be time for them to return home, and once they got there, the Chief Envoy’s report would no doubt be the end of their careers—and possibly even their lives if they were held liable for embarrassing their king and country like that. And so they were resolved that the only way they could go home is if the Chief Envoy was not with them, and they decided, then and there, to kill him.
The Chief Envoy got wind of the attack, but it was too late, and he didn’t know what to do. He headed out into the courtyard of the official residence where they were staying. As soon as he was out in the open, one of the assassins ran out, hit him with a club, and then disappeared again. Then someone came from his righthand side and struck him with another club. Then someone rushed in and stabbed him with a sword in the belly and ran off. As the Chief Envoy fell to his knees, prostrating himself and begging for his life, yet another assailant rushed out from the darkness and finished him off.
The body was found the next morning. The official entertainer, Yamato no Aya no Saka-no-uhe no Atahe no Komaro, who had been given the duty back in the reign of Ame Kunioshi, heard about it and asked what had happened. According to the various Associate Envoys, they claimed that the Chief Envoy had been “disobedient”. They said that he had disrespected Nunakura by refusing a wife that the sovereign had presented, and the Associate Envoys were so embarrassed by this that they killed him to make up for the snub.
This seems to have satisfied the Yamato court, who buried the Chief Envoy with full honors and sent the rest of the delegation on its way.
This whole episode is interesting, and seems plausible. There likely were the unfortunate times that diplomatic missions went astray, and they could stay at a foreign court for months or years. After all, it wasn’t like there were regular flights back and forth, and courts had to expect a long lag time between communications.
There is also an interesting parallel here with the story of Tsunoga Arashito, whom we discussed in episode 30. Prince Tsunoga was supposedly descended from the King of Great Kara, rather than Goguryeo, and he is said to have arrived during the time of Mimaki Iribiko, aka Sujin Tennou. Like the Goguryeo envoys, the local ruler of the place where he stopped—in that case Anato—claimed that he was the ruler of Yamato, but rather than stopping, he continued around the northern coast, past Izumo, and eventually down to Yamato that way. By the time he did all of that, though, Mimaki Iribiko had died and his son, Ikume Iribiko, aka Suinin Tennou, had taken the throne and was the one to receive him.
Either this act of impersonating the ruler of Yamato was not exactly a new trick, or the Chroniclers were possibly borrowing some details between stories. It is hard to say for sure, but certainly worth a look.
This was not the last that the archipelago would see of Goguryeo envoys. In the following year, another group of envoys came through Koshi. Unfortunately there was an accident, and their ship was wrecked and many of them drowned—probably along with any tribute. The court itself was starting to get a little suspicious about all of this, as it was the second time they’d had problems and come through the northern ports. Rather than entertaining them—possibly because the tribute and any memorial were lost—the court sent Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa to escort the envoys back home.
Two months later, Naniwa was up in Koshi and had acquired two ships. Two of Naniwa’s men, Iwahi and Masa, were sent aboard the Goguryeo boat, while two of the envoys traveled with Naniwa, a not-uncommon hostage situation for the time. However, several leagues out, the waves started getting rough. Naniwa grew scared, and in order to calm the waves he yeeted his hostages overboard—either to appease the kami or possibly to get rid of bad luck that they had brought with them. At that point there was no way that he could show up in Goguryeo and explain what had happened, and so he turned around. Back in Yamato he gave a whole story of how a Whale and other fish had risen up and were preventing any boat from rowing out, and so that is why they were in Goguryeo at the moment.
However, the problem with lies is that you often have to face the truth, eventually. In this case, retribution came in the form of yet another diplomatic mission. When the envoys arrived at the court, they brought back their guests, Iwahi and Masa, who had been treated as befitted envoys of a foreign land, and they asked about what had happened to the men on the other ship.
Nunakura, who hadn’t quite trusted Naniwa’s account in the first place, was now positive that Naniwa had thrown the envoys over and then lied to cover it up. And so we are told that Naniwa was punished, which probably meant that he was put to death.
And that about wraps up the stories of the Goguryeo envoys. Regardless of anything else, we can see that Yamato is in regular diplomatic contact with various peninsular powers, at the very least. And we are now into the reign of Nunakura no Ohokimi, aka Bidatsu Tennou. And we’ll get to him, but next episode I might try something a little different.
You see, for the most part we are following what we have in various Chronicles, but there is a lot that the Chronicles don’t go into. For one thing, there are day-to-day items that just don’t get mentioned, but even larger events that seem to go unnoticed. We’ll talk about one such event with the two eruptions of Mt. Haruna, and we’ll talk about how some of the picture is being made clearer through the work of archaeology.
Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode.
Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

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

Episode 85: The Buddha Comes to Japan

May 1, 2023 Joshua Badgley

Sun setting over the hills that form part of the valley around Asuka. In the 6th century this was the territory of the Soga family, and the location of some of the earliest known Buddhist temples in Japan.

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This episode we look at the first attempt to establish Buddhism in Japan, and even though it may have had a rough go of it, this is generally considered to be the start of Japanese Buddhism and also, by some accounts, the true start of the Asuka period, which was characterized by the rise of Buddhism and Buddhist institutions, among other things.

Who’s Who

Ame Kunioshi no Ōkimi, aka Kimmei Tennō

The current sovereign in our narrative. It is unclear when, exactly his reign started and even the role he played vice the various other ministers. This is further brought into question due to the clear attempts by the Chroniclers to portray him as more powerful and involved than he may have actually been.

Soga no Iname no Sukune

Soga no Iname is perhaps one of the most active participants in this narrative. He is the head of the Soga family and the current Ōmi. We know that he resided in the area of Oharida and Mukuhara, in modern Asuka area. He was the first Soga no Ōmi mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, and he hits the ground running. While many previous Ōmi are less than prominent figures in the narrative, Soga no Iname is clearly doing the most with his time in office. In addition to his official position, he had also manuevered two of his daughters into marrying Ame Kunioshi, meaning that he had a very good chance to play grandfather to future sovereigns, or at least members of the royal family.

The Soga family is later said to descend from Takeuchi no Sukune and Ishikawa no Sukune, though this is questionable. More reasonable is the lineage from Soga no Machi to Soga no Karako and Soga no Kōma down to Soga no Iname.

Mononobe no Okoshi

At this point in the story, Mononobe no Okoshi was Ōmuraji, the head of the Mononobe house. He had a powerful lineage, being descended from preivous Ōmuraji who had held the position since at least the time of Wakatake no Ōkimi back in the 5th century.

Wang Jinnie and his children

Wang Jinnie (aka “Ō Shinni” or “Ō Chinni”) is something of an enigmatic figure. He shows up a few times, but his surname name (王) would appear to mark him as having come from the continent. He seems to be involved with recording ships and other such administrative tasks. He has a son, Itsu—or possibly something like “Danchin”, if you use the old Chinese reading—also has a role to play.

Immigrants provided the Yamato court an extremely useful population. They were generally skilled in various arts and technologies, including the technology of government. And so they understood how to read and write and what was necessary to administer different parts of the state. At the same time, immigrants would not necessarily have the same local or regional ties in the archipelago. Members of established families would have ties to the land and the people, which made them useful for administering those areas, but also made them potential threats. Despite what the Chronicles would like us to believe, the central authority was not yet that solidified, and succession could still be an issue.

In such a climate, it is relatively easy to see how immigrants could be useful as they would not have the same political baggage attached to them as members of the local elite.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 85: The Buddha Comes to Japan.
Last couple episodes we’ve talked about Buddhism. We talked about its origins in the Indian subcontinent, with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, aka Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, and how those teachings spread out from India to Gandhara, and then followed the trade routes across the harsh deserts of the Tarim Basin, through the Gansu corridor, and into the Yellow and Yangzi River Valleys. From there the teachings made it all the way to the Korean peninsula, and to the country of Baekje, Yamato’s chief ally on the peninsula.
This episode we’ll look at how Buddhism came to the archipelago and its initial reception there. For some of this we may need to span several reigns, as we’ll be looking at events from early to late 6th century. This is also about more than just religion, and so we may need to dive back into some of the politics we’ve covered up to this point as well. Hopefully we can bring it all together in the end, but if it is a bit of a bumpy ride, just hang with me for a bit.
So let’s start with the official account in the Nihon Shoki, which we already mentioned two episodes ago: the first mention of Buddhism in the Chronicles. The year was 552, or the 13th year in the reign of Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tennou. That winter, during the 10th month—which was probably closer to December or January on a modern calendar—King Seongmyeong of Baekje had a special gift for his counterpart, the sovereign of Yamato. By this time there are numerous accounts of gifts to Yamato, generally in conjunction with the Baekje-Yamato alliance and Baekje’s requests for military support in their endeavors on the peninsula, generally framed in the Yamato sources as centering on the situation of the country of Nimna.
In this case, the gift was a gilt-bronze image of Shakyamuni Buddha, several flags and umbrellas, and a number of volumes of Buddhist sutras. King Seongmyeong sent a memorial explaining his intent: “This doctrine” (aka Buddhism) “is amongst all doctrines the most excellent. But it is hard to explain, and hard to comprehend. Even the Duke of Zhou and Confucius had not attained to a knowledge of it. This doctrine can create religious merit and retribution with appreciation of the highest wisdom. Imagine a man in possession of treasures to his heart’s content, so that he might satisfy all his wishes in proportion as he used them. Thus it is with the treasure of this wonderful doctrine. Every prayer is fulfilled and naught is wanting. Moreover, from distant India it has extended hither to the three Han, where there are none who do not receive it with reverence as it is preached to them.
“Thy servant, therefore, Myeong, King of Baekje, has humbly dispatched his retainer, Nuri Sacchi, to transmit it to the Imperial Country, and to diffuse it abroad throughout the home provinces, so as to fulfil the recorded saying of Buddha: ‘My law shall spread to the East.’ “
Upon receiving all of these things and hearing the memorial, we are told that the sovereign, Ame Kunioshi, literally leapt for joy. He thanked the envoys, but then put the question to his ministers as to how they should proceed. Soga no Iname no Sukune, holding the position of Oho-omi, recommended that they should worship the statue of the Buddha. After all, if all of the “Western Frontier lands” were worshipping it, then should Yamato really be left out?
On the other side of the argument were Mononobe no Okoshi as well as Nakatomi no Kamako. They argued against stopping the traditional worship of the 180 kami of Heaven and Earth and replacing it with worship of some foreign religion.
With this split decision, Ame Kunioshi decided to have Soga no Iname experiment, first. He told him to go ahead and worship the image and see what happens. And so Soga set it up at his house in Oharida, purified it, and, per Buddhist tradition, retired from the world. He had another house, in nearby Mukuhara, purified and made into a temple. Here he began to worship the Buddha.
Around that same time, there was a pestilence—a disease—that was in the land. People were getting sick and some were dying. This was likely not unprecedented. Healthcare was not exactly up to our modern standards, and while many good things traveled the trade routes, infection and disease likely used them as pathways as well. So diseases would pop up, on occasion. In this instance, though, Mononobe no Okoshi and Nakatomi no Kamako seized on it as their opportunity. They went to Ame Kunioshi and they blamed Soga no Iname and his worship of the Buddha for the plague.
Accordingly, the court removed the statue of the Buddha and tossed it into the canal at Naniwa, and then they burned down Soga no Iname’s temple—which, as you may recall, was basically his house. As soon as they did that, though, Ame Kunioshi’s own Great Hall burst into flames, seemingly out of nowhere, as it was otherwise a clear day.
Little more is said about these events, but that summer there were reports from Kawachi of Buddhist chants booming out of the sea of Chinu near the area of Idzumi. Unate no Atahe was sent to investigate and found an entire log of camphorwood that was quote-unquote “Shining Brightly”. So he gave it to the court, where we are told they used it to have two Buddha images made, which later were installed in a temple in Yoshino; presumably at a much later date.
And then the Chronicles go quiet for the next couple decades, at least on the subject of Buddhism, but this is the first official account of it coming over, and there is quite a bit to unpack. For one thing, the memorials and speeches once again seem like something that the Chroniclers added because it fit with their understanding of the narrative, including their insistence that Yamato was a fully fledged imperial state, and there is some fairly good evidence that King Seongmyeong’s memorial is clearly anachronistic. But there are a few other things, and conflicting records on things such as dates and similar.
So first off, let’s acknowledge that there are too many things in the main narrative in the Chronicles that are just questionable, such as the sovereign “leaping with joy” at the chance to hear about Buddhism, and the fact that King Seongmyeong’s memorial apparently quotes a part of the sutra of the Sovereign Kings of Golden Light, known in Japanese as the Konkoumyou-saishou-ou-kyou, but that translation wasn’t done until 703, during the Tang dynasty, by the monk Yijing in the city of Chang’an. While it would have been known to knowledgable monks like Doji, who may have been helping put the narrative together in 720, it is unlikely that it was in use during the 6th century, when the memorial is said to have been written.
In addition, there is question about the date that all of this supposedly happened. The Nihon Shoki has this event taking place in 552, well into the reign of Ame Kunioshi. However, there are at least two 8th century sources, roughly contemporary with the writing of the Nihon Shoki, the Gangoji Garan Engi and the Jouguuki, and both of these put the date at 538, a good fourteen years earlier, and in the era of Ame Kunioshi’s predecessor, Takewo Hiro Kunioshi, aka Senka Tenno. The first of these, the Gangoji Garan Engi, is a record of the founding of the first permanent temple in Japan, Gangoji, aka Hokoji or, informally, Asukadera, which was founded by Soga no Iname’s heir, Soga no Umako. More on the temple itself, later, but for now we want to focus on the historical aspects of this account, which mostly corroborate the story, talking about Soga no Iname’s role in receiving the image and enshrining it, as well as the early conflict between the Soga clan and their rivals. The other source, the Joguki, focuses on the life of Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado, who will become a major subject of our narrative at the end of the 6th and early 7th centuries. Not only is he considered the father of Japanese Buddhism, but he had strong connections to the Soga family. Today, most scholars accept the 538 date over the 552 date when talking about Buddhism’s initial arrival into the islands

