The Emergence of Japanese Kingship [1 ed.] 0804728321, 9780804728324

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THE EMERGENCE OF JAPANESE KINGSHIP K Joan R. Piggott

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

Acknowledgments A GREAT CLOUD OF WITNESSES has informed the development of this book. The works of some five hundred scholars have contributed notably to it. An international battery of more than twenty readers varying in persuasion and concentration has reviewed and critiqued the manuscript. I have had the rare opportunity to consider each and every suggestion and complaint, and have welcomed the chance to react constructively before the book's appearance in print. I have been enabled in this endeavor by my teachers and my col­ leagues, who have directed, corrected, cajoled, and consoled along the way. I am deeply grateful for their continuing encouragement. Special thanks are due the Japan Foundation, Cornell University, and Shiryo hensanjo at Tokyo University, who have made this study possible, and to my support team: Kyoko Selden; Akiko Takenaka; David DeMello; Andrew Lewis; Jane Dieckmann; the staffs of Cornell's libraries. History Depart­ ment, and East Asia Program; and my husband and partner Arnie Olds, who, in addition to all else, illustrated and designed the book. Commenda­ tions for extraordinary perseverance and patience are due Ishigami Eiichi and Araki Toshio, who have been my steadfast companions in the naviga­ tion of the treacherous straits between our native languages and logics. Next come Muriel Bell, Nathan MacBrien, and Rob Ehle of Stanford Uni­ versity Press, who have pulled it into its final shape. In the end, Lwant to express my enduring appreciation to the two who, in addition to my parents, have been with me from the start of it all, my husband Arnie and my mentor Jeff Mass. Thanks to all.

J.R.P.

Contents Introduction

1.

Himiko, Paramount of Wa

i 15

2. Yuryaku, Great King

44

3. Suiko, Heavenly Heir and Polestar Monarch

66

4. Tenji, Fortress Monarch

iq2

5. Temmu and Jits, Stem Dynasts and Divine Kings

xtj

(i.

Great Kings and Rifsuryo Law

167

7.

ShSmu Terms, Servant of the Buddha

236

Epilogue

280

Appendix:

A Catalogue of Major Source Documents and Collections

287

Glossary

305

Notes

331

Bibliography

393

Index

424

Illustrations Maps 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The provinces of Japan in the eighth century The China Sea interaction sphere Regions and selected sites of Wa The coalescent core Early capitals and palaces The Jinshin war The Fujiwara and Nara capitals

xii 2 18 4® 84 130 136

8. 9.

The Nara capital Eighth-century provinces and circuits

190 242

Figures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

A logical representation of Japanese state origins A comparative periodization of China, Korea, and Japan The round keyhole tomb hierarchy Selected Yamato royal genealogy in the official annals Configuring the court; Ranking systems, 603-701 The development of Buddhist prelacy The Council of State and the Eight Ministries The Ritsuryd post and rank systems The Nara palace in the later eighth century Ordering the realm: Provincial administration in Mino The tribute system in the eighth century Bureaucratic adaptation Selected genealogy of the Fujiwara The Chinese-style benkan, crown of the Heavenly Sovereign Membership in the Council of State Todaiji in the late eighth century

10 16 3^ 68 86 94 178 180 192 196 200 246 248 250 264 270

THE EMERGENCE OF JAPANESE KINGSHIP

Map 1. The provinces of Japan in the eighth century

MUTSU

Shlnkiwa) Barrier

ECHICO

5HM0I %

KtSZUXf nCHO

Sea ofJapan

SHtHANO

dtM/l [

\hitacm

MUSASHI

HIDA eCHIZEN

MINO

INAfl/U

IZUMt

y? /

J

xtOrOftw

HI Jif,mMAKAl HARIMA

honshO

[SMne

•sizir

YAMASHIRO

BINGO

TSUSHIMA SM Kinal fteslon

Pacific Ocean

Usa Hachlman

SHIKOKU HIZEN BUNCO HYOCA

KYUSHU a; Temple

n Shrine

The provinces were established and their bour^dries set in the later seventh and eighth centuries. However, retrospective attribution of their names to the regions that they occupied has been a useful practice. In this book the names, without the designation 'province,"will be so used.

Introduction It is written in the chronicle of Wei that in the third century a paramount known as Himiko ruled a chiefdom confederacy somewhere in the island land of Wa. Chinese emissaries reported that she lived in a palace with towers and stockades that were always guarded. She was skilled at theurgy and enchanted the people. X On the ninth day of the fourth lunar month of 752, Heavenly Sovereign ShSmu, Servant of the Buddha, with seventeen thousand officials and monks in attendance, dedicated the Great Buddha of TOdaiji. Bodai, an emigre monk from T'ang China, lifted his brush to paint in the eyes of the golden cosmic Buddha whose truth pierced the darkness of all time and space in Nihon, the land where the sun rises.

Between the historical strata of third-century Wa and eighth­ century Nihon lies an array of paramounts and kings variously styled King of Wa, Great King, Child of Heaven, and Heavenly Sovereign. They pre­ sided over first confederate chieftaincies, then expansive coalescent pol­ ities, and eventually the archipelago's earliest state formation. In my view, by the mid-eighth century, the monarch known as ShOmu attained the zenith of early Japanese kingship; he ruled as tennS, or "heavenly sov­ ereign," supported by a bureaucracy more than 7,000 strong in a realm configured by Chinese-style laws, the ritsuryS. Shomu's palace of unprece­ dented grandeur at Nara and monumental Temple of the Great Buddha at Tbdaiji functioned as twin stages for royal rites confirming the tennd's apical status, while provincial headquarters and official temples replicated those ritual stages across the archipelago. Although the structures of classi­ cal Japanese kingship continued to develop in subsequent centuries, the court, fisc, dynasty, and realm all assumed their basic form in Shomu's age. The purpose of this book is to illuminate processes that shaped early Japanese kingship, to identify its diacritical features, and to consider the

Map 2: The China Sea interaction sphere

INTRODUCTION

3

significance of some epochal moments along its path. My methodology is one I term an "archaeology of kingship." Beginning with the proposition that modes of kingship and political formation must be investigated in tandem, I cut temporal cross sections analogous to an archaeologist's trenches to expose artifacts from seven historical epochs. Data come from the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese written records and from archaeology, providing multiple arrays of evidence and rich contextualization within which every artifact can be placed and evaluated. This archaeology of kingship reflects my own stance as a professional historian. My job as such is like that of an ethnographer; I spend a lot of time in the "field," living with people of a different place and time, learning their ways, and speaking their language. The historian's field is nothing other than the experience of immersion in the corpora of docu­ ments and artifacts, resulting in the fullest possible familiarity with the preponderance of evidence, the extant remains of a time and place. At the same lime the historian needs critical and interpretive faculties developed by broad reading and comparative reflection. A key objective of this project has been countering the ahistoricity that characterizes much scholarship concerning early Japanese kingship. I have also sought to broaden the geographical and disciplinary contexts within which kingship on the Japanese archipelago is examined. As long as evi­ dence was limited to that provided by historical narratives such as the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, ahistoricity was inevitable—these myth-histories compiled in the eighth century trace the rule of Heavenly Sovereigns and their realm of Nihon back to a hoary past in prehistory. Certainly reference to the Kojiki and Nihon shoki is necessary for study of early Japanese history, but it is only when such narratives are reread in the light of evidence from archaeology, from continental history, and from comparative ethnohistorical research that new scenarios tracing the diachronic emergence of paramount rulership can be formulated. In employing such myth-historical narrative sources I have been ever mindful of the need to subject them to the best methods of criticism, investigation, and confirmation available. On the other hand, I remain mindful of Susanne Hoeber Rudolph's ad­ vice to those who would study state formation in Asia, urging us "to create theoretical frameworks that combine a demystified, rationalist world view with an understanding of the phenomenology of the symbolic in societies where the gods have not yet died."’ There are also increasing calls for more and better studies of the origins and operation of complex society in Asia, from Asianists and Western scholars who recognize the need for compara­ tive data from Asia.^ Fortunately, political and cultural anthropologists, historical sociologists, archaeologists, and researchers in such new inter-

4

INTRODUCTION

disciplinary fields as ritual and gender studies have provided suggestive new paradigms for my work. Superb ethnohistorical studies by K. C. Chang, Christine Gailey, Stanley Tambiah, Elizabeth Brumfiel, and Randall Packard provided useful models for the project, which I mean to serve as a meaningful contribution to world historical studies. I recognized early that the processes by which kings are made are intimately associated with those by which social complexity and state for­ mation proceed. Jack Goody, whose edited volume Succession to Hi^h Office proved extremely useful for the analysis of dynastic kingship, makes the point as follows:

The nature of this domination exercised by the ruling dynasty varies with the nature of the resources controlled, and hence with the pro­ ductive (economic) and destructive (military) systems. Therefore, the "power" of kingship varies too; there is no given quantity of authority attached to all kingships. And there are clearly limitations to the cen­ tral control of force when the military technology is based upon the bow and arrow, or agriculture upon shifting as distinct from hydraulic cultivation. So that it is not simply the uniqueness of high office that matters; there is also the functional aspect, the powers it wields, ritual, mediatory, judicial. And these factors necessarily influence the nature of the struggle for office, although even ritual offices produce their complement of succession conflicts.^

Paradigms of early state formation are currently the subject of lively de­ bate.^ My reflections on the processes, nature, and chronology of early state formation on the archipelago are contributions to an ongoing discussion, a brief on whose key issues is useful here. Western studies on early Japanese state formation began with studies by Paul Wheatley and Thomas See, and Cornelius Kiley. Wheatley and See traced the development of "ceremonial centers" from palace court to capi­ tal city, while Kiley explored early dynastic formation in terms of Mizuno Yu's theories of dynastic discontinuity between the third and sixth cen­ turies.® Archaeologist Gina Barnes locates her study of state formation in fifth-century Yamato within a broad East Asian context. She distinguishes the emergence of an early "territorial hierarchy" from the later, vertically integrated state formation of the seventh and eighth centuries.® Barnes's discussion provides us with a more nuanced vocabulary for key issues of social complexity, but in my view the relationships and structures compos­ ing territorial hierarchy and their change through time require still further elucidation. In Japan Tsude Hiroshi has proposed a new periodization for early

INTRODUCTION

5

state formation: he regards the great keyhole tombs constructed from the third to the sixth centuries as monuments of an early state capable of collecting taxes, enforcing corvee levies, assembling a bureaucracy, and controlling trade. Tsude rejects the orthodox Marxist definition of "the state" (kokka) as a centralized, coercive, territorial entity that enslaves its subjects in the interests of a non-kinship-based managerial elite. He ar­ gues that in the Japanese case kinship remained a primary bonding mecha­ nism even as the early state matured in the eighth century.^ Whether one agrees with his chronology and characterization of the early state—I do not in full—Tsude has taken a clear position against which others, including myself, can define their own views. In the chapters that follow I integrate a number of Tsude's insights into my own analysis of changing relations between regional polities and the Yamato core and its kings over six centuries. During that time the keyhole tomb hierarchy was replaced by the ritsuryO hierarchy of central places, and replicas of capital palaces replaced keyhole tombs as architectonic markers of the core's preeminence. An important tool enabling this dia­ chronic analysis is a periodization of political development along a trajec­ tory bridging discontinuous and continuous administrative hierarchy.® I agree with Suzuki Yasutami, who has recently proposed defining the early state as "a hierarchical political formation with a reasonably centered com­ mand structure and unified culture."^ In what follows I elucidate specific processes by which paramounts and kings gradually constructed a reason­ ably centered command structure and unified culture integrating most of the archipelago as "Nihon," realm where the sun rises. I also consider the decentered nature of state formation on the archipelago and the important roles played by "peer polities" outside mid-Honshti.^° The origins of Japanese kingship have been little explored in Western historiography. D. C. Holtom, Robert Ellwood, G. Cameron Hurst, and Felicia Bock have discussed Heian (794-1180) developments, but their re­ search is not focused on the tenno in Nara times, let alone the foregoing emergence of protohistoric Great Kings. Even in Japan few historians ven­ tured into study of the prehistoric and protohistoric epochs until recently. An exceptional scholar who did ponder the long sweep of emergent kingship was Ishimoda Sho, whose classic The Ancient Polity ofJapan {Nihon no kodai kokka) was published in 1971. Having read broadly not only in Japanese history but in Western classical historiography and the ethnogra­ phy of the South Pacific, Ishimoda postulated that the monarchical office of the tennS owed its distinctive character to structures and practices of pre­ historic and protohistoriechieftaincy, glimpses of which could be found in eighth-century myth-histories, gazetteers, and literary compilations. He

6

INTRODUCTION

reasoned that both prehistoric chieftains and historical tenno drew much of their authority from the same sacral and diplomatic realms. Understand­ ing the tennS, he insisted, necessitated study of earlier chieftains?^ Subsequent scholarship in Japan has built on Ishimoda's hypotheses, although historians—who see themselves primarily as scholars of the writ­ ten record—have continued to work at the late end of the chronological trajectory. Yoshida Takashi in particular has concentrated on rulership and state in the eighth century. Applying insights from anthropological theory and Chinese history, Yoshida has urged analysis of Chinese structures in their original locus followed by comparison with acculturated forms in their insular environment.’^ Younger scholars such as Yoshikawa Shinji, Kobayashi Toshio, Omachi Ken, and Haruna Hiroaki have joined Yoshida in making significant contributions in these areas. Kobayashi in particular has carried on Ishimoda's project, contextualizing the emergence of Japa­ nese kingship over the longue dur^. He is also pioneering the use of new paradigms and vocabulary for describing changing patterns of relations between local, regional, and supraregional elites.’^ Although the field of early Japanese history has been inclined to reward research of depth more than that of breadth, the fact is, both breadth and depth are necessary to reconstruct any coherent vision of early Japanese kingship. In my own archaeology of kingship I track early Japanese kingship through seven epochs, concentrating on artifacts revealed by my excava­ tions and on signs of continuity or discontinuity between them. Recent archaeological finds, ongoing intensive research concerning royal ritual at the Yamato court and its continental precedents, and intensifying critical study of eighth-century narratives has made it increasingly possible to confirm, flesh out, or modify Ishimoda's hypotheses. Broad reading out­ side Japanese studies has suggested new paradigms for investigating modes of subordination, hierarchy building, and the integration of core and periphery. Particularly useful has been Louis Dumont's critical dis­ tinction between hierarchies of status and power. I argue that during the six centuries under consideration Japanese paramounts consistently pre­ sided over hierarchies of status rather than hierarchies of power—the latter remained emergent and imperfectly developed even in the fenn^-centered state of the eighth century. Kings were apical rather than autocratic, and their major focus was creation and maintenance of a hierarchy of status and prestige over which they officiated as "kings of kings." In utilizing broad comparative reading my goal has not been to apply one or two "master theories" to the Japanese data. Rather, I have assem­ bled a toolbox of paradigms with their associated vocabularies that prove helpful in organizing and reading configurations of artifacts at hand. In­

INTRODUCTION

7

spiration has come from state-formation studies, archaeology, religious sociology, and ritual theory. I have benefited specifically from models de­ veloped by researchers studying kingship, courtly societies, and early state formation across the globe. Particularly useful have been insights into the nature and operation of segmentary and galactic polities by Aidan Southall and Stanley Tambiah, and discussions by Ronald Cohen and Pierre Bourdieu of social and cultural processes by which social relations of sub­ ordination and dependence are nurtured. Norbert Elias's paradigm of court society provides a host of clues to means by which Yamato para­ mounts established hierarchical relations within their entourages and how such relations contributed progressively to tauter bonds between core and periphery. Clifford Geertz's paradigm of the "exemplary center" and "the­ ater state" helps explicate the importance of ritual and cosmology for Great Kings and Heavenly Sovereigns, or tenno, although how rituals performed at the ceremonial center succeeded in impressing countryside elites re­ quires extending Geertz's model. Finally, Antonio Gramsci's formulations of cultural hegemony and the workings of a historical bloc contain clues to the success of the tennd's rule in the absence of conquest. Although Gram­ sci himself would have been surprised to see his ideas applied in this premodem context, in fact they prove apt. These new paradigms and their nuanced vocabulary have made it possible to reject old terms too long left unproblematized.’* In that regard I argue that what scholars term the "cen­ tralized archaic state"—that is, the fully vertically integrated state—did not appear in Japan during the centuries spanned by this study. On the other hand, the rigid notion embraced by Johnson and Earle in The Evolution of Human Societies, that Japan's earliest state formation dates only from the seventeenth century, is clearly mistaken and requires redress.^® It would have us ignore substantial political, social, and cultural developments over almost two millennia. Determining categories for a diachronic analysis of early Japanese kingship presented a challenge. Henri Frankfort's classic study of seven key aspects of Egyptian kingship—the cosmology of kingship, the king's person, the king's rule (law), royal potency (sacrality), royal ceremonial, royal genealogy, and succession—provided a model.^^ As my project took shape, however, I found the data clustering around four fundamental structures comprising the insular royal office: court, fisc, dynasty, and realm. Not every point of every trajectory is evident. Still, the emergence of an ever more specialized and majestic ceremonial center, a wealthier and more integrated royal fisc, an earlier corporate and later stem dynasty, and an expanding sense of a universal realm embracing much of the archi­ pelago can all be pieced together from careful consideration of artifacts

8

INTRODUCTION

exposed through seven consecutive excavations. By assembling what we can know, a mosaic of early rulership spanning the third through the eighth centuries takes shape. In particular, continuities in the nature of paramount leadership—including the importance of royal preeminence in managing foreign relations, trade, cult, and ritual activities—reveal them­ selves with vivid clarity. Early historians frequently lament the incomplete record with which they must work, but the corpus of evidence for this project is extensive. The earliest written sources are official Chinese records dating from the late third century onward. Archaeological evidence comes from a land­ scape filled with chiefly and royal tombs whose dispersion, contents, and hierarchy of size provides an array of data to supplement the written record. In recent decades a number of inscriptions have also been dis­ covered on artifacts excavated from such tombs. To these can be added official historical narratives compiled in the eighth century, and approx­ imately 10,000 eighth-century records brushed on paper that were pre­ served in the royal treasure house known as the ShOsoin. The advent of the computer age facilitated compilation of a database cataloging a representa­ tive selection of the latter, allowing unprecedentedly broad overview, re­ call, and quantification. And when these documents on paper are exam­ ined in conjunction with tens of thousands of memoranda, brief reports, and shipping tags written on wood during the seventh and eighth cen­ turies, a remarkably clear vision of the structures and practices of early kingship becomes possible. Readers will note that throughout the book I eschew the usual English translation, emperor, for tennO. Instead I use a more literal translation for its two Chinese characters, which together can be taken to mean "heavenly sovereign." TennO has been translated as emperor in the West because of the assumption of strong parallels between Chinese and Japanese kingship: since there was a Chinese emperor, there must also have been a Japanese emperor. In fact, however, structures of paramount leadership in the two societies have taken very different forms. I also argue that the translation of tennS as emperor is problematic because the term empire is strongly asso­ ciated with a martial political formation founded on conquest—consider the imperial states of Rome, Persia, and China 5’’ In contrast, the tennO of eighth-century Nihon did not conquer his realm, he had no standing army save some frontier forces, and the realm remained significantly segmented rather than vertically subjugated. Although the threat of foreign invasion and the ensuing defensive mobilization in the late seventh century were certainly catalytic, I find no evidence that mechanical means, including specifically military coercion, constituted a significant factor in the forma­

INTRODUCTION

9

tion of Japan's classical ten«5-centered state. And I remain unconvinced by those who insist that such evidence was simply left unrecorded. Those who shaped the office of the tenno did take as their model struc­ tures of Chinese monarchy. Indeed I will argue that as far back as the fifth century insular elites began assimilating the sinic concept of the royal realm as "all under heaven/' tenka. Still, historical circumstances shaping insular rulership varied dramatically from those on the continent. Thus did Yamato king-makers call their monarch by the distinctive title tennd, "Heavenly Sovereign," rather than tenshi, "Son of Heaven." Terms such as empire, emperor, and imperial are not appropriate for the Japanese context, and I do not use them. Furthermore, in the study of Japanese kingship that follows we will remark both differences from as well as similarities to Chinese-style monarchy. In the West kingship studies have been of particular interest to histo­ rians of religion, and those who have studied Japanese kingship would agree that in contrast with warrior kings in early Western Europe, paramoimt rulers of the Japanese archipelago exhibit a distinctly sacral charac­ ter. To use A. M. Hocart's lexicon, they were "sky kings" rather than "earth kings."^® James George Frazer, however, described a wide variety of sacral rulers: rainmakers, diviners, royal healers, shamans, and those identified with nature who faced death in the case of lagging efficacy. C. G. Seligman once spedfically defined-a "divine king" as "one who has power over nature, exercised voluntarily or involuntarily; one who is believed to be the dynamic centre of the universe, whose action and course of life affects the well-being of this universe so that it can be carefully regulated; one who is killed when powers fade so that the world does not fall into decay."^’ Noting the confusion, Audrey Richards has urged formulation of a taxon­ omy of sacral kingship, and Robert Ellwood, who himself published a study of royal enthronement rites in Japan, suggested a typology dif­ ferentiating the "totally divine king" of Egypt, from the "ethnarch or divine vicar-mediator with the gods" of Babylonia, from contrapuntal ceremonial-and-administrative kings in Polynesia, from the "Altaic pat­ tern" of China and Japan. According to the latter, the king was a shaman who descended from heaven with heaven's mandate.^® I am interested in such questions as how and why were Japanese kings sacral, and to what extent their sacrality was constant through time. Ishimoda Sho's analysis provides few clues for resolving such issues. He re­ mained satisfied with static references to chieftains, Yamato Great Kings, and terms as wielders of "magic" {Jujutsu), by which they were seen to as­ sure the prosperity of the community. Nor has subsequent historiography engaged the issue. A recent restatement of Ishimoda's view by Kobayashi

Figure 1. A logical representation of Japanese state origins

Ingredients Necessary for State Formation

Replication of China/Japan Dynamic

INTRODUCTION

11

Toshio observed, "Great Kings and chieftains were godly beings who pro­ tected their society."^^ We can do better. Through the story that follows I trace the course of insular kingship spanning the third through sixth centuries from theurgic to martial modes. Then I contend that under increasing pressure from the continent at the turn of the seventh century, the trajectory of warrior kingship was rejected in favor of more unifying and stable rule by a sacerdotal monarch; and that thereafter, as Buddhism and other continental influences nurtured new idioms of royal sacrality, an ideology of divine kingship came to invest the sacerdotal tennS in the late seventh century. This argument is more than one about ideology and iconography: modes of kingship affected struc­ tures of rule, and were themselves affected by processes and conditions of state formation. If the longue duree is important, so is the international context, specifi­ cally that of the China Sea interaction sphere, where the influence of Chi­ nese and Korean political forms and the macrohistory of East Asia is taken into account. Queen Himiko's confederation was as maritime as it was terrestrial. Her reign and realm were buffeted by ceaseless influences from the continent, and in the centuries-long course of Japanese kingship for which her reign as paramount provides an initial chapter, relations with the continent ceaselessly affected the construction of kingship across the archipelago. In analyzing the data that inform this study I developed the following model, which I term "Japan as a secondary state formation within the Chinese sphere of influence." Figure i presents a logical representation of that model, and a review of the model provides a useful prolegomenon for ensuing chapters in this archaeology of kingship. Chinese relations with neighboring polities had two goals: order in the realm and peace on the borders. Order in the realm depended on maintain­ ing a social hierarchy with the Son of Heaven at its apex and every signifi­ cant political player in his place. Deference upward and responsibility downward, as well as the payment of tribute upward and redistribution downward, sustained this hierarchy. Peace on the borders was accom­ plished by making bordering polities into tributary states. The threat po­ tential of these tributary states was neutralized by meddling if practical, by invasion, subjugation, and annexation when necessary and possible. Chinese emperors enhanced the imperial institution by recognizing and accepting delegations, tribute, deference, and requests for official titles, trade charters, and military support. In return, on the borders of the "Middle Kingdom," tributary kings enhanced their own royal institutions by accepting imperial sponsorship in the form of appointments and char-

12

INTRODUCTION

ters, gifts, directives and advice, trade, and delegations. Geography, politi­ cal and physical, was central to the dynamic of tributary relations. The heaviness of the imperial hand was directly proportional to the perceived threat posed by a given border polity. The Chinese considered the people of Wa a peaceful folk, proprietors of safe harbors in the midst of fierce seas on a remote perimeter of the Middle Kingdom. Under their paramounts they welcomed Chinese emissaries, sought imperial charter for their paramount, and sent embassies to the Middle Kingdom bearing respectful memorials and symbolic tribute. To Wa paramounts, China was an awe-inspiring source of goods and technologies, for which paramounts functioned as monopolist conduits of transmission. Within Wa itself the patron-client relationship between Chi­ nese emperor and tributary paramount was replicated by relations be­ tween paramount and subordinate chieftains. Yet these emerging patterns of relationship were also shaped by and compelled to take into account the topography of these precipitous volcanic islands. In Wa, the small amount of arable land was concentrated in the alluvial bottoms of narrow valleys, and on the alluvial plains and basins where such valleys converged. It was on the larger of these alluvial zones where significant populations accumu­ lated. Transportation beyond the confines of the plains was dependent on the sea, because wheeled transport across the intervening mountains was beyond the engineering capabilities of the time. As increasing population strained agricultural capacity and competi­ tion over trade routes broke out, military skirmishes became more preva­ lent, especially on the plains where the domains of several chieftains were contiguous; agricultural systems more complex and vulnerable; and coop­ eration to assure trade routes more critical. Confederation—for conflict reduction and to expand available resources—resulted. By the late third century an early supraregional chiefdom confederacy arose in Yamato in central Honshu. The leaders of this confederacy probably controlled the maritime conduit from the Sea of Japan to China and its tributaries on the Korean peninsula, and thus the material and political benefits of contact with the mainland. By the fifth century collateral confederate rulers in mid-Honshu had formed a coalescent polity under Great Kings; and regional leaders beyond this central zone were attracted to this confederation, which now dom­ inated diplomacy and trade with the continent via the Inland Sea to Kyushu.22 The result was an increasingly complex territorial hierarchy characterized by a variety of relationships linking the Great King with chieftains across the archipelago. Imported technologies and Korean im­ migrants spurred dynamic expansion of the royal fisc while the palace of

INTRODUCTION

13

the Great King became the locus of a courtly center that progressively inte­ grated and subordinated chieftains across the realm. Great King Suiko's tum-of-the-sixth-century realm can be seen as the womb of an early state formation, but the inchoate nature of her "Heavenly court" as state center is an important qualifying fact. Increasing threats to peninsular trade and royal monopoly over foreign affairs in the sixth century, followed by fear of invasion by Chinese and Sillan forces in the late seventh century, galvanized increasing cooperation among confederate segments. These pressures catalyzed early statehood. What emerged was the tennd-centeied state, given expression in writing by a series of Chinese-style codes promulgated over several decades. These codes did not, as has often been claimed, superimpose Chinese law and Chinese-style kingship on insular chieftains. Rather, they codified pre­ existing political and social relationships, including the apical stature of the tennd, while serving as regalia of a Chinese-style state based on written law and bureaucratic forms. Indeed, in vivid contrast with Chinese histor­ ical experience, in the archipelago women frequently served as tennd, just as they had earlier served as paramounts and Great Kings. Successive Heavenly Sovereigns ruled at increasingly majestic courts at Kiyomihara, Fujiwara, and Nara; yet they possessed no standing army with which to integrate the realm or enforce their will. Thus the emergence of the ritsuryo polity presided over by the tennd represented not the estab­ lishment of a "centralized" state but rather the forging of what actually resembled a Gramscian "historical bloc" by chieftains of the coalescent core and chieftains of distant segments. Together they agreed on the apical status of the tennd as preeminent ruler of Nihon, an independent and "heavenly" realm that no longer rendered tribute to any continental court. Instead, Nihon's Heavenly Sovereign had tributaries of his own. By the mid-eighth century, as Shomu Tenno (r. 724-49) responded to a variety of crises both at the core and in more distant provinces, he and his Fujiwara lieutenants reinforced the historical bloc by expanding both the official Buddhist cult and provincial administration. I will argue here that Shomu's reign as sage king, manifest deity, and servant of the Buddha— which saw the construction of lodaiji in Nara—represented the zenith of a long process of king-making and state formation in early Japan.

Japanese colleagues are bemused by the scope of this book. Why, they ask, should a single scholar undertake a study spanning six centuries? The most basic answer is the undeveloped state of the field of early Japanese history in the English historiography. Lacking a scholarly context for this

14

INTRODUCTION

Study, I have provided my own. But there are other reasons for a historian to take up the longue duree. As Fernand Braudel argued, historians are responsible for revealing the historical trajectory, a task for which the study of the short term is ill suited:

When a sociologist tells us that a structure breaks down only in order to build itself up afresh, we are happy to accept an explanation which historical observation would confirm anyway. But we would wish to know the precise time span of these movements, whether positive or negative, situated along the usual axis. An economic cycle, the ebb and flow of material life, can be measured. A structural social crisis should be equally possible to locate in time, and through it. We should be able to place it exactly, both in itself and even more in relation to the move­ ment of associated structures. What is profoundly interesting to the historian is the way these movements cross one another, and how they interact, and how they break up: all things which can be recorded only in relation to the uniform time of historians, which can stand as a general measure of all these phenomena.“

Neither Braudel nor I is arguing for "grand-sweeping" historiography that ignores details. Braudel has written extensively about different histor­ ical epochs and their interlocking importance. His message, with which I agree, is that "nitty-gritty" research must be placed within a broader framework, so that longer trajectories become clear. Much that the Annalistes have termed "the human sciences" can be brought to bear on that ef­ fort. Moreover, in order for the study of Japanese kingship to enhance our understanding of kingship and state formation across the globe, breadth and depth are both needed, and more than a dash of comparative perspec­ tive to bridge the worlds of historiography East and West. What follows is my contribution to that endeavor.

