Episode 47: The Man Who Might Be King

August 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Haniwa of a quiver full of arrows from the 5th century Muromiyayama Kofun. Photo from the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.

Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko

The names we find in the Chronicles are primarily 「葛城襲津彦」 (Katsuraki [no] Sotsuhiko) in the Nihon Shoki and 「葛城長江曾都毘古」 (Katsuraki [no] Nagae [no] Sotsuhiko) in the Kojiki. In the Old Japanese of the Kofun period it is probably something like Kaduraki [no] Sotubiko. Old Japanese had many differences from modern Japanese pronunciation, and is a study unto itself.

The other name we see is from an excerpt from the Baekje annals in the Nihon Shoki, and it is「沙至比跪」(Satibiko). There is technically the possibility that this story is about someone else, or that the Baekje Annals themselves had it wrong, in the first place. The general consensus, though, appears to be that these figures are, indeed, referencing the same person.

The idea of him being a high ranking chieftain, and possibly one of those responsible for the trade routes with the continent—after all, there were only so many ways to get from the archipelago to the peninsula—is intriguing. Perhaps he was some sort of King. However, I would also note that the excerpt from the ancient Baekje Annals, which is no longer extant, other than the fragments in the Nihon Shoki and other histories, like the Samguk Sagi, does not refer to him as the sovereign of all of Yamato, and puts him in a subservient position. That said, it is clear that the Chroniclers tinkered with the wording of the Baekje annals in places. Sometimes it was simply to update words to increase understanding, such as changing “Wa” to “Yamato”. It would have been easy enough, however, for them to “clarify” something in such a way that it changed the meaning to better suit what the Chroniclers knew to be the truth, so even here we can’t be entirely sure that we are getting a faithful transliteration. Still, it seems reasonable to assume that Satibiko—or Sotsuhiko—is, indeed, the one being referenced here.

Ame no Hiboko

You might recall the “Heavenly Sun Spear”—「天日槍」in the Nihon Shoki or「天之日矛」 in the Kojiki—from our earliest discussions of relations with the continent. He was said to be a Silla prince who eventually settled in the area of Kehi, along modern Tsuruga Bay, where he came to be worshipped as a kami. Of course “Ame no Hiboko” is a Japonic name, and unlike other names on the peninsula. He might be the same, however, as the man named Sonaka (or Tsunoga) Shichi (or “Cheulchi” in modern Korean). Some accounts have his origin in Silla, while others point to Nimna and the confederated Kara states. In some stories he even has a title that would appear to equate to about the 3rd rank of the Silla court.

The Chronicles make Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko one of Ame no Hiboko’s descendants, and provide yet another connection to the areas of Silla and Kara on the southern Korean peninsula.

Takechi no Sukune

We just talked bout him last episode (Epsiode 46), and while the Chronicles suggest he was Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko’s father, there is enough evidence to question whether or not that was actually the case.

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Also known as Jingū Kōgō (神功皇后), she was the sovereign who is said to have “subjugated “ the Korean peninsula for Yamato. She is also connected to the Katsuraki family, through her lineage, and some of the earliest stories about Sotsuhiko happened, ostensibly, during her reign.

Homuda Wake

The sovereign for most of this period that we have been discussing, aka Ōjin Tennō (応神天皇). We’ll cover more on him next episode.

King of Kara and his Sister

The King of Kara is referenced as “Kwi-pon” in the Aston translation (己本旱岐—Kwi-pon Kanki). Aston goes on to note that the Dongguk Tonggam, a 15th century compilation of Korean history, gives the sovereign at this time as “I Si-Bpeum” (伊尸品). It is possibly a transliteration error, or it could be the difference between the king of Geumgwan Kara, the primary city-state of the Kara confederacy, or it could be that this is a different '“King” altogether. We have little to go on besides what is written here.

It is interesting that he is given a similar Silla rank to Ame no Hiboko, that of Kanki. I don’t know if this was added later or if it is indicative of Kara kings accepting court rank from Silla, similar to how other states sought out titles from the Wei and Jin courts, a practice we will go over in more detail in a later episode.

His younger sister’s name is given as 「既殿至」, which Aston translates as “Kwi-chon-chi”. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough information on the language of Kara to give you anything more, but it is likely better than reading it using modern Japanese on’yomi. This is the younger sister who then goes to the court of the “Great Wa” to complain about “Sachihiko” not following through with his orders.

Mongna Geunja

Mongna Günja (or Mongna Künja—possibly even something like Mong Nagunja: 木羅斤資) is a Baekje general who shows up during the reign of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, helping out with the Baekje-Wa alliance and later chasing down “Sachihiko” and stopping the assault on Kara. Later he would have a son (with, interestingly enough, a Silla wife) who would have his own role to play in pen-insular events.

Yutsuki / Kungwol

Specifically this individual is referenced as “Yutsuki [no] Kimi” (弓月君)—Lord Yutsuki or Lord of Yutsuki. Yutsuki here is the traditional pronunciation in modern Japanese, and the Korean would be something like Kungwol (and the characters at that time may have been something like “Kung-ngwet” based on a Middle Chinese reading of them). The Chronicles don’t specify exactly where they are from, which has given rise to various theories, many of them trying to connect Yutsuki to someplace in modern China or even out in the Xinjiang region, near the border with Kazhakstan. While that certainly is possible—the trade routes of central Eurasia have long been in operation—it seems difficult, if not impossible, to prove by just this particular entry.

Maketsu

Maketsu (眞毛津) was a seamstress sent over to Yamato from Baekje. She is hailed as the ancestor of the seamstresses of Kume. At that time it seems common to set up villages that specialized in particular goods and skills, and many of the stories of this time talk about the deliberate importation of expert crafters from the continent.

Clothing in particular we have a rather murky view of until we get more human-shaped haniwa in the 6th century, and even then it can be difficult to make out what is actually going on and what is exaggeration by the haniwa sculptures, but here we can see textual evidence of what we see later on, which is the influence of continental styles on the archipelago. Granted, prior to this they were probably in synch with at least what was going on in the southern tip of the peninsula, but I suspect that what Maketsu and people like her were bringing may have been a more Sinified aesthetic.

I should note that it mentions she was sent as “tribute”. It is unclear to me just how much choice that artisans like this had in their assignments, but my guess is that they didn’t have much. It has been a not-uncommon move across the globe for artisans to be forcibly taken and re-established elsewhere so that another group could acquire their intangible cultural properties. Of course, there are also examples where artisans were also enticed with lucrative offers of a comfortable living, and some may just have wanted to travel and explore the world, but given the way it is written and how people were enslaved, resettled, and sometimes sent to foreign courts, I suspect that there was very little choice involved here.

Iwa no Hime

We are told that Iwa no Hime (磐之媛) was the daughter of Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko. She would go on to become the queen of the sovereign Ōsazaki, aka Nintoku Tennō, and her son, Izaho Wake, would eventually follow him on the Yamato throne, becoming known as Ritchū Tennō. I wonder if this connection had something to do with the way that Sotsuhiko is treated in the narrative.

King Naemul of Silla

Naemul was the first historically attested sovereign of Silla in the 4th and very start of the 5th century. Naemul sent the future King Silseong to be a hostage at the Goguryeo court, and may have been the one to send Prince Misaheun to the Wa.

King Silseong of Silla

Silseong followed Naemul, despite the fact that Naemul had at least three sons: Nulji, Bokho, and Misaheun. In the first year of his reign, according to the Samguk Sagi, Prince Misaheun was sent to the Wa as an envoy, though this may have happened in the reign of Naemul, as attested to in the Samguk Yusa. Later he would send Prince Bokho to Goguryeo, and he married his daughter to the eldest of Naemul’s sons, Nulji. Eventually, though, he seems to have had a change of heart and attempted to have Nulji killed, but the plan would ultimately backfire.

King Nulji of Silla

After killing King Silseong in retaliation for Silseong’s attempted assassination of Nulji, one of the first things that King Nulji would do is to set about trying to get his brothers returned from the various courts at which they were being held hostage. This was eventually accomplished by the loyal courtier, Pak Jesang

Prince Bokho of Silla

Prince Bokho was sent by King Silseong as a hostage to the court of Goguryeo. He eventually escaped their custody with assistance from Pak Jesang.

Prince Misaheun of Silla

Prince Misaheun was a hostage at the Wa court. His eventual rescue is mentioned across multiple sources, with slight variations in the details, including the Nihon Shoki, the Samguk Sagi, the Samguk Yusa, and the Dongguk Tonggam. In the Nihon Shoki, Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko plays a prominent role in those events.

