Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan

This is the introductory episode to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan podcast.  This is a history podcast where we'll be going through a chronological history of Japan, from Prehistory up to the Meiji Period. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-0

In this first episode, we will look at an overview of Japan during the Paleolithic period.  We'll start with a look at the geological formation of the islands, and then talk about the first people who came over, starting about 40,000 years ago.  We'll go into what we know about them and discuss a little bit of what life must have been like for them.  This will take us most of the way through the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, period, right up to the period when the temperatures were just starting to rise. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-1 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription thanks to listener Zach)  Greetings, my name is Joshua, and welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. This episode we're covering Japan from prehistoric times up to the end of the Pleistocene, more commonly known as the Ice Age, which will bring us out just before the Jomon Period. I have to warn you, we're going to go through this pretty quickly, as we have a lot of ground to cover and not much to go on. Still, I think it helps us to start here, and really set the stage on which all our actors will play their parts. And to set some expectations, don't expect to be jumping into much of the real story yet. This is mostly background material, and I'd understand if you want to skip on to the next episode. That said, it is nonetheless an important piece in understanding the whole history of Japan. So to that end, we'll start with the basic geography of the archipelago, hitting on some of the points that make up the physical location that is Japan. Then we'll look at what the islands were like when people first arrived. We'll talk about who these people were, what life might have looked like for them, given our sparse archaeological evidence anyway. All right, so to start with, let's make sure we have a handle on the geography of the islands of Japan.   Strung out like pearls along the far eastern edge of the Eurasian continent, there are some 6,000 islands that make up the Japanese archipelago. This includes the islands around Sakhalin in the north, down to the islands of Okinawa in the south, and continuing on down to modern-day Taiwan. While most of these are relatively small, towards the northern end of the chain are four larger islands, Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido. Now, for our purposes here, we will be mostly talking about the first three islands I mentioned, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. However, as we look at this earlier period, we'll also be looking at the chain of islands down to Okinawa, as there are quite a few similarities through this early period, before there is anything really resembling a state on the islands, at least as we would understand it today. Now, this may be a good time for you to grab a map if you aren't already familiar with the geography of Japan. I'll put one up with this podcast, so just find the episode page at SengokuDaimyo.com. Or grab your own. Go ahead and pause the podcast. I'll wait.   Ready?   All right. So if you look at most maps of Japan, the large island at the very top is Hokkaido. As I mentioned, it wasn't truly considered a part of "Japan" for most of the history we'll be discussing. The indigenous people up there are known today as Ainu, and they have their own customs and language, though there are plenty of similarities with their southern neighbors as well. Just south of Hokkaido is the island of Honshu, which curves to the southwest. This is where the modern cities of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and others can be found. This is where most of the historic capitals were situated, including the imperial court. For much of Japanese history, if you wanted to wield political influence, you would need to spend some time in these areas. Of course, in the time we are discussing now, there was no polity to wield influence over, but we'll still take a look at what was there and what we know of what life was like.   Just to the south of Honshu, southwest of modern-day Osaka, is the island of Shikoku. This is the smallest of the main islands, but still large enough to hold several domains over the centuries. In fact, the name Shikoku literally means "four states" or "provinces". It would later be the home of the Tosa domain, modern Kochi prefecture, which was very active in the late Edo period, and its series of temples are still a major pilgrimage for some Japanese Buddhists.   The last of the large islands is Kyushu. This island sits closest to the continent and to the Okinawan island chain, which then goes all the way down to modern Taiwan. For many years, Kyushu was the natural entry point for anyone coming to Japan from the Asian mainland. Hakata Bay was the site of both the attempted Mongol invasions and the location from which most missions to the mainland departed. It was important enough to have its own arm of the imperial government, the Dazaifu, even though it often suffered from neglect.   Now, millions of years ago, all of these islands, what would become the Japanese archipelago, were part of the greater Eurasian landmass. But as the plates shifted and the archipelago drifted east, new mountains rose up from the ocean floor, and water filled in the low-lying areas in between. Through this whole process were created the Japanese islands and the Japan Sea. It's this sea that has probably most shaped the character of Japan, as it formed a moat and Japan's primary defense against the turmoil of the Asian mainland.   Now to really get a good idea of what the Japan Sea means for the islands, it may be helpful to use the British Isles for contrast. So from the Cliffs of Dover, one can see the European continent, and vice versa, at least on a clear day. This has led to more or less constant contact between Great Britain and Europe, as it wasn't too difficult a leap for some with a ship to sail out across the channel. After all, they know there's something on the other side, they can see it. This kept those living in the British Isles in regular contact with the rest of Europe, as can be seen by their involvement in the politics, wars, and culture of the continent. Of course it also put them at regular threat of invasion, whether from the Romans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Vikings, etc.   Now from Northern Kyushu on the other hand, it is roughly 180 kilometers to the Korean peninsula, and the crossing can be quite treacherous without modern navigational aids. Much like the east coast of North America, hurricanes or typhoons regularly migrate up the coast from the equatorial latitudes. Without modern communication and sensing equipment, these storms could come up quickly and without warning. This is precisely what would decimate the Mongol invasion fleets when they were taken out by the kamikaze, or divine wind, back in the 13th century.   Because of all this, it required serious nautical skills for people to make the trip, and we will see plenty of periods throughout Japanese history where the risks were just not considered worth the gains of traveling back and forth. So there was never quite the same level of contact and communication that the British Isles enjoyed with Europe, and the Japan Sea played a large role in just why that was so.   Another important feature of Japan is its place in the Ring of Fire surrounding the Pacific Ocean. The archipelago is very active volcanically, Mount Fuji being one of the most iconic volcanoes of them all. With its often snow-capped conical dome, Mount Fuji has captured the human imagination since the earliest writings. It dominates the territory around it, and can be seen from multiple locations, providing a reliable navigational tool for those in its vicinity. Rising above the Kanto Plain, it has inspired numerous stories and legends over the years, and it is still one of the most well-known symbols of the islands today. Mount Fuji is in fact only the latest reincarnation of several volcanoes that have appeared on or near the same place for hundreds of thousands of years, well before any clear evidence of humans, at least modern humans anyway. The current volcano has been there for 10,000 years or so. Of course, even though it is a volcano, the last recorded eruption was about 300 years ago, back in 1707. That said, it has gone hundreds of years between eruptions in the past, and is therefore still considered an active volcano. Now, the volcanic activity along the islands also provides another key natural feature, the hot springs, or onsen. Ranging from comfortable natural spas to the deadly poisonous springs of a Jigokudani, or Hell Valley, one can have little doubt that ancient humans would have taken advantage of these naturally warm springs, just as we do today. From the earliest recorded history, we know that people have sought them out as places of natural relaxation and healing. In fact, some of the oldest businesses and continuous operation in the entire world are built around these hot springs. And if you ever get a chance to visit the Hoshi Ryokan up in Ishikawa Prefecture, I highly recommend it. We'll likely talk about the Jigokudani at some other point, but let's touch on it briefly here. You see, while hot springs can be nice, sometimes you get more than just a touch of rotten egg smell from the sulfur issuing up from the bowels of the earth. Just as early Europeans connected the smell of sulfur, also known as brimstone, with devilish activity, many Japanese also assumed that these vents were portals to the underworld. In some of the mountainous valleys, heavy poisonous gases will well up from below, but then sit in the small depressions, and these gases can prove to be quite hostile to any and all life, creating steamy, desolate landscapes. It's no wonder that people connected them to the idea of death in the underworld. Of course, the other aspect of being situated around the Pacific Rim, as they are, is that earthquakes are extremely common. Much like California on the other side of the Pacific, Japan is regular

This episode kicks off a multi-part series on the Jomon period.  Known to some as Japan's Neolithic period, and named for the distinctive cord-marked pottery found from sites of this time, the Jomon period in Japan spans thousands of years as humans on the archipelago moved from a nomadic to a more settled lifestyle, yet still before any widespread use of full scale agriculture.  In this series we'll examine the early transitional phase into the growth of Jomon culture, we'll then look at the boom period in the Middle Jomon, and then the consolidation into northern and southern regions in the Late and Final Jomon periods, before the coming of the Yayoi. This episode will focus mainly on the transition into the Jomon period, the Incipient, Initial, and Early periods.  We'll look at the life of the people of this time as well as their homes, rituals, and food.  We'll discuss technological achievements beyond just pottery, such as lacquerware, and we'll see the importance of fishing for coastal settlements. Next episode we'll look at the boom period in the Middle Jomon, when the Kanto and Chubu regions grew to their most populous, ever. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-2 Rough Transcripts (Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Greetings, and welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 2, the Jomon Period, Part 1. That's right, we're going to spend a little bit of time on the Jomon Period. I'm currently estimating about three episodes, but we'll see how it goes. This first episode, I want to dig into the start of the Jomon Period. What was it? How was society changing? And the general evolution of life in the archipelago. We have a lot of information on the daily life of the people at this time, compared to the previous era, including houses, food, cooking, and more. This should help us paint a more fulsome picture, and even delve into some of the regional differences that emerge and change. As a reminder, the period immediately preceding this one was the Paleolithic period. The sea levels were lower, and the temperatures colder than today. People in the islands were living in small nomadic groups. These were hunter-gatherers, living a relatively unpredictable lifestyle where they could easily find themselves subject to adverse conditions beyond their control, such as weather, the migration paths of various animals, etc. Mostly, they would have been concerned about day-to-day existence, and the nomadic lifestyle was not conducive to carrying a lot of extra accoutrements beyond what they absolutely needed. But at the end of that period, the climate began to warm, and we see marked changes in the archaeological record. So what exactly defined the Jomon Period then? Well on the face of it, the Jomon Period is defined by the distinctive cord-marked pottery found at many of the sites from this era. In fact, Jomon means just that, cord-marked. And it refers to the distinctive use of cords or cord-wrapped dowels to impress patterns into the unfired clay. This was a distinctive, though not universal, artistic tradition, and different from the techniques that we see used on the mainland. So not only is it some of the first pottery in Japan, and honestly, the world, but the distinctive cord-marking and other decorative elements set it apart from most other ceramic traditions. Of course, there is a lot more than that, as it is a change in lifestyle on the archipelago, and indicative of a common culture. Or at least related cultures with common cultural elements. Some might even argue that it extends to the Okinawan island chain. That said, nobody just stood up one day and said, "Hey guys, let's start putting this clay together and make some elaborate pots and stuff. And while we're at it, let's change our entire way of living to do just that." The changes we see are more gradual, and it took thousands of years for things to really come together. And, you know, I just want to touch on this span of time for a second, because as we tell this story, timing is important. You know when you're watching the movie, and they need to cram weeks or months of training or travel into only a few minutes of montage? Well, we're going over the historical equivalent of that. Except instead of weeks or months, we are talking about millennia. I mean, from the Roman Empire until today is only a little over, what, 1500-2000 years? Columbus landed in the Americas only 500 years ago? The United States of America hasn't even been around as a nation for 250 years? So in one millennium, a thousand years, we could see the entire history of the United States of America four times over. Every 2000 years is the distance between us today and some Roman troubles back in Palestine. Think of everything that's happened in that time, and how much must have happened between those same spans of time long ago. So keep that in mind as we talk about this period. Now, in part because the period is so large, and so much change occurs from start to finish, it's traditionally broken up into about five or six different sub-periods. To start with, there is the incipient Jomon, from about 14,500 BC until 7-8000 BCE, covering the end of the Pleistocene period. This was the transition period between the Paleolithic to the new culture that we've come to know as the Jomon, though some argue that we aren't quite there yet. In fact, it is the period from about 8000 to 4000 BCE that is known as the "Initial Jomon Period", when we really see things getting started, and where we begin to see cultural diversity expressed through art. Then from there to about 3000 BCE, so only a thousand years or so, we see what we call the "Early Jomon Period", where changing climate and other factors really allow the Jomon culture to take hold and start to build. Well, it's during this period that we see certain ritual elements really come into play. I expect to cover to about that period of the early Jomon in this first episode. In later episodes, we'll talk about the Middle Jomon Period. This is a period of unprecedented growth, and the culture flourished. At least in the Kanto and Chubu Highlands region. Some consider this to be the height of Jomon culture, and we certainly see some of the largest settlements from this period of time. The population of the archipelago hit its zenith, and the art and complexity of this period is really an indication of the prosperity of the people of that time. That only lasted about 2000 years or so before something changed. And we aren't entirely sure what. The populations of the Chubu Highlands and Kanto region dwindled, and other areas became more prominent. By the late and final Jomon Periods, we see a distinct North-South split in the material culture, which seems to indicate two separate cultural areas. These would continue to develop in their own ways up to the introduction of the Yayoi culture, which appears to have been caused by direct influence from the mainland. There are those who argue, even beyond 300 BCE, for an "epijomon" culture in the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions, and we will eventually touch on that as well. So back to our original question. What is the Jomon Period? Well, most properly, the Jomon Period is generally defined as that era that covers the emergence of pottery in Japan until the emergence of full-scale agriculture, particularly wet rice agriculture, generally associated with the Yayoi Period. It is a period where we see sedentary lifestyle emerging in the form of permanent buildings and dwelling places, but the people are still largely reliant on the natural landscape for their subsistence. Besides the distinctive pottery and dwellings, in particular the pit dwellings that are the most common form of building that we have evidence of, there are also massive shell mounds left behind, especially at coastal sites. Shell mounds are pretty much what they sound like, mounds of shells, fish bones, and other detritus piled up over the years. They were basically large trash heaps or middens, and therefore preserve a lot of information about the cultures of the time. These aren't just the trash from a few decades. In some cases, through their size, etc., they show evidence of thousands of years of continuous use. That's a tremendous record on which to base our conclusions compared to the spotty information we have coming out of Paleolithic sites. Unfortunately, by their very nature, we only find these treasure troves at sites that were at or near a coastal resource, where shells were plentiful, meaning we'll need to consider other evidence when we look at more inland locations. Effectively, this period is considered Neolithic, or New Stone Age Japan. In the European model, the Neolithic is typically defined in a couple of ways. First off, the use of polished stone implements, something that we do see in Japan, but we see it much earlier. In fact, we saw ground and polished stone tools from the era typically referred to as the Paleolithic. The other feature of the European Neolithic is the advent of farming, moving society from a nomadic to a sedentary way of life. In fact, for a long time, the popular European model held that natural growth of civilizations was in just this manner. Small family groups of hunter-gatherers would discover the benefits of raising domesticated plants and animals, which would allow them to settle down in permanent settlements, thus becoming "civilized", a word rooted in the Latin "civitas", indicating a city. Of course, any student of world history can look and see this is a very narrow view of how human cultures have evolved and changed over the years. The people of the Central Eurasian steppes domesticated animals and maintained a nomadic lifestyle that roamed across the continent for just one example. And in the case of Japan, we see settlements, but we don't see the key feature that is supposed to anchor it. Agriculture. There is n