I

1 Himiko, Paramount ofWa Our earliest images of rulership in the Japanese archipelago emerge in official dynastic histories from China. The fifth-century Chinese histor­ ical compendium known as the Records of Wei (Wei chih) reports that in the third century—during what archaeologists call Japan's Yayoi period (300 B.c.E. to 300 c.E.)—a female ruler known as Himiko reigned over 22 "countries" somewhere in the island land of Wa: The people of Wa live in the middle of the sea on mountainous islands southeast of Tai-fang. Of old there were one hundred countries and during the Han dynasty their emissaries appeared at [the Han] court. Now some thirty communities maintain relations with us.... The country had a king [wang], but then for some seventy or eighty years there was war, and the people agreed upon a queen [nii-wang] as their ruler. Her name was Himiko. She was skilled at theurgy and enchanted the people. Though mature in age, she remained unmar­ ried. She had a younger brother who helped rule the country. After she became queen, few saw her. She was served by a thousand female servants while one man gave her food and drink and acted as her steward. She lived in a palace with towers and stockades where there were always armed guards in attendance.^ Society in Wa, as the Chinese termed at least part of the archipelago in the third century was said to be vertically stratified. Among the 22 countries, Yamatai had the densest population, and the queen's agents were said to collect tribute, manage markets, and conduct diplomatic relations for the confederacy. Queen Himiko herself is described as a theurgic ruler who "enchanted the people" and kept the peace while remaining cloistered in her fortified palace. A younger brother oversaw affairs outside the royal residence. The locations of Himiko's stronghold and her own prosperous country of Yamatai are still debated, but scholars have generally located them ei­ ther in the westernmost island, Kyushu, or in the mid-HonshU region that

Figure 2. A comparative periodization of China, Korea, and japan

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4 :|

S

I }■ y

Korean periodization after Gina L. Barnes

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

17

came later to be known as Yamato (see Map 3). And although there are some researchers who question the dependability of the ethnological ob­ servations in the Wei chih, specialists who have examined the growing body of archaeological evidence have become increasingly convinced that the Chinese reports faithfully portrayed many aspects of mid- to late Yayoi society and polity? I propose to explicate below how the archaeological record and clues from mythology and local lore in later texts contribute to our vision of paramount leadership and confederate polity in the archipelago of Queen Himiko's day, and to review the Wei chih narrative concerning Queen Himiko in its international context—Himiko's Wa and her role as para­ mount took form within what I call "the China Sea interaction sphere," in which the influence of China was extremely strong. Inquiry into the forma­ tion and character of Himiko's chiefly league will include examination of the archaeological and written records in light of a growing body of an­ thropological and archaeological research concerning the emergence of territorial hierarchy and sociopolitical complexity. In my view it is impera­ tive to problematize the tendency in contemporary historiography to refer to Himiko's league as a "tribal alliance" {buzoku rengStai) or an "early state" {shoteki kokka) without inquiry into its structure and operation. I will take up Queen Himiko's dual role as chief-of-state in the eyes of Chinese emissaries and as theurgic sacral paramount in the eyes of subordinates at home. The last section of the chapter is devoted to the emergence of a supraregional alliance of chiefdoms within decades of the queen's death. Our best clues to the existence and nature of that alliance derive from an architectonic landscape of round keyhole-shaped tombs that rose in midHonshu in the late third century and spread eastward and westward dur­ ing the fourth century. I call this landscape the "round keyhole tomb hi­ erarchy." Throughout, my objective is to identify paradigmatic cultural schemes of early paramountcy in Wa that will provide the baseline for subsequent diachronic analysis of rulership in protohistoric and early his­ torical Japan.

Himiko's Realm: The Archaeological Record On the basis of excavation of an increasing number of Yayoi-period hamlet sites distributed over the western archipelago, archaeologists hypothesize that each of the 22 kuni or "countries" in Himiko's confederacy consisted of a hierarchy of hamlets at the apex of which was the seat of a chieftain.’ Each such hamlet hierarchy is viewed as a kinship-based, wet-rice production

C/i/ba

Map 3. Regions and selected sites of Wa

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

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unit that expanded—largely by fission and colonization—over a riparian drainage area to meet the hydraulic needs of wet-rice agriculture. Over the last decade researchers have also begun to consider the conical clan {ensuikei} as a key feature of social organization in these hamlet hierarchies.* Elaborating on the archaeological record, Kondo Yoshiro has observed that the evolution of successful wet-rice culture forced major adaptations in lifestyle and social organization that, once begun, promoted ever greater reliance on rice and greatly affected Yayoi social organization.^ Working together, archaeologists and historians have posited the following sce­ nario: as Yayoi farmers moved inland from the swampy land where they initially sowed rice to higher ground, they began to dig drainage canals for their fields, in time developing semi-wet paddies like those at the wellknown Toro site in Shizuoka. They also constructed irrigation ditches from nearby streams.® Since individual small hamlets of 25 to 50 residents could not provide adequate workers for the needed hydraulic projects, several hamlets joined together to perform the tasks of rice cultivation. Coordinat­ ing such efforts required the authority of a chieftain—modem scholars have coined the term shucho to denote such chiefs—whose duties included religious and diplomatic affairs.^ As new hamlets were opened by "colo­ nizers" from earlier hamlets, a territorial hierarchy came into being. Over time, social organization within these territorial hierarchies became in­ creasingly complex. Researchers posit that the small Yayoi "countries" mentioned in Chinese sources of the early centuries c.e., including those described in the Wei chih, were the result.® Despite these archaeological advances there remains a tendency to­ ward vagueness in characterizations of Himiko's polity. Kito Kiyoaki, for instance, calk it a "tribal alliance," while Ueda Masaaki calls it "an early state."’ Meanwhile, neither typology has been convincingly elaborated or defended. The written record is admittedly sketchy, but in recent decades political anthropologists have contributed a significant body of compara­ tive data and theory to our understanding of processes by which pre­ historic sociopolitical complexity—the formation and organization of ter­ ritorial hierarchies, broadly termed chi^doms—advanced. An examination of case studies from other parts of the world can, I believe, provide clues for the prehistoric archipelago as well.'® Representative scholarship on chiefdoms includes that of Robert Carneiro, who defines the chiefdom as the simplest, earliest social organiza­ tion having political hierarchy, territorial control, social ranking, and a redistributive economy. A chiefdom is, he says, "an autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief."”

20

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

Pressing further into issues of social structure and process. Sherry Ortner found Polynesian chiefdoms to have hierarchical social organiza­ tions in which "'categories of persons are ranked or graded according to criteria of social or religious value that transcends immediate political and economic realities." They are "prestige societies" in which the basis for a chief's political authority is his mana, by which he is seen to control the forces of nature. In such a setting, redistribution is a fundamental obliga­ tion of chieftaincy—"it displays both his power ... to command resources from a wide group, and his qualities of leadership, in the sense that his wide distributions appear as generosity, and as concern for the welfare of the whole."’2 Ortner found that social practices such as cognatic reckoning of descent, endogamy, female inheritance, and minimal emphasis on mari­ tal relations characterized social practice in Polynesian chiefdoms. Timo­ thy Earle adds that society in chiefdoms is organized around conical clans, with sacerdotal chiefs controlling strategic resources and preserving status through sumptuary rules. The present scholarly consensus is that, as Earle recently stunmed it up, the chiefdom represents an evolutionary bridge be­ tween acephalous societies and bureaucratic states, and that it can be iden­ tified archaeologically by its production of monumental architecture, ceremonial centers, differentiated burials, and distinct settlement hierarchy.^’ A recently discovered site at Yoshinogari in KyushQ's Saga prefecture is thought to have been the seat of a hierarchy of hamlets that thrived from the first century b.c.e. to the fourth century c.E. Extensive excavations there have revealed a double-moated settlement with an impressive adja­ cent mounded tomb dating from the first century b.c.e. Artifacts found in and near the moated zone indicate that weaving, bead making, and bronze casting were performed. Grain storehouses judged significantly larger than those found elsewhere are thought to have housed rice collected as tribute from subordinate settlements over which Yoshinogari's chief pre­ sided in the first through third centuries c.E. The central pit of Yoshino­ gari's chiefly burial mound was found to contain an unusual bronze dag­ ger similar to models found in Korea and glass beads imported from south China. This mound and its adjacent elite cemetery bear witness to a signifi­ cant degree of social stratification differentiating rulers and nonrulers as well as to Yoshinogari's engagement in international trade by the first century b.c.e. In some cases, bodies of those interred in the commoners' cemetery were missing skulls and had bones pierced by arrows, suggest­ ing that they died violently in battle. Since no signs of metalworking have been found at neighboring smaller hamlets, archaeologists posit that the chieftain's seat at Yoshinogari dominated metal technology in a hamlet hi­ erarchy.^* Furthermore, Yoshinogari's deep pillar holes suggest that its

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

21

double-moated precincts had lookout towers similar to those described at Himiko's palace in the Records ofWei}^ There seems little doubt that within the double-moated precincts at Yoshinogari presided a leader—a chieftain—whose remains were even­ tually enshrined at the center of the nearby mounded tomb. Yoshinogari is thus seen to have been the apical settlement in a hamlet hierarchy, a kuni, that already flourished in the first century ». c. e . and employed diplomacy, trade, metallurgy, and a chiefly cult to maintain preeminence over subordi­ nate hamlets in the early centuries of the common era.’® If the Yayoi-period "countries" described in the Wei chih were ham­ let hierarchies bonded by hydraulic and metalworking needs as well as chiefly coordination, what sorts of circumstances might have led to the establishment of Himiko's league of hamlet hierarchies? Political anthro­ pologist Ronald Cohen argues that increasing political complexity results when autonomous entities are exposed to competitive contact with a pri­ mary state or extensive warfare. Heroic figures emerge as charismatic leaders of denser and more defensible settlements. In turn, denser settle­ ments incorporate less defensible acephalous units into territorial hierar­ chies. Sooner or later chieftains are called on to exercise expanded author­ ity to resolve social crises caused by increasing density. At that moment, chiefly title—which was originally based on claims to seniority in kinship society—must be revalidated in order to legitimize the chieftain's authority over non-kin.’^ Such revalidation, according to Cohen, frequently takes the form of elaborating religious functions once performed by local leaders of kin­ based communities. He puts it this way: What was previously a set of beliefs concerned with fertility of land and people, of rectitude sanctioned and defended by the people, the ancestors, and the spirits of a locality, now becomes state religion whose avowed purpose is to provide sanctions for the legitimacy of the ruler, his duties to his people and they to him, and for his capacity to contact and intercede with the supernatural for their behalf.’®

Taboos, regalia, and rites of succession, installation, and burial come to add majesty and mystery to the person and office of the chieftain; the revali­ dated chieftain in the territorial hierarchy thus assumes the figure of a sacerdotal ruler. In time, according to Cohen's reconstruction, additional social needs arise in the denser settlement that occupies the apex of a territorial hier­ archy. Although an early paramount might reign primarily by resort to religious claims, the need to provide for a common defense or to allocate

22

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natural resources eventually leads to tribute collection and increased ad­ ministrative intervention downward in the hierarchy. A more elaborate "ceremonial center/' to use Paul Wheatley's terms, takes form at the chief­ tain's seat. Such centers were, according to Wheatley,

political, social, economic, sacred [and other] spaces, at the same time as they were symbols of cosmic, social, political and moral order. Un­ der the religious authority of divine monarchs and organized priest­ hoods, they elevated the redistributive and mobilizative modes of eco­ nomic integration to positions of regional dominance, functioned as nodes in webs of administered trade, and served as foci of craft spe­ cialization. . . . Above all they embodied the aspirations of brittle, pyramidal societies in which, typically, a sacerdotal elite, controlling a corps of officials and a palace guard, ruled over a peasantry whose business it was to produce a fund of rent which could be absorbed into the reservoir of resources controlled by the masters of the ceremonial center.^’ While Cameiro and Cohen would both stress the importance of threats and dangers as selective factors propelling increasing social complexity (hierarchy), archaeologist Colin Renfrew argues that a broader array of interactions must be considered. Renfrew developed his peer polity inter­ action paradigm to evaluate "the full range of interchanges taking place (including imitation and emulation, competition, warfare, and the ex­ change of material goods and of information) between autonomous (i.e. self-governing and in that sense politically independent) sociopolitical units which are situated beside or close to each other within a single geo­ graphical region, or in some cases more widely."^^ Organizational changes in one polity, Renfrew argues, will be found in a neighboring polity more or less contemporaneously because interaction results in intensification of production and the emergence of more complex decision-making hierar­ chies. Similarly, anthropologist Emmanual Terray has demonstrated how long-distance trade works as a key selective factor for increased stratifica­ tion and infrastructural complexity, while anthropologist Christine Gailey has demonstrated how the emergence of a more culturally unified chiefly stratum, through participation by chieftains in a social network of marital and cultural relations, becomes the basis for regional and subsequently supraregional confederacy.^^ By my lights these theoretical perspectives suggest trajectories of in­ creasing social complexity and territorial hierarchy on the late Yayoiperiod archipelago. As mentioned earlier, the second century witnessed increasing contacts between mid-Yayoi Wa and later Han China. Archae­

HIMIKOz PARAMOUNT OF WA

23

ologist Gina Bames has described how new "peer polities"—chiefdoms and chiefdom confederacies—sprouted dynamically on the Korean penin­ sula and in the western archipelago during the early centuries c. e . When the fall of the Han dynasty in the third century destabilized the Korean peninsula, turmoil would have increased among such peer polities, penin­ sular and insular, as Bames calls them. The large number of upland, moated, mid-Yayoi-period settlements uncovered from Kyushu to mid­ Honshu would seem to confirm reports in the Wez chih that prior to Himiko's election as queen, warfare raged in Wa. At Yoshinogari we know, for example, there are signs of warfare in the first century b.c.e., and the settlement underwent considerable expansion and defensive modification in the first and second centuries. Such efforts presumably necessitated increased intervention downward in the hamlet hierarchy in the form of tribute collection and demands for corvee and military service.^® By Himiko's time peace had been secured among most of the warring polities by the elevation of a paramount chief responsible for coordinating the common affairs of several hamlet hierarchies. Thus Himiko resided in an impressive "ceremonial center" where labor was increasingly spe­ cialized; the queen and her brother exercised contrapuntally differentiated ritual and political roles; and the paramount's control of ports, markets, and tribute collection generated wealth for redistribution, helping to keep rivals "in a state of awe and fear," as the Wei chih explained it. At the same time, continental history helps to explain critical shifts in insular historical geography during the early centuries c.e. For if, as seems likely, Kyushu polities were the hardest hit by instability on the continent and increasing warfare, it would explain why chiefly leagues situated further to the east could have enjoyed new advantages.^'’ Chieftains of such eastern leagues­ like those based in Kibi and Yamato on Honshu further up the Inland Sea— would have recognized gains to be made by joining forces to control the Inland Sea and the sea route to the continent, from which flowed the rich fruits of diplomacy and trade. We can also surmise that as iron tools spread eastward up the Inland Sea in the early centuries c.e. (we will have more to say about the key role played by this trade in iron later in the chapter) their utilization would have propelled increasing articulation of the chiefly stratum in each region. In­ deed, wherever we look in the third-century western archipelago we find impressive mounded tombs—archaeologists call them "Yayoi mounded burials" (Yayoi funkyabO). Such Yayoi mounded tombs have been found in clusters in Kibi along the Inland Sea, in northern Kyushu, and along the Sea of Japan as well. It is worth noting, however, that in the third century chiefs in different regions of the western archipelago were still being buried in

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distinctly shaped mounds. Tombs on the coast of the Sea of Japan, for instance, had four comers, while a chieftain of the Kibi area was buried in a rounded mound with a protuberance on at least one side. Monumentality varied regionally as well: the largest tomb in Yayoi Izumo, Nishitani Sango, spanned 47 meters on a side; Nishikatsurami, further up the Sea of Japan in present-day Tottori, was 65 meters on its long side; and Tatetsuki in Kibi, consisting of stones and packed earth on a natural hill, was 80 meters long. As for grave goods, Kyushu's Yoshinogari tomb-a relatively early Yayoi mounded burial from the first century B.c.E.-contained jewels and a precious dagger; Izumo's Nishitani Sango, which dates from about 100 C.E., contained votive pottery from distant regions including Hokuriku to the east and Kibi to the south. Kibi's Tatetsuki held the richest trove: an iron sword, glass beads, and other jewels that once adorned the de­ ceased, as well as a unique carved stone called the "turtle stone" and specially designed pottery for presenting funerary offerings?^ The grave contained a red dusting of precious cinnabar, thought to assure eternal life

for the interred. As chiefly mausolea grew in size they also grew in exclusivity. Kibi s Tatetsuki, in contrast to the large number of burials in Yoshinogari's chiefly tomb, glorified the persona of the chief alone, thereby witnessing the heightened status of mid- to late Yayoi chieftains. Indeed, among the later Yayoi chiefly burials it is Tatetsuki that stands out as an exemplary expres­ sion of the chieftain's preeminent status over an expanded and increas­ ingly complex territorial hierarchy, the very solidarity of which cohered around the chieftain's apical status in a structuring process Marshall Sab­ lins dubbed "hierarchical solidarity."^* Archaeologist Kondo Yoshird, who directed excavation of Tatetsuki, opines that the third-century chieftain buried there was worshipped as a deity?^ Certainly, funerary arrange­ ments requiring such huge appropriations of labor and wealth evidence what Robert Cameiro has called "mature chiefly power" presiding over extensive confederated territorial hierarchies and controlling considerable wealth in materials and labor amassed through participation in broad so­ cial networks. Furthermore, given the confluence of Tatetsuki's estimated date of construction—the mid-third century—and Himiko's own life span, Tatetsuki affords us an image of how the queen's own mausoleum might have looked,“ Queen and Enchantress: Himiko's Paramountcy The Wei chih provides us with two distinct facets of Queen Himiko's para­ mountcy. To Chinese emissaries, she was the paramount leader of a barbar­

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

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ian people and a notable constituent of the tiered tributary system that spatially ordered the Chinese universe with the "Middle Kingdom" at its center. To the people of Wa, and most particularly vis-a-vis her fellow chieftains, Himiko was a theurgist, an inspirational religious practitioner capable of "enchanting" her subjects.” These two roles, queen and en­ chantress, were the pillars of Himiko's paramountcy. That her preeminence in the realms of international diplomacy and trade empowered Queen Himiko cannot be doubted. As the Wei chih tells it, soon after being chosen paramount of the league the queen dispatched a "tribute mission" bearing gifts to the court of the Chinese Wei emperor. He replied by conferring upon her the title "Queen of Wa, friend of Wei" and sending rich gifts to serve as her regalia. This august investiture made Himiko paramount of Wa not only by election of her own people but also by appointment of the Chinese Son of Heaven, ruler of what was acknowl­ edged to be the most advanced civilization in the China Sea interaction sphere. In seeking such investiture in the 2305, Queen Himiko was following a practice adopted earlier by peninsular chieftains.®® We know from records in the Wei chih and elsewhere that chieftains in southern Korean began seeking titles and seals of authority from Chinese Han dynasts two cen­ turies earlier.®^ When chieftains in Wa began to follow suit is not certain, but one Chinese.record indicates that envoys from a Wa polity known as Na visited China in 57 c.e., and archaeological evidence substantiating that contact has been recovered.®^ Moreover, the inscribed sword found in Tbdaijisan Tomb in the Yamato region of mid-Honshu evidences relations between Wa and China during the 180s.®® By Himiko's day a few decades later, investiture (sakuhS) by the Chinese monarch was the patent needed by a non-Chinese ruler to participate in international diplomacy and trade.®* Such investiture enrolled the ruler's realm in the ecumene of Chinese civili­ zation while it confirmed the invested leader's right to redistribute the fruits gained through such relations. Of these fruits, iron ingots were the most critical to mid- to late Yayoi inhabitants of the archipelago. First produced in East Asia in the southern Chinese state of Wu around 500 b.c.e., iron goods mass-produced and widely marketed had already transformed the agricultural, economic, and military spheres of the late Chou states by the third century b.c.e.®® Iron axes and daggers, probably brought to the islands from the Korean penin­ sula, have been found in KyUshu sites dating from the late centuries b.c.e., and small smithing operations dating from the first century c.e. have been uncovered in Kyushu as well.®® The archaeological record indicates that by the last half of the second century iron tools and weapons were moving

26

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eastward up the Inland Sea and into mid-Honshu; by late Yayoi times such implements were in use in northeast Honshu?^ Since local Yayoi communities lacked significant supplies of iron ore, however, they depended on imported metal, sources of which included south China and the region known as Kaya, near present-day Pusan in southern Korea. It is not difficult to surmise that warfare preceding Himiko's rule involved competition among "peer polities" over access to iron; that such access remained a focus of Queen Himiko's diplomatic and trad­ ing policies; and that domestic distribution of imported iron ingots to con­ federates through an official system of importation and controlled mar­ keting—both noted by the Wei chih—were key prerogatives reserved to empower the paramount as she sought to assure unity and loyalty within her league. The queen would also have been in position to monopolize the latest secrets of iron-forging and tool design, because her contacts with foreign courts also gave her access to the work and advice of their master craftsmen.^® If Queen Himiko's relationship with the Chinese monarch empowered her paramountcy from outside the islands, her theurgic talents strength­ ened her from within. Chinese reports described Himiko as a religious practitioner whose performances "enchanted the people." Cloistering her­ self from view, she brought peace to Wa by unifying the 22 kuni of the confederacy through efficacious practice of a "spirit way" {kids'). Unfortu­ nately, few details concerning beliefs and practices of Himiko's unifying cult are included in the Wei chih narrative, but clues concerning what prob­ ably were similar cults on the peninsula survive in Chinese and Korean records. For example, the Wei chih section on the Han people of the south­ ern Korean peninsula describes them sacrificing to ghosts and spirits, holding communal planting and harvest festivals, and worshipping in shrine-like holy places outside of hamlets where "they set up a great tree, from which they hang bells and drums for serving the ghosts and spirits.Accounts of "spirit way" practices from the early Korean penin­ sula archived in the twelfth-century Chronicle of Three Kingdoms {Samguk sagi) describe rites propitiating heaven and earth—specifically referred to are rites directed to the sun, moon, and stars; the cardinal directions; mountains and rivers; and heroes of the past. There were also rituals to drive out evil spirits, cure sicknesses, and lift curses. Women often led such rites and served as oracles. There was a planting festival in the fifth month to petition ancestral spirits for aid during the growing season, and a har­ vest festival honoring heaven in the tenth month.*’ Moving further back in the history of East Asia, religious performances by sacerdotal rulers are also described in ancient Chinese records. Archae­

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ologist K. C. Chang has described how kings of the Shang dynasty (17661122 B.c.E.) functioned personally as diviners—Chang dubs their practice of divining with oracle bones “shamanic politics."^’ While the meaning of "shamanic" is a subject of debate among anthropologists, Chang would probably agree with I. M. Lewis that a shaman is “an inspired prophet and healer, a charismatic religious figure, with the power to control the spirits, usually by incarnating them." He is, in effect, "a master of the spirits."*’ In the same vein Arthur Waley described the wu of southern China who were "intermediaries used in the cult of Spirits.... They figure in old texts as experts in exorcism, prophecy, fortune-telling, rain-making and interpretation of dreams. Some wu danced, and they are sometimes de­ fined as people who danced in order to bring down Spirits.... They were also magic healers and in later times at any rate one of their methods of doctoring was to go, as Siberian shamans do, to the underworld and find out how the Power of Death can be propitiated."*^ We know from the We/ chih that divination was indeed practiced in Wa as in ancient China—oracle bones have been unearthed in Yayoi excavations. Furthermore, the histo­ rian of religion Fukunaga Mitsuji has elaborated the case for linkage be­ tween continental and Yayoi religious practices by arguing that mid-Yayoi practices such as burying metal goods to propitiate the gods and using water for purification represent popular usage imported from southern China, either directly or through the Korean peninsula.** While Marshall Sablins has emphasized (in the Hawaiian context) the war leader as a type particularly likely to preside over a hierarchical formation, it is not difficult to understand how a performative religious specialist who mediates with the gods on behalf of his or her followers and channels godly powers can also embody sufficient heroic charisma to assume an apical leadership role.*5 Widely read in world history and social anthropology, the Japanese historian Ishimoda Sho pointed out an interesting parallel between Queen Himiko's control of diplomacy and trade and her exercise of theurgic du­ ties. He began with the comparative observation that chieftains of East Asia—in contrast to their Germanic counterparts in Western Europederived a special character and broader prerogatives from handling their communities' external affairs, those concerning both relations with out­ siders and those with the gods.*^ Indeed, as chieftain of Yamatai and as paramount of a chiefdom confederacy, Himiko gained much of her stature, legitimacy, and wealth by .functioning as the portal through which ad­ vanced technologies, trade goods, and mana from the gods were accessible to her people.*’' But for Ishimoda the agrarian rice-growing community remained the chieftain's most profound source of legitimacy, and it was

28

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primarily theurgic (jujutsuteki): "The chieftain brought the community plentiful food with his special charisma, his mana, which expressed itself as productivity. He represented the gods to the community and the commu­ nity to the gods. His was therefore sole dominion over the land, because the crop that grew therefrom was thanks to his theurgic powers, which had stimulated the productive spirit of the grain harvested there."*® Chief­ tains mediated between gods and mortals and tapped deific power to assure the harvest, cure sickness, make rain, prevent natural disasters, and protect the community from malevolent forces.*’ On that basis, Ishimoda posited, Himiko and other members of the chiefly stratum demanded trib­ ute in the form of firstfruits and conscripted labor or goods for communal benefit.®® While the Chinese description of Himiko "enchanting" her peo­ ple is an extremely limited text from which to work, considering the clues assembled here I believe we can view Himiko as the theurgic sacral paramount in third-century Wa.®^ Estimating the territorial scope of Himiko's confederacy remains diffi­ cult. It is frequently suggested that she presided over a supraregional con­ federacy linking several parts of the archipelago. Gina Barnes has pre­ sented evidence confirming that trade and marital networks linked distant parts of western Wa during Yayoi times: Okayama jasper, Nara vermilion, Chinese bronze mirrors, and Korean iron traveled east and west across the archipelago. Nevertheless, distinctly regional tomb styles and funerary cultures persisted. In that light, and considering Christine Gailey's persua­ sive argument that chiefly confederation requires a unified chiefly stratum and culture for its foundation, I would argue that Himiko's third-century confederacy probably remained regional in scope.®^ Furthermore, the Wei chih reports that Himiko was not all-powerful. Theurgy and control of diplomacy and trade did much to empower her; but other rulers—most likely those of other regional confederacies—could and did resist her para­ mountcy. According to the Wei chih, one example was the male ruler of a kuni known as Kuna, whose hostility was persistent and boisterous enough that Himiko sent her emissary to report about it to Chinese officials on the Korean peninsula.®® The Round Keyhole Tomb Hierarchy

When Himiko died around 250 c.e., Chinese emissaries reported that "a great mound was raised more than a hundred paces in diameter, and more than a hundred male and female attendants followed her to the grave."®* The veracity of the second half of this statement, that concerning human sacrifice at the time of a ruler's death, is in fact doubtful—not a single

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OP WA

29

instance of that ancient Chinese custom has been confirmed by archaeolo­ gists working on the archipelago. Then, according to the Wez chih, warfare erupted once again, and peace was restored only after Himiko's niece, lyo, was named paramount. It would seem that by the later third century what Weber termed "a concept of hereditary charisma" had taken root in insular political culture.® It was also within just a few decades of Himiko's death that unprece­ dentedly monumental chieftain's tombs shaped like round keyholes (zempSkSenfun) began to appear in the southeastern Yamato basin, in Miwa, located within present-day Nara prefecture's city of Sakurai. For archae­ ologists, the rise of these tombs inaugurates a new epoch, the "Tomb Age," or Kofun jidai (300-600). The earliest known example, Makimuku Ishizuka tomb, spans 88 meters and was constructed sometime in the later third century. Its shape—a rounded mound with a long and narrow protuber­ ance that probably served as a processional approach to the crypt—is said by some to recall the shape of Tatetsuki in Kibi.® Based on an analysis of the distribution of settlement sites in the surrounding area, archaeologists hypothesize that the paramount of a local confederacy was interred in Makimuku Ishizuka. But excavators have also uncovered pottery from many parts of the archipelago in the vicinity, evidencing Miwa's participa­ tion in a far-reaching social network that included the eastern seaboard and the coast of the Sea of Japan.^’' Evidence of close relations between Miwa and settlements along the coast in the late third century supports the hypothesis that Miwa utilized northern ports for trade with the continent during the third century.^^ On the other hand, the relative scarcity of pot­ tery from the Western Seto culture zone—KyUshQ and far west Honshu— suggests competitive relations. Then, around the turn of the fourth century, a much larger round key­ hole tomb, Hashihaka ("chopstick grave"), was constructed in Miwa. At 275 meters long, it was three times the size of Makimuku Ishizuka and nearly three and a half times that of Tatetsuki. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the paramount who ordered the building of Hashihaka commanded resources on a supraregional scale. Researchers thus posit prior existence of a supraregional alliance {rengStai) of regional confeder­ acies. In this regard, sherds of ritual pottery resembling that used in the chiefly funerary cult of Kibi in late Yayoi times have been found in Miwa keyholes, at Hashihaka and elsewhere; and on that basis, researchers pos­ tulate close relations between these two regions.® Cultural influences from the continent also seem to have played an important role in the emergence of the supraregional league of chieftains over which the builders of these tombs presided. Researchers have noted.