Pak Jesang

Pak Jesang was a loyal courtier of the Silla court. He offered to personally go and bring back King Nulji’s brothers, the Princes Bokho and Misaheun. Even today he is held up as a legendary example of loyalty, giving up everything, including his family and, eventually, his life for his lord.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 47: The Man who Might be King
There are certainly a lot of names that get thrown around in the Chronicles. Most of them only appear once, usually in a list telling us who begat whom, which usually looks like a rather blatant attempt to connect some high muckety-muck with the royal family or otherwise explain the origin of some person or group that was around in the 8th century. This is especially true of the eras we’ve been discussing, I’d say, probably because of the lack of good source material to draw from, among other things. Still, you occasionally get a recurring character here or there that keeps popping up and making an appearance.
Last episode we talked about one such supporting character, Takechi no Sukune, the first Prime Minister, or Oho-omi, who supposedly held his job through at least 5 different reigns, and who was involved in some of the more impactful parts of the narrative, even if he wasn’t the main character.
Now Takechi no Sukune isn’t the only name that keeps popping up again and again in the Chronicles for this time—though certainly he seems to be one of the most influential, not to mention long-lived. Unfortunately, just like the sovereigns he served, we cannot confirm anything about his actual existence. Was he an actual person? Or was he, perhaps, an amalgamation of individuals, perhaps all serving under the name or title of “Takechi”? I suspect that he was an important figure in the transition to the new dynasty—possibly someone referenced in various stories, and maybe he did provide some kind of connection back to the previous dynasty, but all of that is speculation.
At the same time, we have evidence of at least one individual from this time who, more likely than not, did exist. In fact, he’s got a better claim to actual historicity than do either Homuda Wake, the supposed sovereign of Yamato, or his prime minister Takechi no Sukune, since he unlike either of them, this person is directly referenced in the Baekje annals by name. Furthermore, despite not having as many entries in the Japanese chronicles as either of those other two, he seems intimately tied in to the royal lineage. On top of all of that we’ve mentioned him before, though just in passing. His name is Katsuraki Sotsu Hiko.
Now, Katsuragi is a place name, as well as the name of a prominent family group, which is quite likely related. It is located in the southwest corner of the Nara Basin, opposite the old capital at Miwa in modern Sakurai. I haven’t found anything that clearly states when it became a place of significance—or even if the place was named for the family or vice versa. Regardless, the family group claims a lineage going all the way back to the time of Iware Biko, though you may have some inkling just what kind of stock I put into all of that.
More importantly for our current narrative, the Katsuraki family are found in the lineage of Homuda Wake’s mother, Okinaga Tarashi Hime. Specifically they are mentioned as part of the lineage descending down to her from that ancient Silla Prince, Ame no Hiboko. So they are both tied to the royal family and to the royal family of Silla, though of course there is no evidence for this prince in the Silla annals, just in the Japanese chronicles. Still, that tie to the continent is going to be important, because it is in dealing with the continent—and in particular dealing with Silla, where Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko will gain most of his notoriety.
Before we get to those stories, let me quickly touch on the rest of his name, though: Sotsu Hiko. It is an interesting name, in part because it would seem to mark this character as the lord or prince—Hiko—of some place called “So”, assuming that the “tsu” here is, indeed, that possessive marker we’ve seen and discussed before. In the Baekje annals his name is rendered as Sachihiko, which may simply be a transliteration error from the Japanese to the Korean and then back again. In Old Japanese these characters likely sounded even closer: probably something like So tu Bpiko, and “Sa ti Bpiko”.
So to start with, let’s go with the story that is at the core of the belief that So-tsu-hiko was, indeed, a real boy, and that is the excerpt that the Japanese Chroniclers included from the Baekje Annals for the year 382. Now in the hodgepodge of the Chronicles this event actually shows up during the reign of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, backdated by 120 years to 262, but given the rest of the contextual evidence we can fairly confidently put this incident at about 382, which is about 9 years before the events recorded on the stele of King Gwangaetto the Great. This is in the time of King Gusu—aka Geungusu—of Baekje, who had succeeded his father, King Chogo, in 375. In Silla this was still the reign of King Naemul, who had sent his envoys to the Jin court only a year earlier.
According to the Baekje records, the Wa were angered when Silla didn’t wait upon them—by which I assume they mean that they didn’t send them the expected payment-slash-bribe that they were expecting—and so the Wa sent a force to attack Silla, under the command of So-tsu-hiko. So-tsu-hiko had his forces ready to march on Silla, but Silla had a rather unusual plan of their own. Rather than readying an army to oppose him they decided to appeal to try a different approach, sending two beautiful Silla ladies to seduce him. Apparently this ploy worked, and So-tsu-hiko called off the attack on Silla, though that left him with a conundrum: He had troops in the field, and no doubt they were expecting some action.
While we don’t know a lot about the military armies or bands or whatever they were at this time, certain things we can deduce from what we know about militaries around the world. One of those things is that, historically, you need to make sure your troops get properly rewarded, since they are putting their lives on the line. Even in conscript armies you need to keep morale up, and in this period I suspect that many of the soldiers fighting were probably doing so on a semi-voluntary basis, mainly because Yamato court didn’t quite seem to have the kind of authority to just force people off of their land to go fight and possibly die on their behalf. I doubt anyone at this time had true standing armies, though we are starting to see more weapons and armor—something that will become common burial goods, replacing the earlier bronze mirrors as high status grave goods.
Besides, it takes a lot of organization to keep soldiers fed, clothed, armed, and trained, and typically the resources to do that came from the booty acquired during the actual fighting. In later periods we would see this as land that could be given out to those warriors who had fought exceptionally well, while in this period it may have been more material goods, captured during the fighting.
Either way, these troops would need to be taken care of—to send them all the way to Silla, ready to fight, but then to balk at the last minute might have been a rather dangerous ploy for So-tsu-hiko. In all likelihood it he found it easier to simply redirect his forces, and so, instead of reprimanding Silla, the army marched into the lands of Kara, instead.
Of course, this was not exactly a subtle change in direction. The King of Kara, given in the Baekje Annals as Kwi-pon—though Aston gives his name as Si-Bpeum according to his reading of the Korean Tonggam—fled to Baekje due to So-tsu-hiko’s assaults. The King’s sister, Kwi-chon-chi, then went to the Great Wa—aka Yamato—and asked the sovereign there, Okinaga Tarashi Hime, for assistance, complaining about the assaults by So-tsu-hiko and his Wa troops. Well Tarashi Hime was quite livid to hear of this impertinence. Her orders to So-tsu-hiko had been clear, after all, and they had been all about reprimanding Silla, nothing to do with attacking Kara. And so she asked for the Baekje general, Mongna Keuncha, to go and sort things out. Mongna Keuncha, as you may recall from some episodes back, was one of the generals that had led troops as part of the Baekje-Wa alliance, and so here he is again, setting things right in Kara.
Mongna Keuncha appears to have been successful at stopping the assault on Kara, but he didn’t capture So-tsu-hiko, who remained at-large on the continent, presumably with those two Silla women to keep him company, though who knows if they had stuck with him through his defeat. Another account, for which, like a viral meme on social media, we aren’t given the actual source, claims that So-tsu-hiko went into hiding as soon as he learned that Tarashi Hime was upset with him.
That said, Sotsu Hiko had his own eyes and ears in the court. He seems to have had an in with one of the ladies at court, who still thought well of him, despite everything that had happened. After giving everything some time to blow over, he secretly sent her a message and asked her to feel out the mood in the court—specifically that of the sovereign. This court lady found a time to bend the ear of Tarashi Hime. She claimed to have had a dream about So-tsu-hiko. Well as soon as the lady in waiting mentioned his name, Tarashi Hime’s mood soured, and she loudly declaimed that should he ever show his face around Yamato again, she would have him killed.
And so no, things hadn’t blown over. Realizing that no pardon would be forthcoming, So-tsu-hiko headed off into a cave and died.
Which, of course, would seem to bring our story to a close. He was a general, he went to Silla, he was seduced into betraying his orders, attacked Kara, and then died, hiding in seclusion.
Except, of course, that isn’t at all where this ends. In fact, it is barely the beginning, and this is probably why the Chroniclers caveated that whole portion with “one source says” because I suspect even they were having some problem putting all of this together.
You see, Katsuraki So-tsu-hiko shows up—either by his full name or just as So-tsu-hiko, in stories from at least the adjusted year of 325 and then continuing for the next century and a half, scattered across three reigns. Of course, from what we can verify we can more reliably trace him in the historical record from about 325 to probably 418, and maybe even 426. For all of that, though, many of the stories about him seem to be retellings of the same incidents, just placed in different reigns, though with some of the actors changed. We’ve seen similar “repeated” stories in the Chronicles after all.
For example, in the 14th year of Homuda Wake’s reign—probably about 403 CE, right smack dab in the middle of the conflicts with Silla and Goguryeo--, we are given another story about So-tsu-hiko. In this case an envoy named Yutsuki—or possibly something like Kungweol, in modern Korean—attempted to travel from Baekje to Yamato to provide his allegiance. Word may have been sent with an envoy earlier that same year, or perhaps the year prior. The Baekje annals in the Samguk Sagi note that Baekje had sent an envoy to Wa to seek out large pearls, while the Japanese chronicles mention a seamstress named Maketsu who was sent over—possibly as part of the ongoing exchange surrounding the, shall we say, residency of Crown Prince Jeonji of Baekje at the Yamato court. To help Yutsuki make the journey, So-tsu-hiko was sent out to see them safely from Kara at the end of the Korean peninsula, over to Yamato, but after he left, the court heard nothing.
Of course, in this age before modern communication, it is little wonder that nobody heard anything back immediately. All sorts of pitfalls could waylay a journey, and who knew how long it would take on the other side before anyone heard anything back. In this case, though, it was rather excessive, as three years went by and still nobody had showed up at the Yamato court. And so they sent two generals out to find out what happened. Convinced that Silla had interfered and was holding them, the troops made there way to Silla and, low and behold, Silla was indeed keeping So-tsu-hiko and Yutsuki hostage. Under the threat of the Wa forces, or so we are led to believe, Silla admitted to kidnapping them and allowed them to return with the Wa forces.