This episode we'll continue with our exploration of the Jomon period, focusing specifically on the Middle Jomon in the area of Eastern Honshu.  This was truly a fascinating period, and saw the largest population boom anywhere of a non-agrarian subsistence culture.  We'll talk about why that is and look at some of the other cultural factors that we see in this area. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-3 Rough Transcript (Auto transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Greetings and welcome to another episode of Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is Episode 3, Boom and Bust, Part 2 in our series about the Jomon Period. So in the last episode we covered more than 10,000 years, but this episode will really only cover about 2,000 years or so, and mostly in one region of Eastern Honshu. But it was an eventful 2,000 years. Whereas at the beginning of the Jomon Period, there were maybe 20,000 people in all of the islands, by the height of the middle Jomon Period, that number had grown to 260,000. Most of these individuals were residing in the Kanto and Chubu regions of Central and Eastern Japan. In those areas, we see huge settlements appear, and the people really seem to thrive. This was one of the most prosperous times and areas that the world had ever seen in an area that had not yet developed agriculture. And then, for some reason, it stopped. First in the Chubu Highlands, and later the Kanto region, with settlements shrinking until only the coastal settlements remained of any serious size, we see the unique material culture dwindle, overtaken by outside influences. So what happened? What is the cause of this stone age bubble economy? That's part of the mystery we'll be unraveling this episode. Now, before we go much further, I would like to make a quick mention of one of the foundational sources for all of this. Keiji Imamura's Prehistoric Japan. Available in English, some of its information is dated as new finds have pushed the boundaries of our knowledge regarding when things first happened, but it still remains a key source for understanding what is going on, as well as getting an overview of the period. The dating system that Imamura uses is the one that you'll find most others following for this period, and his hypotheses and conclusions are still largely the basis for much of the discussion on what happened during this time. While other sources might provide information about specific technologies and innovations, let alone particular areas of Japan, they still tend to reference Imamura's work. I'll make sure to have information about it on the podcast blog page over at SengokuDaimyo.com/podcast. Alright then, back to Eastern Japan in the Middle Jomon Period. By this time, people in the archipelago were living in long-term settlements, but we see no evidence of full-scale agriculture, suggesting that people were still foraging for food. These settlements are mostly circular in design, as are the pit dwellings that make up most of the structures. We also find some post holes outside of these pit dwellings, and their placement suggests other above-ground rectangular structures. Now it's impossible to know just what these were used for, but they may have been storehouses of some kind. I mean, when storing food and other goods, it's often beneficial to keep them up off the ground. For one thing, it can allow air to circulate and can be a deterrent to animals who might sneak in to raid the food stores. Using a removable ladder, access to the food stores can be further controlled. Of course, these could also be some sort of above-ground pavilions, or some kind of watch tower, from which one could look out over the area around the village, possibly watching for game or groups of other foragers, or if you're out on the coast, perhaps you're watching the horizon, watching folks in canoes who are out fishing. It's just hard to say for certain. And even if they were storehouses, we still find some storage pits, though not as many in the Kanto region, and we'll discuss that more in a bit. But we do find storage pits, so even if some things were stored above ground, others were kept in the ground. This may simply indicate that there was a diversity of foodstuffs and other goods such that different storage methods were appropriate. After all, we use our pantries, and we also use our refrigerators. They are used for different things, possibly the same thing is going on here. There was another feature at some settlements. In at least some of these villages, we have found burials at the center of the circular ring of dwellings, and some of these were actually located underneath a distinctive circle of stones or other decorative, possibly ritual, construction. In some of these stone circles, you'll find a single upright stone in the center, which is believed to be a masculine symbol. Smaller phallic-shaped stones and scepters are sometimes found inside the various homes, probably as some sort of charm for protection or prosperity. These settlements are connected through their material culture with others in the region. In particular, we see similar pottery styles in various geographic areas, and therefore can assume that there were some shared cultural aesthetics at least between these different sites. Over the course of the Jomon period, we see about ten different material cultures expressed through this pottery. Several of these cultures are found in the Kanto Plain and Chubu Highlands, from the area around modern Tokyo and Chiba prefectures all the way out to modern Nagoya and Lake Biwa. This will be the focus of our discussion today, since that is where we see the highest growth. See, when the population of the archipelago reached its zenith, the Kanto Plain in particular saw a density of about three people per square kilometer. I mean, that's incredibly dense. And since people weren't spread evenly across the region, the settlements at this time must have grown to accommodate them. And well, that's exactly what we see. From this period, we see dozens of settlements with 50 or more dwellings, and one, at modern Kowashimizu in Chiba prefecture, just northeast of Tokyo, had at least 260 dwellings. One can imagine them bustling about their daily lives, men and women preparing food, smoke drifting up from numerous cooking fires, dogs and children playing amongst the houses. There might have even been small gardens in and around the houses where select herbs and other seasonings were cultivated. Potters would be at work, building up their pots from clay coils as they had been taught, marking them in a variety of ways with their own distinct designs, and then firing them in an open pit. These people were at the height of their prosperity, and it is seen not only in the size of their population, but in their connection with other communities. We find obsidian that has traveled from at least 100 kilometers away, indicating that there were trade networks, and therefore regional specializations that necessitated the trade. I can't emphasize this enough, this is before horses or any other mode of transportation, other than simply walking. So these weren't isolated communities, but communities that were working together and with one another across large areas. They knew they were part of a larger world, and they participated in it actively. So they had local and imported goods. They had lacquer and pottery and fabric for clothing. Their pottery and lacquer were heavily decorated, and they likely did the same to the clothes and to themselves. We know that they would reshape or even remove teeth, and we also have evidence of other forms of decoration, to include what appear to be ceramic ear decorations or mimikazari, plug-style ear gauges meant to fit in the earlobe, not uncommon practice around the world. There were also lacquered hair combs as well, and decorative shell jewelry at least at the coastal sites. And speaking of the coast, that's another thing about this area. It's when we see some of the highest sea levels in Japan, and many of the "coastal" sites are actually found up much farther inland than might otherwise be suspected. So at a site like Kawashi Mizu, you would also notice the large shell midden surrounding the village, though occasionally people would simply take an old abandoned pit dwelling and throw the shells in there instead. After all, the pit's right there. This would have been a prominent part of any coastal settlement. Of course, you know what we don't see at these settlements? Farming. No fields, or even clear indication of farming equipment. Nothing. And this is pretty remarkable, because it would seem to indicate that their prosperity was based entirely on foraging off the land. And if the estimates are correct, at 3 people per square kilometer, these population densities in Central and Eastern Japan are the highest levels recorded for temperate foragers anywhere in the world. So how did they do it? I mean, what allowed these areas in Japan to support that many people? Well there are several theories. One of them is that they did in fact have agriculture. This is called the Jomon farming theory. And in this theory, the idea is we just don't see any clear evidence of it today. Personally, I'm not convinced. At least not for this middle period. I mean, first off, we would expect to see more evidence of the kinds of crops that make for good stable harvests, typically grains like rice and millet. Foxtail millet in China dates back to at least 5000 BCE, and rice comes in another 1000 years before that even. And it isn't that we don't find grains here and there, in Preston pottery or preserved in other ways. But we don't find enough of it. You see, Japan, at least in present day, isn't really suited to grasslands. And therefore there aren't a lot of places where these grains could have just grown wild in large fields and meadows. So you'd expect to see some

This episode we'll cover the Jomon period down in Kyushu where we will look at the evolution of the culture and the disaster that befell this early bastion of Jomon society. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-4 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Greetings, and welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 4, Jomon vs. the Volcano, Part 3 of our continuing series on the Jomon Period. In previous episodes, we covered the rise of the Jomon people from their Paleolithic ancestors. We covered the great innovations that were made, and the changes in their way of life. Last episode, we covered the rise and fall of the Katsuzaka culture of the Kanto and Chubu Highlands during the prosperous Middle Jomon Period. Today, we are going to look at the Jomon culture down in southwest Japan, particularly down in Kyushu, right up to the final millennia of the Jomon Period and the beginnings of the Yayoi. During the last two periods in the Jomon chronology, the late and final Jomon Periods, there were largely two dominant material cultures, one in the northeast with major concentrations in the Tohoku Hokkaido region, and then another in the southwest, with major centers in Kyushu. Central Honshu was largely split between these two cultural regions. Up in the northeast, the pottery style became more and more elaborate as time went on, while in the southwest of Japan, the pottery style tended to become even more simple, with fewer markings, and instead going for a smoother, more polished look by black burnishing the pottery and firing it in reducing conditions. This created a stark contrast in the material record between the two groups. In addition, we'll examine what is starting to happen on the mainland. By the end of the Jomon Period, the archipelago will be back in semi-regular contact with the Asian mainland for the first time in thousands of years. Pressures on the mainland will eventually cause some people to spill out into the islands, and with them will come a distinct change in the culture of the archipelago. This will be the start of the Yayoi culture. So by the end of the middle Jomon Period, the archipelago can largely be divided into two major cultural areas. There is western Japan, with the largest sites in Kyushu, and then northern Japan in Hokkaido, with large settlements in the Tohoku region spanning across the strait to the island of Hokkaido. Each of these have their own distinct material cultures and histories, and we'll try to touch on both. We'll start with Kyushu in the south, looking particularly at the culture around Kaminabe, and we'll move north and look at the development of the culture through the lens of the Sannai-Maruyama, and Kamegaoka sites. Before we get started on that, I do want to touch on a bit of historiography here. You see, unlike the Paleolithic period, the Jomon Period was known to Japanese historians at least as early as the Edo Period. Or at least the pottery was. Jomon era pots had been found over the years, and in the Edo Period two men, Sekitei Kiuchi and Teikan To, were some of the first scholars to really start collecting and discussing stone tools and pottery. They discussed just what these were and who might have made them, as they didn't seem like anything in the traditional categories of Japanese history. It would be 70 to 80 years after these early scholars had passed away when "scientific" study of the Jomon began with the excavation of a shell midden by Edward Sylvester Morse in 1877, with two of his Japanese students performing another excavation only two years later at Okadaira. Morse is the one who gave the Jomon Period its name, based on the cord-marked pottery found at the Omori Shell Mound. And there's the rub. Based on the name, you would think that the entire period was defined by nothing more than its pottery, and by a specific type of pottery at that. But a lot of excavations over the years have been in the northern and eastern sections of Japan. The early assumptions were that Jomon pottery were simply a part of the early Ainu culture. Under this theory, the Ainu were equated directly with the Emishi, the barbarians, outside of the Yamato polity. They were "driven back" into Tohoku and eventually Hokkaido, where they live to this day. Given that conception, is it any wonder that a lot of the early work was focused in the northeast? And in fact, some 80% of all Jomon sites are in the northeast, rather than the southwest. And yet, in many ways, the island of Kyushu appears to be the birthplace of Jomon culture in the archipelago. While granted, the oldest pottery we have is actually from the Tohoku region, far to the north, some of the first evidence of settlements and other tell-tale markers of the Jomon culture first show up in Kyushu. This is likely because, as it is in the south, the temperatures in Kyushu were much more hospitable to this new lifestyle than further north, allowing for various trees, plants, and animals that would enable the sedentary foraging culture that would be indicative of Jomon settlements for millennia to come. In the incipient and initial Jomon periods, many early artistic and practical developments were made in southern Kyushu, but I can't find evidence of those sites having been explored to the same extent as on Honshu. In addition, with the lower sea levels at the end of the Pleistocene era, it is possible that there are Jomon sites that may now lie out beyond the modern coastline, somewhere under the ocean waves. Recent excavations in Kyushu have shed some light on the culture down there, and we are gaining a better appreciation for it overall. So in southern Kyushu, during this early period, when the north was still much colder than it is today, there is evidence of a thriving Jomon society, not to the level of the middle Jomon period Kanto and Chubu regions, but still a sophisticated culture. Instead of just marking their pottery with cords, they sometimes used seashells, a tradition popular in the southernmost areas of the Japanese islands. And then, one day, about 5330 BCE, something happened. To the people of southern Kyushu, the day would have started as any other day. Whether pattering around the village, or out fishing in the ocean, or even up in the forest hunting for food, nothing would have seemed to miss. They may have looked up when they heard a rumble like distant thunder. The ground would have shook, alarming, but not uncommon in the ring of fire. Then on the horizon, a cloud would have been seen, rising into the air. It's possible they had seen smoke for several days now, in the same spot, but this would be different. It would be much larger than anything they had seen before, and it would be approaching. It may not seem that fast, but it would reach the southern tip of Kyushu, probably 30 minutes or so after it first appeared. Men and women along the shores may have noticed the cloud racing toward them over the water. They were travelling at speeds well over 1000 km/h. They may have tried to run, or shelter in place. In either case, the answer was the same. The pyroclastic flow would have quickly engulfed everything in its path, leaving an unimaginable path of destruction in its wake. This was the Aka Hoya eruption from the Kikai caldera, due south of Kagoshima, and it was one of the three most powerful eruptions in the past 10,000 years. It covered the entire archipelago in ash. In Osaka, there was ash up to 30 cm deep. This was an apocalyptic event, and it changed the landscape of Kyushu, western Honshu, and even parts of Shikoku. It created a decline in the evergreen broadleaf forests of western Japan for more than 800 years. And deforestation can be seen as far away as Shikoku in the Ki Peninsula south of Osaka. Along the southernmost tip of Kyushu, the land was barren, with a total absence of grass, bamboo, and trees for several hundred years. There is even a decline in the oceans with a noticeable decline in shellfish during this period. Southern Kyushu was annihilated, and the flourishing culture was all but erased. This was 100 times the size of Mt. Vesuvius' eruption in 79 CE, which would completely destroy Pompeii and its environs, and six times the size of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883, an eruption that was heard as far away as Alice Springs, Australia, and which was picked up in readings around the globe, even in Europe. We are talking a blast force equivalent to possibly 10 or 20 of the most powerful nuclear devices ever detonated, and it may have been even larger than that. For centuries, southern Kyushu was all but uninhabitable, and the eruption had an effect on the flora and fauna across the archipelago. The destruction was unimaginable. The previous material culture of southern Kyushu was completely destroyed. We don't see anything else for hundreds of years. Perhaps some people escaped the destruction and moved north to join other groups. Perhaps they were entirely wiped out. There is a volcanic ash layer known as the Aka Hoya layer, and beneath it lies the beauty of the previous Jomon culture. Above it, the pottery is distinctly changed. New groups eventually came in to settle the island after the eruption, bringing with them new pottery forms and forming new communities. Eventually, life would return, even to the most devastated parts of the island. By the middle Jomon period, the oceans had reached a peak, and they would have flooded inland valleys, and just like in the north, this is where we find some of the early settlements. Also, as in the north, these settlements were round or horseshoe shaped, with round pit dwellings encircling a central common area. It should be noted that we don't find as many settlements in southwestern Honshu during this or even later periods, at least not when compared to Kyushu, eastern Honshu, and the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions. This doesn't mean that there weren't

This episode will be our final look at the Jomon Period in Japan.  Specifically we are focusing on the northern Jomon, in Tohoku and Hokkaido.  We'll take a brief overview of this northern area throughout the Jomon period, and then focus on the transition from the Middle to Late and Final Jomon periods. We also have a treat this episode--we are getting our best glimpse yet of the people through the DNA of one of the women from Funadomari.  We'll take a look at what we know about her, including what is up with the whole "wet earwax" thing. If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to reach out and Tweet or email us with comments.  How is it going and what would you like more or less of? For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-5 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcript courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 5, Goggle Eyes and Wet Earwax, part 4 of our continuing series on the Jomon Period. So thank you everyone for sticking with me through the series. I know it's a lot of information on a time that is still technically prehistorical. To be honest, I thought this was going to be a quick hop, skip, and a jump through the Jomon and Yayoi myself. It wasn't until I really started digging into it that I realized there was so much here to talk about, and I knew I couldn't get through it quickly. I hope you're enjoying it. If you are, comment or drop us a line at @SengokuPodcast, the Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page, or email the SengokuDaimyo@gmail.com. We've now moved through most of the Jomon Period and are coming to the end. Today we are going to look at just what was going on in the northernmost reaches of the Japanese archipelago. We'll start with a brief outline of the northern Jomon culture through the previous eras, and then pay particular attention to the transition from the middle to late and final periods. We'll end with a look at an actual Jomon woman through her DNA. So shall we get started? When the Jomon culture first moved north, it largely focused on the areas of northeast Honshu, around Tohoku region in places like modern Iwate and Aomori. Over time, it expanded into Hokkaido, and eventually up into the Kuril Islands. The later Okhotsk Sea cultures and the Ainu would eventually come to inhabit both the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands, as well as Hokkaido and northern Honshu. The northern part of Japan has always had a cooler climate than the south. I mean, north-south. It's pretty explanatory. Even today, the Sapporo Snow Festival is a huge draw for tourists every winter. So whereas the Kyushu forests are largely broadleaf evergreens, Tohoku and Hokkaido forests tend to be mixed coniferous and deciduous trees. Pines, oak, maple, chestnut, etc. The colder waters also make for more productive salmon runs, just as we see across the Pacific. This isn't just a north-south distinction. The Japan seaside of the islands, for instance, also tends to have a much greater snowfall when compared to the Pacific side of the islands, so there's an east-west divide as well. The first Jomon settlements in Tohoku and Hokkaido appear quite similar to those in the rest of Japan, though the nut trees that we talked about as being crucial to the growth and spread of the Jomon culture didn't arrive in Hokkaido until about 6-7,000 BCE, just at the end of the incipient Jomon period. Despite this, our oldest example of pottery in the archipelago comes from Oda-Yamamoto in about 14,500 BCE, back when people were still living a predominantly nomadic existence. Then, in the initial Jomon period, we find the earliest examples of lacquerware at Kakinoshima in Hokkaido around 5000 BCE. In the early to middle period, we see a proliferation of sites in both Hokkaido and Tohoku. The diet of the people in this region is varied, with hunting, fishing, and foraging all helping to sustain the communities that spring up. Artists only further perfected and developed their craft in both lacquerware and ceramics. By the late Jomon period in 2000 BCE, the climate took a turn. Down south, the dense Kanto plains population was declining, and the situation seemed dire. Up in Tohoku and Hokkaido, however, there was very little evidence of impact, at least in comparison. Perhaps this is because they were already used to living in a cold climate, or their food sources were diversified enough so that no one thing had such a dramatic effect on them. Whatever the reason, they were able to continue and thrive, even as the Kanto plains system failed. That doesn't mean that nothing changed during this time. Settlements at this time moved closer to sources of fresh water. Some of these settlements also built specific structures to direct the water to help leach the tannins out of their acorns, indicating that this was still an important food source, and that maybe they still had to change their lifestyle to accommodate the changing climate. We also have evidence of bamboo fishweirs from this time. These are traps set in the river to catch fish and make them easier to harvest. This is something that they may have had much earlier, but due to the nature of the materials and locations, very few are found. And of course, there is plenty of evidence of canoes being used to go out into the deep sea to hunt and fish, and probably go across the sea to the mainland for trade. Along with other changes, we find more and more spices from this time, for instance, Sancho pepper showing up in the record, and we also find vessels specifically designed for boiling salt water to get salt. This is important, since for all that is surrounded by ocean, Japan has no source of rock salt, and therefore all of its salt comes from the sea. Later Heian poets would make a special note of the scent of the salt fires, where they would burn large piles of seaweed to extract the salt, a tradition that may go back to this era or even earlier. The cultures of the Tohoku and Hokkaido region also developed their own ritual traditions, similar to the traditions of their southern neighbors, but with their own spin. Remember the figurines or dogū that we mentioned before, where people would break off pieces? Well, the North saw their own versions, and one of the most striking is the quote-unquote goggle type or Shakōkidogū. If you see a picture of one, you'll probably recognize it. Unlike some of the more realistic figurines, the large eyes and ovoid head look much more alien than human. Like something you'd expect to find in a science fiction movie, coming out from a strange metallic craft and asking us to take them to our leaders. Some have suggested that the weird eyes and elaborate markings were representative of some type of mask and clothing. Perhaps the large eyes on a comparably large oval-shaped head actually do represent goggles, like the snow goggles found in the Arctic regions. The most likely explanation, though? Just a continuation of the gradual abstraction that we've seen so far. Many of the features can be explained as exaggeration of earlier models. Over time, it simply reached inhuman proportions. And that is one other possible explanation. Maybe these weren't meant to represent human beings anymore. Maybe they were some kind of spirit, and the exaggerated features were meant to demonstrate the otherworldly nature. Well, who knows for sure. Regardless, they are some of the most beautiful figurines from the entire Jomon period, at least in my opinion. Now it shouldn't be surprising that most of the Jomon figurines found in the islands have been found in the northern half of Honshu. After all, that is where 80% of the Jomon sites have been discovered. But the sheer numbers are still incredible. We discussed the Shakado site in the Kofu Basin, but a single site in Iwate contained 2,000 figurines, more than even in the Yamanashi and Nagano regions. There were also large numbers found in Ibaragi and Chiba, as well as in Aomori. In addition to being more numerous, they are larger as well. There is at least one figurine from this period that is 42 cm tall, compared to most of those that are about maybe 10 cm or so. In addition to the figurines, we see a continued increase in the use and complexity of other ritual constructions. We see sword-like objects and even wooden "totem poles" from this period. The stone circles become larger and more regular. In Oyu, in modern Akira near the northern tip of Honshu, there are two circles with diameters of 40 and 45 meters. If you look up Oyu Stone Circle on Google, you should be able to find photos of the site. The circles are a collection of flat and vertical stones with houses around the perimeter. In addition, they are also doubling as a type of cemetery, with graves found under the stones of the circles. This appears to be an evolution of the overall stone circle idea. In Hokkaido, it appears they may have moved away from stone circles to using dirt earthworks instead. So what are some of the Jomon settlements in this region? First off, let's take a look at Sannai-Maruyama. This is a great example of a middle Jomon period settlement in the Tohoku region, and you can go visit the reconstructed settlement in Aomori City if you get the chance. The main settlement, which covers about 40 hectares, seems to have been a hub with multiple smaller, probably temporary sites elsewhere in the area. So far, archaeologists have found 500 pit dwellings, with up to 100 in use at any given time during its history. More than 20 of the buildings are huge for their time, over 10 meters long, about twice the size of most pit dwellings. And the longest building? It's about 30 meters long. It's unclear whether these are just larger houses, or if they had some other purpose, like a gathering space. Amongst the buildings, we also find evidence of some strange, rectangular, above-ground structures. All we find are the pillars, about 6 per structure, and those pillars themselves are almo