30

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

for instance, that elements of the funerary culture demonstrated in the keyhole tombs reflects usage prescribed in Chinese handbooks of ritual such as the Book of Rites {Li chi). Such elements include burial of the corpse with its head oriented northward in a stone chamber enclosed with earth, and the use of specially shaped offering jars for food and wine “ Moreover, in 1994 archaeologists found proof that smiths were active in the vicinity of the Makimuku tombs by the late third to early fourth centuries. While evidence of smithing from Yayoi times has been found further west in Kyushu and along the Inland Sea, the Makimuku site is one of two places in mid-Honsha where iron goods are known to have been produced in the very early kofun age.®’ Appearance of these great keyhole tombs in the Yamato basin within decades of Himiko^s death is seen by many research­ ers as compelling evidence supporting the thesis that Himiko's Yamatai was located in Yamato.®^ On the basis of settlement patterns that include mounded tombs, Gina Barnes argues the existence of two hegemonic political entities in the fourth-century Yamato basin: one centered in the vicinity of Mount Miwa and another based to the north, aroimd present-day Nara city. A passage from the Nihon shoki may provide clues: in the Suinin chapter, a prince from "Saho" known as Sahohiko is portrayed plotting with his sister Sahohime, princess of Saho and consort of the Miwa paramount, against her royal mate.®3 Barnes argues that Miwa and Saho were rival chiefdom leagues composed of three-tiered territorial hierarchies in which tomb size corre­ lated with territorial hierarchy. Barnes puts it thus: "Through the spatial distribution of different tomb size classes, the hierarchy of individuals in the community can be directly translated into a regional hierarchy."®^ There are central zones, marked by ceremonial centers and large keyhole tombs, and there are subcenters, marked by smaller tombs. Many uncertainties remain. Since large tombs are distributed through­ out various zones and tomb clusters—archaeologist Wada Seigo has re­ cently worked out a chronology that includes four Miwa paramounts tombs in three clusters—researchers theorize that either the office of para­ mount was rotated or the paramoimt was but a "chief among peers," others of whom were entitled to burial in monumental mounds.®® It was not long before round keyhole tombs like those in Miwa began to appear outside mid-Honshu. According to Mori Koichfs kofun chronology of 89 tombs in various parts of the archipelago, about the same time that the Hashihaka tomb was being constructed a much smaller round keyhole tomb known today as Godo Yongo kofun (literally, the fourth Godo mauso­ leum) was built on the Chiba Boso peninsula, on the eastern shore of Tokyo Bay.®® If we accept the premise that differences in tomb size articulated

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

31

territorial hierarchy, then the chieftain who constructed Godo Yongo was expressing his subordination to the Miwa paramount by building a smaller tomb. The tomb's location near the sea also indicates the importance of maritime contact between central and eastern Honshu even in the late third to early fourth centuries.®’' Was the chieftain buried at Godo YongO a native of the east, a conquer­ ing general, or the leader of a colonizing band sent out from mid-Honshu or Kibi? Unfortunately, our understanding of the relationship between the Miwa paramount and the Chiba chieftain remains speculative. Nonethe­ less, based on the recurrence of funerary usage associated with Yamato, such as clay-encased split-log coffin burials, archaeologist Iwasaki Takuya argues that various eastern regions gradually came under the strong influ­ ence of Yamato by the late fourth century.®® Godo Yongo is an early example of what became a major trend during the fourth century, when chieftains in many parts of the archipelago, east and west, forsook distinct regional tomb styles to replicate Miwa's round keyholes. As Mori's selective chronology demonstrates, tombs of varying size were constructed, often from hilltops and ridges overlooking fertile plains. By the end of the fourth century the same sorts of grave goods were being assembled in those chiefly tombs, including bronze mirrors, swords, and halberds; stone bracelets; beads; flint; and iron tools.®’ By constructing their own round keyhole mausolea, chieftains of local and regional con­ federacies dignified their chiefly lineages while proudly signifying par­ ticipation in the supraregional confederacy over which Miwa paramounts presided. It is not hard to imagine that, as chieftains borrowed culture and technology from Miwa, the preeminence of Miwa paramounts also was further elaborated. Besides the replication of tombs, other interactions within this chiefly network of hierarchical relations that researchers call "Yamato kingship" (yamato oken) included gift giving, trading, and marital exchanges.’® Ex­ cavation has provided plentiful evidence of such interactions—bronze mirrors matching those found in central Honshu have been uncovered throughout the archipelago; cylindrical beads were dispatched east from Kyushu; and bracelets made in the Kanto and Hokuriku came to be worn by Yamato chieftains. The distribution of bronze mirrors found in round keyhole tombs has been a subject of particular interest, in part because of a record from the Wei chih noting that in 239 the Chinese Wei monarch sent Queen Himiko 100 bronze mirrors together with caches of red and jade beads, with the mandate to "exhibit them to your countrymen in order to demonstrate that our country thinks so much of you as to bestow such exquisite gifts upon

Middle

400

Early Kofun Age

300

500

Kofun Age

Late Kofun Age

600

700

Kannor> yama

Aizu Otsukayama

Hachtman'yama

Kamegamori I

Nomanji

Inariyama

Kai Chausuyama

Cedo Yongo

Choshizuka |

Koboyama

Ota Tertjin'yama

Futagoyama

Hotozan

Kannonzuka

Okunoyama

Funazuka

Kinreizuka Dampuzan

Enmanji

Ryukakuji Iwaya

Misemaruyama

Noguchi Obaka

Ishibutai

Masuyama

Shibutani Mukoyama

Makimuku Ishizuka

1I--------------J Ikeda Chausuyama w

Koganezuka

Kawachi Otsuka Tsubai Otsukayama

Motoinari

J

Daisen

Minamihara

T I I ,, Kambarajinja Nishitani Yongd An'yoji Sango Miyayama Yongo Matsumoto Ichigo

I Kasuga Mukoyama

Hebtzuka

Kondayama /

Kamien'ya Tsukiyama

kitayama

Yamashiro Hofun Komoritzuka

Tatetsuki

|

Furuhaka

i

Tsuruo Jinja T Yongo I I

Tsuko J&gake

Kurumazuka Tsukunyama Drama Chausuyama

• IwaseoyamaT Nekozuka

Yata Otsuka

Kanakurayama

T Takamatsu Chausuyama

Raidenyama

Mukaiyama

I I |

Tomita Chausuyama

Sekijinzan

Noriba

Eta Funayama

Ishizukayama B Ikisan

Roji

Wani- B 1 H Kakuzuka _ ^h^kaj_^ij2teuj^__________

Dannotsuka B

I

I Tachibanazuka

Iwatoyama

Ishibitsuyama

Shigesada

«)

Saitobaru Jusangb

Himezuka Osahozuk.

Oni'noiwaya

Tojinotsuka

Figure 3. The round keyhole tomb hierarchy

1

Miyajidake

This presentation is derived with permission from the work of Mori Koichi.

34

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

you."^’ Chinese records also mention later embassies in 243 and 247. If such mirrors continued to flow into the hands of Himiko's successors, hundreds of mirrors would have been accumulated by Himiko and subse­ quent paramounts. Indeed, some 329 examples of a special type of cast mirror known as sankakubuchi shinjGkyS, which are decorated with a triangular rim {sankakubuchi) and figures of gods and beasts {shinjG), have been unearthed, mostly from third- and fourth-century chieftain's tombs distributed over the ar­ chipelago from Kumamoto in the west to Gumma and Chiba in the east. On this basis researchers have hypothesized that Himiko and her suc­ cessors distributed bronze mirrors—some imported from the continent and others domestically produced—as gifts to confederate chieftains. Central to the creation of this hypothesis was the excavation of an early fourth-century tomb in southern Yamashiro known as Tsubai Otsukayama. This round keyhole—at 110 meters in length it measures less than half the size of Hashihaka-yielded a grand total of 32 triangular-rim godand-beast mirrors. Twenty-two of them were determined to be duplicate castings of mirrors found in nineteen other third- and fourth-century tombs distributed geographically from northern Kyushu to Kanagawa in eastern Japan. Such results prompted the lead excavator, Kobayashi Yukio, to posit that Tsubai Otsukayama tomb was the resting place of a successor to Himiko who was still distributing bronze mirrors. In other words, the presentation of such a mirror by the paramount was a ritual act of incor­ poration into the confederacy. Kobayashi's idea of a sociopolitical network for which bronze mirrors as well as round keyhole tombs had an important symbolic value denoting an order of prestige has been tacitly accepted by many researchers.^^ Recent discovery of a forged-iron crown at Tsubai Otsukayama, along with an unparalleled treasure of ten daggers, six long swords, a ringpommeled sword, seven spears, and two hundred arrowheads, all made of iron, suggests that the chieftain there oversaw traffic in iron goods as well as bronze mirrors.^ The iron crown is indicative of the ideological charter of chieftaincy at the turn of the fourth century: it is decorated with motifs associated with the cult of immortality {shinsen shinko) in southern China of the same era, including figures of male and female deities known as the Great King Father of the East and Queen Mother of the West. Both deities also figure prominently in the iconography of the god-and-beast mirrors. Historian Ueda Masaaki has connected these motifs with Himiko's "spirit way" cult decades earlier.^^ We need to consider the relationship between the builder of Tsubai Otsukayama (180 meters long) and the builders of earlier, contemporary,

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

35

and later Miwa keyholes identified as paramounts' tombs. While Mori's keyhole chronology does not note it, researchers date a Miwa tomb known as Sakurai Chausuyama {207 meters) to the time of Tsubai Otsukayama.^ From the standpoint of size we can posit a relationship of subordinance. But at the same time, the mirrors buried in Tsubai Otsukayama and the distribution pattern of their mates suggest the enormous wealth and stat­ ure of the chieftain interred at Tsubai Otsukayama. It seems we might then posit a relationship between the two rulers parallel to that suggested in the Nihon shoki between chiefly rivals who were also affines, Miwa and Saho. Future archaeological finds may well provide more evidence concerning this relationship. Indeed, in the dynamic field of archaeology, every day brings new discoveries, which raise new questions. In March 1994, for instance, a sin­ gle mirror judged to have been made in China but not of the triangular-rim god-and-beast type was found in a relatively small fourth-century tomb on the Tango peninsula, which juts out into the Sea of Japan north of Yamashiro. Inscribed with a Chinese date equivalent to 235 c.b., its discovery has led scholars to suggest new hypotheses: could Queen Himiko have received a variety of types of mirrors from the Chinese monarch in 239 and thereafter, or were leaders other than Himiko in diplomatic contact with the continent and receiving variant types of mirrors?^® The predominance of the triangular-rim god-and-beast mirrors means that their role remams important, but the story of mirrors as chiefly regalia, and what they tell us about territorial hierarchy and political complexity in the late third and fourth centuries, has grown more complex. An issue of particular interest is the extent to which conquest may have figured in the diffusion of round keyhole tombs. Artifacts found in the Miwa Mesuriyama tomb (224 meters), built early in the fourth century, include an awesome array of iron arrowheads and other martial imple­ ments, but specialists argue that these were for special ritual use.^ While it would not be wise to overemphasize the peace and harmony of a society where such weapons were produced, the present consensus is that the fourth-century Miwa-led confederacy was founded on mostly peaceful networks of exchange. I agree with archaeologist Iwasaki Takuya, who phrases the argument as follows: As Kobayashi Yukio posited, Yamato [Miwa] kingship broadened its political relations eastward and westward contemporaneously. Had this been accomplished militarily, it would have required overwhelm­ ing military capacity. Furthermore, looking at the Kwanggaet'o Stele inscription, it is clear that Yamato was also involved in complex rela-

36

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

tions with the continent at this time. Such evidence does not suggest a scenario of conquering generals charging eastward for conquest. Fur­ thermore, as far as we can tell from grave goods, the figures buried in early tombs rarely demonstrate a martial character. It is my view that the waves of influence that led to the construction of kofun in various regions did not result from military coercion. What made the reorgani­ zation and unification of the archipelago possible was rather a system of trading relations handling a key resource such as iron. Control of this hegemony shifted from northern KyQshQ, which had had rela­ tions with Han dynasts, to Yamato [Miwa], whose rulers dominated insular foreign relations during the post-Han era.^® If constructing a round keyhole tomb was an expression of affiliation with the Miwa-led league during the fourth century, not every chieftain in the archipelago was buried in such tombs. Some chieftains were buried in square keyhole tombs, while others were interred in round or square tombs. Elsewhere I have described how chieftains in eastern Izumo built a series of square keyhole tombs during the fourth and fifth centuries, seem­ ingly articulating membership in a distinct regional confederacy centered in Izumo's Ou district.^ On the other hand, archaeologist Tsude Hiroshi, in an attempt to explain why different shapes of mounded tombs occur within a single tomb cluster, has suggested the existence of a dual-axis hi­ erarchy of prestige articulated by tombs of differing size and shape; "There were four types of tomb mounds—round keyholes, square keyholes, and round and square mounds. Those types articulated differences in social status between core chieftains who supported Yamato paramounts and local chieftains who supported that political structure. Thus there was hierarchical ranking expressed both by tomb size and shape. “ Tsude posits a system of sumptuary limits that established the primacy of the round keyhole shape as well as the notion that variations in tomb size and shape articulated a chieftain's status along a spectrum of prestige presided over by Yamato paramounts. How such sumptuary limits were established and maintained remains at issue, but control over artisan groups possess­ ing the technology of round keyhole tomb building may be one answer. To integrate these and other hypotheses concerning the chronology and geography of the kofun hierarchy—roimd and otherwise—and to gain therefrom a more coherent vision of supraregional confederacy presided over by fourth-century Miwa rulers, an archipelago-wide data base of kofun replete with detailed descriptive data is needed.®^ At present, all that can be said is that, whereas in the Yayoi period social stratification differen­ tiated chieftains from nonchieftains in hamlet hierarchies and regional con­ federacies, during the ensuing kofun age stratification within the supra-

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

37

regional chiefly elite advanced and was expressed through a hierarchy of tomb building in which round keyhole tombs served as insignia of mem­ bership and status. The round keyhole hierarchy provides a visible landscape attesting to the existence of cultural and trading networks in a territorial hierarchy incorporating and ordering chieftains from Kyushu to eastern Honshu. The preeminence of the Miwa paramounts is confirmed by the fact that until late in the fourth century such rulers invariably were interred in the most monumental round keyhole tombs in the archipelago.^ Thereafter, however, the great tombs moved northward, to the locale known as Saki in the northern Yamato basin. During the same period the settlement hier­ archy in the western Yamato basin shows signs of increasing develop­ ment-tombs in the loo-meter category began to appear.®’ This new diversity in mid-Honshu was reflected by activity beyond its borders. By the early fifth century clusters of kofun began to appear in places as distant as Kyushu to the west and Iwate to the east. According to Wada Seigo, in many cases such tomb clusters took shape over 6o years and were built during two or three chiefly generations. Construction of a monumental tomb initiated the cluster, while subsequent tombs declined in size. After the third generation, building activity in the cluster ceased, suggesting the relative instability of the territorial chiefly institution.®* I shall leave further discussion of such developments for Chapter 2, how­ ever, as they provide part of the context for the next temporal section of Japanese kingship, that of the late fifth century. Chi^tains and Paramounts in Folklore

Before moving on, I want to reflect on paradigmatic schemas of chieftaincy suggested by stories archived in Japan's earliest written myth-historical compendia. (Readers should consult the Appendix concerning historical sources cited in this book.) Legends and tales concerning chieftains and paramounts-abound in the Kojiki, Nihon shoki, and regional gazetteers known asfudoki. The problem for any reader, however, is how to read and evaluate the contents of these early eighth-century myth-histories, which relate the history of a mostly Yamato-centered archipelago and its rulers from the "age of the gods" through the seventh century. Certainly the reader must keep in mind that such lore passed through generations and was refracted through a variety of lenses before being written down. Nonetheless, I believe that narratives telling how and why chieftains inter­ acted and confederated through warfare, colonization, marital exchange, and alliance in a still timeless and hazily remembered past offer important

38

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

insights to what Sherry Ortner has called "paradigmatic cultural schemas" of chieftaincy that endured to shape rulership in subsequent epochs.® Consider an account from the Hitachi fudoki that acquaints us with a couple—whether they are brother and sister or husband and wife is not clear—who were leaders in eastern Japan: Long ago there was a native couple, Kitsuhiko and Kitsuhime. When the Yamato ruler paid a visit, Kitsuhiko disobeyed his command, re­ jected his civilizing influence, and treated him exceedingly rudely. So the Yamato ruler drew his august sword and struck him down. Kit­ suhime trembled and grieved, and she came out to the road waving a white flag and bowing low. The Yamato ruler pitied her and pardoned her along with her household. When his palanquin was carried to the temporary palace of Onukino, Kitsuhime brought her elder and younger sisters and served him with her heart and soul from morning until night in spite of wind and rain. The Yamato ruler appreciated her hospitality and showered her with favor.®^

Here the forces of Yamato are seen venturing far from home; Hitachi in the Kanto region of eastern Honshu was a long journey from central Hon­ shu. This narrative may well reflect memory of a long-ago incursion as forces or colonists associated with Yamato pushed eastward during the fourth and fifth centuries seeking trade and land, bringing them into con­ tact with local chieftains like Kitsuhiko and Kitsuhime. That Kitsuhiko and Kitsuhime were local leaders seems incontrovert­ ible; control of manpower and resources was in their hands. Chiefly society in Kitsu was kin-based; we are told that Kitsuhime brought all her sisters to serve the Yamato leader. The relationship between Kitsuhime and the Yamato ruler suggests what Marshall Sahlins calls a "stranger-king mode" of chiefly confederation; after Kitsuhiko's death, Kitsuhime reportedly served the Yamato leader "with her heart and soul from morning until night." If, as I suspect, this refers to a marital pairing, then Kitsuhime and the Yamato chieftain conjoined their two chiefly lines to beget a new lin­ eage, merging the blood of Kitsu and Yamato and at the same time incor­ porating Kitsu into the Yamato-led confederacy.®^ Given such a system, an emphasis on dual or cognatic descent in chiefly culture would be func­ tional, and there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that a concept of cognatic descent remained strong in Japanese chiefly society well into the eighth century.®® Another story recounting the incorporation of a local chieftain into a larger confederacy is found in the Bungo fudoki. There a female chieftain named Hayatsuhime is said to have ruled the area around present-day Beppu, overseeing an important harbor for ships sailing the Inland Sea.

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

39

When "a Yamato leader" visited, Hayatsuhime greeted him and solicited his aid in suppressing neighboring 'T?arbarians" who rejected Yamato's civilizing preeminence. The Yamato leader accepted Hayatsuhime's re­ quest and destroyed her enemies with superior military might and strat­ egy. Thereby was her loyalty secured, along with the use of Beppu port for confederated vessels plying the Inland Sea.®® We might well imagine this sort of chiefly interaction taking place in the third and fourth centuries, as Yamato and Kibi chieftains joined forces to gain control over the waters of the Inland Sea and the sea lanes to Korea. In fact, archaeological artifacts left at Munakata Shrine on Oki Island off Kyushu indicate that ships asso­ ciated with Yamato were sailing those lanes by at least the fourth century.’® Scholars who study gender relations find significance in the number of female chieftains remembered in these early texts. Further, there are nu­ merous instances of dual-gender pairs of chieftains, recalling the contra­ puntal arrangement between Himiko and her brother.” In addition to Kibitsuhiko and Kibitsuhime in the Harima fudoki, there are Sarutahiko and Sarume in the early ninth-century Kogo shtli, Karunomiko and Karunohime as well as Tomibiko and Tomihime in the Kojiki, and Isakahiko and Isakahime in the Nihon shoki. Decades ago the historian of gender, Takamure Itsue, coined the term himehikosei to refer to the chieftaincy of such dual-gender pairs. She considered them an artifact of earlier matriarchal society. This last proposition has now been rejected as studies of prehis­ toric social organization have increased around the globe.’^ Instead, Hora Tornio has recently argued that contrapuntal dual-gender rulership was meant to embody an ideal balance—gender complementarity—between the Chinese male and female principles yin and yang.^ Researchers have also noted the parallel between structures of ruler­ ship in the premodem Ryukyu Islands and those in Himiko's Wa; in the Ryukyus there was also a paramount sacral queen who exercised co­ rulership with a male ruler. If, as Takamure and others have suggested, the name Himiko really can be taken to mean "child of the sun," still another parallel with the Ryukyus can be established; the Ryukyu queen based her authority on claims to possession by the sun deity. Indeed, while there is much we do not know about social organization in third- and fourth-century Japan, stories of female chieftains in later sources confirm that females of the chiefly strata—like Himiko herself— were sometimes thought to possess distinctive theurgic talents.’^ To give only a few examples, in the Sujin chapter of the Nihon shoki a female chief­ tain from Yamashiro, Atahime, is portrayed casting a spell to ensure an enemy's defeat before joining her male partner to lead an attack.’^ In the Sujin and Suinin chapters of the same chronicle, sisters of the Yamato paramount are seen officiating as priestess-consorts of local deities. There

40

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

are also tales of sisters and daughters of early Yamato rulers acting as augurers, interpreters of dreams, and consorts of local deities.’^ There seems no doubt that in the chiefly societies from which these stories de­ rived either a man or a woman could serve as chieftain, and that a contra­ puntal division of functions between a dual-gender pair of co-rulers was not uncommon. I would add, moreover, that the frequent appearance of dual-gender pairs of deities in the mythology of early eighth-century texts likewise suggests a social paradigm of gender complementarity.’’ Before leaving this discussion of clues to the nature of prehistoric chief­ taincy and paramountcy in eighth-century myth-historical texts, it is im­ portant to say a word about what we cannot learn there. Scholars have occasionally turned to the sections devoted to early rulers known as Sujin and Suinin in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki to catch glimpses of the para­ mounts who constructed the great round keyhole tombs in the later third and fourth centuries. Mizuno Yu, for example, argued that Sujin reigned in the early fourth century and died in 318.’® Eighth-century courtiers com­ piling the Nihon shoki also looked back to Sujin as "hatsukuni shirasu sumera mikoto"—the great ruler who established the country. Partly on that basis the archaeologist Egami Namio argues that Sujin represented a lineage of invading horserider (kiba tninzoku) rulers from the Korean penin­ sula who immigrated to the archipelago, resided for a time in Kyushu, and then made their way eastward to Yamato, where they settled down as.the Miwa rulers. The problem with these views of Sujin and his successors, especially insofar as they are informed by the Nihon shoki, is that the relevant chapters of that text were composed very late, in the late seventh century. Such late authorship makes the historicity of all details in these chapters—names, events, place names, whatever—very questionable. Moreover, in a compel­ ling piece of research published in 1983, archaeologist Walter Edwards provided a host of good reasons to doubt Egami's "horserider theory" of the origins of Miwa rulers.” Particularly compelling are the chronological discrepancies in Egami's scenario relative to artifacts found in third- and fourth-century keyhole tombs. While the mythological and early historical chapters of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki certainly inform our understanding of paradigmatic cultural schemas, the historicity of specific events and personalities recorded therein cannot be relied upon.

Toward Martial Paramountcy When Miwa rulers were initiating the round keyhole hierarchy, rulers of the northern Korean kingdom of Koguryd threatened the balance of power

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

41

on the peninsula. They claimed descent from the emperor of Heaven and began constructing massive royal tombs as symbols of dynastic strength and majesty?*” By the early fourth century they had conquered the mid­ peninsular territory of the old Han Chinese colony of Lolang. The new image of martial kingship embodied by these Koguryo monarchs was to have profound effects on rulers of the archipelago. Threatened with Koguryo aggression, the kingdom of Paekche in southern Korea reportedly opened diplomatic exchange with the Eastern Chin dynasty in southern China in 327.^°^ And there is substantial evi­ dence—in Korean sources quoted in the Nihon shoki and on the inscribed Isonokami Seven-Branch Sword—that by the 360s the reigning paramount of Wa took Paekche's side against Koguryo and also established diplomatic relations with southern China.^“ Conditions, on the peninsula worsened steadily for Paekche and its insular ally between 391 and 413. Koguryo's ruler, Kwanggaefo, unified two-thirds of the peninsula, sacked the Paekche capital, and erected the famous Kwanggaet'o Stele glorifying his martial success.^*” It seems to have been around that time that troops from the archipelago went to but­ tress Paekche and defend insular trading interests in the southern coastal chiefdoms of Kaya, from which iron ingots were sent to Wa.^®* Evidently, the combined efforts of Paekche and insular troops against Koguryo were reasonably successful in the southern peninsula, because in 420 a Chinese monarch again dubbed the Paekche ruler “Great General Stabilizing the East and King of Paekche."’®® Paekche was confident enough and rich enough that over the next half-century ten embassies left Paekche for southern China, initiating a time of dynamic sinicization on the peninsula. Naturally, the archipelago too was strongly affected through its close rela­ tions with Paekche. In the meantime, internal and external tensions were forging a new mode of paramount chieftaincy in the islands. Given the worsening mili­ tary situation on the peninsula in the late fourth century, those in the archipelago eager to maintain trading relations had to take a stand. Para­ mounts in mid-Honshu and confederate chieftains across the archipelago were forced to field troops in Kaya to defend their trading interests. Re­ searchers using mostly Korean sources point out that Wa martial involve­ ment in the southern peninsula was considerable around the turn of the fifth century: in 397, for example, the Paekche crown prince was sent to Wa to reside as a guarantor of amity, while in 402 Silla also sent a prince to Wa?** Given the responsibility of overseeing the safety of the confederacy's critical trading interests on the peninsula, mid-Honshu paramounts were

42

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highly motivated to systematize and expand their authority, and confeder­ ate chieftains would have recognized their need to do so. at the apex of the confederate order did heroic paramountcy overlay the earlier theurgic model, thereby recalling Max Weber's observation, "The entrenchment of a war leader with a permanent staff is the decisive step to be linked with the notions of kingship' and 'state.' Everywhere the king is primarily a warlord. Kingship originates in charismatic heroism/'^’" And as fifth­ century paramounts stepped up diplomatic contact with southern Chinese monarchs and welcomed increasing numbers of Korean immigrants flee­ ing war and destruction to their island shores, conditions favorable for a dynamic process of secondary state formation strongly influenced by Chi­ nese and Korean models were set in place. The result was the emergence of martial great kings with a decidedly Chinese look.

M

Evidence from Chinese records, the archaeological record, and lore ar­ chived in eighth-century myth-histories and gazetteers enables construc­ tion of a composite view of Queen Himiko's paramountcy in the third century. Unlike Gina Barnes, who concluded that "the first archaeologically visible indications of rulership in Japan occur with the mounded tombs," I think we must sink the first trench in Himiko's day. Her ap­ pearance in the third-century China Sea interaction sphere provides us with a baseline and permits us to identify paradigmatic schemas of pre­ historic rulership in the archipelago.’^® As in other parts of the globe, increasing territorial hierarchy and politi­ cal complexity in third-century Wa resulted in the development of in­ creasingly dense and complex ceremonial centers and sociocultural dif­ ferentiation between rulers and ruled. Early territorial hierarchy may have come about as communities engaging in wet-rice agriculture fissioned, creating segmented, hierarchical structures—chiefdoms. More complex territorial hierarchies—chiefdom confederacies—took shape because of in­ creasing interaction with the continent involving long-distance trade, com­ petition, and warfare. Externally, Himiko was recognized as paramount of Wa by the Wei monarch to assure order in the Middle Kingdom's tributary system, itself a pillar of Chinese kingship; internally, Himiko was made paramount to maximize peace and prosperity for her confederates. Moving from Himiko's early third century into the later third century when Miwa paramounts began building their great keyhole tombs, we encounter what historians have termed a documentary black hole. That is because written Chinese reports concerning Wa go silent—probably be­ cause Koguryo expelled the authorities in the Chinese commanderies and

HIMIKO, PARAMOUNT OF WA

43

conquered Lolang in 313. Thus we have no reliable written evidence as to the names and circumstances of paramounts who built the great Miwa tombs in the decades before and after the turn of the fourth century. None­ theless, the archaeological record makes it clear that the paramount who built Hashihaka tomb presided over a supraregional confederacy spread­ ing eastward and northward while maintaining distance from the Western Seto culture zone. Paramountcy in the age of Hashihaka was the heir of cultural schemas of rulership—sacrality and theurgy, the forms of territorial hierarchy, and the importance of external affairs—that had shaped Himiko's paramountcy decades earlier. Aspects of the office remained the same—maximization of the fruits of order, peace, and plenty—but in a more complex supraregional and international setting. A divided China and warfare on the peninsula certainly challenged the creativity of those seeking a steady flow of im­ ported goods, especially iron ingots. But that Miwa was successful there can be no doubt; otherwise there would have been no round keyhole hierarchy replicating Miwa's great round keyhole tombs in lesser propor­ tions throughout the archipelago during the fourth and fifth centuries. That this landscape comprised monuments of death rather than life suggests that rulers of this time, from Miwa paramoimts down to the level of the regional chieftains who built keyhole tombs, were viewed as tran­ scendent figures. Considerably higher in prestige than their fellows, they were primarily mediators between this world and realms beyond. Their mausolea witness their timelessness; even in death they remained critical to the future survival of the communities over which they presided. Like Himiko, these chieftains were doubtless masters of the spirit path, theurgists capable of channeling the forces of the spirit world and transforming them to meet the needs of the world of the living.