Now some see in this story a retelling of the earlier So-tsu-hiko story, possibly mixed with something like the early stories of the Baekje ambassadors from the supposed first meeting of Baekje and Wa, who were also waylaid by Silla and, in that case, forced to bring Silla envoys along with them to the Yamato court. In both casesHere, you have So-tsu-hiko going to the continent and someone else having to go after him. In this story, though, he is treated as more of a victim, rather than a rogue general. And in all of these instances it is Silla who somehow detains him or causes him to stray from his mission.
Of course, this could just be a common theme in pen-insular relations—Silla may have regularly looked to intercept Wa and Baekje ships, and vice versa. But there are a few of these kinds of accounts scattered about.
Unfortunately, there isn’t too much too corroborate this in the Korean sources. The Samguk Sagi does have the Wa attacking the peninsula around 405 CE, but according to Silla they were repelled. Then there were two attacks in 407 where they kidnapped 100 people and took them back with them. But whether any of this correlates to the other stories is impossible to say for certain.
Now as to why one story has So-tsu-Hiko as the villain, disobeying the court, and the other paints him as a victim of Silla’s treachery may have to do with the different sources that the stories were coming from, as well as what we are told afterwards. You see, Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko had a daughter named Iwa no Hime, who would wind up marrying Ohosazaki, the successor to Homuda Wake. She would give birth to one of the future sovereigns, Izaho no Wake. This, by extension makes So-tsu-hiko the ancestor of several generations of sovereigns in the Middle Dynasty, as well as the current lineage, at least according to the Chronicles.
This is interesting for a few reasons, beyond perhaps the obvious. I mean, let’s face it, everyone was trying to tie themselves to the royal lineage, so I don’t think that his placement there is all that big of a shock—if you were a major family and you didn’t claim some tie in with the court then come on, you aren’t even trying, and there were some big names that claimed descent from So-tsu-hiko.
Beyond that, though, it wasn’t just that one of his daughters was married to the sovereign, but rather that she was considered a queen. You see, as we’ve discussed before, there are multiple women who are brought into the royal family as wives of the sovereign, but most do not become the queen, and so their offspring are not considered to be in line for the Yamato throne. To be considered eligible to be a queen, and thus for one’s offspring and descendants to be considered eligible to inherit the throne, a woman had to be of royal blood herself.
Now, of course, technically Iwa no Hime is of royal blood, as is So-tsu-hiko. The Chroniclers saw to that, making sure to connect So-tsu-hiko to Takechi no Sukune, but as we discussed in the last episode on Takechi no Sukune, there are a few things that call this lineage into question, not the least being their disparate titles.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first questionable lineage in the sources, especially for women who would become the queens and mothers of the official sovereigns. However, in this case, she is the daughter of a supposed subject, rather than being the daughter of some lord outside of the Yamato court. So, unlike with those others for whom a royal inheritance may have been manufactured, here we see no obvious political benefit to the royal line for her to be considered as a Queen, let alone for her children to be considered legitimate claimants. Dr. Cornelius J. Kiley discussed this back in 1973 in an article entitled “State and Dynasty in Archaic Yamato”, published in the Journal of Asian Studies. There he discusses a few other points about the succession, but regarding So-tsu-hiko in particular he points out that the stories have him defying the orders of the Yamato sovereign, and later some of his descendants would go on to found the powerful Soga clan, which dominated court politics in the 6th and early 7th centuries. And of course the Soga’s power seems to have been partly based in their association with Buddhism and the continent, which we will see in a bit coming over from the Korean peninsula as well.
Dr. Kiley isn’t the only one to have noticed all of this, and there is some thought that the truth may be that So-tsu-hiko was not actually a vassal of the Yamato court, but rather another sovereign or independent Wa lord who was heavily involved in the activities of the peninsula. Here it is suggested that So-tsu-hiko, wherever he was based, was perhaps in alliance with Yamato, but likely had his own powerful territory or kingdom, and it may be that more than a few of the actions ascribed to figures such as Homuda Wake or the ambiguous “King of Wa” may have actually been referencing him, or some similarly independent figure. We can’t know for certain of course, but we do know that there were other powerful figures—perhaps even rival courts—across the archipelago, given the number of large, kingly tombs that we see outside of the immediate geographical base of the Yamato court.
And so it may be that So-tsu-hiko was his own kind of sovereign—a king in his own right, as it were. He may have been allied with Yamato, and it is even possible that, as an independent ruler of some part of the archipelago or the southern peninsula, he was supporting a larger confederation of Wa countries. Of course, this totally goes against the narrative of the Yamato court, where the rule of the Heavenly Descendant was just a natural consequence of their divine nature and the fact that the kami had gifted the archipelago to them. Even early stories of conquest are treated more like inspection tours, with the odd outsider or resistance from uncivilized barbarians, rebels, and bandits, but no real talk of any other sovereigns. This is especially true in dealings with the continent, where the official story continues to push a narrative of conquest and subjugation by Yamato—a narrative that is not exactly backed up by the other evidence we have available to us.
So was So-tsu-hiko an independent king in his own right, possibly even the true power behind the early Baekje-Wa alliance? Or was he just another court noble, who was then entrusted with great responsibilities on the continent? Or was it something in between? Could this be why we have some stories where he seems rebellious and antagonistic, and others where he is shown in a more positive light, the Chroniclers working from stories from different parts of the archipelago and from different dynastic eras?.
These are the things I urge you to keep in mind as we read further stories about So-tsu-hikothese stories and try to piece together what is happening. That said, let’s get into those stories, and what they tell us.
Now, of only passing interest to us, perhaps, is an account from the 41st year of the reign of Ohosazaki—a year that probably didn’t exist as Ohosazaki was, most likely, not on the throne for that many years to begin with, but they still had to make up all that time since they were condensing the entire 3rd and 4th centuries into only three reigns.
Now in the account of that year we are told that the grandson of the King of Baekje was rather disrespectful towards the Wa envoy, Ki no Tsuno no Sukune, and he was delivered up to So-tsu-hiko to be brought back to Yamato as a form of punishment.
Again, this story has some eerie parallels with another.
There was another act of disrespect from Baekje during Homuda Wake’s reign, where Ki no Tsuno was also sent to the Baekje court to handle the matter. In that case it was king Jinsa of Baekje, whereas the later story focused on a different king, but there are enough similarities to make you wonder if they aren’t just different stories of the same event. So this could be taking place any time around the end of the fourth or first quarter of the 5th century.
And where this intersects with us is that, in the later telling, So-tsu-hiko appears to have been on hand at the Baekje court, or at least in close enough proximity that he could come and take charge of the young princeling and escort him across the straits to Yamato, where he was basically kept as a hostage as penance for his insulting behavior.
Thus, once again we see So-tsu-hiko in a role of essentially escort. Whether it was the young Baekje prince being sent to Yamato as a punishment, or envoys like Yutsuki being brought to pay tribute, So-tsu-hiko was the one who was helping them from the peninsula to the archipelago, and facilitating their journey across the ocean.
Now I’ve tried to save the best for last. It is, in my opinion, the most dramatic account that So-tsu-hiko is involved with, and that is the escape of Prince Misaheun of Silla from the Yamato court.
Now back in Episode 45 we mentioned that Prince Misaheun was sent to the Wa in the year 402, by the continental reckoning, which was also during the events inscribed on the Gwangaetto Stele. Silla claims he went as a peaceful envoy, but the Wa held onto him as a hostage, refusing to let him return home. It is a tale that is found not only in the Samguk Sagi, which says he was sent by his uncle, King Silseong, but it is also found in the more fantastical accounts of the Samguk Yusa, where blame for his departure was put on King Naemul. I tend to lean towards the Samguk Yusa story on this one, given a variety of factors. The Nihon Shoki, as usual, plays fast and loose with dates, and without going into too much details, let’s just say the Japanese chroniclers put this story during Okinaga Tarashi Hime’s reign because it fit right into the stories of various raids and military exploits that they were lumping together. Regardless, Prince Misaheun becoming a hostage of the Wa was a big deal, no matter when it happened. Although, had King Silseong had his way, it likely would have become a non-issue altogether.
We’ve already talked about how King Silseong came to the throne of Silla, having spent ten years as a hostage in the Goguryeo court before succeeding his brother, King Naemul, Misaheun’s father. Upon coming to the throne, he almost immediately sent Misaheun as a hostage to the Wa—though perhaps that had already happened during the Wa invasion mentioned on the stele during his brother’s reign. Ten years after taking the throne, Silseong would send another of his nephews, Prince Bokho, to the Goguyreo court, to be a hostage there, much as Silseong himself had been. You can see in both of these examples a trend: Silseong wass getting his brother’s children, future rivals for the throne, out of the way.
And sure enough, only five years later, Silseong was starting to worry. He had taken the throne in the first place under the pretense that none of his brother’s heirs were old enough at the time, but now his eldest nephew, the eldest, Nulchi, was getting on in years. Though Nulchi was married to Silseong’s own daughter—proving that it wasn’t just the Wa who liked to keep it in the family, so to speak—about fifteen or sixteen years into his reign, Silseonghe decided that he would do something about Prince Nulchi—permanently. The stories claim that he hired a man from Goguryeo—an outsider, an one whom he probably had contacted through his network within the Goguryeo court. He hired this ancient hitman to kill Prince Nulchi, and arranged for the two of them to meet on the road.