This episode we take a brief departure from the Japanese archipelago and take a look at what was happening on the continent.  This is the formation of the states we would later come to know as China and Korea, though they aren't nearly so unified just yet.  Over on the mainland, the development of rice and various metal technologies will create changes that will eventually flow over to the archipelago.  We'll take a look at archaeological as well as historical evidence for this period. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-6 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription by listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 6, Emperor Horse Crupper and Other Continental Developments. Today, we are going to take a trip beyond the archipelago and briefly cover what's been going on with the Asian mainland. Every once in a while it is going to be important to check in on what is going on across the Japan Sea, since despite its nature as an island, Japan was regularly influenced by what was happening over there. Too often we try to take history in isolation of the events going on elsewhere, but that would be a mistake, and by the end of the episode I hope you will understand and see the chain we are building here. Oh, and I would be remiss in not mentioning that, as this is a Japanese history podcast, please don't expect an in-depth discussion of Chinese or Korean history. While I will do my best to provide as accurate an accounting as I can, most of our sources are questionable before the 9th century BCE, and there is still a lot of discussion over just how the various archaeological assemblages from before this period relate to the dynasties that are mentioned in the later histories. Also, we are going to focus on the northeast. You see, despite what it may seem like, China is a highly complex and diverse region, with many cultures, but most of that is out of scope for this discussion. Our goal today is to look at some of the developments that would eventually impact the archipelago and get an introduction to some background for later, as some of our first historical references to the islands would come from the mainland. And that brings up one more thing that we should address here. Just what are our sources, and how much can we rely on them for accurate information? Often when we think about any source touching on history, we tend to view it through a modern lens. Specifically, we tend to view it through our own understanding of what the field of "history" is trying to do. Our assumption is that it is an academic and well-researched attempt to provide us the facts of what happened, and this is something we concern ourselves with a lot. Much of academic debate seems to revolve around whether or not we get our facts right, and we also tend to view this in that very black and white tone. Our facts are right, or they are wrong. That's it. We also tend to take the view that history is somehow "known" to us today, as if there were people constantly chronicling the facts of the human story throughout time, or at least since the start of recorded history, and therefore all we have to do is go back through these documents, find out what happened. Easy peasy. Done. But historical sources are rarely like that. They are rarely complete, or as complete as we'd like them to be. There are linguistic and translation issues that we might find, and then there are cultural and societal norms that we may not fully comprehend today. This is bad enough when we look at the history of our own societies where we assume that our values and norms today must have been our ancestors' values and norms, just in a different context. It gets all kinds of screwy when we start to look outside at not only cultures different from our own, but when we are trying to draw facts from sources from different cultures at the same time. After all, China, Korea, and Japan were constantly in tension. Sometimes they romanticized the other, and sometimes they demonized them. And they almost always lionized their own histories. After all, that was the primary purpose, and that gets to the heart of the matter. You see, most histories, while purporting to give us the facts, are often written from a particular perspective, and it would be better to say that they are offering us the "truth." Or at least, a truth. Typically they are commissioned by a government or dynasty, and they have as their ultimate goal the ideal of making their patrons look good. It's natural. Everyone wants to suck up to the boss, after all. This means that for our purposes, we need to look at them with a skeptic's eye. What are their cultural biases? What was their purpose? And of course, they have another problem too. Most of these histories are written centuries, sometimes millennia, after the events they claim to describe. How can they claim to know what was happening back then? Well, in this area, it depends. In China, who loves to mention their 5,000 years of history, written word has been around for some time. And so most of the histories that are extant today were based off of histories written much closer to the actual time. In some cases, histories were recorded verbatim in later historical works, and so while we may not have the original, we at least have the text. It still leaves us a question. What would the historian do if they found something in the history that contradicted the "truth" they were writing about? Would you leave in a part from a previous historian that said the father of your dynasty's founder was a scum-sucking rebel to the throne and executed as a traitor? Or do you conveniently leave that out in favor of the narrative that your founder's father was a stalwart and upright leader who resisted the despotic and tyrannical rule of a former dynasty whose time has come? And even where it isn't so directly obvious, for instance, the way the chronicles treat the Japanese archipelago, we may see a contemporary historian incorporate an older accounting and then update it from a contemporary viewpoint. And so we take all of these histories with a grain of salt. Sometimes that salt is obvious. I think we all tend to raise an eyebrow when we hear about inconceivably long reigns, with sovereigns being on the throne and ruling for a hundred years or more, let alone a fifteen hundred year reign. However, it gets tricky when things are more plausible. We have to take a closer look and ideally correlate facts from different sources. There is even a trend in some modern research to refer to periods as "proto-historical" when the only histories we have come from other cultures or time periods and we don't have histories from the individuals themselves. Then there is the problem of dating. You see, in most of East Asia, they don't use a single dating system that tells you what year it is. Most histories tell their stories in terms of the regnal date, what year it was of a given sovereign's reign. Therefore, to match up to a common era date format, we have to go back and count up all the years, which can get tricky, especially during a regime change. When a king dies to the first year of the new reign, start the next year, or the same year as the last year of the previous reign, what if there is a gap between one king dying or stepping down and then another one stepping up? Usually that is explained, but sometimes those details get lost. Fortunately for us, the Chinese chronicles tended to include events of astronomical significance (eclipses, comets, etc.) Since these are things that we can look at and generally calculate today, they give us anchor points in the chronicles and help us determine where our chronology appears to be good, regardless of the reliability of the narrator in terms of the characterization of events. In China, it looks like we have reasonably reliable dates, at least from about 841 BCE, based on the astronomical phenomenon described in the records, so that's something. Before that, it is assumed that previous records were lost in wars or other disasters, and historians were probably drawing from less reliable sources, either fragmentary writings, oral traditions, or possibly just making it up based on their own memory and assumptions. At that point, we look to the archaeological record to see what we can find there. As time goes on, records tend to get better, or, well, at least there are more of them that survive and so we get more than just a single account of any given episode. This in turn allows us to build more of a narrative around what was happening. So please stick with me through this as we very briefly try to cover what was happening in China and Korea during the first couple millennia BCE, and remember, our sources for China are not really that solid until about the 9th century, and Korean histories are still questionable for most of this period, but it's what we have for now. Fair enough? Alright, so our story begins in the Yellow River Basin area. You see, while Japan was making its way through the Jomon period, across the waters, people were dabbling in agriculture and state formation and a new technology that had come on the scene. Bronze. Fueled by these developments, the culture we identify as the Erlitou culture arose from about the second millennium BCE or so. This is the culture that some people connect to the Sha Dynasty of the Chinese histories, though the scholarship is still being looked at. Now to hear the Chinese chronicles tell it, the Sha was the start of all civilization. Long thought to be as mythical as the sage kings themselves, archaeological research has indicated a culture around the Yellow River Basin that seems to fit the description of the Sha as we know it, including early inscriptions in oracle bones, turtle shells, and scapula used for an early form of divination, which are the earliest forms of Chinese characters. Chinese scholarship has identified the

Japan without rice? It's hard to imagine such a thing, but it is true. This episode we talk about how rice came to Japan and the culture that was created at about the same time.  This is the Yayoi culture, and it will be the subject of our next several episodes, moving forward. The Yayoi culture is a blend of continental and indigenous culture that creates its own mark on the archipelago and beyond. But why the change? How did this new culture come to the islands? We'll discuss all of this this episode. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-7 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 7, Rice Comes to the Islands. For ten thousand years, Japan had been a land of hunter-gatherers, living in small, sparse settlements throughout the archipelago. Life was rough, but predictable. At coastal sites, they would gather nuts and other vegetables in the fall, hunting and processing in the wintertime, and fishing in the late spring and summer. In between hunting and gathering, they were making their distinctive pottery, lacquerware, and holding communal rituals. Traders would occasionally bring foreign goods from the mainland, and fishermen in the south would meet with their counterparts and trade fishing stories and gear, but for the most part the islands were on their own. And then... they came. A new group of people on the islands, who turned the land from forests into rectangular squares, tilling the land with new tools made of iron, from which they also made new weapons. These people swelled in numbers, absorbing or conquering nearby groups. Some of the original inhabitants tried to stave off this new foreign culture, doubling down on their own rituals and way of life, but it was no use. Eventually it would expand throughout the archipelago, stopping only when it reached the northernmost tip of Honshu. These were the Yayoi. So this episode we start to look at the Yayoi period in Japan. This is considered by many to be the period where we really start to see what would become Japanese culture, as the Jomon culture of the archipelago met with influences from the continent. We see full-scale rice paddy field agriculture, which will make rice a mainstay of Japanese economics as well as a staple food source. We also see both iron and bronze entering the archipelago. Interestingly, unlike in other areas of the world, iron appears to have arrived first to the archipelago, arriving just shortly before the advent of bronze. This means that Japan effectively skipped a Bronze Age, with bronze almost immediately taking a ceremonial role. All of this comes with a new unique culture that blends aspects of the continent with the indigenous Jomon. This new culture also brought social stratification, with obvious distinctions between the elites and commoners, and it grew. With the addition of full-scale agriculture, we now see a population boom in the islands, which contributes to the formation of larger states, most of which eventually would aggregate under a single sovereign. During this period, increased communication with the continent also means that we start to see Japan appearing in the historical records over there. So in this period, we will see the move from prehistory to history, or, well, at least proto-history. Towards the end, we will see the great kings and queens, buried in large keyhole-shaped tombs. These old tombs, or kofun, will give the next period its name. For now, let's turn our attention back to the beginning of this period. Now the name Yayoi really has nothing to do with this period, other than it was the location in Tokyo where archaeologists first found a new style of pottery, clearly distinct from the Jomon period. However, since we don't have a name from the people themselves, this is the name we tend to use for this period. There is evidence later that they may have eventually referred to themselves as the "wa people", but we'll get into that. The pottery itself shows a blend of elements from late southwestern Jomon and Korean plain-style pottery, and it was initially assumed to have arrived sometime around 300 BCE. Early dating put the Yayoi period from about 300 BCE to 300 CE, a convenient date range to remember, but research has consistently pushed back on this. This is also brought into question the definition of what is Yayoi, and where the final Jomon ends and the Yayoi begins. For our purposes, we won't worry too much about the debate, which mostly consists of how we are labeling things, and we'll focus instead on the actual technical and cultural transitions and what we know about them. Now the big thing about the start of the Yayoi is, as I've mentioned, rice. And really, can you imagine Japanese culture without rice? The basic meal in Japan is gohan, or cooked rice, and whether it's sushi, sake, onigiri, donburi, or even mochi, it all requires rice. Rice was so central that it was the chief measure of wealth during most of Japan's history, with land being measured and how many koku of rice it could produce. Japan without rice is like, well, it's like France without bread, or Italy without pasta. It is that ingrained in our perception of the country and culture. And yet, there was a time when rice was new. So where did rice come from, and how did it make such a splash? Well our earliest evidence of rice cultivation in the islands comes from burnt grains found in pottery that have been dated to about 3,000 years ago. Archaeologists are estimating that about 900-800 BCE is when rice cultivation probably came over for the first time. Now rice, as most of us know it, that is the indica and japonica varieties, all comes from around the same area of the world and was originally a tropical crop. Even with the cultivation in the Yellow River Basin, which coincided with the culture that the Chinese identify with the ancient Xia dynasty, that seems to have been about the northern extent of rice for quite some time. As for the varieties, if you aren't familiar with them, you can probably get an idea from the name. Indica, as the name suggests, became popular in India and is the species used in, say, basmati or jasmine rice. Japonica, on the other hand, is the variety found in Japan and much of East Asia. A shorter-grained rice, which is the kind you will mostly find in Chinese and Japanese cuisine today. In China and Southeast Asia, they actually grow and use both kinds of rice. Of course, since it's a tropical plant, one may understand that it took a while for rice to make it to the islands. Despite our current image of rice in Japan going together like Han Solo and Chewbacca, it came to the islands relatively late. After all, north of Kyushu, the climate in Japan is much more temperate than tropical, especially in the northern regions. In addition, with all the other work going on just to keep yourself fed, who had time to mess around and experiment with all the work that rice paddy agriculture involved? And so it was likely something else that brought it to the islands. Or perhaps someone else. If you remember from the last episode, the start of the 10th century BCE had caused quite a disruption on the mainland, and bronze and other technologies had started to move outward from the Chinese heartland to various cultures on the periphery. Bronze weapons provided a significant advantage over stone-age neighbors in war, and rice paddy field agriculture gave many the ability to expand their populations. It is at this point that there are several thoughts as to what might have happened next. Now one theory says that rice agriculture may have come up from the south, specifically from south China, hopping over to Taiwan and up the archipelago. This is not dissimilar from one of the routes people believe may have been taken to get to the archipelago in the first place. In fact, some people tend to believe that the people in the Ryukyu Islands and southwest Japan were of Malayo-Polynesian descent, or at least spoke a Malayo-Polynesian language. We'll discuss language in a later episode, but as for descent, there is some genetic evidence that the Paleolithic inhabitants of the Ryukyu were related to the people of Southeast Asia. However, we have no direct evidence of rice agriculture in the islands until much later. So for this theory to be true, rice farmers would have had to leave southern China and travel pretty much straight to Kyushu to settle, which seems unlikely. In addition, as I mentioned before, southern China had both japonica and indica rice, so why would they only have brought one of them to Japan? Another theory suggests that Chinese migrants from the easternmost edge of the Zhou empire sailed over to Japan, perhaps because of trade or because they wanted to escape a turbulent situation on the mainland. Similar to the southern theory, this seems to be based primarily on similarities between certain aspects of Japanese and Chinese culture. For my part, I am not convinced that such a connection is necessary to explain what we see in the islands. Instead, the theory that I tend to subscribe to is that the majority of influence came over from the southern Korean peninsula. Humans are adventurous, no doubt. For example, check out the transoceanic voyages of the ancient Polynesians, traveling from places like Tahiti or Samoa all the way to the Hawaiian islands. But Occam's razor would still seem to apply here. The Korean origin is supported by a myriad of evidence that appears to dwarf the evidence for the other theories. First, the earliest evidence of rice being cultivated in the archipelago is in northern Kyushu, specifically the areas near Hakata and Karatsu Bays. Hakata Bay in particular is noted time and again throughout history as the chief port for missions to or from the mainland, so why would that have been any different in this era? After all, from Hakata Bay one