'Yuryaku, Great King With our second trench we lay open a slightly more recent stratum of early rulership on the archipelago, that of the fifth-century' paramount called "Bu" in the Chinese records. Although he was probably known as Wakatakeru or Wakatake in his lifetime, today we know him as Yuryaku, a posthumous name created in Nara times.Yuryaku was one of five Wa paramounts with whom the southern Chinese Liu Sung dynasty (420-79) maintained diplomatic contacts during the middle decades of the fifth century. According to dynastic records, he wrote a boastful letter to the Chinese Son of Heaven in 478 and secured for himself the title "King of Wa" (Wfl no 5). In that famous missive Yuryaku crowed of heroic deeds performed by armored and helmeted ancestors both in the islands and on the Korean peninsula: "From of old our forebears have clad themselves in armor and helmet and gone across the hills and waters, sparing no time for rest. In the east, they conquered 55 countries of hairy men; and in the west, they brought to their knees 65 countries of various barbarians. Crossing the sea to the north, they subjugated 95 countries."^ Having thus stated estimable qualifications, Yuryaku went on to pledge his martial services to the Chinese monarch as an instrument of pacification on the war-tom Korean peninsula. From Yuryaku's hand we have a very different portrait of Wa paramountcy in the later fifth century than that of Queen Hirniko the Enchantress. The challenge here is to bring this different royal image into historical focus. Over the last two decades there has been a sea change in the way historians and archaeologists view rulership and political organization in Yuryaku's epoch. An older view, based largely on written accounts pre­ served in the eighth-century chronicles, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, was outlined in English in a 1977 essay by Inoue Mitsusada, who argued that the fifth-century archipelago had been unified by a state centered in the Eastern Seto region that had subjugated Queen Himiko's confederacy. To consolidate its conquest, this new polity, led by Yuryaku's predecessors, imitated the Chinese fashion of granting patents of authority to subordi­

YURYAKU, GREAT KING

45

nates and made its allied generals "country chieftains" (kuni-no-miyatsuko, or alternatively kokuzo), investing them with political and military author­ ity in their domains {kuni). Also, from Kyushu to the Kanto, other chief­ tains were recruited as royal vassals {tomo-no-miyatsuko) and given charge of the estates {miyake} and laboring communities {be) that constituted the royal fisc. According to Inoue's reconstruction, the late fifth-century realm consisted of two sorts of regions with different relations with the center: Tsukushi, Kibi, and Kenu in eastern Japan were dominated by powerful regional chieftains, whereas the balance of the realm came more directly under the control of the Yamato-based royal court? More recently, however, archaeological findings have prompted differ­ ent readings of the same written records used by Inoue. A newer synthesis attempts to mesh archaeological data and written records in the broader geographic anddiistorical context of East Asia. It posits that, as did Queen Hiirdko in the early third century, fifth-century, mid-Honshu-based paramounts dominated diplomatic and trading relations with southern China and the peninsula. Trade in iron and iron goods under the umbrella of the Chinese tributary system continued to empower these paramounts. But as these Chinese-dubbed "Kings of Wa" increasingly found themselves coor­ dinating the dispatch of mercenary troops to the peninsula, they came to assert a greater degree of military hegemony at home as well. Moreover, archaeologists have analyzed settlement patterns, roads, and cultural indices and concluded that by the fifth century the Nara basin and the Osaka alluvial plain—what archaeologist Gina Barnes has termed "the coalescent core"—was successfully integrated under the reign of paramounts called "Great Kings," whose monumental keyhole tombs domi­ nated the Osaka plain. Beyond the coalescent core, the distribution and size hierarchy of round keyhole tombs, and discovery of inscribed swords glorifying service to the Great King, evidence close relations between the mid-Honshu-based paramount and chieftains in distant reaches of the ar­ chipelago. Whereas Inoue's model of Yuryaku's realm assumed radical relations between the center and many peripheral regions, the new model assumes a broader variety of conditions differentiating the coalescent core and segmented but confederated units distributed across the archipelago.^ It still remains for historians and archaeologists working together to flesh out a clearer image of this segmented fifth-century realm and its Great King. Specifically, we want to know more about relations between the paramount and other chieftains, in the core and without. And we need to assemble evidence concerning enabling structures of Yamato-based par­ amountcy that emerge from artifacts of this era. For this second temporal slice in my archaeology of kingship, I have

46

yUryaku, great king

assembled as much information as possible and examined it through a va­ riety of theoretical lenses. In the scenario that results. Great King Yuryaku can be seen to have pursued a variety of strategies to strengthen his hand as paramount: in the coalescent core he strove to strengthen royal hege­ mony by martial and other means; but outside that core he courted re­ gional and lesser local chieftains as allies and clients. Far from being "inte­ grated," Yuryaku's polity was, in my view, segmented and confederate. For analyzing the relational dynamics of such a polity, Stanley Tambiah's model of "galactic polity" is suggestive. In a galactic polity, in con­ trast with more "radial" centralized polities, lesser political units are seen to revolve around a charismatic center while the relationship between the entities is now stronger, now weaker. Center and satellite polities are bonded by pulsating relations of hegemony and influence, and the center must attend diligently to the work of attracting and maintaining relations with satellites. I have concluded that in Yuryaku's "galactic polity" rela­ tionships between the coalescent core and satellites in near and distant peripheries were not characterized by "control," or radial subordination.® And while the written record confirms resort to force by the Great King within the core, in his dealings with chieftains outside the core Yuryaku relied primarily on ties of clientage strengthened by gift giving; he "hus­ banded" the realm by concluding hypergamous marital alliances with sub­ ordinate chieftains; and he fulfilled the traditional sacerdotal functions of paramountcy by establishing patronage relations with regional cults and developing the royal role as preeminent ritual coordinator of the archi­ pelago. In A. M. Hocart's terms. Great King Yuryaku functioned both as a warrior king and as a law king, a king terrestrial and a king celestial.® The archaeological record is central to this study of protohistoric de­ velopments, but much would be lost if we neglected clues found in the retrospective written record, especially in Yuryaku's chapter of the Nihon shoki. Since both the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki were compiled in their present form more than 200 years after Yuryaku died, historians must be extremely cautious about their use of evidence drawn from these late texts. While specialists have different views on the historicity of these materials and how they can best be utilized, most historians agree that a genealogy of fifth-century rulers was first compiled in the late sixth century.^ Kamada Motokazu voices the majority view when he opines that we should accept the broad lines of the written record while rejecting specifics, such as names and precise dates.® In the account that follows I draw on what I regard as credible elements in the written record—such credibility having been carefully evaluated in the context of all other known information—

yCryaku, great king

47

while recognizing the need for an attitude of skepticism toward the con­ tents of what are admittedly politicized retrospectives.

The Coalescent Polity and the Hinterland Ytiryaku was actually the fifth paramount from Wa to send an emissary to south China during the fifth century, and he was the third to receive a patent of investment in return. The first, a ruler named San, petitioned the Liu Sung court for recognition circa 413, as his brother and successor. Chin, did later. Chin was dubbed "Commandant Who Subjugates Barbarians in the West and General Who Serves His Country," and thirteen of his gen­ erals were invested with subordinate martial titles. Then a decade later Sai was named "General Who Maintains Peace in the East, Commanding with Battle-Ax Military Affairs in the Six Countries of Wa, Silla, Mimana, Kala, Chin-han, and Mok-han." The Chinese monarch responded by naming titles. Sai was succeeded by his son Ko, who was followed in turn by Ko's brother, Bu (Yuryaku). As we have seen, this Yuryaku, after pledging that he and his stalwarts were ready to do battle on the Korean peninsula at the command of the Chinese emperor, signed himself, "King of Wa, General Who Maintains Peace in the East, Commanding with Battle-Ax All Mili­ tary Affairs in the Seven Countries of Wa, Paekche, Silla, Mimana, Kala, Chin-han, and Mok-han." The Chinese monarch responded by naming Yuryaku "King of Wa and Generalissimo Who Maintains Peace in the East, Commanding with Battle-Ax All Military Affairs in the Six Countries of Wa, Silla, Mimana, Kala, Chin-han, and Mok-han." Yuryaku's bid for rec­ ognition as ruler of Paekche was thus rebuffed, but his preeminence in Wa and his military services in Kaya were acknowledged.® How can .we associate these Chinese accounts of fifth-century Wa with the archaeological record? In the past, historians looked at such great keyhole tombs as Daisen ("Great Mound," 487 meters long without its moats) and posited that early in the fifth century a "Kawachi dynasty" of paramounts who presided over a maritime confederacy incorporating the Kii peninsula and Kibi displaced earlier Miwa paramounts through con­ quest or by coalescence through marital alliance.^® However it may have come about, it is widely agreed that in the fifth century the chiefdom confederacies of the Nara basin and those of the Osaka alluvial plains merged to form an integrated political entity. According to Gina Barnes, the settlement pattern throughout the coalescent core is indeed that of a tiered polity in which territorial hierarchy was implicit.*^ Tsude Hiroshi agrees. Employing an illustrative case study focusing on shifts in the dis-

Map 4. The coalescent core

yCryaku, great king

49

tribution pattern of large round keyhole tombs in the vicinity of the Ka­ tsura River north of the Yamato basin, Tsude concludes: In the Katsura River region the shift in territorial leadership in the early fifth century from chieftains of the MukO group to those of the Nagaoka group was related to a political shift at the top involving the great kings of that time. The authority of those paramounts pene­ trated downward to the Katsura River region, and the authority of the Muko group that had ordered the southeast Nara basin up to that point was then replaced by that of chiefly leaders of the Nagaoka group. The early fifth century witnessed a massive quaking in political relationships both at the core and in the hinterland. It is inadequate simply to discuss the emergence of Kawachi kingship in terms of the appearance of the great keyholes of the Kawachi plain. The appear­ ance of those tombs was accompanied by related shifts in chiefly au­ thority in every region.

Hierarchical relations nurtured by trade, marriage, and other sorts of social ties resulted in an unprecedented aggregation of influence and wealth by the apical paramounts of this expanding hierarchy, the "great kings" (daio). Their preeminent stature was manifested by their burial in round keyholes of unparalleled size on the Kawachi plain (see Map 4). There has been considerable debate over the geographical locus of the core of this fifth-century coalescent polity. Gina Barnes places it in Kawachi, where both tombs and ruins of massive storehouses have been found. Subcenters, she argues, were located in the northern and southwestern sections of the Nara basin, where large keyhole tombs, industrial sites, and ritual centers have been uncovered. She identifies sub-subcenters by the presence of medium-sized tombs.^^ Wada Atsumu, on the other hand, argues that Yuryaku's center was in the Nara basin near the Hatsuse River, just as recorded in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, although no remains of any palace-like structures have yet to be uncovered there.Wada bases his argument on the archaeological rec­ ord, which indicates that demographic concentration, economic differen­ tiation, and political integration in the Yamato basin far exceeded that of Kawachi; while sites such as Furu, Miwa, and Soga—where ironworking, beadworking, and ritual activity developed to unprecedented heights— indicate that Yamato was the production center of the coalescent polity. Furthermore, Yamato is seen to have been the home of the Otomo, Mononobe, and Soga gens, major supporters of fifth-century kings. Barnes in fact agrees that the "complex distribution of various craft remains, large storage facilities, specialized transportation facilities, and

50

yOryaku, great king

ritual remains" at Furu and Soga in Yamato are "the best examples of urbanizing sites in fifth-century Japan."^® In my mind, Wada's argument is persuasive. It is not difficult to imagine why fifth-century paramounts would have sought continuity with the past by continuing to locate their main residences in Miwa, although certainly the port on Osaka Bay served as an important center for the trading and diplomatic affairs over which Yamato-based paramounts presided.'^ And when they died, kings of the coalescent core were laid to rest in native soil where marine breezes blew, and where broad alluvial space and plentiful river water harnessed by improving hydraulic technology permitted monumental tombs with dou­ ble and triple moats surrounded by abundant new rice fields.^® Construction of the first of the monumental Osaka keyhole tombs, the Kami'iwazu tomb, began during the first half of the fifth century in Izumi, as one in a cluster of mounds known today as the Mozu tomb group. Within a decade or so, Daisen took shape (see Fig. 3). Meanwhile, in neigh­ boring Kawachi, a slightly smaller tomb known as Kondayama was con­ structed in the Furuichi tomb cluster. Unfortunately, these great keyholes have not been adequately excavated because of official restrictions; but scholars have long suggested that the two clusters, Mozu and Furuichi, represent the burial places of two different lineages of fifth-century Wa kings, probably that of San and Chin as well as that of Sai, Ko, and Bu, as they are called in the Chinese histories.^’ Based on careful calculations concerning the chronology of the largest tombs in these clusters, Shiraishi Ta'ichiro hypothesizes that the office of paramount alternated between the two lineages.2® While round keyhole tombs of unprecedented size were being con­ structed on the Osaka alluvial plain, the distribution and size hierarchy of round keyholes built in peripheral zones beyond mid-Honshu provide clues to relationships between paramounts of the coalescent core and chieftains of other regions. It is clear that large round keyholes were under construction in most parts of the archipelago during the fifth century (again, see Fig. 3). More or less contemporary with the construction of Daisen, the colossal Tsukuriyama tomb (350 meters long) was erected in central Kibi, thereby identifying that area as the hub of a regional con­ federacy whose wealth approached that of the coalescent core. To the east, a chieftain in moimtainous upper Kenu built Ota Tenjin'yama, which, as the largest tomb mound in eastern Japan, spans 210 meters. To the west on the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu, chiefs of lesser means built tombs up to 140 meters long. And by Yuryaku's day, eastern chieftains in the Kanto and chieftains in southern Kyushu constructed mausolea up to 200 meters long.

yOryaku, great king

51

These large round keyhole tombs mark the western and eastern fron­ tiers of the Great King's confederate domain, within which Yuryaku's chiefly allies and clients were manifesting "mature chiefly power" as never before. Considering the size of these tombs, it is not difficult to posit that the largest among them were built by paramounts presiding over regional confederacies centered in present-day Okayama, Ibaragi, and Tottori pre­ fectures, and in both northern and southern Kyushu.^’ Tsude suspects the existence of a system of sumptuary regulation prescribing tomb size in this hierarchical order. While there is only circumstantial evidence to support that scenario, the size and shape hierarchies of chiefly mounds clearly articulated a sense of territorial hierarchy and solidarity over which apical paramounts based in mid-Honshu presided.^ Why were fifth-century chieftains across the archipelago eager to be buried in round keyhole tombs? One answer is surely that such burial marked membership in supraregional and international networks in which participation was deemed advantageous. We remain a long way from un­ derstanding all the facets of such confederate relations, but what we can piece together is the following. There can be no doubt that the round keyhole hierarchy of the fourth and fifth centuries emerged only after a substantial increase in food pro­ duction—to support non-food-producing projects—became possible due to expanded use of iron implements and improved hydraulic technology. In the coalescent core, researchers have pointed to the close chronologi­ cal relationship between remains of mid-scale land opening projects, evi­ denced by areas of regularized rice paddies, and the appearance of monu­ mental keyholes on the Osaka plain. Besides necessitating a considerably expanded supply of iron, the engineering skills required for both types of efforts were similar, including surveying, advanced riparian control, and labor management.^ Meanwhile, the written and archaeological records both indicate that such developments coincided with increasing inter­ change between mid-Honshu and the peninsula during the era of the fifth­ century Wa kings. It is thus reasonable to suggest an increased flow of both ingots and technology from the peninsula and south China, presided over by the paramounts of the coalescent core and their martial stalwarts. Con­ firming this hypothesis, large stores of iron tools, weapons, armor, and in­ gots have in fact been found in such fifth-century Osaka tombs as Ariyama and Nonaka.^"* If Wa paramounts' control of iron resources was important, so was their control of the communities of metalworkers who produced iron goods. By dominating diplomatic and trading relations, the paramounts would have been able to control official entry of immigrants from the continent, includ-

52

ytjRYAKU, GREAT KING

ing metalworkers. As immigrants from iron-producing Kaya settled in Yamato and its hinterland, mining for iron ore and smelting would have developed. There'is still wide disagreement concerning the issue of when smelting actually got under way in the archipelago.^^ While Gina Barnes has concluded that iron was probably smelted in Yamato in Yuryaku's day—she notes that slag, a by-product of smelting, has been found at Furu, for instance—other researchers insist that evidence for smelting is firm only from the later sixth century on. The discovery in 1990 of an early ironproducing site at Enjo in the old province of Tamba northwest of the co­ alescent core provided new data; pottery and demarcation of sedimentary strata there indicate that some of the 200 kilns used to produce charcoal to fire smelters date from the sixth century or earlier.^ Archaeological evi­ dence of Yamato seafaring to Oki Island off the coast of Kyushu, added to written evidence, indicates as well that by Yuryaku s day the Wa para­ mount's maritime track linked major centers of smithing in Omi, Kibi, and northern Kyushu?^ Evidence grows increasingly strong that control of trade in iron and production of iron goods were key factors contributing to the preeminent influence of Wa paramounts. And if we add advanced techniques for salt and earthenware production to the list of technological advantages enjoyed by fifth-century Wa kings through their relations with the continent, what results is a view of Wa kingship significantly empow­ ered by oversight of continental trade and diplomacy. Historian Suzuki Yasutami summarizes the argument this way: The Wa kings managed to link a broad region of trade embracing the Inland Sea, northern Kyushu, and parts of southern Korea. Also, their courts benefited from knowledge of iron-making and the manufacture of iron tools, which technology came from beyond their shores. Using this technology, they opened the Osaka alluvial plain by expanding their agrarian skills. Their iron weapons added to their military ca­ pabilities as well. The chiefly class that asserted its authority over this coalescent polity took over methods utilized earlier by the Miwa rulers while organizing their society more efficiently. They worked to create a royal family whose status transcended that of other elites. And gradu­ ally they expanded military and trading relationships with elites all over west Japan, and with Korea and China. Thereby they trod a path toward formation of an archipelago-wide polity.^

Other considerations as well encouraged even lesser chieftains of the marches to sign on as members of the Great King's following. Based on in­ creasing data from excavation, archaeologists characterize the local chief­ tain {shucho) of the fifth century as lord of a small world comprising an

yCryaku, great king

53

irrigated watershed of small to medium size. The chieftain's residenceonly in the late fifth century did chiefly residences begin to appear out­ side cultivators' hamlets—functioned as the center of the chiefly domain. Meanwhile, the authority of the fifth-century chieftain was rooted in con­ trol of irrigation and the chiefly trading network, through which such goods as iron, salt, ceramics, and wooden items entered the local domain.29 Excavators have noted, however, relatively short cycles of construction within most kofun-era tomb clusters. They also posit a 50-year average for habitation at chiefly residences during the later fifth and sixth centuries. Such evidence points to instability of chiefly tenures.^ Moreover, moats and fortifications surrounding chiefly dwellings indicate concern for de­ fense. Local chieftains thus may have hoped to stabilize their tenures while improving surety through membership in the Great King's confederacy and the round keyhole hierarchy. Still, there were regions where chieftains did not construct round key­ hole tombs. One such was eastern Izumo, on the northwestern coast of Honshu facing the Sea of Japan. Despite the fact that in the mid-fifth century an early round keyhole known as Tsukuriyama NigO Tsuka was built in Izumo, round keyholes did not proliferate there.Rather, chieftains in the Ou valley and on the eastern Shimane peninsula expressed chiefly solidarity by building largish square tombs, either keyholes or simple squares. Kososhi tomb, an early square keyhole approximately 43 meters long, was probably erected in Yuryaku's own lifetime, as was the 30-meter square tomb of Oba.’^ In all, some seventeen square keyholes constructed in the fifth and sixth centuries have been identified throughout eastern Izumo, averaging from 50 to 70 meters in length. Ou's Yamashiro Futago tomb, 92 meters long and constructed in the early to mid-sixth century, is the giant among these mausolea and represents the zenith of an Ou­ centered confederacy—which Kadowaki Teiji terms "the kingdom of Ou" (Ou dkoku).^ Although the tombs of Ou paramount chieftains do not match the size of chiefly tombs in many regions where round keyholes predomi­ nated, they evidence a distinctive territorial hierarchy centered in eastern Ou through the mid-sixth century. One explanation for Izumo's autonomy is that in Yuryaku's day Yamato and Kibi were engaged in worsening bouts of rivalry. Kibi paramounts were building their own mammoth round keyhole tombs, as seen at Tsu­ kuriyama and Zozan; and the Nihon shoki tells of other forms of rivalry, including an attempted coup by Kibi elites to take over the leadership of the coalescent core after Yuryaku's death. In such circumstances chieftains in eastern Izumo, distant from mid-Honshu influence by either land or sea and no longer fearful of reprisals from Kibi to the south, would have used

yuryaku, great king

54 the opportunity to establish their own autononrous chiefly on a distinct network of trading and marital relations dating back to Yayo times “ Izumoites were also weU placed to maintam trading mla^o^ wi h thp neninsula especially with SUla. And Izumo benefited from local sources of iron sa^d-researchers point to evidence that a distmctive nom making technology developed there during the fifth and sixth centoi ^GmatKingYuryakuenjoyed substantial influence,the case ofizumo ^ds us that fhere were other chiefly hierarchies across the archipelag

that continued to display distinct signs of autonomy. Constructing the Great King s Retinue

Two inscribed iron swords excavated from tomb mounds m eastern and weste"an provide important clues to the relations^P between Gr a King YuryLu Ld subordinate chieftains residing m distant parte of t SpeZo The inscription on the Inariyama sword, named. for a late fi^Ientoyroundkeyhole tomb inMusashi where It was found,has been

tentatively translated as follows;

Inscribed in the seventh month, in the year... [471 c.e.]. The ancestor S^^ie-no-omi was Ohohiko. His son was Takan-no-sukune. Hte son was Teyokariwake. His son was Takahishiwake. His »n was TasaiX. k son was Hatehi. His son was Kasahiyo^^ so^ Owake-no-omi. From generation to generation they served as Chiets of the Sword Bearers. When the court of Great King Watotakeru was a Shiki, I aided him in ruling the realm [lente], and had this hundredtimes-wrought sword made to record the history of my servi . Over the last decade scholars have generally agreed that the Wakatekerunmned here was none other than Yuryaku. His preemment tideGreat King-seen here for the .first time, may well have been te Koguiyb practice of using Chinese characters meanmg Wh^ly m d^!^he Koguryb ruler.’' Also notable is the first extan use of XX" (2), denoting the realm of a Chinese-style umv Xarch In reaUty, Yuryaku's rule was far from being umversal, but

use of the phrase lente indicates that Chinese conceptions of Xre being introduced into late fifth-century Wa, together with the allied XoloX of writing and record keeping.” The Inanyama sword im scriptionTs one of the oldest known examples of writing m the islan . the centuries to come, writing, like iron, would serve Wa cultural capital, the distribution of which greatly empowered them. " Scription also provides us with some important information

yOryaku, great king

55

about the royal vassal known as Owake, whose place in the royal retinue gave him access to the iron- and sword-making technology necessary for the crafting and inscription of this sword. Here Owake identifies himself as the eighth generation of a patrilineage of chieftains long allied with Yamato-based paramounts in "pacifying all under Heaven." If we accept his claim, Owake's genealogy could extend back to the early fourth cen­ tury, when the Hashihaka and Godo tombs were under construction.^’ Whether Owake was himself a local chieftain from Musashi or a com­ mander sent out to Musashi from the coalescent core, there is no doubt that his lineage was titled—use of such titles as sukune and omi mark an uji, or chiefly lineage that served the Yamato paramount over generations.^ In this regard John Whitney Hall's understanding of such titled lin­ eages needs revision: the uji was more than a basic kinship group. It was a specific political structure bom of a relationship of service between elites like Owake and the Yamato paramount, a relationship that was formally recognized by grant of a noble title (kabane) and a post in the royal retinue.*’ Omi was such a title, and Owake's post was Chief of the Sword Bearers. The current scholarly consensus, based largely on this Inariyama inscrip­ tion, is that such titled lineages, or uji, emerged during the fifth century. Founders of the earliest uji may well have been the generals to which Wa kings distributed martial titles, as recorded in the Chinese histories. Over time, the original uji lineage expanded into multigenerational extended kinship groups like those termed conical clans by anthropologists. Such extended kinship groups also came to integrate a variety of dependent groups.*^ Memory of the founding ancestor and their ongoing service relation­ ship with the Yamato king served as basic sources of solidarity for the uji. Owake's burial in Musashi suggests that whatever his provenance, he functioned in Musashi as royal deputy and local authority. Besides his titled status and possession of the inscribed iron sword, Owake's burial in a moated round keyhole tomb 120 meters in length also signified his close relationship with the Great King.*^ A second inscribed iron sword, this one found in a fifth-century round keyhole tomb only 47 meters in length and known as Eta Funayama in present-day Kumamoto prefecture, describes another member of YOryaku's retinue, an official named Murite who resided in western Kyushu. From there the ships of the confederacy set out for the continent and returned with loads of precious goods, including iron. The inscription even makes reference to Murite's ability to lay hold of 60 precious pieces of iron scrap with which to forge the sword, and how upon completion the sword served its bearer as a talisman:

yUrvaku, great king

56

Under the reign of the Great King Wakatakeru who ruled the realm the official Murite, who served [the Great King], made this swor overhardened by three-sun from the tip in Au^t, usmg a la g ] cauldron and a four-s/iflfc«-long court sword eighty-times-wrought, in addition to sixty pieces of iron scrap. The person who bears sword shall live long and his descendants shall continue to enjoy the three benefits and never lose what they rule. The swordsmith was Itaka, and

the writer was ChOan.'** While chieftains like Owake protected Yuryaku's interests in distant eastern provinces and served as sometime guards at the court m mdHonshofofficials like Murite oversaw the king's affairs in dutwt Kyush . In such a system Great King Yuryaku frequently rewarded these chentfoUowers-Ld proclaimed his own majesty-with lavish gftts as well as noble titles and offices. Many of these gifts reflected the a^tocrahc md martial equestrian culture of the southern Korean peninsula; horse trap pings, often decorated with gold and silver, have been .found m plenty m late fifth-century round keyhole tombs aU over the archipelago. In contrast with Himiko's lifetime two centuries earlier, when a female chieftain could stiU rule as theurgic paramount, Yuryaku's martial era can surely be seen as one when increasing emphasis on male scripts was pro­ pelling gender hierarchy forward at a dynamic pace resultmg in wtet Ltorian of gender relations Takamure Itsue characterized as the first waves of a "patriarchal revolution."^ While I would stress that the emer­ gence of full gender hierarchy was an extremely gradual Takamure was quite right to locate an epochal moment in the Mth century. To put Owake, Murite, and the royal style of "Great ^g m histoncal perspective, we need the broader picture of events taking place m the China Sea interaction sphere at this time. Old records from Paekche quoted in the eighth-century Nihon shoki report that around 461 the tog of Paekche sent a brother to reside in Wa as a pledge of loyalty to the Wa kmg. In return, the Wa confederacy dispatched troops to the peninsuU to help PaekAe defend itself against Koguryo. And in the early 470s the Wa king y sent a Paekche prince back to the peninsula to restore archy, which had been destroyed by a Koguryd mvasion. If we “cept * historicity of these reports, Yflryaku was in a position of shen^ vis-h-vis the Paekche court, which looked to Wa, as well as to SiUa, for vi aid in a desperate time.-’ The fact that the Koguryd "Mighty King was.a common enemy of Paekche and Wa gives new significance to Yuryaku s

use of the royal Style "Great King. Large groups of Korean immigrants who moved to the ai'chipelago as refugees from the war-tom peninsula-we find such terms as Ayahto and

yOryaku, great king

57

Hata denoting groups of these newcomers—were also important contribu­ tors to the wealth and power of coalescent-core paramounts in the second half of the fifth century. According to Hirano Kunio, three waves of im­ migration occurred: the first predated Yuryaku and began early in the fifth century; the second began in Yuryaku's age and continued through the mid-sixth century; and the third occurred later, during the seventh­ century reigns of Tenji, Temmu, and Jito. Immigrants represented a large pool of productive labor, which the Wa paramount could settle wherever he wished and then expect unlimited loyalty and rich tribute from in return. Recent excavation, correlated with the study of place-names, indicates that substantial parts of Yamashiro, Omi, and Kawachi were opened to wet-rice culture by groups of Korean immigrants during the fifth century. They employed hydraulic engineer­ ing skills to dig ponds and long canals.^ Moreover, accounts in the Nihon shoki indicate that immigrant craftsmen contributed specialized skills—in ceramics, leather working, weaving, sake making, hydraulic engineering, scholarship, and record keeping—to the Great Bung's service. Their crafts­ men produced the ornate horse trappings, swords, and other luxury items decorated with gold, silver, and bronze, as well as the stone sarcophagi and sueki ritual ware that were recognized as insignia of membership in the royal retinue and were buried in the newly fashionable "corridor" (yokoana) tombs of the day.^^ Immigrants no doubt influenced elite lifestyles in other ways as well; Koizumi Kazuko notes that miniature grave goods and clay figures (haniwa} confirm the use of chairs and beds by Wa elites in the fifth century.®” Those who had previously served peninsular courts also brought new management skills to the Great King's household, including writing, fa­ miliarity vrith Chinese texts, and record keeping.®’ We can trace resisting changes in the organization of the royal household only through anecdotes in our retrospective written sources. We are told, for example, that an eastern uji known as the Takahashi was charged with stocking the royal larder; another uji, the Mononobe, saw to weapons stores and served the Great King militarily; the Imbe and possibly the Nakatomi oversaw ritual needs, including the production of royal jewels at Soga. Immigrant groups, imder their own chieftains, were charged with all sorts of specialized tasks. And further out on the periphery the royal household received pledges of service to be performed by groups of laborers (be) from regional chieftains eager to demonstrate their loyalty.®^ This arrangement may well imitate one developed earlier in Paekche, the basic model of which can be traced back to the venerable Rites of Chou, which lists bands of specialists re­ cruited to serve the Chou ruler in Chinese high antiquity.®® The be system was important because it established direct patrimonial

O

5»

YURYAKU, GREAT KING

ties between the Great King and communities of royal servants in many parts of the archipelago « Over time these royal workers did more than mobilize the royal fisc. They ultimately provided the Great King with opportunities for what state-formation theorist Kent Flannery has termed linearization and medd/i«g-paths for the penetration of royal authoritywherever they were employed.^ The social networks established and maintained by the uji or great families that served the king provided vital linkages between the king s center and the periphery, as a study of the Kusakabe uji demonstrates. Kusaka was the name of one of Yuryaku's consorts from the Warn family, and the syllable be refers to a group of royal workers. Yoshida Takashi and others posit that the first head of the lineage-perhaps a courtier known as Kusakabe-no-atai—was given the name by Yuryaku when the Great King charged him with overseeing cultivators working rice paddies for Kusaka and her offspring. The atai component in his name signified a middle­ ranking title, or kabane, granted to a member of the royal retinue and his

’ lineal relatives by the Great King. As in the case of Owake, Kusakabe-no-atai's geographic ongins are unclear, but by late in the fifth century he was named a country chieftam (kuni-no-mix/atsuko) in the eastern region later known as Kai province. Was he originally a local chieftain there, or was he sent there to do the bidding of his royal lord? One persuasive scenario takes Kusakabe as a member of the Wani family and therefore as a relative of Yuryaku's consort. Her fam­ ily would have been eager to support a consort from its ranks at the Great King's court; thus it would have been willing to provide Kusakabe-no-atai with the workers needed to open and cultivate rice paddies on her behalf. Why did Kusakabe-no-atai end up in Kai? Hara Hidesaburo thinks there may have been a link between a local Kai chieftain and the Wani, who also colonized parts of eastern Suruga.^ We might also envision a chieftain in Kai who, anticipating a felicitous link with Yuryaku's court and access to new technology, invited Kusakabe managers and workers to colonize an unopened region in his own domain. Such a chieftain might even have offered some of his own people to help with the job, assuming the pres­ tigious name Kusakabe as his own in the process. In this regard, the Hitachi fudoki shows that major land-openers remembered in that region east of Kai were also linked to the court as possessors of kabane.^'^ In the case of the Kusakabe, sons, daughters, and sisters from the lin­ eage reportedly served as attendants at Yuryaku's court, and Kusak^eno-atai is said to have spent time at court before journeying out to Kai. Meanwhile, a higher-ranking noble named Kusakabe-no-muraji served permanently at court, acting as liaison for Kusakabe-no-atai while he was

yOryaku, great king

59

residing in Kai. Extant genealogies indicate that members of the Kusakabe uji developed a strong sense of kinship based on common ancestry and religious practice; muraji and atai lineages of the Kusakabe claimed a com­ mon ancestral deity.^^ Thus the Kusakabe uji not only served consorts and heirs of the Great King. They also linked the coalescent core with Kai, just as Owake connected the core to Musashi still farther east.