As you might guess, things didn’t go according to plan. Apparently the hired sword had a soul, and when he saw Nulchi on the road he was struck by his appearance—the elegant air of a prince of the blood. Rather than kill the Prince, the would-be assassin told him how he had been hired by his uncle, the king, to kill him, and then he returned to Goguryeo. Nulchi was incensed, and rightly so. Taking matters into his own hands the Silla annals tell us that he found his uncle, King Silseong, and killed him and took the throne for himself. The Samguk Yusa gives slightly different details than the Samguk Sagi, claiming that it was group of soldiers that were sent after Nulchi, and that when they met him they switched sides and killed King Silseong instead, installing Nulchi on the throne.
Once he was on the throne, King Nulchi immediately decided to get the gang back together, and he started looking for a way to bring his two brothers back to Silla. Into this stepped a man of Silla known as Pak Jesang. Much like Takechi no Sukune and Katsuragi no So-tsu-hiko, Pak Jesang is one of those fascinating characters who lives in the margins of the stories of the rulers of these ancient countries. Much of what we know about him comes from this story – which, according to Samguk Sagi, along with the Dongguk Tonggam, took place around 418, while the Samguk Yusa gives the date as 426, and most of the details come from the Samguk Yusa and the Nihon Shoki, with some corroboration coming from Aston’s notes on the Tonggam.
Now Nulchi was grieving for his brothers. Neither Goguryeo nor Yamato were ready to just give up their royal hostages, and so Silla needed a wise and brave man to help them hatch a plan. They found such a man in Pak Jesang, the form of the magistrate of Sapna county, and his name was Pak Jesang. Pak gladly accepted the task from his king, and after taking his leave of the court he disguised himself and headed north, to Goguryeo, to the capital at Gungnae—modern Ji’an, where Gwangaetto the Great was buried. There he found out where Prince Bokho – the Goguryeo hostage – was staying, and found a time to talk with him in secret.
Here it may be helpful to understand that being a royal hostage wasn’t quite the same as being a prisoner. Though the prince was unable to leave, it is quite likely that he was being kept in a manner befitting his station, and he would regularly attend the King’s court. He had the opportunity to meet with the members of the court and the people around him and get to know them. He just wasn’t allowed to leave.
Unfortunately, the actual escape from Gungnae—which only sounds like a Snake Plissken flick—isn’t recorded in any great detail. What we do know is that Pak Jesang had a plan, but that plan apparently consisted of the Prince pretending to be sick for a few days, and then finally running off to meet at Koseong, on the coast, where Pak Jesang would have a getaway boat ready. Seems easy enough… except when you realize that the coast would have been well over 300 kilometers away. I hope he had a horse.
Regardless, it seems to have worked, in part because of the good friends that Prince Bokho had made, particularly amongst the guards. When they king found out he ordered his guards to chase him down, but they used headless arrows when they fired at him, and deliberately missed, since he had been such a good friend to all of them—or so the stories go.
When Prince Bokho made it back to Silla, his brother, King Nulchi, was overjoyed, but there was still one more prisoner left—Misaheun, hostage of the Wa. Pak Jesang left on that voyage so quickly he didn’t even stop to say goodbye to his wife, who ran after him, only to see his ship already departing the shore.
Now when Jesang made it to the islands of the Wa where they were holding Prince Misaheun hostage, here’s where we get the Japanese Chroniclers’ perspective on things as well. The Chronicles claim that Silla sent three envoys as part of a tribute mission, none of whom had names resembling Pak Jesang. In the Samguk Yusa we are told that Pak made it to the Wa court by claiming that he was running away from Silla, since the King there had killed his father and brothers without a legitimate reason. Apparently this was believable, and the Wa ruler provided him a place to stay.
As he was staying there, he made friends with Prince Misaheun, and the two of them began heading down to the seashore and bringing back their catch each morning to the Wa sovereign. They kept this up until one day, the fog rolled in, and Pak Jesang saw their chance. He had the Prince taken away by a Silla boatman, and then he went back to the Prince’s house to buy some time. When the Wa came looking for Misaheun to check on him, Pak Jesang told them that he was feeling tired from hunting the previous day, so he was resting. They came again at noon to ask after him, and by then they discovered that Prince Misaheun had fled.
The ruler of the Wa was wroth and ordered his men to go in pursuit, but it was to no avail—the Prince was long gone. Returning back to the court he sought out Pak Jesang and poured out his rage on him, since he had claimed to become a vassal of the Wa king. Pak Jesang, however, now defiantly claimed that he was a man of Silla, through and through, and even as they tortured him, standing him up on a red hot iron, he would not say anything but that he was a vassal of the King of Silla. Finally, realizing they would get nothing out of him, they hung Pak Jesang on Kishima—Ki island.
The story in the Nihon Shoki is similar, but definitely without the pro-Silla angle to it. There, Prince Misaheun beseeches the sovereign to let him go, claiming that the envoys told him that since he’d been away for so long, the King of Silla had confiscated his wife and family and had them enslaved. He asked to go back to Silla to find out if this was true.
The sovereign gave him leave to go, and here is where our friend, Katsuragi So-tsu-hiko, re-enters the narrative. As we already demonstrated, he was the go-to guy for people traveling from or to Yamato. Together they all reached Tsushima together—So-tsu-hiko, Prince Misaheun, and the three Silla envoys, along with whatever sailors and soldiers were sent along as well. They then stayed the night at the harbour of Sabi no Umi.
It was here that the envoys found the chance they had been waiting for. They put Prince Misaheun on a boat that they had arranged to meet them and they sent him back to Silla. In his place, they created a dummy made of straw, which they put in Misaheun’s berth on the ship, and made it seem like he was ill. So-tsu-hiko was worried about his health, however, and sent men to check on him, and help nurse him back to health, but of course, they discovered the ruse.
Angry and upset at being deceived, So-tsu-hiko had the three envoys placed in a cage and then burned them all alive. He then proceeded on with his ship and his men and attacked Silla, taking the castle of Chora, and capturing and enslaving numerous people whom he brought back to Yamato. These were the ancestors of several villages and families. He never did catch up with Misaheun, however, who made it safely back home.
There is one more telling, somewhere in between these two, which comes from the Dongguk Tonggam, and it is provided by Aston in his footnotes to the Nihon Shoki. As with the Samguk Yusa, it claims that Pak Jesang was the one who went to rescue Misaheun, but in this story he went to the trouble of actually having his own family and that of Prince Misaheun imprisoned so that when the Wa checked his story they would see it was true. Indeed, the Wa believed that both Misaheun and Pak Jesang were rebels, and so when they decided to send an army to attack Silla, they enlisted both of them as guides. The Wa generals were plotting each day on how to get in and take back the families of Prince Misaheun and Pak Jesang, but meanwhile, the Prince and Jesang were spending a little time each day in a separate boat, fishing, where they could discuss things.
One day, everything being arranged, when they went out on their excursion, Pak Jesang had Prince Misaheun taken in another boat back to Silla, while he stayed behind. He stayed out as long as he could, all by himself in the boat, until he was sure Misaheun was far away.
As soon as the Wa learned that Misaheun had escaped, they bound Pak Jesang and attempted to pursue Prince MIsaheun, but mist and darkness meant that they could not catch up. The lord of the Wa was enraged and threw Pak JChesang into prison. He interrogated him, asking him why he would help Prince Misaheun to escape, and, as in the Samguk Yusa, Pak Jesang simply stated that he was a vassal of the King of Silla. They tortured him numerous times, but he would not stray from his story. Finally, he was burned to death.
Though slightly different, we can see here three stories that are clearly about the same events. The actual names are a bit different, due to the problems of transliteration and even changes in the languages over time, though I have tried to standardize them here. Still, there are enough similarities that we can make out the general picture.
Now there is one more reference to So-tsu-hiko that I want to bring up, and that comes from the Man’yoshu. I can’t recall if we’ve talked about this, but the Man’yoshu is the oldest anthology of native Japanese poetry. While, yes, many poems exist in the chronicles, the Man’yoshu was written specifically for poetry, and it not only contains many poems that are said to be much older than the work itself, which was compiled around the same time as the Chronicles, in the 8th century, but it specifically made an effort to translate the sounds of Japanese, using Chinese characters.
Anyway, that work deserves an episode of its own, but for now I want to talk about just one poem that is found in that work, and it goes something like this:
Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko ma-yumi araki ni mo;
Tanome ya kimi ga wa ga na norikenu
I’m not sure I can quite do this poem justice from a translation standpoint, but based on what others have said, it appears to be equating the strong, unfinished wood bow of Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko with the act of telling someone—or possibly asking for—a woman’s name. This was a rather intimate act, as most women’s names were private, and typically only known to the family and to a prospective husband.
Because of the subject matter and the fact that it references So-tsu-hiko, some have attributed this poem to So-tsu-hiko’s daughter, Iwa no Hime. Of course, authorship is rather difficult to truly ascertain, but it does at least tell us that So-tsu-hiko was well enough known that his name appears in yet another source, even if just a fleeting reference.
We also can get a sense that he was more than just an escort. The reference to his bow being made of raw wood certainly suggests that people assumed he had a warrior’s aspect, and who knows what stories were being told that just aren’t around anymore?
Whatever else may have been floating around out there about So-tsu-hiko, this is what we have. We don’t even have a good story about his death, beyond that one which claims he killed himself because he couldn’t come back to the court of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, but we already covered how he was apparently active after her, though of course, who can really be sure of any of these things, particularly if the reigns overlapped in some fashion, as opposed to the strictly serial pattern of inheritance that the Chronicles put forth?
We do have a possible candidate for So-tsu-hiko’s final resting place, though even that is suspect. There is nothing mentioned, of course, in th e Chronicles, but there are some traditions claiming that he is buried at Muromiyayama Kofun, in Gose City. Of course this might be a bit awkward, as that is also said to be the burial place of Takechi no Sukune, and we covered it last episode. I doubt both of them are buried there, and it is just as likely that it is neither of them, but it’s interesting that both of these “recurring characters” in the Chronicles have these parallels in death as well as in life..
So that’s the story of Katsuraki no So-tsu-hiko. I hope you enjoyed it. Next episode we’ll continue, and hopefully wrap up the life of Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, and maybe even get into the cult