If the Chroniclers did move the event from 538 to 552, one has to wonder why. This isn’t a simple matter of being off by 60 years, and thus attributable to a mistake in the calendrical sexagenary zodiac cycle of stems and branches, so there must have been something else. One suggestion is that the date conflicted with the chronology that had already been set for the sovereigns. 538 is during the reign of Takewo no Ohokimi, aka Senka Tenno, but what if succession was not quite as cut and dried as all that? What if Ame Kunioshi no Ohokimi had his own court and was in some way ruling at the same time as his half-brothers, Magari no Ohine and Takewo no Ohokimi? They were from different mothers, and thus different factions at court. Ame Kunioshi was young, so it was possible that there were rival lineages attempting to rule, or even some kind of co-ruler deal hearkening back to more ancient precedent. Some even theorize that Magari no Ohine and Takewo Hiro Kunioshi were simply fictional inserts to help span the period between Wohodo and Ame Kunioshi.
Whatever the reason, this theory suggests that it would not have happened in the 13th year of Ame Kunioshi’s reign, but that his reign started in 526, rather than 540. An intriguing hypothesis, but one that begs the question of whether everything in the reign would then need to be shifted to account for that. Given that there are a few attributable events noted that fit with outside sources as well, that doesn’t seem quite as plausible without some very conscious efforts to change the timeline.
Another thought is that the compilers weren’t sure exactly when this event happened, but given Ame Kunioshi’s reputation and long reign, they chose his reign to place it in because it just fit. I suspect that this happened more than once, with people more likely attributing past events to well-remembered sovereigns. If this is the case, then when searching for a date they may have just chosen one that seemed auspicious. In this case, 552 CE was, in some reckonings, an important year in Buddhist history, as there were those who say it as the beginning of the age of “mappou”, the “End of the Law” or perhaps the “Latter days of the Law”.
This definitely is an intriguing theory, and resonates strongly. For most of Japanese history, the idea that we are in this period of “mappo” has had a strong influence, and to a certain extent it is kind of an apocalyptic view of things. The idea of mappo is that while the Buddha was alive, his teachings were fresh and available to all living things. However, after his death, his teachings had to be remembered and passed on. Even with the advent of writing, the meaning and understanding of his teachings, and thus an understanding of dharma, would also atrophy. Different translations, changes in meaning, and just bits and pieces lost to time would mean that for the first 500 to 1,000 years, the Buddha’s disciples would keep things well and the meaning would be protected, but in the next 500 to 1,000 years things would decline, but still be pretty close to the truth. Then – and this is when the period of “mappo” starts - things would really start to decline, until finally, about 5,000 to 10,000 years later—or about 1,000 to 12,000 years after the time of the historical Buddha—things would break down, factions would be fighting one another, and eventually everyone would have forgotten the dharma entirely. It was only then that there would come a new Buddha, Miroku or Maitreya, who would once again teach about the dharma and how to escape suffering, and the whole cycle would start again.
The year 552 would have coincided, according to some estimates, with 1,000 years since the time of Siddhartha Gautama, and so it would have had particular significance to the people of that time, particularly if you counted each of the first two Ages as 500 years each, meaning that the word of the Buddha, that his teachings would spread to the East, would have been completed just as we entered the latter days of the Law.
Regardless of the time—and, as I said earlier, 538 is the more accepted date—the general events described – the statue, the offer of Soga to experiment, and the resulting events - are usually agreed to, although even here we must pause, slightly and ask a few questions.
First off, was this truly the first time that Buddhism had ever shown up in Japan? The answer to that is probably not. There had been many waves of immigrants that had come over to Japan from the peninsula, and even if only a small handful of them had adopted the new religion before coming over it is likely that there were pockets of worshippers. Later, we will see that there are people in Japan who are said to have had prior experience as a monk, or who had their own Buddhist images. These images were probably used by people in their homes—there is no evidence of any particular temples that had been built, privately or otherwise, and so there is no evidence that we have any active monks or nuns in the archipelago, but who knows what was going on in communities outside of the elite core? There were plenty of things that were never commented on if it wasn’t directly relevant to the court.
Furthermore, with all of the envoys that had been to Baekje, surely some of them had experience with Buddhism. And then there were the envoys *from* Baekje, who no doubt brought Buddhist practices with them. So there was likely some kind of familiarity with the religion’s existence, even if it wasn’t necessarily fully understood.
The second point that many people bring up is the role of the sovereign, Ame Kunioshi, or whomever was in charge at the time that the first image came over. While the Nihon Shoki attempts to portray a strong central government with the sovereign at its head, we’ve already seen how different households had arisen and taken some measure of power for themselves. At the end of the 5th and into the early 6th century, the Ohotomo and Mononobe houses were preeminent, with Ohotomo Kanamura taking on actions such as negotiating dealings with the continent and even manuevering around the Crown Prince. The Mononobe wielded considerable authority through their military resources, and now, the Soga appeared to ascendant. It is quite possible that the idea of the sovereign giving any sort of permission or order to worship Buddhism is simply a political fig leaf added by the Chroniclers. The Soga may have been much more independent in their views and dealings. To better understand this, let’s take a look at the uji family system and the Soga family in particular.
Now the Nihon Shoki paints a picture as though these noble uji families were organic, and simply part of the landscape, descending from the kami in the legendary age, with lineages leading down to the present day, although there is some acknowledgment that the earliest ancestors did not necessarily use the family names until a later date. For much of Japanese history, the concept that these family, or uji, were one of the core building blocks of ancient Japanese political and cultural spheres is taken as a matter of course. However, in more modern studies, this view has been questioned, and now the prevailing view is that these families are somewhat different. In fact, the uji are likely just as much an artificial construct as the corporate -Be family labor groups.
According to this theory, early on people were associated with local groups and places. Outside of the immediate family, groups were likely held together by their regional ties as much as anything else. Names appear to be locatives, with ancient titles indicating the -hiko or -hime of this or that area.
Some time in the 5th century, Yamato—and possibly elsewhere in the peninsula—began to adopt the concept of -Be corporate groups from Baekje. We talked about this back in Episode 63, using the Hata as a prime example of how these groups were brought together. More importantly, though, was that each of these -Be groups reported to someone in the court, sometimes with a different surname. These were the uji, created along with the -Be to help administer the labor and work of running the state. They were essentially arms of the state itself, in many ways. The kabane system of titles emphasizes this, with different families having different ranks depending on what they did, whether locally, regionally, or at the central court. Some of these titles, like -Omi and -Kimi, were likely once actual jobs, but eventually it came to represent something more akin to a social ranking.
There have been some questions and emails asking for a bit more in depth on this, and I’d really like to, but I’m afraid that would be too much for now. At the moment I want to focus more on the uji, particularly on those at the top - the uji with the kabane of either Omi or Muraji, as these are the ones most likely to be helping to directly run the government. They even had their own geographical areas within the Nara basin, and elsewhere, that were uji strongholds. The Hata had areas near modern Kyoto, the Mononobe clearly had claims to land around Isonokami, in modern Tenri, and the Soga clan had their holdings in the area of modern Asuka and Kashihara city. At the very least, that is where Soga no Iname’s house was—in Mukuhara and Oharida, both located in the modern area of Asuka, which will become important in the future.
It wasn’t just the landholdings that were important, though. Each uji had some part to play in the functioning of the government. In many cases it was the production or control of a particular service, such as the Hata and silk weaving, or the Mononobe and their affinity with all things military. For the Soga, they appear to have had a rather interesting portfolio.
Traditionally, the Soga family is said to trace its lineage back to Takechi no Sukune, the first Oho-omi back in the time of Okinaga no Tarashi Hime and Homuda Wake no Ohokimi—see episode 46 for more on him. That lineage is likely fabricated, however, and the earliest actual evidence for the family may be from the Kogoshui, where we are told that Soga no Machi was put in charge of the Three Treasuries. These were the Imikura, or sacred treasury; the Uchikura, or royal household treasury; and the Ohokura, the government treasury. This seems like quite the position of responsibility, and it would fit with some of what we see later as the Soga are involved in helping set up Miyake, the various royal storehouses across the land that acted as Yamato court administrative centers for the purposes of collecting goods and funneling them to the court, as well as keeping an eye on the local regions. Although here I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t also note that the “Three Treasuries”, or “Sanzou” is one way to translate the Tripitaka, and given the Soga’s role, I don’t think I can entirely ignore that point.
So the Soga family had experience with administration, and specifically they were dealing with a variety of different goods produced in different regions. If that is the case, then their authority did not necessarily derive from the standard uji-be constructed familial connections, but rather they were deriving positional authority from the central government itself. This may seem like common sense to us, but in the world of ancient Yamato, where family connections were everything, this may have been something new and innovative—and very in keeping with various continental models of administration. It is quite likely that the Soga were dealing with some of the latest innovations in government and political authority, which would also have opened them up to the possibility of new ideas.
In addition, their position meant they likely had wide-ranging contacts across the archipelago and even onto the peninsula. The Soga themselves have connections to the peninsula in the names of some of their members, such as Soga no Karako, where “Karako” can be translated as a “Son of Kara” or a “Son of Gaya”, possibly referring to their origins, and Soga no Kouma, where “Kouma” is a general term for Goguryeo, and so quite possibly indicates a connection with them as well. On top of that, there is a now-out-of-favor theory that once suggested that Soga no Machi might be the same as Moku Machi, an important Baekje official in the late 5th century. While that has been largely discredited, the fact that “Machi” is possibly of Baekje origin cannot be entirely overlooked.
Then there are a series of notes in the Nihon Shoki, particularly surrounding the area of Shirai, in the land of Kibi. These start in 553, just one year after Soga no Iname’s failed attempt to launch a Buddhist temple, at least according to the Nihon Shoki’s record of events. It is a relatively simple note, but it mentions how Soga no Iname made a man by the name of Wang Jinnie the “Funa no Fubito”, or “Recorder of Ships”, and put him in charge of the shipping tax—all at the behest of the sovereign, of course.
Later, in 555, Soga no Iname went with Hozumi no Iwayumi no Omi to Kibi, where they consolidated five districts, or agata, under the administration of a single administrative Miyake in Shirawi. Later, in 556, he would go back to Kibi and establish a Miyake in Kojima, putting in place Katsuraki no Yamada as the Tazukai, or “rural rice field governor”. That same year he and others went to the Takachi district in Yamato and established the Miyake of Ohomusa, or “Great Musa”, for immigrants from Baekje and then Womusa, or “Small Musa”, for immigrants from Goguryeo.
In 569, the person that Soga no Iname had put in charge of recording the ships, Wang Jinnie, had a nephew, Itsu—or possibly Danchin, depending on how you read it—go out to Shirawi to take a census. This is the same Shirawi that Soga no Iname had helped establish in 555. Itsu becomes the Shirawi no Obito, and in 574 we see Soga no Umako, Iname’s heir, heading out to Shirawi with an updated register for Itsu.
So, in short, the Soga family clearly is doing a lot of government administration, and particularly of the Miyake, which is the extension of the court authority into the rest of the archipelago. On top of that, look at how often the names that are coming up in conjunction with what they are doing are referencing immigrant groups. Even the Hozumi family are known at this point for their work on the peninsula, and we see the Soga heavily involved with the Wang family and their fortunes, not to mention Greater and Lesser Musa and the Baekje and Goguryeo individuals there. Wang Jinnie will have even more of a part to play, but we’ll hold onto that for later.
Given everything we can see about how they are operating, is it any surprise that the Soga would advocate in favor of Buddhism? I’d also note that, while other clans have clear connections to heavenly ancestors and kami whom they worshipped, it is unclear to me if the Soga had anything similar. There is mention in the 7th century of the creation of a shrine to their titular ancestors, Takeuchi no Sukune and Ishikawa no Sukune, and today there is a shrine that is dedicated to Soga tsu Hiko and Soga tsu Hime—Basically just lord and lady Soga. But there isn’t anything like the spirit of Futsunushi or Ohomononushi, let alone an Amaterasu or Susano’o.
Why is that important? Well, prior to the 6th century, a lot of clans claimed authority from the ritual power they were perceived to wield, often related to the prestige of their kami. One of the ways that Yamato influence had spread was through the extension of the Miwa cult across the archipelago, and there were even members of the Himatsuribe and the Hioki-be, basically groups of ritualists focused on sun worship, which upheld the royal house. The Mononobe controlled Isonokami shrine, where they worshipped their Ujigami, Futsu-mitama, the spirit of the sound of the sword. And then there were the Nakatomi, who haven’t had much to do in the narrative so far, but we know that they were court ritualists, responsible for ensuring that proper rituals were carried out by the court for the kami to help keep balance in the land.
The dispute between the Soga and the Mononobe and Nakatomi is presented as a struggle between a foreign religion and the native kami of Japan—leaving aside any discussion, for now, about just how “native” said kami actually were. This is, in fact, the primary story that gets told again and again, that the Mononobe and Nakatomi were simply standing up for their beliefs, sincerely believing that if too many people started worshipping foreign gods then it would supplant the worship already present in the islands.
And that may have been a genuine fear at the time, but I would suggest that it was only a small one. What seems more apparent is that we are really looking at just an old fashioned power struggle. Because what all of the information we have about the Soga distills down to is: they were the new kid on the block. The Soga were the up and coming nobility. They had connections with the continent and various immigrant groups. That gave them access to new ideas and new forms of resources. The Mononobe were built on a more traditionalist line. They had been around, ever since at least Wakatake no Ohokimi, playing a significant role in things, alongside the Ohotomo. The Mononobe were at their apex, claiming descent through their own Heavenly Grandson, and having held sway at court through numerous reigns at this point. They represent, in many ways, the old guard.
Worship of a fancy new religious icon—effectively a new kami—threatened to give the Soga even more power and sway. They already had control of the three treasuries, if the Kogoshui is to be believed, and likely had a rather impressive administrative apparatus. Soga no Iname had also ended up successfully marrying off two of his daughters to Ame Kunioshi, making him father-in-law to the current sovereign. If he added to that a spiritual focus that people came to believe in, that would only enhance the Soga’s power and place in the hierarchy.
And what better way to taint all of that, and neutralize these upstarts, than to blame this new god for the plague and pestilence that was killing people. We see it all too often, even today—when people are scared and when there are problems, the easiest people to scapegoat are the foreigners and the outsiders. Those whom we do not see as “us”. It was probably easy to turn the court against Buddhism, at least initially. They threw the image in the canal and burned down the temple, and no doubt they were pleased with themselves.
But that was merely the opening salvo, and as we’ll see in the coming years, the Soga family were hardly done with Buddhism. One can argue whether they were truly devout or if this was merely for political gain, but the Soga family tied themselves to this new foreign religion, for good or for ill, and they wouldn’t be pushed around forever.
When next we touch base on this topic we’ll look at Soga no Iname’s heir, Soga no Umako, and his attempts to start up where his father left off. He would again clash with the Mononobe, and the outcome of that conflict would set the path for the next half a century. It would also see Buddhism become firmly enmeshed with the apparatus of the state. As this happens , we’ll also see the character of Buddhist worship in the archipelago change. Initially, the Buddha was treated little differently from any other kami, and based on the way it is described, probably worshiped in a very similar manner. However, as more sutras came to light and as more people studied and learned about the religion—and as more immigrants were brought in to help explain how things were supposed to work—Buddhism grew in the islands to be its own distinct entity. In fact the growth of Buddhism would even see the eventual definition of “Shinto”, the “Way of the Gods”, a term that was never really needed until there was another concept for native practices to be compared against.
Before we leave off, there is one other story I’d like to mention. It is tangential to our immediate discussion of Buddhism and the Soga, but I think you may find it of interest, nonetheless. This is the story of just what happened—supposedly—to that first Buddhist icon that was tossed into the Naniwa canal.
Because you see, according to tradition, that gilt-bronze icon did not stay stuck in the mud and muck of the canal, nor did it just disappear. Instead there is a tradition that it was found almost a century later. The person who retrieved it was named Honda no Yoshimitsu, and from Naniwa he traveled all the way to Shinano, to the area of modern Nagano, and there he would found a temple in 642. Another reading of his name, Yoshimitsu, is Zenko, and so the temple is named Zenkoji, and you can still go and visit it today.
In fact, the main hall of Zenkoji is considered a national treasure, and it was featured prominently during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. It is a popular attraction for tourist both in Japan and from abroad, and if you get a chance I highly recommend going to see it. On the street leading up to the temple entrance are many traditional shops that still sell various foods and traditional arts and crafts, and there are many intriguring features. For example, there is a narrow walkway underneath the main temple that is completely dark, where you are meant to feel along the wall to try to find the key to enlightenment, a kind of physical metaphor of Buddhist teaching.
And of course there is the icon that Honda Yoshimitsu is said to have fished out of the canal.
According to the temple, the icon still exists, and many worshippers believe it to be the oldest extant Buddhist icon in Japan, even older than the icons at Horyuji. However, there is one catch—nobody is allowed to see it. Shortly after it was installed in the temple, the statue was hidden in a special container, or zushi, and it became what is known as a hidden Buddha. This is a tradition particularly prevalent in Japan, where some Buddhas are hidden away and only brought out on very special occasions. Some cynics might note that those occasions are often when the temple needs to raise funds. As for this hidden Buddha, however, it has not been seen more than a handful of times since it was locked away in the 7th century.
Despite that, we know what it looks like—or at least what it is supposed to look like. The image is said to be a triad, and though the Nihon Shoki claims it was an image of Shakyamuni, the central figure of the Zenkoji triad is actually the figure of Amida, aka Amithabha, as in the Pure Land sect of Buddhism. Amida Nyorai is flanked by two attendants. We know all of this because a copy of the Zenkoji image was made in the Kamakura period, and that image, said to be a faithful recreation of the original is also kept at Zenkoji. While the original is kept hidden in the back, the replica, which is thought to have all of the miraculous powers of the original, sits in front, and is therefore called the Maedachi Honzon, basically the image standing in front, vice the original, the Gohonzon, the main image.
Except it gets even better, because the replica is *also* kept hidden away most of the time, and only revealed on special occasions, known as Gokaicho, or “opening of the curtain”, which occurs once every seven years.
The Zenkoji triad became extremely important in later centuries, and copies were made and installed in sub-temples throughout Japan. Even today you may find a Zenkoji-style triad here or there, each one considered to have a spiritual tie back to the original, and some of them even have inscriptions confirming that they are, indeed, Zenkoji style triads
Of course, the big question remains: does the original image actually still exist, and is there any chance that it actually is as old as it claims to be? There really is no good way of knowing. Zenkoji is not offering to open up the zushi any time soon. We do know a few things, however. We know that the temple has burned down at least 11 times over the years, and the Gohonzon was rescued each time, or so they say. There are some who claim that it still exists, but perhaps it is damaged. If that is the case, how did they make the replica, though?
There was an inspection during the Edo period. There was a rumor that it had been stolen, and so an Edo official was sent to check on the status. They reported that it was still there, but crucially they never described actually laying eyes on the statue. In one account where a monk did open the box it is said that their was a blinding light—kind of like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones but just overwhelming; no faces were melted, at least none that were reported.
The monks of Zenkoji, when asked how they know the image is still there, will point to the weight of the container, which, when lifted, is apparently considerable. They say that is how they know it is still there. Of course, a melted lump of metal might be the same weight as it was when it was full statue, as long as it didn’t lose any actual mass, so it is hard to tell if it is still in good condition.
Even with all of that, there is the question about the veracity of the original objects lineage to begin with. Did Honda Yoshimitsu really just find *the* original statue? And even if he did, how would he have known what it was? Was there an inscription: To Yamato, from Baekje, hugs and kisses?
I’ve yet to see anyone directly compare the purported replica with other statues, but I suspect that would be the route to at least check the age, but nobody seems to be saying that the style of the replica is blatantly wrong for a 6th or 7th century icon from the peninsula or by peninsular craftsmen. Then again, there were plenty of local immigrants in the Naniwa area who could have potentially crafted an image. Indeed, the area around modern Nagano even has traces of Goguryeo style burial cairns, possibly from immigrants settled out there to help with early horse cultivation, and so there is even the possibility that there were locals with the connections and skills to craft something.
If you really want to know more, there is an entire work by Donald McCallum, titled “Zenkoji and Its Icon”, on not just the icon but the entire worship that sprang up around it and caused copies to spread throughout the archipelago.
And that’s where we will leave off for this episode. In the next couple of episodes I want to finish up some of the secular history of this reign, and look a little bit outside of Yamato and the evidence in the Chronicles as well.
Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode.
Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Friday, K.F. (Ed.). (2017). Routledge Handbook of Premodern Japanese History (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315170473
Deal, William E. and Ruppert, Brian. (2015). A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. ISBN: 978-1-405-16700-0.
McCallum, D. F. (2009). The Four Great Temples: Buddhist Art, Archaeology, and Icons of Seventy-Century Japan. University of Hawai’i Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqtwv
Matsuo, K. (13 Dec. 2007). A History of Japanese Buddhism. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9781905246410.i-280
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253.
Best, J. (2006). A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche, together with an annotated translation of The Paekche Annals of the Samguk sagi. Cambridge (Massachusetts); London: Harvard University Asia Center. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1tg5q8p
Farris, W. (1998). Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824864224
Piggott, Joan R. (1997). The emergence of Japanese kingship. Stanford, Calif : Stanford University Press
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