Husbanding the Realm The opening poem in the Man'yoshil, an eighth-century poetry anthology, is no doubt apocryphal in its portrayal of Yuryaku's encounter with a maiden plucking herbs in springtime;

Girl with your basket, with your pretty basket, with your shovel, with your pretty shovel, gathering shoots on the hillside here, I want to ask your home. Tell me your name! This land of Yamato, seen by the gods on high— it is all my realm, in all of it, I am supreme. I will tell you my home and my name.®’ The woman here is engaged in gathering herbs, a springtime activity char­ acteristic of Chinese empresses and associated with both fertility and heal­ ing. As she works, the paramount, supreme in the land and beloved by its gods, comes upon her. In his mind, his is the land and the link with the gods; without him there would be no fertility or healing, and so he de­ serves to know her name and to know her. Whether the attribution is apocryphal or not. Great King Yuryaku's relations with women from many parts of the archipelago empowered his paramountcy as surely as did his control of diplomacy, the dispatch of mercenary forces, and the iron trade. Yuryaku's chapter in the Nihon shoki portrays the Great King's palace filled with a plenitude of consorts of varying status. The most senior was Hatabi, reportedly the granddaughter of the earlier Wa king known as Nintoku. Such a marriage between two royal lineages may have been an expression of what anthropologists call rank consolidation," a strategy to concentrate royal charisma and ease

yCryaku, great king

6o

succession tensions."° Other consorts were drawn from the great ujt such as the Katsuragi and Wani, who themselves presided over subcenters m the territorial hierarchy of the coalescent core. From outside of the coales­ cent core, Yuryaku took a consort from upper Kibi, and chiefly families from other regions-specifically recorded are Yamato, Kibi, and Ise-sent women to join the royal household as gift-maidens {uneme)fi^ These alliances were mutually beneficial to both sides; chiefly famihes gained status and influence upward, while the Great King gai^d allies downward. As Stanley Tambiah has noted was also the case in Thailand, the high king's multiple affinal relations with queens, concubines, and ladies-in-waiting led to an ordered system of alliances with the king as the apical figure, thereby nurturing hierarchical solidarity and constituting the

This strategy was not without difficulties, however. The Nihon shoki portrays the "greatiy wicked ruler," as Yflryaku was termed by later com­ pilers horrified by the violence of his times, struggling mightily to define his own transcendent status especially vis-^-vis affines. While the Great King was attempting to elaborate a concept of hypergamous royal m^riages his affines—who were themselves building massive keyhole tombs at just this time-rejected his calls for increased subordination. So it was that on different occasions Yuryaku attacked the Katsuragi, the Wani, a^ the Kibi chieftains, and in a fit of temper he also executed the daughter of a Korean chieftain sent to him as a gift-maiden. It was likely m order to lessen royal dependence on unruly affines that YOryaku enlisted the Soga chieftain as steward of his treasury, recruited the Otomo and Mononobe as palace guards and shock troops, and employed immigrant advisers to a heater extent than had predecessors.^ In Yuryaku's day the construction of Great Kingship required aggressive definition and enforcement mcreasingly elaborated concepts of preeminence, and proud royal affines often obstructed that process.

Ritual Coordination

We have seen that Queen Himiko, together with chieftains and peuamounts before and after her, performed theurgic functions to pacify de­ ities, make the land prosperous, and unify her confederate realm. Such functions were stUl claimed by eighth-century country chieftams, as this eighth-century enumeration of the old beliefs by the country chieftam of Izumo witnesses: "The land of rich rice-ears growing in the reedy plains m the daytime buzzes with flies as in early summer, and in the mghttime there are spirits who shine like fire-pots. Everywhere sounds from the

yOryaku, great king

61

rocks, the tree-stumps and the bubbles of foam on blue waters are heard as they talk in this restless land. Nevertheless I shall calm and pacify it"** And yet there is little evidence to suggest that by Yuryaku's day the Great King was exercising such sacerdotal talents. Gina Barnes may well be right—Yuryaku had become too much of a martial figure, too much a warrior king (in Hocarf s terms), to act the king celestial. So it was that professional ritualists such as the Sarume, the Imbe, and the Nakatomi began to emerge within the royal household, taking upon themselves the specialized work of enchantment that had once been Queen Himiko's. While the evidence is drawn from lore in gazetteers, we see instances of ritualists charged with subduing the kami with appeasement rites and spells (kotodama, kotomuke), as was the case when a theurgist dispatched from the Great King's court pacified a violent deity that threatened the people of Harima.^ The archaeological record indicates that ritual sites on the northeast slope of Mount Miwa near the king's Shiki palace were active during Yuryaku's era, and entries in the Nihon shoki record that a local noble named Miwa-no-kimi was charged with propitiating the deities there.** Pottery and jewels found at cult sites on the mountain came from the paramount's own kiln at Sue and from royal jewel-making factories at Furu and Soga.*’’ The Great King thus succeeded in retaining an aura of heroic religious charisma by functioning as a coordinator of theurgists and patron of kami cults in the coalescent core and beyond.*® Stories in the Kojiki, the Nihon shoki, and the gazetteers confirm that Yamato paramounts "guarded" sa­ cred regalia from regional cult centers, such as those of the Kuwata region of Tamba and Kitsuki in Izumo. These precious jewels, swords, and other treasures were reportedly stored in a treasure house at the Isonokami shrine, cult center of the Mononobe In addition to guarding sacred regalia from regional cult centers, par­ amounts of the coalescent core reportedly dispatched offerings to the shrines of major deities of the confederacy. Such offerings may well have been sent first to the Munakata Shrine on Oki Island off the Kyushu coast. Archaeologists have determined that jewels and pottery manufactured in Yamato sites reached the island shrine of the sea deity in the fourth cen­ tury.’^ Such offerings help us to date the historical moment when the coalescent core succeeded in establishing peaceful relations with local chieftains of far-west Honshu and Kyushii, whose domains bordered the Inland Sea. Ise Shrine is another regional cult to which Great King Yuryaku dis­ patched royal offerings and, according to the Nihon shoki, a priestess­ princess (saio). There are numerous theories about when the first saiS actu-

62

yOryaku, great king

ally might have gone out to Ise. The event is described in the Suinin chapter of the Nihon shoki, and Suinin's reign is generally associated with the third century. But since the Sujin and Suinin chapters were compiled quite late, probably in the late seventh century, researchers consider them to be mythhistorical, that is, they represent a weaving together of mythic themes associated with Yamato paramountcy in the kofun age.^^ To lend historic credibility to particular events or personalities seems dubious. On the other hand, to connect the establishment of increasingly intimate relations between Ise and the coalescent core with the period when round keyholes were spreading eastward during the fourth and fifth centuries seems rea­ sonable. Certainly a cult whose locus was situated near the entrance to Ise Bay would have enjoyed support from mariner folk sailing the sea route between the port at Suminoe and eastern Japan. Establishing relations with the Ise cult, first by sending offerings and later by sending his own kinswoman as priestess-princess from the royal household, was just the sort of "courting" strategy the charismatic center of a galactic polity would have utilized to bond the coalescent core more intimately with eastern chieftains like Owake, Kusakabe, and a host of others.’^ In this regard, historian Wada Atsumu has concluded from excavated artifacts that early liturgical practices at Ise—the use of wooden, human-shaped replicas, burial of metal and wooden objects, purging with water, and propitiating the deity with offerings—reflect popular religious usages of south China that first took root in Japan at Mount Miwa in Yamato and then moved eastward to Ise in the late fifth or early sixth centuries.^

j ;

I ; i

1

J j j

t I is J

After Yuryaku: Succession The collage that we can piece together from clues in the written and archaeological records shows Great King Yuryaku to have been paramount chieftain of a supraregional confederacy of what might be termed "nested polities." The coalescent core can be viewed as a galactic-polity-within; relations between the Great King as paramount and satellite chiefdoms were now weaker, now stronger as the paramount exercised both military strength and other sorts of influence to bind his confederates to himself. Further out in the hinterland, in what might be called the "galactic-politywithout," relations between the paramount of the coalescent core and satellite chieftains—some of whom were much more powerful than others— were more attenuated. But in the fifth century, as the 400-meter round keyhole tombs appeared on the Osaka plain, there was no doubt in any chieftain's mind who was the apical figure in the order of territorial hierarchy that constituted the nearly all-archipelago realm of Wa. We have seen that Yuryaku's reign was characterized by strategies

yOryaku, great king

63

to strengthen Great Kingship. Elaboration of the royal retinue, fisc, and household were of prime importance. Within the coalescent core, wherein resided powerful chieftains who had long intermarried with Yamato chief­ tains, Yuryaku resorted to martial force to enhance his paramount preemi­ nence. But in his relations with distant satellites in the hinterland he gave gifts, entered into marriage alliances, bestowed titles and offices, and used other tactics to increase the influence of the galactic center while nurturing a sense of vertical integration to constitute the realm. That members of Yuryaku's retinue themselves celebrated him as Great King and were ea­ ger to participate in his rulership of "all under heaven" suggests that he enjoyed considerable success in these endeavors.^"’ Nonetheless, after Yuryaku died in 479 the written and the archaeologi­ cal records mutually confirm that the coalescent polity fissioned. In the Kojiki and Nihon shoki we read of rival leagues of chieftains based in Yamato's Katsuragi region and in Kibi competing for control of the Great King's throne by supporting different princes for succession. In the Chinese rec­ ord, notices of Wa kings cease for over a century. Meanwhile the round keyhole hierarchy evidences a new level of competition between builders of great tombs in different regions of the archipelago; although Osaka's Ota Chausuyama (227 meters long) maintained its preeminence as the largest round keyhole of its day, its margin in terms of size relative to other large tombs of its day—even in distant, peripheral regions like the Kanto and southern Kyushu—decreased in stunning fashion (see Fig. 3, p. 32). The Great King who was interred in Ota Chausuyama was less great, and the age was marked by a significant devolution of political authority. The downturn lasted some decades; it was well into the sixth century before another truly monumental keyhole, Kawachi Otsuka (335 meters long), rose on the alluvial plain, confirming the "recoalescence" of the core.^^ There were doubtless multiple causes for these developments, the clar­ ification of which will necessitate broad inquiry into changing conditions within the China Sea interaction sphere at the turn of the sixth century. As my colleague Oliver Wolters has argued in his study of Srivijaya, the rhythms of East Asian history are international. Wolters showed how Malay kings, like their counterparts in Wa, benefited from participation in the Chinese tributary system and were adversely affected when that sys­ tem weakened: Protected by friendly tributary relations between the ruler of the Malay entrepot and the Chinese emperor, Asian traders from many coimtries proceeded safely on their way to China, while the ruler of the entrepot, as a result of the wealth brought to him by this trade, was able to acquire influence and support in the Malay world. His city

64

yOryaku, great king

became a capital city (nagara) because it was the residence of the prince with most prestige. But, when these favourable conditions of interna­ tional trade disappeared, a necessary consequence would be that pros­ perity would begin to desert the entrepot and the power of its Ma­ haraja [Great King] would decline.^* Following Wolters's lead, inquiry into conditions in the China Sea tributary system at the turn of the sixth century is needed. Certainly, recent excavation of the double-moated, 96-meter Minegatsuka round keyhole tomb in the Osaka Furuichi cluster has confirmed the continuation of dy­ namic interaction between Wa and the peninsular kingdoms of Paekche and Silla in the post-YQryaku age. Constructed in the late fifth century, Minegatsuka interred a figure important enough within that system that he or she was buried with imprecedentedly rich gold and silver accesso­ ries, fifteen long swords, and plentiful iron weapons and other military equipment. Further research will be needed to consider whether the Great King's grip on trade and diplomacy slackened late in the century, allowing the rise of a new stratum of elites—perhaps military commanders who oversaw trading and mercenary efforts on the peninsula and were then buried with unparalleled treasures imported from abroad in smaller key­ holes like Minegatsuka.^ On the domestic side, it is clear that the death of the valorous monarch called Wakatake exposed a weak point in the structure of late fifth-century paramountcy; the polygynous system of royal husbanding of the realm was producing an overabundance of eligible heirs, each backed by his mother's kin and their supporters, in a system of succession that was yet indeterminant and increasingly martial and competitive. Yuryaku himself had reportedly destroyed several rivals to get and keep the throne. After his death, his heirs—and those of other royal lineages who lodged claims to the throne—were less successful in maintaining those claims. To speak of a "royal dynasty" in the fifth century is anachronistic. There was rather a burgeoning royal kindred, within which succession was by kinnght. All eligible princes—and princesses too if we accept the historicity of Queen litoyo's succession some time in the late fifth or early sixth centuryshared parity of estate.^® How to limit the succession and safeguard the peace and order of the galactic polities within and without was a challenge sixth-century rulers were obliged to face.

In her study of the archaeology of state formation in fifth-century Yamato, Gina Barnes concluded that Great King Yuryaku commanded awesome

yOryaku, great king

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military power. He was capable of conscripting, feeding, eqiiipping, and coordinating sufficient labor from the territorial hierarchy over which he presided to build a great keyhole tomb—a tomb which, however, has yet to be identified.^ Barnes sees such coordination as indicative of the state­ formation process and posits the emergence of a fifth-century Yamato state.™ I disagree. Even in the coalescent core Yuryaku was obliged to battle rivals ceaselessly. Relationships in Yuryaku's segmented realm—compris­ ing the core, or galactic-polity-within, and the periphery, or galactic-politywithout—remained fluid. Strong and enduring linkages between center and periphery sufficient to constitute the infrastructure of what can be termed "a state formation" had not yet taken shape. Nor can we con­ fidently identify the "reasonably centered command structure and unified culture" of Suzuki Yasutami's "early state" in Yuryaku's day.®’ Yuryaku girded himself with martial charisma, and he grasped control of diplomatic, trading, and mercenary relations with the continent to assert preeminence at the core of the coalescent polity and far beyond. His suc­ cesses led members of his retinue near and far to acclaim him "Great King." The size of the royal household and the complex politicosocial net­ works linking it to many parts of the archipelago increased dynamically. And component parts from which a more enduring paradigm of kingship could be fashioned—a gathering of hereditary followers constituting the court, a fisc made up of royal estates and worker groups, and an apical image of the Great King as heroic warrior and ritual coordinator—were taking shape. But the confusion over who should rule after Yuryaku's death ultimately demonstrated the limits of late fifth-century structures of kingship, in which succession was violently contested and personal bonds of loyalty between the Great King and his subordinates were not yet suffi­ ciently regularized to be reproduced easily in the next generation.^ Critical facets of kingship—a cosmological charter, distinctive courtly ceremonial, and a legitimizing genealogy—had not yet been sufficiently articulated. Such gaps required the diligent attention of sixth-century Great Kings and their advisors. The results of their efforts dramatically differentiated paramountcy in the era of Great King Yuryaku from the nascent Chinesestyle sacerdotal kingship of the late sixth-century ruler known as Great King Suiko.

3 Suiko, Heavenly Heir and Polestar Monarch A GREAT HISTORICAL GULF Separates the rule of heroic Great King Yuryaku from that of the ''heavenly" female ruler known as Suiko. During Suiko's reign an ideological recasting of earlier modes of Great Kingship to incorporate structures and practices of Chinese kingship was undertaken. YOryaku's martial paramountcy was replaced by the idealized, universal reign of a Chinese-style sacral monarch-a polestar-who presided over a ranking system and a courtly ethic into which all chiefly elites of the realm were to be incorporated. A compelling cosmological revalidation estab­ lished the "heavenly court" {tenchG') as a center of unprecedented virtue, contributing substantially to the waxing of the galactic center at the turn of the seventh century. Meanwhile, construction of round keyhole tombs ceased across the archipelago, and in the coalescent core tomb mounds were replaced by palaces and Buddhist temples, ceremonial centers for living rather than dead kings. Early in the sixth century the disorder that followed Yuryaku's death was brought to an end by another warrior king, Ohodo, or Keitai as he later came to be called. His relations with chieftains to the east and north successfully expanded the boundaries of the coalescent core, making it richer in resources and manpower. The result was greater hegemonic strength, enabling the expanded core to overcome challengers in the east and west and to continue developing the royal fisc. Then, by mid-century, during the reign of the Great King known as Kimmei, the king and his heirs, aided by Soga affines and ministers, blended continental models of courtly kingship with indigenous practices to fashion new structures of dynasty and court. Most important, they succeeded in founding what Goody calls a "corporate dynasty," the first royal dynasty in the historical record of the archipelago. My methodology in this third cross section, which focuses on Great King Suiko but also provides an overview of changing structures of Great Kingship during the early sixth century, is similar to that in previous sec-

SUIKO, HEAVENLY HEIR AND POLESTAR MONARCH

67

tions. I evaluate the Nihon shoki account, other anecdotal data found in fiidoki, temple histories (such as the GangOji engi), and genealogies (such as Prince Shotoku's ShGtoku HdG teisetsu) for plausibility in light of the archaeological record and Chinese sources. Suiko's era represents an epochal historical juncture: the bridge be­ tween protohistory and history. Historians have concluded that the first genealogy of Great Kings was drawn up in the late sixth century—prob­ ably in Suiko's own lifetime. Moreover, intensive diplomatic interchange with the continent during Suiko's reign pressed the concerns of literacy and scholarship at the Great King's court in unprecedented fashion. The written record and effects of the transition from orality to literacy at the Wa court are therefore central here, as is a consideration of the claims of some historians that written records from Suiko's chapter in the Nihon shoki are more credible than those in earlier chapters of the chronicle.’ The reign of Kimmei's daughter at the end of the sixth century man­ ifests further significance when illuminated by models of sacral kingship and courtliness developed by Clifford Geertz and Norbert Elias, which prompt consideration of new developments in royal ceremonial and court­ liness that reconfigured Great King Suiko's court into the exemplary center of a Chinese-style polestar monarch.

The Expanded Core To expose the roots of the epochal transformation that marked Suiko's age we must dig back further to the early sixth century, when the coalescent core expanded and the structures of Yamato kingship—dynasty, court, fisc, and realm—underwent substantial reorganization and elaboration. One hundred years before Suiko's reign—around the turn of the sixth century—the galactic polity over which Yamato Great Kings presided was in a waning phase. After Yuryaku's death there were several claimants to the throne, each supported by different great families. One of them seems to have been a princess known as litoyo, who was supported by her matri­ lineal relatives, the Katsuragi? Her brothers are said to have been hidden away in Harima until they claimed the throne from her. The Nihon shoki also records the outbreak of a coup launched by a prince supported by elites from the Kibi region. Such was the situation when one of the highestranking hereditary royal counselors, Otomo Kanamura, sought out in dis­ tant parts the prince who would become the Great King known as Keitai.® While the dates of Keitai's reign remain speculative, Kakubayashi Fumio tentatively dates it from 507 to 518, thereby revising the dates provided by compilers of the Nihon shoki (507-31).

Figure 4. Selected Yamato royal genealogy in the official annals

Daisen Kofun

Oj in (early fifth century) □ Richu Hanzei

Inariyama/Eta Funayama Sword Inscriptions

Ingyo (mid fifth century) □ YOryaku (456-79)* □ □ □ □ Buretsu (498-506)

° □ □ □ □ Pr. litoyo (4fl0s?)

Keitai (507-31) □ □ Kimmei (539-71)

Coming of Buddhism Fujinoki Kofun Soga Zenith

Bidatsu (572-85)

Sujun (587-92)

YSmei (585-87)

Suiko (592-628)

Pr. Oshisakanohikohito

Taika "Reforms" 645

KOtoku (645-54)

Pr. Umayado "ShOtoku*

KOgyoku (Saimei) (642-45) (655-61)

Jomei (629-41)

Temmu (673-86)

Jits (690-97)

Tenji (668-71)

Otsu Capital

Jinshin War 672

Fujiwara Capital 694-710 Taihd Ritsuryd Code 701 Nara Capital 710-84

Usa =t=

Pr. Kusakabe:

,

K6bun (672)

Cemmei (707-15)

Pr, Otsu Pr. Takechi

Prince Nagaya TOdaiji Constructed

DOkyd, Prince of the Law

I—---- 1 Censh6 (715-24)

Mommu (697-707) I ShSmu (724-49) 1 K5ken/(749-58) (ShOtoku) (764-70) KOnin (770-81)

Nagaoka Capital Heian Capital Reign dates prior to Suiko are approximate.

Kammu (781-806)

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There are several things about Keitai that made him unusual among pretenders for Great Kingship; the Kojiki and Nihon shoki tell us he was bom and raised outside the coalescent core, that it took him two decades to establish a palace in Yamato, and that although he took one wife from a Wa royal lineage, most of his consorts were daughters of chieftains from the regions of Omi and Owari to the north and east of the old coalescent core. All of this makes it probable that Keitai was a candidate backed by a chiefly confederacy based in these regions. Official genealogies identify Keitai's father as a fourth-generation descendent of a paramount known as Ojin, who reigned in the late fourth or early fifth century (see Fig. 4). Even if the claim was true (and it might be pure fiction), the fact that such a distant relative of a long-ago king could lodge a successful claim to the Great King's throne demonstrates that succession was extremely indeterminate and that many candidates had been killed off during the decades of unrest since Yuryaku's time. A persuasive reading of Keitai's succession is that chieftains outside the core seized on the disorder as an opportunity to improve their positions, some seeking status and influence at the center, others desiring more independent orbits on the periphery, and still others looking for opportunity to break away. In recent decades historians have been adding to our knowledge of the "frontier" confederacy that Keitai represented. It encompassed the terri­ tory that would later become the provinces of Omi, Mino, and Owari, as well as the Hokuriku region. Its leading chieftains have lately been identi­ fied as the Okinaga, who are thought to have grown increasingly wealthy and powerful from the production of iron, including mining and smelting.* Their smelting facilities, which some researchers date back to the early fifth century, are the earliest known in Japan.® The metal they produced spread southward into Yamashiro, where tools made from it helped the immi­ grant Hata open new fields; weapons made from it may well have bol­ stered Yuryaku's strength. It is thus no coincidence that the new Great King Keitai reportedly built early palaces in Yamashiro, between his home­ land and Yamato and conveniently located near the upper flows of the Yodo River. When Keitai finally did manage to build a palace in the old coalescent core, the extended coalescent polity over which he ruled bene­ fited from far richer resources and manpower than had the earlier coales­ cent core.* The Okinaga and their allies to the east and north were not the only regional elites who challenged Yamato hegemony in the early sixth cen­ tury. The Kojiki records that the country chieftain of upper Kenu in the east attacked a Yamato confederate during the 5205.^ He was eventually de­ feated and compelled to donate land for a royal estate to the Great King.

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And according to the 'Nihon shoki the paramount of Iwai, who controlled much of northern Kyushu, formed an alliance with peninsular Silla against Yamato. But when Silla failed to send soldiers to support him, the Iwai country chief was obliged to face forces representing the Great King's military might alone and was defeated. Presumably because written rec­ ords were not yet being kept, no complete description of the Iwai affair has survived, but Kakubayashi argues that this important victory took place in the second decade of the sixth century.® There seems little doubt that regional challenges, eastern and western, were successfully neutralized because the expanded core of Keitai's day was capable of providing more resources—food, manpower, and iron goods to name a few—than could any one rebellious region. The stakes in the conflict with the Kyushu paramount were particularly high. Had the Iwai chieftain succeeded in his bid for autonomy, the Great King would have lost control of the preferred sea route to the continent. But once Iwai was pacified, the preeminence of Great Kingship based in the extended coalescent core was never again seriously challenged until late medieval times. How sixth-century Great Kings continued to benefit from their monop­ olistic hold on the fruits of interaction with the peninsula is suggested by the archaeological record. Consider, for instance, the treasures excavated at the mid- to late sixth-century Fujinoki tomb in Yamato's Ikaruga district during the late 1980s. Its fabulously rich grave goods include gold and silver accessories and intricately crafted horse trappings that reflect aristo­ cratic fashions on the sixth-century peninsula. These goods were either imported directly from Korea or made by peninsular craftsmen in the Great King's royal workshops.’ Similar goods, albeit in less rich stashes, have also been uncovered in tombs distributed across the archipelago from Kyushu to the Kanto, and it is assumed that they were gifts dispatched to loyal chieftains by the Great King.^” In the sixth century then, gold and silver ornaments and equestrian gear—secular goods to delight human eyes—replaced the bronze swords and mirrors and comma-shaped jewels buried in earlier chiefly tombs. The common denominator linking both types of grave goods was their rare and prestigious character as treasures bestowed by the paramount, who controlled access to them through the monopolistic diplomatic and trading channels of the China Sea tributary system.