References

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Kim, P., & Shultz, E. J. (2013). The 'Silla annals' of the 'Samguk Sagi'. Gyeonggi-do: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
太田蓉子. (2020)「葛城」を詠んだ万葉の歌. http://www.baika.ac.jp/~ichinose/o/20211125ota.pdf
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
Iryŏn, ., Ha, T. H., & Mintz, G. K. (2004). Samguk yusa: Legends and history of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
Kiley, C. (1973). State and Dynasty in Archaic Yamato. The Journal of Asian Studies, 33(1), 25-49. doi:10.2307/2052884
Aston, W. G. (1972). Nihongi, chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN0-80480984-4
Philippi, D. L. (1968). Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN4-13-087004-1

Episode 39: Birth of the Three Kingdoms

April 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Royal tombs of the Silla Kings. While they also built mounds for their kings’ final resting places, there were many differences in construction between the ones here at on the archipelago, but both indicate their culture’s desire to memorialize eli… — Royal tombs of the Silla Kings. While they also built mounds for their kings’ final resting places, there were many differences in construction between the ones here at on the archipelago, but both indicate their culture’s desire to memorialize elite personages, even in death.

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This episode, as Okinaga Tarashi Hime is preparing her troops to cross the straits and seek out the land of “gold and silver” that the kami have promised her, we’ll take a moment to look at the peninsula and just what has been going on over there in the late 3rd to early 4th centuries, because this is when we see the peninsula enter into the Three Kingdoms period, with the countries of Baekje and Silla rising to meet the elder state of Goguryeo and becoming kingdoms in their own right.

Before we get too much into that, let me address a few things.

First, I don’t speak Korean, and so my apologies up front if I butcher any of these names. I’ll do the best I can. Also, on the spelling: There are various ways of turning Hangul, the Korean writing system, into Latin characters. So sometimes you’ll see Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, and sometimes you’ll see Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla. For the most part I’ll be using the Revised Romanization (Gug-eoui Romaja Pyogibeop) as opposed to the McCune-Reischauer system, but since I’m not always familiar with things, forgive me if I slip up from time to time.

A general idea of the locations of the Samhan, or Three Han, of the Korean Peninsula. Map by Idh0854, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

So where are all these places we are talking about? Well, let’s first look at the location of the Samhan, or Three Han. By the way, it can get very confusing because generally I use “Han” in the meaning of the ethnic Han people in the area that is, today, modern China, including the various empires that were inspired by them (though those empires were not always properly “Han” in that context). (漢 / 汉) However “Han” is also the reading of the character that the old chronicles, like the Wei Chronicles, used to discuss three of the groups on the Kroean peninsula, and it also happens to be the term used in Korean for Korea itself (韓). For the most part, if I’m talking about the “Han” I’ll be referring to those people who came over from the areas of modern China, and not the early inhabitants of the peninsula.

Now exactly where these groups were is vague. It isn’t like anyone laid out a geographic map with borders. And there were other groups as well on the peninsula, even though we mostly concern ourselves with these three. So the map here gives a rough approximation of their location. The Commanderies would have been above them, to the north, and then the states of Okjeo, Goguryeo, and Buyeo beyond that.

Map of the Korean Peninsula showing the Three Kingdoms and Gaya. This is roughly showing the extent of the kingdoms in about 476. Used under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

After Goguryeo defeats the commanderies, and pushes them off of the peninsula, then the three kingdoms are able to take over most of the peninsula. The map here is actually of the borders in about 476—so about a hundred years after the time we are discussing—but it gives a general idea of where we are talking about. Of all of these, I’d say that Goguryeo probably has the most dramatic shift in borders. Then again, being at the northern end of the peninsula with access to the Manchurian massif and the Eurasian steppes, they have the greatest ability to expand, but also face the most threats in the form of other actors encroaching on their borders, while in the rest of the peninsular kingdoms they have at least one back to the ocean.

And, remember, other than Goguryeo, the Kingdoms generally weren’t being written about until after the fall of the Commanderies, and so we don’t exactly have great records for their full extent until much later.

Inscribed bricks (Goguryeo)

Bricks inscribed with writing from the 3rd century in Goguryeo, indicating the presence of some kind of written culture. From the Seoul National Museum.

Oracle bones

Oracle bones from SW Korean peninsula, near modern Haenam. Oracle bones in Shang times or earlier may have actually been the earliest use of Sinitic writing, but it didn’t necessarily require a written culture to “read” the cracks, as it were. Still, it shows some similarities with the scapulamancy practiced in the archipelago. From the Seoul National Museum.

Shield Decorations (Gaya)

4th C bronze decorations found in Gaya and also in Japan from very early centuries. It is thought that they were probably used on wooden shields, but the exact nature of their usage is unknown. From the Seoul National Museum.

Iron armor (Silla)

3rd-4th C iron cuirass. From the Seoul National Museum.

Iron cuirass (Silla)

Iron cuirass from a 4th C Silla tomb. Gyeongju National Museum.

Iron neck armor (Silla)

Rear view of a 4th C piece of neck armor—part of a larger suit. From the Gyeongju National Museum.

Iron cuirass (Silla)

Iron cuirass from a 4th C Silla tomb. Gyeongju National Museum.

Iron helmet (Silla)

Iron helmet found in a 4th C Silla tomb. From Gyeongju National Museum.

Iron helmet (Silla)

Rear view of an iron helmet from a 4th C Silla tomb. Gyeongju National Museum.

Iron socketed spearheads (Silla)

3rd-4th C iron, socketed spearheads. From the Seoul National Museum.

Iron socketed spearhead (Silla)

4th C iron socketed spearheads. Gyeongju National Musem.

Iron horse bit

4th C horse bit, indicating presence of horses on the peninsula. The archipelago seems to have still been working without horses, for the most part. From the Gyeongju National Museum.

Iron horse bit (Silla)

Iron horse bit from a 4th C Silla Tomb. Gyeongju National Museum.

Crystal and Jade Necklace (Silla)

Necklace from the 3rd Century. From the Gyeongju National Museum.

Glass and Jade Neckalce (Silla)

3rd C necklace. Before gold and silver there were other materials used in Silla—and jade and glass would continue to be appreciated into later centuries. From the Gyeongju National Museum.

Gold earrings (Silla)

Gold earrings found in a 4th C Silla tomb.

Bird-shaped ewers

Bird shaped funerary pottery seems prevalent in the southern Korean peninsula. Could this be connected with the sotdae (birds on poles) and the story of the Silla founder being born from an egg? From the Seoul National Museum.

Halfmoon Fortress (Gyeongju)

Overgrown earthworks of the Halfmoon Fortress in Gyeongju.

Halfmoon Fortress, Gyeongju

Broken pieces of rock at the top of the tree-covered earthworks of Halfmoon Fortress in Gyeongju.