In this episode we look at one of the other large innovations of the Yayoi period:  Bronze and Iron.  We'll explore just when bronze and iron came to the archipelago, and its role as a prestige good in the growing stratification of society.  We'll talk about how it connects the islands to the continent, but also how it connects the various settlements to one another. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-8 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcript courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 8, Iron and Bronze. A group is stalking through the forest. They are quiet, looking for sign of deer or boar. Their wooden and stone-tipped arrows and spears held at the ready, they are hardly aware that they themselves might be under threat. As the group of hunters crosses a small clearing, they hear a noise as arrows whistle through the air, coming out of the forest. Surprised and ambushed, the hunters are nonetheless anything but cowards. They have seen their share of violence and they quickly rally to face their foes. They charge towards the tree line, spears ready, and the two groups enter a brutal melee, skirmishing amongst the trees. The lead hunter fights his way to the most impressive of his attackers. He thrusts forward with his spear, but it is turned aside. He pulls back, swings the spear in an arc, hoping to catch his opponent off guard, but his stone head hits something, and a strange sound rings out throughout the forest. The hunter looks on in disbelief as his stone spearhead chips and breaks as it, itself, is struck by a strange, shining blade. Smoother than the smoothest stone and thin as the most finely worked obsidian, this blade is stronger than either. This is iron, and it would change the history of the islands. Japan has entered the Iron Age. Alright so last episode we talked about the arrival of rice, and agriculture in general, to the archipelago. We discussed how that led to the formation of the Yayoi culture, which remained distinct from the Jomon people still covering most of the islands. Today we are going to talk about the other big imports. Bronze and iron. You see, unlike most places in Africa and Eurasia, Japan never really went through what you would call a Bronze Age. Now this gets back to our previous discussion of the Jomon and whether or not they were "neolithic". Most of these "ages" are bound up in a Eurocentric view of historical progress, based on how things unfolded for European and Mediterranean cultures. However we have already seen that those assumptions often don't hold up. One may have ceramics without agriculture, and likewise one did not have to have a Bronze Age or even a Copper Age to necessarily bring about iron. And even where one follows the other, it means little more than the presence of the physical material, and we should be careful about too many inferences of what sociological changes it might thereby imply without direct archaeological evidence. In the case of Japan, by the time bronze reached its shores, iron came along with it, or at least it was only shortly behind. There is no evidence that bronze was produced locally until much later, leaving them dependent on the continent for much of their supply of raw materials. This means that bronze was rarely used for actual practical purposes and was almost immediately relegated to a ritual role in society, being used for ceremonial and prestige items. In fact, some scholars suggest that there was no impetus to bring bronze over until there were elites who desired it. They had ceramics and shell bracelets, but that was it. Iron on the other hand, which kept an edge better than bronze, was used more often for tools and weapons. It had a much more practical use by all levels of society. Now the story of iron and bronze and their arrival on the archipelago is still muddled. We have evidence of iron and bronze in the archaeological record, but there are plenty of questions. First off, just when did metal arrive on the archipelago, and how did it get here? But why did we say that bronze and iron came together? Well, this is all tied up in a few things. First off, the oldest examples of metal in Japan are from the Imagawa and Magarita settlement sites. At Magarita, which was classified as an initial Yayoi site, we found the remnants of a flat iron axe. At Imagawa, an early Yayoi site, an iron arrowhead was found, alongside a bronze chisel and a bronze arrowhead. So that seems to indicate that iron came over with the earliest Yayoi settlements. This narrative made perfect sense when we thought that the first people came over from the Korean peninsula between the 3rd and 5th centuries BCE. But now that we have pushed the introduction of rice back another 400 years or so earlier, we are left with something of a dilemma. You see, while there is iron on the East Asian mainland, and even up in Liaoning, we haven't found any evidence of iron as early as 900 BCE on the Korean peninsula itself. So if iron arrives in Japan by that time, then somehow Japan is getting iron before even the Korean peninsula. But let's take a look at this. Now rice had come to the islands by 900 to 800 BCE, quickly spreading through North Kyushu and the Western archipelago. Early archaeologists have found iron and bronze tools at Yayoi settlements, and believing that rice had arrived between 500 and 300 BCE, had assumed that iron and bronze had come over with the earliest rice-going culture. In fact, it was thought that iron tools were essential to the wet rice paddy agriculture. Investigations over the past decade, however, have shown that this is highly unlikely. Rice came over much earlier, but there is no evidence of a similar change in the dates on when bronze and iron made their way down the peninsula. Which means that the earliest periods of the Yayoi, the initial and Yayoi periods, which Gina Barnes dates to between 1000 and 400 BCE or so, were still technically in the stone age. Now by about 720 BCE, near to the period when we were talking about temperate japonica coming over to the islands, the proto-Songguk-ri culture was appearing on the Korean peninsula. That developed more fully into what we truly call the Songguk-ri culture, and started to spread on the peninsula around 450 BCE, about two and a half centuries later. This is one of the cultures that we mentioned last episode as being a large contributor to the Yayoi culture. Only a century or so later, the Chinese sphere was caught up in the warring states period, and the Yan state started pushing into the Liaodong area at the head of the Korean peninsula, facing off against the Gojoseon. In fact, around 400 BCE there was a downturn in the climate, which may have been some of the impetus behind things like the warring states period over in China. During the early 3rd century BCE, Yan asserted its independence, and General Qin Kai of the Yan state invaded the Liaodong peninsula, home of the Gojoseon. Gojoseon and Yan escalated a border conflict between the two states. That conflict likely spilled over into the areas further south on the peninsula, and may have spurred further emigration over to the archipelago. War and conflict often inspire movements of people, fleeing the chaos and destruction war brings. It appears that this conflict pushed people down the peninsula and across the straits, and they brought with them an understanding of metal tools, first bronze and then iron. But now we are already into the Middle Yayoi period, and didn't we say that the Magarita and Imagawa sites were classified as initial or early Yayoi? Well you see, while we have evidence of rice as early as 900-800 BCE through carbon-14 AMS dating, our traditional chronological tool for the longest time was not carbon dating, but rather pottery types, as well as other material goods found in the archaeological record. And well, we tend to make some assumptions. So for instance, if Yayoi is associated with rice, and we find a pottery sherd with carbonized rice, then we assume that pottery sherd must be from a Yayoi pottery assemblage. Likewise if we find an axe head from China around the 4th century BCE at a Yayoi site, and we believe the Yayoi started around that time, you can see how someone might date that to one of the earliest periods of the Yayoi. Now that we have more information, we can revise those concepts. So where does this leave us? Well, with everything we have discussed, we now see the story something like this. Early contact in the first millennium BCE leads to rice being brought over to the archipelago, and the beginnings of a new culture. A blend of peninsular and indigenous culture. It is followed in the 7th and 6th centuries with temperate japonica as contact with the mainland continues, as well as trade up and down the islands. That rice-based culture seems to have led to a stratification of society. Before bronze or iron goods arrive, this manifests in a few different ways. First in burial patterns, which we touched on somewhat previously. From relatively egalitarian cemeteries to burial groupings, and eventually even small tomb mounds. Where we really know that position is hereditary more than simply based on an individual's practical worth to the community, is when we start to see children buried in some of these prestige graves. Now remember that back in the Jomon period, children were often buried apart from the adults, and with no differentiation that we can see in the archaeological record, one child to the next. To see children in prestige graves with prestige goods may not seem like much to us, but think about it. Children in their minority are typically too young to be extremely productive members of society. No offense to any kids out there. So why would some children be separated from others and buried as elites? The easy answer is that they were buried with their family. Not an unreasonable assumption

This episode is a bit different.  Whereas we've been looking primarily at the archaeological and historical evidence, this episode we look at the linguistic evidence--language--and what it tells us.  For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-9 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 9, The Language of Wa. Now in the last few episodes we've talked about the arrival of rice and agriculture in general to the archipelago. We discussed how that led to the formation of the Yayoi culture, which remained distinct from the Jomon people still covering most of the archipelago. We also talked about the material culture that the Yayoi brought with them, not just different pottery styles, but metal technology, bronze and iron. There's one more thing that they brought, one of the key things that likely set this new culture apart from the original Jomon, and that was its language, which evidence suggests was likely an early Japonic language, an ancestor of modern Japanese. Now the story of the Japanese language and where it comes from is still something of a mystery, though one that various historical linguists have been working on, so I feel confident that I can at least give you a glimpse into some of the thoughts and theories that are out there, as well as help put to rest a few of the more commonly held theories that were once in vogue but have proven problematic over time. But before we get into that, I guess I should ask the most basic question of all. Why do we care? How does this help us tell the story? Well for one thing, language is how we communicate. It isn't just how we communicate, it actively shapes how we think about and perceive the world, and when we get into the historical period, that history will largely be written in Japanese. Language is often central to identity, you know, those things that let people know who they are, what they belong to. It's shaped by their environment and what is around them, and it in turn reinforces and influences how people think about themselves and others. For example, in English, we tend to think in terms of egocentric directions, that is directions centered on the subject or object of our conversation. So forward, backward, up, down, left, and right. We also have words for cardinal directions like north, south, east, and west, but we tend to use these when thinking in larger terms. For local directions, we usually say something like "go down the street and take a left." In Tlingit, they have words that have evolved specifically for where the language evolved. Words for instance, specifically indicating whether you are going towards the shore or away from it. "Ik" and "yik." Which is understandable as much of Tlingit Ani, the Tlingit homeland, is along the coast of the Pacific Northwest in the Alaskan panhandle. And these would be handy directions, regardless of whether you are actually going north, south, east, or west. So you might tell someone to "go shoreward" or "go inland" and there is even a variant for if you are on the water, vice on the land. Meanwhile in the language of the Guugu Yimithirr of Northeast Australia, they tend to use the cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west, rather than egocentric directions like left, right, forward, and backward, even when talking about something that is close at hand. Rather than saying "give me that book that is on your left," they would likely say something like "give me the book that is northeast of you." As a consequence, its speakers are constantly keeping track of where they are and have developed a remarkable ability to tell directions. In Japanese, we can see some similar differences with English, from the different levels of politeness and honorifics when speaking with people, to just the sheer number of words for different types of fish. These are clues about values Japanese society then puts on different things. You can even see in some instances where Japanese may not have originally made distinction, but one now exists because of borrowing from Chinese, for example. A good example here, to make something, whether a chair, a sword, a garden, or a boat, one might use the word "tsukuru." However, when written with the Chinese characters, the same word, tsukuru, shows a difference between small things like the chair and the sword, and larger projects like building a boat or a garden. Language is both shaped by its environment, and in turn it shapes its speakers, giving those of us who speak it a reference for how to view the world. And this is one reason why many people work so hard to preserve their individual languages, despite external pressures to conform, while on the other hand, many immigrants may endeavor to adopt the language of their newly chosen culture in order to better assimilate and be seen as part of the group. Japanese also has meaning in a religious sense as well. Shinto belief puts particular emphasis on the kotodama, the divine power inherent in words. This power is conceived as being in the actual sound and shape of the words and how they are spoken, and it is often used in explanations of why things are named as they are. Shinto formal prayers, or norito, are often in an older form of Japanese and preserved to maintain these sacred sounds. And so we see that language contains more than just a means of being understood. Through language, we can connect with others, and those linguistic connections, like the connections buried in our DNA, may then help illuminate some of the movements in our past, particularly when we don't have a direct historical account. It's also telling how language is adopted. You see, when two languages are commingled for a long period of time, they'll start to affect each other, like Chinese and Japanese, as I mentioned earlier. Simply take a look here at the evolution of English, given the influence from the Anglo-Saxons, the Norse, the Normans, as well as French, Greek, and Latin. All of them have left a mark and the history of England is written in the very core of its language. And when a people are oppressed and one population is replaced by another, such as through war and conquest, we can sometimes see traces of that. Even just which language becomes dominant provides clues regarding state formation, etc. I mean, think of how people often use the example of pork versus pig, and how we eat pork and raise pigs. This is often attributed to the fact that the Norman conquerors would be the ones eating pork, while the Anglo-Saxon farmers would be the ones raising the pigs. So given all of that, what exactly is Japonic? Isn't that just Japanese? Well today Japonic is a language family that realistically includes two, maybe three extant languages, depending on who's counting. Though whether these are full-blown languages or simply dialects is an area up for debate. The two primary languages in the Japonic language family are Modern Japanese and Ryukyuan. Modern Japanese is the language of the modern country of Japan and what is taught in schools today. We should be clear though that this is not the same as the language of the ancient Japanese, as it has gone through many centuries of evolution. The language of the original Japanese chronicles is about as close to Modern Japanese as Chaucer's English is to Modern English. And if we go even further back, we hit the story of Beowulf, one of the earliest examples of quote-unquote "English" that we have, but I doubt few Modern English speakers would be able to recognize it if they heard it today. The other extant version of Japonic that we have is Ryukyuan, the language originally spoken in the Okinawan islands, many of the dialects of which are endangered today. The Ryukyuan language has similarities to Japanese, but it is clearly separate. This is similar to, say, Spanish and Portuguese. Both are Romance languages from the Iberian Peninsula and they have a lot in common, but there is enough difference that you can't necessarily count on a one-for-one translation between the two. Some examples, in Okinawa, a castle is called a gusuku rather than shiro, and even the word Okinawa is read as Uchina in the Ryukyuan dialect. And even Ryukyuan can be broken down. Some classify it really as being six distinct languages, Okinawan, Amami, Kunigami, Miyako, Yayama, and Yonagumi, all languages based around the islands from which they take their names. The third candidate in this mix is actually the Japanese dialect in Hachijoushima and the Izu Islands south of Tokyo, which have had their own insular effects and retain some old Japanese elements that have been lost in modern Japanese. A parallel could perhaps be drawn between the people of Tangiers Island and the Chesapeake Bay, who have retained a distinct accent that goes back to the 17th century, except that the Izu Islands are even further removed from the Japanese mainland, sitting out as they do in the Pacific as part of an underwater ridge that extends south, all the way down to Guam and the Mariana Islands. In the Hachijou dialect, the word yama, mountain in modern Japanese, is used for field, and they continue to use some older words or usages. For example, they use aru for both living and non-living things, and kamu in place of taberu, meaning "to eat". Now notably, there is another language we discussed on the archipelago that is not a Japonic language, and that is Ainu or Ainu Itak. Ainu Itak is a completely separate language from anything else, likely a blend of the northern Jomon language with other elements from the Okhotsk Sea region. We won't really touch on it here other than to say it is a distinct and separate language all its own. So what do we know about the Japonic languages? Well to start with, let me cover something that I know I heard early on and still seems to be out there occasionally. Is Japanese related to Finnish? Yep, I'm

This episode we cover the archipelago at the turn of BCE to CE through the eyes of the Chinese chronicles.  We take a look at what the Chinese thought was the founding of Japan in the Qin dynasty, as well as the disruption to the islands caused by the Xin dynasty interregnum between the early and late Han dynasties.  We also look at the earliest recorded missions to China, as well as the fortunate discovery in the 18th century of the famous seal of the Kingdom of Na. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-10 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcript courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 10, "The Islands of the Immortals." Over the past few episodes, we've discussed how rice agriculture came to Japan and how that led to stratification of the society. Then we looked at how bronze and iron arrived, another key component of this period. Finally, we took a look at language. Not only about the language that the new culture brought and developed, but how it defined them to those outside and how it gives us clues as to the connections that were made across the straits. We also talked a little bit about how the modern Chinese pronunciation is not quite the same as the older Chinese pronunciation. Now, we are slowly going to ease our way into the historical period, and we're going to start with the text with the oldest reliable, or, well, at least semi-reliable information, the Chinese Chronicles. Now wait just a minute, some of you are probably saying, "Don't the Japanese Chronicles go back even further than those?" Well, yeah, you're right, they do, or at least they purport to. I mean, the Nihon Shoki gives us a firm date for the formation of Japan at around 660 BCE, and that seems reasonable now that we look at it, right? I mean, with the Yayoi period pushed back to the start of the first millennium, it is possible that things started back in 660 BCE, right? Yeah, not so much. First off, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are both being written in the early 8th century, so that's over a thousand years later. And the date of 660 BCE can be reliably traced to an historical theory that was being used to demonstrate that change that had put the patrons of the Nihon Shoki on the throne was part of a natural process, one that came every thousand or so years. Therefore, they figured that the previous date had to be the start of that cycle of years, so 660 BCE. From there it was a matter of figuring out how to stuff all of the sovereigns in there so that there was a nice clean line from the sun goddess Amaterasu to the current ruler. Therefore, the dates for many of the events, even if they did occur, are suspect. Many of the events may have happened or may allude to something that happened and was remembered through the ages, but without further context, it's hard to match the story up to the archaeological findings. The Chinese chronicles, while still written after the fact, and sometimes even hundreds of years after the fact, are still much closer to the contemporary events. And the fact that we can't really line up the Chinese and Japanese sources suggests that there are some potential problems with one or the other. Given that the Chinese sources were composed closer to the contemporary events and that they likely used even more contemporary sources in their composition, I tend to see them as more reliable, at least for this early period. That said, we will eventually be looking at the Japanese sources. For now, we are still laying some groundwork so that when we do get to the actual Japanese chronicles, we'll have an understanding of what was happening so that we can put the stories we read into context. So that leaves us with the Chinese chronicles. In particular, we have the Hō han shu, or the Chronicle of the Later Han, written by Fan Ye, and the Wei zi, or History of Wei. There is actually a history of the early Han that has brief mention, which we touched on back in episode 8, but given the brevity of its entry, there really isn't much to say. By the early Han period, there were 100 Wa states, or guo, koku in the Japanese pronunciation. We don't know what these so-called "states" were, but we suspect they were groupings we see of larger settlements with several smaller satellite settlements around them. Basically city-states. Chinese reports of earlier contact are more detailed, but much less believable. The earliest contact, according to Chinese tradition, was back in about 1000 BCE, when a messenger came from the Wa and paid homage to the king of the Zhou dynasty and brought him a fragrant herb, chang zhao, for making wine for his ancestral altar. Of course this would have been just at the start of the Yayoi period, meaning that it's more likely that it was possibly someone from the southern Korean peninsula or even Shandong, assuming the "hua" refers to anyone speaking Japonic, that is. Now another legendary account comes from the time of the Qin dynasty. Now the Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, who united China and is buried with the terracotta warriors outside of Xi'an, is said to have been obsessed with immortality. He commissioned searches for an elixir of immortality that would allow him to live, and rule, forever. In fact, we found wooden slips that record responses from a few of the towns and provinces in the empire, either respectfully declining, claiming that they could find no such elixir, or sending back herbs that might be useful. However, there was one account that seemed promising. Xu Fu, a native of Qi, the state on the Shandong peninsula, submitted a memorial and claimed to have knowledge of three mountains in the eastern sea, on one of which the immortal sages lived, thanks to the power of a plant that could grant them immunity from death. This was the mountain called Penglai. The Qin emperor decided he had to have this mythical herb, and he granted this alchemist ships as well as funding and manpower to go in search of this mysterious Penglai and find this rare herb. Xu Fu left, but unsurprisingly, could not find this non-existent island. It's possible he went looking, or equally possible that he took the funds and lived a life high on the hog. Either way, he went through the funding and apparently didn't find anything. Except that he didn't just send back a memorial to the court. No, several years after setting out, he decided to go back to the court, but he knew he couldn't just go back empty handed. After all, the Qin emperor was not exactly known as the picture of mental stability. You see, apparently several of the elixirs of immortality that had already been offered to the Qin emperor included something called cinnabar, also known as mercury sulfide. Of course, mercury is poisonous and can have serious mental side effects. You may be familiar with the term "mad as a hatter"? This came from the fact that in the 19th century, creating hats relied on mercury as a key part of the process, and as the hat industry grew, hatters began to exhibit symptoms of shaking, slurred speech, tremors, and even hallucinations. Mercury poison can also result in irritability, memory problems, depression, and anxiety. In a regular person, this can be debilitating. In a sovereign at the top of a terrifyingly efficient and legalist bureaucracy, well, I'm sure you can imagine the effects. In fact, in the latter years of his reign, the emperor was almost entirely sequestered, with his senior officials running the government. Given his options, Shufu likely decided that maybe describing failure to a not altogether sane and with-it sovereign who holds the power of life and death over everyone in the kingdom was not the best idea. And so he decided to concoct a story about his journeys. And it was quite the story he came up with. He told the court how he had indeed set out in search of the fabled island, to which there were no maps. Out in the ocean, he and his crew had met a god of the sea, yep, that's right, a god of the sea, who had indeed led him to an island. The stories he wove told of a miraculous place, including the legendary herb. But here was the kicker. You see, Shufu's mission may have found the herb, but they couldn't acquire it, as the price was just too dear. Shufu then listed off an exorbitant list of items that included young boys, virgins, and craftsmen of every kind, which the immortals of Penglai required in exchange for the herb of longevity. Certainly, Shufu figured this would be the end of it. The court wouldn't go for this twice. The price must be too steep. Well, whether it was because Shufu was just that good at weaving such stories, or perhaps due to the effects of the mercury poisoning, the Qin emperor apparently took his story at face value. Regardless of what his advisors may have said, the Qin emperor was obsessed with immortality, and he would do anything to achieve it. He ordered a fleet of ships built, and sent Shufu and all of the people that had been requested, along with rice, millet, beans, and other seeds, off to go purchase this herb. Now of course, Shufu knew that there was no island, but he couldn't exactly back down now, so he took the ships and goods and set off. It's unclear if he had a particular destination in mind, but he certainly couldn't return back to the court one more time. Besides, he now had everything one might need to go off and live comfortably. And so he did that. He sailed off, over the horizon. And that might have been the end of it. Except that, once again, after a few years, members of the expedition reached back to the court. According to what they reported, they had not found the island of Penglai, but they had crossed the sea and found a land with large plains and lakes. They settled there, farmed and fished, and made a new life for themselves. Their messages back to the Qing court advised them of the happiness they had found and suggested that the Qin emperor too give up