Episode 84: The Middle Way Through the Middle Kingdom

April 16, 2023 Joshua Badgley

Ruins of a stupa at the Ancient city of Subashi, once a thriving city in the land of Kucha, home of Kumarajiva, on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin. Kucha was a major stop on the Silk Road. Photo by author.

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This episode looks at the trip that the Buddha’s teachings took from the Indian subcontinent through the Kushan empireand the land of Gandhara, and over to East Asia—to the Yellow River and Yangzi River regions as well as the Korean peninsula.

Buddhist Art and Architecture

Ruwanweli Maha Saya, aka Mahathupa, or “Great Stupa” in Anuradapura, Sri Lanka. Photo by author.

Some of the oldest evidence we have for Buddhism are monuments. The Ruwanweli Maha Saya is believed to have been built in about 140 BCE in Sri Lanka, where the Pali Canon was put together and eventually disseminated. It claims to have the largest collection of the Buddha’s relics anywhere in the world, and rises up 103 meters high. It was built at the heart of the ancient capital of Sri Lanka.

This is a very classic stupa shape, and the shape most commonly found in South and Southeast Asia.

Early Buddhist art and artifacts can be hard to find. There are the Ashoka Pillars, which have references to Buddhist theology, and stupas, but most of the written documents have turned to dust, as they were written on leaves or paper, which typically don’t do well outside of very specific conditions.

The historical Buddha represented as a wheel wrapped with a garland, from Madhya Pradesh, in Central India, 2nd Century CE. In the Freer-Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Photo by author.

Where we do find art, it may not always be obvious. Take this early depiction of the Buddha as a wheel, with a garland. The idea of existence as a wheel that kept turning and turning, and therefore kept bringing people back to an existence of suffering again and again, is at the center of a lot of Buddhist teaching, and so wheels are often used as symbols. Sometimes they will have eight spokes, representing the eightfold path, but here we see it is just a wheel.

Gandhara and the Kushan Empire

Gandhara Stupa

An image of people worshiping at a stupa. You can see the form is fairly standard for the time. 2-3 Century CE, from the British Museum in London, UK. Photo by author.

The Buddha's Enlightenment

Images indicating the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and the suppression of the demon, Mara, who tried to disrupt him. 2-3 Century CE, at the British Museum, London, UK. Photo by author.

Image of the Buddha

This image of the Buddha shows many of the western features common in Gandharan art. The hair is more naturalistic than later depictions, and the loose folds of his robe recall some of the Greek and Roman influence in the region’s art. 2-3 Century CE, from the Seoul National Museum. Photo by author.

