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.

This episode we talk about Katsuraki no Sotsuhiko, covering what we know of the stories he is in as well as discussing what might be lurking behind these stories.

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 46: I Stan Takechi no Sukune

August 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Takechi no [Sukune] no Ōmi on a Japanese 1 yen note from 1916.

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This episode we cover the life of Takechi no Sukune, whom we’ve partially covered in past episodes, but this episode we take a look at his whole life, including records of his actions during the reign of Homuda Wake. There is a lot of discussion of different reigns, so I’ll try to lay out some of what is going on with each one. This might help give an idea of what we are seeing, but there are still a lot of questions and supposition in all of this:

Iribiko Dynasty

Mimaki Iribiko

Nominally the “first” dynasty of Yamato (despite the 10 reigns before), and contemporary with Yamato Totohi Momoso Hime, who might be “Himiko” by some estimations. She is buried in Hashihaka kofun, which dates from the 3rd century.

Ikume Iribiko

Mimaki Iribiko’s successor. This reign, which likely was in the later 3rd century, assuming Mimaki Iribiko’s reign ended somewhere near the time Hashihaka Kofun was built. During this period, there is early connection to the continent, and many of the traditions—sumō and the situating of Ise Shrine—that are placed in this reign.
Theoretically both Waka Tarashi Hiko and Takechi were born during this reign, it would seem, though it is likely that any direct connection between the Iribiko and Tarashi dynasty is fiction to try to connect these ancient stories together.

Tarashi Dynasty

Ōtarashi Hiko

The first of the “Tarashi” dynasty. During Ōtarashi Hiko’s reign we see the “conquest” of much of the archipelago, including subduing the Kumaso in the south and the Emishi in the north, along with the occasional Tsuchigumo. It was during this reign that Takechi first starts to take on official duties. His charting of the East sets the stage for Yamato Takeru’s later campaign, during the same reign.
If this was really the reign that introduced Takechi, then one would have to assume that, given what we know about other reigns, it should probably be assumed to be somewhere in the mid-4th century.

Waka Tarashi Hiko

Despite a relatively long reign, very little is actually written about Waka Tarashi Hiko’s reign. He is said to have reigned well, but when he dies, the throne passes to his nephew, rather than to a son.

Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko

In comparison to the previous sovereigns, his reign was amazingly short—only 9 years. Despite that he still gets more written about him than Waka Tarashi Hiko. During this reign, we first meet Okinaga Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune is clearly helping out with some of the ritual components.

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Known for her raids against the peninsula, Takechi no Sukune seems to be her partner in her campaigns on the peninsula and in the archipelago. Later, Takechi is seen accompanying the young prince, Homuda Wake. Based on the connections with Baekje, this reign would need to have been in the later 4th century.
Many people have suggested that Tarashi Hime is completely fictional. She is definitely used as a stand-in for the Himiko of the Wei Chronicles.

Middle Dynasty

Homuda Wake

The first reign of the Middle Dynasty. He is probably the sovereign at the end of the 4th century and into the 5th century, though some doubt his existence as well. This is the last “reliable” reign where we see Takechi no Sukune.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 46: I Stan Takechi no Sukune
Well, we’re back and we are still talking about the reign of Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou. Last episode we talked about incidents recorded on the stele of Gwangaetto the Great, which provide some important contemporary context for everything going on both on the peninsula and the archipelago at this time. These next couple episodes we’ll turn back to the Chronicles for most of our information, and we’ll look at some of the so-call “supporting” characters, those outside of the royal line, that are now starting to play larger and larger roles. And we’ll start with someone whom we already talked about in a previous episode, but whose exploits continue through the reign of Homuda Wake, and that is the legendary Takechi no Sukune. Now, I started this episode with the idea that we would just quickly cover a few things from Takechi no Sukune during the reign of Homuda Wake, but the more I started to get into the material the more I realized that I really want to do something of a deep dive. And I know we’ve talked about Takechi in the past, but I don’t think that did him justice.
I am finding that, the more I learn about him, the more fascinated I am about this character, in part because, before undertaking this project, I didn’t even know he existed. Or at least that stories about him existed—we can’t really say much of anything for the existence of any particular individual in the Chronicles, really, until we have corroborating sources and unfortunately I don’t know of any source that can corroborate the existence of this character—he exists purely in chronicles and related stories, from what I can tell.
And yet, I can’t shake this feeling that he is actually rather important to trying to understand some ground truth to all of this.
Now you may recall Takechi no Sukune—also known as Take-uchi no Sukune—from when we talked about the reign of Homuda Wake’s mother, Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jinguu Tennou. Now during Homuda Wake’s reign, Takechi no Sukune continued on in his role as Prime-minister-for-life.
His exploits, of course, begin well before this period, and even before that of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, Takechi no Sukune supposedly came into the world the same year as Homuda Wake’s great-uncle, the sovereign Waka Tarashi Hiko aka Seimu Tennou, which would put his birth during the reign of Ikume Iribiko, or Suinin Tenno. That’s about five reigns back from where we are now, and probably in the latter half of the 3rd century, assuming the Iribiko dynasty fills in for the time around Queen Himiko’s reign. And so the Chronicles already have him living well over a century at this point in the narrative, surviving several contemporary sovereigns and would-be sovereigns, and providing a rather storied career in the process. Of course, despite everything he accomplished, the chronicles aren’t really about him, so they still treat him like a background character, kind of like Rex in the Clone Wars, or even Wedge in the original trilogy—though in this case we may be more in R2D2 territory, given the scope of his involvement. Sure, the story may be focused on members of a particular dynasty, but when you really look, he always seems to be there at those critical moments.
As I said before, Takechi no Sukune had quite the life. During his youth, he purportedly marched out to the east, to explore and open up those lands.Of course, Yamato Takeru took most of the credit for all of that, his own legends far outstripping, and possibly even replacing, those of young Takechi. Furthermore, despite his youth, he displayed uncommon loyalty and good sense from the get-go. For instance, there was that time that Oho Tarashi Hiko threw a party so grand that all of the court officials were basically secluded in a drunken bender for several days. All, that is, except for Takechi no Sukune and Prince Waka Tarashi Hiko, who stood guard over the palace to make sure that none of the court’s enemies decided that this was a good time to get up to some shenanigans.
For his loyalty and good sense, Oho Tarashi Hiko made him Oho-Omi—the Prime Minister, and the next several sovereigns also confirmed him in this role. This would mean that he was not only involved in administering the affairs of Yamato, but also he would be heavily involved in the rituals as well. This shouldn’t be at all surprising since the two went hand in hand—in fact, you can’t really separate the two, and this would remain the case for much of Japanese history. Thus, when the kami contacted Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko and Okinaga Tarashi Hime and commanded them to invade the Korean peninsula, he was there, assisting with the rituals, helping to cover up Naka tsu Hiko’s death, and eventually supporting Tarashi Hime as she sailed forth. Later, during the formation of the Wa-Baekje alliance, we once again find Takechi no Sukune at the wheel, delegating who would be the ones to represent Yamato in negotiations.
Beyond helping to direct overseas negotations, he also seems to have had quite the hand in Homuda Wake’s own upbringing. Not only did he help keep him safe as a child, but he later took the young Prince around Lake Oumi, and to Tsuruga Bay, where Homuda Wake exchanged names with the kami, which we discussed back in episode 41.
And so, other than the incredible lifespan that it would seem to imply, it should be no surprise that Takechi no Sukune continued to be deeply involved with government affairs during the reign of Homuda Wake, as well. For example, given increased traffic with the peninsula, there were more and more people coming to the islands from elsewhere. Most of these visitors are identified with either Baekje, Silla, or Kara, though in this reign we do start to see some discussion of Goguryeo as well—we’ll spend a lot of time on everything going on here next episode, as there is a lot happening, especially at the end of the 4th century and into the early 5th. For whatever reason that people are coming—whether by choice, seeking greater opportunities, or fleeing war and conflict, or possibly even as slaves, captured in raids—the Chronicles give Takechi no Sukune command of these immigrants, who are immediately put to work building ponds.
As a quick reminder, building ponds was actually something that was quite important. Up to this point it has largely been sovereigns and royal princes who were building ponds, and so this isn’t just about digging ditches somewhere. These are effectively community hydrological works, and seem to have been important irrigation projects. The pools themselves are named things like the “Baekje Pond” and the “Kara Pond”, seemingly referencing the labor used in their construction. Though it is odd that the Baekje Pond, which is mentioned in the Kojiki, was apparently built by immigrants from Silla. Meanwhile, the Kara pond, mentioned in the Nihon Shoki as being made specifically under Takechi no Sukune’s supervision, with labor by people from Baekje, Silla, Goguryeo, and, interestingly, Nimna, aka Imna or Mimana. Of course, most of those aren’t “Kara” or “Kaya” as we know it, though “Kara” would eventually become a general term for anything from the peninsula and even from the continent.
So here we see that Takechi no Sukune continued to have significant influence in the court. He had a hand in just about everything. But it wasn’t all just administration of the state, and there is a story in this reign that I think talks to the personal influence he had with the sovereign and the royal family.
The story revolves, as many of them do, around a woman. Her name was Kaminaga Hime, and she was the daughter of the Muragata no Kimi no Ushimoroi in the land of Himuka, on the eastern shores of Kyushu, and news of her exceeding beauty had reached the ears of the Yamato court. Now we are told that Ushimoroi had long served Yamato, but he was getting on in years and thinking of retiring. As he did so, he offered his daughter’s hand to the sovereign—which would seem to be another example of those marriage politics we’ve seen used to create bonds between various parts of the archipelago. Ushimoroi’s title of “Kimi” would seem to imply that he was some kind of local ruler, possibly over an independent country or region. So this would have been an offer with some political weight beyond just the fact that she was a beautiful woman. Homuda Wake was greatly intrigued, and so he sent for her to come and to become one of his many wives at the palace.
Now neither communication nor travel were instantaneous back in those days, and so it was that six months went by. Homuda Wake went on with his life, and one day he and his retinue had traveled to Awaji Island, on the Seto Inland Sea, to take part in some hunting, when he spided something rather odd. Looking out to sea, towards the Harima coastline, and he saw what appeared to a herd of stags swimming towards him in the water. They eventually stopped at the harbor of Kako in Harima, a little ways east from the modern city of Himeji. Intrigued by what he had seen, Homuda Wake sent a messenger over to Kako to find out what was happening. It turned out that what they had seen, off in the distance, were actually the boats accompanying Kaminaga Hime on her journey to Yamato. The men rowing the boats had all donned deerskins, with the horns still attached, apparently as part of some ceremonial garment.
And if you would, just take a moment to imagine what that must have been like as they cut through the water.. From far away, it very much may have looked like a herd of stags, all in a line, swimming through the water—and deer are known to swim between islands, so that wouldn’t have been so strange, but for them to be lined up in two neat rows, all with impressive racks, well, it is no wonder that Homuda Wake sent someone over to figure out just what was going on.
It seems that Kaminaga Hime wasn’t playing around. She was coming in all of the glory of her station, and nobody was going to question who she was or the power of her people.
When the impressive, antler-clad retinue finally made landfall, they were greeted by the court. The Chronicles then tell us that immediately one of the royal princes, Ohosazaki, one of Homuda Wake’s many sons, became awestruck by her beauty, and fell immediately in love.
Of course, lovestruck though he might have been, the prince had a problem, becuase she had come to marry his father, not him. Perhaps if it had been anyone else, he could have easily claimed some prerogative, but it would probably be a bit awkward to ask his dad to just stand aside.
And so who did Ohosazaki turn to in order to help him out? You guessed it, the trusted advisor and prime minister, Takechi no Sukune.
I imagine the scene playing out as if this were some anime—or possibly even a Shakespearean play, the tropes surrounding lovestruck youth are plenty old. Anyway, I imagine Ohosazaki, his heart beating with his young crush, storming into Takechi no Sukune’s quarters and swooning all over the furniture while pouring out his grief at his hopeless case, Takechi, of course, just patiently taking it all in and consoling the young Prince. Of course, the Chronicles aren’t nearly so dramatic and simply note that Ohosazaki asked Takechi no Sukune to intercede on his behalf in hopes that he could make Kaminaga Hime his wife.
Well, if there was anyone who could help the young prince, it was Takechi no Sukune. And so he found an appropriate time to bend the ear of Homuda Wake, probably taking him aside and letting him know about his son’s longing. Of course, had Ohosazaki asked for her hand directly, that might have been considered improper. However, Homuda Wake had several wives at this point, and for all of Kaminaga Hime’s connections, it was unlikely that she would take the place of his primary queen..
And so, with Takechi no Sukune’s help, Homuda Wake could make it look like giving Kaminaga Hime to his son was his idea, all along.
And in case you are wondering, no, the Chronicles don’t give any thought about Kaminaga Hime’s position on all of this, which may say more about the 8th century than about the 4th or 5th.
So Homuda Wake gave a banquet in the Hinter Palace—that is, the women’s quarters of the palace, and depending on the source he either gave her the upper seat, or kamiza, or else he set it up so that she would serve wine to Ohosazaki in a special cup. Either way, the conspirators had ensured that Kaminaga Hime would be the center of attention when Homuda Wake launched into an impromptu bit of suggestive poetry—given here in Aston’s translation from the Nihon Shoki:
Come! My son!
On the moor, garlic to gather,
Garlic to gather
On the way, as I went
Pleasing of perfume
Was the orange in flower.
Its branches beneath
Men had all plundered
Its branches above
Birds perching had withered
Of three chestnuts
Mid-most, its branches
Held in their hiding
A blushing maiden
Come! And for thee, my son,
Let her burst into blossom.
Ohosazaki took his meaning immediately and answered with an impromptu poem of his own:
In the pond of Yosami
Where the water collects,
The marsh-rope coils
Were growing, but I knew not of them :
In the river-fork stream,
The water-caltrops shells
Were pricking me, but I knew not of them.
Oh, my heart !
How very ridiculous thou wert !
The Kojiki has a few other songs, though I think you get the picture. The others, by Ohosazaki, talk about her laying by his side and another has a rather, well, questionable line that states that “she slept with me / unresisting”, which, just, ugh. Sigh. Because yes, “resisting” was a thing and consent wasn’t considered necessary, and at some point here we will spend some time on this rather distasteful aspect of court culture, with plenty of appropriate content warnings up front.
But that is all tangential to our main thread, which is the role of Takechi no Sukune and the trust and loyalty he seems to have had at court, which this whole story illustrates very well – and which makes the next story so very strange, when you stop to think about it.
Now it is unsurprising that in all of his work for the state, Takechi no Sukune was not universally appreciated. In fact, it seems that there were those who were rather jealous of his success and his control over the administration of the state. It is a tale as old as time, really—in any political system with limited positions at the top of the heap, there is only room for so many people up at that rarified altitude. And so people were regularly jockeying for position, and even friends could become rivals in their pursuit of status. In Takechi’s case, however, trouble didn’t just come from some random colleague trying to impugne his character. No, the dagger that was thrust towards the Prime Minister came from another direction: His own younger brother, Umashi no Sukune.
It makes a perveted sort of sense, when you think about it. As brothers, they both came with a similar lineage—though we aren’t told if they were full brothers or only half-brothers. But as far as their lineage went, there was likely not much to distinguish one from the other. Even so, it seems that Takechi no Sukune’s own position was, from an early period, based on his personal relationship with the sovereigns and their family, and then it built upon that with all of his works. Meanwhile, we haven’t heard from Umashi no Sukune until now, though his title of Sukune would seem to indicate he’d done something right, though that could have all been due as much to his elder brother’s influence than anything he had personally accomplished.
It is unclear exactly why Umashi no Sukune decided to betray his older sibling—whether he hoped to inherit his powerful station, or whether he just had a grudge from some perceived slight that he had been nursing for some untold period of time.
Whatever the cause, there is no indication that Takechi no Sukune had even the faintest hint that something was amiss. And so, as he embarked on a trip to Tsukushi to inspect that region, he likely had no thought as to the dangerous situation that would soon unfold.
At the court, with his brother gone, Umashi no Sukune seized his opportunity.
He found his way into the good graces of Homuda Wake and, like Wormtongue whispering his dark thoughts to Theoden, he started to slander Takechi to the sovereign. He intimated that Takechi had treasonous plans on the country, and claimed that while he was in Tsukushi he would start to enact plans to break the entire island off from the rest of Yamato. From there he would control all trade and communication with the continent, and that would eventually give him control over the entire archipelago.
One might question if Homuda Wake would truly be swayed by such an outlandish and audacious story. After all, this was Takechi no Sukune, who had served loyally for so many years and had basically helped raise the young sovereign. On the other hand, the accusations were coming from his own younger brother. Furthermore, remember how Homuda Wake had come to power, and the many roles that Takechi no Sukune had played leading up to that. I mean, if anyone knew how to rally and lead an army to put himself or someone else on the throne, it would be Takechi no Sukune
In the end, whether fully convinced or just deciding that he couldn’t take the chance that Umashi no Sukune could be right, Homuda Wake decided he must take action. Fearing the damage that would happen to the realm--not to mention what might happen to him—Homuda Wake had Takechi no Sukune branded as a traitor and sent warriors out to track him down and kill him for his alleged crimes.
Fortunately, Takechi no Sukune’s time as Prime Minister hadn’t just garnered him enemies, but he seems to have had quite a few friends as well. In fact, given how he seems to have operated, I suspect he had made as many, or more, friends than enemies in his long and highly successful career. And so word reached him of the warriors that were hunting him well before they arrived.
Takechi no Sukune was crestfallen by what must have felt like a massive betrayal. After all he had done, had it really come to this? Could Homuda Wake really think so little of him? I can hardly imagine the turmoil he was going through trying to understand how this had happened. But ancient politics were brutal, and having skin in the game wasn’t just a metaphor. For someone in power as long as Takechi no Sukune had been, he must have known that his position at the top made him a target.
While Takechi no Sukune was still reeling from his misfortune, no doubt trying to strategize a way out of this mess, he was approached by a man named Maneko. Apparently this man bore an uncanny resemblance to the prime minister, and he offered to be his stand in—his Kagemusha, if you will. It is unclear whether he made this offer purely out of some sense of civic duty, or if there was some greater obligation that he felt towards the prime minister, but Maneko made his offer freely, knowing full well what it would mean. Nonetheless, he felt it was worth it if it would give Takechi no Sukune time to return to the court and make his case to the sovereign in person.
And so, to throw the assassins off Takechi no Sukune’s scent, Maneko made himself up to look as much like the Prime Minister as possible and then he threw himself onto his own sword.
Local people must have been shocked when they heard the news, and it likely spread quickly through the archipelago. Eventually the news reached the assasins who were still on the road. They were told that Takechi no Sukune had taken his own life rather than let himself be killed. Without a mission left to accomplish, the would-be assassins apparently turned around and headed back home.
And so, making the most of Maneko’s sacrifice, Takechi no Sukune himself—very much not dead—made his way quietly back to the court. One can imagine that he must have done his best to hide his identify, lest word get back to his rivals that he was still alive. We are left to imagine just how he made his way back, but eventually he he snuck back into Yamato.
Once back, he slipped into the palace without being recognize, and once there, he revealed his presence and threw himself at Homuda Wake’s feet. He explained everything, at least as he knew it, refuting any accusations of disloyalty from his brother.
Homuda Wake was in something of a bind. Which brother was really telling the truth? Unsure, and, now presented with two different stories, Homuda Wake interrogated both Takechi and his brother, Umashi. All he had to go on, though, was their individual testimony. There was no evidence that Takechi was plotting anything, other than his own brother’s say-so, but then again, there was no clear evidence to exonerate him, either—and this is well before any concept of “Innocent until proven guilty”. And so, in order to get at the truth, they were both submitted to the ordeal of boiling water.
I am not exactly sure what form this took, but it sounds like they would have had to endure boiling water in some form or fashion, and one imagines that the one who better endured the pain would be the winner. We are told that it took place on the banks of the Shiki river, and Homuda Wake called upon the gods of Heaven and Earth to help decide the case.
Personally I’m imagining that this was something similar to the ordeals imposed in Europe, operating along similar lines. A person would be submitted to boiling hot water, which should severely scald or even burn them. Theoretically some great power—God in Europe, or the kami in Japan—would intervene on behalf of the innocent to ensure that they came out unscathed. Hardly the kind of justice system that I would want to be subject to, but apparently it worked, and Takechi no Sukune was, of course victorious.
As soon as the verdict was read out, Takechi leapt into action. He didn’t even wait for sentencing; he may have been an old man by this time, but he was still spry, and he jumped on his traitorous brother. Gone was any sense of the calm, cool-headed administrator. This was the Takechi who had traveled out to the east and raided the coasts of the continent with Tarashi Hime. He was angry, and he was out for blood.
Apparently such a reaction caught the entire court offguard. They were probably expected him to be nursing his wound from the ordeal. Wrestling on with his startled brother, Takechi quickly pulled his own cross-sword and was about to kill him when Homuda Wake suddenly intervened and parted the two men.
In the end, Umashi no Sukune wasn’t killed, but he was handed over to the lord of Kii. Of course they didn’t exactly have a prison system that we are aware of, so we have to make some assumptions as to what this meant. Perhaps Umashi no Sukune was forced to work as an enslaved servant, or, given his status, he may have simply been held under a kind of house arrest, away from the politics and power of the court. Enforced exile seems to be a common punishment for more high ranking individuals, and perhaps that is what happened here. Either way, we don’t hear any more from him in the Chronicles.
As for Takechi no Sukune, he returned to his work, and despite everything that had passed, he would continue to serve the court until at least the reign of Homuda Wake’s son, Ohosazaki no Mikoto.
He isn’t as prominent, however—in fact, we have only a single reference—a set of poems by the sovereign and Takechi no Sukune referencing the odd occurrence of a wild goose found laying an egg—odd in that geese do not typicallylay their eggs in Japan, preferring their summer nesting grounds up in the arctic tundra, so this would have been an odd occurrence indeed, though why it would be connected to Takechi no Sukune is beyond me, to be honest.
Interestingly there is also a similar entry in the Harima Fudoki that similarly talks about an area named “Kamo”. It was apparently so-named because the wild geese used to gather in that area, and, again, they talk about them laying eggs, which must have been an odd find. In that story, however, the eggs were laid in the reign of Homuda Wake, not that of his son, suggesting that this incident, like so many others, may not be in exactly the right spot.
Regardless, that is the last we hear from Takechi no Sukune, aka Takeuchi no Sukune, at least in the Chronicles. From there we need to look at other sources to see what might have happened to him.
A Kamakura source, claiming to be from the no longer extant Inaba no Fudoki, claims that Takechi no Sukune retired around the ripe old age of 360 years old and headed north, to the country of Inaba. He lived there for a time, and then one day he just disappeared. They found a pair of his shoes at Kamegane hill, or so we are told. Today, you can actually visit the site of Kamegane Hill at Ube Shrine, in the southeast of modern Tottori City, near the Fukuro River. It is just north of the archaeological site thought to be that of the old Inaba provincial office, and the shrine claims the title of the Ichinomiya, or principal shrine, of that ancient country. Here they proudly lay claim to the tradition of Takechi no Sukune, which holds that he was buried in a kofun whose remains can be seen on the shrine grounds.
Other sources—all much later than the Chronicles—suggest he died some time during the reign of Ohosazaki, aka Nintoku Tennou, sometime between the 55th year of that reign—the same year that those goose eggs were found—and the 78th year of the same. These accounts then put him at various ages, all on the upper side of his third century, however. As for the actual place of his death, that’s also scattered across the country, with some traditions having him pass away at Kai, others at Mino, and still others having him remain in the Nara region.
Likewise, his actual kofun is also unclear, though we know he had one. One of his descendants, Tamada no Sukune, is depicted escaping to it in one account of the Nihon Shoki, but they don’t actually tell us where it was. The traditions at Ube Jinja obviously have it up there, but in the Nara basin there is a round keyhole shaped tomb known as Muromiyayama Kofun, formerly known also as Muro no Ohobaka. It sits at the foot of the mountains that form the southern extent of the Nara Basin, in Gose city. Some traditions claim that this is where they laid to rest the famed courtier.
The kofun is the correct age, dating to about the start of the 5th century. It is 238 meters long—about 40 meters shorter than Hashihaka Kofun, thought to be the resting place of Queen Himiko, and less than half the size of the giant Daisen Kofun of Nintoku Tennou. So while it may be similar in scope to previous kingly tombs, it doesn’t really hold a candle to what was going on over in the Furuichi-Mozu area of Kawachi—modern Ohosaka. Still, it is impressive, and if it really was for Takechi no Sukune then it seems like a decent kofun for someone of his status, though its placement in the southern edge of the Nara Basin strikes me as slightly odd—I would imagine a tomb mound closer to the court in the Kawachi area, nearer to the kingly Furuichi-Mozu tombs, but perhaps there was some significance in the Gose region that we don’t have the context for, today.
And that is it for the life of Takechi no Sukune—or at least the life that the Chronicles lay out for us to find. But we are still left with quite a few mysteries. Perhaps the largest amongst them is what, in all of this, is actually true?
Well, most of this is going to be conjectural, but I’ll provide some of my own theories. First off, I think that it’s important to note that Takechi no Sukune features in the lineages of some rather important families in the 7th and 8th centuries. Not only is he linked as an ancestor of the royal lineage, but he is also said to be one of the ancestors of the Soga family. The Soga were extremely powerful in the 7th century, to the point that they were effectively running the government, with power that rivaled that of the royal house, itself. There were also numerous other families that traced their lineages back to Takechi no Sukune through one means or another.
So it would make some sense that the ancestor of these powerful families would be an important figure that couldn’t just be written out of the story.
On the other hand, it is possible that we have the opposite effect, here—rather than Takechi no Sukune being important because those families claimed him as an ancestor, it could just as easily be that those families claimed him as an ancestor because he was important. I mean, everyone tried to claim some connection to the royal family, if they could, and Takechi no Sukune is said to have descended from one of the likely fictional sovereigns before Mimaki Iribiko. So there’s that. But also, if he was a known character in so many of the oral histories, it may be that he was a great legendary figure to help bolster your own family’s position in the status-conscious court of the 8th century.
And there is some evidence to suggest that this is the case. You see, many of the more famous families claiming him as an ancestor appear to be doing that through another legendary figure of this time—someone I had actually planned to talk about this episode but, well, we’re already getting a bit long so I think we’ll cover him next time. His name is Katsuragi no So tsu Hiko.
And what stands out, here, is that title: “Hiko”. Now we’ve seen many examples of “Hiko” already. Today it is often translated as Prince or Lord, and we often talk about the Hiko-Hime ruling pairs that are a staple of the earliest stories, where “hiko” appears to be an old word for some kind of territorial ruler or authority.
The key there is that it is an older title. Sukune, and even Wake, appear to be later signifiers of authority, and, in fact, we have one piece of evidence that appears to help place all three of these titles in context for us.
You see, we have a sword dated to the late 5th or early 6th century—probably about a century out from our current temporal coordinates within the narrative. It had been buried at Inariyama Kofun, and it is important because it contains a lineage inscribed on the blade that takes us up to the time of the sovereign Wake Takeru, aka Yuuryaku Tennou. This lineage, starts with Oho-hiko, who may have been the same one mentioned as one of the four generals of Mimaki Iribiko, and it progresses through several generations. In the earliest generations we see a transition in the titles from Hiko, to Sukune, to Wake. If we assume that the family continued to grow more powerful, with successive generations ascending to new heights, then we would expect to see the same kind of progression and escalation of titles in other lineages as well.
For the offspring of Takechi no Sukune, the vast majority of them are also given the title of Sukune, presumab ly inherited from their father. One notable exception to this pattern is So tsu Hiko—if he was truly Takechi no Sukune’s son, then we would expect that he would also have a title like Sukune, or possibly even Wake.
In all likelihood this stems from the fact that So tsu Hiko wasn’t Takechi no Sukune’s son at all.
But, if that is the case, it just leaves us with more questions. If there was no direct connection to these families other than one they made up, then why, again, was he mentioned so many times and in so many places?
Personally, I can’t help but wonder if he was more than what he is made out to be in the text—and that is quite a lot. Perhaps “Prime Minister”, or “Oho-omi”, was a convenient way to explain all the things the stories said he had done. He may have even been something of a legendary figure, but they couldn’t quite slot him into the royal lineage in the way they did with everyone else.
I also wonder if he wasn’t, in fact, a co-ruler. If the theory of co-rulership is true—and it wasn’t actually gendered—then perhaps he wasn’t just an administrator, but was actually a co-sovereign. To that point, I can’t help but notice the similarities between his title, Oho-omi, the Great Minister, and the 5th century title used for the sovereign, “Oho-kimi”.
There is also the business of him and Okinaga Tarashi Hime, where the two often look like they are working extremely closely together, and while that could be explained as the natural response to their situation, I can’t help but wonder if it is more than that.
Another possibility is that he wasn’t a co-ruler, but that he was the chief of one of the other countries in the archipelago—perhaps even a king in his own right. Remember, we are still seeing evidence of some independence in places like Kibi, Izumo, and Tsukushi, even if they may have largely been working with the Yamato hegemon.
If that were the case, it seems the most logical place for him to have been was probably somewhere in Kyushu, which many of the stories connect him to. Perhaps the story of him possibly breaking away and declaring himself the sovereign was not just a fanciful conspiracy theory, but an actual threat to Yamato’s dominance. After all, we’d already seen rulers at the Shimonoseki Straits reportedly telling people that they were the actual rulers of the archipelago. Some have even suggested that most of the actions of the Wa on the peninsula were actually referencing some powerful, northern Kyushu entity, rather than Yamato as we think of them.
There is a less exciting possibility. That one suggests that these stories aren’t actually of the same person, but that Takechi, or perhaps Takeuchi, was actually more like a title that got passed down over time, and that multiple different people held this position during different reigns.
Of course, none of that is really provable without corroborating evidence, and given the lack of any written history prior to the early 5th century, it seems unlikely that we’ll get much more than speculation, at least for now. Heck, there are even those who don’t believe that any of this is even remotely historical, so there’s that, too.
Before we close, though, I do want to touch on one more thing. It is impressive that Takechi no Sukune is so prominent across so many stories, but the Chronicles don’t seem particularly interested in how long-lived he had to have been. Which may give us some evidence, however sketchy, to take another look at just how long people were reigning.
For example, let’s make the assumption that Takechi no Sukune was, indeed, extremely old at the time of his death. While it would probably be odd, let’s assume that he lived for roughly 80 years, and that he died during the reign of Homuda Wake—the incident with Ohosazaki could have just as easily happened when the sovereign was still a young prince. If we assume he passed away in the first or second decade of the 5th century, then he would have come into the world some time towards the start of the 4th, perhaps even as early as the 320s or 330s, with him only being in power from the latter half of that century, since he wasn’t running a country just after he was born. So looking at his professional career, starting with the Oho Tarashi Hiko and continuing to Homuda Wake, we have all four sovereigns of the Tarashi dynasty and then Homuda Wake—five reigns in total. Even allowing that he likely wasn’t in power until late in Oho Tarashi Hiko’s reign, that gives us reigns averaging about 15 years a piece. That’s much shorter than anything claimed in the Chronicles, of course, but much more realistic. Average reign lengths in the latter part of the chronicles, not including Homuda Wake and his immediate successor, average about 11 to 12 years, which makes sense if you assume that typically a reign starts after the death of the previous sovereign—most monarches are coming to the throne when they are much older.
That doesn’t entirely solve our issue of dates, but I do think that it is a useful tool to try to see how, rather than Takechi no Sukune’s lifespan being incredibly long, it is more likely that the reigns that we’ve been seeing up until now were much shorter.
And so, there you have it. The life and times of Takechi no Sukune. I really do think that he is one of the interesting figures in this period, perhaps in part because I suspect he was largely ignored as the Chroniclers were messing with everything. Sure, his timeline gets dragged out with everything else, but I can’t help but wonder if he wasn’t actually a real person, and probably there for the actual coalescing of the early hegemony. The story suggests that when he started his career, Yamato was still largely just a powerful central state, with no real hegemony much beyond the Nara Basin, and that by the end of it Yamato was making alliances and working as a mover and shaker on the Korean continent. The latter half of the 4th century in particular had seen tremendous growth, and if Takechi no Sukune were there for it, well, I think that would be pretty exciting.
Next we’ll talk about someone whose feet are more firmly planted in history—he even gets some love from the continental sources. He is Katsuragi no So tsu Hiko, and though his exploits may not quite rival those of Takechi no Sukune, he was party to some rather important events, especially dealing with Silla and the continental powers.
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