In this episode we follow the footsteps of the Chinese emissaries on their way to archipelago.  There had been plenty of travel back and forth, based on the various artifacts we've found, but it wasn't until the History of the Wei that we get our first look at the paths and directions to the countries in the island.  It is also when we get our first look at the people and customs of the people known as  the "Wa", including their sovereign:  A Queen known as "Himiko", and her home country, known as "Yamato". So come with us as we take a look at the lands of the Wa. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-11 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 11, Journey to Yamato. Now before we get started, I want to apologize to everyone for last episode. The audio quality was just not quite what we hoped it would be. Unfortunately with jet lag and a bit of, let's say, work being done on what is my recording studio, aka the library, it just didn't come out like we wanted it to. So hopefully we'll have a bit better audio quality this time around, and we'll do a bit more quality control. With that, let's get into the episode. So we are finally into the Chinese accounts of the Hua, moving into the periods between the first and third centuries. At this point, I'll largely be leaving the distinction between Common Era and Before Common Era aside, unless it is specifically relevant. These next few episodes, we'll be starting to look at the lands of the Hua, and specifically, the territory said to have been controlled by a relatively new state, Yamato. Now the question we should probably address is, what constitutes the lands of the Hua people? I mean, the Chronicle tells us that there were originally over a hundred polities, but only 30 or so that were actually in contact with the Chinese court. We get the names of these 30 largely from the entries in the Wei Zhi, or the Wei Chronicles, and as such, we are looking at all of these names in Chinese characters, not a native alphabet. I'm going to largely be referring to two resources for names here. One is J. Edward Kidder's 2007 work, Himiko and Japan's Illusive Chieftain of Yamatai. This is a great compilation of the research up to that point, and the way he brings together the various accounts provides a great in-depth look at this period. The other main source is Massimo Soumare's 2009 work, Japan in Five Ancient Chinese Chronicles, translated by David Amana and edited by Mark Hall and Sengoku Daimyo's founder Anthony J. Bryant. It really helps lead you through the various Chronicles, and I recommend it as an easy way to read the Chronicles themselves, including the original Chinese in facsimile. For the most part, I'll try to use the name that's as close to the old or modern Japanese as possible, rather than using the Chinese. This is so that we can move beyond matters of translation and transliteration and into the story of the time. But just know that there is still an entire area of study out there on just what these names really were. In fact, that was one of the reasons we went over the language issues in a previous episode. And if people are really interested, maybe we'll do a special episode just on the various names and what they might be and might mean. And with all that disclaimer out of the way, let's move on. So if you were a Chinese ambassador during the Wei Dynasty, heading out to the lands of the so-called Eastern Barbarians, you would probably be starting from the Chinese stronghold of Daifang, the successor to the Lelang Commandery, near the mouth of the Han River and modern day Seoul. From there you would travel south, along the coast of Mahan on the west coast of the Korean peninsula until you came all the way round to the mouth of the Nakdong River, near present day Busan. This was the land of Kuya in Byeonhan, one of the twelve states in that region, which would eventually become known as the Gaya Confederacy. At this point you were on the edge of Wa territory, and the people and culture you saw at this jumping off point likely prepared you for your journey out into the ocean. The crossing here has always been treacherous, so you probably had to wait for the right season before you could cross. Even then the chance of getting caught out in the freak storm, or simply bad seas, was a real possibility that would probably have you just a little on edge. By the way, at this point as you are following along, it might be helpful to pull up a map. I'll try to give some modern reference points that you can follow along, but I'll also post a Google map layer that will give you some of the general points along the way, at least to our destination, the country of Yamato, home of the Queen of the Wa. So, leaving port at the mouth of the Nakdong River, you'd strike out for the islands of Tsushima, in the middle of the Korean straits. On a clear day one might be able to spy the island before leaving sight of the mainland, allowing for easier navigation, and it would only be about 35 miles to the northern tip of the large island. This large island is mountainous, and covered in thick forests. Despite its size, there are only a few thousand people here, and they mostly live off the bounty of the ocean, including the ships that inevitably stop here on their journey to or from the Japanese archipelago. Paths through the forest are merely tracks, nothing large enough for carts as they have neither carts nor the horses to pull them. Though other Wa people grow rice, the islands aren't that well suited to it, and so instead they rely on trading with the mainland and the archipelago for most of their rice and other cereals. This hearty group of people making a living in the ocean expanse is governed by a leader called Hiko, and their second in command, Hinamori, who themselves may have resided in an area around modern Mine Bay, where numerous archaeological sites have yielded up evidence of continuous Yayoi settlement. Previously the island had been its own autonomous chiefdom, but recently it had come under the sway of a powerful state of the archipelago, and it now owed allegiance to the Queen of the Wa, who resided in the country of Yamato, our fictitious mission's eventual destination. So leaving the large islands of Tsushima in the distance, the next stop would be at the island of Iki. Despite a much smaller size when compared with Tsushima, this has many more people, about 4,000 households, or roughly 16,000 people. The ambassadors from the Wa may have arrived at Uchi’umi Bay and traveled up along the Hatahoku River to Haranotsuji, where we have found a large settlement that was possibly the old capital of Iki in the Yayoi period. As with Tsushima, Iki once had its own independent chiefdom, but at the time of the Wa dynasty it was part of the larger Wa state. Also like Tsushima, the governor is called Hiko, and their second in command is called Hinamori. Now really quick a note about this. It's really unclear if these are names or if they're just titles, and as we continue it may be that we're getting both. It is common practice in Japanese to refer to someone by their title rather than by their name, and so it is very likely that is how they would have been introduced to the Chinese officials. The terms Hiko and Hinamori, or possibly Hinumori, certainly feel like titles to me. Of course it's also possible that at this time it was only these two individuals, and they are mentioned twice because they were presiding over both the states of Tsushima and Iki. I mean, well that certainly could be the case. But the way the chronicle is written, it seems to imply that these are different individuals, and therefore I'm going to assume they were simply noting the titles of the governors and their deputies, and in this case they happen to be the same. By the way, someone might point out reading ahead that if these are titles, they aren't exactly consistent. While Hinamori appears to be the name of the second in command in at least four different states, the governor is almost always different. My response is that the fact that the other governors and deputies would have different titles shouldn't really be surprising. While these states may be under the rule of the Queen of the Wa, there is no sense of a homogenous organization, and the ties are likely still pretty loose. According to the chronicles, the archipelago had been embroiled in interstate conflict for quite some time in the late second century, and the current peace was probably only a generation or two old. Although the Chinese call it a kingdom, the Wa states are probably better described as some sort of confederacy with a single head of state. Each chiefdom still has its own culture and practices, however. And this is something that we will see again and again throughout Japanese history, even when it can be described as one single country. For instance, in the Edo period we often talk about the domains as "han" and so we might talk about the Fukuoka Han as an example. And yet the political units and structures often actually varied from one place to another. Modern scholarship has used "han" for all these domains because it really just helps us generalize to have a jargon that we can use no matter where we're talking about and trying to remember what a particular village or other political organization is from one place to another just gets way too confusing when you're trying to have larger general discussions. But in reality, what different sized villages, regions, or domains were called could definitely differ from one place to another. And that does make looking up information quite painful when you're going back to the old records. So Japan may look homogenous, but there are myriad regional differences in language and culture even up to the modern day. But let's get back to our missi

CW:  In this episode there will be some mention of slavery, as well as reference to wars and warlords. We continue our journey into the culture of the Wa, looking at the social conventions and society.  The past may often be a foreign country, but there are also a lot of things that look familiar.  We'll look at how society was structured as well as the rituals we know about to give us more perspective on this time in history. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-12 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 12, Society and Ritual. Now last episode, we looked at the Chinese accounts and how to get from the lands owned by China to the ancient Hua states, including the country of Yamato, home of Queen Himiko. We also looked briefly at the lives of the people and what they were like. We talked about what they wore, what they ate, and a little bit about society. You know, it still seems striking to me how much you can see of the roots of later Japanese culture in these early descriptions, while simultaneously recognizing just how different it was from what we know of today. This episode, we'll continue to look at the society of Queen Himiko's Hua, especially in light of how it compares with later Japanese culture. Now one of the things that may be particularly intriguing, at least I think is particularly intriguing, is this idea of a relative equality between the genders. The idea that the sovereign could be either a king or a queen without apparent distinction, and that women and men both had an equal voice at the table when it came to deciding things for the community. In fact, Himiko appears to have ascended to the throne following a disturbance, but before that, there was a man on the throne. There was also another man who followed her, and then a woman after that, and we'll talk about that later. For now, I just want to note that gender does not appear to be a prerequisite to political authority. And let's just think about that for a bit. This is something we're really going to have to remember when we get into the Japanese Chronicles, which were definitely written from the point of view of a patriarchal society. Still, stories from the Chronicles and the Fudoki, or local gazetteers, provide us some stories that show that both men and women yielded power and authority in ancient times. Now despite the apparent relative equality between the sexes on a political level, that doesn't mean that everyone was on the same level, or that there weren't gendered roles within society. Society was still stratified, with deference being shown by those in the lower castes of society to those in the upper caste. I feel I should note here that modern Japanese society also has its own forms of stratification, if you didn't already know. Even the Japanese language emphasizes the difference between inside and outside, as well as those who are higher or lower, socially speaking. Now by inside, I mean those whom you share a social grouping with, whether a club, a family, or even your co-workers. There's a different level of formality used with those who are part of your group, and those who are outside of it. Then there are those who are ranked higher or lower on the social ladder, and this can be situational. Within a family, the parents are higher than the children, while at work your bosses higher than you are. I mean, that could be the same for a teacher or other group leader. Even amongst your colleagues, there might be differences in seniority based on, for instance, when someone joined the group, their age, or other factors. Now while much of this has mellowed out from the days of the Edo period, when everyone would have been keenly aware of his or her overall position in society, it's still something that is kept in mind and part of general etiquette that people learn. There are even different words for the same thing depending on two individuals' relative positions. Now this is all a highly simplified description of a very complex social system, and I don't want to get too deep into it, but it does point out the importance of rank and position in society, and that appears to be something that was important back in the time of Himiko as well. It may not have been the same rules, but the concept was still there, and it would develop over time. Now it's thought that this idea of group identification also contributed to what may have been one of the oldest practices of social identification known in the archipelago, one we've seen in the archaeological record, and that's dental ablation. You remember that? It's the practice of knocking out teeth for various ritual purposes, like we saw back with Minatogawa 1. Well dental ablation was apparently practiced throughout the Yayoi period, and not just by "jomon" people. In fact there appear to be different patterns used by various Yayoi settlements and by people of immigrant descent. It was still going on, particularly in various coastal regions, but we don't really notice it being commented on as a feature of the Hwa people, at least not in the Chinese chronicles. So either it wasn't noticed by the various ambassadors, or it just wasn't considered important enough to comment on. I mean it is possible that the chroniclers themselves edited it out for some reason. I mean I also wonder if they just thought people had lost their teeth naturally. They may not have noticed the patterns, and if they didn't see it occurring, you know, didn't see someone taking a rock to someone's mouth and banging out the teeth, well they may just have assumed that a lot of people were missing teeth. And it doesn't appear to have been universal. I mean we don't find every skull missing teeth. So what does that mean? Well whatever it means, its absence in the written record whilst being present in the archaeological one is a bit of a mystery, and one we may never solve. So what would make people knock out perfectly good teeth? I mean I know early dental practices were pretty rough, but this was something more than that. And it didn't happen all at once. That is, you didn't just go into the local dental oblationist and say "hey, I'd like you to remove these six teeth today." Rather it would be something that happened over time. I mean studying just how teeth were removed, anthropologists have suggested this likely had something to do with your position in the group, and it might have marked different points in time. I mean usually certain teeth are knocked out first at an early age, and then later other teeth are removed. Based on the number of finds, a general progression can be established of which teeth were removed in what order. Interestingly, there are at least two different patterns that have been found in various communities, and it's been suggested that this may indicate people who are from the local area versus people who were considered outsiders. In other words, creating a physical indication of inside and outside. Whatever it meant exactly, it was clear that people were marking themselves in different ways, creating a physical and permanent difference that would mark them as similar or apart. It may seem extreme, but many people have had similar rituals, from tattoos to scarification to other means of permanently marking themselves. Now besides inside and outside, there also appears to have been a vertical hierarchy of sorts, with differently ranked individuals. It was unclear how many ranks of people there were in society of this time, or how formally they were defined. Later adoption and adaptation of the Confucian system would create a clear delineation in most of society, while the court itself would adopt a Chinese court-ranked system for those in government. But all of that is sometime in the future of these islands. What we do know is that there were the leaders, sovereigns or chieftains, and then there appear to have been at least one group of "important" people below them, either local leaders or other government functionaries. It's also unclear if these elites held status themselves, or if it was based on the group. A later system of social titles was actually based on the ranking of one's entire family unit. Then there were the free common people, who still held a great deal of autonomy, and finally there were serfs or enslaved people, who would have had the least freedoms. Wait, but... slaves? Yep, that's right. This last one may come as a shock to people who aren't aware of this particular practice in Japanese history. I mean, I'll be honest, it's not often talked about, but enslavement was a punishment that was used throughout Japan up until the 16th century, when it was outlawed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. And this is something we just don't normally associate with Japan. We don't see them as having slaves, and that may be because the marks of servitude are not as obvious as they were in the West. There certainly is no evidence of the kind of wholesale chattel slavery that fueled the Western imperial expansion. But there were still enslaved people, nonetheless. This may be a good time to bring up a story that I think illustrates the difference, at least to some extent. Recently, the story of Yasuke has become more well known, an enslaved African who was presented as a gift to Oda Nobunaga. There's even a movie coming out that you may have heard about, with none other than T'Challa himself playing the titular role Chadwick Boseman. Now, as the story goes, Nobunaga did not recognize Yasuke as a slave, as someone's property, the way they did in the West, and so he treated him just like other servants. Yasuke was given greater freedoms than he would have enjoyed with the Portuguese, even the Jesuits, and eventually accompanied his lord into battle. Of course, this all happened because Oda Nobunaga was a nice guy. Oh, wait, scratch that. I meant to say he was