Halfmoon Fortress, Gyeongju

Modern approach to the tree-covered earthworks of the ancient Halfmoon Fortress in Gyeongju.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 39: The Birth of the Three Kingdoms.
Alright, so we’ve been dealing with the Chronicles up through the fourteenth sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, more popularly known as Chuuai Tennou. By my calculations, we are somewhere in the mid to latter 4th century, even if the Nihon Shoki claims we are just at the end of the 2nd century. This was a momentous time on the peninsula, seeing the rise of native rule after the fall of the Han Commanderies, and the events there were having rippling effects throughout both the peninsula and the islands. You know, it is so easy for us to assume that because Japan is an island nation that it was somehow disconnected from the events on the mainland, like the straits and seas were a moat that kept everyone out. And yet, while they certainly did allow Japan to maintain some distance, they were hardly an iron wall, and Japan was often impacted by what happened with her neighbors, especially as time went on and things were becoming more and more connected. In a way, you could see this as the natural extension of the connections that we are seeing mentioned in the Chronicles, with Yamato dominion having been extended from Tohoku in the northeast all the way to Kyushu.
In the 4th century, the archipelago seems to have had at least good trade relations with the Gaya kingdoms, as we’ve mentioned before. To recap, Gaya was a confederation of small states that may have even become a kingdom, based in the old Pyonhan area, one of the three groups of city-states, this one around Gimhae and the Nakdong River region. While not confirmed, I highly suspect that the Pyonhan were—or at least included—a peninsular Wa people, possibly speaking their own form of peninsular-Japonic. If that is the case, then the states of the Gaya confederacy might be seen as simply an extension of the culture that had spread with the Yayoi into the Japanese archipelago, though no doubt, over time, those on the peninsula would have had more blending and interaction with the other people there.
From what it looks like, the Korean peninsula at this time was a diverse region. You likely had Han Chinese, Japonic-speaking Wa people, as well as others, such as the Buyeo people in Goguryeo and Baekje. There were many other groups mentioned in the Annals and Histories, such as the Ye, the Maek, the Malgal, and others, though whether they had distinct linguistic traditions or were simply different political groups, it is hard to say. Since we don’t have any indigenous chronicles for them we are largely left to conjecture based on what others have written about them. But regardless of the cultural and linguistic diversity, in broad strokes we can talk about the formation of three main powers. I will emphasize that these strokes are necessarily broad—I think it would be awesome to do an in depth discussion of Korean history, but that just isn’t our main focus. So please don’t yell at me for skipping over your favorite story from this period—we have a lot to cover.
So the Three Kingdoms that we are focused on here are Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. We’ve talked about the Gaya confederation some in the past, and we may touch on them, but really I want to talk about the reason why the 4th century is considered the start of the “Three Kingdoms” period on the peninsula. And no, these are not the same as the Three Kingdoms, or San-guo, of China. No Cao Cao with a duck on his head. Sorry. Though some of the peninsular aristocracy did have some totally bitchin’ headgear. I’m just saying.
I want to try to talk about these as best we can, and to do that we’ll be looking at some other sources, including the Korean chronicles of the Samguk Sagi and the Samguk Yusa, which tell the tales of the “Three Kingdoms” of Baekje, Goguryeo, and Silla. However, as sources go, we need to be aware that these are even further than the source material than the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, having been written centuries later. The Samguk Sagi, or “history of the three kingdoms”, was commissioned by the Korean Goryeo dynasty, and compiled by Kim Busik in 1145. It seems that this largely drew on various extant chronicles that we no longer have and compiled them into a single work. In fact, the Nihon Shoki mentions various Korean annals that were referenced in its own compilation. One interesting note, though, it seems that Kim Busik didn’t try to integrate all of these into a single narrative. Rather, the annals of each kingdom are told largely separately, meaning it reads something like Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”—or even the original “In a Grove”—with several different perspectives on the same event.
The Samguk Yusa, or “Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms”, focuses more on the stories and less on the chronicled history. It was probably put together by a monk by the name of Iryeon in the 13th century, but that is a lot less clear.
Like the Japanese Chronicles, both of these were written entirely in a Korean form of Chinese, using Chinese characters for both meaning and pronunciation. On the other hand, they likely had reliable textual references dating back much earlier than the archipelago, given their proximity to the various continental empires. That means that the peninsula likely had a more robust literary culture than the islands seem to have had. After all, the peninsular kingdoms had been right on the border of Wei and Jin empires, and both they and the ethnic Han commanderies utilized writing for all sorts of purposes, including the administration of the state. Bordering states would have likely been expected to pay tribute or otherwise appease the commanderies and the court at Louyang of which they were an extension. As such, one can only assume that they ended up adopting and adapting the tools of statecraft that they knew, which would have included reading and writing.
In the archipelago, on the other hand, there is no indication of this same kind of literary tradition—definitely not to the same extent. It certainly may be the case that there were those who could read and write, at least enough to send correspondence to the Wei court, back in the time of Himiko, but it is unclear if that was actually the Wa themselves, or perhaps Han immigrants in their midst. There may have even been decorative or performative writing—that is, writing that was done more as a performance or decoration than for any actual communication. This may be what we are seeing when we catch glimpses of what could be Sinitic characters on clay pots and similar media early on. But there is no indication of widespread use nor of an understanding of writing as a means of supporting the government.
I mean, think about it for a moment. When you consider a government, what do you have? Sure, at the top you have the leaders and people making decisions, whether a king, a president, a prime minister, and various legislative and judicial bodies. But other than arguing, what do the majority of people in a government do? A lot of them are either collecting data on the state of the country and sending that to someone, or they are implementing the policies being directed down from the top. That is something that is possible to some extent without writing, but it quickly gets to be unwieldy. Sure, you can rely on a network of individuals, but how reliable are they?
So writing may not be absolutely essential for the formation of a state—look at the incredible Incan empire in the Americas—but it is certainly extremely helpful, especially when you are trying to govern large regions of territory. And some of the earliest writing is really about keeping track of stuff—inventory, taxes, etc.
So it is quite likely that the peninsular kingdoms had some form of literary traditions, no doubt based on what they had learned from their Han neighbors, though these weren’t always long traditions, and weren’t necessarily being used to document historical fact. After all, as just about anyone in IT can tell you, most people don’t exactly focus on documentation first and foremost. Baekje, for instance, was possibly just starting to really keep court records around the mid-4th century—which could also be because, despite the claims made about the state’s history, it was actually relatively new to the scene at that point, which we’ll talk about.
Now, just because they wrote things down doesn’t mean that their sources are any more or less infallible. Indeed, there is some consideration that the historiographical methods of the Japanese court, designed to promote the story of the royal family, was something that they came by honestly from their peninsular teachers. So we can’t exactly treat the Samguk Yusa nor the Samguk Sagi as accurate in all things. In fact, it is very clear that they seem to have postulated much earlier dates for some events than seems at all possible, and, like with the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, as the centuries progress they get more and more reliable.
But let’s actually get into the history of the Three Kingdoms, themselves.
We should probably start in the north, because while the rest of the peninsula was still divided up into the Samhan, or three Han, each of which was made up of multiple independent polities, up in the north you already had one of your first of these three Korean states. This was Goguryeo, or sometimes even just “Goryeo”, which is actually where the English name, “Korea” is derived. Goguryeo was largely at the head of the peninsula and expanded into the continent. While the territory governed by the state would vary, at its height it ranged from the area of Harbin, in modern China, and, at its height, south into the northern parts of modern-day South Korea, encompassing all of modern North Korea.
Now you may recall that we discussed Goguryeo previously, and their on-again, off-again relation with the Han Commanderies. Sure, the Wei loved Goguryeo when they were helping them to take down their rivals on the Liaodong peninsula, just to the West, but it didn’t take much for that alliance to break apart, especially once the other threats had been eliminated. When Goguryeo attempted to expand southward, hoping to get access to much needed farmland, the Wei saw that as a provocation dealt a considerable blow to Goguryeo, driving them from their capital city in 244.
Goguryeo was down, but not entirely out. A second Wei invasion in 259 seems to have turned out not quite so well for the Wei, and they were defeated at Yangmaenggok. Nonetheless, the damage to Goguryeo was significant, and it would be years before they were again a major threat to the Commanderies or anyone else on the peninsula.
In fact, during the 2nd half of the 3rd century, much of Goguryeo’s bloodshed was internal, within the royal court. This seems to have culminated in the last decade of that century in the rise to power of one of Goguryeo’s most ruthless kings, King Bongsang.
According to the stories we have, Bongsang was quite the disagreeable figure. Arrogant and downright paranoid. Of course, he may have had a reason to be worried, but largely those seem to be reasons of his own making. As soon as he rose to power in 292, he had his own uncle, Prince Anguk, executed. Now Prince Anguk wasn’t just some dandy with royal blood, but back during the previous reign, that of Bongsang’s father, he had been helping his brother, the king, defend Goguryeo. The man was a frickin’ war hero, and quite popular with the people. King Bongsang didn’t care, and being the paranoid and insecure man that he was, only saw this as a threat to his own power, so he had him labeled as a traitor and killed.
And of course that totally blew up in his face. Killing the beloved war hero--I mean, really, when has that really worked? Bongsang’s plan seems to have been that if he labelled him as disloyal then it would kill any support the people had for him, but instead Prince Anguk’s death seems to have only riled up the populace against the King. He turned him into a martyr.
As if that wasn’t enough, he would try again, only a year later. This time he accused his own younger brother of plotting against him, and he made him commit suicide.
Now his brother’s son—that is Bongsang’s nephew—clearly saw the writing on the wall and decided to get out of Dodge. Known as Prince Eulbul, he apparently took on the life of a servant to hide as a commoner, taking on various menial tasks and doing his best not to catch his uncle’s eye. And when I say menial, I mean it. At one point he was in a job where he was throwing rocks into a pond at night so that the frogs wouldn’t wake up his master. How’s that for a night shift? He actually ran away from that job to find one where he had to do more physical labor, but at least he wasn’t up all night on frog duty.