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
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
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
Shichirō, M., & Miller, R. (1979). The Inariyama Tumulus Sword Inscription. Journal of Japanese Studies, 5(2), 405-438. doi:10.2307/132104
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 42: The Seven-Branched Sword

June 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

The seven-branched sword at Isonokami shrine. There are several reproductions that can be found in museums in Japan and Korea.

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This episode we are going to talk about the final events that the Nihon Shoki, at least, attributes to the reign of Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jingū Kōgō. The Kojiki doesn’t go into the same level of detail, but does seem to attribute the interaction with King Chogo (see below) with Tarashi Hime’s son, Homuda Wake. There could certainly be some truth to this—the obsession in the Nihon Shoki with dates means that they seem determined to make Tarashi Hime’s dates match those of Queen Himiko. Unfortunately, the Nihon Shoki is our only real source for much of this, as the Kojiki and the Kūjiki don’t really deal much with the peninsula other than to discuss Tarashi Hime’s initial campaign against Silla and that’s it.

Or course, that also brings up questions about the entire narrative, since without other sources to compare it against, what did the Chroniclers change, add, or massage to make it fit their narrative? Well, in general we know that they definitely made some changes, such as using more favorable names for “Japan” and otherwise changing a character here or there, but in general I haven’t seen any real attempts to flat out make up a quotation. So when something says the the “Baekje Annals state…” I’m inclined to take the base narrative at face value, even if I question the bent. For instance, the Chroniclers put diplomatic gifts from the peninsula in the category of “tribute”, which conjures up a whole mindset of hierarchical relations that likely did not exist. Certainly when an embassy was entreating with another country they may have acted more subservient if they wanted something, but that may have been little more than diplomatic niceties. It could also have been the case that as things were being translated from one language to another, translators may have slightly editorialized just what was being said. All of this to say that I just don’t think we can read too much into the language to figure out some kind of exact hierarchical map of northeast Asia at this time. These were independent states that were still establishing themselves in their own territories, let alone in the larger geopolitical sphere.

So with that, let’s get into the locations and people discussed this episode—at least as best as we can tell. I will ask for some forgiveness on the pronunciation of things from this period. It is already one thing to determine Japanese pronunciation—I won’t get into it too much here other than to say Old Japanese had more than 5 vowels and had different pronunciations for various consonants. I usually default to modern Japanese for understanding. This gets even more confusing, though, with the names that could come from another language. So for the Korean names that we know, I’ll try to defer to the modern Korean pronunciation as best we know, with some exceptions, and for Chinese I’ll be deferring to modern Putonghua (i.e. Mandarin) where I can—or at least my best approximation. But for some of these, we don’t know the native language. The best we can do is to use the Chinese characters and determine a pronunciation based on that. These are not likely to be exact, but they should get us close. For the most part I’m deferring to others, such as Aston, on the pronunciation, but I’ll try to give you the characters here in case you want to do a more in depth look yourself.

Locations

Wa/Yamato - (倭・和・大和) - Of course, this is largely the name for the main focus of our attention, but I’d make a few notes. First, while the character “倭“ is often assumed to be derogatory, meaning “submissive” or “dwarf”, it was likely chosen because of its phonetic similarity for the name that the Wa people used for themselves. This is further emphasized by the fact that the Japanese themselves would keep the pronunciation “Wa” but use the more complimentary “和“, meaning “Peace”. However, even when using the term “Great Wa” for their state (大和) they would pronounce these all as “Yamato”, a note even made in some of the continental sources.

This is further confused in this particular period (4th-5th centuries) in that the Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo writing refers to “Wa” (“Wae” in modern Korean), but it is unclear if they meant the Japanese on the archipelago or Japonic-speaking people in the southern part of the peninsula. So we end up with “Wa” as a general term for the larger ethnic groups of Japonic speaking people, while “Yamato” refers both to the state that would come to control the archipelago and the area of the Nara Basin.

As a final note on this, I try to refrain from using the term “Japan” until later. Eventually the Japanese themselves will ask to be known by the name “Nihon” (日本), which is probably about where I think it will be best to switch to using the term “Japan” for the state as a whole.

Baekje - (百済) - Also romanized as “Paekche”, which gets into a whole thing about how many east Asian languages focus more on aspiration while English tends to focus on voicing, but that’s neither here nor there. Sometimes you’ll also find this in Japanese as “Kudara” for reasons that are not at all clear to me or anyone that I’ve asked. It seems to be a later reading that came about and was attached to the Kingdom, possibly after its fall at the hands of Silla. It was located on the western edge of the Korean peninsula, stretching from somewhere north of modern Seoul all the way down to the southernmost tip.