We're finally here!  Queen Himiko.  In this episode we tell the story of Queen Himiko--or at least what we know of it.  From her rise to power as the paramount of the Wa to her missions to the Wei court in Luoyang and dealing with the commandery in Daifang. This was a particularly tumultuous time in northeast Asia, and the story dives into not just the Wa, but their interaction with the other polities that were developing into their own states and kingdoms on the peninsula. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-13 Rough Transcript (Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach) Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 13, The Life of Queen Himiko. Now before we get started, I just want to give a brief shout out to Tyler, Sean, and Louis for their donations on Ko-Fi. We really appreciate your support in keeping the site and this podcast going. Alright, so I realize we've talked about her somewhat, but this episode will be going over the life and times of Queen Himiko, Paramount of Wa. And though this episode drops on the 15th, I can't tell you how cognizant I was of just what was going on as I was putting this episode together, especially as I was doing most of the reading and writing on March 8th, International Women's Day. And oh my, what a great reminder that was for what we are doing here. The first named sovereign of Japan. And it's a woman. Not that we won't get our fair share of them in this early period, there clearly wasn't the stigma that came later with the more patriarchal leanings of Confucian and Chinese philosophy, let alone the later practice of simply ignoring women altogether, listing them simply as "daughter" in many of the official genealogies. I'm also excited though, because there's just so much research still going on trying to detail her life and times. Just earlier this year, there was a conference still looking at whether the Yamataikoku was actually Yamato, or if it was somewhere down in Kyushu. Now Queen Himiko is a character that has sparked imaginations of countless individuals. There was a period in Japan where there was literally a Himiko craze, it drove all sorts of books, manga, and other media about her. Much of it greatly embellished. Even today, she'll show up sometimes as a heroic figure, and sometimes as a villainous tyrant. Most of these are caricatures, with only the loosest of connections to reality. Like if George Washington were used as the game's final boss, chomping away with his wooden teeth and throwing cherry bombs. But however she might be depicted, and whatever we know about her, there is one thing we can be certain of. She was a human being. That means she had all the same emotions and basic concerns of anyone, with just as much capacity to be kind as she could be cruel. She was likely much more complex than the small snapshot we have can adequately portray her. But we'll do what we can to touch on her and on the other members of the WA who are named in the Chronicles. Alright, so let's dig in, shall we? Our tale starts in media res. Nasome stood looking out over the bow of his ship at the ocean waves, the boat rocking back and forth, while the men at the oars helped pull the craft through the water, wind whipped across the surface, catching the spray from the waves and misting everyone in salt air. At least the weather was warm, and there were no ominous clouds gathering on the horizon. This boat was made to ply the ocean, and was much more seaworthy than its Chinese counterparts. Below decks, the precious cargo was locked safely away, cargo fit for a king, or even an emperor. Only a few weeks ago the monsoon rains had pummeled the archipelago, and they still might be a threat, even in the later season, but so far the Jisai's powers had worked, and they had relatively clear skies. They had already been traveling for more than a month, and probably had at least one more month before they hit their target, the Chinese commandery of Daifang. To get there, they would need to head towards Guya, and then make their way along the western coast past Mahan and north to Daifang. From there, they would get a pilot and strike out across to the Shandong Peninsula, and eventually to their end goal, Luoyang, the capital of the Wei state. Years ago there had been turmoil in the archipelago, with states fighting each other and vying for dominance. There were precious few resources to be spent on missions like this one. Even after they had unified under Queen Himiko of Yamato, there was enough chaos on the Korean peninsula that would have sown doubt in anyone's mind regarding just whom one should deal with. The renewed Yan kingdom until recently held uneasy sway over Liaodong and the peninsula, including the Chinese Han commanderies, and their loyalties vacillated between the neighboring state of Wei and the southeastern state of Wu. Meanwhile the Samhan, Mahan, Jinhan, and Byonhan were starting to come together in their own states, what would eventually become Baekje, Silla, and the Gaya Confederacy. Still, Yan had been the most powerful state in the Korean peninsula, and would have strictly controlled trade and tribute with the mainland Chinese courts. It was only in the past year that the Wei armies had overthrown their unreliable ally, Gong Zun Yuan, and established direct control over the commanderies, as well as enforcing a tributary status with the states of the peninsula. With their newfound control, the Wei summoned those states on the peninsula, and while most of the wall were not on the peninsula proper, this would be a good time for them to come and feel out this new player, who previously had been removed behind other actors like the commanderies and the Yan. Unfortunately the Wei's celebrations were short-lived. Despite the victory over Yan, Emperor Ming, known by his given name of Cao Rui, died later that year, sending the Wei court into a state of mourning. So even as news of the Wei's victory was filtering down to the islands, they also would have received word of this tragedy. China's misfortune was an opening for the Huo, however. A chance to legitimate Yamato's rule through the auspices of the Middle Kingdom, Zhongguo, and to learn more about their intentions in the peninsula and the archipelago. The timing of the mission indicates that Himiko and the Huo were well informed regarding just what was going on in the rest of Northeast Asia, and they weren't some far off hermit kingdom. During this period, the Wei court would be taking the opportunity to renew its bonds with the more far-flung tributary states, especially those on the Korean peninsula, where a firm Wei presence had just been re-established. Himiko and her advisors could not have missed the fact that the Chinese court would be in a period of some upheaval, and that would actually be good for them, since the new emperor would likely want to show his power, wealth, and authority, which could include significant gifts in return. This was a key moment where she could bring her people into the lucrative tributary sphere of the Wei court. More important than the gifts, however, would be the legitimacy that came from an endorsement by the Chinese court. As far as we know, only one other such endorsement had been truly given out to one of the Wei states up to this period, and that was simply addressed to "the king of Na of Wa." With this mission, Himiko would be asking for something even greater, recognition of her rule across the archipelago as "Queen of Wa." After all, there were still some states resisting Yamato authority, and it wasn't very long ago that there was constant fighting. Himiko had probably come to power in 190, or shortly thereafter, which means she likely came to power at a young age, probably because of her presumed powers of intercession with the kami. Even Himiko's position was based on the general agreement of other chieftains, and was not inherent to anything about her herself. Meaning the imprimatur of a state-like Wei could bolster her position and authority. Besides the largely symbolic gesture, an alliance with the powerful Wei state might also lead to military aid against her enemies sometime in the future. And so they launched an expedition as soon as they could, waiting for later in the season to avoid the summer monsoons, but early enough that they would be able to cross over to the mainland before winter settles in, when many of the northern ports might ice over, providing unpredictable and treacherous conditions for any who might seek to travel across the straits. Like other later expeditions, they likely called on the various states to provide boats (there may have been more than one), and Himiko herself would have consulted with spirits. To the sounds of the zither, drums, and ringing bells, she would enter into a trance and consult with the kami regarding the appropriate timing for any expedition, as well as having others consult the oracle bones. Through these implements, the court would affirm their decisions to the people. Now to lead this expedition, Queen Himiko appointed Nasome as ambassador, with his second in command, Izushi-Gori, who is also simply referred to as Gori in much of the chronicle. We don't know much about these two individuals prior to this, though they must have been trusted officers of the court. This would be a dangerous mission, but it was also likely to bring rewards not just to the queen and her court, but specifically to those officials who made the journey. After all, it wasn't like today where people could just hop on a plane and fly halfway across the world. A journey like this would take at least a year given the distance and the seasons during which one could catch the appropriate prevailing winds. Even without complex sailing technology, winds, weather, and currents would have been a huge factor in any crossing. That said, I doubt that these crews were completely ine

CW:  This episode deals with ancient Japanese stories that contain depictions of sex, misogyny, and death. The Chronicles of Japan finally get into the Japanese Chronicles!  This episode starts our foray into the Japanese Chronicles:  The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, with a look at what's behind the Chronicles and one of the first real stories:  The creation of the archipelago and the kami, or gods, of Heaven. We'll start with a discussion of the main chronicles for this time and go on to discuss the story of Izanagi and Izanami, the two gods who are said to have created Japan and are the progenitors of most of the later kami.  We'll examine all of this and look at some of the possible cultural information that can be gleaned from these stories. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-14 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 14: The Japanese Chronicles In the beginning, the world was void, with only clumps of primordial substance floating on the oily surface of the water. Izanagi and Izanami stood upon the Bridge of Heaven, gazing down at the oceans.  Wondering if there was any land, they took the Spear of Heaven and plunged it into the waters, which swirled and congealed upon the tip.  That congealed matter became Onogoro Island, a small island in what would become the Seto Inland Sea.  It was here that Izanagi and Izanami came and built their house and gave birth to the other islands and the gods of Heaven. That is the basic description given for the creation of the first piece of land that would eventually become Japan.  The actual text differs somewhat depending on the source and is traditionally preceded by the creation of the initial kami. Alright, so this episode we are diving into some of the less historical parts in the native Japanese records.  We’ll look at the accounts of the kami—the gods of Japan—in the early Chronicles.  These are the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, known collectively as the Kiki—which is basically just the last character of the name of each chronicle put together.  By the way, quick shout out to the Nihon Shoki because as we are recording this it is just turning 1300 years old, so Happy Birthday!  That’s right, it was completed and submitted to the court in 720 and we are recording in 2020, so 1300 years ago.  It came a few years after the Kojiki, and is believed to have been compiled by the same author, O no Yasumaro.  In the case of the Kojki, Yasumaro was apparently just transcribing the oral history being recited by Hieda no Are, who had been tasked with memorizing the stories of the Imperial lineage several decades prior.  The Nihon Shoki, on the other hand, appears to be the compilation of extant written records. By the way, content warning right up front on this on:  The Kojiki is often lewd and vulgar in its descriptions of sex, violence, and other matters, and this may include some rather racy tales.  The Nihon Shoki, takes a slightly more technical approach, but there are still some things that modern listeners may find objectionable.  I will do my best to ensure there is a warning up front at each episode, but I just want to make sure everyone is aware.  Today, we’ll mostly talk about the context of these Chronicles and then we will talk about the Japanese Creation story.  And like many such tales it is going to deal primarily with procreation, aka sex.  However, this was also a patriarchal society, and we’ll be running into those attitudes in this as well. Before we dive into that stuff, though, let’s make sure we have our context. Now these Chronicles weren’t the oldest histories written down, but they are the oldest ones still extant.  The earliest was probably a set of records compiled around 620, and said to have been presented by the famous (and possibly fictional) Shotoku Taishi, and saved from a fire during a coup d’etat in 645, and it is possible that there were other copies or early drafts which may have fed into the stories of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki.  There are also a few later accounts that can be looked at for clues.  Things like the Fudoki and the Kogo Shui, which were written later but may contain some stories or details that the chroniclers just didn’t think was important for their purposes.  There is also the Kujiki, which John Bentley believes was written in the 8th century, but other scholars place in in the 9th or 10th.  Early Japanese scholars thought it was the original National History rescued from that fire in 645.  Bentley doesn’t go quite that far, but does suggest it as another important early historical text.  I will try to bring it into the conversation where appropriate. This means that all of this is being written down several centuries after Queen Himiko and her time.  The first part of the narrative that some consider to be “historical”, though, was probably from around her time, which is why I wanted to dig into this, now.  To bring us up to speed, we’ll get through the early parts of the narratives and then do our best to match up what is going on in the Chronicles with what we know from archaeological and continental historical sources. Now it is important, here, to understand some of the background and what was happening just prior to and during the composition of these early Chronicles.  You see, in the late 7th century, Prince Ohoama, also known as Ama no Nunahara Oki no Mabito, the brother of the reigning sovereign, who was posthumously known as Tenji Tennou.  According to the chronicles, he had originally been named Crown Prince—it was actually quite common for a brother to inherit a position—but when his brother died he was passed over in favor of Tenji Tenno’s young son, and Prince Ohoama does not seem to have been pleased with this outcome, and he gathered supporters to press his claim.  The resulting conflict is known to scholars as the Jinshin War, so called for the name of that year’s place in the sixty year zodiac cycle.  In the end, Prince Ohoama came to power, and is known to us today as Temmu Tennou. And it is no wonder that, once he had power, Temmu would want to solidify his position.  After all, if he had just raised up an army and taken the throne, then what was to prevent someone else from doing the same?  This was one movie that didn’t need a sequel.  He would need to ensure that there were no questions as to legitimacy, and one of the ways of doing that was to take control of the narrative.  In Himiko’s time she had appealed to the authority of the Chinese court to legitimize her rule, but this was different.  By now, the rights of the imperial family to rule had been linked to the divine, and I have no doubt that it was important that the history be “correct” to ensure that nobody could make counter-claims against Temmu’s dynasty. That is probably at least part of the impetus behind the action in 681, when Temmu brought together twelve members of the imperial family and other court nobles in his Great Hall of Audience and ordered them to commit to writing a chronicle of the Emperors and matters of High Antiquity.  This may have also been the time when he ordered Hieda no Are to commit to memory the narrative that would eventually become the Kojiki, as well.  There is no official mention of Hieda no Are, nor anyone like them, in the Chronicles other than the preface to the Kojiki, so we don’t know just when Are was commissioned.  Neither effort is recorded as being completed before Temmu passed away 5 years later in 686,  but only 5 years after that—a full decade since the first order—his wife and successor, Jito Tenno, would issue a command that the various families submit their ancestral records, probably to add to the continuing work of compiling a complete history. For all of this work, it wasn’t until 712 that the first of these efforts would make its way into a printed version presented to the court.  This would be the Kojiki, which was O no Yasumaro’s transcription of the imperial history as recited by Hieda no Are. In his introduction, Yasumaro records that Temmu Tenno lamented the fact that the Imperial Chronicles and the records of the various houses had lost their veracity.  No doubt, as we see, they had conflicts, but I think it is just as likely that they didn’t quite fit the truth that Tenmu wanted to have told.  So he had Hieda no Are learn these to recite them back, but she hadn’t finished before Temmu Tennou passed away. So let’s tease this apart:  Hieda no Are was told by Temmu to study and memorize the history when Are was 28 years old, but didn’t complete before he passed away.  Aré must have kept at it, up until Yasumaro writes it down, presenting it to the court in 712.  That’s at least 26 years after the death of Temmu—I highly doubt that it took Are 26 years to memorize everything, and it only took Yasumaro roughly 4 months to transcribe it since he was given the commandment by the then sovereign, Gemmei Tenno. I would suggest that this tells us several things.  First off, oral recitation was still an important part of tradition, and there were professionals, like Hieda no Are, who spent time committing narratives to memory and then reciting them back.  There is even a term, “Kataribe”, for these storytellers. I suspect that there was a certain sacral quality to recitation, either because of the idea of the kotodama, the special sounds made by the words, or simply because it was the continuation of an ancient practice, rather than a foreign one.  This may have had meaning to the people of the time that is hard for us to fully comprehend in modern society. In fact, among many peoples of the world, oral histories are important, even today.  These often tell the stories of who you are as a people, as a family, and as an individual.  Being someone called upon to recite these stories is a very important, and often sacred duty.  There is great importance placed on getting it right.  These stories aren’t ju

CW: Anatomy discussions and scatalogical humor. Issues in the Heavenly Plain as Susanowo goes up to see his sister, Amaterasu.  This eventually led to the famous story of the Heavenly Rock Cave, and the origin stories of many of the clan deities. For more information, see https://www.sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-15 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 15: Trouble in Paradise. So I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and not going too stir crazy right now.  This Coronavirus situation has a lot of us staying at home, right now, and we are no exception here at Sengoku Daimyo HQ.  It put a certain emphasis on part of our story, today, as we discuss one of the OG self-isolators—Amaterasu and her retreat into the Heavenly Rock Cave Before we get into this one, a quick content warning.  The Japanese chronicles often refer to areas of anatomy that some people consider sensitive topics.  I will do my best to present them in a straightforward manner, without intent to be overly vulgar, but neither shall we get so academic as to avoid the subject.  Human anatomy is natural and we will do our best to treat it as such. In addition, this particular section has a couple of, shall we say, scatological references as well. Finally, I want to emphasize that we are dealing with the stories here in the context of the time they were written and what that tells us both about the people who wrote them down and any hints at earlier life and tradition.  This is not an attempt to discuss any particular Shinto beliefs, other than in the context of possibly helping us to make sense of what we are reading. With that said, let’s get into it. So of all the deities birthed by Izanagi and Izanami, two seem to shine above the rest—no pun intended—and they dominate the next part of the chronicles.  The first is probably known to many of you:  Amaterasu no Ohokami no Mikoto, the sun goddess.  Her birth takes different forms—in some accounts she is born from the union of Izanagi and Izanami, and in others, she is born after Izanami’s death, through the power of Izanagi himself.  Whatever her origin story, she is immediately recognized as a glorious and wondrous deity and set up to govern the High Plain of Heaven—something that I’m sure has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that that sovereigns of the 8th century were claiming her as their own, personal ancestral kami, or ujigami .  Meanwhile, she has a brother born about this time:  Susanowo no Mikoto.  Where Amaterasu is beautiful and immediately honored by the gods, Susanowo is wild and tempestuous, with a beard 8 spans long.  He rages and weeps and causes destruction, and so he is eventually exiled to the Nether World. Now the actual origin story for these deities comes in a few different flavors, but generally they are connected.   Typically there are three kami who are born together—Amaterasu, Susanowo, and Tsukuyomi, the moon god.  We’ll examine a few different accounts of these three kami, their origins, and how they are interrelated with one another, and the rest of the narrative. In the Nihon Shoki’s main narrative, Izanagi and Izanami intentionally give birth to a kami that would rule the cosmos.  This is the sun goddess, Ohohirume no Muchi, also identified as Amaterasu no Ohokami, or even Amaterasu Ohohirume no Mikoto. They immediately decided that she was too brilliant for the world, and so they send her off to Takama no Hara, the High Plain of Heaven. Next they create a partner for her—Tsukuyomi, the moon god.  He is created specifically to help her rule in the heavens…  And that is just about it.  He really doesn’t factor into the story much after that.  Well, that’s not quite true, there is one story, but we will get to that in due time. And I have to admit, despite his lack of presence I find Tsukuyomi intriguing on several different levels.  I mean, obviously the sun and moon go together, that is hard not to see, but the gender choice is interesting.  You see, in much of China, and even the world, the Sun tends to be male—Apollo, Ra, etc. Meanwhile, the moon is often female, likely because of its waxing and waning being compared to women’s menstruation cycles.  In Chinese Yin Yang theories the sun is associated with the yang—fiery, hot, and bright, while the Moon is associated with Yin, the feminine, cold, and dark.  In the Japanese tradition, though, this is precisely the opposite—the Sun is female and the Moon is male.  That would seem to put at least the origins of these stories some time before the wholesale import of Chinese thought and philosophy. Not only is Tsukuyomi, the moon, male, but his origin story is pretty much exactly the same as Amaterasu’s in most of the variations.  In the Nihon Shoki, he’s explicitly created by Izanagi and Izanami, along with Amaterasu.  In the Kojiki, as well as one of the alternate stories in the Nihon Shoki, they both come about when Izanagi is purifying himself, with Amaterasu being born from his left eye and Tsukuyomi being born from his right.  Sun and moon, as large disks in the sky, certainly could be easily equated with eyes.  In yet another story, they are created from disks or mirrors that Izanagi holds in his left and right hands, respectively. Now, Left and right also have significance in Japanese—the Left was often slightly elevated above the Right, such as the Sadaijin, or Minister of the Left, had slightly more authority and prestige than the Udaijin, the Minister of the Right.  Still, that seems a far cry from what we have here, where Tsukuyomi is basically non-existent and has very little prestige at all... After both Amaterasu—or Ohohirume, as she is often referred to in this early passage—and Tsukuyomi are born, then, in some of the stories, comes the Leech Child, Hiruko, whose bones never fully form and who still cannot stand by his third year, so he is put adrift, like Moses in a reed basket, though without so much hope that he’ll grow up to be something more—maybe more like the Spartans abandoning deformed children to the wilderness. Some scholars also see in Hiruko’s name a parallel with that of Ohohirume, or more appropriately “Hirume”.  Whereas “Hirume” is taken to mean “woman of the sun”, could “Hiruko” have originally meant “child of the sun”?  If that were the case, then the association with leeches (also “hiru” in Japanese) may be a false etymology from which the later descriptions were taken. By the way, this idea that Hiruko is born after Tsukuyomi is part of the main narrative thread in the Nihon Shoki, but many other stories put the Leech Child’s birth closer to the start of the tale, often coming just after Izanagi and Izanami’s first act of intercourse.  It is used in that context to provide an immediate consequence of Izanagi and Izanami’s initial mistake, which was simply to have Izanami speak first, if you recall.  Of course, regardless of where, the child is still placed in a boat and abandoned. There is one more kami that is often mentioned in this story, and that is the kami known as Susanowo.  Technically his full name is given as Take Haya Susa no Wo no Mikoto.  Susanowo’s origin story takes a variety of paths, but it always comes last of the three.  Reading through the variations of his story is like watching the OVA versus the television run of an anime, which often have wildly different story arcs but the same gist.  The main text of the Nihon Shoki gives no explanation other than he was born.  In the Kojiki, after washing his eyes and producing Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, Izanagi blows his nose, and thus is born Susanowo.  In the version where the sun and moon deities are born from disks or bronze mirrors, Susanowo is instead born from Izanagi looking askance.  No matter what, he doesn’t exactly have a noble entry into the world.  And it gets better:  he is described as wild and impetuous.  He grows a beard, 8 spans long, almost overnight and then he goes about wailing and making trouble.  This causes no end of trouble for those around him in the land of the Reed Plains, and it is recognized that if he is left alone, he will bring nothing but destruction. So a few things before we really get into Susanowo’s cycle.  First off, I don’t know if you got this from context, but Amaterasu is the favorite child, here.  She is the sun goddess, and, spoiler alert, she’ll eventually be the one from whom the entire Imperial line descends.  Remember that even Himiko’s name—or possibly title—appears to be a reference to the sun, and she is certainly seen as the head deity of the Yamato lineage.  Even today, most shrines will give her pride of place, even if they are chiefly venerating other kami. Susanowo, on the other hand, is a wild, earthy god.  Most of the references to him are from Izumo, on the Japan Sea coast, and he is chiefly venerated at Kumano Taisha, in Shimane prefecture—the old Izumo region.  Archaeology confirms that Izumo was its own, independent power base for centuries, and there are indications of conflict over the years between Yamato and Izumo.  I’ve said before that Izumo will likely deserve its own treatment here at some point, but for now let’s just talk about the fact that Izumo was eventually on the losing side of the power struggle between them and Yamato, and it shows in the narrative.  Still, they were too powerful to ignore completely, and many of their stories were clearly brought in and made a part of the official narrative, though taking a back seat to the story of Yamato.  Through these stories, as well as some hints from texts like the Izumo Fudoki and others, we might see hints of some of the political struggles taking place in the context of the mythic narratives, though trying to place them, historically, could be challenging without corroborating evidence. So anyway, these three children—Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanowo—are given reign over the universe—or at least the universe that is Ja