Death of the Buddha

Here we see the Buddha lying down, entering nirvana, while those of his followers still here in this existence lament their loss. Notice the facial features of the Buddha, including his mustache, which was prominent in a lot of early art. Also the clothing and depictions of his followers. From ca. 200, at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. Photo by author.

Boddhisatva

An image of a Boddhisatva—one who has attained buddhahood but delayed nirvana so that they could stay in this existence and help others. From the Prince Albert Museum in Jaipur, India. Photo by author.

Head of the Buddha

From about the 3rd century. Once again, see the features, which were common to the Gandharan style, and which made an impact on early Buddhist images along the Silk Road and all the way to East Asia. In each place he would be depicted with features that were familiar to the people there, while retaining certain distinctive marks, such as the chignon, or ushnisha, at the top of his head. From the Freer-Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC. Photo by author.

Scene from the Buddha's Life

Many reliefs are scenes like this. Much as a church in the west might put scenes from the Bible in a stained glass window, scenes from the Buddha’s life or teachings are often found, usually with depictions of people in local dress and architecture around him. From the New Delhi National Museum. Photo by author.

Seated Boddhisatva

Here is an example of a Boddhisatva, with many of the features of the Buddha, but also with indications of their status as beings who stayed in the world to help others. From the Tokyo National Museum. Photo by author.

The Buddha's Enlightenment

Another scene of Buddha’s enlightenment, with the leaves of the tree above him, and soldiers below and around him—the forces of Mara. His right hand is down, towards the earth, and this gesture is commonly used to reference subduing Mara. Specific gestures and poses became common ways to depict different scenes such that an entire lexicon of how to depict the Buddha was developed. 2-3 Century, Freer-Sackler Gallery. Photo by author.

Seated Buddha

The seated Buddha, holding the fingers of his left hand in his right, forming a common mudra, or hand posture. Here we see a very prominent mustache on the Buddha, common to this period (2-3C) and region. Where we don’t see one, it was probably painted on—most of these would have been elaborately painted in their day, but now only the stone itself remains. From the Tokyo National Museum, photo by author.

Buddha's Disciples

In this scene, the Buddha’s disciples lament their loss at the foot of his deathbed. While most are wailing or comforting each other, we also see one in meditation, not giving in to the feelings of loss. Ca. 100-300, from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK. Photo by author.

I’ve collected a series of images and encourage you to look through at the art style in Gandhara that was so influential on later Buddhist imagery. Much of this comes from the 2nd to 3rd centuries, which was the height of the Kushan Empire’s power.

Tarim Basin

A ruined building with no roof. Wooden and straw supports of some sort of floor can be seen beneath the dirt.In the distance are more ruins and a range of mountains. — Ruins at the ancient Kuchean city of Subashi, looking towards part of the Tianshan mountain range. Photo by author.

One of the main routes of the overland silk road was through the Tarim Basin. To the south it are the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. To the north are the Tianshan mountains, and beyond that the region of Dzungaria, part of the Eurasian steppe. In the center of the Tarim Basin is the Taklamakan desert. Eons ago, it was a fertile inland sea, but over time it has dried up, so that the only remnants are in the eastern extremity—the swampy, stagnant former salt lake of Lop Nor. Despite this seemingly inhospitable land, settlements arose along the edges, where meltwater runoff from the mountains kept rivers flowing. Water could be found there to grow crops and even support thriving cities and kingdoms.

A large mudstone brick wall--possibly part of an ancient building--in the desert. — Ancient city walls at Subashi. Photo by author.

Thanks to the dry conditions of the Tarim Basin, many arts were preserved, including paintings and even documents, giving us keen insights into just what went on along the silk road in ancient times.

One of the larger polities around the time that Buddhism was spreading was the land of Kucha.

Kuchean history is not fully understood. We have mention of it in other documents, but it is known mostly through other sources and the archaeological traces left behind. We do have documents in a language that we believe was the language of Kucha, known as Kuchean or, likely erroneously, as Tocharian B, one of two—or possibly three—related Indo-European languages found in the Tarim Basin. It was once thought that Kucha was related to Kushan and the Yuezhi, though the language of Kushan appears to have been Bactrian, an Indo-Iranian language, instead.

A detailed but eroded painting of the Buddha, with individuals on either side. — The Buddha and disciples from the Qizil cave grotto paintings, 4th-5th Century, on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photo by Author.

Kucha (or Kuqa or Kuche) likely started further east and then people moved west along the edge of the Tianshan mountains, likely pushed along by the Xiongnu and others who were fighting for dominance in the Gansu region. As such it is part of the northern route through the Tarim basin. While the majority of Kucha has since been lost, there are many sites, such as the ancient city of Subashi and the Qizil caves, which remain. In the Qizil caves, you can see ancient Buddhist statues and paintings by believers. The caves were dug out of the side of a cliff face, and would have provided shelter and shade, which kept the caves, and the art in them, well protected.

A painting of the Buddha is shown on the left, with a dark mustache and hair in the classic chignon style. To his right are paintings of six bald figures, one of whom is holding a feathered fan. — Image of the Buddha and disciples from a fresco in Miran, along the southern edge of the Tarim Basin. 3rd-4th Century, currently in the New Delhi National Museum. Photo by author.

This is where the monk Kumarajiva was from, making his way west towards Chang’an (modern Xian) and helping to spread Buddhism there.

There was another route along the south, where traces of loanwords show up that appear linked to the language of Kucha. Whether there were more speakers in that area or they came from other influences, there were definitely links across the region in terms of art and religion.

Dunhuang

A low wall, maybe 2 to 3 meters tall, with clear striations. The base is covered in sand and dirt, and a modern fence can be seen in the foreground. — Western edge of the Han era “Great Wall” in Dunhuang, near Yumenguan, the Jade Gate. Photo by author.

At the edge of the Han sphere of influence was the city of Dunhuang, where the northern and southern routes around the Tarim basin came together, leading towards the Gansu corridor and into the Yellow River region. Otherwise you were traveling over treacherous mountain paths towards the Yangzi or the Sichuan basin. When the Han dynasty pushed back against the Xiongnu, they established an outpost here, including an extension of their original “Great Wall”.

An imposing mudstone construction with a square base that tapers towards the top. One side shows a large opening, and the outside has clearly been worn away by the elements. — Yumenguan (玉門關) - this is actually a fortress built to house the soldiers who monitored people traveling from the Tarim Basin towards the Gansu region, and vice versa. Photo by author.

“Yumenguan”, the Jade Gate Pass, is mentioned in many of the stories of people passing through the region. A garrison here was supposed to keep track of who was coming and going, and provide protection against incursions by outside foes, such as the Xiongnu. This was the edge of empire, but it was also where many of the merchants and people who traveled back and forth along these desert highways would meet and come together.

A rocky cliffside, worn away by erosion, with numerous manmade caves and rooms that have been exposed over time. — Just a few of the Mogao caves that have not been built up in the way that others have, giving an impression of what people would have seen as they approached.

One of the famous sites of Dunhuang, today, are the Mogao caves. These are some of the most striking caves and examples of Buddhist artwork anywhere. While some of been damaged by erosion, many of the caves remain intact, and there are ongoing conservation efforts to try to minimize damage to and catalog the artwork that is inside.

The caves were first dug out in about the 4th century as a place to practice Buddhist meditation, but eventually it evolved into a system of over five hundred caves where people could worship. Elaborate carvings and paintings can be found throughout the cave system, which was actively being used and improved for roughly a thousand years. Today it is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Image of a wall and ceiling painted with various scenes, including the life of the Buddha. In areas the plaster is missing. The colors are faded to mostly blue and white, though there is faint evidence of other colors visible. — Example of some of the paintings at Dunhuang. These have been exposed to the outside, and thus exposed to the elements over time, but there are many even more impressive paintings inside. Photo by author

Unfortunately, the popularity of the paintings has actually put them under threat. First there are those that were taken out and moved when early explorers like Aurel Stein came through, with expeditions sending samples off to London, Berlin, and elsewhere. But even today, as more people come to study or just to see the paintings, it has changed the humidity and pH levels in the caves, such that many are deteriorating at a much faster rate, and so access has been limited, but there are efforts to digitize many of them so that they can be safely viewed for generations to come.

Image of the Buddha, flanked by two attendants, in clay. The Buddha's right hand is up, palm out, while his left hand is down, also palm out. In his chest is drawn a Buddhist swastika, arms facing counter-clockwise. — Buddhist image of Shakyamuni from the Northern Wei dynasty. H has an ancient Buddhist swastika on his chest, a common symbol at this time, well before it was appropriated by the Nazis in the 20th century. From the Shanxi Museum of History. Photo by author.

China

When Buddhism came in the Han dynasty it was simply one of many religions. While we have examples and mentions of it, it was not as influential, and the Buddhist heartland remained in the West—in India, Kushan, etc. However, in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, Buddhism gained immense patronage and saw much growth. From the third to 6th centuries there was even a reversal, as the Kushan Empire declined, and Central India saw a rise in Brahmanic traditions. Monasteries in the Yangzi and Yellow River region would become the geographic center of much of the Mahayana Buddhist practices, which themselves spread out to the rest of east and northeast Asia.

Image of the Buddha from the Northern Wei dynasty in 499 CE. From the Beijing Capital City Museum. Photo by author.

Converts during this period often went out in search of documents and manuscripts in an attempt to try to get at a more authentic version of the Buddha’s teachings. This was no doubt hampered by the fact that there were so many different writings by this time, particularly in the Mahayana tradition. The Buddhist canon is vast, and could fill up entire libraries. Debates over which sutras and which practices were more effective would continue throughout the historical period, and even today there are numerous schools that emphasize different things.

Through it all, there are some common threads as to the core nature of the historical Buddha, Siddharta Gautama, aka Shakyamuni, and his core principles. The Three Jewels, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path remain at the heart of Buddhist teaching. This would prove both helpful and troubling to various states as they looked at how to use Buddhist teachings and thoughts to support their own aims at political power and stability.

A green-glazed pottery version of a two story watchtower. At each level are crude figures with crossbows pointed outwards. At the very top is a depiction of a tiled roof. — Example of a Han dynasty watchtower from a funerary arrangement. There seem to be obvious similarities between these and the later pagoda towers, although many of the latter were not necessarily made for actual human use.

Temple design and practices were, in turn, influenced by the cultures of these areas just as much as Buddhism influenced them. Buddhist images, originally in the Gandharan style, began to take on their own characteristics. As with other regions, the face of the Buddha often reflected the people who were building the images, and we can see a change in the look of the Buddha as time progressed.

Furthermore, the temples changed. The stupa became more of a tower, and eventually transformed into wooden or stone pagodas. These then became standard for most East Asian Buddhist temples, and even became iconic images of various locations, such as the pagoda of Tōji, in Kyōto, which for centuries towered over the city, and was as iconic as the Eifel tower in Paris, or the Capitol Building in DC. Even today, these iconic buildings evoke the places where they reside.