One thing about Baekje—the Nihon Shoki takes a certain almost paternalistic view of Baekje, and treats Yamato as the senior party in any relationship. This is in keeping with a certain chauvinism on the part of the archipelago that is seen again and again throughout history. This will come up again in a famous note to one of the Sinic courts when the Japanese sovereign famously opens with the greeting: “From the ruler of the land where the sun rises to the ruler of the land where the sun sets.” This means that we see the Japanese put themselves in the driver’s seat of the various campaigns, whereas it is much more likely that Baekje was probably driving things on the peninsula, with Yamato forces backing them up.

Silla - (新羅) - Pronounced (and sometimes written as “Shilla”, it is also known in Japanese as “Shinra” or “Shiragi”. This was still a relatively small kingdom on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, centered on the capital at the modern city of Gyeongju. Silla had a history of raids and attacks by the “Wa”—whether that was the people in the archipelago or the southern peninsula, it isn’t quite clear.

Thaksyun - (卓淳) - Aka “Taksun” or, in modern Japanese on’yomi pronunciation, “Tokushu”. The latter pronunciation is, in my opinion, the least likely option. Typically in these chronicles we are seeing either the Sinic characters (i.e. kanji) being used for their pronunciation—basically to “spell out” a name—or we are using them for their meaning, so that we are then using the Japanese (or in their case, the Old Japanese) pronunciation. Thus “Takeru” (e.g. Yamato Takeru) is written simply as “武” while a name like “Kibi” is written as “吉備” but Koshi is “越” and Izumo is “出雲”. In the case of Kibi we are seeing them use the “on’yomi” for the characters, but Koshi and Izumo both use the kun’yomi. In the case of the peninsula we generally assume that they are using the characters to phonetically spell the names unless we have reason to believe otherwise. It can also generally be assumed that they were, at the time, using a reading closer to the continental pronunciation of that time, assuming they were getting records from about the 4th century, rather than a modern Japanese on’yomi reading, as on’yomi have drifted some along with the rest of Japanese pronunciation in the centuries after.

As for where this was, we still aren’t sure. Some have suggested it was around modern Gimhae and near the mouth of the Nakdong river, which we know had contact with the archipelago from early on and was one of the stronger areas of the Kara (or Gaya) Confederacy. This is just conjecture, however, given its place in the story. It is possible that it was further west, closer to Mahan and Baekje.

Kara/Gaya States - (加倻・加羅 ) - The modern pronunciation in Korean is “Gaya” but given its importance to Japan and the word “Kara”, I am continuing to use that. Though it may have even been more like Karak or Garak, These states seem to have been the successor states to the Byeonhan (sometimes “Pyonhan”) of the three Han (三韓). That “Han” (or “Kan”) is the same word used to represent Korea today, and in later Japanese periods there was a confusion between the Samhan (Mahan, Byeonhan, and Jinhan) and the three Kingdoms of the peninsula (Baekje, Goguryeo, and Silla). While we believe that there was significant overlap in the territories of Mahan and Baekje, and possibly Silla and Jinhan, the Byeonhan states seem to have been in the south and become the Kara Confederacy, which may have attained the status of a Kingdom just before being swallowed up by Silla in later centuries. Goguryeo was, of course, in the north, at the head of the peninsula, and its territory is not considered part of the Samhan region by most scholars, today.

The general assumption is that the states that the Nihon Shoki claims Yamato and Baekje troops subdued were probably part of this group of states in and around the Nakdong river region. They may have just been city-states, and while some of the names reference Kara, others are unclear. They are, as romanized by Aston. Locations are pulled from Internet sources and I won’t put any real credibility there:

Pichapun - (比自㶱) - Possibly Bijabal? Some connect this with a place called Bihwa Gaya, centered on modern Changnyeong.
South Kara - (南加羅) - The meaning of this one seems clear. Other readings in Japanese include “Arihishi no Kara”, but I’m not sure when that reading comes about, much like “Kudara”
Tokkuk - (㖨国) - “The Country of Tok”. Possibly around the modern city of Changwon?
Ara - (安羅) - Possibly the area of modern “Haman” district?
Tara - (多羅) - Maybe the area of modern “Hapcheon” district?
Thaksyun - (卓淳) - We talked about Thaksyun, above.
Kara - (加羅) - This seems odd, especially with “South Kara”. It does seem that some of the states used “Kara” as part of their name, such as “Taekara”, or “Great Kara”, so this may be one of those.

Kohyechin (古爰津) and Chimmitanye (忱弥多礼・枕彌多禮?) - So I’ll be honest, I have no idea where these are, but the assumption is that they were in the southern tip of the region of the Mahan confederacy. Whether or not these were the actual last Mahan states to be conquered by Baekje is still a question, but they do seem to have been added to Baekje’s territory. Kohyechin is mentioned as being west of the conquests in Kara and then Chimmitanye is noted as being the “Southern” barbarians (and no, not those Southern Barbarians). The characters for Chimmitanye seem to vary depending on your source. I’ve tried to use the ones I’ve found.

Piri (比利), Phichung (辟中), Phomiki (布弥支), and Panko (半古) - These are even more obscure. I’ve seen some that seem to claim they are part of Kara but is suspect they would have been over in the region of Mahan, as they are said to have submitted to King Chogo on his journey to meet up with the rest of the army in the south.

The Village of Winiu - (意流村) - This seems to be a village somewhere in Baekje territory.

Mt. Phiki (辟支山) and Mt. Kosya (古沙山) - Likely mountains in Baekje, possibly of some importance to 4th century Baekje. I have no idea why they would give proclamations on one mountain and then another, but mountains would certainly be memorable reference points.

Tasya Castle (多沙城) - Again, we aren’t sure just where this might be. “Tasya” or “Tasha” castle would be one reading.

People

There are a lot of names in this episode, and I’m not referencing all of them here, but some of the more major players:

Okinaga Tarashi Hime no Mikoto (氣長足姫尊) - She doesn’t have much of a role here, other than the occasional pronouncement and ruling.

Takechi no Sukune (武内宿祢) - The extremely long-lived Prime Minister, who was extremely involved in the government, including planning the eventual campaign against Silla and others.

King Chogo (肖古・近肖古) (r. 346–375) - More popularly known as Geunchogo (the “recent” Chogo) to differentiate him from an early ruler of the same name in the Baekje annals. Historical records for Baekje were first officially kept during his reign, and he both consolidated the power of the King and expanded Baekje’s territory to its greatest extent.

Crown Prince Gusu (貴須・仇首・近仇首) (r. 375–384) - The Crown Prince of Baekje, who would follow his father’s rule, he likewise is known with the prefix “Geun-” to distinguish him from an earlier (probably fictional) ruler of the same name. He was something of a warrior. After the campaigns with Yamato, Prince Gusu led the Baekje forces against Goguryeo and took the fortress of Pyongyang, killing King Gogugwon of Goguryeo in the process.

Kutyeo (久氐), Michyunyu (彌州流), and Moko (莫古) - The three envoys from Baekje. Kutyeo seems to have been the lead envoy, as he is often the only one mentioned later in the account.

Shima no Sukune (斯摩宿禰) - “Sukune” is, of course, indication of his high rank in the court. He was clearly an ambassador of some kind, and seems to have been in charge of the mission that opened relations with Baekje, but like a good manager he mainly seems to have sent his subordinates to perform the actual duties.

Nihaya (爾波移) - Yamato’s initial representative to the Baekje court. Apparently a subordinate to Shima no Sukune. We don’t have much more information on him.

Kwako (過古) - A man from Thaksyun who accompanied Nihaya on his trip to Baekje. In all likelihood, he would have acted as a translator, as it is quite likely that none of the Yamato delegation had experience with the language of Baekje, but Thaksyun, situated as it was on the continent, likely had experience with their language OR knew that Baekje understood the Thaksyun language. Either way, he likely acted as interpreter and go-between.

Go Heung / Gao Xing (高興) - Often listed as a man of Baekje, but he was likely of Han ancestry. He is said to have written the first history and annals of Baekje, but his work is no longer extant. Nonetheless, it is assumed that later histories built off of his original work.

Chikuma Nagahiko / Shimana Nagahiko (千熊長彦・職麻那那加比跪) - Here we have the name from the Japanese records and the name that (at least according to the Nihon Shoki) is in the Baekje records of the time. The Japanese name uses kun’yomi reading of the characters, while the Baekje account has a name that is written phonetically. It is likely that the Baekje record didn’t capture the name exactly, a particular problem with attempting to transcribe names from other languages. Chikuma Nagahiko was the main envoy sent to investigate matters on the peninsula and who worked directly with King Chogo on the details of the Yamato-Baekje alliance.

Areda Wake (荒田別) and Kaga Wake (鹿我別) - The two Yamato generals who led the Yamato forces during the Baekje-Wa campaign on the peninsula. Typically, when multiple people are given, it seems that the first person is treated as the de facto leader of the group, and future references will often only name them.