R To return to the question of the infrastructure of Great Kingship, although the record in the "Nihon shoki is vague, a series of anecdotes from there and

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elsewhere provide clues to the processes through which dynasty, court, and fisc were taking shape in Keitai's era. Keitai's reported construction of a palace at Iware in Yamato around the year 526 would have signaled the cor\solidation of the expanded coalescent core. It is also reasonable to posit that the royal fisc grew dynamically as pacified country chieftains ceded land and communities of workers to the king to signal their subordination. These gifts were transformed into royal estates (miyake) and worker groups (be), some under the control of managers sent by the court and others under the control of local appointees of the Great King.” The Nihon shoki and the gazetteers contain occasional references to specialized workers who were sent out to open and cultivate new land—for instance, Inoue Tatsuo estimates that groups of Kusakabe cultivators were dispatched dur­ ing the late fifth and early sixth centuries to locales in what would later become 36 provinces.” Scattered references and anecdotes in the written record indicate that groups of Korean immigrants contributed vital expertise to this expanding royal fisc. According to the Nihon shoki, around mid-century the Great King's minister, Soga Iname, was sent down the Inland Sea to Kibi to set up Shirai Miyake. The manager (tazukai) there was a member of the Katsuragi family from Yamato. But other entries in the same chronicle note that when Soga Iname established a new estate, he was frequently accompanied by immigrant scribes and managers. And when there were complaints that registers {fumita) of estate cultivators were not being correctly maintained, officials with Korean names conducted a new census and reorganized cultivators in residential units called tabe for registration.” Meanwhile the Suguribe, immigrants from Kaya, opened several estates known as Ota Miyake (Great Rice Paddy Estate). According to the Harima fudoki, "The reason it was called Suguribe is that during her [Suiko's] reign, the Sugu­ ribe people of Chiyo in Yamato were sent to reclaim the area. They settled around this mountain and it was called Suguribe Hill.'”^ The fudoki also recounts that when the Suguribe emigrated from Kaya, probably in the early sixth century when Silla annexed their land, they first settled at Ota, "the great rice paddy," on the Kii peninsula. Later, they founded a second such colony in Settsu, and still later they opened their third colony in Harima. In each case it would have been the Great King who authorized their efforts, thereby benefiting royal storehouses. Other stories recount how regional chieftains eager to demonstrate loyalty to the Great King donated land and cultivators to the royal fisc. A passage from the Harima fudoki records that a Tajima chieftain provided workers (foshiro) to open and cultivate a royal estate in Harima's liho district: "The community of Koshibe, once known as Mikoshiro, has me-

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dium grade soil. It was named that because during the reign of Prince Magari [posthumously Great King Ankan], Wotsu of the Tajima-no-kimi [m/i 1 was accorded royal favor and endowed with the title of Mikoshiro-nokimi. He served the throne by building royal storehouses [miyake] there, so the place was called Mikoshiro."^® In exchange for his service to the Great King, Wotsu gained a new name, Mikoshiro, designating him steward of a royal holding, and a new royal title, kimi, demonstrating his prestigious status in the royal retinue. The name, title, and office of stewardship enabled Wotsu to establish his own court-recognized lineage, or uji, through which his duties and pre­ rogatives could be transmitted hereditarily. By such means did the Great BCing gain new vassals, new productive land, cultivators, and a royal repre­ sentative in lihiho. According to the official histories and gazetteers, this pattern was replicated many times, and it demonstrates well how Great Kings elaborated their authority and influence through a process Pierre Bourdieu has termed "symbolic violence"—the use of promotions, ap­ pointments, or gift-giving to effect habitual hierarchical relations.^® Sym­ bolic violence proved an important instrument for sixth-century Great Kings seeking to increase their influence and wealth. References to agata, or units of royal land donated by local chieftains, begin to appear at this time as well.^^ According to the Ni/ion shoki, during Ankan's reign a chieftain in Settsu called libo contributed 40 chO (1 chd equals 2.94 acres) in five areas to make up the new agata, or "royal paddy land," of Mishima.^® Chieftain libo was then dubbed agatanushi, or chief of the royal paddy land: "There was a royal progress to Mishima. Otomo-noomuraji Kanamura went along. The tennO sentOtomo to ask agatanushi libo about good rice land. libo was delighted and did his best with the greatest humility and reverence. So did he offer up a total of 40 cho in Kaminomino, Shimonomino, Kaminokuwabara, Shimonokuwabara, and Takau. Since the Suiko chapter in the same chronicle subsequently records construction of a massive irrigation ditch to facilitate the opening of some 40,000 cho in Settsu, Sonoda Koyu connects the two events to posit dynamic develop­ ment of Mishima agata later in the century.” If we follow Ueda Masaaki's analysis of all references to agata in extant sources, such donations can be seen to have spanned the archipelago from Kyushu to the extended core—Echizen, Mino, and Owari form the eastern boundary of agata formation. As was the case with royal estates, the great­ est number of agata were established in Yamato, Kawachi, Kibi, and Tsukushi—all were adjacent to the Inland Sea and clearly of strategic interest for sixth-century Great Kings.^^ Sonoda Koyu suggests that agata and miyake were managed in tandem, particularly in places like Kibi and Tsu-

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kushi that were distant from the coalescent core. If he is right, the overseer of Shirai Miyake in Kibi may well have overseen affairs in the five agata established in sixth-century Kibi?’ As royal control of the fisc expanded, wide-scale "planned" land­ opening, enabled by iron implements and technology transmitted by the chiefly network headed by the Great King, became the basis for stronger chiefly claims to newly cultivated lands and those who worked them. Ishimoda Sho posited a new relationship between middling and lesser chieftains and their subjects, as follows: Chieftains up to the sixth century were characteristically sacred lead­ ers who embodied the community and its holdings. Such chieftains managed the natural resources of the community—mountains, forests, and open land—but not as their personal holdings. In contrast, from the sixth century on, members of the community came to comprise a patriarchal community: they were subjects and the chieftain owned garden and rice lands that he transmitted hereditarily to his heirs as personal holdings. The chieftain also possessed laborers {bemin).'^ More studies focusing on the written and archaeological records of various regions are still needed, however, to better illuminate the trajectory of such transformative social and productive relations, especially the degree to which patriarchy (kafuchosei) is an appropriate term to describe the new relations.23 Great King Keitai and his successors also enhanced their influence far from the Yamato palace through the coordination of ritual—sending offer­ ings or ritualists from the palace to distant regional cult sites. Place names, for example, indicate wide distribution of branches of Yamato's Miwa cult within royal estates. Ritualists called hiokibe, which name linguistically suggests association with a sun cult, fanned out from Yamato to administer these cult sites. Given that they often settled at the headwaters of water­ sheds, hiokibe are thought to have been engaged in irrigation and iron production as well as ritual activities.^^ They represented the Great King's potency in two closely allied realms, the technological and the religious, both the sources of human prosperity. Having succeeded to a contested throne. Great King Keitai and his advisors would have been keenly aware of the need to smooth succession in the future. One means of doing so was to designate a senior queen­ consort {kisaki) whose firstborn son was designated an "elder son" (Se) of the royal house and thus marked as leading contender for the throne. Courtly practice in Paekche provided the precedent, and we find the ear­ liest records of this custom in Yamato in Nihon shoki entries for the early

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sixth century.^ Prince Magari, who succeeded Keitai, may have been the first oe. As Keitai's firstborn son by a consort from the Owari family, Magari reportedly served as his father's second in command before his accession, gaining valuable experience and stature before taking the throne.^ None­ theless, violence broke out during the reign of Magari, later known as Great King Ankan, when contention developed between two families who served the throne as advisors and shock troops, the Otomo and the Mononobe. The Mononobe disdained Keitai and his heirs because their succes­ sion had been engineered by Otomo Kanamura. A citation from a historical record originally written in Paekche and archived in the Senka chapter of the l^ihon shoki mentions a mysterious palace coup in sixth-century Wa during which an unnamed Great Kingthought by many historians to be Ankan's successor, Senka—and his fam­ ily were all assassinated. Then we hear that the third of Keitai's sons be­ came Great King. The succession of this ruler, known as Kimmei, report­ edly took place in 539 and was backed by two powerful uji, the Mononobe and the Soga. If royal blood was thought by some to have been woefully diluted in the case of Keitai and his sons by provincial consorts, that claim was harder to make about Kimmei, who easily won the favor of chieftains in the old coalescent core—his princess mother had the blood of two for­ mer Great Kings in her veins and had been raised in the core.^^ Through his parents, Keitai and Tashiraka, Kimmei could claim bilineal descent from three different Great Kings: Yuryaku, Ninken, and Keitai. Court and Dynasty in Kimmei's Reign

If a key development of Keitai's era was the expansion of the coalescent core, that of Kimmei's reign—estimated by historians to have spanned 539 to 571—was the foundation of the first dynasty of insular Great Kings. By the end of the century Kimmei and his heirs had established a hereditary claim to the Great King's throne by establishing a strong sense of corpo­ rateness in the royal family, by distinguishing their royal lineage from others, and by defining a distinctive historic charter to rule.^ Kimmei's dynasty was what Jack Goody has termed "corporate" in its structure, meaning that the throne was the corporate possession of members of the dynasty.^ Aided by their Soga affines and ministers, members of the dy­ nasty cooperated to strengthen their shared possession; they found ways to make the throne more majestic by instituting new courtly rites, they developed new practices to make succession more determinate, and they labored to expand the royal fisc as a source of both wealth and "meddling"

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influence. While the written record is hazier than we might wish, when we use what physicists call the "black-box" method (in which what happens in the box is deduced by comparing what exits the box with what enters it), contrasting conditions at the royal court late in the sixth century with those a century earlier, the achievements of two key processes, dynastic con­ struction and courtly figuration, are very clear. Christine Gailey has argued that the formation of a corporate dynasty is best facilitated by a process of rank consolidation achieved by means of royal endogamy.^ That insight seems relevant to sixth-century Wa, where efforts to stabilize transmission of the Great King's office were in progress. Official histories indicate that Kimmei had three main consorts—a royal princess from Keitai's line and two Soga daughters. These three assured a limited but adequate number of male heirs as possible successors to the throne. But then in the next generation, Kimmei's daughters served as queen consorts (kisaki) for their own princely half-brothers. The Chinese would have considered such a marital strategy reprehensible, but endog­ amy suited the needs of dynasty building in mid-sixth-century Yamato. For several decades, brother succeeded brother in a manner meant to avoid the sort of fratricidal violence that had marred Yuryaku's early reign and the early decades of the sixth century.^’ Meanwhile, new rituals at Kimmei's court, following precedents adapted from continental courts, served to articulate special functions of the royal office, thereby elaborating the corporate dynasty's charter to rule. Growing familiarity by courtiers with such Chinese texts as the Book of Rites, the Rites of Chou, and such official histories as Ssu-ma chien's Records of the Historian no doubt stimulated this articulation and elaboration. The Nihon shoki records the arrival of a master of the Chinese classics (goky5 hakase) from Paekche in 513, and additional texts and teachers would have arrived throughout the century. Such texts functioned as primers of Chinese-style kingship and statecraft in which ritual played an important role. So do we begin to read of royal propitiatory offerings of first fruits to thank the collective deities of the realm for the bountiful harvest, and realm-wide purifications to pacify angry deities. Ishimoda Sho has argued that such rites initially were performed by local chieftains throughout the archipelago but that in the sixth century they were transformed into royal rites by Kimmei's palace ritualists.^^ Diplomacy also made an important contribution to the development of court ritual—frequent receptions to welcome emissaries from the peninsula necessitated attention to ceremo­ nial protocol. Finally, the special character of dynastic royalty—its trans-

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mission by blood from generation to generation—came to be ritually repre­ sented in royal funerary rites, or mogari, over which the senior consort and an elder prince presided as senior members of the royal family.^ The creation of courtly ritual was complemented by the compilation of a mythical cosmology and genealogy of kingship legitimizing the claims of BCimmei's lineage to "own" Great Kingship.^ Historian Naoki Kojiro ar­ gues that the Jimmu cycle of martial epics in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki may well memorialize Keitai's efforts to establish himself in Yamato?^ Late in the century a royal genealogy, the Teiki, was written down, probably with the help of Korean scholar advisors who knew something of royal genealogy making on the peninsula. At this point, Koguryo traditions that viewed kings as "heirs of the Emperor of Heaven" and "heirs of the sim" may well have been absorbed into the charter myth of Kimmei's dynasty?^ Lore concerning chiefly families and deities of the recently incorporated extended core would also have been added to weave together the cos­ mogony that portrayed Kimmei and his heirs as "makers" (kunizukuri) of the realm. The Teiki is not extant, so we do not know when its entries began; some scholars posit the five Wa kings as its starting point while others argue that the record would have begun with Yuryaku. Nor do we know precisely what format the Teiki employed, although the final chapters of the Kojiki and the Account of Prince Kamitsumiya—both are primarily genealogical in nature—are thought to have relied on the Teiki as a source?^ Were that the case, each monarch's section of the Teiki would have recorded the site of his palace, the names of consorts and their offspring in order of status, and the ruler's posthumous name?® In her studies of African modes of kingship, Audrey Richards has noted the importance of affines and other service elites who serve a corpo­ rate dynasty as keepers of historic charters and regalia.’’ Those who served Kimmei's dynasty most visibly in these capacities were members of a lin­ eage known as the Soga. While their origins are debated, one scenario paints them as descendants of members of the Katsuragi uji who survived Yuryaku's purge in the late fifth century. They are thought to have sup­ ported Keitai's accession and moved to the Soga region of Yamato in the 520s, taking the place name Soga as their own. Great King Kimmei subse­ quently took two Soga women as consorts. Proponents of this scenario insist that the Soga could not have functioned as royal wife-givers in Kim­ mei's age had they not been related to the Katsuragi, wife-givers to fifth­ century Wa kings.‘‘° At Kimmei's palace the Soga served as majordomos. The Nihon shoki describes them opening royal estates in Kibi, Yamato, and Ki, thereby enhancing the throne's redistributive capabilities. The Soga

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were ably aided by immigrant allies, such as the Ayahito from Paekche, whose scribal and managerial skills had no parallel in the mid-sixthcentury archipelago.*^ What became of the keyhole hierarchy in this age of dynasty making and enhanced courtliness? An unidentified member of Kimmei's linesome would argue it was Kimmei himself—built the massive Misemaruyama tomb in Yamato's Katsuragi district (see Fig. 3). Misemaruyama is a massive round keyhole 310 meters long, with a corridor entrance (yofcoConstruction of this royal tomb in Yamato marked a notable geo­ graphic shift in locale, because a few decades earlier, perhaps in Keitai's day, the Kawachi Otsukayama tomb (330 meters long) had gone up on the Osaka plain. Both were monumental tombs that confirmed the contin­ ued preeminence of paramounts of the coalescent core, although neither matched the monumentality of tombs built for fifth-century rulers.*^ Out­ side the core, however, construction of round keyhole tombs had tapered off in every part of the archipelago, and, as Figure 3 makes clear, that system of prestige ordering was no longer functioning in the sixth century. The inevitable question is. Why did the rise of the first dynasty of Great Kings parallel the disappearance of round keyholes, which had served as symbols of the apical preeminence of mid-Honshu paramounts for over two centuries? Researchers attribute the decline in round keyhole tomb construction to the waxing authority of sixth-century Great Kingship, which succeeded in recruiting the leading chieftains of the realm into its service while out­ lawing construction of monumental keyholes. Shiraishi Ta'ichiro summa­ rizes the scenario as follows: After the third century, chieftains in every part of the country built round keyhole tombs as symbols of membership in the Yamato confederacy, but in the late fifth century the confederacy altered its character. In each region the chieftain class involved itself more intimately with Yamato and its regional governance system. In the late sixth century the Soga developed new means of articulating vertical rela­ tions linking the paramount's court and subordinate chieftains throughout the realm (structures such as kabane, be, and miyake are examples). Key­ hole tombs then were no longer necessary insignia of membership in the confederacy.** I would add at least two more aspects to Shiraishi's scenario. First, extensive land opening was under way in the late sixth century, and it seems likely that materials and labor used previously to build the great kofun were now committed to such land-opening projects. Production for •the living, not for the dead, was an axiom of the times. Second, the eclipse of the keyhole hierarchy and increasing interest in Buddhism around the

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court of the Great Kings in the late sixth century are surely related. As we shall see, by the seventh century the foundations of Buddhist chapels and pagodas became repositories for the same sorts of offerings—especially jewels and beads—that had once been buried in mounded tombs.^

K Kimmefs corporate dynasty made significant progress toward royal sta­ bility and reproducibility, but three knotty problems nonetheless resulted in a crisis of succession as the turn of the seventh century approached. First was a collapse of existing foreign policy. In 562 Silla forces occupied Kaya and terminated Yamato's long and close association with that region of the peninsula. Although many researchers believe that by this time the Great King controlled his own domestic iron supplies, the fall of Kaya nonethe­ less occasioned a major rethinking of foreign policy. Then in 589 the foun­ der of the Sui Dynasty reunified China after three centuries of division. Such a critical change in the overall balance of power on the continent could not but profoundly affect the fabric of the Yamato-led confederacy. The second problem was heightened enmity between the two uji that had backed Kimmei's accession, the Soga and the Mononobe. According to the account in the Nihon shoki, their quarrel concerned the wisdom of official recognition of Buddhism by the Great Bang. But clearly the clash went deeper and broader.^ As royal affines who had helped to create the dynasty, its court, and its fisc, the Soga had^much to protect by manipulat­ ing the succession and other royal policies. In addition, there may well have been disagreement over peninsular policy. So in 587 the Soga assem­ bled their forces for a coup and massacred the main line of the Mononobe uji. This coup marked a turning point at court; once the Mononobe had been ousted, Soga ambitions were unchecked. In the coalescent core, mem­ bers of the corporate dynasty as well as other great families would have been profoundly uneasy, and beyond the coalescent core Mononobe kins­ men and clients surely resented the fate of their leaders. For instance, Kusakabe worker groups in some 36 provinces formerly had been man­ aged by the Mononobe, and numerous country chieftains along the eastern Pacific coast claimed to be Mononobe kinsmen.**’’ The coup of 587 thus shattered a network of relations linking core and periphery, which would need replacing. A third fire that smoldered in the 580s had to do with the proliferation of royal blood and charisma. There were too many princes in the genera­ tion twice removed from Kimmel's, and the "senior consort" and "elder son" mechanisms for determining precedence in succession proved inade­

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quate to prevent serious tensions at court.^ There were also serious affinal interests at stake; the Soga wanted a prince on the throne who was inti­ mately bonded to them, and other groups, including the Okinaga, wanted the same. No one prince could serve the various claims lodged by different groups against the throne. War between contenders, however, would cer­ tainly have encouraged further attempts at regional autonomy and weak­ ened the structures of Great Kingship. Thus was a negotiated settlement reached that brought a senior "neutral" royal, Kimmei's daughter Suiko, to the throne. Suiko and her associates then proceeded to launch a dynamic program of diplomatic exchange accompanied by reorganization of the court. They rewrote the charter of Kimmei's dynasty in more sinified and cosmological terms, presenting the Great King as a Heavenly Monarch, or polestar. Suiko, Heavenly Heir and Polestar Monarch

Suiko was Kimmei's daughter by a Soga consort and had served a consid­ erable apprenticeship at court before taking the throne. In 576 she became queen-consort to her half-brother Bidatsu, Kimmei's firstborn son. After Bidatsu's death, Suiko's brothers and half-brothers succeeded one by one, and it seems likely that as Bidatsu's widow Suiko would have exercised influence over younger and less-experienced members of the dynasty. But during the reign of her youngest half-brother, Sushun (587-92), fighting' broke out between the Mononobe and the Soga. Then Soga Umako had Sushun assassinated.**’ The Nihon shoki provides no motive for this violent deed, but disagreement over a planned invasion of the peninsula is a possibility. In any event, the court was left in disarray and without a con­ sensus as to the succession. It was in this vacuum that Suiko took the throne, despite the irregularity posed by a female Great King. At her side as princely co-ruler was the de facto elder son of Yomei's line. Prince Umayado, usually known by his posthumous name of Shotoku. This pairing of Suiko and Shotoku represented a brilliant political strat­ egy. It enlisted the respect due Suiko as Great King Bidatsu's widow and activated the network of blood and affinal relations linking her with aU the members of the dynasty, including her Soga matrilineal relatives. As the senior royal woman of the dynasty she embodied what Ronald Cohen has termed "matrifiliation," the role of a queen-mother who counters the forces of princely opposition and thereby integrates the royal kin.®® Mean­ while, Prince Shotoku's participation pleased members of Yomei's lineage and their supporters, including the Soga. The new palace from which Suiko and Shotoku ruled was situated at Toyoura in Yamato's Asuka

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vicinity, a locale opened to rice cultivation by the Soga and their immigrant allies.5^ My own reading is that the pairing of Suiko and Prince Shotoku worked to neutralize divisive interests that endangered the unity of the corporate dynasty “ That Suiko herself understood the need for a new degree of royal transcendence was signaled in 624 when she reportedly rebuked her uncle, Soga Umako, for requesting an extraordinary grant of land from the royal

fisc: I was bom of the Soga. Moreover, the great minister is my uncle. So when he speaks at night, before dawn his requests are fulfilled. And if he speaks during the day, before evening I do as he asks. But now in my reign if I irresponsibly lose this parcel [flguM] of the royal domain, later rulers will proclaim, "That foolish woman gave away that parcel while she was ruling 'all under heaven'." It would not be me alone who would be judged lacking. You my minister would also be judged disloyal. In later ages you would surely have a bad name.^’

So, we are told, she refused his request. If the dynasty and its estate right to the office of Great Kingship were to survive, particular demands of kin had to be moderated and claims to transcendence maximized.^ Foreign affairs, ever crucial to Yamato rulers, were of special concern to this royal pair. Just three years before Suiko became Great King, the Sui dynasty reunified China after centuries of division. As Bruce Batten has observed, "the emergence of a new type of political leadership in Japan was part of a larger cycle of power concentration and state formation which affected all parts of Asia in the wake of Sui and T'ang expansionism."“ Establishment of the Sui dynasty aroused both fear and uncertainty in the minds of insular elites. Given the dire situation on the peninsula­ various attempts to recover Kaya had failed over recent decades—some voices at court urged war against Silla, whereas others counseled establish­ ing diplomatic relations with the Sui. Moreover, since groups of immi­ grants from the peninsula had settled in different parts of the archipelago, and with monks and advisors from all three of the kingdoms serving at the palace and in elite households, consensus on peninsular issues must have been very difficult to reach.^ Against this backdrop Suiko and Shotoku sent Yamato's first embassy to Sui China, in 600. In the interests of forging a middle path between warring parties on the peninsula, they also opened diplomatic relations with Silla in 621. Their main objective seems to have been to preserve Yamato's longtime relationship with Paekche while establishing official relations with Sui China.

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What Suiko and ShOtoku sought from diplomatic association with the Chinese court in 600 was substantially different from what Yuryaku had sought a century earlier. In an official missive written in 607 and quoted in the official history of the Sui dynasty, Suiko asserted the autonomy of her own island realm, which she claimed to rule as "Heavenly Heir (tenshi) in the land where the sim rises.Although the Sui monarch was reportedly angered by this lack of deference, diplomatic relations were nonetheless established and additional embassies left for the continent in 608,610, and 614.5® The issue here is whether the breach of protocol was planned and what it says about the diplomatic objectives of court leaders. In a recent dissertation on early diplomatic exchanges between Japan and China, Wang Zhen-ping suggests that Suiko's advisors were not suffi­ ciently well versed in Chinese diplomatic usage to anticipate the reaction of the Sui monarch to claims by an insular monarch to rule as a heavenly heir.5’ In my mind, however, the presence of knowledgeable Korean ad­ visors and familiarity with Han-dynasty historical texts as Suiko's Yamato palace makes Wang's explanation untenable. I see the independent stance taken in the 607 letter as a response to two key concerns; Suiko and her prince-lieutenant were determined to protect the historical relationship with Paekche; and they still hoped that the traditional relationship with Kaya might one day be restored. Had Suiko accepted membership in the Chinese tributary system, both objectives would be rendered moot.®° A sense of diplomatic independence within the China Sea sphere had to be maintained. There is another issue here, that of gender. Chinese Sons of Heaven had always been, by definition, male. How could Yamato courtiers now use a male title for a female ruler? The answer, I believe, lies in synthesis; the partnership of Suiko and Shotoku as Great King-plus-Elder Prince repre­ sented a synthesis of old and new and of native and foreign. On its face the duo seemed to replicate the himehiko tradition of chieftain pairs, while it also replicated the practice of empress-dowager regency at the Chinese court. Since Han times, whenever an heir to the throne had been consid­ ered too young to rule alone, the empress-dowager ruled by his side.®’ In Yamato, given the martial tradition of Great Kings in the fifth and sixth centuries, coupled with the indeterminacy of succession, the Great King had always been an adult capable of leading a faction and a fight. So, in the Yamato version of empress-dowager regency, the dowager and an adult prince were invested as co-rulers, but the dowager, as senior member of the corporate dynasty and a royal neutral, assumed the throne. What to the Chinese was necessarily gendered—the ruler's office—was not taken as necessarily so in Yamato.

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Historians have nevertheless tended to assume that the prince was the active member of the pair, noting that even Chinese records of an embassy of the time fail to record Suiko's rule as that of a female Great King?^ The N/hon shoki itself says that the prince "administered the affairs of govern­ ment and was entrusted with all royal powers [banki]."^ Scholars have often construed this to mean that the prince ruled as administrative head while Suiko functioned as sacerdos or theurgist—the ghosts of Himiko and her younger brother surely lurk here. But I think we can consider the pair co-rulers and full executors of the panoply of royal powers. Historians Ishimoda Sho and Kobayashi Toshio have both noted that in Korean king­ doms of this period co-rulership by more than a single member of the royal family was common.^ Furthermore, descriptions of Suiko in the Nihon shoki, the Gangoji Chronicle, and the Account of Prince Kamitsumiya portray Suiko as an active participant in the business of rulership, together with the prince and Soga Umako, the leading minister of the time. Shotoku was an elder prince of one collateral line of the royal family who, as co-ruler with Suiko, exercised the full powers (banki) of great kingship under the mantle of Suiko as a senior royal. He may well have been a strong con­ tender for the throne had he outlived Suiko, but he did not. It should be noted in this regard that the Western tendency to refer to Shotoku as "crown prince" is anachronistic for this time when there was still no deter­ minate system of succession. While Aston called Shotoku "Prince Impe­ rial" in his translation of Suiko's chapter in the Nihon shoki, it would fit contemporary conditions at court more accurately if we called him "grand prince" or "senior prince" {taishi), thereby denoting his preeminent status among princes of his time.“ As for the lack of reference to Suiko in Chinese records of the day, it seems likely that the prince and his ministers may have directed diplomacy in Suiko's place, given Chinese prejudices against female rulership and the eagerness of Suiko and Shotoku for their new diplomatic endeavors to bear fruit. Foreign relations, even more than domestic conditions, profoundly af­ fected the shape of Great Kingship in Suiko's age.^ A clue to this is the timing of two major domestic initiatives that emerged just after the return of the first Yamato embassy to Sui. The first was a plan for a new Chinesestyle palace at Oharida. Then, in 603 and 604, Yamato's first court-rank system and Prince Shotoku's Seventeen Articles prescribing principles of courtly propriety were promulgated. These two initiatives transformed the charter of Great Kingship, reconfigured its retinue, and provided that retinue with a new ethic. A third initiative, cultivation of Buddhism as a royal cult, began almost from the moment Suiko took the throne.®’’ I will argue that taken together these initiatives reconstructed the Yamato Great

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King as a heavenly, "polestar" ruler, one who, according to a well-known passage in the Analects of Confucius, "exercises government by means of his virtue [and thus] may be compared to the north polar stai> which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it."“ This amounted to a process of cosmologization for the purposes of revalidating the galactic center. In exploring this process I have found two models of kingship and courtly ritual, originally developed for very different times and places, useful. One is Clifford Geertz's concept of an "exemplary center," and the other is Norbert Elias's concept of a "court society." Suiko's court, I argue, took the form of an "exemplary center," where the heavenly monarch and her retinue defined their solidarity by means of a new courtly ethic empha­ sizing subordination to the ruler and ritual propitiation of the cosmic order that they claimed to replicate.^ I agree with Geertz that the ruler con­ stitutes the realm. But we must also add Elias's vision: the ruler is con­ stituted by his retinue, the court, the configuration of which as a hierarchi­ cal society plays a critical role in monarchical development.™

The Palace

at

Oharida

Construction of a new palace began at Oharida in 603. The site was at the very center of Yamato's Asuka Valley, on land that belonged to the Soga (see Map 5).^^ The style and layout of Suiko's new ceremonial center pro­ vide important clues to a new conception of classical Chinese-style kingship, according to which Suiko styled herself an "heir of Heaven" in the east. Fortunately, scattered written clues and archaeological evidence allow us to visualize the plan. A visitor entered the palace precincts from a great south gate {nandaitnon), thereby gaining access to a great assembly area (chodo) where courtiers gathered for audiences with their monarch. Were he of sufficient rank, the visitor could proceed through a second great gate {daimori) into the residential palace precincts {dairi}. There he found the royal residence, with a garden and bird pond (forinoike). This basic plan recalls prescriptions in the Rites of Chou [Chou li), which called for a palace for the monarch—a priyate zone—and an outer precinct for public audiences.^2 Although the first Chinese-style capital city in Yamato was not built until almost a century later, basic elements began to appear at Suiko's Oharida: marketplaces were established at Karunoichi and Tsubakiichi, northeast and southwest of the palace; upper, middle, and lower highways were built; and port facilities at Naniwa were improved to permit foreign emissaries to arrive in style. The classical Chinese view of court relations adopted by Suiko and her

Map 5. Early capitals and palaces

1

SUIKO, HEAVENLY HEIR AND POLESTAR MONARCH

85

advisors corresponds well to Norbert Elias's model of a "court society" as a hierarchical solidarity with highly differentiated functions stabilized in one place and the locus of a courtier ethic emphasizing monarchical domi­ nance.^ Consider this passage describing the ideal monarch from the Rites of Chou: "The sovereign alone constitutes the realm. He fixes the four sides and the principal positions. He draws the plan for the capital and its en­ virons. He creates the ministers and determines their separate fvmctions, thereby forming a central administration of the people."^* The ruler ma­ nipulates ranks, defines court etiquette, acts as patron of the arts and learn­ ing, redistributes economic goods, and presides over all sorts of hierarchy­ confirming rites to configure the court. Later the concepts, values, and hierarchical practices of the court must be transmitted from the palace outward, into the countryside by means of what Elias calls "the civilization process." The main task during Suiko's era was the first of these two: the configuration of court society through cap ranks and Prince Shotoku's Seventeen Articles.

Cap Ranks If the new palace at Oharida furnished the stage, a new ranking system and courtly ethic articulated the charter of polestar kingship. The twelve­ grade cap-rank system was introduced in 603 and Prince Shotoku's Seven­ teen Articles was promulgated in 604 (see Fig. 5).75 Since Yuryaku's time, titles and posts, some borrowed from China or one of the Korean kingdoms, had provided Great Kings with symbolic capital that, when distributed, resulted in the recipient's obligation to prof­ fer in return homage and loyalty.’’'^ As we saw in the previous chapter, the Inariyama sword inscription of 471 contains such titles as -omi and -sukune. These were kabane, noble titles indicating distinctions of function and sta­ tus, bestowed on the heads of courtier lineages by the ruler in return for loyal service.’^ Chieftains who possessed the kabane of muraji, for instance, were generally members of the Great King's court, resident in the coales­ cent core, whereas those styled miyatsuko were lesser chieftains who re­ sided in more distant parts. In contrast, the ranking system announced in late 603 was narrower in scope. It applied only to courtiers, and its new ranks (kan'i) were named for six Confucian ideals—virtue, benevolence, propriety, loyalty, justice, knowledge—each divided into greater and lesser degrees for a total of twelve levels. A courtier's rank was to be signified by the color of his cap. We gain a glimpse of courtiers exhibiting the markings of this newly cre­ ated court society in an entry of the Nihon shoki dated the fifth day of the fifth month, 611:

Figure 5. Configuring the court Ranking systems, 603-701

Talka 3 (647)

Suikolt Storehouse

Land tribute

Provincial Tribute Rice Storehouse

Interest on Royal Subject Households

Central Receiving and Distribution

Products paid and their disposition

Famine relief

Pay for provincial ' laborers Support for provincial government Rice sent to the capital. To market for exchange

Adolescent and___ Provincial miscellaneous ► Workshops

Adolescent tribute goods


Office Fields-

Special tribute items for —. royal household

labor tribute

Central Disposition

(Rice, salt)

(Cloth)

Ministry of Popular Affairs J

Office of

Food for royal table

Food allowance for bureaucratic offices Raw materials for royal workshops and industries

Pay operating expenses of bureaucratic offices

Remuneration for officials

Food allotments for official laborers and guards ’ expenses of Council of State

* Tribute in these categories received from sustenance households was sent to their beneficiaries by provincial officials.