A multi-tiered tower with a slightly domed top and an octagonal base with trees surrounding it and mountains in the background.. Small holes can be seen at some levels and there are faint decorations along the edge, but the tower is largely plain. — Songyue pagoda, 523 CE. Photo by Siyuwj, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The oldest tower style structure that we have today is the Songyue pagoda in modern China. It was built on Mt. Song in modern Henan province in 523 CE, the Northern Wei period, and is one of the few remaining from this era. Many others were made of wood, a tradition that would pass on to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, where we have an example in the oldest wooden buildings in the world at Hōryūji, built in the 7th century, about one hundred years after Buddhism first arrived in Japan.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 84: The Middle Way through the Middle Kingdom.
First things first, thank you to Bodil, Gabe, and Lauren for donating to support the show on Ko-Fi and Patreon. If you’d like to join them, will have information at the end of the episode.
Also an apology—if my voice isn’t in tip-top shape, well, it seems that COVID finally found us after 3 years or so, and I’m on the tail end of it. So thank you for your understanding.
Last episode we talked about Siddhartha Gautama, aka Shakyamuni, the Historical Buddha, and his teachings, and how they spread, at least through the Indian subcontinent, with the patronage of rulers like Ashoka the Great. The original teachings, initially taught as an oral tradition, was eventually turned into a series of writings, called the Tripitaka.
As for how those writings came about, it’s worth talking about the languages involved. The native language of Shakyamuni was probably a language known as Maghadi, or something similar. But the Indian subcontinent, including the modern countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Afghanistan, is over three times the size of western Europe. There are at eight south Asian language families, with hundreds of different languages, depending on how you count them. The modern state of India counts 22 official languages, not including English. I mention this to point out that as the Buddha’s disciples spread his teachings, they were, by necessity, translating it into different languages.
There is a story that a student suggested to the Buddha that they make Sanskrit the official language of Buddhism. Even then, Sanskrit was considered a language of learning and education, much as Greek or Latin was in medieval Europe, but the Buddha rejected this and insisted that his teachings be taught in people’s own tongue. This proved great for reaching people, but over time there was a fear that the oral teachings might be lost, and so they were written down.
The oldest written Buddhist canon is generally agreed to be texts in Pali, commissioned in Sri Lanka. These are sometimes called the southern Tripitaka—or Tipitaka in Pali—and it is the primary canon for Theravada Buddhists. In the north, however, Sanskrit remained the prominent language of learning, and texts written down and transmitted in the north—particularly those that made it to China and on to Japan—were typically Sanskrit or translations of Sanskrit texts. This is what some refer to as the Northern Tripitaka. Both of these were transcriptions of the oral teachings that Buddhist monks were otherwise memorizing and presenting to the Buddhist community. That oral tradition, in fact, never really went away, and these early texts were more like a reference so that monks could check their memory. Chanting the sutras—and especially chanting from memory—remained a highly prized skill of Buddhist orators.
Now, the split between northern and southern texts is convenient, but it isn’t necessarily as simple as all that. We have plenty of examples of texts, particularly in the northern traditions, that don’t necessarily have an extant Sanskrit counterpart. In fact, the oldest extant sutras of any tradition that we have today are known as the Gandharan sutras, and written in the Ghandari language using a Karosthi script. Gandhara refers to a region centered north and west of the Indus river, in modern Pakistan, stretching to the Kabul river valley in modern Afghanistan and north to the Karakoram mountains, which is one of the interlocking ranges that form the boundary between modern Pakistan and India and modern China and the Tibetan plateau. It is believed to be the namesake of the city of Kandahar, in modern Afghanistan.
This area was important, and not just to Buddhism. For thousands of years it has been a crossroads between the Indian subcontinent, the area known as the Middle East, and the inner trade routes of central Eurasia. It was part of the conquest by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, becoming part of his kingdom, but then it was lost in battle to the Mauryan empire, which Ashoka the Great ruled in the 3rd century BCE. The area later fell to Indo-Greek rule from members of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom to the north. The most famous ruler during this period was probably Menander I, who is also remembered as a patron of Buddhism, building more stupas and monasteries in the region.
The Hellenic Greco-Bactrians were eventually displaced by tribes of the Yuezhi, who themselves were being displaced by the Xiongnu, in central Eurasia. In this epic game of musical chairs, a branch of the Yuezhi eventually settled in the area, ruling a large territory, including Gandhara, under what is known as the Kushan empire. They had first moved into the area of Bactria and Sogdiana probably around the 1st or 2nd century BCE, and by the 1st century CE they were exerting authority over Gandhara. Around the time the Gandharan sutras were written down, in the 1st or 2nd centuries, Buddhism—especially Mahayana Buddhism—was flourishing in the region, and Kanishka the Great—don’t you love how all of these rulers are known as “the Great”, by the way?—ruled the Kushan empire, and hence Gandhara, in the early 2nd century. He is said to have been a great patron of Buddhism, although it was one of several religions, including Zoroastrianism, that flourished in the region at this time.
The Kushan empire is believed to be the same Yuezhi that we mentioned in episode 79, when we talked about the Han diplomat Zhang Qian, who had trekked through hostile Xiongnu, or Hunna, territory across much of what is now western China in the 2nd century BCE, seeking allies against the Hunna. At that point, the Yuezhi had had enough of war, however, and they declined to fight, preferring to settle where they were and eventually growing into the Kushan empire. That connection with the Han dynasty, however, likely was maintained through trade routes that continued to operate across the vast expanse of central Eurasia. The Han dynasty itself continued to send out diplomatic missions to the various states of central Eurasia, and of course there were trade routes.
As the Kushan empire expanded into the Tarim basin, it met once again with the Han, who had defeated the Hunna, and then claimed routes across the oasis towns of the desert regions. While the routes would have high and low periods, often depending on the state of various conflicts, in general it seems that Buddhist missionaries probably made it to the Han dynasty and the Yellow River region, and founded monasteries, as early as the first century CE and certainly by the second century. And, by our best understanding, the folks in these monasteries were already doing a lot of copying and translation of texts – both as a meritorious act, and to spread the word. Since this is around the time the Gandharan texts were written, they were likely a part of this larger tradition of copying and translating that was going on, although many of those early documents did not survive intact to the modern day.
One of the earliest records of Buddhism in the Han dynasty is a record dated to 65 CE. Liu Ying, Prince of Chu and son of Emperor Guangwu of Han, sponsored Buddhism—as well as a school of Daoism—in attempts to better understand longevity and immortality. While he was eventually accused of treason, putting something of a damper on his patronage of the religion, it is the first mention we have in the histories of Buddhism, and in some ways it speaks to something else about the initial acceptance of Buddhism.
While there were likely those well-versed in Buddhism, particularly in the community of foreigners from the Western Regions, evidence suggests that for many lay people it was just as likely about what people thought that the religion could do for them in this life as anything else. After all, there are many stories of miraculous events, and there was the concept of reincarnation and karma—the idea that by building merit, one could improve their lot in the next life. There was even a belief that by building merit, one could improve their lot in the current life—and apparently extend their life or even, possibly, gain immortality.
Sure, there were the more intellectual and philosophical endeavors, but for many people Buddhism was just as much about what it could do for them in the here and now. Stories of monks and other holy men fit in right alongside stories of Daoist immortals. In Han tombs, where Buddhist imagery is found, it is often found with or in place of the Queen Mother of the West—the same image that is found on many of the bronze mirrors that traveled across to the Japanese archipelago around this time. It was likely that many of the early stories that the laypeople heard were probably fragments as much as anything. Even with the Tripitaka written down, much of the transmission was still done orally. Furthermore, it was in translation—and probably a translation of a translation.
The earliest stories of Buddhism’s transmission—particularly the translation of texts into Sinitic characters, the lingua franca of East Asia—claim that first the Theravada canon, and then later Mahayana texts, were translated in the second century, with foreigners from Parthia and Kushan credited with the early translations. Others would continue the work, and at first it was mostly people from the Western Regions doing the translating.
One of the earliest stories of sutras making their way to the Han dynasty comes from the time of Liu Ying, when his brother, Emperor Ming, sat on the throne. The stories claim that the emperor saw an image of a golden Buddha, and that he requested either a statue or temple be erected. So he sent people off to Kushan, where they found two monks who would come back with them in 68 CE, bringing portraits and scripture—specifically the “Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters”, which the two monks helped translate into a Sinitic version at Baimasi, or White Horse Temple. As such, this “Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters” has been accorded a status as the first such Buddhist work to be brought to the area that is, today, modern China, and the White Horse Temple, located in Luoyang, is counted as one of the earliest temples in the Yellow River region. That said, there are a lot of questions as to the authenticity of this tale, though it does mirror others about the arrival of Buddhism in the East, even if we cannot verify the actual first temple or work.
Although Buddhism arrived during the Han dynasty, it wouldn’t really begin to fully develop until after the dynasty’s fall in the 3rd century. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, the metaphysical and doctrinal beliefs of Buddhism began to penetrate the elite circles in a more tangible way. Much of the philosophical underpinnings blended well with the interest at the time in “Dark Studies” and the school of “Pure Conversation”, which we discussed back in episode 72. While Buddhist temples, much like their Daoist brethren, found some sanctuary from the chaos that created this period in the mountains and hills—not to mention a bit of added spiritual cachet—it was really the opportunity to gain greater state patronage that also helped.
Monks like Zhi Dun began to reconcile Buddhist thought and doctrine with local beliefs. In some cases, local religious figures—including gods and other spirits—were incorporated into the Buddhist framework, often by their “conversion” to the Buddha’s teachings. This was one of the strengths of Buddhism—although it carried with it a framework of Indian religious teachings and thoughts, it was not exclusive in its cosmological outlook. Buddhism was more focused on helping one escape the suffering of this world, which would take you beyond all such things. As the doctrines were meant for all beings—not just humans, but for animals, spirits, gods, and even demons—there was nothing to necessarily exclude other beliefs. This helped some of the ethnic Han dynasties to accept and even promote Buddhism.
Meanwhile, some of the non-ethnic Han dynasties patronized Buddhism for either its miraculous powers or just because it was a foreign religion, much like they were foreigners in the Yellow River Basin. In many cases, state-sponsorship was a two way street. Dynasts would set themselves up as holy men, claiming to be Boddhisatvas. They would even appropriate the concept of the Cakravartin, a Buddhist “Golden-Wheel-Turning-King”, which had overtones of cosmic overlordship. I can see how that would fit in quite well with local concepts that a sovereign might lay claim to ruling “all under heaven” and be carrying out a “Heavenly mandate”.
Along the Yangzi River, Buddhist monks gained a certain amount of independence. They were not expected to bow to the sovereign, for example; an acknowledgment of their holy nature. In the northern Wei dynasty, however, it was a different story. There, the ruler was said to be no less than an incarnation of the Buddha, and a Chief Monk was selected to oversee the Sangha and no doubt ensure that the various Buddhist communities were in line with official dogma. At the same time, the government provided captured men and women to work fields to help pay for Buddhist temples and their work. Likewise, people would make merit by donating wealth and land to temples, in hopes of blessings either in this current life or in the next life. For their part, the temples were expected to act as storehouses or granaries—the wealth that poured into them would be used to help alleviate suffering, especially in the case of droughts or floods.
It soon became clear, however, that more wealth was going into the temples than was necessarily coming out. There were attempts to reign in this Buddhist establishment, often by limiting the number of temples or even the number of monks, as well as limiting what people could donate. These same edicts were undercut by the elites of the country, however, and often proved less than effectual.
Along with sutras and Buddhist teachings, Buddhist images and architecture spread widely. In India and the Western Regions, a key aspect of many temples was the stupa. This was a mound containing a relic of some sort. Originally these relics were said to be remnants of the Buddha, after he had been cremated. Later, it was said that the remnants of the Buddha turned hard, like crystal, and that the original remains were gathered up and distributed to even more stupas. Later they may contain other relics, as well.
The stupa was an important part of the Buddhist temple, but over time, its character changed. Instead of a mound like we still see in Southeast Asia, we start to see a building—a tower—which became a ubiquitous symbol of Buddhist temples in East Asia. This multi-level pagoda originally started off with simply three levels, often made of brick and stone, but over time it grew with five or seven levels. These towers were inspired by a description in the Lotus Sutra, a Mahayana text, that described a bejeweled seven-storey tower.
Speaking of the Lotus Sutra, this was one of the many teachings that made its way to East Asia, and a hugely influential one. It purports to tell the story of a sermon by the Buddha outside of those mentioned in the Theravada texts. The teachings expounded upon in the Lotus Sutra had a great impact on Mahayana Buddhism and how people viewed the teachings of the Buddha. For one, it also proposed the idea that the Buddha did not actually cease to exist when he attained nirvana, but is simply no longer visible. He still remains in the world to help all life find salvation from suffering. That goes along with the concept of the Bodhisattva, a being who attains a Buddha-like understanding but out of compassion remains in the world to assist others.
The Lotus Sutra also made claims such as the idea that anyone could attain Buddhahood, if they followed the teachings—and not just one particular set of teachings. It opened the idea that there were multiple vehicles—that is to say different practices—that would all get you to the truth, to Englightenment. Even the term “Mahayana” means the “Great Vehicle”, while Mahayana sees Theravada as “Hinayana”, the “Lesser Vehicle”. Both will get you where you need to be, but Mahayana offers an exapansion of teachings and texts that Theravada Buddhism does not necessarily accept as authentic. Indeed in Mahayana belief we also see a focus on multiple Buddhas with different specialties – not only the historical Buddha, but Vairocana, aka Dainichi Nyorai, the Great Solar Buddha, Amitabha, aka Amida Nyorai or Amida Butsu, and so on.
In comparison, the Theravada school tend to be more dogmatic on various points of practice and belief, claiming that they focus on the actual teachings of the Historical Buddha and not necessarily looking for extra texts and practices. There may have been Buddhas in previous ages that attained nirvana and departed this existence, but the Buddha of the current age is the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. Another Buddha, Maitreya, is not expected for another five to ten thousand years—not until the teachings of the Buddha have been forgotten and are once again required. Acquiring freedom from this existence through nirvana is not necessarily one and the same with obtaining Buddhahood—the enlightened understanding required to save all beings.
There is another school, “Vajrayana”, the “Lightning” or “Diamond” vehicle. It focuses on tantric, or esoteric teachings, which practitioners believe provide a more direct, and faster method to enlightenment. Many secret teachings, or mikkyo in Japanese, can trace themselves in some way to these practices, though it likely didn’t make it to East Asia until the Tang dynasty or so in the 8th century, so we’ll come back to it when we get to things like Kuukai and Saichou, who brought Shingon and Tendai, respectively, to Japan in the early 9th century—about four centuries from our current chronological position.
Both the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools included the teachings from the Lotus Sutra, which would become one of the most important sutras, certainly by the Tang dynasty, as well as in the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. Its widespread dissemination is often attributed to the famous monk Kumarajiva. Kumarajiva was a citizen of Kucha, one of the oasis towns along the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, and site of a bustling metropolis and capital of one of the largest oasis kingdoms in the Tarim basin. Even today, you can see remnants of the ancient city in the desert, and the dry conditions have preserved a number of artifacts, including plenty of texts referencing Buddhist and other beliefs.
Kumarajiva traveled from the peripheral city of Dunhuang, another site renowned for its Buddhist roots, especially the famous Mogao caves—a series of Buddhist grottoes built into a cliff face which, along with the dry conditions, have exquisitely preserved the early sculpture and painting, as well as, again, numerous documents. He came to Chang’an around 401, and he helped translated numerous Buddhist scriptures into Sinitic characters, which could then be shared and read by people across East Asia—everywhere in the ancient Sinic sphere of influence.
Besides the Lotus Sutra, another famous text told of the Buddha Amithabha, aka Amida Butsu in Japan. Amithabha’s teachings claimed that any who would call on the name of Amithabha, or just picture them in their mind with a sincere heart, would, on their death, find themselves reborn in a Western Paradise—a “Pure Land” where there were no distractions other than to meditate on the Buddha’s teachings and eventually attain freedom from this existence. Whereas many of the teachings and theological discussions of the various Buddhist schools could get quite complex—thus almost requiring any serious student to join a monastery if they wanted to truly study a particular flavor—the teachings of Amithabha were appealing to those without necessarily a lot of time or resources. It boiled down to a few practices that just about anyone could do. It didn’t require that you donate huge sums of money or land, or that you spend all your day copying scriptures. One could chant the name of Amithabha in the fields as you were working, or picture them in your mind as you prepared for bed.
These kinds of practices—the chanting of particular mantras or other such things—became a kind of thing people could do to help protect themselves or ward off evil. A particular example of this practice is preserved in a text from Dunhuang, which has a colophon explaining its purpose. According to Patricia Ebrey’s translation, the text, which was copied by someone named Sun Sizhong, was an incantation that, if said 7, 14, or 21 times a day, with various somatic and material components (willow twig to cleanse the mouth, scattering flowers and incense before the image of the Buddha, and kneeling and joining the palms of the hands) it would clear away the four grave sins, the five wicked acts, and other transgressions. “The current body would not be afflicted by “untimely” calamities, and one will be reborn into the realm of immeasurably long life. Plus, reincarnation in the female form would be escaped forever.”
On that last piece—yeah, Buddhism came with a little bit of baggage. In ordering all of life, men were seen as inherently higher on the ladder than women. This discrimination has been walked back or even abolished in some modern interpretations, but it was definitely present in older beliefs.
Besides the power of the incantation if said 7, 13, or 21 times a day, Sun Sizhong went on to explain that if someone recited it 100 times in the evening and then at noon and it will ensure rebirth in the “Western Regions”, while 200,000 recitations gets you perfect intelligence, and 300,000 recitations, one will see Amitabha Buddha face to face and be reborn in the Pure Land.
As you can probably start to see, there were many different beliefs and teachings that fell under the Mahayana teachings, and many of the texts were translations. Even those that had been translated into Sinitic, it was often done by foreigners for whom the local Sinic language was not their native tongue, so there was always a kind of awareness that important pieces might have been lost in translation along the way. In the 5th century, this led some monks to make the particularly long and dangerous journey all the way to Kushan and on to India, to access the original primary sources for themselves. One of these was a monk by the name of Faxian.
At the age of 62, Faxian decided to go to India to try to get to the heart of what the Buddha really taught. He set out in 399, traveled across the Tarim Basin and into the Kashmir region and the Indus Valley—Gandhara, in modern Pakistan. From there he traveled to central India and arrived at Patna, where he stayed and studied for three years. He traveled around, seeking out works in Sanskrit on Buddhsit ethics and teachings, studying the local languages as well. In 410 he made his way to the mouth of the Ganges and down to Sri Lanka, where he stayed for almost two years before boarding a ship and traveling home—traveling through the straits of Malacca and around Southeast Asia to take the sea route back to his home.
The journey was perilous, and at least twice the boat lost its way. According to the stories, some of his fellow travelers, who followed more Brahmanic teachings rather than Buddhist, believed that Faxian and his quote-unquote “heretical” teachings were what were leading them astray. Faxian was able to maintain order and he and his books eventually made it safely to the Shandong peninsula in or around 412.
He made his way down to Jiankang, aka modern Nanjing on the Yangzi river. There he spent the rest of his life translating the scriptures he had brought back. Others would make similar journeys, all to try to find more authentic versions of the texts—which usually meant finding the Sanskrit version—and then creating translations from those.
With the growth in popularity in Buddhism, it is probably little wonder that it eventually made its way over to the Korean peninsula. It is hard to say exactly when Buddhism arrived, but the Baekje annals in the Samguk Sagi claim that it was brought there by a monk of Central Asia descent in about 384. One year later, we are told the king of Baekje erected a temple and caused ten men to become monks.
The timing of this generally accords with some of the information in the Nihon Shoki, which claims that Buddhism first came from the Western Regions to the Han dynasty, and then to Baekje 300 years later, and then to Yamato about 100 years after that. While the dates aren’t exact, this generally accords with what we know of the way that Buddhism traveled to East Asia and to Baekje, at least.
Although we have textual evidence, there isn’t much archaeological evidence for Buddhism on the Korean peninsula in this time outside of urban centers. That is where we find temple rooftiles and other indications that Buddhism was practiced, but at the time it was probably something more common amongst elites than the common people, at least in the 4th and early 5th centuries. With the invasions by Goguryeo and the loss of northern territory in about 475, it did gain increased patronage. Still, it wasn’t until the 6th century that it really left the urban centers, which is roughly the time we are talking about with the Yamato sovereign Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tennou.
Next episode we’ll get into just how Buddhism came over to the islands—or at least what is recorded and what we have evidence for—in the sixth century. We’ll also talk about its reception and its patronage by the famous Soga clan.
Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode.
Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Lewis M. E. (2009). China between empires : the northern and southern dynasties (First Harvard University Press paperback). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Best, J. (2006). A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche, together with an annotated translation of The Paekche Annals of the Samguk sagi. Cambridge (Massachusetts); London: Harvard University Asia Center. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1tg5q8p
沈福伟 (1996). Cultural flow between china and outside world throughout history (1st ed.). Foreign Languages Press.
Skilton, Andrew (1994). A Concise History of Buddhism. Barnes & Nobles Books, by arrangement with Windhorse Publications. ISBN 0-7607-4829-2.
Ebrey P. B. (1993). Chinese civilization : a sourcebook (Second edition revised and expanded). Free Press.