Mongna Geuncha (木羅斤資) and Syasya Nokwe (沙沙奴跪) - The Baekje generals who participated, leading some of Baekje’s best troops, at least according to our sources.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 42: The Seven-Branched Sword.
Less than 10 kilometers north of the ancient capital at the foot of Mt. Miwa lies the ancient shrine of the Mononobe Family. It is said to have been established during the time of Mimaki Iribiko, and it is said to house important artifacts such as the ten treasures said to have been brought over by the Silla prince-turned-kami Ame no Hiboko, whom we talked about back in Episode 30.
Since its founding, this shrine has been known for the swords that were donated to it—unsurprising given the Mononobe Family’s traditional role in the Yamato court overseeing military affairs. Even the kami worshipped at the main shrine is Futsu no Mitama—literally the spirit of tachikaze, the spirit of the sound of a sword cutting through the air. Not only were a ton of swords made by princes early in its history, but it is said to have even contained the sword that Susanowo had used to subdue the famous Yamata no Orochi, the giant 8-headed serpent of Izumo. That was the same serpent who had another sword in its tail, the sword known as Murakumo, aka Kusanagi no Tsurugi.
But none of these swords are what holds our interest this episode. Instead, it is an old iron sword—though sword only in the barest form, and definitely not function, as it has six protrusions, like mini-swords, three on each side, alternating left and right, all pointed forward, making the end the seventh sword, or branch. It is known as Shichi-shi-tou, or possibly Nanatsusaya no Tachi—the seven branched sword—and it is an important, if controversial and somewhat enigmatic—witness to history.
Most important to our purposes is an inscription on the sword that says it was made by the Sovereign of Baekje for the Sovereign of Wa in the year 369.
Which leaves us with a question: What was going on between Baekje and Yamato in 369?
As far as our narrative goes, we are probably around the early 360s. As you may recall, in the last few episodes, we saw Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jingu, take control after the death of her husband, the 14th sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko. She completed the subjugation of the Kumaso and then took her forces and invaded Silla—and all while she was pregnant. Returning to the archipelago, she gave birth to a son: Homuda Wake. The kami who had sent her to Silla had said this son would inherit everything, but not everyone felt that way. And so, after the fighting in Kyushu and the peninsula Tarashi Hime and her troops had to fight their way back to Yamato.
Through it all, Tarashi Hime was accompanied by her Oho-omi, or Prime Minister, the long-lived Takechi no Sukune.
Of course, up to this point, it is difficult to tell fact from fiction. The dates are all messed up, and the archaeological evidence doesn’t give us enough to build a full picture. We do know that in the 4th century there seems to have been a decline in the Miwa polity until a new power center emerged to the West, in Kawachi. In fact, while the traditional location of Tarashi Hime’s palace is in the Nara basin, along with her supposed mausoleum, the palace and mausoleum attributed to her son, Homuda Wake, as well as her husband, the previous sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, are both in the area of modern Ohosaka, in the area that used to be known as the country of Kawachi, rather than the area of Yamato proper.
Regardless of where the court may have been physically located, precisely, with the issue of succession finally behind them, the court was ready to reengage with the rest of the world—and in this case with the peninsula. This is where there is definitely some potential disagreement between the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, since the Nihon Shoki, which seems to be more directly drawing from dated accounts in Baekje records, puts this next piece in the reign of Tarashi Hime, while the Kojiki would seem to claim that it was happening during her son Homuda Wake’s reign. This is further confused by the fact that one could technically claim all of this as Homuda Wake’s reign anyway, if Tarashi Hime is simply the regent until he reaches his age of majority, meaning that it is entirely possible that both records are correct, just in different ways. That said, I’m sticking largely with the account in the Nihon Shoki, but really it is more about what is happening between Yamato and the Peninsula, so let’s not get too wrapped up in the players, per se.
Whatever the exact circumstances, it seems that Yamato was not satisfied with just raiding the peninsula, as lucrative a business as that may have been, but they decided to send envoys to open up formal diplomatic channels with the peninsula. It is possible that this had been done previously, but the records are not extremely detailed, and it is difficult to confirm dates. If they did establish early ties, it was likely with the region of Kara or Gaya, which seems to have been closely tied to the islands through trade and material culture at the very least. Kara was still more of a confederation of states, though, and not so much a kingdom in terms of how one might describe the later Silla or Baekje states. And so the ties between Kara and Yamato were probably less binding and I expect they were limited. Now, those connections were about to expand, and the Yamato Court wouldn’t just be reaching out to others, but it looked like others were reaching out to them as well.
Based on our corrected dating, it looks like in about the year 364, it would seem that the King of Baekje was seeking contact with the Wa on the archipelago. He is said to have sent three envoys, named Kutyeo, Michyunyu, and Moko to the state of Thak-sun to try to find a way across the straits to the islands and the nation of formidable pirates that lived there. However, it seems that the King of Thak-sun, which we assume was probably along the southeastern shores of the peninsula, was not familiar with the way across the sea. Disappointed, but undeterred, the envoys headed back to Baekje, where they were going to start a new project to build ships that could make the journey and seek out the people across the water.
It was nearly two years after they had departed that an ambassador from Yamato, Shima no Sukune, arrived in Thaksyun himself, and he was told about Baekje’s earlier request for an audience. Shima no Sukune seems to have stayed at the Thaksyun court, but he sent one of his companions, a fellow by the name of Nihaya, as well as a Thaksyun man, named something like Kwako, as envoys to the King of Baekje.
Now the Samguk Sagi is strangely silent on this embassy, but that may be because it has a gaping hole between the years of 347 and 366. What we know of this period is that it was during the reign of one of Baekje’s greatest kings, known as Chogo or, more commonly today, Geun-Chogo, or the Later Chogo, to differentiate him from a likely fictitious 3rd century namesake. Now Chogo is significant not only for the actions that he took as king, but he is also the first king in the Baekje Annals for whom it is said there were actual written records, as the court began keeping track of things about this time. Writing had, of course, been available in the peninsula, but it was in Chogo’s court that they began to really chronicle the important events and keep track of them from year to year.
In fact, Samguk Sagi gives us an actual individual in the reign of Chogo who was said to have kept this record. His name in Korean would be Go Heung, though he may have been an ethnic Han official named Gao Xing. With the destruction of the Commanderies, the former commandery staff would have had the choice to either return back to the mainland of China, or to stay on the peninsula and look for new ways to ply their particular trade. Of course, being versed in the bureaucratic ways of the Chinese courts, they would have had skills of interest to growing states like Baekje. It is quite likely that Gao Xing, then, was not the only bureaucrat to be given a position.
But of course, this means that record-keeping was still quite new, which could explain why none of this is mentioned in the Samguk Sagi. It could be that it was all just too recent a development, or that even if records were written down, they didn’t have a good way to keep and store them, and so by the time of the Samguk Sagi they may have been no longer extant. There is also the possibility that these events were not considered significant enough to record—or at least not significant enough to record in later records, as both the Samguk Sagi and the Nihon Shoki are giving us only an abridged version of things, picking and choosing the historical events that the chroniclers found to be of interest, and often filling with tales from other records where they could.
It is also possible that much of this was made up later to fit the facts—at least the facts as known in Yamato. Still, why would they bring up Thaksyun and this elaborate method of getting in contact with Baekje if there wasn’t something there? I suspect that there is at least a kernel of truth to all of this.
Speaking of which, I hate to tell you this but we aren’t quite sure where this middleman state of Thak-syun is. The best we can figure is that it was probably a coastal state, probably in the region of the Kara states—perhaps even a peninsular Wa state, which could explain both their connection with the archipelago and why Baekje would have made an assumption that they might know how to get to Yamato.
So what exactly could King Chogo want with Yamato, anyway? What reason could he have for reaching out? Well, as you may recall, Baekje was still expanding. Since at least the fall of the Commanderies, if not earlier, they had been taking over the territory of the Mahan states, and it seems that around this time they were eyeing the few states left in the southernmost tip of the Korean peninsula. In addition, there was a threat in the north in the form of Baekje’s sister kingdom of Goguryeo. At the same time, they had conflicts with the rising power of Silla, whom the Wa themselves were apparently antagonizing a well. It would have made perfect sense for Baekje, beset from all sides, to court these coastal raiders to help them against their enemies. In return, Yamato would receive recognition from a continental power, providing legitimacy. Given what we’ve seen so far, it appears as though Yamato’s grip on power had slipped earlier in the century, and if Tarashi Hime and her son were to reestablish some form of control, the prestige that would come with such a relationship may have been significant.
Of course, the Japanese frame all of this as the Kingdom of Baekje paying tribute. Indeed, they claim that they offered bolts of fabric, a horn-bow and arrows, and, perhaps most significantly, 40 bars of iron. These were all bestowed upon the Yamato envoy, Nihaya, with promises of more. Heck, the King of Baekje even showed him his treasure house, which Nihaya took to mean he was offering it in tribute, though I suspect it was more likely being shown off as a sign of Baekje’s wealth and a potential for future profit if Yamato would join them.
This was enough for Nihaya. He apparently provided instructions on how to get to Yamato, and then he headed back to Thak-syun, where he met back up with Shima no Sukune and relayed everything that he had heard and seen, and Shima no Sukune got back in his boats and headed back to Yamato to relay the request to the court.
Sure enough, in the following year, 367, the three Baekje envoys, Kutyeo, Michyunyu, and Moko, sailed off to Yamato, but they ran into a bit of snag. It seems that they were waylaid by men of Silla, who captured the envoys. They would have just killed them and taken the tribute, but Kutyeo thought quickly and pronounced a curse that made them hesitate. The Silla bandits held them for three months, trying to determine what they would do. Finally, they seem to have hit on a plan—the men of Silla would add themselves to the embassy traveling to Yamato. Since Yamato was already preparing for the Baekje ambassadors, and the Silla men could just as easily claim that they wished to pay tribute as well. After all, the Yamato court seems to have believed that Silla would pay them regularly after their earlier raid, and it may even have been the case that these bandits were, themselves, actually an official party from the Silla court, already taking a form of payment-slash-bribe to Yamato in accordance with the agreement that Yamato would cease their raids. Either way, from what we know of the typical tribute trade, this could likely have been quite lucrative, as the court that was being visited was expected to provide even more in gifts than the tribute itself in order to demonstrate their own status, power, and wealth—at least if they wanted to look like the great continental powers they seemed to be modeling after.
Of course, for the men of Silla to get the most out of this, they would need to make sure that their tribute was worthy of a reciprocal gift from Yamato, and what they had with them seems to have been sub-par, at best. Fortunately, however, what they did have was the Baekje tribute, and so they decided to simply pass that off as their own, and since it would look suspicious if the Baekje men showed up with nothing at all, they left them the scraps and the bottom of the barrel.
Then they warned the Baekje ambassadors that if they said anything about this turn of events they would slaughter all of them.
And so it was that they showed up together at the Yamato Court. Immediately, Tarashi Hime suspected something was off. After the report by Shima no Sukune, the tribute that the Baekje envoys had seemed meager and wholly inappropriate to the status of the two nations. Meanwhile, the erstwhile Silla ambassadors seemed to have top quality goods. The Baekje ambassadors, heedless of their own safety, explained what was going on, but it seems it was just Baekje’s word against Silla’s. Someone would need to go to the peninsula and investigate and figure out who was telling the truth. Okinaga Tarashi Hime asked the kami about this, and they deferred to our good friend, Takechi no Sukune, to come up with a plan. After thinking about it for a bit, he appointed Chikuma Nagahiko.
And here the chronicles make a note that while the Japanese account says his name is Chikuma Nagahiko a no longer extant account from the old Baekje Annals that the Japanese chroniclers were using claimed that his name was Shimana Nagahiko.
And so Chikuma Nagahiko went to the continent, presumably with a goon squad in tow. They don’t quite tell us just how he investigated, and as much as I’d like to think he was the Poirot of his time, utilizing “zee leetle grey cells”, I suspect that he just made a trip up to Baekje and confirmed with them what they were sending for tribute, since Baekje and Yamato had diplomatic ties. I mean, technically Yamato may have had ties with Silla, but I doubt they were very friendly. Sure, Silla may have paid them off years ago, but that was hardly an amicable relationship.
Sure enough, Chikuma Nagahiko confirmed the Baekje envoys’ story, and Nagahiko began to work to call Silla to account, staying in Baekje to organize the eventual military assault. This culminated in the following year, in 369—the same year as found on the that strange seven-branched sword—when the campaign was to commence. Yamato sent Areda Wake and Kaga Wake as generals, and they brought Kutyeo, the lead Baekje envoy, on their way to their peninsular ally, Thak-syun, where they gathered their forces to invade Silla. However, someone noted that the forces were short a few troops. After all, this wasn’t just some raid—pop up the river and you’re done. Yamato had grander plans than that. And so they sent a man to Baekje to ask for reinforcements. Sure enough, King Chogo sent two Baekje generals, Mongna Keuncha and Syasya Nokwe, to take command of some of his best troops.
Together, the Baekje and Yamato troops invaded Silla, and then continued their attack on several surrounding states of Kara, named in the Chronicles as Pichapun, South Kara, Tokkuk, Ara, Tara, Thak-syun, and Kara. They then turned westward to Kohyechin and destroyed the people of Chimmitanye, granting that land to King Chogo and Baekje. King Chogo and his son, King Kusu, made their way down with troops, and four other settlements—those of Piri, Phichung, Phomiki, and Panko, all surrendered without a fight.
Finally, the main force and the extra troops under the royal banner of Baekje met up together in the village of Winiu. Mongna Geuncha and Areda Wake came before King Chogo, who congratulated them on a job well done and dismissed them, essentially ending hostilities. The generals could return home to their respective countries.
Chikuma Nagahiko, who had apparently spent the war at the Baekje court as Yamato’s envoy to King Chogo remained there in the country after the armies had left. Together, he went with the king to the top of Mt. Phiki and Mt. Kosya, where together they could make solemn declarations to one another. Here, King Chogo found a large rock on which to sit, since grass or wood might be burned or washed away. There he offered unending friendship to Yamato, and said that they could consider Baekje as their “Western Frontier Province” and they would regularly exchange tribute. And with that, the Baekje and Yamato alliance was formed.
So let’s talk about some of this. Obviously the account I’ve given here is what we have coming out of the Japanese Chronicles, and those may have a bias to them. As noted earlier, the Samguk Sagi is largely silent on this whole affair: the Baekje annals of the Samguk Sagi have a void until 366, when there is a record that Baekje sent envoys to a Silla on what they list as a “courtesy visit”, while there is a record in Silla of an attack by the “Wa” two years earlier, in 364. And then, in 368 CE, we see a record that Baekje supposedly sent two horses to Silla as either tribute or a gift of some kind—only a year before the supposed campaign. Of course, none of this is exactly contradictory, though it may speak to the scope of the campaign, which I suspect was much grander in the minds of Yamato, whereas on the peninsula they may not have thought as much of it. Also, once again, the Samguk Sagi has a decidedly pro-Silla slant to its narrative. The fact that the Japanese chroniclers are quoting what they call the “Baekje Annals”—court records and histories of Baekje that for some reason were not included in later Korean compilations—confuses this even more.
And then there is the confusion about names throughout the Japanese account. Putting aside the fact that one of the states they subdued, Thak-syun, is the same state that was the middleman early on, and who seemed to be on friendly terms with Yamato, previously in the narrative, many of these names don’t seem to exist anywhere else, but they don’t seem unreasonable. Remember, much of the peninsula was made up of smaller states, which may or may not have been part of larger confederations. It is little wonder that many places may have come and gone in the chaotic period during the formation of the three kingdoms—that is, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—without ever making it into the historical record. And then most of the names were deliberately changed in later centuries. This has been particularly frustrating for linguists, erasing much of the evidence of the original languages and linguistic evolution of the peninsula, which are most often captured in the names of ancient places.
Overall, while the details may be embellished, it does seem that Yamato and Baekje worked together. Whether or not they attacked Silla is perhaps a question, but it seems perfectly reasonable that they may have attacked some of the states in the south of the peninsula—including in the southernmost tip—perhaps the last vestiges of the Mahan confederacy. While the Samguk Sagi claims that all of Mahan had been subsumed into Baekje well before this point, that is likely more propaganda than fact, part of the attempt to stretch events of the last 80 years back over several centuries.
One more thing to bring up here is the supposed lasting presence of Japan on the peninsula. It is possible that some of the states in the region—particularly those with populations of peninsular Japonic speaking Wa people—aligned themselves with the archipelago. Perhaps this is what is meant when they claim to have subdued places like Thaksyun. It is possible, and I want to stress here that we are talking possibility and not verified fact, that parts of the Korean peninsula at this point came under Yamato hegemony, at least in name. As we’ve seen on the archipelago itself, it is hard to say that there was any kind of firm control of the islands, so why would the there be anything more secure on the peninsula? And yet, by placing themselves into the Yamato sphere the peninsular regions may have accomplished several things. For one, they would theoretically be safe from the piratical raids of Japanese boats. In addition, they would be able to play the part of intermediary—much as Thak-syun seems to have done—between the peninsula and the islands. Finally, if they were Japonic-speaking peoples, there may have simply been a greater kinship felt with the islands, especially as the Koguryoic speaking people were pushing down from the north and expanding their influence in the peninsula.
What I don’t see is some kind of colony of Yamato on the peninsula. I’m not seeing anything resembling direct control of people or territory. Just so we’re clear.
So whether or not there really was some shenanigans with tribute payments or gifts or anything like that, there likely was some kind of alliance between Baekje and Yamato, and we’ll see more evidence as the Chronicles go on—so this is as good a place as any to assume that it started. More likely than not, Baekje was seeking Yamato’s help with its interests on the peninsula. Later Japanese chroniclers would no doubt play this up, but the idea that Yamato had some form of military influence and may have even helped Baekje finish their consolidation of the Mahan territories is not all that far-fetched. There are certainly elements that sound familiar to stories from the archipelago—for example, that whole thing about sitting on a rock to make their statements? I can’t help but think of all the rocks scattered throughout Japan that are little more than “Naninani-Tennou sat here”, which seems somewhat odd, but would make more sense if these were traditional places to make agreements and similar pronouncements. Unfortunately, this is just an idea at the moment—I have nothing in particular to back it up besides a few “traditional” sites that you can find on Google Maps and this reference, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled as we continue to read through the accounts.
But for now, let’s not dwell too much on the hypothetical rabbit hole, but rather take a look at something a bit more concrete—like that sword. So where is it? We saw the events of 369, which the sword seems to commemorate, but where did the sword come from? Well, let’s dig a little bit more into the narrative.
So Chikuma Nagahiko had stayed back for a time in Baekje while the troops sailed off. They arrived back in Yamato in the 2nd month of 370. Only three months later, Chikuma Nagahiko came back—apparently they had finished up any last remaining details, and possibly Yamato had sent a permanent ambassador. Nagahiko was accompanied on his return voyage by a familiar face: Kutyeo, the lead ambassador from Baekje.
Now the sovereign, Okinaga Tarashi Hime, seems to have been a bit perplexed by this, at first. After all, hadn’t they just finished the task of subduing the peninsula and giving the Western countries, as Yamato called them, to Baekje? What business could Baekje have with Yamato so soon after?
But Kutyeo was chosen as an ambassador for a reason, and he charmed the sovereign, flattering her with promises that Baekje would return every year for the next 10,000 years to attend the Yamato court—which would include the promise of gifts and trade, which wasn’t too bad a deal for Yamato, so Okinaga Tarashi Hime gave Baekje the castle of Tasya for future missions.
By the way, when we say “Castle” I expect that many of you know already that we aren’t talking about tall stone buildings with towers, and keeps, nor even the later Japanese castles, with their tiled rooves and white exteriors. It may be that this was simply a walled enclosure of some kind—perhaps built on a mountain, though not necessarily. Unfortunately, I’m not even sure we know where this was—it may have been on the peninsula or the archipelago, and may have been a dedicated port for the missions, much like the later Kourokan, an official government guesthouse set up in the area of modern Fukuoka City for envoys from the continent in the late 7th century and used through at least the 11th century. This brings up a whole set of interesting questions for those who care about the administrative aspects of history: Did the Yamato court set up warehouses for the goods? Would they have had administrators to help organize the missions as they arrived? Messengers to alert the court—after all you don’t want to be surprised. All of these kind of apparatuses would have provided the kind of infrastructure needed to host embassies, which could be a natural evolution if the court was going to be more involved in what was going on over on the continent.
Indeed, Kutyeo would return the following year, in 371, with gifts, and Tarashi Hime sent both Chikuma Nagahiko and her own prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, on a return mission back to Baekje.
The following year, 372, Kutyeo returned, and this time he had, in and among the tribute being brought from Baekje two items of particular interest to us. One was a “Seven Children Mirror” (Nanatsu-ko-kagami) and the other, you may have already guessed, was a Seven Branched Sword. If you think that these seem like the kinds of Kingly gifts that were being given in the archipelago, you’re right, except that you may notice that the auspicious number here seems to be seven, rather than eight, and the specific shape of this sword very much resembles peninsular motifs.
This has been pretty phenomenal. I talked a bit about the sword at the start of the episode, but let’s go into a bit more depth. It is an iron sword, and one side, it includes the date, the 4th year of Taihe, a Chinese year name that equates to 369 CE. On the other side is another inscription that appears to state that it was given by the King and Crown Prince of Baekje to the King, or ruler, of Wa, aka Yamato.
Of course, as with so many of these things, that is not the only reading of this particular phrase. Some point to language that would indicate that the so-called “King of Wa” was in a subordinate position to the King of Baekje, and certainly there may have been some of that from Baekje’s perspective, just as the Japanese Chronicles make Yamato out to be the superior member of the partnership.
Just to add to the controversy, the inscription wasn’t even known to exist until 1870, when it was noticed underneath the rust that had accumulated over the centuries. It was cleaned up and the characters were filled in with gold—something that also was done to the mei, or signature, on various other swords in the Edo period. Of course, that almost always leads to someone challenging the actual characters and whether or not they were altered in the conservation efforts.
On top of just the reading, there is the dating. 369 CE seems the accepted date in the inscription, but it looks like it may have been made by smiths over in the territory ruled by the Eastern Jin court, who by this time had moved to their southern capital to the area of modern Nanjing. Some have suggested that the first inscription was already there when it was received by Baekje, who then added their own inscription afterwards. I that is the case, then the date may be irrelevant to whatever the circumstances were for handing over the sword.
Of course, another explanation could be that a custom tribute sword like this took time. 369 may have been the year it was commissioned, and it may have taken three years to have it made, transported back to Baekje, and then taken to Yamato. Indeed, we do know that in the first month of 372, a Baekje embassy arrived at the Eastern Jin court, and a return mission to Baekje by the Eastern Jin was sent only five months later. Perhaps this is when the sword was acquired and sent to Yamato.
Regardless of the exact details, there definitely seems to be a clear friendship between Baekje and Yamato, and this alliance would prove useful well into the future.
The rest of the account in the Nihon Shoki seems a bit off. There is an account about Katsuraki Sotsuhiko out of a Baekje annal that seems to be almost a duplicate of what we see in the reign of Homuda Wake, but other than that, the main highlights seem to be the death of King Chogo in 375, the death of his son, King Kusu, in 384, and then the death of King Kusu’s son, King Chimnyu, only a year later, allowing his brother, Chinsa to take the throne in Baekje. A year after that, they claim Tarashi Hime finally passed on herself—a year that happens to correspond with the record of the death of Himiko, so I have a hard time taking it all at face value, rather than one more convenient fiction to make all the dates line up nicely.
Add to this the issue that the Kojiki, which really doesn’t have any dates, equates King Chogo’s time on the throne with the reign of Homuda Wake. For his part, Homuda Wake’s reign seems to continue until 430, but again, this could be overlap caused by the need to somehow get past about 120 years in the narrative.
And that brings me back around to the biggest problem we have as we make a transition from the legendary to historical periods—while we have some confidence that certain events likely happened, it is unclear that they are situated in the appropriate reign. For example, I would not be at all surprised if Homuda Wake’s reign and Tarashi Hime’s reign overlapped—we are still in an era where ruling pairs would not be entirely out of the question. It doesn’t help that most of the continental sources simply discuss the “Wa” as doing something, or the “King of Wa”, without providing any kind of name. I’ll continue to do my best to piece this all together, and we’ll pick our way through, but you should be aware that there are other interpretations of what was going on in this period.
And who knows? Maybe some new evidence will pop up in an excavation of a previously undisturbed kofun that will shed more light on the subject. For now we will continue to chip away at what we can see, realizing that there is still a fair amount of conjecture.
But regardless of whose reign this all occurred in, I think there is evidence that Yamato and Baekje did open relations during the reign of King Chogo. King Chogo would go on to push into Goguryeo’s territory, expanding Baekje to its further extent throughout that nation’s history.
And that’s what we’ll dive into next episode—the reign of Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou. We’ll take a similar approach to Tarashi Hime and try to get a handle on just where we are, temporally. There are actually a fair number of stories about continued interactions both with the peninsula and on the archipelago, especially as more and more people arrive from Baekje and elsewhere for a wide variety of reasons.
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

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.
2013; Vovin, Alexander (2013). “From Koguryo to T’amna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean”, Korean Linguistics 15:2, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
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.
Bentley, John R. (2008). “The Search for the Language of Yamatai”. Japanese Language and Literature (42-1). 1-43. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/30198053
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
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
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
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 41: Trouble on the Homefront

May 16, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Jingū and Takechi no Sukune, armored up for battle. Of course, in this Edo period depiction, they are anachronistically in armor that is many centuries out of date, but it still depicts them as warriors.

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This episode we take a look at what happened after Tarashi Hime returned from Korea, and the story of how she secured the throne for her infant son. This episode does have a lot of names in it, admittedly, so we’ll try to go through the who’s who for you.

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

We should be well acquainted with our main protagonist by this point. Her father is said to have been Okinaga no Sukune, grandson of Hiko Imasu, who was a half-brother to the tenth sovereign and August Founder, Mimaki Iribiko. Both Hiko Imasu and Mimaki Iribiko (Sujin Tennō) claimed descent from Waka Yamato Neko Hiko Oho Hihi, aka (Kaika Tennō). Meanwhile, on her mother’s side she claimed descent through Kadzuraki no Takanuka Hime, a descendant of the Tajima line from Ame no Hiboko. Ame no Hiboko is said to have been a Silla prince who came over back around the time of Mimaki Iribiko, and the Kojiki specifically waits until they are telling the story of Homuda Wake, Tarashi Hime’s son, before they tell his story, which would seem to indicate that it was really more about the connections with his story then about Ame no Hiboko himself. Below, I’ve tried to give you a rough breakdown of the generations, with the paternal line on top and the maternal line down below:

LINEAGE OF Okinaga Tarashi Hime:
- Yamato Neko Hiko Oho Hihi + Oke tsu Hime
  - Hiko Imasu + Woke tsu Hime
    - Yamashiro no Oho Tsutsuki no Mawaka + Tanba no Ajisawa Bime
      - Kanime Ikazuchi + Takaki Hime
        Okinaga no Sukune
        Okinaga Tarashi Hime
        Kadzuraki no Takanuka Hime
      - Tajima Hitaka + Yuradomi
    - Tajima Hinaraki
  - Tajima Hine
- Tajima Morosuke
Ame no Hiboko + Maetsumi

Homuda Wake

Homuda Wake would eventually be the next sovereign. His birth is considered rather miraculous, as he was conceived before his father, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, died, but he wasn’t born until after Okinaga Tarashi Hime returned from her campaign in Korea. By the count in the Nihon Shoki that would seem to be three years, which is highly unlikely. A quick Internet search turns up the pregnancy of Beulah Hunter, which went 375 days, while in 2016 a woman claimed to be pregnant for 17 months, though it seems that it could not be fully verified and some doctors had their doubts. So it is possible that Homuda Wake was abnormally long in the womb, and even that he was born after Tarashi Hime went to Silla and back, but it likely wasn’t a full thirty six months.

Quite notably, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko doesn’t seem to have ever known his son. He passed away before the kami were able to break the news to Tarashi Hime that she was pregnant. This means that he was never officially appointed as the Crown Prince and heir to the throne—in fact, all we really have is the vision of the kami that said he would be the ruler.