And while Prince Eulbul was trying to figure out what options were open to him now that “Prince” was apparently out of the question, things weren’t getting any better at the court, and eventually, the court itself had enough. Bongsang’s own prime minister, a man by the name of Chang Jori, resigned his position and, along with other disaffected ministers, he planned and executed a successful coup, overthrowing King Bongsang in 300 CE. King Bongsang and his two sons were both exiled, but they all committed suicide rather than go on frog duty, themselves.
With the throne empty, Chang Jori and the other ministers decided that they needed to find a new monarch, and so they instituted a search throughout the land, eventually tracking down Prince Eulbul. Of course, the Prince thought this might be a trick—he hadn’t exactly been plugged into court politics for the past eight years, and he tried to deny who he was, but eventually they explained to him the situation and he was reinstated and then enthroned as King. Posthumously known as King Micheon, he grew the Goguryeo military, and had an extremely successful career, being known as one of Goguryeo’s better rulers. He expanded back into the Liaodong peninsula, and turned his attention to the old Han Commanderies.
Now the Wei had long since fallen and given way to the Jin dynasty, but the Jin itself was in trouble and unable to provide the support to its outposts as it once did. Still, at the beginning of the 4th century, the peninsula was not exactly forgotten. In fact, political rivals were often sent to the commanderies as a form of exile, sending them to the very edges of the empire.
Nonetheless, the commanderies were not what they once were, and Goguryeo forces began to attack the representatives of Jin power on the peninsula. First they attacked and destroyed the Xuantu Commandery in 302, which was the northernmost of the three commanderies still on the peninsula. Later they annexed the Lelang and Daifang commanderies in 313 and 314, effectively ending any official Jin presence on the peninsula, though there remained some ethnic Han citizens who stayed and seemed to have thrived, at least through the middle of the 4th century. Han tombs and their contents tell us that even if the Commanderies were no longer present, it doesn’t mean that all of the Han were wiped out, and in fact some seem to have done quite well for themselves.
After the defeat of the Commanderies, Eulbul turned his attention largely to the west, where he spent much of his time embroiled in conflicts with the Xianbei in the area of the Liaodong Peninsula. This continued throughout Eulbul’s reign, right up until the king’s death in about 331 CE, and likely kept Goguryeo’s attention focused largely on their western neighbors, rather than on the peninsula itself.
Following Eulbul’s death his son, Sayu, came to the throne. He would posthumously be known as King Gogugwon. One of the first things he did was apparently expand the fortress at Pyongyang—and yes, that is the same Pyongyang as the modern capital of North Korea. Later, he would repair the old fortress of Hwando and build the city of Gungnae-song in its shadow. This was actually a common plan for Goguryeo cities at this time: a fortress would be built incorporating the natural rise of the mountains, and this would be a stronghold for the people to take cover in during times of war and strife. Outside would be built a walled city on a geometric plan—in this case a square-walled site near modern Ji’an, on the Chinese side of the Yalu River border with North Korea. This square-shaped walled city would be the site of daily activities in a time of peace.
Not that peace was in the cards for Sayu and Goguryeo. They continued to suffer attacks from Xianbei Murong and other steppe groups, until they were ultimately defeated and humiliated by the Xianbei Yan Kingdom around 342. The Xianbei dug up the body of Sayu’s father, the previous sovereign, King Micheon, and also captured Queen Ju, Sayu’s mother, and various concubines. Holding all of them, both the living and the dead, as hostages, they demanded Goguryeo’s surrender. Eventually, Sayu submitted to Yan as a vassal state, for which he received back his father’s body, but his mother was still held hostage for some time. Sayu moved the capital back down south to Pyongyang, and seems to have focused their attention back on their southern neighbors. In 369, some 27 years after their defeat by the Xianbei, Sayu led an army against the people to their south, perhaps in an attempt to reinvigorate Goguryeo. This would not exactly go as planned, and we’ll touch on that, later.
That said, the fall of the commanderies at the beginning of the 4th century had ripple effects throughout the peninsula. Up to that point, they had represented the major power on the peninsula, whether it was the Han, the Wei, or the Jin. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that they continually played the various polities of the three Samhan off of one another and kept them largely destabilized and, in a way, subservient to the Commanderies themselves. Without the commanderies, there would have been a power vacuum created—and this may be one of the factors leading to the rise of the other kingdoms on the peninsula.
The first of these that I want to touch on is the Kingdom of Baekje. Now according to the Baekje Annals in the Samguk Sagi, the Kingdom of Baekje was actually founded in about 18 BCE, but that date seems impossibly early based on what else we know. For instance, we know that in 290 there was an embassy to the Jin court sent by representatives of the various Mahan states. At that time there was one state known as Bochi, or Pai-chi, which may be an early name for Baekje, but it wasn’t even the most prominent of the states in Mahan. That honor seems to have gone to a state known as Wolchi-guk, or possibly Mokchi-guk, about which we have very little information.
Now according to most sources, the founding of Baekje was closely tied to the state of Goguryeo, and through them to the ancient state of Buyeo. Buyeo seems to have been a predecessor to the state of Goguryeo, founded around the 2nd century BCE and lasting until the late 5th century. Much of its territory seems to be in the middle of Manchuria, in modern Northeast China. The legendary founder of Goguryeo, King Jumong, is said to have been a descendant of the King of Buyeo, founding Goguryeo around 37 BCE. According to Baekje tradition, King Jumong had three sons: Yuri, Biryu, and Onjo. Yuri was born to a previous wife, and when King Jumong died Yuri suddenly showed up in Goguryeo to take the throne. Accordingly his half-brothers, Biryu and Onjo, decided that they wouldn’t wait around—and seeing how bloody things got in later family disputes in Goguryeo, I can’t exactly fault them for deciding to get out of Dodge altogether. They made their way south, to the 54 states of the Mahan. There they were accepted and set up two new kingdoms. Biryu set up the kingdom of Michuhol, while Onjo set up the kingdom of Sipje. When Biryu died, the people of his kingdom joined with the other Goguryeo refugees in Sipje, and the kingdom was renamed to Baekje. “Sipje” basically meant “10 subjects”, indicating the 10 allies who had come with Onjo to first found his new state, and “Baekje” replaces “10” with “100” indicating the new subjects that had arrived from his late brother’s kingdom.
Some time after this consolidation, Onjo and his descendants began to consolidate power, eventually subjugating or absorbing all of the states of Mahan.
Of course, as I mentioned earlier, the Annals claim this was sometime around 18 BCE, but that date seems extremely unlikely. I mean, granted, it isn’t some 8 centuries too early, like we find in the Japanese Chronicles, but it still doesn’t line up with what we actually know about the peninsula.
There is no evidence that there was any kind of major peninsular state south of the commanderies that early on. In fact, as we’ve mentioned, the Commanderies themselves would likely have done their best to stop any major states from forming. But besides that, if one did form, we would likely hear about it in the record.
Johnathan Best, who translated the Baekje Annals from the Samguk Sagi into English, has made an attempt to try to uncover just when the state of Baekje was likely founded—or at least when its Buyeo-descended royalty may have arrived. After all, there does seem to be a consistent theme that the Baekje royal family was connected to Buyeo, usually mediated through the state of Goguryeo, and there are various cultural artifacts that would seem to confirm a connection, at least between Goguryeo and Baekje.
So it seems that there may, indeed, be a connection to the Goguryeo royal lineage—and thus all the way back to the ancient state of Buyeo—but if so, it must have been much more recent than 18 BCE. What we know for certain is that Baekje was definitely a fully fledged nation by 372, when King Geungchogo sent his own embassy to Jin Court. This King, King Geungchogo, was also the first king of Baekje to have had official written records kept, so he is largely considered historical whereas the previous 12 or so kings back to Onjo are questionable.
Now if the royal line of Baekje did come from Buyeo stock, by way of Goguryeo, when could that have occurred? Well, Best suggests that it may have been around the turn of the 4th century, probably around the time of the cruel and capricious King Bongsang of Goguryeo, whom we talked about earlier in this episode. It is possible that in his cruelty, he drove out more than just Prince Eulbul. On the other hand, it could also have been that when Changjori and other ministers enacted their coup and placed Eulbul on the throne, well, there may have been continued supporters of Bongsang, or even rival princes, who decided that it was in their best interest to not hang around any more. After all, they had just been through a decade of bloody palace intrigue and there was no reason to think that the newly risen faction in court wouldn’t take their opportunity to enact vengeance upon their rivals.
Furthermore, it is not too improbable that these disaffected nobles and Goguryeo refugees may have found safe haven in the young states of Mahan—possibly even in an existing state known as Baekje-guk. Even though they may have been on the outs with their home kingdom, they were still nobles and they would have been experienced in the latest tools of statecraft on the peninsula. This is something we don’t often think about but understanding how to run a government is a skill in and of itself, and the art of government evolves and changes. Over time the tools and techniques developed in one country can be spread and adopted in others. This may have made these foreigners quite popular with the elite.
In addition, they seem to have been given leave to set up in the northern part of the Mahan territories, around the Han river system, near modern Seoul, creating a buffer, of sorts, between the Mahan and the commanderies.
And here we see several similarities in the archaeological record between Baekje and Goguryeo. For one thing, Baekje’s capital city was similar to that of the Goguryeo site of Hwando and Kungnaesong, in that it was a geometric walled city paired with a Goguryeo-style mountain fortress. We also see similarities in the tombs, which are built up like short, flat-topped pyramids. These would seem to suggest that there was, indeed, some connection between these two states, though there was also a certain enmity between them.
Now, although the dates found in the Baekje Annals are questionable, the overarching story of the early kings of Baekje is, itself, rather intriguing, and not entirely unbelievable. Early on in the Baekje Annals, the rulers of the young state take a subservient position amongst the other Mahan, with one individual seemingly at the head of the various Mahan states. Though far from holding direct rule over all the myriad countries, this individual did seem to hold the power to intervene in disputes and even shame the kings of Baekje, at least early on, into compliance. This may not be too dissimilar from the kind of coercive influence that early Yamato may have held in the archipelago.
Of course, as the state of Baekje grew, it soon turned the tables on its neighbors, absorbing the other states of the Mahan, and entering into constant struggles with its neighbors. To the north, the commanderies were pressing on the young state, and rallying up local groups, referred to in the Annals as the Malgal, to raid and harass Baekje.
Despite all of the attacks and apparent warfare, Baekje seems to have thrived, holding its own against the Commanderies until they fell to the Goguryeo King Micheon—the former Prince Eulbeul—in 313 and 314. With the commanderies gone, Baekje would have been free to continue its expansion across parts of the peninsula. It also may have freed up the talent of the ethnic Han bureaucrats and merchants, if the young peninsular states could attract them to their courts.