Episode 71: The Yellow River and the Birth of Han Culture.

September 1, 2022 Joshua Badgley

Han era statue in the Gallery of New South Wales, Australia. Photo by author.

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This episode we start our more in depth look at what is happening on the continent, breezing through the Qin and Han periods. We focus on the culture that grew up along the floodplains of the Yellow River, and how that really became the touchstone for Han culture, which then spread outwards in many directions—though our primary focus is on the Yangzi river system to the south.

Image showing Sinitic civilization around the time of the Qin dynasty. You can see how it is mostly concentrated in the north along the Yellow River, with some pockets along the Yangzi. That would extend farther south, especially in the later Han period. Image by User Yuninjie on en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons.

This episode is fairly broad, only lightly touching on various subjects. Expect to dive into it again. In the meantime, here are some artifacts from the period that may be of interest:

Han TLV mirror from the Forbidden City in Beijing

This mirror has a pattern that looks suspiciously like the game known as liu bo, which may have arisen from some kind of divination. It is unclear just how the game would have been played, but it seems to be connected with Sinitic concepts of the universe. TLV patterns would make their way to Japan on the backs of these mirrors, although there is no record of liu bo having also made the journey, and it may have simply become a common decorative feature.

Stone carving of liu bo, from the Tokyo National Museum

Here we see a carving of two people playing the game liu bo in a Han era carving.

Han figures playing liu bo, from the New York Metropolitan Museum

Here we see figures playing liu bo, from a Han era tomb.

Han musicians, Shanghai Museum

Here we see a pair of Han dynasty musicians. One is playing the qin, or an early relative thereof. This zither would come to Japan and eventually become the koto, a vital part of Japanese court music.

Terracotta Warrior, Shaanxi History Museum

Here we see a typical member of the terracotta army set to guard the tomb of the first emperor of the Qin dynasty.

Terracotta Warrior, Shaanxi History Museum

Face of one of the terracotta warriors from the tomb of the first Qin emperor. Each one was unique, with its own features and exquisitely detailed. They even had slightly different hairstyles.

Terracotta Warrior, Shaanxi History Museum

Another example of one of the unique terracotta warriors.

Terracotta Warrior, Shaanxi History Museum

Face of one of the terracotta warriors from the tomb of the first Qin emperor. Each one was unique, with its own features and exquisitely detailed. They even had slightly different hairstyles.

Terracotta Warrior-boots, Shaanxi History Museum

Here we can see the pattern on the soles of the shoes of one kneeling feature—even this detail was preserved by the unknown artists who created these statues.

Terracotta General, Tomb of Qin Shihuang

Example of a general, wearing a different type of armor. His armor was probably less effective, but it is also unlikely he would have been fighting on the front lines. There are similarities here with conjectured armor in Japan between the Nara and Heian periods.

Terracotta Warrior - Pigmentation, Tomb of Qin Shihuang

Here we see some of the remaining pigmentation on the red cords of the armor. It was likely black, to represent lacquer, with red cords to help hold it together. The armor itself may have been metal or simply lacquered leather plates.

Terracotta Warrior - Pigmentation, Tomb of Qin Shihuang

Here we can see evidence of the pigmentation that the original statues would have had. Unfortunately, oxidization typically causes the colors to fade, quickly, after exposure, leaving the grey remains that most people know.

Terracotta Warrior - Pigmentation, Tomb of QIn Shihuang

Another example of pigmentation that seems to be remaining, in this case on the face. Still, there is only a little left at this time.

More photos by the author from various museums can be found at the following links:

Qin Dynasty

Han Dynasty

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan! My names is Joshua and this is Episode 71: The Yellow River and the Birth of Han Culture.
Before we get started a quick shout out to Arnold for donating to support the show. If you would like to join him you can do so over at our Ko-Fi site, that’s Ko-Fi.com/Sengokudaimyo, or find us on Patreon.
So we’ve been working our way through the Kiki—the Japanese chronicles—and we’ve made it through to the very start of the 6th century. In that time we’ve seen the state of Yamato grow, though in all likelihood its direct influence likely remained contained in the area immediately around the Nara Basin and out to the area of modern Ohosaka. Which isn’t to say that they weren’t a leader in their confederation, or that their dealings were confined to that area any more than later daimyo would be confined merely to the area of their own domains. It is still a question as to just how much influence Yamato had, but clearly they were a trendsetter, and had connections with the other lands of the archipelago and the continent.
And from the continent, the archipelago was receiving new technologies and new ideas. Envoys from Yamato were being sent, all the way to the court of the Liu Song, near modern day Nanjing, along the easternmost reaches of the Yangzi river. And they, as well as continental visitors and immigrants, were bringing back horses, writing, weaving, and more, including ideas of statecraft. Over the coming centuries we’ll see more and more of this, as Yamato grows and becomes ever more connected with the mainland.
And because of that, I want to once again take a detour away from our islands, and focus for a time on what was happening in the mainland at the beginning of the 6th century, as a lot of this is prelude to what we will see going forward in the archipelago. The governmental systems being used, refined, experimented with, and, some might say, corrupted, on the continent would become the model on which the future Japanese court would base their own system—with some twists of their own.
And yet it’s important to remember that the continent was not a monolith - it was home to various groups and ethnicities and cultures. However, just as the Roman empire had its impact on the various cultures of Europe, eastern Eurasia was heavily impacted by the culture that arose out of the Yellow River Basin.
Speaking of the Yellow River basin, I’d like to start by painting a picture. When we started this whole project, we talked about the islands of Japan and their geography, which impacted the development of Japan and continues to be a factor today. Therefore I figure it is likewise useful to talk somewhat about the geography of the continent.
If we start with the Korean peninsula, we see that it is similar to the archipelago—mountainous, with areas of flat land. In fact, like Japan, some 70% of the land is mountainous. This continues into modern China until you hit the Liao River basin in the west and the Amur River to the north. We know this as a home to Tungusic speaking people, as well as Mongols, and the Nivkh on the coast, but there is little enough in the written record, though there has been archaeological research in the area. This is likely where the people of Goguryeo came from, and Amur and West Liao DNA has been seen in the people on the archipelago, so we know there was contact.
This may be an area to explore more. Certainly the area played a large role in more recent historical events. But for now, I want to turn south, to the main part of what is known today as China.
That name, by the way, is something I’ve touched on before: “China” is something of an overloaded term, as is the concept of “Chinese”. It can be used for just about anything within the bounds of the modern state of China, which includes much of the area from the Amur River in the north all the way down to modern Vietnam in the south and all the way west to modern Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. At the same time, there are clearly differences between the Uighur, Mongol, Tibetan, Han, and many other cultures, as China is a nation with many cultures and ethnicities living within its borders.
So I’ll try to be specific, and often speak in terms of ethnic Han people and Sinic culture, broadly referring to the ethnic group and cultural norms that grew up largely along the Yellow River, which is one of two main rivers that run through the area of China – the other being the Yangzi, to the south.
Looking at a modern map, you can largely divide eastern China into roughly four regions. First, there are the northern region of Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.
Second, south of this, there is the Yellow River. The Yellow River starts up in the mountains and flows through the Loess Plateau, the source of the sediment that gives the river its brownish-yellow color—and thus its name. It then passes through a mountainous region and then the lower regions of the Yellow River flow largely through wide, flat land, before the river empties out into the Yellow Sea – likewise named for the color of the sediment that the river disgorges into it. The Yellow Sea opens out past the Shandong peninsula and is bordered on the east by the Korean peninsula until it reaches the East China sea. This Yellow River area was the homeland of the Han ethnic group, and the origins of the Shang and Zhou dynasties—as well as many of the dynasties up to the Han.
The third region, south of the Yellow River is the Yangzi River and its surroundings . Compared to the flatlands of the lower Yellow River, the Yangzi tends to be more hilly. In the east it is relatively flat, along its lower section, where it empties into the East China Sea around modern day Shanghai. The central region is more mountainous, and in the west is the Sichuan basin, a largely flat area surrounded by mountains, which proved both a help and a hindrance to people living there. Originally, the Yangzi was populated by numerous ethnic groups, who are often lumped together as the Bai Yue, or Hundred Yue. We will talk more about them, later.
Last there is the far south, which is a largely mountainous region that extends to the South China Sea. This was largely considered foreign or frontier region through most of the time we will be talking about, with some outposts and commandries, like those in the Korean peninsula, but for our purposes, right now, we will largely leave them be.
And so, let us go back to the Yellow River region. As I noted, the river brings down sediment from the Loess Plateau, and deposits it along the river bed. This was particularly true when the riverwould flood—due to either heavy rains or melting ice in the mountains near the river’s source. These floods would inundate the flat lands of the lower Yellow River, and deposit that soil across the land. This made the land incredibly fertile, but the unpredictability of the floods was a constant danger. This, in turn, led to settlement patterns where people built communities on the occasional high ground in an attempt to avoid the floods.
Early organization appears to have been built on the idea of taming the waters, and yet it was a constant battle. Dikes would be built and the sides of the river could be built up, but over time the sediment would deposit on the riverbed, raising the riverbed. Without constant dredging and building up of the riverbanks, the river would eventually flood. Sometimes this could change the location of the river—or at least its main branch—by over 400 km or more.
In many ways, then, good government in and around the Yellow River basin was, indeed, tied to mitigating natural disasters—or at least flooding. A government that kept up work on the river and ensured that it was properly managed would reduce the damage caused by flooding, while a government that was negligent would eventually allow the precautions to collapse. This is a theme we see early on in Chinese documentation, and it prompted the German philosopher Karl Wittfogel to form a theory called the “hydraulic hypothesis” which says, basically, that people banding together to manage flooding and irrigation was what prompted the formation of complex states. The real explanation is more complex, but it’s easy to see where this idea comes from.
The Shang and then the Zhou were early, powerful states. Much as with Yamato, the question of just how powerful is still somewhat up in the air, but this does appear to have been the foundation of early Sinic thought, and in particular the Duke of Zhou was often credited with creating the various rites and rituals that were considered at the core of good statesmanship.
In some ways, I’d say this was similar to what we see in Yamato, in that there were certain rituals that the sovereign was expected to perform that, along with administrative and military might, helped maintain the state. But the geography of the Yellow River Basin allowed for larger populations and, in some ways, allowed for greater control by the state, at least early on.
From what we know about the Zhou, it appears to have been a feudal system, with a social hierarchy. The sovereign sat at the top, with courts of nobles—members of elite families. These families were given control of large territories themselves—they were basically the hegemons of their own states, with Zhou at head of the coalition. And that seems to be part of the Zhou’s eventual downfall. While the nobility initially owed their place and lands to the ruling sovereign, over time they amassed their own, independent power. Combined with external threats, the Zhou weakened, and the situation quickly deteriorated. The various families became insular, and each state set against each other.
Many of these states would have names that will become all too familiar in later eras—names such as the Song, the Jin, and even the Wu, read in the archipelago as “Kure”. This turbulent time led to a certain diversity of thought and ideas. Confucuis, Laozi, Sunzi, and many other famous philosophers came from this period.
This is the Warring States Period, from about the 5th to 3rd century BCE—and yes, it is the same name as the period in Japanese history, the Zhanguo Shidai, or Sengoku Jidai. This is no accident, but rather a deliberate call-back by Japanese of that era and later periods to connect their own turmoil with that of China’s classical age. This era of conflict and division on the continent would eventually be brought to an end by forced unification under the state of Qin, the westernmost of the various kingdoms, situated around modern Xi’an, along the Wei River, which runs east to the Yellow as it heads out onto the plains of the lower reaches.
It was the Qin who unified the warring states through military conquest and instituted a harsh regime. The ruler of Qin took the name of Emperor, or Huangdi, and is still remembered as Qin Shihuangdi, the First Qin Emperor. He instituted a state based on the legalist system that had brought Qin to power, and he did well for himself. After all, his is the tomb of the terracotta army in Xi’an, a tomb on par with that of Daisen kofun in Japan, in size, and even moreso considering everything else in the complex – which is still being actively mapped and excavated, although the main tomb remains undisturbed at this time. The terracotta warriors themselves are truly remarkable, each one with unique features and tremendous detail down to the hobnails in their boots. These statues were originally vividly painted, though the pigments rarely survive long after being exposed to the open air. They provide us an unmatched view of what the Qin army looked like, such that it is suspected that each statue—or at least their head—was likely a depiction of an actual soldier in the army.
As I mentioned, the Qin state was organized around Legalist principles. Legalism insisted that all people follow exactly the rules and laws of the state. The theory was that if everyone played their role exactly, then the state would run smoothly. Ideally it eschewed favoritism and familial ties for a strict interpretation of the laws that applied to everyone, equally. It enforced this through draconian punishments. For example, there is a story that the emperor was out one day enjoying himself, and he fell asleep. He had with him two servants, one who was responsible for his cloak, and another who was responsible for his umbrella. As time dragged on, the servant responsible for his umbrella fell asleep as well, and so did not notice that the sun had shifted and the emperor was exposed. The other servant, thinking little of it, simply moved the umbrella so that the emperor remained in the shade.
When the emperor woke up and found out what had happened, he had both men punished. The one for falling asleep and not doing his job, but the other for trying to do someone else’s job instead of tending just to his own.
As one might imagine, this was considered a mite harsh by many, and it tended to rub people the wrong way. Still, Qin Shi Huangdi maintained power over a unified nation for nine years, despite numerous assassination attempts. He was eventually undone not by assassins, but by his own quest for immortality—the same quest that had him send people out looking for the famed Island of the Immortals, which we discussed back in episode 10. He was apparently drinking elixirs made with mercury, which likely poisoned him.
After his death in 210 BCE, court ministers tried to hide the news and eventually planned to have his son rule as a puppet sovereign. But this left the court weak, and fighting and rebellion once more broke out.
This could easily have devolved back into the Warring States period, which would have made the Qin dynasty simply a blip in the record, if it weren’t for a peasant-born commander named Liu Bang.
Liu Bang was a local Qin official who was working as a penal officer. We are told that he was taking prisoners to go work on the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi when some of them escaped. Under the Legalist penal codes of the time, allowing prisoners to escape was considered a dereliction of duty, and punishable by death, and the court was not known to be merciful. With no other options, Liu Bang decided to voluntarily free the rest of the prisoners—after all, it wasn’t going to get any worse for him—who were so grateful that they joined him. Together they took up residence in an abandoned fort in Mangdang, where they set up to resist any who might be sent after them.
But the death of Qin Shi Huangdi, and the subsequent rebellions that broke out the year after, provided an opening for the ambitious Liu Bang, who fought for the state of Chu, but eventually ended up taking power for himself. Thus Liu Bang, son of a commoner, became Emperor Gaozu of the Han dynasty.
The Han dynasty maintained much of the political apparatus of the Qin dynasty, but changed it in subtle, yet significant ways that would keep it in power for the next four centuries—minus a brief interregnum by one Wang Mang. This is one of the reasons why, while the Qin dynasty is the root of the English word for “China”, many Asian sources refer to Han—such as Hanzi, or Kanji in Japanese, for Sinitic writing—and it is generally used to refer to the ethnic Han people, or Hanren, in Mandarin, a term that appears to have been used since the period after the fall of the Han dynasty to refer to the major Sinitic speaking ethnic group of that and later dynasties. That’s how much of an impact this period had on the development of the people and thought of China.
Although the Han dynasty inherited the Qin governmental structures, it did away with the strictly legalist interpretation. This allowed some of the philosophical thought that had been oppressed under the Qin to flourish. In particular, Confucian classics had been confiscated by the Qin, and most were lost when the library they were stored in burned down, though some were saved by scholars who defied the Qin orders. Later, an official hunt would be made to find as many of these old works as possible, and by the end of the first century BCE, Han policy was that government officials had to be men trained in the Classics—generally speaking that meant Confucian classics, espousing Confucian values.
Setting up the government so that officials had to be trained typically meant that there had to be tests. It set up the semblance of a meritocracy—where one’s learning and cultivation would lead to jobs with the government, and thus access to political and social power. This would theoretically ensure that men in government positions—and, yes, generally speaking, it was only men who were considered, thanks to the patriarchal structure Han society inherited from past generations—so these government officials were, theoretically, men of learning and good character, and not just men from Great Families, who still had considerable power in their local areas. Government officials would be provided a stipend, often assessed in terms of the amount of grain that their stipend provided. The term for this, “dan”, would later be used in Japan as well, with the character, which also means “stone”, pronounced as “koku”.
Early on, the Han court knew it had to find a way to either blunt the power of hereditary families or at least get them working for the good of the state. The Zhou had done this through feudal bonds of fealty, and the Qin had attempted to do it through draconian legal measures after crushing them with their military force. Indeed, I suspect that many were still rebuilding after first falling to the Qin and then the rebellions thereafter.
So the Han attempted to tie families more firmly to the State. First, they recognized many of the ancient kingdoms, but placed members of Liu Bang’s own family in charge. Theoretically, the family ties would keep them loyal, but over time, this would break down. At the same time, Confucian values, growing at court and with anyone who wanted to hold social or political power, also emphasized the family. The concept of filial piety, expanded through all social relationships, formed the ties that bound people to the families and the families to the government, thus incorporating them and making them an extension of the government system.
This may have worked for a while, but nothing lasts forever, and there are almost always unintended consequences. For one, the court was still located along the Yellow River. A rising population, no doubt assisted by high yields from the Yellow River and the relative stability of the Han dynasty, put pressure on the land, and the Han expanded into frontier territories—for instance, settling large numbers of people on the Ordos plateau, with outposts far out in the western deserts, and the commandries in the Korean peninsula and the far south. And yet, despite this expansion the court, and thus, political power, remained concentrated largely in the capital regions. This included Chang’an, modern Xi’an, near the capital of Qin on the Wei river. Later, they would move to the capital of Luoyang, just a little further to the east. This was the center of power and prestige in the empire, and the families that were closer to the center had an advantage in playing the politics of the court. This was further emphasized by a worldview that placed the court at the center of the world. The further out from that center, the more uncultured and barbaric the people were thought to be. Han elite who were too far from the capital often found themselves as political outsiders—seen as country bumpkins and hicks. In turn, these outside families would often set themselves up at the center of their own cultural sphere. This idea of the center of the Court versus those on the periphery has some rather direct similarities with actions that would take place in Japan, as well. Great families were part of the ruling court, but outside families built up their own bases of power.
Back in the capital, the growing influence of certain families seemed to be a threat. How could even the emperor know whether someone’s loyalty was to themselves or to their family? And so they came up with a strategy that they thought would overcome this problem. To ensure that certain positions were only loyal to the court and the emperor, the court employed eunuchs—men who, through birth, accident, or voluntary action, had been castrated, losing the ability to reproduce. The theory seems to have been that men who could not produce an heir would not be so busy playing politics for their family, and they would be solely devoted to the court.
This really was a thing—and one part of court culture that I don’t believe Japan ever attempted to reproduce. Eunuchs could do well for themselves in the court, however. In fact, they could do so well that men voluntarily underwent castration so that they could apply for a position.
And, of course, many found ways around the idea that castration would prevent them from having heirs, too. In some cases, men would undergo castration after having fathered children, in the hopes that their service could provide a better life for their family. In other cases, eunuchs would “adopt” an heir. This was important in a society where it was your ancestors who were supposed to carry out the proper rites after you passed away, and keep your memory alive. Without heirs to perform the rites, what would your afterlife be like? Probably not pretty.
That said, without heirs, and without the hope of better life in the hereafter, it seems that some eunuchs were, instead, tempted to acquire social and material power in the here and now. In fact, it grew so bad that even today the trope of the evil, greedy, court eunuch is still quite common, despite the fact that it was likely only a small number for whom that was true—or at least no more true than for any other elite official anywhere in the world.
Still, according to the histories, the fall of the Han came at the hands of just such eunuchs, whose desire for worldly comfort led them to play fast and loose with the empire’s finances.
You see, as the eunuchs were amassing power, there was another dynamic going on. Much as the Roman empire did in Europe, the Han dynasty often enlisted and employed ethnic groups from outside of their own borders and brought them in. The idea was to let barbarians fight barbarians, and so they would resettle nomadic groups inside of Han territory, giving them land in exchange for fighting on their side.
However, these outside cultures were literally foreign, and they often clashed in contact with their Han neighbors, often leading to raids inside of Han territory by the very same people that had been brought in to protect them.
With no other recourse, local communities had to create their own armed groups to fight off these horse-riding warriors. Some of these groups would be organized around more than just local community pride. After all, in times of chaos, religious zeal often brings people together, and this seems to have been the unifying factor of more than one group. Organizing around a place usually meant that you attracted people from that place, but organizing around religion or around an idea meant that you could bring together disparate groups from all over.
One such idea was the Way of Taiping, or Great Peace. This is unrelated, by the way, to the Taiping Rebellion of the late 19th century, in case you were wondering. In this instance, the Way of Taiping was based on Daoist ideas, though, despite their name, they were anything but peaceful. Their adherents were militants, and they believed that, with the disorder in the land, a millennium of Great Peace was due to either reform the Han or sweep it away.
A series of rebellions broke out, often known by the headgear that these adherents wore: A yellow piece of cloth, wrapped around their head. Thus the name, in English at least, of the Yellow Turban Rebellion—sometimes also the Yellow Cloth Rebellion, for a more accurate but less romantic description.
Of course, people begged the Han court for assistance against these rebels, but the Han coffers were empty—there wasn’t enough money to raise an army. This was compounded by the fact that Yellow Cloth adherents and sympathizers were found even among the palace guards and amongst the powerful eunuchs. Armed rebellion eventually broke out in the 16 commandries, largely in the area immediately surrounding the Yellow River basin. Without a centralized military response, private armies, led by members of powerful families who were in opposition to the powerful eunuchs at court, ended up putting down the rebellions themselves.
This, of course, brought nominal praise from the Han court, and the generals were lauded for their success. But then, almost immediately, they were removed from their posts and shoved aside, with eunuchs taking over, as they were the ones officially in charge of the army.
Infighting continued, and the weakened Han dynasty never recovered. The Han dynasty would effectively end in 190, which led to a period of warlordism known as the Three Kingdoms, which in turn would lead to the era of the northern and southern dynasties, during which the empire largely remained fractured, with only short periods of unification. This would last into the late 6th century. It was in this environment of fractured and warring states that the Japanese archipelago—and specifically Yamato—would be conducting most of their early interactions. This includes Himiko and the Wei, as well as the Jin and later the Liu Song dynasties—not to mention those interactions we don’t have records for. Many aspects of continental culture, often filtered through the Korean peninsula, would be arriving during this time. .
And speaking of arriving in distant foreign lands, the archipelago wasn’t the only place that was getting new ideas. While the Han dynasty imported new ideas and people from the outside—mostly from the north and west—there were also pressures sending people—and ideas—out in all directions as well. The Han culture complex was an amalgamation of different philosophies and cultural ideas, brought together in one place, but even as that was happening, conflict and population pressures were also pushing people out to the frontier areas. In the west and north, Han people were often the minority, but in the southern regions, especially along the Yangzi, Han people began to emigrate in droves. This escalated towards the end of the Han, especially in the period of violence that surrounded its downfall.
It is estimated that several million people—mostly ethnic Han peasants—headed south in the last century of the Han dynasty, settling along the Yangzi river basin. As they moved in they would start the process of draining swamps and wetlands and making the region more habitable for rice paddy farming. This area had been the southern frontier for years—described as a place of jungles and strange people and cultures, but now it was becoming Sinicized in ways that it had not before.
The majority likely took the easiest path, from the Yellow River floodplain to the Huai River basin in central China, and then on to the Yangzi river, mostly ending up in the fertile lower reaches. Some, however, settled further upriver, in the more mountainous reaches of the central Yangzi. This was accessible from the Han capitals of Chang’an and Luoyang via a daunting route that included traversing the Qinling Mountains at Wuling pass—a 7,000 foot climb that traversed a plank road built along the cliff walls.
That was nothing compared to the third path, however. The truly adventurous took the famous Road to Shu. This road went west out of Chang’an to Baoji, and then turned southwest to the Min River basin—modern Chengdu, in Sichuan. It was 270 miles, about a third of which were those same type of cliff-side trestle roads. Historically speaking it was the least important—it wasn’t exactly likely that someone would be marching their armies down it any time soon—but it was immortalized by the Tang poet Li Bai—known as Ri Haku in Japan—in a poem entitled Shu Dao Nan—the Difficult Road to Shu.
In the course of these migrations, the ethnic Han farmers tended to monopolize the flat lowlands for growing rice, leaving the highlands for forestry products. This drove the indigenous people—various ethnic groups generally lumped together as the baiyue, or hundred Yue—up into the more mountainous and less desirable areas. The Yue are thought to be the ancestors of the Vietnamese people, who once ruled large swaths of areas from the Yangzi river south.
Those mountain tops and highlands would make a good location for temples and fortresses, creating myriad small, and independent communities.
This will all play out in our next episode as we talk about the aftermath of the fall of the Han, the rise of the Three Kingdoms, and the cultural changes that came with it—all happening at the same time that Yamato was being born and starting to take its own place out in the archipelago.
I’m thinking this will probably take at least 3~4 episodes to get through, which is a bit, and I’m going to do my best to avoid getting too far into the weeds, but as we go I think there are a few important facets of continental culture that we want to focus on, especially as the 6th century will start to see even closer ties. So we’ll try to condense several centuries into just a few episodes for you.
Until then, thank you for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode.
Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. It is always great to hear from people and ideas for the show.
And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Lewis, Mark Edward. (2009). China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties. ISBN 978-0-674-02605-6
Kohn, Livia (ed.) (2004). Daoism Handbook: Volume I. ISBN 0-391-04237-8.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (ed.) (1993). Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. ISBN s0-02-908752-X.