Takechi no Sukune

AKA Take-Uchi no Sukune, Takeshi-Uchi no Sukune, Take-no-Uchi no Sukune, and Uchi no Ason. We’ve talked about him before, of course. The “Take” in his name would seem to be the same as in Yamato Takeru—that is, “Brave”—which seems appropriate given his involvement . In the latter name, used by Kuma no Kori in his poem, Takechi no Sukune is given the title of Asomi, or Ason. This is a title that has roots in the Korean courts, and was likely imported at a later time, but its use here, as we are seeing more and more connection with the peninsula, is interesting, to say the least.

Ō Naka tsu Hime

Another wife of Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, the 14th sovereign (aka Chūai Tennō). She was the mother of the princes Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma. Her father was Hikobito no Ohine (aka Hiko Hito no Ohoye), and his parents were the 12th sovereign, Oho Tarashi Hiko and Inabi no Waka Iratsume. So she had essentially married her cousin. Several things that strike me about her and this lineage. First, she seems firmly placed in the context of the Tarashi dynasty. On top of this, her name, along with that of her husband, seems to form a Hiko Hime pair. The explanation of “Naka” is given that Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko was the middle of three brothers. Is that the same story for his wife? Or was there some place called Naka? It is unclear. But it bolsters an idea that perhaps Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma had a more legitimate claim than the Chronicles make it out to seem.

Prince Kakosaka Hiko

AKA Kagosaka. His name looks suspiciously like a title—the Lord/Prince of Kako Hill. According to the Chronicles, he is said to have been the eldest son of the 14th sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko and Oho Naka tsu Hime.

Prince Oshikuma

The younger brother of Kakosaka Hiko. Perhaps. That’s what the Chronicles say, at least. I only wonder about this because of the name element “kuma”. Typically assumed to be “bear” there certainly are a lot of “kuma” names that show up in the Chronicles for these stories. Most notably, there was the campaign against the Kumaso—probably the Kuma and So. And then we have people in Kyushu like Kumawani and Kumawashi. Then there is Oshikuma, and on the other side there is Take Furukuma. There is even a Kuma no Kori. What it actually means I don’t know that I could say, but the prevalence of this name element certainly seems odd, and with the seeming abandonment of the Miwa area, I wonder if it indicates other groups that were coming to power, bringing new names and traditions with them. Or it could just be that the name element “kuma” became popular around this time. Who knows?

Kurami Wake and Isachi no Sukune

These are the generals who came with the soldiers from the east. We don’t have a lot of information about them, but they seem to have been major players. “Wake” indicates a title—the Chronicles claim it means that they are a royal prince that was separated (“wake”) from the royal lineage. There is also evidence that it may have just been a noble title at the time, so this could just be something like the Lord of Kurami. His partner in all of this, Isachi no Sukune, carries the title of Sukune, just like the once and future prime minister, Takechi no Sukune. Of course, we know that Sukune is a high ranking title in the court—look at Takechi no Sukune. So these are individuals of some status, lending credence to the idea that Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma had some powerful backers.

Take Furukuma

Tarashi Hime’s main general during the conflict. Sometimes his role is usurped in the Chronicles by Takechi no Sukune, but that may just be a case of Takechi being a more memorable figure in general. This is one problem with things like oral history, where it is easy for stories to accrue to the more famous individual, while others become forgotten. He is said to have been an ancestor of the Wani no Omi, a rather powerful family whom we’ve already seen pop up here and there throughout the stories.

Kuma no Kori

As far as we can tell, this was just a soldier in Oshikuma’s forces who composed a song that mocked Takechi no Sukune, or, as the song calls him, Uchi no Ason. Other than showing the importance of verse to the early Japanese, we also get a glimpse at a possible seperate mode of address for Takechi no Sukune. I would also note that hwere we have one more person with the name “kuma”

Izasa Wake no Ōkami

THis is the name given for the god of Kehi that wants to exchange names with the young prince Homuda Wake. In the end he is also known as Mike tsu Ōkami, because of the way he helped out with the offering for the ritual.

Tarashi Hime's Campaign:

Map of the likely route of the campaign, based on the sources, as well as the location of Kehi, also mentioned in this episode. Click to enlarge. Original map by Ash_Crow, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Modified by author.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is Episode 41: Trouble On the Home Front
Now, before we get started, just a quick shout-out to Steve-O for donating to support the show. If you’d like to join him and just help us keep this thing going, we always appreciate any donations at kofi.com/sengokudaimyo. That’s ko(dash)fi.com/sengokudaimyo.
So, from the last episode, we’ve been talking about Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jinguu, and her supposedly successful assault on the Korean peninsula. Of course, as we covered, and despite what the Chronicles would have us believe, this likely wasn’t the first time that warriors from the archipelago had gathered in boats and made the journey across the straits. In fact, if anything, Jinguu’s invasion may have been a story that encompassed numerous different assaults and generalized them into a single campaign. And it really is unlikely that the outcome of the raid was that anyone on the peninsula felt subjugated to Yamato, though there certainly may have been some payments made to hopefully prevent future raids.
“Hey Silla—those are some nice villages you have there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to them.”
Either way, though, that is all only the beginning of Okinaga Tarashi Hime’s story in the Chronicles, and though they don’t exactly count her as a sovereign—the Nihon Shoki continues to refer to her by her title as wife of the sovereign and regent—one has to wonder at the fact that she gets to have her own book in the Chronicles. Not even Yamato Takeru can make that claim, and he was supposedly the one whose lineage would rule the archipelago.
I’ll drop a quick note here that the fact that she isn’t counted as a sovereign is not just something that we talk about today. Kitabatake Chikafusa, writing his own history in the 14th century, known as the Jinnou Shoutouki, gives Tarashi Hime her due and treats her with full honors, claiming she was actually the 15th sovereign, not just a regent. On top of that, there are many other records that accord her with titles, often anachronistic, that are otherwise only used for the other sovereigns of Japan. So even though the Nihon Shoki may not deign to give her the title, she certainly seems to have been a sovereign in all but name.
So there she was, a ruler with a powerful army and direct connections to the kami. Okinaga Tarashi Hime must have been at a high point. Her campaign against Silla had been successful, and she likely came back to the archipelago in quite a good mood. She probably would have been celebrating, if it weren’t for the fact that she had other things on her mind. For according to the Chronicles, no sooner had she gotten back to the island of Kyuushuu but she went into labor. The child she had been carrying finally was due. Before departing for the mainland she had performed a ritual involving a couple of white stones to put off the birth until she returned, and according to the stories, this must have been some medicine, because the Nihon Shoki claims she was gone for three years. Of course, this is still at a time when the Japanese weren’t exactly great at date-keeping, so it could easily be the case that three years was anything but. Still, they don’t seem to think anything of it—after all, she had done the ritual thing with the rocks, right? So all was good.
Now, though, she had successfully returned, and it was time for her to give birth. We aren’t given the details—did they have time to set up a parturition hut for her, or did it come on suddenly? All we know is that her birth was successful, and resulted in a healthy baby boy who would be known to posterity as Homuda Wake, aka—and this may be a bit of a spoiler—Oujin Tennou.
The birth of her son was likely great news for Tarashi Hime, but it also put her in a bind. After all, Homuda Wake was only a baby—just a newborn infant—and however legitimate his claim to his father’s throne, he was hardly the only one with such a claim. Tarashi Hime and her prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, both knew that their position was tenuous, even with their recent successes on the continent. It seems that Yamato wasn’t quite as unified as the Chronicles might have us believe.
Now, up to this point, the title of sovereign seems to have been passed down from one ruler to the next in a fairly orderly succession—or so we are led to believe. It may not have been the eldest child, and not even the child of the sovereign’s first wife, but it does seem to have largely just happened. But then again, was it really in the Chroniclers’ interest to try to challenge the legitimacy of the royal family? Wasn’t building an unbroken lineage back to Amaterasu Ohokami, the sun goddess herself, one of their key tasks?
And yet, despite all of that, there are hints throughout the stories that we’ve read that there were plenty of places where history may have taken a different turn—stories that may even cover up times when the lineage did break, only to be stitched back together through the efforts of some rather creative story tellers. Remember how Ninigi no Mikoto wasn’t the only Heavenly Descendant? There was also Nigi Hayahi no Mikoto, the ancestor of the Mononobe clan. Then, after Iware Biko had conquered Yamato, removing Nigi Hayahi’s descendants, his own chosen heir had to deal with a jealous older brother who wanted the throne. Then there was Prince Take Haniyasu and his wife, who apparently thought they should be in charge rather than his nephew Mimaki Iribiko. And of course, how can we forget that all of this was being compiled after Ohoama – aka Emperor Temmu - had usurped the throne of his own nephew in what would be known as the Jinshin no Ran. It wasn’t enough to just be named the heir, you had to be able to fight for it as well.
I think we can safely assume that Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune realized this fact. For one thing, while she may have been Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko’s partner in the campaign against the Kumaso, she was not his only consort, and there were adult princes running around, who were probably already helping to run things—whether they were off running their own provinces or were keeping things afloat back in Yamato or wherever the seat of government was. And while she had been off on the peninsula, they would have had time to consolidate their own power base. Of these potential rivals, two in particular looked like they were going to be a problem—these were the princes Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma.
Now, it is little wonder that Kakosaka Hiko and Oshikuma might have some reservations about serving under their younger half-brother. After all, they doubly descended from royalty. Not only was their father the fourteenth sovereign, Tarashi Nakatsu Hiko, their mother was Oho Nakatsu Hime, the daughter of Prince Hiko Hito no Ohine, who, himself, was the son of the Twelfth sovereign, Oho Tarashi Hiko and his wife, Waka Iratsume. They had the bona fides of their lineage, so why should they bow and scrape to some kid who hadn’t even been born when their dad kicked the bucket?
Truth be told, it is unclear how strong Homuda Wake’s claim to the throne was. Sure, they all had the same father, but let’s take a look at his mother, Okinaga Tarashi Hime. Sure, she’s a badass conquering hero who leads troops into battle and speaks with the gods, but how did her background stand up to her husband’s other wife, Oho Naka tsu Hime? Of course, everyone was trying to connect themselves back to the royal family so that, as I’ve noted before, the family tree was often more the family bamboo stalk. Heck, even Takechi no Sukune has a genealogical link back to the legendary eighth sovereign, Oho Yamato Neko Hiko Kunikuru no Mikoto, who was supposedly his grandfather—man that guy must really be old. But how did these two separate lineages compare when it came to deciding who should take the throne?
Well, we are told that Okinaga Tarashi Hime’s father was a man named Prince Okinaga no Sukune—who may or may not be the same person listed in the Fudoki who assisted Oho Tarashi Hiko when he was creep-stalking Oho Iratsume over in Harima Province. Prince Okinaga no Sukune was, in turn, a great-grandson of the legendary 9th sovereign Waka Yamato Neko Hiko-ohohihi, also known as Kaika Tennouō. Perhaps more importantly, she descended through his son, the prolific Prince Hiko Imasu. But it wasn’t just Tarashi Hime’s paternal lineage that is mentioned—the scribes also recorded her maternal lineage as well. Now all of this is somewhat scattered and obscured in what became these long lists of names, but it is still there if you want to pull it out, especially in the Kojiki. There they have her maternal line traced back through her mother, Kadzuraki no Takanuka Hime, herself a descendant of family from Tajima, all the way back to a man that we talked about many episodes back: Ame no Hiboko.
Two things stand out in this lineage. First, it is Tarashi Hime’s connection to the Kadzuraki family. We’ve previously mentioned that “Kadzuraki” may be the name of the envoy to Silla that the Korean annals record as Kalyako, and later there would be another Kadzuraki no Sotsuhiko who would be sent over to the continent, so let’s not forget about that little fact. But looming much larger than that is the presence of Ame no Hiboko, who is said to have been a prince from the Korean peninsula. Specifically he is said to have been a prince of Silla, who followed his wife to Japan, where she ended up at the site of Naniwa where he ended up at Tsuruga Bay, where he was worshipped as a kami at the shrine of Kehi. And Kehi, as you may recall, was the location that Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko had moved the court before heading off to the south, and it was also the location that Tarashi Hime herself had departed from on her way to Kyushu. It seems that Homuda Wake, then, makes claims not only to the Yamato royal lineage, but also to a line of Silla kings, though the connection is not exactly air tight, as we don’t really have anyone in the Korean chronicles that we can identify as Ame no Hiboko, who comes down to us with a decidedly Japanese sounding name.
Now, again, we aren’t sure how much truth there is in any of this—in fact, we are pretty certain that much of the lineages are constructed to try to make everything neat and tidy. But if so, why tie Tarashi Hime—and, by extension, her son—to a legendary Silla Prince?
Well, I suppose that in the first case, it could have just been a way to give her legitimacy for her actions on the peninsula. After all, if she was descended from Silla royalty it would bolster her claim to be the rightful ruler when subjugating Silla. There is also another thought, though, and that is that it tells a story of Silla—or at least continental—blood in the royal line. Some have taken this to mean that Homuda Wake and his mother were entirely from the Korean Peninsula, and that this next story is basically a fanciful retelling of the conquest of Japan by a Korean prince, who stayed and later founded a new line of sovereigns. I’m still not willing to go that far, but it is not out of the realm of possibility that Tarashi Hime and her son were not solely descended from the Wa people of the archipelago, but that they did have Korean ancestors on the continent, as well. In fact, this is almost to be expected given the Wa’s use of marriage politics.
And this is probably the time to discuss one other line that many bring up on this topic, Homuda Wake’s own name. Scholars much more versed in the study of ancient Japanese and Korean have made the case that “Homuda”, or perhaps “Pomuda”, is clearly a Korean name, and not Japanese. For my part, I don’t know about that.
One claim, in the Chronicles, is that Homuda is an old name for a Japanese style of wristguard, known as a tomo. These were bulky pads that were tied around an archer’s wrist to keep the bowstring from striking into the inside of the arm. It is said that the young Homuda was born with a growth of his arm, and hence the name. On the other hand, I don’t think there is any other evidence of such a word in ancient Japanese, and the Chronicles don’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to etymology.
I would note that there was a Homutsu Wake – or Pomutu Wake - as the son of Ikume Iribiko and Saho Hime. He was never Crown Prince, that we know of, but is it so far a jump from Homutsu to Homuda? As for the title “Wake”, that would seem to be just that, a title. Is it possible that Homuda is simply a locative—a place name? If so, is that place in the archipelago or somewhere on the peninsula?
Regardless of the name, there is a question if what we are seeing is more than just a fight between rival heirs to the throne, or if there is something more. Is there, woven in here, an allegory for something else: the rise of elites that were closely tied with the Korean peninsula?
Certainly the changes on the peninsula had created some uncertain times. Goguryeo’s destruction of the Han commanderies meant that there was no longer the threat of continental reprisals to help keep all of the peninsular states at peace, and Silla and Baekje were bringing the other states of their confederacies under their sway—by force if necessary. And though they were the states that would come out victorious, we shouldn’t assume that they were the only ones. Where would the victims, displaced by these conflicts, end up going?
In addition, though there is no direct evidence that I’m aware of, I have to wonder if the life of the Japanese raiders didn’t appeal to certain peninsular people as well. It is a story that plays out time and again throughout history—farmers abandoning their fields, especially in times of conflict and uncertainty, to join up with the same people that the so-called civilized cultures deem as ruthless barbarians. In Great Britain, it wasn’t uncommon for Anglo-Saxon farmers to join up with the Norse raiders, and on the borders of empire, there are stories of peasant farmers abandoning their livelihood to take up with the nomads of the steppes. And why wouldn’t they? As part of a roving band they had opportunities to acquire wealth, whereas on the farm they were little more than targets for others. Would it have been so surprising if some number of people from the peninsula threw in with these Vikings of northeast Asia?
And again, that puts this whole story in a different light. While there is no evidence that there was a sweeping conquest of the archipelago by a peninsular force, could this struggle be rooted in the idea of a new and changing elite—one made up of a blending of people from the archipelago and the peninsula? The jury is still out, but we do know that from at least this point on, there were certainly more and more people who would be coming to Yamato from the continent, with entire families claiming that their ancestors were actually ancient peninsular royalty.
But much of that is to come, so for now, let’s return to the story at hand: Homuda Wake was little more than an infant, and his mother Okinaga Tarashi Hime, knew that she was probably going to have a fight on her hand as she tried to head back to Yamato along the Seto Inland Sea route. Thinking ahead, she decided on a clever ploy.
First, she dressed one of the ships in the style of a funerary boat. Word seemed to have gotten out that the sovereign, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, had died, and so she made it seem as though they were bringing his body back to the Yamato heartland so that it could be buried. This ship would sail the direct route, through the Seto Inland Sea, while another ship, carrying her infant son and under the command of her trusted prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, would take the long way, traveling along the Pacific coast side of Shikoku. It would add time to the journey, and expose the ship to some of the dangers posed by being on the open sea, rather than the relatively calm waters of the inland sea route, but those were nothing compared to the dangers that were likely lurking and waiting for them along the interior waterways.
And we’ve talked about this before, but it bears mentioning again, I believe—the Seto Inland Sea may be more protected from the weather and vagaries of the open ocean, but the numerous bays and islands also make it the perfect place for pirates and other nefarious actors who may want a piece of whatever was coming down that channel. The entire waterway is only 34 miles wide at its widest point, and in some places the widest passage between islands is still less than a mile. Furthermore, the many islands and shallow waters can make for some unpredictable currents, if you aren’t familiar with them. It was the fastest way from Kyushu to central Honshu, but it had its share of dangers.
Case in point: The two brothers, Oshikuma and Kakasaka Hiko, the other royal princes. They had heard about the birth of their infant half-brother, and they were determined to resist. Together they raised an army, and they came up with a ploy to intercept the royal ship. Claiming to build their father’s mausoleum in Harima province, they set up a line of boats going back and forth from Awaji Island to Akashi, in Harima Province. There is only about 4 kilometers—roughly two and a half miles—between the island and the shore, and their soldiers were patrolling back and forth.
This army wasn’t just their own men. The two brothers were joined by others from the eastern lands—likely those of Azuma, that Yamato Takeru is said to have pacified. These were Kurami Wake and Isachi no Sukune, and they were quickly made generals. Clearly it wasn’t just the two princes who had a problem with Tarashi Hime and her plans to put her own son on the throne.
Now while they were waiting—their ships spread out to ensure that they would catch Tarashi Hime as she would have to pass through their line or take a detour all the way south around Awaji Island—the two princes went out hunting. Of course, this wasn’t just any hunt—it was a divination hunt. You may remember that Tarashi Hime conducted several of these divinations before setting out for the peninsula, to establish the success of her endeavor. So, as they were planning to hunt Tarashi Hime and her son, the princes knew that if they were victorious in their hunt on land, they would be successful in their hunt on the water.
And so the two sat and waited. The elder brother, Kakosaka Hiko, climbed a tree to look out and see what he could observe. As he did so, a giant beast came crashing out of the underbrush—it was a wild boar.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of encountering a wild boar, but these aren’t like domestic pigs. The Japanese wild boar is, itself, a subspecies of the Eurasian wild boar, slightly smaller than its continental cousins they still can average about 100 kilograms, or about 220 lbs. But that’s just average. Even in the past couple decades there were boars that have been caught that were 220 and 240 kilograms. That’s over 500 lbs, and that isn’t the lazy fat of a pig, happy in its muck. That’s 500 lbs of lean muscle with two tusks 5 to 18 inches long. On top of that, they are aggressive. In Europe, the boar spear, used for hunting such animals, had a crossguard built into it to prevent the skewered animal from continuing to push up the spear to gore its attacker. Although they are not exactly hunters, they are still quite deadly, especially when you have to face them head on.
It was this ferocious vision of the forest that came out and attacked the two brothers. According to the chronicles it knocked down the very tree that Kakosaka Hiko had climbed up into to get a better view, and then gored him to death. Oshikuma, the youngest brother, escaped, but barely.
It would seem that their divination was anything but a success. With his brother dead, Oshikuma had to decide what to do next. Rather than confront Tarashi Hime’s forces as he had planned, he told one of his generals, Kurami Wake, to pull the troops back to Sumiyoshi, near modern Kobe, and they would wait there for the royal ship to arrive.
When that time came, Oshikuma looked out and he could hardly believe his luck. Where he had likely suspected an armada, fresh from their victories on the peninsula, instead he saw the ritual funerary ship, carrying the body of the deceased sovereign, his grieving wife, and only a handful of seamen to work the oars.
Oshikuma gave the words and his men got in their boats and rowed out, expecting an easy victory. But, as the wise Admiral Ackbar once said: “It’s a trap!”
No sooner were Oshikuma’s ships within range when the funerary ship was transformed. What they thought was an empty ritual vessel was quickly shown to be swarming with hardened veteran warriors. They fought back their surprised foes, who turned and ran, but Tarashi Hime’s forces pursued them. Her general at that time, since Takechi no Sukune was handling the infant Prince, was a man known to us as Naniwa-neko Take Furukuma no Mikoto, an ancestor of the Wani no Omi.
The royal forces pushed their opponents to the shore and then pursued them back all the way to Uji, in Yamashiro province. Take Furukuma, Tarashi Hime’s general, was eventually joined by Takechi no Sukune. The two forces found themselves camped out on either side of the river, each waiting for the other to make a move.
As they glared across the waters at each other, a man named Kuma no Kori in the army of Prince Oshikuma sang a song to encourage the men, in which he mocked Takechi no Sukune—or, as he is referred to in verse, Uchi no Ason.
Now the next part is a bit confused—the Kojiki attributes it all to Take Furukuma, but the Nihon Shoki gives the lion’s share of the credit to Takechi no Sukune. Either way, the basic tactic is more or less the same, regardless of who came up with it. First, the men of Tarashi Hime’s army took out their spare bowstrings and tied them into their hair like normal cords. Then he had them all put on wooden swords, made to look like the real thing. Once they did this, they called out to Oshikuma.
Takechi—or perhaps Furukuma—called out that they had received word that Tarashi Hime had died, and now all they wanted was to secure a promise that the young prince could live, and in return Oshikuma could take the throne—after all, why should anyone else fight and die over this. As a gesture of their goodwill, he had the royal army cut their bow strings and then thrown their swords into the water.
Prince Oshikuma, seeing victory at hand, accepted this and magnanimously returned the gesture. He had his men cut their own bowstrings, and throw their own swords into the river. Of course, no sooner had he done so than the ruse was revealed. Tarashi Hime’s forces pulled their spare bowstrings from their hair buns and quickly strung their bows and they started launching arrows at their now weaponless opponents. They grabbed up their real swords and started across the river.
Prince Oshikuma had no other options. Without weapons, there was only one thing he could do, so he ran. He and his men ran north, retreating all the way to Afusaka, near the shores of Lake Biwa. Takechi no Sukune and Take Furukuma continued to pursue Prince Oshikuma and routed him and his men all the way to Kurusu in Sasanami, where Prince Oshikuma’s army was finally destroyed. Defeated and facing certain death, Prince Oshikuma and his remaining general, Isachi no Sukune, decided to take their own lives rather than be captured. They sailed a ship out onto the lake, the Kojiki records the song that Prince Oshikuma sang:
Come my lads,
Rather than receive the wounds
Inflicted by Furukuma
Come, like the nipo birds
Let us dive into the waters
Of the lake of Afumi
And, so saying, they jumped into the lake together. Their bodies were swept downstream, and eventually washed ashore in Uji.
With their opposition now quite decidedly out of the picture, the generals returned, and Tarashi Hime took time in the peace immediately following the conflict to properly bury her husband, Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko. Supposedly he was buried not back in the area at the foot of Mt. Miwa, but instead outside the western mountains of the Nara basin at a place known as Nagae or Nagano, in Ega, in Kawachi Province. This has been identified as a late 5th century tomb in Fujidera, in modern Osaka, just south of the Yamato river where it comes out of the Nara Basin. Of course, much of this is suspect, but it certainly does seem like an impressive—even kingly—tomb.
Once her husband was in the mound, Tarashi Hime set up a court at the Wakazakura no Miya, or Young Cherry Blossom Palace, in Iware, on the eastern edge of the Nara Basin. And if Iware sounds familiar, you might remember that it was Iware Biko, aka Jimmu Tennou, who had supposedly marched in and conquered the Nara Basin some 800 or more years prior, at least according to the Nihon Shoki’s dating.
Here, in the Nara Basin, it seems that Homuda Wake was finally poised to take the throne at what I can only assume was the youngest age ever. Have no fear, however, for Tarashi Hime was more than ready to step in as regent and rule in his stead.
For 69 years.
Yes, once again that habit of the chronicles to go all timey-wimey, Jeremy Bearimy on us strikes again. Not only does the Nihon Shoki claim that Tarashi Hime was pregnant with Homuda Wake for three whole years before she brought him to term, but she then sits on the throne herself for 69 years as quote-unquote “regent”. Homuda Wake’s own chapter and deeds doesn’t start until she dies, 69 years into her reign. So something is going on here.
First off, it could be as simple as the idea that she was no regent, but she was the sovereign. Certainly much of the verbiage used for her is, much like with Yamato Takeru, verbiage that would be used for a sovereign. Indeed, in the Fudoki she is often treated as ruler in her own right, and like we discussed above, the later historian Kitabatake Chikafusa certainly viewed her as such—though that 14th century history was based more on his memory than on documents. Still, it supports one idea.
Another thought is that her reign is unnaturally long to account for other events dealing with the Korean peninsula, and we’ll certainly delve back into those. In this case, her rule is so long because she’s being held up as the embodiment of Queen Himiko, and the chronicles are using Himiko’s known dates as well as extrapolating back to the supposed dates of the older rulers.
There is one thought that in this time before the Japanese started writing things down the years were not based on actual seasons, but rather on harvests. Some have suggested that there were even three cycles a year, and that this was what was counted. If that were true, then 69 cycles might only really be 23 to 35 years—still past the age of majority for young Homuda Wake, but not nearly as excessively so.
And then there is the idea that there is actually a problem in the record, and that many of her exploits actually belong to her son. The problem with that is that he then goes on to reign for another 40 some-odd years. So while it is perfectly reasonable that some of his exploits—particularly some of the more martial exploits—were attributed to his mother, it doesn’t explain the supernatural longevity.
Personally, I simply don’t hold much with the chronology. Remember, Takechi no Sukune is supposedly with us through all of this. We’ll see that the earliest date that I might at all want to put any reliance on is about 366, and the last is roughly 385. Even these dates are suspect, but they seem much more reasonable, given other events that we know are going on. This gives us about 19 years to work with—a much more reasonable number than 69.
But what happened in those 19 years? Well, quite a lot, and much of it has to do with the peninsula. Before we get into all of that, though, let’s talk about the other things that happened in Japan.
First off, there were the kami. It certainly seems that the kami were jealous of the time that Tarashi Hime had spent on her campaign. In fact, when she was sailing back towards Yamato, before that whole mess with her stepsons, there was a point where her boat kept getting turned away, and she couldn’t get past Muko Bay in modern Hyogo prefecture. Now one might assume that this was because of the army that was waiting for her, but the Nihon Shoki makes the much more reasonable and sensible claim that it was the kami. Most importantly, Amaterasu Ohokami’s “rough spirit”, or “ara-mitama”, could not be allowed to approach the land of Yamato.
You may recall that the spirit of a kami could be divided up in various ways. This includes their rough, or wild spirit—the ara-mitama—as well as their gentle, or pacified spirit, known as the nigi-mitama. Of course, they had just been at war, so it is little wonder that Amaterasu’s ara-mitama might be with them, but they did not want that spirit of war brought into the heart of Yamato, so it was sent to be worshipped in Hirota by Hayama Hime, a daughter of Yamashiro-neko—a name that suspiciously sounds like they may have been an ancient ruler, or at least major noble, of Yamashiro province.
But that wasn’t all. You know how once you stop to talk to one person all of a sudden everyone else wants a piece of your time? It seems that Tarashi Hime had to deal with this as well, but with the kami. No sooner was Amaterasu Ohokami’s ara-mitama was taken care of than Waka Hirume asked to be worshipped in Nagawo, in Ikuta, just beyond modern Kobe. Then, Kotoshiro Nushi wanted to be worshipped in the land of Nakata, so Hayama Hime’s younger sister, Naga Hime, was sent out to perform the task. Finally, the three spirits that had started her out on her campaign, known as Uwa tsutsu no wo, Naka-tsutsu-no-wo, and Soko-tsutsu-no-wo, asked for their gentle spiritis, or Nigi-mitama, to be worshipped at Nunakura in Ohotsu, so they could watch the ships traveling back and forth through the Seto Inland Sea.
By the way, if any of those names seem familiar, they should. Of course we know Amaterasu, also known as Oho Hirume. Waka Hirume was her maiden, or perhaps even younger sister, who was doing the weaving when Susanowo tossed in that backwards flayed colt, at least in some of the stories. And then Kotoshiro Nushi was a son to the great god of Izumo, Ohokuni Nushi. We’ve encountered him a time or two back in the mythical period.
I mention all this because I find it significant that they are being mentioned at this juncture, because this seems to be that point where we see something else happen, at least in the archaeological record. Around the 4th century we see the abandonment of the Miwa area for some reason. The seat of power when the mounded keyhole tombs became a thing in the archipelago seems to have disappeared. Eventually, though, in that same century, there is a shift to the Kawachi area, and modern Ohosaka. Much of it was probably still under water as part of Kawachi Bay, but that was silting up and creating more and more land.
This is also an area where we see heavy influence from the peninsula, and we’ve already talked about all of the stories associated with the Korean peninsula and this area. This could simply be a reflection of increased immigration as well as increased trade, but with the mention of these kami, was there also something happening to the ancient Miwa cult? Are we starting to see other kami come in and take center stage? Of course, since this is all being written down at a much later date it is hard to pull apart all of the threads, but it does make one wonder.
Speaking of other kami, there is at least one more story that we should relate here. It is likely apocryphal, but it nonetheless adds a few more threads connecting this latest dynasty to the peninsula, because it deals with the god of Kehi.
Now at this time, the young prince, Homuda Wake, was probably no more than about 13 years old, and he went with the prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, on a tour of several provinces. At this point, I have to imagine that Takechi no Sukune must have been Homuda Wake’s father figure. The way they talk about Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune, one almost thinks that they might have been married, but of course, no such allegation is ever made, though it does cause one to wonder. Takechi no Sukune wasn’t exactly a commoner—his lineage in the Chronicles goes back to before Mimaki Iribiko and to the line of sovereigns before him, or at least so they claim. And yet he is never mentioned as anything other than the prime minister and a dutiful officer of the court, still, it does make you wonder if there wasn’t something more in their relationship.
Still, his relationship with Homuda Wake, whatever may or may not have been going on with his mother was undeniably a close one. Travel such as this must have been quite the bonding experience.
Together they went through the province of Afumi and ended up at Tsuruga Bay, near Kehi. There the deity known as Izasa wake no Ohokami no Mikoto reached out to Takechi no Sukune in his dreams and told him that he wished to exchange names with the young prince. Takechi no Sukune agreed, and he said the words of blessing and promised that they would do whatever the kami had commanded. And given everything they had been through, I’m sure that Takechi no Sukune had learned to listen when the kami decided to speak to you.
Izasa wake no Ohokami seemed pleased, however. Rather than Takechi no Sukune preparing some elaborate offering it seems that the kami offered to handle that on his behalf. He simply had to go down to the beach the next day the kami would present the offerings.
The next morning, as he had been told to do, Takechi no Sukune made his way down to the beach. There it seems that a pod of dolphins had beached itself. Their snouts were broken and bloody, and they were lying all over the shore. Dolphins, which were hunted by the Japanese up through the modern day, were considered a source of food—and thus an offering for the exchange of names.
Now, what’s not quite clear to me is exactly what it meant, in this case, to exchange names. Does that mean that Homuda Wake received the name Homuda Wake at this point? If so, does that mean that was actually the original name of the kami of Kehi? If so, what was Homuda Wake’s original name? Was it Izasa Wake? This isn’t answered by the chronicles in any satisfactory way that I can make out. The kami of Kehi is given the name Mike tsu Ohokami, or the Great Kami of the August Food, since they had provided the dolphins as an offering. They are also called, rather uncreatively, Kehi no Ohokami. But nowhere does it actually demonstrate them exchanging names. It is possible that there is a problem with the way that the words are translated, and it was more a ceremony of giving each other new names—or even just getting a name of the kami. Either way it is a strange episode.
Following that encounter, Takechi no Sukune takes the young prince back home, where he is wined and dined with a great banquet by his mother. While the young prince was away, she had worried, as mothers around the world are want to do when their children are away. To take her mind off things, she caused to be brewed a particular sake, which she did as what would appear to be another ukehi—a kind of divination she was rather familiar with. It must have been successful because they did return safely, and in the end she had barrels of sake at her disposal, so what better way to get rid of them than to throw a party.
It was at that party that she invoked the name Sukuna, by which many people believe she meant Sukuna Bikona, the kami who had helped Oho Kuni Nushi. Apparently he had more than a little efficacy in the realm of sake, or at least so we gather by the way that he is invoked by Tarashi Hime in her poetry.
And I think that is enough for this episode. From here, we are going to get into more shenanigans with the peninsula. Notably, however, these are dated shenanigans. We can argue whether it was Tarashi Hime, Homuda Wake, or some unknown sovereign that took part, but the actual incidents seem to come from records older than our extant chronicles that actually describe real activities with what seem to be verifiable—if slightly offset—dates. These are largely from the Chronicles of Baekje, the country that would become one of Yamato’s closest allies, or so it would seem. There are certainly a couple of problems between what we read in the Nihon Shoki and what we read in the Kojiki, but I think we can get over those.
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

Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
Chamberlain, B. H. (1981). The Kojiki: Records of ancient matters. Rutland, Vt: C.E. Tuttle Co. ISBN4-8053-0794-3
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 40: Tarashi Hime and the "Conquest" of Korea

May 1, 2021 Joshua Badgley

Okinaga Tarashi Hime (aka Jingū Kōgō) and Takeuchi no Sukune as she fishes with rice as an ukehi to determine if the campaign against Silla will be a success. Print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi in 1876, courtesy of LACMA. — Okinaga Tarashi Hime (aka Jingū Kōgō) and Takeuchi no Sukune as she fishes with rice as an *ukehi* to determine if the campaign against Silla will be a success. Print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi in 1876, courtesy of LACMA.

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This episode we get to talk about one of the most intriguing and controversial parts of the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, and that is the claimed “conquest” of Korea, and as much as I’d like to just tell you the story, this time we really need to address the controversy, because it gets to the heart, in many ways, of modern relations between Japan and Korea. Before World War II, images of Empress Jingū were widespread, and stories about the conquest and subjugation of the Korean peninsula were used to justify Japan’s actions in occupying Korea in the early 20th century. After the war, there was a backlash against the nationalist version of history that had propped up such a view, with claims that Jingū never existed and she is simply a composite figure—the chroniclers knew that there were reaching the era when the Wei Chronicles said there was a Queen, and so they added a queen and then added on other stories, many of them actually coming from later female monarchs. In addition, they added details from the Baekje Chronicles, a no-longer-extant work that nonetheless seems to match up with what we have in later Korean histories.

Nonetheless, there seem to be enough details that I suspect there is at least a grain of truth to the story of Okinaga Tarashi Hime—I accept her as an historic figure—even if many other details have been glommed on to her story. Likewise, there is enough evidence that there were plenty of raids by the Wa (倭) on the Korean peninsula, though nothing firmly indicating subjugation of one of any of the Three Kingdoms. That said, it very well could be the case that Silla tried to “buy off” Yamato to get them to stop the raids, a tactic that we see time and again in various places in history. Without something like that, then how, exactly, do we explain the political hostages that were sent in the late 4th or early 5th century? Would Silla have sent a prince to Japan—especially without receiving a Japanese prince in return—unless they felt somehow compelled to do so? But we’ll get into that more in other episodes.

For this post, I want to try to lay out some of the things we talk about in the episode and give you some references you can check out. I am going to give you some of the dated references as well as more recent, so you can make up your own mind on some of these theories that people have put forth.

First, though, let’s talk about dates. For more in depth you can read our article on Calendar and Time.

The sexegneary cycle, starting with kinoe-ne (elder wood rat) and ending with mizunoto-i (younger water boar). — The sexegneary cycle, starting with *kinoe-ne* (elder wood rat) and ending with *mizunoto-i* (younger water boar).

This was the kind of dating system that was frequently used throughout East Asia, in combination with the regnal names, creating eras and unique years within each era. However, it was likely not in use in Japan until the influx of actual writing. That leaves us with a problem: Although we can figure out the dates of things from outside annals, such as the Wei, Jin, Baekje, or Silla annals, we cannot necessarily trust the internal dates of the Japanese chronicles at this time, since by their own admission they had not yet started keeping written records in the continental fashion. Therefore it is entirely possible that the dates of things that are solely found in the Japanese records are out of place. It would be like having all the episodes from a highly episodic 80's cartoon show, without any of the names or show dates, and then being asked to put them together, in order. Now imagine doing that for, say, the 1940s Batman shows. You would be trying to use clues inside the episodes to put them together, but can you actually tell which order they are supposed to be in just by their content? Oh, and you' are probably missing at least half the shows. Good luck!