And here I want to pause for a moment. We talked about the make up of the Baekje royal family as one of Buyeo descent, as was Goguryeo, and many of the high-ranking court nobles seem to have made similar claims, but this was only the upper echelon of society. It is actually quite probable that the people that they ruled over were ethnically distinct, which would make sense if this was Goguryeo nobility ruling over a common Mahan people.
The fact is, we don’t really know all that much about the people of Mahan. Were they a single ethnicity or were they several different groups? Did they all speak a common language, even? What was it that caused the Han, Wei, and Jin chroniclers to differentiate between the three groups of Mahan, Byonhan, and Jinhan in the first place? Was it just for geographic simplicity, or was it something else?
I suspect that the Baekje rulers and their people likely spoke a different language, at least at first. Think of the Normans in England, though I don’t know if the relationship was so cut and dried as “rulers” and “subjects”. The main thing to note is that the peninsula was, from an early point, a very diverse and heterogenous place, with many different groups, including, we believe, people speaking some form of proto or peninsular Japonic, as well as Chinese and an early form of Korean—and probably more as well. It is quite possible that people were regularly bilingual and dealing in multiple languages, or possibly through some regional lingua franca. Whatever the reality, it is hard to uncover exactly. Over time, many of the place names on the peninsula—the very locations that would most likely have held onto traces of the original languages of the region—were deliberately changed and replaced. Today we tend to treat all of these names and locations as if they were spoken with a modern Korean pronunciation, just as we tend to do with Japanese names on the archipelago, but we should remember that the truth is likely to be much more complex.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much more that we really get on the common people in Baekje at this time. We have only scant glimpses at their religious and personal lives, with much of the action focused on things like meteorological events and the political and military accomplishments.
Speaking of which: as Baekje subjugated much of the Mahan, they also eyed the land of Jinhan, to the east, on the other side of the Peninsula, where another fledgling state was asserting its own dominance; Silla. This was one of the other states that would rise and become a significant power on the peninsula. At the same time, Baekje was also taking the fight to the north, and without those pesky Commanderies in the way, they came into conflict with Goguryeo. When King Sayu of Goguryeo marched south with his men, Baekje, under the rule of King Geunchogo, repulsed the invaders and counterattacked, eventually culminating in an assault on the fortress of Pyongyang in 371 CE. During the assault, a Baekje arrow found its mark, striking and killing the Goguryeo king, Sayu. Baekje seems to have been unable or unwilling to press the advantage, though, but they do seem to have moved their own capital northward, perhaps to better administer the territories of southern Pyongyang.
So that gives us a general idea of Baekje, but let’s take a look at the third kingdom that we see rising up at this time: Silla.
Much like Baekje, Silla makes no real appearance in other records before the 4th century. The Samguk Sagi suggests that it was formed before either Baekje or Goguryeo, with a claimed founding in 57 BCE. Once again, we have to wonder about such a date. More likely, an early state, by the name of Saro, likely arose in the midst of the other countries of Jinhan, and really started to grow into a regional power sometime in the late 3rd century.
Ignoring the dates, if we look at the Silla Annals in the Samguk Sagi we see evidence of its growth. Of all of the locations, it seems to have been one of the most cosmopolitan. Some of the people of Jinhan apparently claimed descent from the ethnic Han populations, claiming status as ancient refugees of the Qin, though this seems questionable at best. There were also members of the court who laid claim to Wa ancestry—and indeed the areas of Jinhan and Pyonhan—the area of the Kara confederacy, and likely home to a fair number of peninsular Wa people—both seemed to have shared a fair amount of material culture up until the late 3rd century, when we see them start to drift apart.
Silla’s legendary founder is known as Bak Hyeokgeose, and the stories say that he was born from a large egg. From there, the early history of Silla talks of dealing with the leader of the Mahan states as well as Wa pirate raiders along the coast. Soon, they are in conflict with Baekje, while also dealing with the other tribes and ethnic groups on the peninsula, such as the Ye and the Maek.
Silla built its capital in the plains of Gyeongju, where there certainly is a long history of occupation, at least according to the archaeological record. Silla’s own stories say that six villages came together to build the city of Gyeongju, and that may give an indiation of how this early state was born.
The capital of Silla, known from early times as “Seorabeol”, which may have just meant “capital”, was centered on the Gyeongju plain. At a bend in the river, a fortress was built on a half-moon shaped hill, known as half-moon fortress, and then four other fortresses guarded the city from atop nearby hillsides. This was quite different from the Goguryeo-style paired sites of a mountain fortress and a geometrically planned walled city.
Their burial practices were also different. They built wooden chambers, covered in dirt, much as the ethnic Han would do, but then they employed a trick learned from the Goguryeo, adding a layer of cobblestones before covering it all over again. Those cobblestones, and the lack of a corridor, were a type of anti-theft measure. Imagine digging into the side of a mound, and at first it is easy going—you have some grass, probably, but soon you are just pulling out dirt. You know that there is something in there, so you keep digging, and eventually you hit the cobblestones. At first this doesn’t seem so bad—you just grab the cobblestones and pull them out of there. Except, you are probably working from the bottom, and it is like you just pulled the fruit out from the bottom of the display. As soon as you do that, all the other cobblestones fall after it, filling in the hole you just made. Like Sisyphus, every inch you gain is taken away from you, and instead of digging a small hole to your target you end up digging away half the mountainside. It is really a rather simple and ingenious way to protect your dead kings and their stuff, and it worked remarkably well—we have a treasure-trove of items from ancient Silla, and a lot of it does seem to involve gold and silver, much as we heard in the Nihon Shoki, though when Silla really became known for their golden crowns and manufacturing techniques I couldn’t exactly say.
It’s possible that this came with the fall of the Commanderies and the movement of some of the ethnic Han into Silla. It may also be notable that the surname of the later Silla kings, “Kim”, is a reference to “Gold”.
Speaking of which, it is somewhat notable that the first twelve rulers of Silla were actually from one of two intertwined families, either the Bak or the Seok. The thirteenth sovereign was actually the first ruler from the Kim clan, which would eventually come to dominate the throne. The Kim clan’s status seems to have been solidified by the time of the kingdom’s 17th sovereign, Kim Naemul, who was also the first sovereign that could be corroborated in other historical sources, such as those of the Jin court, and even mentioned in the Japanese Chronicles. Naemul came to power around 356 and ruled through 402—basically the entirety of the latter 4th century.
Now, of all the annals in the Samguk Sagi, the Silla Annals are the most detailed. Even for these times that we believe are anachronistic, they have a lot of detail of the dealings of Silla with its neighbors. It seems that Silla grew, and just as Baekje absorbed the Mahan, Silla absorbed the Jinhan. Whereas Baekje was focused on the Mahan and the Commanderies, however, Silla seemed concerned with the Wa and with Gaya, to the south. It is unclear if the Wa mentioned in the Silla accounts are all from the archipelago or if some of them may have come from the peninsula. Over time there is definitely a distinction between the Wa and Gaya, however, indicating a clear distinction between them.
There are also numerous conflicts with Baekje. Baekje seems to be shown as an aggressor against Silla, while Silla is actively attempting to subjugate the areas of Gaya and Wa. Of course, if they are fighting with Baekje, and Baekje wasn’t really a power until the late 3rd or early 4th centuries, then we have some idea, possibly, of when many of these stories are actually taking place.
That said, none of this is constant warfare, but instead there are periods of fighting followed by a truce, and then eventually, more fighting. The root cause of many of the conflicts aren’t directly discussed—and it may simply have been enough that they were different states vying for supremacy. There were even other groups and people, but other than Gaya we don’t hear nearly as much from them, other than the occasional raiding party or alliance. Even Gaya seems to be an “outside” party on the peninsula. It is into this mix that the Wa would find themselves, and Yamato would enter the complex world of peninsular politics.
And I think that’s about where we will leave it. By the latter half of the 4th century, around the time that Okinaga Tarashi Hime is gearing up to head off from Kyushu, there were three major states on the peninsula, and then myriad other, smaller groups. Goguryeo in the north had destroyed the ethnic Han commanderies, but was still nursing its own wounds inflicted by the Murong Xianbei and Baekje. Baekje itself was just reaching the height of their power, and were even starting to encroach on the weakened Goguryeo as well as their Silla neighbors. Silla had established itself on the central eastern coastline, and was fending off attacks from, and attempting to subjugate, the loosely confederated states of Gaya to their south. Meanwhile there are attacks by the Wa, the Malgal, and the Ye and Maek. Up in the north, the ancient Okjo and Buyeo, whom we’ve really only barely mentioned, seem to be waning.
This is the early part of Three Kingdoms era on the Korean peninsula. These three states will vie with each other for the next several centuries. At the same time they are still developing their own policies and statecraft, borrowing from their Han neighbors, but also innovating their own ways of doing things. Over time, they would consolidate into a single state, but for now they were still fighting with one another.
Next episode, will get back to Okinaga Tarashi Hime and we’ll see how she fares as she jumps into the fray on the Korean Peninsula.
So, until next time, thank you for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us on iTunes, Spotify, or 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 through our KoFi site, kofi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the link over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Questions or comments? Feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.
That’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Kim, P., & Shultz, E. J. (2013). The 'Silla annals' of the 'Samguk Sagi'. Gyeonggi-do: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
Kim, P., Shultz, E. J., Kang, H. H. W., & Han'guk Chŏngsin Munhwa Yŏn'guwŏn. (2012). The Koguryo annals of the Samguk sagi. Seongnam-si, Korea: Academy of Korean Studies Press.
Jeon, H.-T. (2008). Goguryeo: In search of its culture and history. Seoul: Hollym.
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
Shultz, E. (2004). An Introduction to the "Samguk Sagi". Korean Studies, 28, 1-13. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720180
Iryŏn, ., Ha, T. H., & Mintz, G. K. (2004). Samguk yusa: Legends and history of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press.

Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko

Ame no Hiboko

Takechi no Sukune

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Homuda Wake

King of Kara and his Sister

Mongna Geunja

Yutsuki / Kungwol

Maketsu

Iwa no Hime

King Naemul of Silla

King Silseong of Silla

King Nulji of Silla

Prince Bokho of Silla

Prince Misaheun of Silla

Pak Jesang

Rough Transcript

References

Rough Transcript

References