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(shuchS). For senior chieftain, choose someone of the outer junior eighth upper rank; for junior chieftain, choose someone of the outer junior eighth lower rank. When candidates are equaUy matched, select the candidate with country-chieftain (kuni-no-miyatsuko) status. According to the Law on Personnel, senior and junior chieftains were charged with overseeing all the affairs of the district and shepherding its folk.’07 Third-ranking managers (jd) in the district office acted as facilities managers; fourth-rankers drafted and handled documents; and clerks served as messengers, investigators, checkers, and cosigners of docu­ ments. Chieftains ranks were outer (ge'i) rather than inner and clustered around the eighth rank, as compared with the inner fifth rank frequently held by the provincial governors to whom the district chieftains reported. The largest districts-comprising from sixteen to twenty townships ac­ cording to the Law on Residential Units—were to be overseen by one senior chieftain, one junior chieftain, two secretaries, and two clerks. Mid­ dling and small districts had smaller managerial staffs. The Law on Rice­ field Property (Den-ryd) designated the district as the basic territorial unit of the realm.’™ It allowed senior chieftains to claim six chs (approximately 17.6 acres, 1 cho — 2.94 acres) as salary fields (shikibunden); junior chieftains could claim four, and secretaries and clerks were allowed two cho each.’™ I disagree with William Wayne Farris's characterization of the gunji as "local strongmen." They were doubtless men of the horse and bow, but the epithet "local strongman" overemphasizes their martial aspect while igno­ ring their sacral and cultural claims to local preeminence.’’^ It is true that provincial colonels (gunki) and other staffers who led provincial militia (gundan)—which units were established by the ritsuryd Law- on Defense and constituted the tennd's army—came from the same local elite families as did district chieftains, as did ritualists (kannushi) at district shrines.’” The fact is, administrative, military, and sacral authority were conjoined in the hands of district chieftains and their kin. Indeed, it can be further argued that this very distribution of authority across the realm, combined with the codal requirement of a royal edict for the mobilization of more than twenty men, effectively obviated coercion of a district chief­ tain by central authorities through mechanical means in the absence of consensus among a broad spectrum of elites. As was the case of the earlier kSri-no-miyatsuko discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, the gunji frequently derived from the old country-chieftain stratum. Ishimoda Sho argued on that basis that the new codal organization did not substantially change the nature of productive relations in the coimtryside.”2 The historian Kitayama Shigeo concluded that district chiefs such

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as Hi no Kimi, heir of country chieftains in Kyushu's Chikuzen province, derived numerous benefits from his appointment as district chief:

The new ritsuryG law provided great benefits to such local magnates as Hi no Kimi. Provincial governors sent out from the capital with ritual, administrative, fiscal, judicial, and military powers could perform their jobs only by utilizing the traditional political authority of pow­ erful country chieftains, once the regional rulers in each area. By ap­ pointing such magnates as district chieftains and then letting them ad­ minister the bailiwick, provincial governors could administer thenprovinces. And from the perspective of local elites, only by attaching themselves to the authority that came out from the capital to the pro­ vincial headquarters and the district chieftain's headquarters could locals hope for future appointments to lucrative posts with important prerogatives. So did local elites contend among themselves for ap­ pointments as district chieftains. Provincial governors were quick to realize this weakness on the part of locals and manipulated it for their ownpurposes.''^

Other country chieftains known to have become district chieftains include the Awa kuni-no~miyatsuko, later district chieftain of Nakata district; the Nasu country chieftain, later of Shimotsuke's Nasu district; the Ou country chieftain, later district chieftain of Ou in Izumo; and the Usa country chief­ tain, subsequently district chieftain of Buzen's Usa district. However, researchers have also identified numerous district chipffains from lineages other than those of the country chieftains. As noted in Chap­ ter 4, during the post-645 the Yamato court took every opportunity to expand appointment of district officials to heirs of tomo-no~miyatsuko lin­ eages who had served Great Kings loyally.^'^ Such past service was fre­ quently evidenced by the syllable be in the names of district chieftains. The Sui History indicated that Suiko's realm comprised approximately 120 kuni, but by the early eighth century there were 555 districts. Imaizumi Takao estimates that as many as two-thirds of these were in the charge of chief­ tains not deriving from old kuni-no-miyatsuko lineages.’’® Indeed, in a list­ ing of 320 district chieftains whose names appear in eighth-century rec­ ords, 23 percent possess names including the be character.”® Although some of these be may have been established by earlier country-chieftain famihes—that is known to have been the case in Izumo province, for in­ stance—the be syllable in their names evidences their history of specialized service to the Yamato monarch. In Hitachi there had originally been sue kuni-no-miyatsuko according to the Hitachifudoki, but in the eighth century, there were eleven districts. In Musashi of old, one very powerful kuni-no-

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miyatsuko had once controlled the entire province, but in the eighth century there were 21 districts. As districts were created and the ritsuryd process proceeded, middling chieftains emerged as the appointees of the center while the authority of earlier country chieftains was attenuated. It is also notable that district chieftains were permitted to transmit their posts and perquisites to heirs, a principle called fudai—genealogical trans­ mission—in eighth-century documents.”® Rather than representing an "anti-nfswzyo" tendency in the countryside, as some historians have ar­ gued, this hereditary principle paralleled the "shadow-ranking system" for court nobles in the capital and was a key element of what I see as the negotiated settlement between central and provincial elites on which the ritsuryS process was founded. Sons of district chieftains also had other opportunities. According to the Law on Defense (Cunbd-ryG) they were recruited as commanders of provincial regiments, and as palace attendants {toneri), guards (hyoe), and retainers (chdnai) for noble households in the capital.”’ The Law on Scholarship also directed that sons of district chief­ tains be admitted to the royal university {daigakuryO). Through such provi­ sions, capital and countryside were more closely tied, and when young men from the gunji class returned home to their local places after service in the capital, they brought back both the culture and the basis for ongoing contacts with the court. What is clear is that provincial governors could not perform their du­ ties without the cooperation of district chieftains, whose local authority and connections governors needed to communicate with elites who led townships, residential units, provincial militia, and local shrines. District chieftains were members of the lowest stratum of rank holders in each province; since it was largely by means of ranks that the center recruited allies, district chieftains in fact represented the bottom rung of the ladder of command in every district. We see in the Law on Corv6e Labor (Buyakuryd), for instance, that the availability of laborers in every township was to be reported by the township head (richs, later goche} to the district chief and then upward to the provincial governor.”'’ Furthermore, extant sources in the ShOsOin archive, wooden documents, and stories in the RySiki indicate that census taking and the actual collection and transport of tribute from the ko units was overseen by district chiefs; they signed census records and their excavated headquarters have been found to have in­ cluded numbers of storehouses {shdsdin') for rice collected as tribute.’” On the other hand, district chieftains had to rely on the governor for recommendations and evaluations, on the basis of which they might have their office terminated or be promoted in rank. The Law on Residential Units elaborated this relationship:

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The governor shall make an annual progress through his province. He will observe local customs, ask about the history of the place, record [the names of] those imprisoned, correct any failings of justice, make clear the successes and failures of judgments, familiarize himself with the hardships and complaints of the people, energetically teach the five relationships, and see to the prosperity of agriculture. Within his bailiwick the governor should encourage the love of learning, virtue, harmonious relations, loyalty, uprightness, and superb behavior. If there are any in the locality of good reputation, let them be recom­ mended [for official posts]. But if there are those who behave badly, those who disrupt propriety and custom, or those who do not obey the law, restrain and correct them. Let the governor also see to the pros­ perity of cultivation. The enhancement of cultivation, the learning of handicrafts, the practice of propriety, and the enforcement of the law all demonstrate a district chieftain's skill. But if upon entering the borders the governor sees few people, or if there are robber gangs and numerous accusations of wrongdoing, these indicate the failure of a district chief. If the district chieftain is fair, does not work to enrich himself, corrects bad behavior, and is humble, report that. But if he has a grasping heart, is ambitious and argumentative, does not listen to his people, and enriches himself privately, report that. All the good and bad points of his governance and its successes and failures should be written down in the evaluation as praise or blame. But should there be damages, do not wait for the final evaluation. Correct wrongdoing as is appropriate. *22

Just as the monarch himself entertained officialdom and presided over its rites in the capital, so were governors beneficent hosts, ritual specialists, and tutors who disseminated the array of Nara's advanced arts and knowl­ edge to provincial officials. The Man'yoshrt, for instance, describes how the courtier poet Otomo Yakamochi presided over poetry banquets attended by visitors from the capital and district chieftains in the province of Etchu, where Otomo served as governor.^^a District chieftains also required sup­ port from the provincial governor when sending relatives or clients to the capital as "tribute personnel," to serve as gift-maidens, guards (hytJe), or sutra copyists (kyifsho). That governors sometimes misused their leverage was reflected in a Council of State directive (sei) dated 713. It accused some governors of pressing district chieftains they disliked to resign so that favorites could be appointed. The Council ordered that such manipula­ tions cease and that district chiefs be terminated only when they had com­ mitted specific crimes or were incapacitated, and after proper procedures had been followed.^24

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When archaeologist Takai Teizaburo excavated parts of the district of­ fice in one Hitachi district, that of Niihari, in the early 1940s, he foimd evidence of a total of 42 storehouses in three district groups.*^ An entry dated 817 in the Heian-period RuijH kokushi records a fire that burned thirteen storehouses holding 9,990 koku of rice?^^ These were exceedingly large storage facilities, perhaps larger and surely more numerous than those built in the early eighth century; the need for stores would have grown substantially during the course of the century as tribute demanded from the countryside increased. Indeed, archaeologists excavating the Mihara district office site in distant Kyushu (Chikugo province) think that the earliest facilities erected there in the late seventh century included but three granaries, expanding to five later on.^27 other components of the district office precincts included a main hall (cZio), official residence {tachi), kitchen (kuriya), workshops including a smithy {kajiya), and often a forge, gates {mon), and perimeter walls {kaki). Remains of a Buddhist temple built presumably by the district chief are frequently found nearby. Iron produc­ tion was a particular responsibility of certain districts in the western Japa­ nese provinces of Bingo and Mimasaka, and Fukuda Toyohiko has argued that mokkan shipping tags for iron goods in the eighth century generally came from districts or townships, confirming the key role of such admin­ istrative entities in iron production.^^s mid-1980s, more than 40 district-office sites had been identified across the archipelago, many of them thought to date from the late seventh or early eighth century.^29 Despite the willingness of local chieftains to serve the interest of the center in the early eighth century, there were still difficulties in implement­ ing the ritsuryd system of provincial administration, requisite census taking and registration required a reasonably sedentary popula­ tion. Farris and others, however, posit a high rate of sbsh-and-bum agri­ culture and a mobile populace. Eighth-century records complaining of large numbers of "wanderers" {furd) support their argument.^’’ And, as Dana Morris suggested, it may well be that the tennd's government encour­ aged wet-rice cultivation as a means of fostering a more sedentary population.’32 Second, there was a shortage of literate personnel to make the recording and accounting components of the system work, despite the fact that large numbers of wooden documents found at sites judged to have been district offices attest to long hours of writing practice by aspiring scribes. Members of the provincial governor's staff probably served as tutors for those who needed to learn the New Characters and the documen­ tary forms mandated in the Law on PubEc Protocol {Kajiki-ryO).^^ Third, substantial increases in population may well have ch^enged the new system; historians posit that population increased by more than a million

2O6

GREAT KINGS AND KITSURYO LAW

in Nara times?^ And fourth, unlike in China where a rule of exclusion kept locals from serving in their own home places, district chiefs of the archi­ pelago sometimes faced serious contradictions; their loyalty to local so­ ciety could easily come into conflict with their duties vis-^-vis the center. Some of these difficulties were alleviated by ad hoc legislation. New laws simplified the levying, collecting, storing, and transportation of trib­ ute. Township units (^5) comprising 200 adult males (50 kd) thus became the standard unit on which demands for tribute were levied within districts. Procedures for the commutation of grain into lighter goods were developed to ease the costs of transporting the stores of heavy grain collected. Duties of provincial officials were gradually defined, and super-ordinary governors known as azechi served as censors to hear complaints.’^ Successful comple­ tion of many facihties in the new capital at Nara by 720 and extant census and tribute-collection records from the same era indicate that the system was operating relatively well.’’’’ Even if it did not always function fully as the codes and supplementary legislation prescribed, the system's existence "on the books" articulated what anthropologists term "a nested hierarchy" of vertical integration that ordered relations between the tennS and subordi­ nates throughout the realm.”® Using the case of Izumo to illustrate, we know from the Izumo fudoki that each of Izumo's nine districts had been subdivided into townships by the time the provincial gazetteer was completed in 733. Ou District seems to have been the most populous, with 11 townships. In one of those town­ ships, Yamashiro, the remains of a huge eighth-century granary consisting of six timber storehouses were uncovered a few years ago. The granary was used presumably to store rice collected as tribute, the amount of which was increasing in the early eighth century as productivity of the checker­ board fields and population both increased.”^ An official known as the township headman" (gdfs/ii) would have acted as superintendent at the granary and chief collector of tribute for the township, under the authority of the Ou chieftain. We also know from wooden tablets found at the Fu­ jiwara and Nara capitals that Izumo sent seaweed, dried fish, silk, and writing brushes to the capital as tribute.’^ What was the human landscape of Yamashiro township that supported this granary? The written and archaeological records provide both clues and puzzles. According to the Izumo fudoki, Ou district's eleven townships included 33 administrative villages (ri), an average of 3 per township.’^ In 715 new legislation changed the designation of a township from ri to gS and reassigned ri to designate a village, mandating two or three ri per gd. The fudoki evidences operation of that revised system in the 730s. And because Yamashiro was located in what had long been Ou's center, it is also

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easy to postulate that it was the most densely populated township in the region. Below the level of the administrative village, archaeologists envision a typical Nara hamlet complex (shUraku) to have comprised 20 to 30 dwell­ ings with four to six occupants residing in each, resulting in a population between 80 and 180.Such a complex would represent an agglomeration of five or six ko, according to Kinda Akihiro. Unfortunately however, the relation between such eighth-century residential communities partially uncovered by excavators and both the ri and the ko of our written sources remains hazy. Codal policy, however, defined a township as 50 ko. U a ko actually averaged 25 to 30 members, as the extant written records suggest, Yamashiro would have been home to as many as 1,500 people. Further, if we were to suppose that the ri agglomerated on average three hamlet complexes—a reasonable response to larger, more complex irrigation sys­ tems—a go would in fact represent 45 to 54 ko, thereby rationalizing the archaeological and written data. These figures are not as precise or as firm as we might wish, but they suggest the demographic parameters of Yama­ shiro township in the early eighth century.^^ Ultimately, it is important to remember that ritsuiyS structures were not products of insular social or political development; they acquired their basic form in China from the early centuries b.c.e. onward. They were then adopted and adapted to the needs of Yamato kingship in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. The need for better understanding of the processes of acculturation and transformation has made recent ritsuryo scholarship increasingly comparative, and made all East Asia its scope. Yoshida Takashi and KitO Kiyoaki have taken the lead in studying how the less-developed sociopolitical and economic circumstances of the late seventh- and eighth-century islands affected the acculturation of ritsuryo. Kito puts the argument this way:

When elites [of the archipelago] imported the codes they did not sim­ ply accept T'ang ritsuryo as it was. Rather they reflected on the system as it had existed in China before T'ang. They also adjusted the T'ang code to make it apply to society in the islands. For instance fields were given to women and slaves and the field tribute was collected from both groups. This followed the [earlier] system of sixth-century China, whereas in the T'ang system women and slaves did not receive fields. There are also cases in which special elements were integrated into the Yamato codes. In the tribute system the rate for field tribute was light, about 3 per cent of the harvest. The chO tribute included products from the sea and many others. In the T'ang code, however, the total was computed in terms of cloth. And as for the Yamato political and bu-

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GREAT KINGS AND RITSURYO LAW

reaucratic systems, the Council of State reflected the old prerogative of the [kinat] elite to participate in Yamato kingship, a prerogative that predated ritsuryo. Furthermore, the examination system was not in­ cluded in Yamato's ritsuryO at aU. In the social realm, the T'ang code recognized the equal rights of brothers who lived together and shared the same tools and materials. But in Japan the heir and the other sib­ lings received different shares. In T'ang China the family head was the respected head of the household. But in Yamato, provisions concern­ ing family headship were left vague and there were cases where a nephew or cousin might become family head.’«

As we understand more about differences in the operation of ritsuryd in different historical and social settings, we are challenged to consider the reasons for such differences. Indeed, if we are to go further in understand­ ing the actual operation of the geographic hierarchy, more research in a broadly comparative framework focused on issues of social organization and social relations and utilizing both the written and archaeological rec­ ords is needed. Sacral Hierarchy: The TennO

as

Ritual Coordinator

A third hierarchy created by the codes vertically integrated sacred ritual sites—at ceremonial centers, shrines, and temple-monasteries—where rites and other propitiatory good works were performed for the sanctification and protection of the realm. The tennO did not serve personally as sacerdos at all such places; rather, the monarch acted mainly as a coordinator of rites, as prescribed by two chapters of the codes.’*^ The Law on Deities of Heaven and Earth {}ingi-ryS) defined relations between the throne and the kami cults of the realm, and the Law on Monks and Nuns (SSni-ryS) defined relations between the court and the Buddhist clergy. The two chapters were quite different because of the dissimilar character of the two ritual systems—distinct means were needed to fashion the tennS into their princi­ pal and coordinator.^**® In addition to these written sources, archaeological finds of such ritual objects as wooden dolls, clay horses, and pottery with inscribed faces in the excavated precincts and waterways of capitals, pal­ aces, provincial headquarters, and district offices are also informing our understanding of religious beliefe that empowered the tennS at the apex of a nested hierarchy of sacred places and a chain of sacral rites that inte­ grated the fcMMff-centered ritsuryd realm

Kami Worship. Yamato paramounts and Great Kings had long dispatched offerings to regional cults, and regional chiefdoms joining the Yamato con­ federacy often saw establishment of Miwa shrines and settlement of Ya-

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mato hiokibe ritualists in their locales. A passage in the Hitachifudoki recalls, for instance, how a Yamato ruler sent "ten large swords, two halberds, two iron bows, two iron arrows, four quivers, one sheet of iron, one piece of tempered iron, one horse, one saddle, two yata mirrors, and one set of rough silk cloth of five colors" to assure the goodwill of the deity wor­ shipped at distant Kashima Shrine?^^ As we have seen, in Suiko's day royal worship of the kami was increasingly colored by Chinese ideals of royal sacerdotalism and Buddhist kingship. Great King Temmu reportedly sent offerings to shrines in the kinai and to Ise Shrine, but the codal Law on Deities of Heaven and Earth in the Taiho and Yoro codes signaled in­ creased routinization and an expanded geography of shrines receiving royal patronage. It has frequently been asserted that enthusiasm for Bud­ dhism dampened the fervor of shrine worship by seventh- and eighth­ century elites, but in fact, since many chieftains in the islands traced their genealogies back to kami of earth or sky, veneration of such deities could not but continue to play an important role in the social organization over which such chieftains presided.’"’® The earliest recorded dispatch of offerings by Temmu's heirs to shrines outside the kinai dates from 698, less than a year after Mommu's acces­ sion.’^® At that time a drought threatened, and prayers to water deities and to the kami of rivers and mountains were ordered.Mommu and his lieutenants may have been following classical Chinese precedents or they may have had a T'ang exemplar in mind; Howard Weschler has described offerings to local deities made by T'ang rulers in the course of imperial inspections or after martial victories.’^’ In any event, whatever its model this new practice of dispatching royal offerings to the shrines of "all under heaven" was a dramatic assertion of sovereignty far beyond the kinai. Three years later the Taiho Code promulgated the Law on Deities of Heaven and Earth and charged the Council of Shrine Affairs with oversee­ ing such ritual coordination. The Law comprised twenty provisions that elucidated a calendar of nineteen regular rites blending continental and native ideas of royal propitiation to assure peace and prosperity in an expanded royal realm.’^i Rituals prescribed in the Law on Deities can be categorized in four groups. The first consisted of propitiatory rites for which offerings (mitegura) were distributed to chieftain-priests at shrines in the hinterland. Throughout the eighth century, country and district chieftains journeyed to the capital to receive these offerings from the Council for Shrine Affairs.’^ A second group included propitiatory rites performed at Yamato shrines or at Ise shrine. A third comprised liturgies held within the palace or in the capital. The fourth was made up of exorcisms and purification

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rituals (Oharae) performed at ceremonial centers throughout the realm. The rituals in each of these categories contributed to the notion of a realm unified in worship of the deities and presided over by the ritsun/o king, the tennS, as ritual coordinator?54 Events for which the Council for Shrine Affairs distributed official of­ ferings for cults in the provinces included the annual prayers for a boun­ teous harvest (kinensai), which took place prior to the planting season; the semiannual tsukinami propitiatory rites in the sixth and twelfth lunar months; and the annual thanksgiving rite (Niinamesai).^^ The objectives behind such offerings can be gleaned from the Kinensai liturgy (norito) for a bountiful harvest, thought to date from the eighth century:

Before the mighty ancestral gods and goddesses who augustly reside in the plain of high Heaven, before the many kami enshrined in Heaven and earth, we raise our words of praise. And to the mighty kami we humbly speak: In this second month of the year, at the beginning of the sowing of seed, we humbly raise our words of praise even as we bring choice offerings from the divine descendant at this moment of the majestic and brilliant dawning of the morning light. Before the pres­ ence of the kami who govern the crops we do humbly speak, praying that they will grant a late-ripening harvest of grain. With foam on the water up to the elbows and muddy water up to the thigh as the rice is planted, may it grow into countless bundles of long-eared grain, vig­ orous grain. If the mighty kami grant that it shall ripen, we shall offer up the first-fruits of the grain, a thousand, yes, ten thousand ears. Let offering jars be filled to the brims, let full-bellied jars be arrayed in rows. We shall offer liquid and grain with words of praise, together with things that grow in the broad meadows and moors, sweet herbs and bitter herbs. We shall offer things that live in the blue sea-plain, beings wide of fin and narrow too, seaweeds of the deep and those of the shore. And for divine raiment, we shall offer up bright cloth, shin­ ing cloth, soft cloth, coarse cloth, all with our words of praise.’®^ First invoked here are the ancestral deities, gods and goddesses of high heaven from whom the tennS's sacral potency flowed. Only then does the petition address the various kami of heaven and earth, who according to myths in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki had accepted the dominion of the Heavenly Grandchild Ninigi, first earthly representative of the Sun-line.’®^ The rite portrays the "divine descendant" as mediator with the gods, an­ cestral and other, who offers up praise, gifts, and a promise of enduring faithfulness for his people. Nevertheless, actual consecration of all such offerings from the tenno

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remained in the hands of local priest-chieftains, familiars of each local kami cult. By ordering his ritualist staff to deliver offerings into the hands of priestly subordinates, the Heavenly Sovereign established himself as chief shrine patron and ritual coordinator in the realm, after the fashion of the Chinese Son of Heaven?^ But, whereas in China the worship of the deities was regularly performed by the emperor on public altars outside the pal­ ace, in the early eighth-century Eight-island Land, country and district chieftains were called to the capital to receive offerings from the tenno through his ritualists constituting the Council on Shrine Affairs. Then they returned home to install the offerings.’®’ This method of worship, symp­ tomatic of the segmentary nature of the insular polity, the taboos sur­ rounding the person of the tenno, and the geolocal nature of kami cults, was decidedly centrifugal compared with the conduct of "shamanistic politics" in China, in which the Son of Heaven was said to have "annexed the spirits of the land/'’" After offerings for the gods of heaven and earth had been distributed to country and district chieftains, royal rites continued with court ritual­ ists addressing their own "congratulatory words" {iwaigoto) to their chief­ tain, the tennd. Like prayers of petition, these liturgical acclamations pro­ nounced the monarch a deific being descended from the heavenly sun goddess and charged with ruling the Eight-island Land.’®’ They might well be compared to the laudes regiae in early Western Europe described by Marc Bloch. The Japanese version, likes its European counterpart, both elaborated and confirmed the charter of ritsuryo kingship, using the same idiom as found in Hitomaro's mythopoesis and in the myth-historical nar­ ratives of the "age of the gods" sections of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki.^^ The number of official shrines that received offerings from the tennS grew steadily during the eighth century. In 706, when plague swept through the land, nineteen additional shrines in Kai, Shinano, Etchu, Tajima, and Tosa were added to the list.’®® And by 733, when the Izumofudoki was completed, a total of 180 shrines in Izumo were receiving offerings. So was the Heavenly Sovereign identified as the pivot of prosperity through­ out the realm, a notion reinforced as well by frequent announcement of propitious omens as demonstrations of heaven's favor. Such omens were not only seen in the capital. They were often witnessed in the provinces as well, and they often resulted in the tennS's favor in the form of trib­ ute exemptions or promotions in rank for local elites. So did the palace strengthen its role as the nexus of a ritually bonded, fajm/-protected polity over which the Heavenly Sovereign presided. Meanwhile local shrines also served as places where the law of the realm was proclaimed to all the men and women of the neighborhood (mura). The provision on shrine

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festivals dating from the Taiho Code is quoted in an early ninth-century legal tract; Appoint local shrine officials in every mura and call them "shrine el­ ders" [s/ws/iMp®* As they come and go from other parts, let the people publicly and privately present offerings to the kami. Or let the circum­ stances of every residence [yate] be determined and let rice be assessed so that interest on lent seed rice can be collected. In advance let sake be prepared and on festival day let food be brought by every individual. Men and women alike should assemble and the law of the realm [kokka ho] should be proclaimed. After that let all take their seats according to age. Have young people act as servants and let them present the food and drink. Such festivals shall be held twice yearly. This is the way of respecting and nurturing seniors. While this notation concerning local shrine headship specifically notes that such elites were not appointed by the tennO's government—they were de­ cided locally, that is, "unofficially"—shrine festivals were nonetheless ven­ ues for public announcements, including those concerning ritsuryO and its supplements. The second category of rites was performed at shrines in Yamato such as Hirose, Miwa, Tatsuta, and in Ise at Ise jingu. All were cult centers long associated with Yamato kingship. Rites at Ise, as the shrine of the ancestral deity of the tenno, affirmed the dynasty's charter myth of divine descent from Amaterasu.^^ Thus the codes prescribed that the Council on Shrine Affairs dispatch red robes for the semiannual Kanmiso liturgy at Ise in the spring and fall; and a woman from the royal lineage was sent as a priestess (said) to dwell in Ise as the tennS's representative.’®^ Notably, this use of princesses looks to be an artifact of earlier contrapuntal structures of chief­ taincy and paramountcy. Among the third category of rites addressing kami, those performed within the palace or in the capital by court ritualists to protect the ruler and his metropole, those taking place inside the palace were often performed by priestesses (fiijo), another remnant of paired chieftaincy.’®® Meanwhile, rites propitiating the fire deity (Hishizume no matsuri) and warding off evil spirits at the borders of the city {Michiae no matsuri) marked the capital as the royal center and displayed the sacral potency of the sovereign publicly, just as the suburban sacrifices of T'ang rulers had done.’®’ In contrast to China's emperor, however, the Yamato tenno did not personally participate in these rites; he remained secluded inside the palace and delegated the task to professional ritualists. The regular rites of the fourth category performed semiannually in the

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capital and in the provinces consisted of purifications {Oharae) to banish impurity or evil spirits, or to atone for transgressions. Some of the inspira­ tion for such rites may have come from purification exercises at the time of the winter solstice in ancient China, as described in the "Monthly Ordi­ nances" of the Book ofRites. The Oharae liturgy was already being performed in Temmu's day and was increasingly elaborated over time. According to the Law on Deities, each country chieftain was to oversee preparations and performance of the rite, to which he was to donate a horse, while district officials contributed swords, hides, and plows, and cultivators donated hemp. An entry dated 702 in the Shoku nihongi records appointment of a select group of country chieftains and compilation of a register of their names known as the Kuni-no-miyatsuko nofumiy° Kaneko Hiroyuki has studied the remains of objects thrown into the rivers and waterways'of the Nara capital during Oharae and has concluded that wood, clay, or metal ritual goods invested with evil or illness, or offered to the katni for their favor, were thrown into flowing water by officials performing purification rites at ten different ceremonial locales in the capital. Some ritual sites were within the royal palace itself, others were outside its main gate, still others fronted the main north-south boulevard or were located outside the Rashomon, the main gate of the metropole.'^’ Mokkan and other written sources demonstrate that the Bureau of Medi­ cine {Tenyakuryd) and the Bureau of Yin and Yang—both agencies of the Ministry of the Royal Household {KunaishO)—included specialists whose knowledge of medicine, astronomy, divination, and interpreting cosmic phenomena was utilized during Oharae to assure health, prosperity, and long life for the tennO, officialdom, and ultimately, "all under heaven." That the same sorts of ritual goods have been excavated in quantity at provincial and district office sites witnesses that ritsuryo officialdom transmitted the technologies of purification and theurgy to subordinate ceremonial centers far from the capital, confirming the distant tenno's ritual potency even as local elites used that potency to enhance their own stature locally.'” Beyond these four categories of rites, the Daijosai was an extraordinary rite mandated by the Law on Deities for consecrating a new tennO. Scripted as a celebration of universal monarchy, the Daijosai was to be performed within the first two years of a reign in place of the annual harvest rite.’” The charter of the rite portrayed not only the special relationship between the sun goddess and the tenno but also the role of the provinces as the realm; two provinces outside the kinai, selected by divination as representatives of the realm-at-large, provided materials needed for the consecration, including goods needed to construct two shrine-like pavil­ ions, the Yukiden and the Sukiden, in the garden of ministries where the rite