So we are pretty sure that things mentioned in the outside Chronicles happened, but they may have happened at different times. In this case they’ve combined the Wei chronicles, using the actual dates, with the Baekje Chronicles, but they’ve pulled that information back in time about 120 years—so that the cycle names still match up. The thing we aren’t sure of is whether all of the other action happening is properly dated. That is, is the rest of the story also 120 years out of synch, or is it inserted from somewhere else altogether?

We’ll talk about this more, later, but just to give you an idea of the confusion: The Nihon Shoki claims that Tarashi Hime lived through the reign of King Chogo (aka Geunchogo) of Baekje, and that he died before the end of her reign. On the other hand, the Kojiki has this same king interacting with Tarashi Hime’s son, Homuda Wake, during his reign, after Tarshi Hime had passed away. For what it’s worth, the Kūjiki seems to follow the dating of the Nihon Shoki, but doesn’t include the passages from other chronicles, sidestepping the question of dates altogether. So even though we are on the cusp of historical material—we will see writing arrive at the court in the next reign—we are still not sure of when, exactly, things are happening.

Still, we can use the dates we have in other sources to try to give ourselves some idea of what kind of intercourse is taking place between the archipelago and the peninsula. For instance, the Samguk Sagi gives the dates below as various points at which the Wa interacted with Silla or Baekje, prior to the late 4th century. While we cannot fully trust these dates, either—neither Silla nor Baekje seem to have kept written court records, themselves, until the mid-4th century—at least we can see what sorts of activity they were claiming. I suspect that these years are somewhat more spread out than they should be, and if that is the case we could be experiencing a kind of textual time dilation. Thus, assuming that these are at all accurate, these are probably accounts that took place within a span of a century or so, rather than the four centuries or so that is claimed:

50 BCE – Wa came with troops, intending to invade the coastal region of Silla, but withdrew because of the Founder Ancestor’s divine virtue.
20 BCE – Lord Ho, from Wa, was sent by the King of Silla on an official call to Mahan.
14 – The Wa sent more than a hundred ships to plunder the homes of the people on the sea coast.
59 – Silla established “good ties” with the Wa, and envoys were exchanged.
73 – Wa invaded the island of Mokchul. Kakkan Uo was sent to defend it, but to no success and he died there.
121 – Wa invaded the East Coast.
122 – A year later, a rumor that the Wa had come in “great numbers” caused people to hide in the mountains.
158 – Wa “courtesy visit” to Silla
173 – Samguk Sagi’s Silla Annals mention an envoy from Himiko. This feels way too early. She died in 238 CE. Some claim this is a highly anachronistic entry, and may reference a visit in 712 CE.
193 – The Wa had an epidemic and people came asking for food
208 – The Wa invaded the border [of Silla and the Six Districts]. Ibeolchan Ieum was sent against them.
249 – The Wa killed Seobulhan Uro
287 – The Wa raided Illye district and set it on fire. They captured 1,000 people and left with them
289 – The King, hearing that the Wa troops were approaching, repaired his ships and readied his armor and his troops.
292 – The Wa attacked and defeated Sado fortress
294 – The Wa troops came and attacked Changbong Fortress, but didn’t capture it.
295 – King of Silla suggested working with Baekje to attack the Wa across the sea, but his ministers suggested against it as they were not used to naval warfare and Baekje had often been deceitful.
300 – Silla exchanged envoys with the Wa
312 – The King of Wa sent an envoy proposing the marriage of his son. The court sent the daughter of Achan Geumri.
344 – The King of Wa sent an envoy requesting the marriage of the king’s daughter, but was refused because she was already married.
345 – The King of Wa sent an official letter severing ties.

Likely route for Yamato/Wa ships to the Silla capital at Gyeongju.