Episode 10: The Islands of the Immortals

February 1, 2020 Joshua Badgley

Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s 19th century block print depicting Xu Fu’s fantastical voyage in search of Mount Penglai. Image in the public domain, from the Boston Fine Arts Museum.

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This episode we really start to take a look at Japan as seen in the Chinese chronicles. From early times, the Japanese archipelago has been viewed as an almost mythic place in Chinese histories, connected as it was with fantastical tales of the herb of immortality and Penglai, the mountain where the herb was said to grow, far out in the eastern sea.

We also take this time to look at some of what was going on in China and how that affected Japan. Remember, a key aspect of the position of the elites in the archipelago was based on the ability to acquire bronze and iron from the mainland. When turmoil on the mainland disrupted access to these goods it had ripple effects that would echo through the trade routes out into the archipelago, and we see its mark left in the archaeological record of the period.

Copy of the gold seal of the King of Na of Wa from the Tokyo National Museum.

Emerging from this chaos we then see our first glimpses of the early Wa states in the islands—while there is some mention of them in the early Han dynasty, it isn’t until the later Han accounts that we start to get any real details. Perhaps most incredible is the seal of the King of Na, a gold seal found on Shika Island, in modern day Fukuoka prefecture, which appears to be the item described in the Chronicles of the Later Han dynasty. That we should have such close agreement with the written histories is almost too good to be true—and to be honest, many have questioned its validity. Found in the late 18th century by happenstance while a farmer was working his fields, the story of its discovery is just as incredible as its provenance.

We also cover the account—sparse as it is—of king Suisho. Or—maybe King Suisho. There is no ruler in the Japanese histories that can be easily equated with this figure. This will be a problem for a while, as it is difficult to equate the Chinese names for the Japanese sovereigns with the Japanese names given to them. It is often further confused by the fact that we usually know the names in the Chronicles by their posthumous names—a practice that was likely imposed much later, in imitation of Chinese practice. And that even assumes that the given names we have—names like Ikumeiribikoisachi no Sumeramikoto—are, in fact, the names of the time and not a later name or title, as early Japanese names have their own special qualities that make them interesting to study.

And so, unfortunately, we’ll have to continue to live with some uncertainty for the time being, but at least a few of the clouds are parting and we are beginning to see a glimmer of what is going on. All of this will start to come together, and we’ll soon be entering into the period that is considered most reliably as historical. From there we’ll be able to dig into the Japanese chronicles and hopefully have a good platform to examine them critically as we do so.

References

Robbeets, Martine (2017). Austronesian influence and Transeurasian ancestry in Japanese, Language Dynamics and Change, 7(2), 210-251. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-00702005
Mizoguchi, Koji (2012). The archaeology of Japan: From the earliest rice farming villages to the rise of the state. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139034265
Soumaré, Massimo (2007); Japan in Five Ancient Chinese Chronicles: Wo, the Land of Yamatai, and Queen Himiko. ISBN: 978-4-902075-22-9
Kidder, J. Edward (2007); Himiko and Japan's Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology. ISBN: 978-0824830359
Imamura, Keiji (1997). Prehistoric Japan: New perspectives on insular East Asia. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00085215
Barnes, Gina L. (1988); Protohistoric Yamato: Archaeology of the First Japanese State. ISBN: 978-0915703111

The Tone River

Rough Transcript

References

Ame Kunioshi, aka Kimmei Tennō

Soga no Iname no Sukune no Ōmi

Ishihime

Yata no Tamakatsu

Osada Nunakura Futodamashiki no Mikoto, aka Bidatsu Tennō

Kasanuhi (aka Satake) no Himemiko

Kitashi Hime

Wonane Gimi

Takechi (or Takeuchi) no Sukune

Koshi no Kuni

Sushen / Mishihase (粛慎)

Sado Island

Nivkh

Kawahara Tami no Atahe no Miya

Umakai no Omi no Utayori

Umakai no Omi no Morishi and Umakai no Omi no Nasehi

Hafuri

Michi no Ushi

Shibagaki

Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Arako

Katsuraki no Atahe no Naniwa

Sagaraka (or Saganaka)

Kashiwade no Omi no Katabeko

Kose no Omi no Saru and Kishi no Akabato

Yamato no Aya no Saka no Ue no Atahe no Komaro

Nishikori no Obito no Ōshi (or Ōishi)

Wang Jinnie

Tsunoga Arashito

Kibi no Atahe no Naniwa

Iwahi and Masa

Rough Transcript

References

Who’s Who

Ame Kunioshi no Ōkimi, aka Kimmei Tennō

Soga no Iname no Sukune

Mononobe no Okoshi

Wang Jinnie and his children

Rough Transcript

References

Buddhist Art and Architecture

Gandhara and the Kushan Empire

Tarim Basin

Dunhuang

China

Rough Transcript

References

Rough Transcript

References

References