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took place. The roofs of those paired enclosures seem to manifest a yin and yang symbolism, perhaps another architectonic representation of the tennO's universality.^^^ Participation by provinces outside the coalescent core in the consecration, including royal gifts to and special recognition of par­ ticipating district chieftains, also confirmed the tenno as universal sov­ ereign. Moreover, the Law prescribed a set of special taboos to be observed by all officialdom during the period before and after the DaijSsai, dramatiz­ ing the numinous nature of the king and, by extension, officialdom, which drew its authority from the throne: When a new monarch is consecrated, let aU the gods of heaven and earth be venerated—with a light taboo of one month and a heavy taboo of three days. Let offerings be prepared and dispatched over three months. During the period of light taboo, let the various officials see to affairs as in the past, but they should not mourn, visit the sick, or eat meat. There shall be no death sentences, no punishment of criminals, no music-making, and no handling of forbidden things. During the period of heavy taboo, officials will concern themselves only with the rite itself, ceasing all else. Before and after the period of heavy taboo, let all follow the rules for light taboo.^^s

The sacerdotal role of the Heavenly Sovereign as evidenced by the Law on Deities was substantially different from that of the Chinese Son of Heaven, even though the former was influenced by the latter. According to David MacmuUen, under the T'ang dynasty 150 state rituals were per­ formed, of which the emperor participated in 60. Says MacmuUen, "De­ spite sometimes violent court politics, the ritual tradition continued to provide, more than any other Confucian-oriented learned discipline, an index of the prosperity and confidence of the state and of the ritual com­ munity."’^^ Moreover, T'ang commentators emphasized the social rather than the cosmological aspects of ritual; they saw ritual contributing to social stability and harmony by its confirmation of hierarchy. In the Eight­ island Land, however, both the myths and praxis of Azinii-worship empha­ sized cosmology. In that regard kami ritual prescribed by the codes and performed by the tennO's professional ritualists reflected an ideology of archaic Uturgical kingship that was closer to that depicted in the "Monthly Ordinances" than that practiced in T'ang China. In the "Monthly Ordi­ nances" whatever the Son of Heaven eats, wears, and does affects cosmic harmony. In such an environment, purity and precise replication are crit­ ical for efficacious rites; such was indeed the tenor of pronouncements concerning worship of the gods in Yamato royal edicts like that issued in the spring of 723:

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Heaven and earth are interdependent. When their powers fuse. Heaven covers and protects all below, and the virtue by which the ten thousand things is comprised grows yet more profound. When the sovereign rules fairly, the nurturing grace of benevolence spreads far abroad. At such times, the ruler faces south and whoever is sitting on the throne acts in Heaven's stead, infusing all with virtue. The monarch who rides the North Star nurtures and protects the people. So do I travel throughout the capital and inspect fields far distant. In the fra­ grant second month, grass and trees bloom profusely; and as spring ar­ rives, robust men eager to work attend to the cultivation of dry fields. In timely fashion, rain soaks the earth and insects waken from winter sleep; bathed by the rain they chirp their joy. Having received such blessings, let the people be tranquil; let their hearts be submissive to in­ struction. Can not all living things be saved? Distribute one plow, one measure of cloth and two measures of seed to every ko head [koshu]. Make sure that the arts of cultivation and silk-worm raising are fostered under every roof. Let those who would study to become officials forget self and personal needs, sacrificing all for the public good [oyakeJA^ The Official Buddhist Cult. Heavenly Sovereignty, as constituted and con­ figured by codal officialdom, benefited from regularizing and expanding relations with major cults throughout the realm.’^ But the visibility and charisma to be gained from kami worship by the tenno was limited. Bud­ dhism provided a more unified universal cult upon which Heavenly Sov­ ereigns could depend. As the Law on Deities summarized prescriptions for JtflznZ-worship, the Law on Monks and Nuns performed that function for worship of the Buddha. Since Suiko's reign Yamato Great Kings had nurtured the spread of Buddhism, but I would argue that it was Temmu who greatly expanded the official cult by building multiple official temples, opening an official sutra-copying center, and ordering annual readings of realm-protecting sutras in district offices far from the palace.He also ordered that every temple be registered and given a Chinese name by officials. By making himself the very visible principal of the expanded Buddhist cult, Temmu closed himself in the garb of a Buddhist cakravartin—a universal savior king-much as Chinese monarchs had done for some centuries. The Law on Monks and Nuns subsequently fixed that policy, making it clear that the Heavenly Sovereign was the principal of the official Buddhist cult, the pur­ pose of which was to provide ritual protection for the realm and its king. In his book Folk Buddhist Religion, David Overmeyer has explained how trouble between the government of the Chinese Son of Heaven and "rebel

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monks" broke out in the fifth century, confirming earlier official fears at court that folk Buddhist organizations were capable of leading the masses into revolt. Rulers thereafter condemned monks who "confused the peo­ ple." From that time on the Chinese imperial state distinguished official and orthodox from unofficial and unorthodox.^®” Regulations forbade preaching, monastic residence outside monasteries, unapproved rites, and the removal of sutras outside monastery gates. Also forbidden were theurgic practices, begging, and monastic possession of military texts and arms. Millennial cults dedicated to Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, were particularly feared; since foretelling the future was a Maitreyan specialty, and divination had long been considered a royal prerogative, monks were forbidden to engage in those activities. It is no surprise then that such limitations were placed on monks and nuns in the Regulations Regarding the Taoist and Buddhist Clergies (Tao seng ko) promulgated by the T'ang court in 637.’®’ Moreover, two years later those regulations were followed by an edict ordering clerics to abide by the Last Words of the Buddha, an apocryphal appendage to the Mahaparinibbana Suttanta. The T'ang ruler of the time declared that since the Buddha had entrusted his law to earthly rulers, it was up to the Son of Heaven to ensure order and virtue among the clergy in a decadent age distant from the Buddha's own lifetime when human morality had reached its ebb.^®^ yhe Taiho Law on Monks and Nims must be seen in this international historical perspective. Further­ more, while it indubitably reflects policy initiatives of which Temmu him­ self would have approved, the Law also reflects a stricter, more ambitious, and more routinized "heavenly court" determined to keep the burgeoning cult of the Buddha under control.’®® The Law consisted of 26 provisions regarding the organization and decorum mandated for members of the Buddhist order. The essence of the Law is reflected in the excerpts below:

Monks are guardians of the Three Treasures, which they transmit to officialdom. The purpose of a monk's life is to practice meditation and Buddhist discipline. This means morxks should rejoice in peace and quiet and not mix with the secular world.

Unlicensed, self-declared monks, those who lie and falsely assume a monk's identity, or those who have already been laicized but don monks' garb, shall be judged and punished by secular law. Any monk or nun who passes sutras or images through the temple gates to a lay person, or who instructs a lay person, shall be punished one hundred days.

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Monks are forbidden either to divine good fortune or to foretell trag­ edy by means of reading Heavenly omens, thereby deceiving the sov­ ereign and the people. They are also forbidden to possess and study military tracts. Monks who practice divination and magic, as well as those who cure illness by magical practices, shall be laicized.’®*

Before all else, the Law on Monks and Nuns makes it clear that Buddhist monks and nuns were official ritualists who enjoyed special status in the realm because of their efficacious ritual services to the throne. Because of that very status, they were subject to official regulation. Members of the monastic order were expected to study, give counsel, and perform rites, in exchange for which they were excused from paying tribute and given alms for their livelihood. In the Buddhist cult over which the tennS presided, there could be no more serious crime for a monk than compromising ritual purity. Such a sacrilege risked bringing down divine wrath upon throne and realm. Fur­ thermore, the Law forbade public preaching. According to the Chinese model of rulership, the Son of Heaven was the culture hero who nurtured civilization in the realm. Thus the Law had monks serving to enhance the ritual purity of the tennS and his officials, not to convert the populace at large. To preserve their purity as ritualists and to make them easily distin­ guishable from the lay population, monks and nuns were required to wear distinctive garb-as were other officials—and to live cloistered in temple­ monasteries under their own officials. Each monastery was governed by three deans-the jdza, jishu, and fsw/no-who were collectively known as the sangd (see Fig. 6). Aside from supervising the everyday life of the monastery, the sangd oversaw distribu­ tion of alms (fuse) gathered from official or private sources, including what was produced by temple land {jiden) or tribute-paying units—"sustenance households" (fiiko)—allotted to the temple. Initially, the deans were proba­ bly chosen by their fellow monks-there is a strong tradition of the auton­ omy of the monastic community in Buddhism—but in both China and the archipelago monastic officials also functioned as agents of the monarch. In that capacity they were charged with keeping registers of monks' names anddoings, and they reported regularly to both secular and higher monas­ tic authorities. In the secular hierarchy established by the TaihO Code, they reported to the Bureau for Alien and Buddhist Affairs (Genbatyd) within the Ministry of Civil Affairs {Jibushd). They also reported to the Prelates' Office (Sogd), a sort of Vatican for monastic affairs whose four or five monks were appointed by the lennS himself.’®® Who were the prelates who composed the Prelates' Office in the eighth

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century? Early in the century they were typically the foremost scholar monks of the realm, and they resided and taught at official temples such as Daianji and Gangoji, or at the Fujiwara family temple, Kofukuji. They had frequently studied abroad in T'ang China, and many came from immigrant Korean families where the arts of literacy and interest in Buddhism were highly developed. By the early eighth century there were three ranked posts in the Prelates' Office: the primary prelate (SOjd), the secondary pre­ late {SSzu), and the master of the law (Risshi) (see Fig. 6). According to the codes, the Prelates' Office was charged with oversight of temple­ monasteries and monks residing in the capital. Provincial temples and monks reported to the provincial governors. Although the Prelates' Office had been created as an autonomous en­ tity during Suiko's reign, now its members and other monastic officials such as the temple deans were fully integrated into the official bureau­ cracy. That was clearly demonstrated by the rite of installation for prelates, announced by a Council of State directive (shobunjO} in 702. It called for witness by twenty secular officials from the Controller (Benkan), the Minis­ try of Personnel, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the Bureau for Alien and Buddhist Affairs. Installment took place in the presence of the assembled clergy of the capital: Those appointed prelates shall be summoned to Yakushiji with all the monks from capital temples and three officials from the Controller; three officials of the Ministry of Personnel including one each from the second, third and fourth managerial levels; and all managers from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Bureau of Religious and Immigrant Affairs above the fourth level [sakan A member of the Controller's staff of the third level (/5] or higher and holding the fifth rank or higher shall read out the tennO's command [semmifd]. Officials from the Con­ troller and those from the Ministry of Personnel shall stand to the left while those horn the Ministry of Civil Affairs shall stand to the right. Before this august assembly, the order of the monarch was read aloud. Deans at individual temples in the capital were clearly subordinate to the prelates, whose function was to link monks and monasteries to the government of the tennO. When a dean from one of the capital temples had business with the government, he was to address his petition {gebumi) to the Prelates' Office, which would transmit it upward to the Bureau for Alien and Buddhist Affairs, whence it continued upward to the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Council of State. Nevertheless, the special form of communique, called a gOchS, addressed to it by the Council of State sug­ gests that the Prelates' Office remained somewhat anomalous in the hier­

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archical court system. The gdcho form was horizontal rather than vertical. The prelates special status signaled by the g0ch6 derived from the older tradition of autonomy for monastic officials and monks that predated the Sui and T'ang eras in China. Traces of this autonomy preserved in insular codes and customary practice are more evidence of the selectivity Yamato lawmakers exercised when adopting and implementing Chinese models of governance. Anyone wishing to enter a temple-monastery to become a monk or nun was required to seek official permission; a process for licensing (kugen) and testing candidates was elaborated early in the eighth century. The Capital Office (KySshiki) and provincial governors kept records of monks' names, their scholarly specialties, and dates of entrance into the monastic order. Those who committed serious offenses against the Law on Monks and Nuns were laicized and punished as commoners. Those guilty of slight offenses were judged by their monastic superiors, the deans, and punished within their temples. There were also monastic teachers called kokushi—the term has some­ times been translated preceptor—who were sent out to the provinces to assist secular governors in overseeing Buddhist affairs and to serve the needs of the burgeoning cult far beyond the capital Preceptors jour­ neyed out to provincial headquarters from great capital temples such as Gangoji and Daianji to read sutras at year-end and for new-year rites, to lecture at the requisite summertime retreats known as geango, to conduct memorial services (keka hde or chinkon kuyd) for tribute bearers and others who died m public service, to prepare provincial novices (tofcwdo) for or­ dination {jukai), to visit district temples presided over by district chiefs, and to conduct memorial services on behalf of the deceased parents of provincial patrons.^®® Suzuki Reiji has recently pointed out that numerous stories concerning the comings and goings of such elite scholar monks are archived in the early ninth-century tale collection, the Nihon njoiki, and that accounts of their liturgical activities are preserved in the ninth-century manual known as the Ibdaiji Juju monko. In the latter, monks are directed to speak in the local dialect when preaching and to praise the lineage and accomplish­ ments of their patrons, who were often members of the district chieftain class.’®’ We also find a poem in the Man'yoshil describing a banquet at the Etchu provincial headquarters around midcentury where the governor, Otomo Yakamochi, and his staff were joined by district chieftains to bid a monk-teacher adieu as he set off for the capital.”'’ Curiously, the Law on Monks and Nuns has relatively little to say about regulating temple-monasteries, despite the fact that, by the early

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eighth century, Buddhist foundations were appearing everywhere. Ar­ chaeologists have identified more than 500 temple sites from Kyushu to the Kanto, indicating exponential growth of the Buddhist cult during the sev­ enth century. In the Izumo gazetteer, to cite one instance, several "newly built chapels" {shinzdin) are mentioned; they were so new when thatfudoki was compiled they had not yet been given names. In the capital itself there were 24 temples in 680, and according to the Shoku nihongi there were double that number by 720.*” The three great official temples of Temmu's Kiyomihara capital had by then increased to four—Daianji, Gufukuji, Yakushiji, and Gangoji were all constructed by royal command, supported by fuko units donated by the throne, and utilized as sites for official realm­ protecting liturgies.’’^ By the second decade of the eighth century, however, officials began to complain that temples were being established and then neglected by their patrons, thereby exposing throne and realm to the Buddha's wrath. There were also charges that temple authorities were impoverishing local farm­ ers through rice-lending {suiko) programs, and that some patrons used the temples as an excuse to avoid paying tribute, since rice fields associated with temples were exempt from such payments.A strong voice in this debate was Fujiwara Fuhito's son, Muchimaro. Muchimaro submitted a memorial to the Council of State when he was still serving as governor of Omi province. Therein he argued that the tennO's government was respon­ sible for venerating Buddha's law and that therefore Buddhist institutions must be subject to the ruler's oversight.”^ Gemmei Tenno thereupon or­ dered that any temple improperly maintained or staffed should be closed. Thereafter, regular itemized reports {shizaicho) concerning temple upkeep and assets were to be submitted to the proper authorities—presumably to the prelates' office or to the provincial headquarters—and construction of new private temples in the kinai was banned. In 717 an edict also castigated "wandering" prelates and unlicensed monks (shidoso).^^^ Since protection of the realm was the primary raison d'etre for the official Buddhist cult, we need to consider the character of such protection. The text of the Sutra of the Benevolent Kings around which the Ninno Rite {NinnS'e) developed provides a graphic portrayal of realm protection and the principal role of the king therein:

Now I shall explain... the law of protecting the country. In all coun­ tries, when riots are imminent, calamities are descending, or robbers are coming,... you, the Kings, ought to receive and keep and read this Prajna Paramita [Sutra]; ... to adorn the place of worship; to place (there) a hundred Buddha images, a hundred images of Bodhisattvas,

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a hundred lion-seats; to invite a hundred Dharma-masters that they may explain this sutra. And before the seats you must light all kinds of lamps, bum all kinds of incense, spread all kinds of flowers. You must liberally offer clothes, and bedding, food and medicine, houses, beds and seats... and every day you must read this sutra for two hours. If kings, great ministers, monks and nuns, male and female lay-members of the community, listen to it, receive and read it, and act according to the Law, the calamities will be extinguished. ... All human kings have obtained this rank because in former ages they served the 500 Buddhas and respectfully made offerings to them.... But if... those kings ... do not walk in the Law, the holy men go away and violent calamities arise. Great Kings, if in future ages the ^gs of the countries establish the Saddharma [Law] and protect the Triratna [Buddha], I will order the crowds-of Bodhisattvas Mahasattvas of the five quarters to go and protect their countries.'* In preparation for such events, officials in the Ministry of Civil Affairs cooperated with the Prelates' Office and monks at the temple where the rite was to be held to fulfill these stipulations. Offerings of flowers, incense, and foodstuffs were dispatched to the temple, great numbers of votive lamps were prepared, and renowned scholars and ritualists were invited. During the rite the 100 monastic celebrants were feted with vegetarian banquets and luxurious silk robes.”’’ Prelates and clerics residing in official temples generally supported the Law on Monks and Nuns; official patronage was their livelihood and they no doubt agreed that official controls kept the clergy pure, orthodox, and orderly. The monk Gien (d. 728) provides an exemplar; he was head monk at Kofukuji and a court chaplain during the early decades of the century. Like many prominent monks of the time, Gien was of Korean blood and had spent time studying in China.”® After his return to the islands, and thanks to the patronage of Fujiwara Fuhito—who strove to imitate the wise layman Vimalakirti in patronizing Buddhism—Gien shaped Kofukuji into the sort of scholarly monastic institution he had seen in the T'ang capital at Ch'ang-an.’” In 703 Gien was appointed to a post in the Prelates' Office, where he served for the next quarter century. Given his background and his relationship with the court, Gien's support for official control of the Buddhist cult is quite understandable.^®® Doji (d. 744) was another proponent of the official cult. He returned from sixteen years in T'ang China in 718 to establish himself at Daianji.“’ Doji had also studied in Ch'ang-an, where he had participated in the Ninno Rite performed at the behest of the T'ang court. No doubt he was eager to replicate T'ang practices at home. While in China, Doji would also

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have witnessed the brutal suppression of Buddhism that began in 713. By emphasizing the realm-protective role Buddhist ritual and scholarship should play in the tennS's government, Doji perhaps hoped to ensure that such tragedy would never strike the Eight-island Land. In the year of Ddji's return, late in 718, the Council of State ordered establishment of five "lineages" (shfl) of Buddhist study embracing all strands of Buddhist knowledge and praxls.^^^ Doji's influence may well have prompted the new policy, which proclaimed the interest of the tenn^'s government in promoting Buddhist scholarship and orthodox praxis. Five schools—known in Japanese as Kegon, Hosso, Sanron, Gusha, and Jojitsu— were henceforth to embrace and preserve all the teachings of the "three storehouses"—the sutras, the monastic rules of the Vinaya, and the schol­ arly commentaries. Each school was to be directed by an outstanding scholar-teacher such as Doji, who was himself chosen to head the Sanron school. Every monk or nun was to profess a scholarly commitment to a single school; clerics were not to wander about from teacher to teacher or from monastery to monastery. The new policy thus emphasized orthodoxy and stability of residence. Scholars have argued that establishment of the five schools repre­ sented an attempt by officialdom to exert greater control over the Buddhist order.^’’’ That seems likely; the new emphasis on scholarship was certainly related to the certification (kugen) system then being launched by the Council of State. An early reference to certification comes from an entry in the Shoku m'hongi dated 720 and records in the ShOsOin archive.^®* Over time three stages of certification emerged: the first, extending permission to enter monastic life as a novice (tokudo), was to be followed by permission to take vows (fukai), and subsequently by certification as a teacher {kokuchS). Scholarship gave the state a needed yardstick for determining who should be allowed to take vows. However, there was more at stake than control over the number and qualifications of clerics. As the number of Buddhist texts coming into the realm from the continent grew, so did the need for better organization of Buddhist scholarship. Whereas in China T'ang T'ai-tsung and Empress Wu patronized one or another syncretic formulation such as the Fa-hsian or Hua-yen schools, the N^a court sought to safeguard the whole of Buddhist teaching by distributing its patronage to the five schools. Control of Buddhist personnel and their activities was nonetheless proving difficult for at least two reasons. Interest in Buddhism was surg­ ing, leading to the appearance of many self-declared monks and nuns who were not members of the official monastic establishment. At the same time.

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access to a broader range of Mahayana texts containing new conceptions of the ideal Buddhist lifestyle, what I term "the bodhisattva path," was result­ ing in a trend of proselytization. A popular evangelist known as Gyoki Bosatsu (668-749) embodied both problems. Gyoki was a son of the Fuhitobe kindred of Kawachi, emigres from Paekche, and he emerged as a wandering holy man with a significant fol­ lowing in the early 700s. From 707 on, Gyoki lived and taught in the Nara area, preaching a life of service to living beings, a vocation glorified as "the way of the Buddha" in the Lotus Sutra. He and his band erected temples and travelers' huts, built bridges and ports, and opened new rice fields. They worked together as a sodality, pooling their good works for the bene­ fit of all.^ To accomplish such projects, Gyoki must have worked closely with district chieftains, and his activities baldly ignored the laws stipulat­ ing that monks and'nuns remain in monasteries and refrain from popular preaching. Authorities thus feared that Gyoki and his followers would dis­ rupt the newly established ritsuryd hierarchical networks joining center and periphery. So between 717 and 722, when Nara was still under con­ struction and implementation of the tribute-collection system was devel­ oping dynamically, complaints about Gyoki and his band of "uncertified clerics" {shidoso) surfaced. The miscreants were accused of leaving their homes and wearing monastic robes without official permission; of refusing to live in monasteries; of preaching before crowds wherever they went; and of collecting alms. Most abhorrently, they were said to be "confusing the masses," utilizing theurgic powers for healing, spell-casting, and fortune­ telling.^’' All were serious offenses against the Law on Monks and Nuns. Historians have generally characterized Gyoki's activities in the same terms as those used by the Nara-period authorities, calling him a theurgist or a practitioner of magic But recently historian Yoshida Yasuo has argued that Gyoki's teachings and deeds may have been influenced by a sixth-century Chinese Buddhist movement known as the "Three Stages School" (Chinese, San chieh chiao; Japanese, SangaikyO). The school was developed by the Chinese monk Hsin-hsing, some of whose writings may well have been brought back to Yamato by Doji and placed in the Zen'in sutra library at Gangoji.^®’ Hsin-hsing preached the preeminence of the Nirvana, Lotus, Vimalakirti, and Flower Garland Sutras, and he urged followers to practice ascetic discipline according to the Vinaya. He encour­ aged his followers to live a life devoted to good works for the benefit of living beings. All living beings possess buddhahood, Hsin-hsing taught, and to save living beings is the ideal praxis for a Buddha-to-be (bodhisat­ tva). To quote the Lotus Sutra,

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The Buddha appears in the world only for this one reality, the other two not being real; for never by a Smaller Vehicle could a Buddha save any creature. The Buddha himself is in the Great Vehicle and accordant with the truth he has attained, enriched by meditation and wisdom, by it he saves all creatures. I, having proved the supreme way, the univer­ sality of the Great Vehicle, if, by a small vehicle I converted but one human being, I should fall into grudging selfishness, a thing that can­ not be. If men turn in faith to the Buddha, the Tathagata will not deceive them, having no selfish, envious desires, being free from all sins of the Law. Hence, the Buddha, in the universe, is the one being perfectly fearless.^^o

The Vimalakirti Sutra proceeds to couple theurgy, or spiritual curing, with preaching and living the way of the bodhisattva: Although both pleasure and pain are abandoned when the buddhaqualities are fully accomplished, there is then no sacrifice of the great compassion for all living beings living in the bad migrations. Thus, recognizing in his own suffering the infinite sufferings of these living beings, the bodhisattva correctly contemplates these living beings and resolves to cure all sicknesses. . . . One has only to teach them the Dharma for them to realize the basis from which sicknesses arise.

The Sutra on Merit from the Fields of Fortune (Shotokufukuden-kyo) seems to have been a critical influence on Gyoki's teaching and activities as well. Although our earliest reference to this text dates from a record in the Shosoin archives dated 736, when the sutra reached the islands is uncertain.2’2 The tg^t urges the faithful to gain merit by cooperating in the con­ struction of Buddhist towers (to), cloisters, chapels, gardens, ponds, medi­ cal facilities, harbors, bridges, roads, and resting places for the weary.^i^ Instances of such corporate patronage of good worfe, referred to as chishiki in seventh- and eighth-century texts, are also recorded in seventh-century inscriptions found on icons cast in the Osaka area where Gyoki was born. For instance, a plaque on an Amida icon from Sairinji thought to date from 659 proclaims that a group there cooperated to endow the image, as does another inscription on an Amida image from Nonakadera thought to date from 666.2’4 In the latter case, 118 persons contributed to the project. The costs of copying sutras were endowed in this way as well, as in 686 when a sodality in Kawachi's Shiki district patronized copying of the Kongojo Darani Sutra. As a final example, a stone stele from Gumma prefecture known as the Kanaizawa hibun records a chishiki project—its nature is not clear, but it may have involved opening a chapel—undertaken by members of the local elite. Their stone memorial tablet, dated 726, dedicated their

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efforts specifically to the well-being of seven generations of their mothers and fathers?’^ By Gyoki's day then an increasingly active notion of an ideal Bud­ dhist life incorporating teaching, curing, and communal good works was spreading dynamically within the coalescent core and along its frontiers. According to this decidedly Mahayana ethic, saving oneself by monastic withdrawal was undesirable. The proper goal for one who would become a bodhisattva—a Buddha-to-be—was to save others in the world.^i* Monks who remained sequestered in their monasteries as the Law on Monks and Nuns prescribed were even condemned by the Lotus Sutra as creatures of "grudging selfishness." Given this new emphasis on the way of the bodhisattva, older concerns about ritual purity and taboo that had originally given the Law legitimacy began to ebb; clerics grew eager to move more broadly in society, preach­ ing the good word and doing good deeds, both individually and in sodali­ ties like Gyoki's. Indeed, even as Gyoki was being castigated by officials, he was being called "Bosatsu," meaning bodhisattva, by his followers. Nakai and other historians have argued Gyoki and his followers were too well loved for the authorities to lay hands on them. In any event Gyoki was far from being alone in his wandering ways; in 722 even monks from the Prelates' Office were upbraided for leaving their monasteries to preach publicly.2’7 We also know from popular tales collected in the RyOiki that unlicensed clergy, and monks practicing theurgy just as Gyoki did, wan­ dered about the countryside in significant numbers.^’® GyOki's movement is notable both in terms of its geography and tim­ ing. The Bosatsu's activities spanned the kinai, from the Nara capital to the port at Naniwa. In other words, they ranged over the coalescent core and into the extended core. This was the zone most profoundly affected by the new structures and networks of ritsuryd. As a social formation, GyOki's following represented a new type of solidarity that attracted individ­ uals who had moved beyond their original kinship-based communities to travel the routes of broader exchange—the great hunk highways—serving the transport and communication needs of the networks articulated by the codes. The emergence of the "Bosatsu" as the charismatic leader of a new type of solidarity, one based on faith in the Buddha's powers and on Gyoki's ability to channel those powers, effectively challenged the no­ tion that Heavenly Sovereignty was the sole pivot between heaven and earth?’’ To authorities in the Nara capital the deepest concern was that ritsuryd structures did not have the means to integrate Gyoki's new soli­ darity. As Michael Mann observes, a religiously centered ideology like Gyoki's enjoys an unparalleled capacity to unify and motivate people over

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great distances. That potential threatened to put Gyoki and ritsuryd of­ ficialdom on a collision course.“° The question was. What could be done to reassert the leadership of the Heavenly Sovereign over the Buddhist cult? Finding the ultimate solution was left until the 720s and the reign of Shomu TennO, the focus of the next and final chapter.

Heavenly Soverei^ty in the Ritsuryo Age: Voices and Images Gillian Feeley-Hamik and Maurice Bloch have described the myriad ways kingship is "constructed" and affirmed through ritual performance.^^ Some of our best evidence concerning the character of ritsuryS kingship comes from "spoken edicts" (semmyo) uttered as the "living words" of the monarch—generally through a spokesperson—on ritual occasions. Au­ thored by literary specialists on the staffs of the Ministry of Central Affairs and the Council of State, the semmyo show us how the tenno presented himself to those over whom he ruled.Such royal proclamations were read in Japanese—not in Chinese—with great pomp, often from the Throne Hall before elite officialdom assembled.^^ In a culture where the spoken word was believed to have magic properties, the divine ruler's words in a ritualized setting constituted an excellent occasion for what Ernest Gellner has called "inconceptualization," the imprinting of concepts, compulsions, and obligations, here concerning the nature of rulership.There were also other edicts {mikotonori)', written in Chinese rather than spoken. All such pronouncements deserve close study because they express the contempo­ rary idiom of authority and power.^^ A series of written edicts articulated the theurgic nature of the tennO's office in 705, just three years after promulgation of the Taiho Code. The young Mommu Tenno still reigned and the year had not been a happy one—draught had been followed by famine. Temmu's grandson expressed a keen sense of personal responsibility for the natural disasters that were deemed heaven's judgment against him:

Although of little virtue, I have been enthroned above you, my lords of the court, and now I depend upon you. My virtue is insufficient to move Heaven and my humanity is inadequate to sway the people. Thus has the balance between yin and yang been lost. There is either too much rain or there is drought. Harvests have been meager and the people suffer from hunger. Reflecting on this, I am sad. Let the five official temples [kandaiji ] chant the Sutra of Golden Light. And to give solace to the people, let the interest on this year's official rice loans [sM/fco] be forgiven and the labor tax [ i/1

Tokyo: *' Kashiwa

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