Late 4th century haniwa sculpture of a boat discovered at Takamawari Kofun No. 2 in modern Osaka. From the Osaka National Museum. Photo by author.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 40: Tarashi Hime and The Conquest of Korea.
Sitting on a rocky beach, a fisherman mends his nets and sets his hooks, looking out into the ocean. The white-capped waves roll up and down, and mimic the whisps of clouds in an otherwise clear sky. Suddenly, there is a glint upon the water, a flash of light in the bright daytime in a time before electricity. Squinting his eyes, the fisherman can just make out the sight, but what he sees sends an immediate shiver down his spine. The glint of light is simply the sun, reflecting off of a polished bronze mirror, hung from the branches stuck into the prow of a long, low ship, which is cutting through the water at a tremendous pace, urged on by the practiced oarsmen who sit upon benches and propel it forward. Then, behind the lead ship, come more, appearing from around the cape and just over the horizon. The fisherman drops his work and runs back up to the village, screaming: The Wa are coming!
So last episode we talked about the rise of the Three Kingdoms, or Samguk, of the Korean Peninsula. This was Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. The fact that they seem to be keeping records from about the latter half of the 4th century is going to be key for helping us to understand the next part of the narrative. We also know that there are other groups operating on the Korean peninsula, though they don’t get the same kind of attention since they either weren’t keeping their own chronicles or, if they were, those chronicles don’t appear to be extant. Certainly the later Korean histories would focus on these three states, though there does seem to be some grey area as concerns the area known as Kara or, in modern Korean, Gaya. Either way, these three main kingdoms were definitely jockeying for position on the peninsula, playing a high-stakes game of warfare and international politicking that would eventually turn into a unified kingdom—though that is still some distance in the future.
Back in Japan, I want to just focus on the story as it is told from the Chronicles, at least for now. This is the idea that the Kami directed Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko to go and conquer Korea—specifically Silla—but he refused, remaining focused, instead, on the Kumaso of southern Kyushu. For his troubles, he was killed—whether in battle or by the mysterious power of the kami themselves—and so it fell to his Queen, Okinaga Tarashi Hime, as well as his prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, to carry out the kamis’ will and invade and conquer the Korean peninsula in the first place.
The Japanese Chronicles tell this as a fairly straightforward narrative, but with enough commonalities that there was clearly some source material available and common imagery that all of the chronicles are drawing from. The Kujiki even mentions a work that must have been around in the 8th century or so, titled “The Record of the Subjugation of the Three Han”, or “Seifuku Sankanki”, which may have been the original source from whence our story comes. Of course, even that source would be suspect, since it would still have been written down a good deal of time after the events that we are talking about here, which is still in the time of oral history.
So let’s get into it.
Now the Kojiki, as usual, is focused on the action and doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Remember, it was written down from what was effectively a performance piece by Hieda no Are, who would have recounted these stories for the court. As such, it launches straight into Tarashi Hime’s departure, stating: “She put the army in order and marshalled the ships.” Shortly thereafter she flew across the water, borne on the backs of every creature of the sea, and a giant wave brought the fleet halfway into the country of Silla—basically on the doorstep of the capital at Gyeongju. With no regard towards how they were going to get their boats back to the water—let alone all of the people who must have drowned in the flooding that such a tsunami would have brought with it, the Wa set up outside the Silla capital. The King of Silla, seeing such an overwhelming force, immediately capitulated, with no fighting at all. Next thing that you know, badda-bing, badda-boom, Tarashi Hime is planting her staff at the gates of Silla’s capital and Silla and Baekje are both sending tribute to Yamato. With Silla conquered, Tarashi Hime gets back in her boats (which probably had to be hauled back out to the ocean), and she’s sailing home.
Mission Accomplished. I’m sure that everything worked out fine.
Except that clearly there was much more to it than that. After all, when Tarashi Hime’s husband, the former sovereign, Naka tsu Hiko, died, the Yamato soldiers were still engaged with the Kumaso, and even if they wanted to obey the will of the kami they would need to disengage and regroup. Furthermore, they would need ships to take them across the straits in sufficient numbers to be effective. All of this is just glossed over in the Kojiki, but Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune must have been working diligently to get everything ready.
Sure enough, in the Nihon Shoki, we see more of these details. Tarashi Hime first off puts Kamo no Wake, an ancestor of the Kibi no Omi, in charge of prosecuting the war against the Kumaso so she can attend to other matters. This he seems to take care of handily. But then, there were still a few out there defying Yamato authority, and Tarashi Hime didn’t want to leave to conquer the peninsula just to come back to some mess at home, and so she dealt with a few others before really heading out.
The first of these distractions is really fantastical. There was a fellow in a place called Notorita who was completely ignoring Yamato. He had a powerful frame, but more than that, he had wings. Yes, actual wings—at least according to the Chronicle, who names him as Hashiro Kumawashi, or “White-Feather Bear-Eagle”. I wonder if he was any relation to Chief Bear-Shark, that is: Kumawani? Anyway, this Bird Man of Notorita was apparently weighing on Tarashi Hime’s mind, so she went to Notorita and smote him. We aren’t exactly told how, but apparently she handled her business. And the proof of that? Well, there aren’t any birdmen flying around Japan today, are there?
Seriously, though, this is where I’m probably supposed to mention that he was just a chieftain and perhaps there was some totemic thing going on with birds, and the whole thing got wildly out of control. There is an ancient form of wooden armor that some people have suggested was supposed to represent wings on the backs of a warrior, but I find that a bit of a stretch. Truth is, we don’t have any evidence to corroborate this, really, and this is the only source I know of for the tale.
Next up is the rather mundane story of Tarashi Hime defeating the Tsuchigumo in the Yamato district of Tsukushi—later Chikugo. It is said that she killed Tabura tsu Hime, and when Tabura tsu Hime’s older brother, Natsuha, heard about it, he scrapped his idea of raising an army against Tarashi Hime and decided to flee, which was probably the best course of action for him. Again, this is probably demonstrative of various fighting that was going on in the archipelago as part of the process—intentional or otherwise—to unite the islands under a single government, though clearly there was still plenty of independence. Assuming that others recognized Yamato’s hegemony it may have been something more like Primus Inter Pares—the first among equals—rather than a purely dictatorial authority.
By the way, I’m not sure why the Kami didn’t get on Tarashi Hime’s case for all of these apparent side quests. Wasn’t she supposed to go and subdue Korea? But, whatever. Who can say why the kami do one thing or another.
Regardless, it seems that Tarashi Hime was finally ready. Well, almost. This was a large undertaking, and one shouldn’t embark on such a campaign without a little divination to ensure that it would be victorious. Of course, this wasn’t some kind of scapulimancy or plastrimancy—that is, burning deer scapulae or turtle shells and reading the cracks. No, in this case, it took the form of several ukehi—the oath-style divination.
First up, Tarashi Hime put a piece of boiled rice on a hook and made the claim that if she was able to catch a fish then that would indicate that she would also achieve victory. Sure enough, as she cast her line into the Ogawa river in Matsura, on the western side of Kyushu, a fish bit the line and she pulled it up. Apparently this is something that was repeated by women in the area every year as part of a festival, commemorating the event.
Next, Tarashi Hime set aside a sacred rice field and tilled it in anticipation of victory. She had an irrigation channel dug all the way to the Hill of Todoroki, where she planned to divert water from the Nakagawa river. However, the engineering crew encountered a seemingly insurmountable obstacle when they ran into a giant boulder. Tarashi Hime, the sovereign who had smote the mighty birdman of Notorita—and, fair warning, I’m probably going to just keep bringing that up—was not concerned. She had Takechi no Sukune pray to the kami of Heaven and Earth while she presented a mirror and a sword as offerings. Sure enough, out of the sky came a bolt of lightning that split the rock asunder, allowing the water to flow through. This was known as the Sakuta Channel.
Finally, at the Bay of Kashihi, Tarashi Hime got into the water and made the prediction that if the campaign would be a success, her hair would naturally part in two. Sure enough, as she lay down in the water the currents naturally took her hair and split it into two, which she then tied up in the fashion of a man—in fact, the Chronicles claim that she purposely donned the outfit of a man at this point in order to lead men into battle. Of course, that could just be the Chroniclers borrowing from some Chinese stories to help make things that more epic for their readers, or it could be the fact that, other than perhaps where it sits on the hips, armor doesn’t really care that much about how your body looks, let alone what pronouns you use, and generally provides everyone the same basic profile.
So kitted out in her armor, and with all of the omens pointing to “yes, do this thing already,” do you think Tarashi Hime was ready?
Of course not.
Apparently, despite everything else, they were having trouble raising enough ships for the voyage. And having an army is all well and good, but if you don’t have ships, well, that’s an awfully long way to swim. Of course, as with many things during this period, the answer isn’t just “build more ships”, but rather to address the real problem: Figuring out which kami you need to properly appease. In this case it was the kami of Ohomiwa, who perhaps hadn’t been feeling much love since the sovereigns had largely buggered off to everywhere *except* Yamato, recently. Tarashi Hime offered Ohomiwa no Kami a sword and a spear, and that seems to have done the trick. With Ohomiwa’s divine blessing they were able to raise the ships and the men and get things underway.
Except for one other thing. You may recall that the Kami who were spiritually financing this conquest had killed Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko, but had then said that the lands of the Korean peninsula would be given to the unborn child in Tarashi Hime’s womb. That’s right, Tarashi Hime wasn’t just going about all of this in the moment of her grief, she was also doing it while *pregnant*. However, she had no time to be giving birth—she had land to go and conquer. And so she performed a ritual where she attached two white rocks around her waist—some even say in her nether regions—and made another ukehi, praying: “let my delivery be in this land on the day that I return and our enterprise is at an end.”
Apparently those two stones were then set beside the road in Ito, where people would worship at them as they passed by. They were eventually stolen, but there are plenty of references to their miraculous power. These weren’t small stones, either—they were apparently about one to two shaku in length—so about half a meter or so.
Anyway, whew, finally! All of the prayers and divinations had been made, all of the ships and men were gathered, and Tarashi Hime’s pregnancy was put on a supernatural pause. It was time to go out and see what they could find.
The exact route of the journey isn’t mentioned, but it isn’t hard to guess just where they went, hopping from island to island until they got to Tsushima, and they departed from the bay of Wani for the territory of Silla. The Nihon Shoki, just as in the Kojiki, claims that the Yamato ships were borne on the backs of the fish and beasts of the sea, and they were aided by the Sea-god and the Wind-god—though the phrasing of the latter looks more like a Chinese phrase than something from Japan. As with the Kojiki, they were carried halfway into the territory of Silla, catching their prey largely unawares. When the King of Silla saw this, he immediately capitulated, waving a white flag, which is apparently a universal signal. Then he came out of the gates with his hands tied behind his back in a form of submission, just as we saw the Emishi chiefs do when they surrendered to Yamato Takeru. Tarashi Hime graciously accepted his surrender and made the King of Silla into her “forage provider”—basically the position of a lowly servant.
Now with such an entrance, word got around the peninsula, and Baekje and Goguryeo, the other two major powers at the time, sent spies to check out the Yamato army. They were so impressed by its size that they decided not to fight. Instead, they submitted to Yamato and agreed to send tribute of their own.
With things well in hand, Tarashi Hime headed back to Japan in triumph.
And that’s it, that’s the conquest of Korea. Except, well… maybe not? Let’s see if we can get past the story and into what may have been actually happening.
Now I have both been looking forward to and dreading getting into all of this here and the next few episodes. I’ve been looking forward to them because they cover an extremely dynamic part of the Chronicles and the history of the archipelago, and there is some actual documentation to attach it to on the peninsula. In fact, from here on out we’ll be getting into what we can reliably call the “historical” period for Japan, as they’ll soon start keeping their own records. On the other hand, as we make the transition from oral to written history, the boundary zone is rather like two rivers coming together, and occasionally the eddies and whirlpools of the narrative may bring us forward or backwards in time, so we get events verified by other sources, but well outside of their appropriate period. This leaves us with a quandary or two. For my part, I’ll try to keep the 4th and 5th century chronology consistent with what we know from continental sources, and then I’m using a bit of shorthand to otherwise line up events here. You see, in the reigns of Okinaga Tarashi Hime and her son, Homuda Wake, we often have direct quotes from mainland sources. The Chinese quotes are from the Weizhi, and these are clearly referencing Himiko—which I would argue could not be Tarashi Hime. However, because the chroniclers were trying to add years to the royal lineage, Tarashi Hime’s reign is given as probably about a century and a half too early—they are claiming dates that correspond to about 200-269, but describing events that seem much more likely to have been occurring from about 340-375 CE. In fact, the entries that correspond with known events in the Korean annals—particularly those of the country of Baekje—appear to correlate by exactly 120 years.
Now we won’t get into all the complexities of ancient Asian dating systems here—I’ll leave that for the blogpost—but suffice it to say that there was a 60 year, or sexagenary, cycle. It was actually 5 cycles of 12. Every series of 12 corresponds with one of the 12 zodiac animals you see on the placemat at many Chinese restaurants, and then each of those was paired with the five elements: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. In total, this creates 60 unique year designations. These were used with the name of the reigning monarch to determine what year it was, and together they create a means of recording what happened in what years of any given reign. Once you know the reign orders and lengths, you should be able to correlate them to an absolute date. What the Chroniclers have done is added two cycles of 60 into their calculations somewhere, so that they are placing the events from the Baekje sources in the correct place to match up with that 60 year cycle, but just two cycles too early. Eventually those will start to marry up over the next series of reigns.
By the way, we do have at least two other pieces of corroborating evidence for this period. The first is a large stone pillar, or stele, known as the Gwaangaetto Stele, and it tells the story of the reign of King Gwangaetto the Great of Goguryeo. It is notable because it was erected in the 5th century, not long after the events that it records, but most of the events described occured at the very tail end of the 4th century and early into the 5th. The other piece of evidence that we have is a strange, seven-branched sword, which appears to have been given to the Japanese sovereign by the country of Baekje and it has an actual date in the inscription. This will come into play as we try to assess what is happening when. Unfortunately, none of these artifacts really give us the names of the Yamato sovereigns, so while we can verify that the events took place, who was actually on the throne is still a bit of an issue.
There is one more thing that we should pull out into the open here, and that’s the controversy surrounding this whole story. Nationalist scholars in pre-war Japan took it as a given that this story proved, conclusively, that Japan had subjugated Korea and therefore were justified in reasserting their control over the peninsula in modern times. Furthermore, when Japan occupied Korea in the early 20th century, and while they were propping up the puppet state of Manchu-kuo, many nationalist scholars used the Gwangaetto stele—which has numerous mentions of the Wa fighting on the peninsula—as evidence that Yamato was a major player in peninsular politics. On the flip side of this, many of the characters have been worn down with time and are illegible, and there are accusations against the Japanese army that they enhanced the inscription so that it would read more favorably based on their interpretations. While other, independent scholars have attested to the authenticity of the inscription as it is generally known, there are still different interpretations over exactly what it says, given the still missing characters. Still, it is a valuable resource given its proximity to the events in question.
To many of the pre-war Japanese scholars, the events of Tarashi Hime’s reign culminated not only in the subjugation of the peninsula, but in the establishment of a Yamato colony, known in Japanese as Mimana—or Imna in modern Korean. This was effectively treated as known fact, and knowledge of Tarashi Hime by her posthumous name: “Jinguu Kougou” was fairly well known. That said, the actual location and even existence of Mimana-slash-Imna has been hotly contested on all sides. However, I want to leave it off to the side for the time being. After all, nowhere in the narrative on Tarashi Hime’s conquest have we yet mentioned “Mimana”, and though various scholars have attempted to situate it in these earliest stories, it just isn’t clearly there, yet. That’s not to say that there wasn’t some place called Mimana, or Imna, or perhaps more appropriately “Nimna”, the contemporary Chinese reading for the character. The name even shows up on the Gwangaetto Stele, but if such a place as Nimna did exist, we don’t have any record of exactly where it was, nor what their leadership, culture, or ethnicity may have looked like. Many equate it with the polity in Gimhae known as Geumgwan Gaya [check spelling and pronunciation!], but even that seems to be conjecture at this point and not confirmed fact..
Of course, many scholars—especially Korean scholars—have pushed back against this interpretation of events. They claim that Japan never conquered anything, though they may have raided the coast quite a bit—especially the coast of Silla. Also, it is unclear whether or not the “Wa” mentioned in those ancient accounts had anything to do with the polity in Yamato in the archipelago. Were they armies sent by a strong central government? Or were they raiding parties from individual groups—most likely in Kyushu or even on the peninsula itself—who were operating independent of any larger state system? I wonder if it wasn’t a little bit of both, but I’ll talk about that in a bit.
There was also a push by Japanese scholars to reexamine the Chronicles. In the pre-war period, even the suggestion that there were problems with the official imperial genealogy could bring accusations of lese majeste and there were actual trials early on. This brought on a backlash as some scholars claimed that everything from Jimmu to Oujin—or in our case, Iware Biko to Homuda Wake—was a fiction created by the court to prop up the Yamato royal lineage. Because of the dates in the Nihon Shoki, and the Wei Chronicles talking about an early 3rd century female ruler in Japan, the Chroniclers somehow had to fit Tarashi Hime into the narrative. And so she is given credit for the work of Himiko, but they also layered on the various stories of attacks on the Korean peninsula and the birth and ascension of Homuda Wake. There is even the belief that some of the stories should be attributed to much later female sovereigns. Now, I think by now you know where I stand on this—somewhere generally in the middle—but just know that there are still some people who believe that Tarashi Hime herself is entirely fictional.
And then there is one other area that I want to address, which completely turns all of this on its head. This is the idea that the story of the conquest of Korea is actually *backwards*. It isn’t the story of Yamato conquering Silla, but rather the story of Baekje conquering Yamato. Yes, you heard that correctly. This theory holds that Tarashi Hime—if she existed—as well as Tarashi Nakatsu Hiko were actually from the continent. Eventually Tarashi Hime fought her way to Japan and all the way to Yamato where she put her son, Homuda Wake, on the throne. According to this theory, later Japanese sovereigns reversed things and added this story about the conquest to cover up their own lineage as Baekje nobles. This usually goes hand-in-hand with the “horse-rider” theory of Egami Namio, formulated around 1949, and later supported by Gari Ledyard in a paper in 1975. Namio’s theory points to the lack of horse-riding gear in the early archaeological record, up through the 4th century, and then its sudden explosion across the peninsula in the 5th century, and suggests that this was because Buyeo nobles from Baekje had arrived with their cavalry and these horse-riders had easily defeated the unmounted soldiers of Yamato. This theory has largely been denounced—in large part due to the archaeological evidence—but it still has some adherents.
As you can see, and as we’ve discussed previously, interpretations of the past can be influenced by modern thoughts and opinions, so let’s try to be aware of our own as we approach the material. I know this was long and involved, but I think it is necessary to really dig into some of this stuff.
Personally, as I mentioned, I find at least a grain of truth in most of these perspectives. Is Tarashi Hime completely mythical? I don’t know that I’m prepared to go that far, but clearly a lot of what is attributed to her is either anachronistic or clearly belongs to someone else’s story. There is also the fantastical nature of many of her exploits, even moreso than Yamato Takeru in places—and he was fighting off gods left and right. So I think we can tone down the rhetoric a bit, but that doesn’t mean she was not some sort of historical personage, or at least representing some person that was important enough to be remembered. So we’ll try to untangle a bit of what we know, but we can only go with the information presented to us.
Let’s start with the so-called invasion of Korea, which is really at the crux of what makes Tarashi Hime so controversial, given Japan’s later actions on the peninsula, including the invasion by Hideyoshi and the occupation in the early 20th century. One would think that such a massive undertaking as conquest of the peninsula would have found its way into the Korean records. Now, Aston was regularly checking his translation of the Nihon Shoki against the Dongguk Tonggam, a 16th century history of Korea that pulled together various other accounts, and I’ve also been checking against English translations of the Samguk Sagi and the Samguk Yusa, specifically the Silla, Baekje, and Goguryeo annals. None of them has anything that comes close to the scale of assault that we could really refer to as subjugation, or even direct Yamato control of anything on the peninsula at all.
The Korean histories, especially the Silla Annals, have contact with the Wa people noted as far back as 50 BCE. Of course, I have a hard time accepting that, since that is a mythical time even for the Korean histories, where founders are being born out of eggs and that sort of thing. Still, let’s take a look at the references and see what we find, realizing the dates are probably a little out of whack, at least until we get into the mid-4th century.
In Silla’s early history we see a Lord Ho serving the king who was originally from Wa. This in the time of Mahan, the confederacy that was eventually subsumed by the Kingdom of Baekje,
Early on, Wa sent 100 ships to plunder the homes of people on the eastern sea coast. Later, Silla established good ties with the Wa, but it wasn’t too long until the Wa invaded the island of Mokchul. Silla sent someone to defend the islands, but to no avail, and their general was killed. Then, the Wa came back and invaded the East Coast with such ferocity that only a year later there was a rumor that the Wa had returned in quote-unquote “great numbers”, causing people to abandon their villages and hide up in the mountains until they realized it was just a rumor.
Some time after all of that, Wa sent a “courtesy visit” to Silla. Later they claim that in 173 the Silla king entertained an envoy from Himiko. This entry is suspect—it seems to make an assumption based on the Weizhi and possibly using a later envoy from the Japanese court in 712. It is clear that, even though the early sources they were drawing from may have been referencing different polities all as “Wa”, by the time the Samguk Sagi was put together the Chroniclers just assumed that all of these were from the Kingdom of Yamato, generally accepting Japan’s own claims to an ancient state.
The entry for 193 is interesting in that it mentions refugees from Wa coming to ask for food because of some kind of epidemic. I’m reminded of the epidemic during the time of Mimaki Iribiko, but it isn’t clear that the two are actually related. Of course, a little more than a decade later the Wa are invading the borders of Silla and the Six Districts—which likely references the six communities that came together to form ancient Silla. Silla sent a general against them and he seems to have been successful.
In 232, it is said that the Wa “unexpectedly” showed up, surrounding the Silla capital at Gyeongju. The king personally went to fight them, and they scattered. Silla sent cavalry to pursue them, capturing a thousand of their troops. It apparently did not stop the Wa from attacking, though, as they would invade and raid the eastern coast the following year until Silla fought them at a place called Sado, setting fire to their ships.
Then, in 287, the Silla annals claim the Wa raided Illye district and set it on fire, capturing a thousand people and taking them with them—probably as slaves, given what we have seen in similar conflicts.
In 292, the Wa attacked and defeated Sado fortress, where they had previously been defeated, and two years later they attacked Changbong fortress, though they were unable to capture it.
In 295, apparently fed up with the raiding by the Wa, the King of Silla suggested working with Baekje to attack the Wa across the sea, but his ministers suggested against it. For one thing, they didn’t feel they could trust Baekje to hold up their end of the bargain, as Baekje had proven themselves deceitful many times over, at least from the Silla point of view. Furthermore, Silla didn’t really have a navy and they weren’t used to naval warfare, unlike the Wa, who seem to have been masters at it. This really sounds like the Wa really owned the sea lanes, early on. Those tables would be turned centuries later, but not right now. This may be why, five years later, Silla agreed to exchange envoys with the Wa, to try to find peace and put a stop to the raids. Indeed, in 312, the Silla Annals claim that Wa even sent an envoy proposing marriage to one of the King’s sons. The court responded by sending a noblewoman, the daughter of a man of the rank of Achan named Geumri. Thirty years later, the King of Wa supposedly requested the hand of the King of Silla’s daughter, but Silla refused because she was already married. A year later, the Wa formally severed ties, and the year after that the Wa suddenly showed up at Pungdo Island, where they plundered the households and then advanced inland. They surrounded the capital of Gyeongju and quickly attacked. The King of Silla wanted to sally forth with his troops, but his ministers cautioned against it, instead suggesting that they wait out the siege. Sure enough, the Wa supply lines were too long, and they ran out of provisions, causing the Wa to leave. This was in the year 346, so plausibly within the historical period.
There are other attacks, such as the ones in 364 and 393, but we’ll go over those in time. For now I want to focus on these entries in the Silla Annals not because I necessarily believe them in their entirety—I certainly am not ready to give credence to their dates—but I think it definitely demonstrates that by the latter part of the fourth century we see that there is a history between the peninsula and the Wa—and I think it is fair to assume that this includes the Wa on the archipelago.
The first thing that pops out is that there is no mention of actual submission by Silla, but there are moments where they send envoys to broker peace. It is important to remember that Silla would eventually unify the peninsula and so successive dynasties would likely not want to write down any indication of Silla as a subjugated state. And it is unlikely, in my opinion, that they ever were, completely.
The analogy that actually springs to mind for me is that of the British Isles during the raids of the Norsemen—commonly referred to as Vikings, or, more specifically, “going Viking”, aka going on a raid. I see a lot of similarities with a group of able seamen and warriors who could apparently raid and plunder the eastern coast of the peninsula more or less with abandon. There are fewer examples, however, of the Wa rounding the south and west coasts—possibly because the naval forces of the ethnic Han peoples in the south would not have countenanced such piracy, and the Wa were probably keen to stay on the good side of the commanderies, at least until they fell in the early 4th century.
Also like the Norse raiders along the coasts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, I suspect, that the ships the Wa sailed in were not just built for the sea, but could likely be rowed upstream through the various river systems to deploy troops deep inside Silla territory. This is based on the examples we have from haniwa and a handful of other depictions. That could account for how the Wa were getting all the way to the Silla capital, and could also explain the note in the Chronicles about them getting “halfway into the country” quickly and rapidly.
Furthermore, like with the Viking raids against England, the Wa seem to have excelled on the sea. This is unsurprising for people living largely on and amongst islands, whereas Silla and others were probably more practiced fighting on land.
And, one more possible similarity with the Viking raids on England—it is possible that Silla ended up buying them off. This isn’t exactly mentioned anywhere, but it could explain the two different views of the situation. From the Wa standpoint, they really want the goods—which, in the case of the chronicles, they frame as “tribute” being paid to them. However, it isn’t as if Silla were truly under their thumb once they departed, and there is no indication that there was any kind of actual control exerted on the peninsula beyond this desire for tribute-slash-bribery, but that is contextualized in the language of Empire—the language of the Sinitic chronicles that are their template for how such stories are supposed to go.
It may be the case that warriors from Yamato were trading with the peninsula, and when they felt they couldn’t get what they wanted that way, they may have used violence to take things that they felt they needed. This may have even led to forms of payment from peninsular groups and attempts to ally, such as through the traditional practice of marriage alliances that were so prevalent on the archipelago.
Because of all this, I have no problem believing that there was a sovereign—perhaps a female sovereign—who rallied the troops of Yamato and various other provinces and led them on a raid against the continental kingdom of Silla. This probably wasn’t the first such expedition, and it wouldn’t be the last. They may have even had practice raiding various coastal settlements in ways that just never made it into any histories, oral or otherwise. Riding across the waves in their boats, using their paddles to pull them across the straits, they skirted the coastline, possibly picking up others for their raiding party. Eventually they made their way upriver and inland, likely pillaging as they went, and eventually arriving at the Silla capital of Gyeongju. There they may have fought, or it may have been a siege or similar standoff between the various sides. Eventually, the King of Silla may have even met with them under a white flag and offered to send some sort of payment if they would leave. They were likely speaking different languages, and so any negotiations would have required interpreters, and, just as often happens today, the terms of any negotiation may have been conveyed slightly differently in each language. I can imagine a proud Tarashi Hime and Takechi no Sukune returning to their forces probably with some amount of treasure and claiming victory over Silla. I can see the King of Silla spinning the retreat of the Wa forces as a victory in their own right. Each confident that they had come out the victor—or at least that’s how they would make sure it was remembered, at least.
But what about Baekje and Goguryeo? It seems obvious that this was really just between Yamato and Silla at this point. We’ll get to Baekje, shortly, and Goguryeo some time after that, but at this point in the story, we are mostly talking about Silla and Yamato.
There is one more item from the Chronicles that I admittedly skipped over, but I think it would be relevant, here, and these are in some of those “other sources say…” kind of comments that pepper the Nihon Shoki, especially in the more mythical chapters that likely started as purely oral tradition. This has to do with the story of Prince Uro. There are two of these “other sources” stories I’m going to talk about, and then I’ll discuss the parallels we see in the Korean sources.
The first variant from the Nihon Shoki says that the person whom Okinaga Tarashi Hime met was a Prince by the name of Urusoborichiu, who submitted to the Yamato forces, whom some suspect may be a reference to the story of Uro, whose rank in modern Korean reads as “Seoburhan” or “Seopulya”. Could Uru-Soboritiu be the same as Uro Seoburhan?
The second variant doesn’t give the Prince a name, but expands on the story a lot more. In this telling, Tarashi Hime captured a Silla Prince and she had his kneecaps removed and had him crawl along the rocks until she finally slew him. She then installed a governor over Silla and headed back to Yamato. Now the wife of the prince cajoled the governor into telling her where her husband, the Prince, had been buried. Once he told her, she exhumed the body and raised up the people and killed the governor. When Tarashi Hime heard of all of this she was especially wroth and raised another army to punish Silla. The people, afraid of what that would mean, killed the late Prince’s wife to appease Tarashi Hime’s anger.
Again, I wouldn’t exactly take this story at face value for a variety of reasons, but there is some interesting correlation with the Korean records, specifically some events that are described as happening around the year 249. At this point, it’s doubtful that Silla and Baekje even existed as anything other than small parts of the larger confederacies, but we’ve already talked about how time is somewhat flexible in these retellings. So these events could have happened much later, and it could also be the case that the Japanese Chroniclers had access to these records from Silla and Baekje and were inserting the stories they thought were best to bolster the tale of Tarashi Hime.
So, here’s how the Korean records talk about this situation. It turns out there was a Prince named Uro listed in the Silla Annals. He is at one point referenced as the Crown Prince, and helped lead soldiers of the Six Districts of Silla to aid Kara. Despite being named as Crown Prince, he never actually seems to have attained the throne, but he did become a general and had other military successes and became the chief minister of military affairs in Silla by 244. A year later, however, he led troops on an unsuccessful raid against Goguryeo, where the Silla troops had to withdraw to a defense barricade at Madu.
Now it seems in this time there were at least semi-amicable relations between Silla and Yamato, because the Tonggam has an account in 249 of a Wa ambassador named “Kalyako”—possibly Katsuraki no So tsu Hiko, or someone similar. The King asked Prince Uro to entertain this ambassador, and at one point Uro mockingly told the ambassador that “sooner or later we shall make your King our salt-slave and your Queen our cook-wench.” As soon as this got back to the King of Wa, he was understandably upset and he sent an army to invade Silla. The King of Silla retreated to Yuchhon, while Prince Uro made his way to the invading Wa forces to apologize. Apparently words were not enough, and so the men of Wa seized Prince Uro and burned him on a pile of firewood and then left.
Later, another ambassador was sent to Silla. This time, the wife of the late Prince Uro asked to be allowed to entertain him. She got the ambassador away from his retinue, got him quite drunk, and when he was senseless she seized him and burnt him in the same manner that the Wa had burnt her husband. The Wa again attacked and besieged the Silla capital at Gyeongju, but they were unsuccessful.
Now, as with the other parts of this story, we can see how the Silla and Yamato accounts have some similarities, including names of the Prince and others involved, and various other details, such as the story of the wife taking revenge. In Yamato they conflate an ambassador or envoy with a governor, and they don’t mention the outcome of the retaliatory strike. I tend to put a little more faith in the Silla account, as it seems rather believable, but I suspect that the date of 249 CE is probably much earlier than any such event actually happened.
By the way, the Silla Annals in the Samguk Sagi, from which we get some of Prince Uro’s earlier life, also mentions the fateful year of 249, but without much embellishment. All it really gives us is that the Wa killed Seoburhan Uro, presumably in battle, but nothing more is given. It is an odd corroboration, if minimal.
For now, I think that gets us through the so-called Conquest of Korea, but don’t worry, there is plenty more fun to be had over the next episodes. We’ll see an alliance with Baekje and then we’ll continue to address the events on the Gwangaetto Stele. We’ll also talk about how writing first came to the archipelago. This really is an exciting, if confusing, period in Japanese history.
Next episode, however, we have more pressing concerns, and we’ll talk about Tarashi Hime’s son, Homuda Wake, and the succession crisis that she faced when she returned to the archipelago, focusing our attention briefly back on events in Yamato before again looking outward.
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

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Ō, Yasumaro, & Heldt, G. (2014). The Kojiki: An account of ancient matters. ISBN978-0-231-16389-7
Yoshie, A., Tonomura, H., & Takata, A.A. (2013). Gendered Interpretations of Female Rule: The Case of Himiko, Ruler of Yamatai. U.S.-Japan Women's Journal 44, 3-23. doi:10.1353/jwj.2013.0009.
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Bentley, John. (2006). The Authenticity of Sendai Kuji Hongi: a New Examination of Texts, with a Translation and Commentary. ISBN-90-04-152253
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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

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Iribiko Dynasty

Mimaki Iribiko

Ikume Iribiko

Tarashi Dynasty

Ōtarashi Hiko

Waka Tarashi Hiko

Tarashi Naka tsu Hiko

Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Middle Dynasty

Homuda Wake

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References

Locations

People

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Okinaga Tarashi Hime

Homuda Wake

Takechi no Sukune

Ō Naka tsu Hime

Prince Kakosaka Hiko

Prince Oshikuma

Kurami Wake and Isachi no Sukune

Take Furukuma

Kuma no Kori

Izasa Wake no Ōkami

Tarashi Hime's Campaign:

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