This episode we finish the  tale of Susano'o, including who he slew the giant beast, Yamata no Orochi, and thus saved Kushinada Hime, who would become his wife.   We talk about how, back on earth, Susano'o plays the part of the culture hero, rather than the wild and destructive god of the Heavenly Plains.  What is going on with that?  And just how deep is Susano'o's connection to Izumo? For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-16 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 16: Susano’o Slays the Serpent… and does a bunch of other stuff.  Now, before we get going, I’d like to quickly thank Corine for their support via KoFi.  Every little bit helps us pay for the costs of keeping this going and obtaining access to the books and articles that we use to put all of this together. As for content warnings—I think we are good for this episode; even the procreation is pretty tame and straightforward in this one. So you should be okay unless you have a problem with violence against mythical giant monster serpents, in which case, this might not be the episode for you.  Sorry, Jörmungandr—come back next episode. So for now we are going to continue with the story of Susanowo, after he left Takama no Hara.  Of course, on the surface, it wouldn’t seem like there should be much there.  Remember, he had been exiled down to Ne no Kuni, and had just finished saying farewell to his sister, Amaterasu.  That had been a lengthy and, ultimately, disastrous affair that had led him to be fined, punished, and finally exiled from the Heavenly plain.  So now Susanowo descends to earth and will eventually make his way to the underworld—the land of his deceased mother—but as with the Heavenly Plain, he takes his sweet time getting there and does plenty of other stuff along the way.  I swear, he’s like little Jeffrey from Family Circus, able to go just about anywhere except a straight line.  And if we had that little dotted line map it would run through Izumo Province, Aki Province, Kii Province—even out to the Korean Peninsula and back.  It’s crazy.  So anyway, Susanowo descened from the Heavenly Plain and landed somewhere in the general vicinity of Japan.  We’ll talk about the different areas of where he is said to have landed—and why that matters—and then look at what he did there.  Now in some cases he has children with him—by whom it is not mentioned, but there you are—and in some cases he arrives by himself.  In at least one he plays the part of Johnny Appleseed, planting all manner of trees as he traverses the land. Eventually he comes to a river, and at that river he runs into an old couple and their daughter, who is bound to be eaten by a giant, eight-headed serpent.  Of course, this being a heroic tale, he slays the serpent, gets the girl and saves the day.  He apparently settles down for a while, builds a house, has a family, and then, FINALLY, he leaves for Ne no Kuni. It’s like he’s the hero in one of those old console RPGs, where there is supposedly some big thing he has to do *right now*, but he’s off making sure that every cave has been searched and every vase has been broken before he moves on to the next cut scene.  And who can blame him, really? So we’ll take a look at this story—really several stories—and try to unravel some of what is going on.  We’ll also put up some more information on the website, sengokudaimyo.com/podcast—some of the things that we found to be pretty neat but that might not fit neatly in the podcast itself. In the end, I hope that we can really see how this Susanowo is quite different from the Susanowo of the last episode.  The Heavenly Jerk is now an Earthly Hero.  We’ll also talk about some theories regarding Susanowo’s role as a god of Izumo—specifically in his relationship to rain and agriculture.  We’ll discuss his connections with Izumo, seen not only in the Kiki but also in the Izumo Fudoki, and try to tease out a little more information that will inform out later discussions of the Izumo-Yamato relationship. So let’s get into it Alright, so we know that Susanowo came down from the Heavenly Plain to the earthly realm, but right off the bat we are confronted with a conundrum, as, you see where he lands, exactly, is something of a debate, even within the Chronicles.  In several stories he arrives  directly at the headwaters of a large river in the Izumo area, yet in another account in the Nihon Shoki, as well as in the Kujiki, he arrived all the way over in Silla, on the Korean peninsula.  Let’s look at this version for a minute, as it raises a couple of interesting points. In this version, Susanowo arrives in Silla with his son, Isotakeru no Kami, at a place called Soshimori—or possibly Sorimori--and it was is only after spending some time there that he and his son hopped in a boat made out of clay—not exactly your typical shipbuilding material—and made their way to Japan and eventually up to Izumo and the Hi River.  As they went, at least in the Johnny Appleseed version, they planted trees from seeds they had taken from the Heavenly Plain, making the mountains green with life from Tsukushi onwards. There are two somewhat important pieces of information that this version of the story gives us about Susanowo.  For one, there is his arrival in Korea—combined with other information that we’ll get to, this has led some to assume that Susanowo isn’t native to Japan, and that he may, in fact, have been a banshin, or foreign deity, brought over from Korea.  This is certainly possible, though I don’t know that I would go that far—even if he had origins on the continent, it is clear that much of his character was defined by the people of the islands, particularly Izumo Province, so I have a hard time calling “foreign” in that context. The other thing I find interesting is the way that he is shown sowing the islands with trees and plants of all kinds.  This hardly fits the character of one who, in the heavenly realm, had been all about destroying and wrecking the fields.  There are several other clues, as we go through, that I believe hint at Susanowo’s role, at least in Izumo, as a benevolent spirit who protected the people and helped ensure a good harvest. Now, whether directly or indirectly, Susanowo eventually wound up at Torikami, at the headwaters of the Hii River in Izumo, which flows off of Mt. Sentsu.  Or possibly the Ye River, in Aki Province—though both actually flow through the old province of Izumo.  There, he came upon an elderly couple with their young daughter, and they were weeping.  When they noticed Susanowo they introduced themselves as Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi, Foot-stroking-elder and Hand-stroking-elder, two earthly kami—that is, the spirits that reside on the earth, also known as kunitsu-kami, as opposed to those in the High Plain of Heaven.  Their daughter, Kushinada-hime, meaning Wondrous Princess of the Rice Fields, was their 8th and youngest daughter, and, as it turns out, the only one left alive.  You see, every year the great beast, Yamata no Orochi, an 8-headed and 8-tailed serpent, would descend and devour one of their daughters.  This was the 8th year, and it was on its way back. Now if you’ve seen the anime Blue Seed, you might recognize parts of this story, as Takada Yuzo drew on many of the elements in the Izumo cycle—though it’s hardly a straight up retelling of the story, so I don’t think there are any spoilers.  Still a good series, however. Anyway, Susanowo told the man and woman that he could save their daughter, and asked for her hand in marriage.  The old man, Ashinazuchi, agreed, and immediately Susanowo turned the maiden into a comb and stuck it in his hair.  Which, I guess is one way to protect her?   Anyway, now sporting the latest fashion of wife-comb, Susanowo told the old couple to brew 8-fold sake, put one tub of sake in each of 8 cupboards—some stories say 8 gates—and then they waited. Well, actually, I suppose they hid somewhere out of sight and THEN waited, but that part isn’t really stated explicitly. Eventually, Yamata no Orochi appeared—a giant beast.  As the old couple had said, it had 8 heads and 8 tails.  Its eyes were bright red and there were trees growing on its backs.  As it crawled it spanned 8 hills and 8 valleys, and one account even says it had mountains on its sides. We mentioned before that eight might mean “many” in some cases.  We see the eightfold, or the eighty, or even the eight hundred.  Just as the Bible likes 40, the Chronicles like the number eight.  Even today, throughout Asia, eight is considered a lucky number.  In Buddhism you have the Eightfold Path, and in Thailand people will pay extra for phone numbers or license plates with eight in them.  When you learn to write, you might learn the Eiji happo, or eight strokes of the character “Ei”.  It is a fortuitous number.  And so it is unclear when we encounter eight if that is truly the number or if it just means there are a lot of them, and eight was  good number to use.  So you may notice that the theme of 8 is coming up pretty heavily here in the story.  Even the name of the serpent, “Yamata”, is thought to refer to 8 heads, so there you go.  If anyone decides to make a drinking game out of the chronicles, I’d be wary about what you drink whenever “8” or “eightfold” is mentioned, as that could be a quick trip to alcohol poisoning. Speaking of drinking games, when this giant beast came upon the tubs of sake, each head dove straight in and began to drink the sake.  The alcoholic beverage quickly did its work, and pretty soon Yamata no Orochi was dead drunk, unconscious to the world.  As soon as that happened, Susanowo drew his long sword—a sword 10 hand-breadths long, probably about a meter or so—and he went to work, cutting off the heads, and then continuing to chop up the rest of the body until he got to the end of its tail.  There he cut, but his sword suddenly chipped, encountering unexpected

Alright, so this episode we continue with the Izumo theme and we are going to focus on The Great Land Master, some times called the Great Name Holder, Ohonamuchi, aka Ohonamochi, aka Ohokuninushi, aka Ashihara no Shiko'o, aka Utskushikunimitama, aka... well, you get the picture.  The guy has a lot of names. Anyway, in this episode we'll go over the story of him and the White Rabbit of Inaba, as well as his conflict with his many brothers, which leads him down to Ne no Kuni, the home of Susano'o. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-17 Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 17: The Great Land Master, or Wisdom is not a Dump Stat. So as we tell these stories I want to stress again that they are *not* history—not in the traditional sense.  These are stories written down well after the fact and with a political purpose, but they are considered largely myth.  They tell the story of gods, not people, and as much as we may want to connect them to individuals, we need to be careful.  These stories are myths by the 8th century, and most scholars don’t really start considering the words of the Kiki to be anywhere near historically accurate until *maybe* around the 10th sovereign, posthumously known as Sujin Tenno—and even then the narrative is largely considered legendary.  Still, I feel that reading them gives us something to use to otherwise interpret what we see, but we just need to be careful. I am taking some liberties with my interpretation, much as the scholars of those ancient texts did, to try to make sense of the stories as they are told, but we have to be careful.   We should not always assume that every story is a stand-in for some historical event in the same way that we should not assume that they are simply made up out of whole cloth, either.  At the very least, I hope that these stories of Ohonamuchi and others are entertaining, and give you a glimpse into Japanese mythology and legend. With all that said, let’s continue our trek through the Chronicles.  This time, as we move on from Susanowo, the man from Susa, we’ll focus on another Izumo deity: Ohonamuchi, or “The Great Land Master”.   He’s known by many names, perhaps the two most common being Ohonamochi or Ohokuninushi, and they all have similar connotations: the holder of the land and lord of the country.  He is the primary deity of Izumo, enshrined at Izumo Taisha, considered to be the site of one of the oldest shrines in Japan, which still retains peculiar architectural details not found in most Shinto shrines.  He is enshrined there with his primary wife, Suseri Bime. But we’ll get into that more, later. According to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Ohonamuchi is a descendant of Susanowo and Kushinada Hime through his father, Ame no Fuyukinu no Kami, a fifth generation descendant of Susanowo and his bride and also the one who took the sword that would come to be known as Kusanagi (the one found in the serpent Yamata no Orochi’s tail) up to the Heavenly court.  I think it is very likely that this lineage is a kind of retcon to provide some semblance of narrative to otherwise disjointed stories, but without any other sources to back that up, it is purely conjecture.  Interestingly enough, Ohonamuchi’s early story is mostly found in the Kojiki—the Nihon Shoki has only a relatively brief section on his background of Ohonamuchi, mostly focusing on his role in the creation of the sub-celestial world and then handing it over to the Imperial ancestor – but we’ll get to that later.  You see, for someone with such a great name, his story doesn’t start out quite that grand.  In fact, Ohonamuchi started out as the runt of the litter, with many brothers—the Kojiki, of course says 80 brothers, but the exact number is hardly relevant.  Young Ohonamuchi, much like the Biblical story of Joseph and his Amazing Coat, was forced to act like a servant for his brothers, and they persecuted him relentlessly. The first story dealing with young, put-upon Ohonamuchi is probably the most famous:  The story of Ohonamuchi—aka Ohokuninushi—and the White Rabbit of Inaba.  Even if you’re only a little familiar with Japanese myth, this is a story you may have heard of.  It goes something like this. It happened that there was a beautiful woman named Inaba no Yagami Hime, or Princess Yagami of the land of Inaba. So of course, Yagami Hime was so beautiful that every one of Ohonamuchi’s 80 brothers wanted to marry her, and so they all decided to go to Inaba together to woo her, with Ohonamuchi carrying their luggage like an attendant.  Because, of course, what could go wrong with 80 (or more) suitors all showing up on a lady’s doorstep all at once?  I’m sure this will end happily for all involved. Since Yagami is east of Izumo proper, they had a bit of a hike ahead of them.  Apparently their GM was nice, however, as they only seem to have come upon a single random encounter.  As the brothers were passing the cape of Keta, they came upon a wounded rabbit that had been stripped of its fur, lying naked on the beach. Now if you couldn’t tell by now, the brothers had a bit of a cruel streak.  They pretended to take pity on the wounded rabbit and told him that he would be healed if he would lie down in the salt water and then climb to a high ridge and let the cool wind blow on him.  As Rogaine was still some centuries in the future, the rabbit decided to do as he was told, but of course, it only made things worse.  I mean, who would have guessed that dousing your open wounds with seawater was a bad idea? Still, the rabbit apparently put up with the pain of the saltwater and made it to the top of the ridge.  As he lay there, probably hoping the pain was just medicine at work, the salt dried out his skin, which, to make matters worse, began to crack as the cold wind hit it. Now the rabbit was lying there, writhing in pain, when Ohonamuchi came upon him—I guess he had been weighed down with all those bags as his brothers had gone ahead of him.  I can’t help but picture him comically overloaded with everyone’s stuff at this point, peeking out from behind a couple of baskets as he makes his way along the coast. Feeling sorry for the wounded animal—because apparently he had a heart—Ohonamuchi actually took the time to ask what had happened, and the rabbit relayed its tale.  According to the rabbit, he had been living on the Oki Islands—a cluster of islands north of Izumo, not the holy Oki island in the Korean straits—and could find no way to get to the mainland.  So, using his wits (because rabbits are known in Japanese legend as being clever and resourceful), he sought out a sea monster, and suggested a contest.  “I bet you that I have more relatives than you”, the rabbit said to the sea monster – and to test this, he suggested to the sea monster that it gather up all of its family and that they lay down, nose to tail, all the way from the islands to Cape Keta.  That way the rabbit could them and compare the number to his family.  The sea monsters obliged, at which point the rabbit started hopping over the sea monsters, counting as he went.  He almost made it all the way, but as he was almost to the land he shouted out to the sea monsters, “Ha, ha!  I’ve tricked you!”  But this hubris would come back to bite him—quite literally—for just as he said that the last sea monster lashed out and caught him, tearing off his fur as the rabbit leapt ashore.  And there he had lain until the other deities, Ohonamochi’s brothers, found him, and what happened next you already know. Ohonamuchi was filled with pity for the rabbit, and he suggested that he go wash himself in the river—in freshwater—and then take the pollen of the kama grass—probably something like our cattails—and roll around in it so that his skin would heal.  The rabbit did as Ohonamuchi suggested, and sure enough the pain abated and he began to heal.  The rabbit was grateful, and told Ohonamuchi that because he had been so kind, none of his brothers would gain Yagami Hime’s hand.  Instead she would wed Ohonamuchi. And so it came to be—Yagami Hime did not accept any of the brothers, but instead was betrothed to Ohonamuchi, and all because of the kindness he showed to a wounded rabbit. Alright, so about this story.  First of all, most of these events would seem to take place in or around the area of modern Tottori city, which was the site of one of the clusters of Izumo-style square shaped burial mounds, and was in the area of that used to be called Inaba.  The princess’s name, “Yagami”, also happens to be the name of the largest of the 12 districts of Inaba, south of Tottori, with its district head thought to be in modern Yazu, near the site of the old Mantai Temple ruins between the Kisaichi and Hatto rivers.  Leading one to believe that she was actually the Lady of Yagami, of Inaba.  Maybe the daughter of a powerful local chieftain, or even the chieftain, herself.  Of course, the way that the Chronicles have been going, where the line between “person” and “area of land” is blurred—particularly when talking about the kami—it strikes me that she could just as easily be some anthropomorphized version of the land itself.  Still, Occam’s razor suggests that she is either the Lady Yagami of Inaba or the Lady of Yagami of Inaba, and that is enough for us right now. The cape of Keta, where the brothers came across the rabbit, would appear to be in the northwest of modern Tottori along the sea coast—there is even a shrine that has been set up there named Hakuto Shrine—White Rabbit shrine—though this no doubt came much later.  The names have changed, but that is thought to be the area. Now the Oki Islands, where the Rabbit came from, are interesting.  These are islands out in the Japan Sea due north of Izumo—we believe they may be what are referred to in another story as the “Northern Gate”.  Of course, while their name is “Oki”, it is actually written with differe

This episode we continue with the rest of the story of Ōnamuchi--aka Ōnamochi, Ōkuninushi, Ōmononushi, Ashihara Shiko'o, Utsushikunitama, etc.   Last episode talked about his martial and marital exploits in becoming Ōkuninushi, the Great Land Master, and now we dive into his role as a Creator kami--finishing the work of Izanagi and Izanami.  We'll also talk a little about his partner, Sukuna Bikona, who assisted him in most of this endeavor, as well as how he came to also be associated with Ōmiwa no kami, the tutelary spirit of Yamato.  Finally, we'll discuss the land-ceding story, and how he eventually gave it all up to the Imperial Ancestor, Ninigi no Mikoto.  For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-18 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 18: Ohonamuchi and the Epic Bromance. So last episode we covered Ohonamuchi’s story primarily as it is told in the Kojiki, with some input from the Fudoki.  There we see him as a general culture hero: initially the runt of the litter, his origin story takes us through the encounter with the white rabbit of Inaba, his conflicts with his many brothers, as well as his marriages to various women as he was becoming Ohokuninushi—the Great Master of the Country (or else the Master of the Great Country—either way, the meaning seems pretty clear).  This episode we’ll continue with his story, but as Ohonamuchi, the Creator—a deity who finished the work of Izanagi and Izanami, with a little help from a friend. But before we do that, I thought I should note that I did neglect one area of research that I should have included, and that was the story as retold in the Kujiki.  The Kujiki is a little different than the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in that it reverses the two parts of Ohonamuchi’s life.  Whereas the Kojiki talks about Ohonamuchi’s life up through his marriage to Suseri Hime and then goes on to his work as a Creator spirit, the Kujiki has it reversed, whilst the Nihon Shoki only carries this latter part of the story.  In addition, the Kujiki seems to treat Ohonamuchi’s 80 brothers—the Yasogami—as a single entity, Kotoyasu no Kami, rather than as separate kami.  And remember the betrothal to Princess Yagami of Inaba?  You know, the one with the white rabbit and all of Ohonamuchi’s brothers going to court her at once?  Well this certainly makes the story with Yagami a little less odd, as there would now be only two suitors.  Otherwise, much of the story is the same, though missing some of the poetry. So anyway, about this other aspect of Ohonamuchi—the Creator.  It might seem odd that he would be a “Creator” god given everything so far.  After all, didn’t Izanami and Izanagi create the world?  What was left? Well, for one thing, in at least some of the stories, as you may recall, they never finished their creation:  Izanami died giving birth, and though Izanagi continued some creation after that, apparently it was still unfinished.  And then Susanowo was supposed to take care of the terrestrial realm, but much of his story was taken up with him heading up to the Heavenly Plain and then down to the Nether World.  So apparently there were still a few things to do. More likely, though, I suspect that Ohonamuchi’s creation was focused on his province of Izumo—and possibly the surrounding regions. In fact, there are roughly four Izumo creation deities.  First, of course, there’s Susanowo, who we already talked about.  He is a pretty big deal in the Chronicles, but makes much less of a showing in the Izumo Fudoki.  Mostly he seems to have influence in the south of Izumo proper, up in the mountains.  Perhaps he shows up more in other Fudoki, but since there are only a few extant, it is hard to know. Then there is Yatsukamizu Omizuno, who gets short shrift in the Chronicles—merely a mention in a genealogical record between Susanowo and Ohonamuchi—a genealogy that was likely created to try to put some semblance of order on disparate tradtitions.   However, he has an entire section in the Izumo Fudoki that is effectively the creation of the land of Izumo by pulling together pieces of Silla, the Oki Islands, and the Noto Peninsula.  Other mentions are all geared around this one myth—the kuni-biki, or land-pulling myth.  Given that and the fact that he is credited in the Fudoki with giving Izumo its name, he was certainly important, and his worship may have been connected with the traders and trade routes connecting Izumo to the various lands mentioned in the myth. A third kami is Kami Musubi no Mikoto.  You may remember from last episode, this is the kami that helped Ohonamuchi’s mother bring him back to life, and also the parent to Ayato Hime, one of the kami that Ohonamuchi courts in the Fudoki.  Kami Musubi no Mikoto shows up mostly in the northern and coastal regions of the Shimane peninsula, in the districts of Tatenui and Izumo proper. In the Chronicles, kami with the term “Musubi”—which can mean “to tie” or even “to procreate”—are generally High Gods, living in the Heavenly Plain, and they don’t typically descend to the earthly realm.  Kami Musubi no Mikoto, along with Takami Musubi no Mikoto, was among the first beings to come into existence, even before Izanagi and Izanami, and there is some thought that this deity was based on pre-agricultural concepts. Another thing that is unclear is the gender of Kami Musubi no Mikoto and other “Musubi” kami.  It is quite possible that they were originally a genderless spirit concept, though the narrative does lean towards the feminine.  Takami Musubi no Mikoto, the other ancestor deity of the Imperial lineage, along with Amaterasu no Ohokami, is quite often seen as male.  Kami Musubi no Mikoto is frequently paired with Takami Musubi no Mikoto, and given that they have an offspring shared with Takami Musubi, one would understand them being considered female, but there is no clear indication in the text, and Japanese does not typically use pronouns or similar markers of gender unless the author is trying to make a specific point.  Without context clues such as “Hime” and “Hiko”, one just isn’t sure.  Therefore I’ve decided that the best pronoun in our English tale is “they”, as the third person gender neutral pronoun, to avoid otherwise misgendering them.  Besides, these are ineffable spirits, so just how hard should we try to “eff” them, anyway? So these four—Susanowo, Yatsukamizu Omizunu, Kami Musubi, and Ohonamuchi are all considered creator gods in the Izumo tradition, but there are clues that Ohonamuchi is a bit more than the others.  Without even considering the Chronicles, the records from the Fudoki should help us see that Ohonamuchi—whether under that name or one of his many others—had connections that were much further afield.  Not only does Ohonamuchi show up in most of the regions of Izumo, where he can often be seen paired with daughters of Kami Musubi or Susanowo, but evidence of his worship are found up and down the Japan Sea coast and throughout the archipelago.  There are connections mentioned between him and the princesses of the triple shrines of Munakata, and there is even an Ohoanamuji Shrine down in Kagoshima.  There are references to him that are traced to the no longer extant Iyo Fudoki, as well as elsewhere. In the remaining text of the Harima Fudoki Ohonamuchi—in this case as Ashihara Shikowo, the Ugly Man of the Reed Plains, as Susanowo had dubbed him in the Kojiki narrative.   And he has all kinds of adventures.  In one story, he confronts a foreign deity, Ame no Hiboko, who is looking to come ashore.  He initially denies the kami’s request to land, but eventually allows him ashore.  Later, they have a contest to see who will have access to what lands.  So they throw ropes of kudzu vines from the top of Mt. Shinitake.  Hiboko’s ropes all land in parts of Tajima province, on the Japan Sea Coast next to Inaba.  Meanwhile, Ohonamuchi’s ropes land in Tajima and Harima province. Now it is possible, of course, that these different names were once different kami, and that they’ve been collected together as a single individual over the centuries.  It could also be that some of the stories about Ohonamuchi originally were of different deities, and as the political map of the archipelago changed and as the influence of Izumo spread, Ohonamuchi was adopted into the stories, and other deities may have been forgotten.  Whatever the reason, Ohonamuchi was clearly well known across the islands, at least by the 8th century. Still, he is not alone in his role as a creator.  He has help.  A sidekick of sorts.  Someone who will be the yin to his yang.  The Sundance to his Butch.  The Iron Man to his Captain America.  The Enkidu to his Gilgamesh. The Tippy Toe to his Squirrel Girl.  The… well, you get the picture. The story goes something like this. One day, Ohonamuchi was out walking along the beach, in Izumo province, when he heard a voice call out over the waves.  He looked out, but he initially couldn’t see anything.  Approaching the waves he found a tiny man floating in a hollowed out seed husk, wearing a cape made of the skin of a small bird—some sources say a wren, and others suggest a wagtail. Intrigued, Ohonamuchi scooped up the little man and started “playing around with him.”  Yeah, I don’t think consent or even empathy was high on the list here.  This Asian Lilliputian wasn’t too thrilled with this treatment, apparently, and so he jumped up and bit Ohonamuchi on the cheek.  This startled Ohonamuchi, but he didn’t retaliate.  Instead, he asked the diminutive individual his name, but he got no answer.  And so he asked his attendant kami if they knew who he was, but nobody did.  Finally, a toad spoke up, and suggested that Ohonamuchi ask Kue Hiko—the Scarecrow spirit. Now here’s the thing about the scarecrow spirit—though he has no legs, he sees everything.  And this makes some sense, you know?   As you pass by a rice field you see him standing th

This episode we take a quick break from the Chronicles to go over a bit of the history of Izumo, focusing on the archaeology of the region, which we don't really get in the Chronicles.  This episode we'll focus primarily on the geography and then the Jomon through Yayoi period history--right up to the time of Queen Himiko.  Next episode we'll look at the Kofun period. This means we'll be skipping around, going back to some subjects we've covered and looking a head into the future.  The goal is to get an idea of Izumo's history as we are reading through Yamato's account, so we can keep things in perspective. For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-19 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 9:  Yakumotatsu Izumo, Part 1. This episode we are going to dive into the land of Izumo—the land where many of these early myths seem to be rooted.  According to some:  The land of the gods themselves.  “Yakumotatsu Izumo”, the poets say, the Rising Clouds of Izumo.  So let’s dig into this a bit. Oh, but before we go too far, I want to let you know that I’ve put some of the general locations we’ll be talking about up on SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where I’ve even linked to a Google Map so that you can have a better idea of the areas we are talking about.  And there is a lot to keep track of, and I apologize in advance as I’ve tried to make this as digestible as I can.  Still, this episode had me looking up archaeological site reports, and numerous articles, many in Japanese.  They should be linked over on the Podcast blog for those who want to dig into them. Alright, what is it about Izumo that makes it so special?  There are so many ancient provinces, some of which we’ll likely touch on: Harima, Kii, Houki, Aki, Kibi, Iyo, and so many more, and of course, Yamato itself.  What makes Izumo so special? Well, we could maybe attribute that to the survival of the Izumo Fudoki—one of the few extant fudoki that has survived the centuries, and it is one of the most complete.  But that was written after the Chronicles, so it can’t be the full story. The historical “specialness” if Izumo is an even stranger concept from a modern point of view.  Shimane prefecture and the cities of Izumo and Matsue are hardly economic powerhouses, and they are actually quite out of the way for most travelers.  To get there without your own car entails taking a train to Okayama, on the Seto Inland Sea, and then a two and a half hour train ride over the mountains, a trip of about 180 km.  Compare that to the roughly 470 mile trip from Ueno station in Tokyo to Kanazawa, also on the Japan Sea coast, which takes a little under 3 hours via the Hokuriku Shinkansen.  It is little wonder that Shimane, the Japanese prefecture with the second smallest population—only beaten out by neighboring Tottori prefecture—is also one of the least visited as well, at least by international tourists. That said, Shimane definitely has its attractions.  Matsue, along the shores of Lake Shinji has one of the few remaining Edo period castles—and I mean original structure, not just the stones and a concrete reconstruction.  It was also the home, for a while, of the famous author Lafcadio Hearn, also known in Japan by the name Koizumi Yakumo, a name that clearly alludes to the territory of ancient Izumo.  Still, I would venture that Izumo hardly pops up into the forefront of most people’s minds when they think of Japan, and this has affected modern attitudes towards the study of this region’s history—a struggle that one could argue goes all the way back to the 8th century.  As we have seen all too often, even in the modern day, it is the victors who write the history books, build the statues, and determine just how and what gets remembered.  And as humans we tend to emphasize what *we* feel is important and sweep under the rug those things make us uncomfortable or don’t fit with our vision of what we think we know about reality.  Too often this means that we use modern conditions to make assumptions about the past, even when, rationally, we know that socio-economic and environmental conditions may have been quite different.  And so even when many striking archeological discoveries were being made in Izumo, many scholars tended to dismiss them as insignificant up through the early 80s.  They felt that Izumo was only so big in the Imperial myth because of narrative logic and perhaps its location as a “far away land” from the perspective of Yamato, but there was no reason to think that it had ever been much more important than any other part of the island chain. That view was transformed on July 11, 1984, when a team from the Shimane Prefectural Board of Education discovered unprecedented caches of bronze instruments at the Kanba Kojindani site in modern Izumo City.  This site is 6 kilometers southwest of Lake Shinji, and maybe a day’s walk from Ohonamuchi’s great shrine, Izumo Taisha.  It was discovered by accident during logging work on the hillside.  There, in four uneven groups, they found 358 bronze swords, in relatively mint condition—well, as mint as they could be for being in the ground all this time.  Now up to that point, archaeologists had only found 300 bronze swords in the rest of the country, so this more than doubled that number.  That’s impressive enough in itself.  But then, the next year, in 1984, they found 6 large bells, or doutaku, along with 16 bronze halberds.  People started to wonder about some kind of Izumo kingship, prior to Yamato’s cultural expansion and dominion.  This was further reinforced in 1994 when 39 more doutaku were found in the mountains at Unnan City.  So something was definitely going on here, but just what was it? Today, the term Izumo properly refers only to Izumo City, located on the Izumo plain, on the Shimane peninsula, with the Japan Sea to the west and beyond the hilly mountains to the north.  The plain is formed from the Kando and Hii rivers, flowing north from the southern mountains, either west to the Japan Sea or East to Lake Shinji, respectively. Of course, the ancient 8th century *Province* of Izumo much larger, encompassing districts throughout modern day Shimane prefecture and possibly even further than that —or at least it had influence well beyond its 8th century borders.  Early burial practices and kofun types indicate a Izumo cultural zone that encompassed much of the Japan Sea coast of western Honshu, with particular concentration between Mt. Sanbe all the way to eastern Tottori, spanning some 93 miles as the crow flies.  There are connections to the Oki Islands, some 30~40 miles to the north, and even jumping from Eastern Tottori to the Hokuriku Region, about 100 miles distant, and then covering another 100 miles or so northeast from there, which was known as Koshi in the Chronicles and Fudoki.  This area was never a single polity, or state, but it is perhaps better referred to as the Izumo Cultural Zone, and evidence suggests that in the early days it gave the Kinai region around modern Nara, Osaka, and Kyoto a real run for their money as the dominant Japanese culture in the archipelago. And let’s take a bit more of a look at the areas that were encompassed in this “Izumo Cultural Zone”.  We’ll have some references at the podcast webpage as well:  sengokudaimyo.com/podcast. If we start at the far western edge, at least for our purposes, we find Mt. Sanbe, and nearby are two rivers.  Flowing northwards, due east of the mountain is the Kando river, which eventually flows through the Izumo plain and empties out into the Japan Sea on the western edge of the Izumo peninsula.  Just south of Mt. Sanbe, however, is the Gou-no-kawa, or Gou River, which was known in the ancient chronicles as the Ye River—and its name is still written with the same character that can be written as “E” or “Ye” in “Edo” or “Yedo”, the old name for the city we know today as Tokyo. The Ye River is interesting in that it actually connects the Japan Sea coast with the Seto Inland Sea, on the south side of Honshu.  It has its headwaters in the hills north of Hiroshima, on the Seto Inland Sea side, and while normally one would expect such a river to flow south, instead it winds through the mountainous valleys of western Japan, heading eastward towards Okayama and the ancient area of Kibi before turning north through a break in the mountains and eventually emptying out into the Japan Sea on the northwest coast at a place named Goutsu, or Gou Port.  The entire watershed was not necessarily a part of Izumo itself, of course, but you can see how it could have been an important artery  allowing for trade of goods and ideas over the centuries. Moving East from Mt. Sanbe we have, as we mentioned, the Kando and Hii Rivers, which both flow north to the Izumo plain.  The Kando river pours out at Ooyashiro Bay, named for the nearby Izumo Ooyashiro, also known as Izumo Taisha.  This is the sight of Inasa Beach and believed to be the location of several of the myths and legends. As for its compatriot the Hii river, you may recall that that is where the god Susanowo is said to have arrived in Japan and slain the beast Yamata no Orochi, and that river turns east to empty into lake Shinji.  This area, around the Kando and Hii rivers, is what we typically will refer to as Western Izumo. Moving east, there is the large expanse of Lake Shinji, and then the area between two great lakes - Lake Shinji, and the Nakaumi or “inner sea” which is really more of a lake these days.  In the west of this area is modern day Matsue City, which sits on the Ou Plain between these two great bodies of water, and in the east is Yasugi city, on the Nogi Plain, at the mouth of the Iinashi River, on the southern shore of Naka’umi.  We will generally refer to this area as Eastern Izumo, and in the 8th century this area—specifically the Ou Plain—was actually the center of the provincial administration of Izumo.  That t